Jet Thunder silently buried?

[+Stary 2,427]

not that we couldn't see this coming after all

 

after some month or so checked Aerosoft site, lo and behold, all Jet Thunder related topics are locked...

 

just to remind you all, some screenshots from what some still have hope might see the light of the day:

 

from 2006

 

 

 

from 2007

 

 

2008

 

 

2011

 

[+JonathanRL 974]

I lost hope in Jet Thunder when they failed to meet their new, partitioned release date. Too bad, since it looked to be something rather interesting.

 

This may however encourage TK to make a "SF2 South Atlantic" now when the competition he always pointed as hindrance is gone... aw, who am I kidding.

[+Soulfreak 6,524]

If you would like to know something about current status, shoot them a message on their facebook side!

Did it some month ago, but deleted it.

What i remember is, that they are still working on it....

[+Stary 2,427]

Carlo, I've seen your post on Aerosoft German subforum and I've seen their reply ...or there lack of

[+Soulfreak 6,524]

Jip, Aerosoft did not respond to any kind of JT topic since month.....

So I contacted them at Facebook.....

[+Stary 2,427]

I wonder if Aerosoft is de facto still the JT publisher

[+Dave 2,322]

Vaporware, like Fighter OPs....

[+Soulfreak 6,524]

Shooted themanother message, with detailed questions.

Will let you know what they will awnser! ;-)

[+Stary 2,427]

Vaporware, like Fighter OPs....

Most likely Dave, yet Dante and his team allways seemed to me as likeable, reasonable people, full of passion and in the know of what their goal is.

Contrary to Fighter Ops where I smelled something fishy going on quite quickly

[SUICIDAL 401]

A few months ago i talking with Ariel Cancio, the Argentine who was with the Brazilian Dante Mendes Da Patta, in building 3D models.

Apparently they separated due to differences with business ideas.

Honestly I think they should remodel the entire imaging engine to suit the new requirements. One thing is to see the renders, another is the In game.I had the opportunity to test a Beta 1.0 of Jeth Thunder.

I wonder if you could prove to the SF2 North Atlantic with Malvinas Mod, is really impressive.

The picture quality is very good.

[MAKO69 186]

Would have loved to have purchased this sim!

[MigBuster 2,884]

Me too - hope the work isn't wasted and becomes part of another project

[+Stary 2,427]

I still hope so, but I'll no longer waste my time for Aerosoft forums

[JediMaster 451]

It's the same old song and dance. Unlike Fighter Ops, though, this had a lot more concrete headway made. That makes it more disappointing.

[FastCargo 412]

Unfortunately, this kinda shows a point I've been trying to make for a while:

 

Coding air combat sims that use AI, electronic warfare, and missiles (basically, most stuff post Korean War) is not easy, takes more time and costs more than you think.

 

The only 2 consumer products that I know that address this (air combat, AI, electronic warfare, missiles) at all (other than pure arcade products like Ace Combat) are DCS and TW. Everything else is either civilian (MSFS and its ilk), pre-missiles (IL2 and its derivatives, War Thunder, etc), multiplayer only (TacPack for MSFS - drones that don't fight are NOT combat AI), or hobbies (Falcon, EECH, Janes F-18, TAW, etc).

 

Unless someone knows something I don't, that's all there is...which is disheartening to say the least.

 

FC

[+Brain32 265]

The problem with more in-depth sims is that they lack the very thing arcade games have...

 

First, wider audience can't really get into the somewhat sterile world of flightsims, I mean basically they hold as much appeal as Call of Duty singleplayer without the storyline especially if there's no multiplayer which is another attraction.

I tried AceCombat for PC and it's pretty much not even a sim-game but rather plane-game, but I'll tell 'ya, it kept me in the chair to the very end and old hand AceCombat players even say that we got the worst one!

So to cut to the mighty two(from our perspective):

 

LockOn saga:

It's ok, pretty scalable in difficulty options although maybe not fully up to my taste, has multiplayer which is a big plus, however singleplayer is just as sterile as usual for those games and with the limited amount of scenarios, terrains and flyable aircrafts I get bored with it really easy.

Big minus - no mods(in SF sense) from the start, can one imagine what would be available now if mods for LockOn were possible from the start?

Another huge minus for LockOn series is unreasonable performance demand topped with poorly scalable graphics options which often lead to the what I call LockOn paradox a 3d game phenomenon which occurs when the game is so demanding that even when you cut it down to the point it looks VERY poorly as in worse than competition poorly it still runs like crap.

 

TW series,

- small development house can't follow modern trends

- continuation from the first point, same as LockOn and other sim-games, has sterile gameplay

- no multiplayer

On a good thing, high modability gives it nearly endless possibilities, you can buzz around in a Fokker Dr.1 over France in 1917 at one point, push the attack on Hanoi in F-105 in another and finish your playtime pushing amraams from your Raptor over Taiwan, no game could give us that, ever...

- however devs for some reason are pushing the mods out more aggressively than ever which makes that huge uber-plus of tw games a big-fat minus.

 

Do we dare to hope for a super game? I think we should and basically if such game ever shows up it will have to concentrate on allowing a smooth mod support and let the people as enthusiasts build it together with the devs, I see DCS is trying that but they are waaaay too complicated for that to explode and conquer like SF series mods(just look at the insane amount of stuff we built over the years!!!) because with the amount of time it takes to make something at DCS level mods that do come out and actually get finished can pretty much be payware only and even then considering the time it will take they will most likely be obsolete...

[+streakeagle 871]

Hope everyone likes Strike Fighters Mobile Edition, because the programmers have to follow the money.

 

On the other hand, if you take the kind of people modding for games like DCS and Strike Fighters and unleash them on an open source platform, there is nothing that can't be done over time.

But it takes commitment for no pay.

 

FlightGear can be made into anything anyone wants if they are willing to code it.

MS FSX even has great potential because it was designed from the start to support external code and the codebase has become very stable.

VRS has demonstrated that it is possible to make major additions/changes necessary to support a combat flight sim.

Over time, their solution could improve to a level that surpasses SF2 and challenges DCS functionality.

But no one is going to invest so much time if there is no profit for doing so.

All I know is that I am not going to be the one to make any breakthroughs and I am left with SF2 and DCS as my only acceptable options for jet sims.

Since SF2 development has come to a halt (or even started going backwards), I can only hope DCS will reach their stated goals.

[SUICIDAL 401]

They have too much competition now.

It is no longer profitable to launch a game of Malvinas

With many free MOD with almost same quality.

 

Example : Arma 2 MOD MALVINAS , By https://www.facebook.com/malvinasmod

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+streakeagle 871]

Any mod of ArmA is nowhere near the quality of Jet Thunder or even the "lite" SF2 when it comes to flight/air combat simulation. If ArmA was any good in this role, DCS and SF2 wouldn't exist.

[+HomeFries 29]

The way the sim market is (high cost of development for a niche audience), I don't see any upside to designing an entirely new flight sim (models, engine, netcode, et al). Especially when DCS World can pretty much do anything that needs to be done. There is a SDK available for 3rd party developers, and though it is difficult to develop now this will improve once the developers figure out how they can code within the DCS framework (which is actually the difficult thing now despite the SDK). Soon enough (at least less time than it would take to do ones own scenery and graphics engine), EDGE will be out, along with a theater devleopment SDK. With people clamoring for additional aircraft and theaters, it would make more sense to develop for a modular system than to build a stand-alone sim with an even smaller niche audience.

 

Hopefully the JT folks can port some of their work; I would love to fly the A-4 in DCS World.

Edited May 3, 2013 by HomeFries

[+streakeagle 871]

While I expect DCS to proceed... it is really such a niche that the whole idea could go bust before it gets very far. But due to the lack of competition and the current evidence of steady progress, all my eggs are in this one basket. Against my better judgement, I prepaid for the MiG-21bis, and more than the bare minimum to help improve the odds of it getting done. But paying for a product that isn't available yet is generally a bad idea... paying for a Fighter Ops forum subscription even a worse idea ;) But I wouldn't have bet on the MiG if I didn't have 99.9% certainty that it would get done in a reasonable amount of time. Those that prepaid for DCS:A-10C looking for DCS:Nevada are still hanging out to dry. Hopefully, edge is compeleted AND turns out to be great, followed by an upsurge in third party participation and productivity. Would be nice if DCS creates a market similar in scale to FSX with lots of choices across the range in quality and cost for all types of addons to create whatever world you want to fly/fight in. It would be nice if sea combat makes it into the spread and all aspects of the game have the option to have addons at the A-10C level of quality and realism as well as the FC level to suit everyone's preferences.

[JediMaster 451]

I didn't prepay for A-10C, I bought it later, BUT I paid the full $60 so I get nothing. Unfortunately, I never saw the announcement that only pre-release purchasers got Nevada for free when it was released, I thought it was part of it that they were just holding back to finish without holding up the rest. Had I seen that, I could (and would) have waited and bought it on sale just a few months later for maybe 1/2 or even 1/3 price. Instead I'll have to decide whether to buy Nevada or not now.

So I would say that I'm the one who got hung out to dry, not people who are still going to get Nevada on release. They're covered! I have no sympathy for them just because of a delay.

 

I also preordered the MiG-21 via Indiegogo, although I admit I didn't think a year later it still wouldn't be out and the UH-1 (which wasn't even announced until much later) would beat it. Still, I'm confident it will come. I have no confidence in any others as of yet.

 

No one is going to replace SF2 or DCS with Arma. It's great if you want to do a Falklands conflict based on the infantry side, with fighter support and all for immersion, but it's not going to be a decent representation of the air war. Not with Arma's stunted map sizes and limited draw distances (compared to other flight sims).

Edited May 3, 2013 by JediMaster

[+streakeagle 871]

I don't know if Nevada will ever be released.

Maybe DCS is gone by next year?

Just don't know in the flight sim market.

If it ground to a halt right now, I would be OK.

The UH-1H is awesome.

I already liked flying the P-51D, having an AI Fw 190 D9 to shoot down is just icing on the cake.

The FC3 cockpits are way nice.

Of course, I would prefer the DCS level F-15C and Su-27.

 

As far as I can tell, ED and DCS are doing fine and it is just a matter of how many 3rd parties can adapt and succeed.

Hopefully, the MiG-21bis delays are a thing of the past and it gets released before the summer is over.

I am not only eager to fly the MiG-21bis, but to see if the MiG-23 is next.

[+76.IAP-Blackbird 3,557]

This sim could be a very good and moder friendly sim. Imagine a better SF2 with all the stuff we ever wanted. Avionics, terrains and better graphics

[+Julhelm 266]

I think DCS is overrated. Sure it's fine for the hardcore folks but for those of us who don't care for clickable cockpits and ultra-sterile atmosphere it's not an alternative. The problem with all these other sims like JT and Fighter Ops is that they all set out to be super-duper accurate and hyper-realistic and as a result turn out too complicated to develop for any team that doesn't get their real money from military contracts.