The decline and fall of the Flight sim

[MigBuster 2,861]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CYy5MgFd7ME#t=687

[SFP1Ace 33]

He took a stab or two at Rise of Flight...Time will tell if he's able to deliver something better than 777 studios...

[Boresight 51]

Hello MigBuster,

 

Well, my english is not prime, so I've had to see the vídeo twice trying to follow Mr. Ilya Shevchenko's message when he spoke faster, but I believe I managed to understand the general idea. And for the most part I agree with him.

 

If I understood well, he says that the search for the maximum realism, actually impaired the flight sims in the way that, make it loose it's appeal to general (not harcore fans) gamers.

So, now he's trying to create fligh sims which although still generally hard, are also more progressive learning and rewarding/fun to the gamers.

 

1 - About the decline of the flight sim:

 

What does concern me, is when I see more people warning about for example: the developer TK intending to dumb down some SF 2 (PC) game features, and so I remember him:

 

What made buy his PC games again, was - the possibility to fly / enjoy an F-14 Tomcat with the at least minimum acceptable standard features, like it's radar; HUD symbology; flight model; etc. and not some crap, arcade style, PC game.

( For arcade fans, there's Playstation's Ace Combat, which is very good and I've played it too ).

 

Just don't turn SF 2 PC series on arcade style - for me that's the kind of supreme decline.

 

 

2 - About the fall of the flight sim:

 

Maybe I didn't understood quite well the thread, but aren't: DCS MiG-21bis; Aerosoft's F-14a for FSX; and several other releases coming out ?

[MigBuster 2,861]

There are 3rd party jets like the ones you mentioned being worked on for DCS World yes

 

 

How I read it was that back in the 90s flight sims were one of the biggest selling types of games - and the decline has been partly blamed on sims getting to difficult to play (there are probably other issues) . He compares hardcore flight sims with some other games that are difficult to learn today but actually still have many players.

 

I would see most 90s games as being of a difficulty like SF2 but with more features and gameplay included - due to larger budgets. SF2 may have suffered due to poor marketing really.

 

Ilya mentions that to survive they have to evolve. TK has had to evolve and gone to the mobile platform - otherwise he would have been out of business by now that's a fact - so any future changes to SF2 will be based on what makes money above anything else.

 

Good luck to Ilya hope they do well - but I'm not convinced Hard Core sims will ever have a massive following - and I'm surprised there isn't a bigger Russian or Chinese market for his game tbh where they could make more money.

[Boresight 51]

There are 3rd party jets like the ones you mentioned being worked on for DCS World yes

 

 

How I read it was that back in the 90s flight sims were one of the biggest selling types of games - and the decline has been partly blamed on sims getting to difficult to play (there are probably other issues) . He compares hardcore flight sims with some other games that are difficult to learn today but actually still have many players.

 

I would see most 90s games as being of a difficulty like SF2 but with more features and gameplay included - due to larger budgets. SF2 may have suffered due to poor marketing really.

 

Ilya mentions that to survive they have to evolve. TK has had to evolve and gone to the mobile platform - otherwise he would have been out of business by now that's a fact - so any future changes to SF2 will be based on what makes money above anything else.

 

Good luck to Ilya hope they do well - but I'm not convinced Hard Core sims will ever have a massive following - and I'm surprised there isn't a bigger Russian or Chinese market for his game tbh where they could make more money.

 

 

1 - Very true. I believe "Fleet Defender" vs "Strike Fighters 2: North Atlantic" is an example of those differences.

 

2 - I already was aware of that, as it's been spoken a lot of times at third wire forums. Unfortunately, sometimes things have to be developed on budget and in a specific format.

I just hope TK don't ruin what's left of SF 2 PC titles with those money centered changes, and leave them to the mobile platforms.

 

3 - About the small Russian and Chinese market, might it have been poor marketing again?

Edited September 28, 2013 by Boresight

[JediMaster 451]

He also mentioned the "killer app". Basically, Il-2 was so good that the others mostly shrugged their shoulders and said "don't see how we can beat that" and did something else instead. While I agree that Il-2 seems to have kicked MS and others out of the WWII market (even though I felt there were some things CFS3 did better than Il-2, like the campaign, the UI, and the overall immersion), I don't think that Il-2 competed with LOMAC or any other jet sims.

 

Yes they were flight sims, but if you were planning on making a Nam or modern era flight sim, and then saw Il-2 and said "oh, that's better than we can do" and moved on, you were an idiot. Props and jets are different enough in the sim world that you don't directly compete.

 

 

Something I've said for a long time, and Ilya echoed here, was the scalability of sims disappeared. The older sims weren't capable of as much, so the distance from "easy" to "realistic" wasn't all that far. As tech got better, that distance grew and grew, and if the devs spent time on the realistic end there was little time for the easy end and ZERO time for the mid range. Even today, look at DCS. You have your uber-real Ka-50 and A-10C, you have your almost-as-good FC-level planes, or you can flip the switch to "game mode" and it flies with less realism than SF offers.

 

No sim today offers you the ability to start at arcade/easy and work your way up through SF level to FC level to full DCS level. I'm sure that's purely because it's too expensive to devote people to all these intermediate levels. DCS in particular offers top-end or bottom-end but they leave the middle out. Yet that middle is what the market needs. If you like the easy stuff, frankly DCS can't compete with the visuals of games like War Thunder that spend all their effort on visuals since the rest is fluff. If you like more than that but not too much more, SF wins because of the simple lock-with-one-key setup and the fact that if you can work the radar on one plane you know it for most of them. Even in FC knowing the F-15C radar does nothing for learning the Flanker/Fulcrum radar.

 

The learning curve needs to be flattened by providing intermediate stages. I also laughed when he basically crapped on the very training mechanism his own CloD used--flying through rings in the air!

 

 

Now he's acknowledged he knows and understands the problem, but I'm not sure that most other devs don't know it too. They just haven't all made videos where they said so. But knowing what the problem is and actually making a product that doesn't have it are two different things. To say "the problem with most fast food burgers is cheap meat, we need to make a burger with good meat"...and then make a burger with cheap meat because of inadequate funding for the good stuff...doesn't help.

[ironroad 218]

I like the video, but I do not agree some of his assessments.

Flight sims in the 90s had better scalability?

 

I believe that most flight sims from the late 80s through 90s were waaay simpler in their physics and implementation (barring a few titles), especially in comparison to what is capable with today's systems.

What made a lot of the older sims shine was replayability and the immersion factor. Radio chatter, music, intro videos, even character development for campaign and training missions was common.

Back in the 80s-90s developers/publishers hired voice actors, animators, writers, and former military just work on doing the opening credit videos for their sims.

However, I do agree that most flight sims released in the past decade tend to be sterile and purely mechanical, which means they lack a lot of immersion. Also, many FPSs and RPGs allow you "rank up" to unlock goodies and features, which is one of the key ingredients to their massive online popularity. Games like War Thunder, World of Tanks, etc. took note of this and it is the primary reason why they are so popular, despite lacking the freedom and options that PC military/flight games are commonly known for.

I do agree that IL-2 and Pacific Fighters set the benchmark for propsims, but long before that the Falcon Series set the benchmark for avionics, systems, and missions, MS flight simulator set the benchmark for graphics and environment, and a good chunk of the Jane's/EA titles set the benchmarks in replayability and for multiplayer. However, a lot of what has kept the genre going (and kept these titles going despite being released years ago) has been the online/modding community (places like Combatace).

 

Flight sims too hard for the general public?

 

There maybe some truth to that, but personally I believe it came down to cost. The big publishers went to consoles and FPS games, and your average consumer couldn't afford to keep up with every changing and evolving PC gaming technology. Flight sim components and tech cost even more. $50 for a new tricked out Xbox controller or $150+ for a low end HOTAS or flight yoke?  $300+ for a decent late model GFX card, or use the money to buy a bunch of brand new console games and some new cell phone/apple gadgetry?

 

 
 

Edited October 1, 2013 by ironroad

[Dogzero1 16]

I'd love a remake of Janes USAF and Janes Israeli Air Force.  Quality, deep sims.  Loved em.  Yes modern sims have become sterile and too technical and lack the depth of the past masters in my opinion.

[CheckGear 1]

First time poster here. And I could not have picked a better thread to kick things off in.

 

In my view, it must be remembered that a flight simulator that is sold for the PC (or any gaming system, for that matter) is still, at the end of the day, a GAME. While I am all in favor of realism and technical details, even a hard-core simmer like me has to admit that it can become incredibly overwhelming at times and it takes away the "fun" factor of the game.

 

The way I see it is this. You want to be realistic? Then you have to consider the fact that professional military aviators learn everything about the aircraft before they go on their first flight. In other words, your first flight is not the time to be trying to figure out where the jet-start switch is located. But that is often what you end up doing in a study-sim -  a lot of trial and error involved. In my view, the simulator assuming that you are already a qualified combat aviator ready to take on your first combat mission to the point that all the "little things" have been accounted for is far more realistic than making a player learn where every switch is located and learn the exact protocol for getting the plane started on the ramp.

 

There are a lot of things the '80s and '90s flight sims did well, but that is at the top of the list - making you feel like you were a combat aviator right out of the box, as opposed to a noob.

 

Part of the appeal of LOMAC and the SF2 franchise (which I consider to be LOMAC-lite) is that they have that '80s and '90s feel to them. All the little things are taken care of, all you have to do is focus on the big picture. Within that big picture, however, are many small details that you do have to pay attention to and that provides further realism towards the simulation.

[MigBuster 2,861]

Nice first post - welcome 

 

The one thing I would disagree there is that the switchology also becomes a big part of fighting - especially in say the P-51 where it not only has a throttle, but prop speed, and if you want to change something you have to look down into the cockpit to find it and click on it (as you would in reality ) in the middle of the fight.

 

Even with a HOTAS in an F-16 there is a lot to think about in the fight - so although its a major PITA learning what everything does I find that gives you more realism for having to do functions the real pilot would - and once you get to know things they often give you more flexibility.

 

Sims like SF2 are great because they get you into the fight with minimal training - you still need to invest time practicing dive bombing and dog-fighting - but doing this is a lot more fun than reading up about the EGI etc

 

 

FC3 with its 6DOF pits, 3D models and AFMs looks to be a perfect compromise and a Jet handling the way it should is a great thing - but with that quality comes massive amounts of time to create them.

[CheckGear 1]

Nice first post - welcome 

 

The one thing I would disagree there is that the switchology also becomes a big part of fighting - especially in say the P-51 where it not only has a throttle, but prop speed, and if you want to change something you have to look down into the cockpit to find it and click on it (as you would in reality ) in the middle of the fight.

 

Even with a HOTAS in an F-16 there is a lot to think about in the fight - so although its a major PITA learning what everything does I find that gives you more realism for having to do functions the real pilot would - and once you get to know things they often give you more flexibility.

 

Sims like SF2 are great because they get you into the fight with minimal training - you still need to invest time practicing dive bombing and dog-fighting - but doing this is a lot more fun than reading up about the EGI etc

 

 

FC3 with its 6DOF pits, 3D models and AFMs looks to be a perfect compromise and a Jet handling the way it should is a great thing - but with that quality comes massive amounts of time to create them.

 

Don't get me wrong - I am all about realism. What I am saying, however, is that developers ought to be a bit more discretionary about how much realism they intend to put in and how much they intend to simulate.

 

To me, this is in part why sims like Jane's F-15 and F/A-18 were so popular, even to this day. These were study sims, but they never quite reached the depth that Falcon 4.0 and DCS reached. Thus, they struck that perfect balance - they realistically simulated and covered only what they had to. These were games that assumed you had earned your wings and you were ready to take on your first combat mission.

 

Another example of a study sim that did it right was Graphsim's F/A-18 franchise. To this day, this is probably still the best study sim ever, in my opinion. It was highly scalable, easy to learn and get into (aided by a "classroom" training tool), yet you could really amp up the realism. Even then, it was still a very playable game.

[Dogzero1 16]

I want F-16 Combat Pilot (Digital Integration) to be re-done and re-released.  Only for my own nostalgia you see.  For me it was the best Combat flight sim ever made.  You were in a theoretical 3rd world war with the Soviet Union and the front line changed depending on how well you did and the other Squadrons did.  You could even get back to base and find it wiped out and you had to divert.  Great stuff.

 

Dogzero1.