PAX South 2015

[FastCargo]

Just got done spending 2 days at PAX South 2015. For those who don't know, PAX (in this case) stands for Penny Arcade Expo and is a convention dedicated to gaming...mostly video and tabletop gaming. It is an outgrowth of PAX Prime, which was started in Seattle a few years ago and has rapidly grown in popularity (which is why there are now 4 PAX events per year instead of one).

 

As you might imagine, hardware and software vendors show their wares with new and upcoming stuff. This is not a report about PAX...I was there as a fan of games, not as a reporter.

 

There were all sorts of genres there...with one exception.

 

In atmosphere flying games...combat or otherwise. Not a single one, arcade, sim or whatever. There were several space combat games...I got to try out Eve Valkyrie with the Oculus Rift.

 

It was beautiful. The first VR set I have ever used that seemed to show absolutely no lag, loss of calibration, tracking errors, etc. Flying with it felt convincing...to the point that I actually got slightly queasy because my body wasn't feeling the familiar pull of G's that I was used to when flying 'head on a swivel' style...and there were absolutely no visual cues telling me I was just sitting in a stationary chair.

 

And not one air combat sim there to take advantage of the technology.

 

I really am not sure what that says about the state of air combat games/sims. But I know I was disappointed.

 

FC

[+Dave]

Go the the DCS forum here and you can see what is going on with Oculus Rift and combat fight simming. 

[FastCargo]

That wasn't quite what I was getting at. My concern was seeing the lack of ANY aircraft based games. FPS, RTS, MMOs, adventures, turn based, space, cars. Okay, no water based ships as far as I could see...

 

Logitech and Saitek HOTAS sets. Several of them. None connected to a flight sim. But instead, to Elite: Dangerous, other space combat games.

 

FC

[Do335]

Perhaps, TK was wise after all.

[+Dave]

That wasn't quite what I was getting at. My concern was seeing the lack of ANY aircraft based games. FPS, RTS, MMOs, adventures, turn based, space, cars. Okay, no water based ships as far as I could see...

 

Logitech and Saitek HOTAS sets. Several of them. None connected to a flight sim. But instead, to Elite: Dangerous, other space combat games.

 

FC

 

 

Very sad indeed. 

[Lexx_Luthor]

TK didn't keep developing his SF original idea, instead tried to go "normal." Oleg made the same error.

 

You've seen some of my weirdo visual mods. Low quality but best I could do with our particle system. Imagine those ideas done by the pros, in a game engine made for atmospheric warfare over longer ranges.

 

It takes alot of  WORK to have fun at flight simming. You have to give alot of visual feedback to reward that work. Its never happened in flight sims. Just talking about visual stuff. I had alot of immersive fun just navigating around in some sims, but I was already motivated by aviation and willing to put in the work. There's not that many of us maybe.

 

Worse, games are cheap now. I got teh Su-27 FLAKER 1.0 for DOS in 1995 for 50$ ... with currency devaluation (ask Typhoid) that would be about (guess) 120$ now. Granted wages were stronger then, relative to the devaluation, but not exactly.

 

If TK could get 120$ for a family size box of full grain SF.