Personally I think that the Dynamic Campaign is the heart of a good flight sim. I don't enjoy "flying" for flyings sake in a virtual world. If I want to fly, I can go spend £100 on a flying lesson and have an hour of exhilleration.
I'm a combat flight simmer. I fly sorties in a war. That war is an unpredictable war. I don't exactly know where the enemy is, I have friendlies in the area to look out for, as well as enemy fighters and SAM's. I then need to hit my target, bug out and RTB.
IMO flight sims without a dynamic campaign are pretty much a no-no these days, and I'm not alone. Recent flight soims to come out don't offer dynamic campaigns (lock on), or if they do, it is with retardedly long fly outs (Pacific Fighters). This also MUST BE available for the multiplayer genre.
I have spoken, at length, with many simmers and we are pretty much in agreement. Make a decent, believable dynamic campaign. We've had countless hours of frustration trying to get 3rd party add-ons to work, or making our own missions, etc.
Well this all sucks major ass. It's annoying to see a game like falcon do it so well, and nothing since has come close - which is why it's still played today.
At the end of the day, when I look at a sim, I look at replayability. Scripted missions and I simply will not buy it - I'm in for the long haul. I also want missions to change every time I fly them. I don't want to know what is coming up - that's NOT immersive.
You can have your fancy flight models, trrain, graphics and cockpit, but if you have no missions to fly, you're just flying a plane over 20sq miles of falklands islands (does the falklands even have trees?), and a lot of water. Not an inspiration to buy I'm afraid. The DC is vital.
Falcon I think set the precedent. It seems in it's current version to have an awful lot right. Forget about the days with the problems, and look at the product now. I've only been playing the game for what, 4 -5 months and I can see an awful lot of good stuff here. My experience in gaming extends over 25 years. I'm not saying it is the best flight sim out there, but imo certainly the best combat flight sim at the moment.
I think a lot of that has to do with immersion. When I get in flacon, and have my real-life wingman on teamspeak with me, the immersion factor is great (but yes, the graphics by todays standards are poor). We take off and turn to target. Long fly out? Well no not really, even for the long flights. The reason for this is 1 - we need to fence in (set our weapons up etc) 2- we have to keep our eyes open for enemy fighters and SAM's. Before you know it, you're at the target, hitting it and then running for home - all the time AWACs is keeping you informed of the picture.
Because of the detail, we have lots to do. Lock on on the other hand was raise gear and flaps and you were pretty much done (oh but it looked great flying along - but that got boring soon).
When you take up the reigns for a new sim, it will always be compared to previous ones. I'm not expecting a falcon ripoff, but without a decent dynamic campaign, I can tell you that at least 20 people won't be buying your product - that's how important it is to our community. If you produce a decent sim, then we most probably will.
Please don't take this as a threat though (lol as if 20 people would hamper things), but more of a heads up to what we want in our community and what has led to disappointment by many other sims in the past. As a brit myself, I'm really hoping you do a good job as I have yet to sim in a harrier.
Thanks,
J.
PS - I hope you modelled the FM to make the harrier able to fly between 70-120kts and still have control ;). Can't remember what page but Sharky does say it can be done - might be the part where he kicks ass over those F15's :)
