FarmBoy

Probably a strange sounding request, but can you make it possible to walk across the terrain? I remember one of my favorite sims of years past, Joint Strike Fighter (not the best flight model but superb graphics for its day), was unusual in that if you got shot down and parachuted to safety, you could then run around the landscape on foot and even take a quick pot shot with your side arm at a nearby target. I remember one of the reviews generally rubishing this idea, something along the lines of "do they really expect us to walk back to freindly lines to save one pilot in the campaign". I think they kind of missed the point, which was, to me at least, that only by walking across the terrain can you get a real feel for the speed you were travelling before you got shot down. Puts it all in context somehow. The experience kind of reminded me of one of the comments of a tornado pilot shot down over Iraq. One minute you are super high tech gladiator of the sky, the next you are a man alone in the desert with nothing but a pistol by your side. Quite a shock to the system. The other advantage of course is that if the graphics are really good then it is nice to slow down and look at them in your own time. Also if you were involved in a multiple plane dog fight, but have to bail out it is nice to hang around and observe the rest of the combat, see if your mates make it out in one piece. OK its possibly you guys have way too much to do to consider this feature, but thought I would bring it up anway... Project is looking super beautiful btw!!!!

I remeber in JSF walking aournd one of the hostile cities in Afganistan, and I kept expecting a guard to leap out and arrest me. OK so in practice I guess the devs did not have quite enough time to implement this, sigh :-( but it was still kinda cool. But I guess if walking is implemented then it just leaves the door open for the future modding community to do something interesting maybe one day. I remeber a modder for janes USAF did a mod that allowed you to drive one of the tanks around... ...drifts off into unrealistic dreams of Great Escape style motorcycle chases across the falklands... oh, what is the TSE btw?

Hi. I was just wondering where you guys work, or do you just work in completely different places and comunicate online?

The first flight sim I bought was A10 cuba, and even having bought just about every other flight sim that has come out over the last ten years or so, I keep going back to this. The basic reason is that it combined a realistic flight model, with some interesting and challenging terrain to fly through. I mean the stuff like bridges, canyons, tunnels and caverns. Once I had played all the missions, it became much more interesting trying to fly through the road tunnel at maximum speed, or trying to skim throught the canyons as low as possible, it was really fun. Despite the main game being as realistic as possible, ie a sensible map of cuba with realisic combat, the developers werent afraid to just go out and have some FUN in other aspects of the game. For example the multiplayer maps included one that was covered in strange alien impossible tower structures, and one in "outer space" where you could land in floating asteroids. "Fun" terrain, rather than eye candy is something that practically every other flight sim I can think of has done astoundingly badly. I figure you guys are kind of limited to the Falklands terrain for the main part of the game, hey thats not a bad thing, in fact I have always been interested in seeing a Falklands based flight sim. Can I just encourage you guys to consider doing some fun stuff in addition to the main game? Like inlcude a training map or multiplayer map covered in canyons and tunnels. I have been longning to see a realistic harrier flight sim for so long, but it would be so much more interesting to have some crazy terrain to fly it through. In fact how about an Airwolf style 'volcano' to try and land in? Or at least a cave or two.. Just wanted to throw out some thoughts anyway, I while I appreciate hardcore flight simming I think some developers just tend to forget about the fun part at the end, perhaps this is why the flight sim market has almost ceased to exist.

Sounds like you guys have got the right idea!! if you have a graphics engine that can handle tunnels, then how about some "Descent" style caverns for a bit of multiplayer Harrier combat, how much fun would that be?

Well I want some FUN which for me basically means a good flight model combined with intersting terrain to interact with.