Julhelm

...you can call them as you see them.

It's pretty simple. The big publishers flooded the market with derivative flightsim shovelware back around 1999-2001 at a time when Half-Life had just redefined gaming, and when these promptly bombed the big publishers decided sims were too risky to be profitable and simply stopped making them, shutting down developers in the process. You have to understand that the big publishers are incredibly risk-averse and will not pursue any IP which cannot be readily turned into a yearly franchise ala Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. Since all of those developers you listed were dependent on the traditional publisher businessmodel for funding, they promptly folded. Spectrum Holobyte/MPS in turn were killed off by Falcon 4. Only Microsoft remains and are doing anything to innovate in the genre. The russian devs survived because they relied on independent funding or publishers like 1C. And until some western indie dev produces or MS Flight turns out to be a smash hit, AAA western flight sims will continue to be dead for the foreseeable future. Of course, all western indie flightsim devs except Aerofly and TW seem to be fat nerds so they invariably become bogged down in feature creep and turn into vaporware, lol.

Feb 25th

I dunno. People had no problem buying $15 outfits in our iOS game.

I have Jetfighter IV original btw. It's basically JF2 with 3dfx graphics. It's funny when you think of it. Jetfighter 2 is a really simple sim but they get so many things right that HAWX and Ace Combat get wrong. Like realistic weapons and mission scenarios.

Even Jetfighter 3 was as much sim as SF2. Certainly nothing like HAWX or Ace Combat which are more like 3d versions of 1942.

Final Countdown sucked. It's all one massive false promise.

Well as soon as NA is released its getting a refit anyway...

There's a typo on the stencil on that upper right ECM blister maintenance panel, as well. Clearly TK is a hack who pays no attention to accuracy!

ORLY? If anything the flightsims have steadily grown ever more complex with each new iteration, with (especially russian games suffer from this) complete emphasis on systems modelling and technical complexity to the detriment of anything approaching engaging gameplay. So each new sim is more expensive to develop than the last but appeals to an ever shrinking but vocal "hardcore" crowd. Kind of like they did with subsims but it was much faster there. I can't help but think that back in the 80's and 90's devs could afford to make "fun" sims like Jetfighter or Strike Commander because the stuff people would hear about them would be balanced reviews from gaming magazines rather than fat people hyperventilating with fury because it's a game not a SIM. You only have to look at the amazing rage directed against Microsoft for daring to try something new with Flight.

Just trying to give some helpful input, that's all.

Looking better and better Stary. You just need to accentuate the details more to bring in more contrast like in those awesome CoD pits as it all looks kinda flat atm. Try some overlaying some texture from cgtextures.com or something to break up those areas of flat color you have, too. One trick a friend showed me is taking a pic of your work into photoshop and just playing around with curves a bit to see how it changes... I made a quick paintover to show what I mean:

You are wrong. The first submerged-launch missile was the Amethyst used on Papa and Charlie class as far back as 68 or something.

Yeah it better not be too hardcoded...

It's a little better but there are still things to fix, but we can talk on facebook about that. I can send you my pit tbh.

It's less than 30k. Don't bother using turbosmooth or anything. Just add edgeloops close to the edge and it'll make it appear smoother.

You can do korean bevels around things and get away with single smoothing group :)

Stary dude, you need to start smoothing things...

Your GPU does, though.

Nah, I said an art director.

I still think TK needs a competent art director...

What does that mean?

I want to see a WW2 Luftwaffe F-105...

Those Hornets sure are pretty. Can you maybe give the afterburner petals a bit more shine though?