How will JT compare to Falcon 4?

[Suds 0]

Just wondering if anyone can tell me how Jet Thunder will compare the to "bench mark" of combat sims...Falcon 4?

 

I am interested in Jet Thunder, but if it is not better than Falcon 4 I will not get it.

 

Your thoughts.

 

Cheers

[JediMaster 451]

Your question begs the question "define better".

 

Fact: Falcon 4 was made on a multimillion dollar budget by a large team that worked over 5 years.

 

Fact: JT has a, um, considerably smaller budget and shorter development time.

 

Fact: Falcon 4 in its current state has had an extra 5 YEARS of 3rd party work with both leaked source code and simpler hex editing behind it.

 

 

Conclusion: To expect JT to compete with F4 in sufficient areas to call it "better" strikes me as unreasonable. JT will be what it will be, and an F4 "replacement" is not it.

 

 

The Jedi Master

 

 

PS Many in the industry consider the virtual death of the flight sim genre as attributable to the unrealistic demands of simmers for new products, and the "if it's not better than XYZ I won't buy it" position responsible for the lack of sales and hence abandoning the market.

[chimpymcflightsuit 0]

The industry should consider releasing a product that, you know...works...before they start drawing conclusions about the serious flight sim market.

 

I can recall a lot of games that actually worked out of the box AND without a computer that costs more than the GDP of a small country that didn't need the latest bells and whistles or most advanced flight models to be successful.

 

"But that's WHY they worked! They weren't complex!" you say? Baloney. If a team of devs came along that concentrated on keeping the code clean and making the damn GAME instead of worrying about all of the frills that, in reality, no hardcore simmer really gives a damn about when taking into consideration how they would prefer the devs to allocate their resources, they could hit it out of the park. BANG. Instant brand loyalty.

 

They've lost sight of their own demographic. "Realistic" flight sims didn't die at the consumer's hands. They committed suicide.

Edited April 25, 2005 by chimpymcflightsuit

[PG_Raptor 0]

"But that's WHY they worked! They weren't complex!" you say? Baloney. If a team of devs came along that concentrated on keeping the code clean and making the damn GAME instead of worrying about all of the frills that, in reality, no hardcore simmer really gives a damn about when taking into consideration how they would prefer the devs to allocate their resources, they could hit it out of the park. BANG. Instant brand loyalty.

 

And therein lies the problem. You can't simply go out there and make a game just for the "hardcore simmers" and expect it to sell well. Even if there are no bugs, and everything else has the perfect balance (ie graphics to performance), if the game is so complex that you can't sit down, and in a few hours, have at least a basic understanding of what you're doing, then the sim simply won't sell. While it may certainly appeal to those hardcore simmers, they represent a vocal but small fraction of the market. They just can't support the market by themselves.

 

And that is what makes modeling sims so hard. You need to be able to dull it down to make it fun for beginners, but also be able to up all the settings to ultra-realistic for those hardcore of us. That, I think, is why there have been very, very few complaints with the Microsoft FS series. It's got all the abilities of real flying, while also being able to dull it down and let some noob going blasting through the sky at Mach 2 in a 737. And it's got eye candy to go along with it. Now, granted, it's not a combat sim, but it illustrates the point.

[Wilko 0]

Well as long as I can start it up and fly then I'm going to be happy

 

I can't do that with any sort of confidence in F4 , tried both SP and FF and the stupid sim ctd on me so I tool it back off my hard drive in sheer frustration yesterday LOL so it won't take very much to beat F4 for me LOL

[scary_pigeon 0]

Just wondering if anyone can tell me how Jet Thunder will compare the to "bench mark" of combat sims...Falcon 4?

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

might be in some ways a different sort of game?

 

our idea would be in comparison to falcon4.0 the game experience is sort of 1970's-1980's level tech for us, in falcon 4 - very modern stuff. but the avionics we model - this ought to be done top notch. as said, we're a small team, small budget so for us, the simpler tech level of the equipment we model makes its a tiny bit easier to do right.

 

hopefully the fm will prove top notch too.

 

falcon4.0 had a good dynamic campaign which many people appreciated. For us this is an important goal to.

 

Being honest, this is a rather a taxing task. its notable that not that many flightsims have dynamic campaigns apart from psuedorandom mission generators. We will do what we can - and already, the essential stuffs been programmed - the player bubble concept: this hopefully lets us model extensive battles without crushing system performance.

 

I think now the hardest problem is becoming gameplay programming. the mission/campaign system is all scripted and it is this script were the cleverness of having a decent campaign experience emerges or doesnt. The script will be open for anybody to enhance or replace. I think we'll do a good job of this, others may improve it.

[Scout_51 0]

I think just about every comment has good and bad points...I think the companies would help themselves greatly if they had a basic game,good ballance in eye candy and frame rate and Playability(PLAY being the operative word)..then they could have a very 'real' type Add-On for that game,it could be a free d/l or a bit of charge but it would allow the person that knows he/she(this pc times are getting to me lol) want to do it the 'realistic' way to Know what they getting into..there are times one just wants to go out and bomb things,kill other planes etc..and wants to do it without having to have 4 hands(or a hotas controller),there are other times one wants to just fly as it was intended,the one sneeze and into the ground thing(if you doing say 700+ at 500feet..) and contact atc,etc etc...I have bought some games that LOOKED great, sweet graphics but you needed a lot of other items(hotas,a very expensive controller,a few monitors) to really get the full effects..lets say lomac,very Very nice game but hell not all of us are real pilots,again as stated at times one wants to just kill things let god(or allah) sort them out...cfs1 and cfs2 were not 'realistic' tho you could up some settings,BUT they gave you the option to just fly,kill and land....well enough of my 50cents(inflation you know) for today...be well guys and gals(is that pc these days????)

[chimpymcflightsuit 0]

And therein lies the problem.  You can't simply go out there and make a game just for the "hardcore simmers" and expect it to sell well.  Even if there are no bugs, and everything else has the perfect balance (ie graphics to performance), if the game is so complex that you can't sit down, and in a few hours, have at least a basic understanding of what you're doing...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In my opinion, this is entirely wrong.

 

Joe average doesn't walk into a store and look at the back of "World of Warcraft" with towns on fire and people being executed on pikes and say to himself "Gee, this looks like TOTAL CARNAGE!" and then pick up the flight sim next to it and see a tiny puff of an explosion on the HUD and say "But this looks ABSOLUTELY INSANE!"

 

It would never have been a sale in the first place if they were looking for instantaneous blood or gigantic explosions so long as games like World of Warcraft are on the shelves.

 

People that have little or no experience in flight sims buy them because they're looking for something different, whether it be the feeling of simply flying a REAL enormous beast at mach 2.0, or the exhiliration of getting what they consider to be a REAL kill. Nobody on earth buys a computer flight sim and expects to be an ace in four hours or able to level an entire city in one sortie. The feeling of being able to experience, even if it's just a little taste, of flying a real jet aircraft is what brings them there in the first place.

 

They know it's something they will have to invest time in when they hand over their fifty dollars. I've never heard anyone complain about the complexity of managing an army with 100 different commands during a dynamic compaign in a war game, and their willingness simply because it's a flight sim doesn't suddenly just magically drop.

 

The problem occurs when they're thumbing through the biblical manual and follow the exact directions to drop a bomb, excitedly pull the trigger in anticipation of evaporating a parking lot full of buses, and it doesn't work. Then 2 minutes later, under the mistaken assumption they're doing something wrong in their exciting quest to feel a little itty bit like a pilot and learn how the aces do it, they find out on the message boards that no, they didn't do anything wrong, and it's going to take them 3 hours of downloading patches, reading workarounds, and investing an additional $300 in graphics hardware to get any real enjoyment out it. At that very moment, their opinion goes from "Wow this game is awesome!" to "This game sucks".

 

This is the experience that has become known as the difficulty ("complexity") inherent in buying a flight simulator. It's not that the average user is unwilling to learn more than one radar mode in the same fashion they learn more than one way to kill someone with a pen in "Hitman 10", it's that they don't feel like spending four hours reading posts to find out if they're doing something wrong, or the game is.

 

If it were just a matter of learning, and it being their mistake, communities would begin forming reflective of their skill level because they would feel like they're building their skill each time they PLAY, not each time they log onto a forum to learn if it's broke or not.

 

In addition to the game not working, they're told by a bunch of seething nerds that if they don't want to upgrade and peruse forums for four hours every day learning which parts of the game are broken, they're just an wanna-be and don't belong there. It makes a person feel a lot less like a pilot and a lot more like a guy hanging out with the people who still wet their bed in highschool, and on top of that, a sucker.

 

That's when the box gets thrown in the closet, word gets around, and the community folds to a few hardcore guys and a bunch of people who stare at the graphics while the joystick remains idle under the desk.

 

The fidelity of the experience is the #1 selling point of a flight sim, and I guarantee if a team of devs released a product with the characteristics you've described (balanced graphics, no bugs) it would sell more than enough copies. It's just that no one has stepped up to the plate.

Edited April 26, 2005 by chimpymcflightsuit

[Jex =TE= 0]

Well as long as I can start it up and fly then I'm going to be happy 

 

I can't do that with any sort of confidence in F4 , tried both SP and FF and the stupid sim ctd on me so I tool it back off my hard drive in sheer frustration yesterday LOL so it won't take very much to beat F4 for me LOL

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

go to www.freebridswing.org, they have a very stable copy of falcon IF you follow their install EXACTLY. I've gone out time and time again with no problems - well in MP I haven't flown Falcon SP except for a few practice missions. Flying out with 8 other wingmen is great though :)

 

IMO, this is THE combat flight sim today. It has just about everything you could ask for except the graphics. Yes there are some graphic packs out there but tried it and problems.

 

Of course, there is always http://www.fighterops.com/ coming along, and if you read the FAQ's, it's being done for the community, by the community near enough.

[Jex =TE= 0]

falcon4.0 had a good dynamic campaign which many people appreciated. For us this is an important goal to.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

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 :)

[Scout_51 0]

gee a stealth posting....

[Jex =TE= 0]

gee a stealth posting....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

A what?

[TROOPER117 146]

The whole immersion thing for me is the taking off, forming up and heading out on a bearing with your flight, and the concentration required to keep your place in formation for a lengthy period.

The actual combat part at the target area, and the objectives to be completed in order to complete the mission are the icing on the cake of course! But the WHOLE experience is what makes me fly these things over and over again!

Many will disagree of course, and some only want a quick,' jump in, get a quick dogfight and a few kills' type game, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I think it will be a tall order for developers to please all camps 100%.

 

Only my humble opinion of course gentlemen!

 

Dave S

[flyingvee 0]

Hello All,

 

Having played flight sims since not long after the Falklands War (on a ZX81!!!), and have bought just about every major flight sim since, as well as having flown a variety of aircraft, I'm delighted by the prospect of this sim. :)

 

For the record, I personally found Falcon 4 an absolute pig straight out of the box. It was almost unusable! After weeks of trying to get it to work for more than 5 minutes at a time and finding bizarre bugs, it became completely unattatractive.

 

I found that there was eventually a point beyond which I didn't much care how authentic it was, and I don't say that lightly! .

 

I think even pretty serious simmers have thresholds, if you pardon the pun, and I'm primarily interested in a generally very accurate and reliable sim which I can cope with after a tough day and maybe a glass or two of wine. If that means the weapons modes (for example) are made a little simpler, that's fine by me!

 

It will also be nice to "fly" something in a jet combat sim which isn't an F-16, F-15, F/A-18....etc.

Ah, if only the English Electric Lightning was used in anger....or a Saab Viggen...think of the sims!

 

Kindest regards to all. :)

[svetron 0]

Hi ! This is my first post in this forum.

 

I've been playing flightsims since the 1980's, my first "filghtsim" was the F-19 Stealth Fighter on the C64 !

Now I'm mostly playing Falcon 4 (FF3) and think it's really the best game available now, I bought LoMac and did play it for a short time before going back to F4. The reason ? It was the missions, I really like the random feel to the campaigns in F4. So I hope that any new sims will have a dynamic campaign engine, or at least give the impression of random missions.........

So, will I buy Jet Tunder ? OOOHHH YES !!!! I've bought just about every sim I could get my hands on, and don't really care if it's "better than F4". As long as it's fun and "feels" right I'm happy ! (I've only bought one sim that I regreted buying and it was several years ago")

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

~hi~ my first post here too (Jet Thunder)

 

I started out with DOS Su-27 Flaker 1.0 -- it was "different" from all the rest and so I was interested in trying a flight sim. Nothing else interested me until FB Eastern Front (also different) and now StrikeFighters which I am trying to mold (not mod !!!) into Cold War strategic bombing/interception simulation.

 

I just want to thank the Devs for thinking up a wonderfully *different* arena for a flight sim. Falklands. Who would have guessed? My main interest (as of now) is Mirage III, even if JT may become popularly known as "The Harrier Sim[tm]"

 

You never know what will happen. This could take off so make sure the Devs are planning the sim so they can easily expand it if and when they are pleasantly surprised -- I hope expand back in time and not forward. Mirage III creates an exciting scent of Mysteres, Hawker Hunters, Su-9s and B-47s.

[Bard 0]

no amount of eye candy can compensate for poor stability, poor networking code, poor missions or a poor interface.

 

prime priority should always be the content, not the decoration - the decoration might help it to sell but without the rest it ends up placed on a shelf and does not generate a 'community' with which to expand upon with future products.

 

creating 'dumpware' might be a good short term strategy, so long as it's intended to be the last product before getting out of sim development.

Edited August 13, 2005 by Bard

[scary_pigeon 0]

hehe - right now we have a interface which is an msdos prompt window and when i tested guided missiles sometimes the server would crash :)

 

but i think its really the right thing to do to prioritise netcode before the last minute!