Incline Wings Over Flanders Fields

[commie]

15 year old engine, eh?

Thing is that most of the engines that power flight sims are ancient and still can look so damn good. Shows how cutting edge Sim gaming was at the beginning of the century and end of the last: always was, but there was a sweetspot from 1996-2003 or so where the introduction of 3D cards and even more importantly rapid exponential power increase in CPU; where Sims pushed games to the limit. Hell, I'm still amazed at the aircraft models and cockpits of games like Jane's WW2 Fighters or F/A-18 or the dynamic campaigns of Falcon 4.0 and the Razorworks Heli sims, which are still miles above anything now.

Eagle Dynamics' engine doesn't look all that different from the one back in Flanker 2.0 or the first LOMAC. Same with 777 Studios and their new Il-2, having a similar pedigree in engine from the first Il-2 in 2001.

Maybe if there was money and demand and Simulators weren't a 'lost art' slowly being revived, we might have had some uber next gen sims with dynamic campaigns, thousands of units, full strategic planning(like the Total Air War games of the 90's) and even more lifelike graphics all round(aircraft themselves are pretty much as far as they can go but the ground details could be spruced up somewhat). Mostly though it's the lack of feeling that you're in a real war that is holding modern sims back. Apart from a few dozen planes and some tanks here and there in some scripted attack, most combat sims feel like a small skirmish. Compare to how campaigns were in the late 90's, from the semi-scripted ones like Hind through to Jane's Longbow 1, then more dynamic offerings like in Longbow 2,Falcon 4.0 and Enemy Engaged series where it felt like a war as you'd see other flights attacking, ground units advancing and taking territory etc.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The old engines were made for high end PCs, and showing things as crisp as possible (Lomac is particularly good, CFS and MS Flight sims belong to that family too).

The new sims (and this includes the overrated 777 Studios) are made for people who are not used to that and resemble the overfiltered crap we see on consoles. I could puke when I see one of these flightsims for extended times. Even Il2 CoD is pretty bad in that regard.

That's why your average gamer is so confused when he sees a real computer sim in action, numbed like a chicken that has been hit over the head with a club, because he has never seen anything like it before. And then he realizes that it requires the thing that he hates most and thought behind him since he left school: actual learning.

 

[Hoodoo]

jizzz

 

[Makabb]

more work in project shots

 

[Burning Bridges]

They got the colors and ground textures perfect. I have looked up some images from Aces Hight to show what I mean.

In the long term the game will of course fall back further from being limited to DirectX 9. I have recently seen that modern shit like HDR is now used in flight sims to very good effect.

And I wonder if they have also done something about the engine sounds, because that part was dissapointing.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Say about this what you want, but for my ears this still sounds dissappointing for 2016 [Sound mod]. Engines sound like East German 2-stroke shitbuckets, and sometimes like sewing machines which badly need oil. A possible and more favorable explanation is that the engines at that time simply sounded so bad. Or is there just something with the quality of the sound? Something is just not right.

 

[Makabb]

No idea about the sound but the new damage effects look great

 

[Burning Bridges]

Makabb I believe OFF Phase 2 is available as torrents, they went payware after that version and CFS 3 can be had for a few Euro. For example used copies from Amazon Germany start at 0,71€.

So instead of bitching you could try that and then make up your mind if you want to save for the Ultimate Version with 10 years of improvements.

And the fact that it's a mod is actually working against a lower price, because they are forever locked out from Steam.

 

[Makabb]

And the fact that it's a mod is actually working against a lower price, because they are forever locked out from Steam.

If they were smart they would buy the engine, then they could do more with it and put it on steam also, more sales, especialy if they are working with it now more than 10 years.

 

[J_C]

That's why your average gamer is so confused when he sees a real computer sim in action, numbed like a chicken that has been hit over the head with a club, because he has never seen anything like it before. And then he realizes that it requires the thing that he hates most and thought behind him since he left school: actual learning.

 

[Burning Bridges]

And the fact that it's a mod is actually working against a lower price, because they are forever locked out from Steam.

If they were smart they would buy the engine, then they could do more with it and put it on steam also, more sales, especialy if they are working with it now more than 10 years.

That would be ideal, but I doubt that Microsoft will sell them their entire flight sim technology up to ca 2002 for a few thousand dollars And if I remember their launcher they have at best intermediate programmers. Most of their work is in scripting and graphics/sound. This is basically a ultra fine tuned campaign which uses the open structure to levels that MS once designed but never utilized, and the game also had very future proof graphics technology for its time.

But I you're really interested, you should check their public info. They have made improved AI which I think used a custom dll, and I remember reading that they also did something about the CFS3 CD. I think they probably reached some sort of mini agreement with MS.

 

[Makabb]

One could only imagine what a proper CFS 4 could achieve today

 

[Makabb]

They have some new amazing tree density in ultimate version, i have never seen forests like this in ANY game

 

[J_C]

Does this games have decent missions and campaign, or it is just an engine where you can fly around?

 

[Makabb]

Does this games have decent missions and campaign

Dynamic campaign

 

[Burning Bridges]

Does this games have decent missions and campaign, or it is just an engine where you can fly around?

I can only relate to a much older versions where the career manager used to be a pretty shitty VB program that was just in the way most of the time. But I think the career management has greatly improved since the.

I don't like the term "dynamic campaign" but you should not worry at all. What you will notice immediately is that the world is limitless (meaning you can never reach the end of it) and you have ground and air objects wherever you fly. Planes take off below you, artillery, tanks, tents, infantry and so on. This together with the constant presence of artillery shells and flak create the impression that you will never run out of interesting things to see in this game. Everything is basically as it should be if it was decided by the people who play. It is a total contrast to the newfag flightsim where the ground is just a Potyemkinesque backdrop of cardboard objects without anything taking place.

 

[Burning Bridges]

They have some new amazing tree density in ultimate version, i have never seen forests like this in ANY game

This may be actually an advantage of an engine that it was initially made to run on Pentium IV / Athlon XP computers. I would not be surprised if some core graphic routines were written in machine language.

 

[Makabb]

Ah the ground war yes, i wish there would be some real-time player involvement with the ground war because everything is there. This could not only be a great flight sim, but a great war game and they could probably do it if they wanted to.

 

[Hellshade]

I see lots of screenshots that I took of WOFF UE. Really a great sim and the devs give top notch support with patches. Thought you might like to see a few videos of WOFF UE in action so you could see it in motion. Mind you, I'm not a great pilot so don't blame the sim for my lack of skills. Also, Shadowplay (which is how I record videos) has a known problem of not getting all of the 5.1 sound channels. It seems to prefer stereo only, so if sounds seem to be missing sometimes, it's because Shadowplay has issues. They are present in the sim.







Anyway, hopefully you enjoy seeing WOFF UE in action. For me personally, I find it to be have the best campaign available and the largest number of flyable planes.

 

[Makabb]

It's like the guys who made this game don't want to sell it, they have ancient sell methods from the 90's.

 

[Hellshade]

I think they are extremely limited on budget and their team is so small that all of their time goes into the sim, but that is pure speculation on my part. They could certainly use better advertising exposure.

 

[Hellshade]

 

[Hellshade]

Here a few slightly older WOFF videos. These should all be viewable in HD.

 

[Burning Bridges]

That engine sound is pretty meh

 

[Hellshade]

I don't know what the real engines sounded like, so I honestly couldn't say. I do enjoy the Albatross engine sounds though. They have a great guttural rumble to them!