this sounds like a fine idea to me. Hope that it happens.
Salute
after SOW..is there going to be an IL2 community ??
RB3d lasted years, and then "BANG" it died over night because of ROF
And when SOW comes out, I know that all members of TP will switch over, leaving those of us with older rigs to die in the corner, desperately holding onto IL2 because we cant afford the next step..so to say.
mark
The newfound interest in the W.W.-1 addition being masterminded over at S.A.S.and the foresight of the modding community will have this sim in the forefront for years to come.....it will never die with my squadon..
PD
Leder the demise of RB 3D was much more complex....
1. By the time the RoF had come out it was but a shadow of its former self...A good percentage of the community had left for IL2, OFF, and other sims
2. The in fighting was killing the community
3. The Game engine had been taken as far as it could go. Without real 2 seaters in MMP the game was going no where...this seems to be a fact that the RoF people have not yet figured out...basically they have copied the line up of RB planes and think that is what the WW 1 community wants.
4. The game had been hacked to no end...and security was completely faulty...
5. RB's greatest feature that still has no match..was its Single Player Side...the dynamic campaign generator engine it used has no match or never has been duplicated...You could fly from 1916 until 1918 and fly several varieties of missions hardly ever in the same sequence.
Salute Benge,
you are correct, as always. Hee hee
I just generalized to make point. We need a RB4d really
Led
Modding will obviously continue but if it's not controlled/monitored it will devolve into little splinter communities. I believe IL-2 has some legs yet (I haven't even touched any of the mods yet). There will always be a core of fans/players to which IL2 fills a niche, look at EAW, I can't believe there are still guys out there playing and modding this game. It's a matter of taste (and machine capability LOL). Battle of Britain Wings of Victory is another game that is still going fairly strongly although I think SOW will bring a lot of people from that game.
I think it speaks to the quality of a game and the support it gets aftermarket which gives it longevity. Oleg and crew provided a high quality product when it was first released (initial bugs notwithstanding) and then followed up with good support/patches and then subsequent upgrades a lot of which didn't cost us a penny. If SOW comes with that type of commitment and dedication it will also be a winner. Having said that I think having realistic expectations would be adviseable....bitching about the wrong leaves on the trees or the number of rivets in a given segment of a fuselage (those are the types of comments at the SOW updates) is setting oneself up for disappointment.
Anyway this thread is about IL2. The fact that IL2 is still going strong after this many years in a market which sees games come and go in a heartbeat is testament to the quality (and playability) of the product. If a newer flight sim, including SOW fails miserably for whatever reason then it's safe to say that IL2 will be the trusty fallback. I'll stick my neck out and say that's basically what seems to have happened with SH5 versus SH4. SH5 was touted as the next latest and greates subsim but for various reasons was, from a marketing POV, stillborn and many, many subsim guys went back to their trusty old SH4 and/or SH3 (which to be fair are now heavily modded too).
I like flying the more obscure aircraft - such as the Avia B534, Fokker DXX1 etc. I tend to stick to HSFX and UP so at the moment I am conscious that there are loads of mods that I suspect will appear in these post the release of the next mod to the base. I am thinking of such gems as the He51, P35 etc, and I look forward to people hopefully continuing to produce further add ons with fingers crossed for the pre-war Hawker Fury ( as used also in Yugoslavia in 1941 and in Ethiopia in 1940/1), and of course the Hawker Hunter which is well on the way.
For me a good fantasy war would be Europe in 1938 if it had all gone wrong over Czechoslvakia. You could have Ar68s, Ju86s, Ju87As, DO23s, early model Do17s and He111s, Gauntlets, Harts, Hinds, Harrows, Wellesleys, Amiot 143s, Potez 540s, D501s, D510s, MS225s, Bloch 200s and so on. A fantasy camapaign could start in 1938 and go through to 1940 - think of the transition!!
I will continue to use IL2 whilst there are large numbers of obscure aircraft available and actually for me game play is more important that whether an aircraft is complete down to the last rivet. Would I vote for 50 aircraft 100% accurate or 1000 aircraft 95% accurate? The latter. Remember that last 5% of accuracy can and up taking 95% of the development effort.
Posts: 292
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Joined: May 2010
IL-2 has probably a long way of modding fun to come before it ends, but one never knows.
What I had the luck to fly in HSFX and UP compatible mods ATM is just a world full of opportunities, like those named in this thread.
There are 3 eras spanning 40 years ++ currently under development, just today I checked an update to the Aviator Mod team progress at SAS and was once more amazed about the Mig-21 WIP screens...just an example here.
I went through a number of sims and the only one that finally outran all of those in terms of beauty was IL-2 with the latest modpacks and some mods of taste I currently love.
I think the possibilities of the engine and this game are not explored yet.
Look at redko's/Agracier's/Avala's/Bombsaway's and other gentlemen's map and texture efforts! Those are the best theatres and textures I have seen anywhere in any sim...and those guys post updates to their projects on a daily basis, e.g. here and at SAS forums. They still learn even at their high standards, so to say.
I currently tested Histomod V3.0..it may have some limitations left..but..those cockpits, flight models and realism implications +effects are simply stunning. (To my taste)
I'd love to play-and surely many folks would love to-SOW in a few years when it is as advanced as current IL-2 variants-mod-wise..but in the meantime IL-2 is far from dated IMO.
I'm still member of another dev group that posts updates based on a 12 year old sim-Falcon 4.0-on a regular basis, last updrade came out this week..and yes, the engine is a bit outdated. But it has the best avionics/effects/ etc
and campaign engine of any current modern military sim. ("FreeFalcon.com"-freeware.)
I say this because it is based on DX7!-and many thousands hardcore modern mil. sim fans fly and love it. (..the effects were extremely upgraded with particle effects etc.)
IL-2 is DX9.0C --and seeing some of the community's videos makes me think it is the best current military aviation sim available. Guys like redko make FSX look pretty old IMHO.
I cannot imagine to quit any of my 2-4 IL-2 installs.. :wink: :mrgreen:
So this is a thanks to AAS and SAS as well as to Histomod's team..!
Tom
