ZachariasX

It is indeed funny. The speeder bike can do 500 km/h in the dense atmosphere and the dude sitting on it upright "no strings attached", but the huge star destroyer do about 1000 km/h. I mean, the Apollo capsule did almost 40'000 km/h!

Me after about an hours workout sitting on a pressure radiator. Sywell, last year. I'll be back.

Making watchable content for a streaming service is one thing. Making a whole generation cosplay your movie is just another sport. THAT is what pulls the merch. Andor is nice if it was just a sci-fi series. How many Andor toys have been sold at Walmart in the US? Like 5? I mean, the Death Star could be awesome for another adaptation of "the office". Andor goes far enough in that direction. But it's just not SW, even if you bring in the X-wings and some dudes in a white plastic dress shooting with friggin' "laser" guns. It is highly doubtful that KK thinks she did anything wrong, hence they keep pushing out that stuff, and this until the company collapses. And they are at that point now and everybody knows they are on fire. Leslye Headland, the former assistant to Harvey Weisnstein most likely was selected by KK to carry on her legacy of the female force, the bestest evar!, but it seems now that even the untouchables get sacked. Iger is personally responsible for getting the woke minions aboard, hence him cutting them lose doesn't mean he wants to, but he knows he must. Some shows were better when Favreau still had some say, but it appears that he was discarded for Filoni who caved to KK. Andor may be something, but wait for the Acolyte, if that should indeed materialize. As said, I don't think so as they ("some say") spent some 300 million USD on it already but Disney is basically broke by now. Some others however say that at Disney they are happy with it as it was "looking good". Now what is the supposed plot? It's said to be this one: Girl-boss wants to be a Jedi but thinks that Jedi-teacher is an a**hole and promptly joins the dark side to find out that that man is also an a**hole and she don't need no training anyway, because you go girl! and decides to destroy the force once and for all. Which of course she can. How great is that? I bet they make billions with that, especially on an all-inclusive streaming platform. Haha. And as in Indy5, the definitive plot can be made up in the cutting room and with re-shoots. Or even while airing the show. There are hardly any relatable characers in a movie anymore. The stoic hero has been thoroughly exterminated. Imagine "Cool Hand Luke" today in theaters. And the thing is, even women like good male characters.

I have some dim hope for that. The trailer has some positive and negative. But under the current management, I have little hope. Kathleen Kennedy successfully destroyed any IP Lucasfilm had to a probably unsavable degree. Disney management did so with other IPs. As things are now, it is even questionable if Disney - as we know it - will even survive the current monumental mismanagement on all levels. There was a time when I was still angry about KK and her minions destroying pop culture with spite and on purpose. But after the third Rey Palpantine movie, I am past caring. And so is the world, given they managed to halve the profits over three movies. And turn a net loss on "Solo". (Turning a net loss on a SW movie is actuaull quiet an achievement.) SW merch is like lead in the shelves of large retailers. As even huge rebates won't make it move, it's just landfill. the cultural impact of a movie is not really measured on the box office, but in the merch it sells. There was a time when that industry actually produced something we looked forward to. It was a disaster when the writers guild went on strike. Well, they are on strike now (against not being replaced by ChatGPT and given the current quality of their scripts that is a fair assumption) and who cares? Some say that the total cash net plus in the books of Disney company is a mere 200 million USD for the entire company. Now they have to cash out Comcast on the Hulu deal (to get another Sreaming service of questionable profit) and certain outlets had valued Hulu at 25 to 70 billion USD. Goold luck financing new "content" like that. No wonder Lucasfilm is on the chopping block with allegedly a wealthy individual as buyer. But this is not the only dark cloud, there is persistent rumor that Disney is involved in some dealings with FTX before that crime venture went belly up. But Disney is left with a fantastic hole in their books that has to be covered with a kind of bookkeeping that should make for a great movie plot. However, they have due dilligence in house right now and the FTX might be the initial reason for it. So, what to expect from SW? Jon Favreau had his ways of giving up at least on his ideas about SW (or will quit entirely) and if Filoni would make something the world wants to see is a question. The Acolyte is DOA and Leslye Headland fired. (There is some good in this world!) KK at some point will have to go as well, as Iger mandated she makes a net plus on Indy 5. This would be about 1 billion the movie had to make on the box office. Given even the industry wants her to fail (showing the movie at Cannes much before the release, no embargos on reviews and even allowing shills to write that the movie really sucks, because it really does) and she'll be on the way out. Those four people who liked a deconstructed, broken Luke drinking alien milk and giving way to girl-boss Palpantine, maybe want to see a deconstruced, old, and mocked-by-fleabag Indy. But that won't make Disney 1 billion USD. But at that point Disney looks like Germany'45 in every possible way. Time for a new start with whatever is left. Now, I might be wrong about all of this (great if I am!), but Disney just became that place, where under every rock you turn, it stinks.

I think the hunting is far, far easier in the game, where there are no noise, vibrations, gun triggers not places in odd places and you knewthat facing defensive cal .50 guns without meaningful amament whatsoever could be a reason to be somewhat conservative in how to apporach targets. In that case, defensive guns even effectively outrange the Zeros armament. So, i guess anyone going in for three kills would, in the real world, be dead at least by the second or third attack run. If it comes to high angle off attacks (as the pros use to zap the peshkas in IL2), this is probably a maneuver that even Sakai wasn't profficient in doing, never mind the rest of his crew. Good simmers have just so much experience and no constraints like weakned by disease and malnutrition in a physically excecptially demanding environment.

Ian McCollum visiting the Solomons:

Too political of an image Zach. -Jason

There are only a few functons that can be reasonably mapped on a HOTAS. I find Great battles series about borderline where it is reasonable not having clickpits. Many planes are so simple that this works fine (especially FC ones), but with the twin engine ones and some later planes, it gets more difficult. The key binding concept ahs up and downsides in it's own way. If you have the full systems simulated, the HOTAS gets cumbersome. Like in MSFS, if it is a dead simple plane like a stock C152 or a glider, all can be mapped on the HOTAS. Now map the Cessna310R on a Hotas, Good luck with good engine management and Garmin functions. Never mind the tubeliners.

Thinking of it... @Gambit21, how would you alter the map I posted above to make good/convenient missions possible?

Thing is, how much do you have to move things together in order to make it playable vs *can* you move stuff without totally altering the setting? If I have a what is an, eg., 210 min mission but in MP that is too long, you had to shrink your playpen by factor 10 to make it a 21 min mission, which I think would be something very suitable as mission time. If I shrink the play pen by factor 10, the area of the map would shrink by factor 100. By shrinking the map, you change A LOT of variables that affect your mission: The yellow line is about 1000 km, as reference. That is about the distance a P40 can fly. It means it can fly halfway from Guadalcanal to Bougainville and return. Scaling by factor 2 makes the P40 do round trips to bougianville instead of a one way. But would this game changer (it certainly would have been one back then!) actually be any good? A four hour missions is still two hours then. She right, man! Scaling by factor 10 makes the mission 24 minutes (veeery convenient now, at least for myself) but now you can fly CAP between San Cristobal to Rabaul... The whole thing gets absurd if flying actual missions should be an objective of the game. Given a scaled map/theater of interest is less work by one to two orders of magnitude (in order to make just to make minimal concessions to mission lenght) and most of it is still just blue water, I would see different worlds for MP and SP as the simplest of all solutions. Also if you scale your world, no more terrain data will fit and you have to do everything by hand. Any kind of real world navigation will not possible anyore. All you're left with is slewing in whatsoever way to your waypoint, dakkadakka, and return. It's Aces of the Pacific. And that concept surely by now is a bit long in the tooth. I guess Midway is the first installment, there you can mend all issues by parking the carriers where it is convenient for gameplay and neuter battleship artillery where needed. But the Solomons and PNG are a different issue. Given distances are absolutely no issue in SP, I don't think it is wise to trash the whole sim world for what I hear is the big majority, SP, on the altar of MP. The fact that distances ARE perceived as an issue in SP by some is the fact that sim rate just doesn't work properly in the Great Battles series. This is not how "it is", but how it is not good enough they way they made it in Great Battles. It fundamentally limits what you can conveniently do as a gamer. If Jason can't make his sim do at least 4x sim rate, that will close a great many doors, for sure. I'd see that as the iceberg for the viability of the venture here.

They even make different maps for something we don't even have in PNG, it's called "seasons". Besides, specific "MP maps" were part of most MP games, including flight sims.

If what we get are truly "maps", then sorry, 🤮 In 2023, getting doom levels just won't do it. We don't need an MSFS2020 world, but we need the theater of interest (that is mostly water plus PNG) while the rest of the globe (the round thing, you know) can be extremely coarse in detail. I mean "it fits on a CD" kind of coarse. (It did fit on a CD back then!) It is clear, that average mission times uf 3.5 hours are not a viable proposition in a game, as not only @Gambit21 experiences RTI during gameplay. I really, really frown upon moving the islands together. In the weather (should "realistic looking weather" be a goal for this sim, and then it is a challenge in itself) of the theater, islands would be all visible at once, negating many of the challenges the pilots were facing. But "sim rate" is a solved and very practical function for SP missions. For MP this is not possible, as when one starts messing with the sim rate, all experience that (or he player would just warp away from the rest). I see no other solution than giving MP either a completely different world to fly in (I admit, it would actually be kind of a "map"), where distances are indeed shortened (as well as artillery fire limted etc.) as well as using airstarts and defined "exit points" to sucessfully leave a mission. The aspect of having different worlds to fly in is nothing new, as we load different "maps" all the time in old fashioned games. Remember the "islands map" in RoF? something like that. Also, the player needs some assists to fly long legs. Many planes were multi crew for a reason and they should offer some functionality. Switching to the crew position should not make the pilot seat abandoned, but some sort of reasonable automatation should take over. So far, planes fall out of the sky if you didn't hit "a" before the switch. Poor you, if you have full realism without that aid. Assuming we get different, small playpens for MP bar fights, in SP and a "real world" we must absolutely have some Jester-like assits for the pilot to make the flights both viable and a good experience in SP and compatible with changing the sim rate: For single seat planes, there must be a navigation board as a knee pad like function, where the planned flight is plotted on. There should be an option to make a flight plan before a mission and use that in flight, LittleNavMap may serve as an inspiration. Going to the kneepad funtion should make the plane fly level. Yes, you could trim the plane for that, but trimming without force feedback is different and more cumbersome IMHO, hence there should be the ROL autopilot analogue in when doing navigation. For multi seat aircraft, switching to the navigator should engage the HDG funtion analoge, resembling apilot that actually knows where he's going after getting directions he's getting by the comms. Multi seat planes should even have a more elaborate flight planner function, to measure flown distances and do some calculations. just basic stuff. This as his second function aside from gunner position. Sim rate should be deactivated in the presence of enemy aircraft or close active and engaging enemy ground units. For coop flights, the sim rate must be annonced and can kick in, when all participating players set their Jester pilot to take control. The "hold formation" would be the function for the wingmen, the HDG would be the function for the flight leader. Time compression could be set for a specific simulator time, meaning you set a certain course and you want to skip 1 hour flight time, then set the sim rate for the rate you want it for the total on board tome of 1 hour. After one hour, sim rate would fall back to normal. None of what I mentioned is new to flight sims. That would be easy and onvenient ways to fly vast distances and should solve any RTI problems in SP. MP is and will always be a bar fight and has little to do with the actual situation back then, which is fine with me.

Welcome guys!

AI is not complete unless it can PlankTurn™

I would also very much appreciate not having Steam as a launcher.

Out of reactions, but those builds are brilliant!!

Well, what is the expectation then if you ask for a specific theater, but when it looks like that theater, it's no good anymore? Besides, if you have the planes, you can always spawn them next to each other if shooting 'em up is all you care for. But that is like a Brit coming to blows with a Frenchie over a spilled beer in a bar, and we think of it as reenacting Waterloo. I understand that there is a notion that a "combat fligh sim" somehow doesn't need to meet even remotely bare minimum standards of what is a flight simulator, as long as there is plenty of dakkadakka and we can count the rivets on a plane. This is probably due to historic reasons. Back then like when three people in the basement of their parents house coded a sim that fit on a floppy (we're old enough to remember such times), they had to set priorities. Same were set when Rise of Flight was created. ressources were put in aircraft and dakkadakka, but flight simulators spent their efforts on a believeable world, hence the two games forked and evolution turned them into two different games, FS and CFS, even though they shouldn't be. Today, I'd say such an approach is just not ok anymore. At least in my world, a "combat flight sim" ADDS functionality and scope to a "flight simulator" and does not take away neither functionality nor scope. I would however agree that there is a fundamental requirement for making the game open to various modes of gameplay. And the MSFS way of gameplay made monumental sales. Record breaking sales for MS. If I were to sell anything, I'd be careful before crossing that of the list, given the clientele who is just here to shoot up things and does not go WT are probably just a rounding error to the sales numbers of a simple "flight simulator".

I agree. I still enjoy my long distance flights in MSFS (as you all are aware) and like the challenges it poses. Bougaineville - Henderson is some 450 miles one way. How fast would a Zero's cruising speed be? I suppose some 200 mph, that would make it a 5 hour roundtrip in minimum, given time required to takeoff and landing. As for navigation, it would be plain dead reckoning and VFR if sight is lost to the escorted bombers. Also, such a flight is not possible without drop tanks... What I really, really would like is that in bombers, all seats are accessible for their respective function. Naval aircraft are for good reason multi crew aircraft, as navigation and flying are too much overhead for one person. Unless you have ground/carrier control, single seat aircraft are a challenging affair if finding your carrier again after 4 hours of flight is your thing ("Yes baby, this is my bag!"). We would need sort of a Jester as navigator giving good advice as well as a gunner. If one likes to navigate and switch seats, the Jester pilot has to fly the plane and in direction where you want it to go after you figured out your whereabouts. Your means to navicate should replicate what was available to the navigator back then, not the moving map (which should always be available in the cheat menu). This would also make it easy to (in SP) to tell the sim to jump ahead a given time (specifying distance is a cheat!) to be near where you want to be. Having the option of manning all positions in an aircraft would give those long haul flights a very unique challenge. There must be radio stations and comms that are useful for navigation. The single seat fighter has a hard life otherwise without in game cheats. A carrier needs a functional ATC. Else... well, no need going into this. Imagine, you are in a B-25 en route from Lae to Rabaul, you could use a "Jester-pilot" as an autopilot when switching to navigator and lead your plane (and maybe flight) to where you are going. Without a GPS map in weather this can be quiet a feat. Especially if flying low is a requirement that, if not followed and you be detected early, would augment your welcome team at the destination. The requirement of using gunner stations is self evident. having to option to create your flightplan and plotting your course en route is a challenge in itself if you want to survive. People may think of that as boring, but this is probably what killed most airmen. I would say having this functionality far outweights anything related to rivet counting. Especially for japanese planes, I would see good reason for some artistic liberties to make something plausible withing schedule than perfection... in two weeks™. It is evident that air combat in PTO on the whole has little in common with the low altitude fragging that we have over the steppe in the eastern front. Hence, there should not be much focus in replicating that game, but focus on the challenges this kind of flying brings instead of giving us just Berloga with Zeros and Wildcats. (We want that too once we have those planes and we do have it, but only when we have the real thing primarily.) This means @Jason_Williams has to provide a true flight simulator, not a limited, static and flat playpen.

Basically making a setup that has little in common with reality back then. I think only "convenient" spawn points can solve the issue in MP. As for SP, a working sim rate that can deliver more than 1.4x time accelleration (or 0.8x in case of lots of action) can be of use. Navigating will be the prime difficulty, weather being the main enemy for all things PTO. Midway and other specific carrier battles are a special case, but moving ships too close again just mitigates the main difficulty. For fast food MP, you'd have to have a red and a blue base on Guadaclacal. Or two carries cruising basically at arms length alongside (with gn restrictions as you say) to get some happy fragging. Nothing like it ever was. But why not?

That will open a fantastic can of worms, worms like we have never seen. I mean, capital ships can fire at the range encompassing the average WoL mission...

I wonder how the fact that common missions are a 1'000 km to 1'500 km trips will play out. Fighter sorties can be 3 h to 4 h, bomber sorties up to 8 hours. There better be some sort of time compression. (And drop tanks...) I don't think "jump to waypoint" will be possible unless you add specific logic to place units (planes) to place them there. I wonder how such a sortie will work out in MP, where someone using "sim rate" will be... interesting for the other players.

Hi everyone. The Swiss is here, hoping for an at least somewhat round globe for this simulator, something I am not neutral about.

Missed you on the other Forum! I have some child labor going on:

Agree!

Nice having you back Jason! Fingers crossed for thos project!