MustangMike

You can use Discord in a browser

Always impressed me what these older games were able to do with 90s era computers.. Lots of things that modern sims have forgotten! Big maps and grand battles, pilot careers and dynamic campaigns. They knew how to make up for deficiencies in things like graphics, complex flight, and damage models to still provide an immensely immersive experience. Hopefully one day we see a return to form of quality flight sims that also manage to be fun GAMES.

I am cautiously optimistic.. although the "no timeline" part doesn't fill me with hope. My gaming time lately has been mostly devoted to Falcon BMS, so I'm not in a huge rush at this point.

Obviously we shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves with Midway still quite a ways off, but I'm also VERY excited for a Guadalcanal campaign in a flight sim some day. Lots of cool scenery to fly over and lots of fun aircraft! I'd absolutely LOVE flying some of the Cactus Air Force P-39s/P-400s!

Pretty graphics in tech demos are neat, but I'm more curious about the nuts and bolts of how the game will actually play! What kind of support does UE5 have for complex AI, and how many can it support? What about interfaces for complex dynamic campaigns? And also how much of this stuff needs to be designed in-house vs things that are already "built in" to the engine (or can be implemented quickly via addons, I suppose is the better way to phrase it) Either way, I think using an engine like this potentially opens up a lot of cool doors for things that we haven't seen in a flight sim before! And with Jason at the helm I'm pretty optimistic that it'll turn into something real eventually. Looking forward to it!

I think taking the time and money to develop trainer aircraft is a huge waste of resources and totally unnecessary in a videogame where there is zero risk of actual death. Hop in the plane you want to fly and restart if you crash it.

I love flying floatplanes in MSFS, so I'm all for seeing them in Combat Pilot! The Kingfisher and Catalina would both be a TON of fun, and would have some pretty unique missions!

Almost all of my flight time lately has still been in BMS. Still not much of a looker (and VR screenshots don't help either) but when you're flying around in that truly alive, dynamic battlefield at 20,000ft focusing on your jet and its systems, you don't notice some terrain tiles! Besides, if pretty graphics are all you care about, go play Call of Duty like the other kids 😝

Hell yeah! Its starting to look real now.. Hard not to get excited!! Wondering about all the cool things this game will be able to do with Unreal that other sim's can't with their in-house engines.

People been asking these questions for how many months now, and the english speaking community has to hear it second-hand from some Russian podcast? No other announcements? Come on guys, I know you can do PR better than that... Good to know GB will be backwards compatible at least I suppose.

Hopefully we get a system for automatically assigning numbers and serials to aircraft, Heck, I'd consider that almost mandatory for a new game, and I'm surprised that some other sims didn't have that feature until quite recently.. In terms of more "wishlisty" things, I quite enjoyed IL-2 1946's style of applying nose art, would love something like that in a modern sim! And of course, custom cockpit photos are lots of fun and I enjoy it in all the games that have them.

I'm excited for this one for sure, but for how long its been in development, I was hoping they'd have a bit more than just a jeep ride... Think this one is still a long way out. Gonna be really cool though to crew up with some buddies!

Goin F-16 every time, no contest

the A-4 is a really fun little plane. Super simple to operate, agile little thing with quite a bit of versatility. You can even do carrier ops! Really hard to go wrong considering its a free mod. If only it were just a tad faster, it'd be unstoppable! hahaha.

Agreed, plenty of old 20+ year old games still have dedicated player bases thanks to mods breathing fresh life into them long after their time. Look at Falcon BMS, Richard Burns Rally and plenty of other games.

P-39/P-400 would be a really fun plane to fly! Heres hoping we get a Guadalcanal DLC one day...

100% agreed, any time I hop on for serious flying I always hook up the jetseat, especially for warbirds where feel is so important to flying. Though, my understanding is this is less about "supporting simshaker" as it were, and more about offering plenty of good telemetry for the simshaker software to read and work with, so hopefully we get plenty of good data that we can export for use!

Should we start a new "Where's Jason" thread? 🤣

"We got every mission that you do, and we fly 'em all better than you! Yeah all you f*****rs wish you flew the Viper!" BMS is an incredibly complex sim, but its worth learning to be able to enjoy the best dynamic campaign ever in a flightsim... This is the way study sims should be! Make one aircraft the best it can be and focus on giving it an amazing immersive environment to operate in. None of this DCS crap with a dozen aircraft from a dozen different eras and parts of the world. Lately though I haven't had much energy for sims and I've actually been having a lot of fun playing the Ace Combat series. Played through 4, 5, and Zero on a ps2 emulator and now I'm enjoying 7. For sure not a flightsim, but thats not the point! its a fun arcade shooter where you aim for high scores, enjoy the story and listen to a good soundtrack! Highly recommend to turn off your brain, suspend your disbelief and just have some fun. MSFS also gets a mention, the A2A Comanche is probably the best modelled aircraft in any sim right now, and I've also had lots of fun in the Vision Jet and DHC-2, among a bunch of others! Really great, polished sim that other devs should be taking notes on!

Saw a Reddit post the other day about CloD and mapping out joysticks, reminded me just how much of a nightmare it was in that game! Had plenty of trouble myself that I'd blocked out of my mind. Also the games tendency to delete all your mappings if you happened to plug your sticks back in, in the wrong order!! So yeah, agreed fully agreed with Feldgrun, the game desperately needs fixes along with content (Which is still likely years and years away from release) Honestly starts to feel like a wasted effort, regardless of how much "potential" this engine might have had. Can't help but compare to the folks over at Falcon BMS and they work they've managed to do with an even older game, and for free!

2024 is looking like an exciting year!

Looking great! Very excited

As a VR user, this easily mouse accessible system for various resources in-cockpit is AMAZING. The ability to drag windows and place them around in 3d space, and easy access to information without having to remove or peek under the headset is huegly convenient and has spoiled me when playing other games. things like briefing, maps, checklists, comms (for ground and wingmen!) rearm/repair menus, a notepad and who knows what else could all be great windows to have in cockpit with me for quick reference. Screenshot as an example (in a Wildcat, of course), I placed a whole bunch of random windows around just to show off the feature and some of its functions for those who haven't tried MSFS or are in 2d. they can be moved around anywhere in 3d space (included being set closer or farther away), resized, closed or minimized to get out of the way as needed. Would love to see something like this in Combat Pilot!

All well and good, I welcome the transparency with their plans but considering how long we've been waiting for the visual update/VR update, I find it all a bit.. ambitious to say the least. I'd be surprised if most of this is complete by the end of the decade, and by then I strongly suspect flight simmers will have new better games to play. The TF team would honestly be better off looking for work with Jason or Microprose at this point I think.

Its clear we have a long way to go before we're all flying this game, but its all looking good so far!! The future of flight sims is looking mighty bright right now.