Let's be honest, looking at this map of the Pacific War....there's a huge amount of scope!

[Mysticpuma]

I mean we are so used to the European Theatre, looking at this map.....the potential is amazing!

[ZachariasX]

On 7/24/2023 at 10:20 AM, Mysticpuma said:

looking at this map

This „map“ is half the world.

[Boom]

It is quite mind boggling just how vast the Pacific/CBI theatre is. Will (hopefully) take years of development for Combat Pilot to do justice to this Theatre.

I hope 'they' (Combat Pilot) develop the sim on a time line, from go to woe. With probably a 'start' campaign covering either (or both) Coral Sea and Midway, which seems to be the strongest interest campaign to kick off sales. Then maybe revert back to a Malaya/Dutch East Indies, Philippines and Pearl Harbour multi-campaign; then progress through Solomons/New Guinea; USN Central Pacific Island campaign from '43 to '45; squeeze China/Burma '42 to '44 in somewhere; Philippines again '44-'45, then finishing with both the B-29 campaign and the USN carrier raids over Japan in '45. 

Such a huge task. So hopeful that it's a long term development. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Boom

[anwdr39]

2 hours ago, Boom said:

It is quite mind boggling just how vast the Pacific/CBI theatre is. Will (hopefully) take years of development for Combat Pilot to do justice to this Theatre.

I hope 'they' (Combat Pilot) develop the sim on a time line, from go to woe. With probably a 'start' campaign covering either (or both) Coral Sea and Midway, which seems to be the strongest interest campaign to kick off sales. Then maybe revert back to a Malaya/Dutch East Indies, Philippines and Pearl Harbour multi-campaign; then progress through Solomons/New Guinea; USN Central Pacific Island campaign from '43 to '45; squeeze China/Burma '42 to '44 in somewhere; Philippines again '44-'45.

Such a huge task. So hopeful that it's a long term development. 

I would guess that some maps would be quite easy in comparison to make given that they would be slightly inhabited islands? I wonder

[Feathered_IV]

I hope these developers put some very serious thought into in-mission game saves, time acceleration and warp to target options. 

[milopugdog]

There is a huge scope for the theater in general, but for now it's limited to Midway/ Coral Sea from what I remember. Maybe an open ocean map would be good too so we can place fleets however we want. A nice thing about the European theaters is that we're used to groupings of land based targets. Whereas here we have a moving concentration of ships unless an attack is based around an island. Even then, a surface ship component usually plays a part.

[Gambit21]

On 7/25/2023 at 9:34 PM, Feathered_IV said:

I hope these developers put some very serious thought into in-mission game saves, time acceleration and warp to target options. 

What...not sound? Good God man have you forgotten your priorities?!!!!

 

 

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

I for one hope that they abandon the idea of "maps" like we have in IL2 1946/BoX, DCS etc. and move to a world system as we see in MSFS. One big world where you can fly wherever you want, with only those areas you've bought filled in with (hand-made) terrain (the rest either ocean or low-res terrain).

[Chief_Mouser]

2 hours ago, ÆþelrædUnræd said:

I for one hope that they abandon the idea of "maps" like we have in IL2 1946/BoX, DCS etc. and move to a world system as we see in MSFS. One big world where you can fly wherever you want, with only those areas you've bought filled in with (hand-made) terrain (the rest either ocean or low-res terrain).

I like the idea, but whoever is hosting in multiplayer, or even yourself in single-player, will have to load in the whole world -as defined in CP. The thing with MSFS is that they host the world, we just join in their mega-server.

I think that we'll be getting maps; hopefully decent-sized ones though.

[ZachariasX]

2 hours ago, Chief_Mouser said:

will have to load in the whole world

You only need to put on „that world“ what you need. The whole world fit on a sinle CD ROM back then on previous iterations of Flight Simulator. You just make your area of interest more detailed. Wh cares if Helsinki is 10 km2 per pixel.

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

2 hours ago, Chief_Mouser said:

I like the idea, but whoever is hosting in multiplayer, or even yourself in single-player, will have to load in the whole world -as defined in CP. The thing with MSFS is that they host the world, we just join in their mega-server.

I think that we'll be getting maps; hopefully decent-sized ones though.

Nope, that's not the case 🙂  Besides what ZachariasX says, it's been quite common in games for ages already to only load in those parts of the "world" where you actually are, whether that game is a flight simulator, a shooter or a MMORPG. The whole world needs to be stored somewhere, sure, but there is no technical reason the whole world needs to be loaded beyond what you can actually see at a particular time.

Similarly, MSFS doesn't actually host the world - you do that locally. It's just some data that is stored online, e.g. the satellite textures and the locations and type of buildings and trees, etc. The only reason for that is that it'd cost too much disk space (i.e. "store" a world), not that it'd cost too much RAM ("load" a world).

I guess the biggest technical problem with an entire world is that you'd need a spherical coordinate system, and that can be a bit of a hassle to properly implement when pretty much all of the world around you happens in carthesian coordinates - including aircraft and ship physics.

 

[Trooper117]

That world would need to be a complete WWII era world, not like MSFS modern data world... would that be even possible?

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

13 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

That world would need to be a complete WWII era world, not like MSFS modern data world... would that be even possible?

You don't have to fill in everything 🙂 Either just low-res land or simply ocean.

The big advantage is that a world system makes it possible to have additional historical missions as more content is released, as well as enable the Devs to release content in smaller increments. Bought both a Marianas and Kyushu map? Fly a bomber (escort) mission to Japan. Just Guadalcanal? Fly ground attack from Henderson Field. The Devs add Rabaul? Attack Henderson Field as the Japanese.

[Trooper117]

In the perfect combat flight sim world maybe... but somehow I think it will be maps. Jason has been doing this stuff for years, and maps and plane sets to go with them seem to be his bag... but we shall see how things pan out in time I guess.

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

6 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

In the perfect combat flight sim world maybe... but somehow I think it will be maps. Jason has been doing this stuff for years, and maps and plane sets to go with them seem to be his bag... but we shall see how things pan out in time I guess.

Well the sales picture would be the same. Didn't buy CP: Battle of Guadalcanal? You only get low-res terrain (if at all) without any airfields, towns, targets or campaigns/career. Buy CP: BoG and you get the additional content. I just think that having no restrictions on where your carriers, airfields and targets are located has lots of benefits in the long run, especially with the huge distances of the Pacific.

But it undoubtedly is more difficult to implement (spherical coordinates) and as such more expensive in the short run. I guess only Jason knows whether this extra investment is worth it, or even possible budget-wise 🙂

[ZachariasX]

Doing „maps“ I consider a fatal idea for any future development of this new sim. It has no advantages and all disadvantages one can think of. „Maps“ are not smaller in terms of bytes than a whole geoid with just an area of interest rendered in higher LOD. Having a geoid would reflect the world in which we live in. That is the base for and „realism“ in a simulator. How much that matters is proven by Microsoft. Clouds are a big part of the scenery, even bigger than terrain details. I wonder if we had new cloud tech in both DCS and GB if it wasn’t for MS to show how that really should look like. It was another instance of how much we got so used to crap. There is nothing more important to flight than weather. For the longest time „weather“ was difficult to achieve and the result was mainly ugly enough to get used to having it turned off. 

You could get away with that 30 years ago, when three nerds without any budget tried to code a game and they had to keep things very, very simple. I so much hope this bad habit will get extinct. Actually, I am certain the market will take care of it. Any young gamer looking at scenery tech from 30 years ago will hardly shell out money for that ugly crap, because at least ROBLOX, for having similar visuals, is always fun. No need to learn superchargers.

[Trooper117]

I take it then, if the 'map' option is chosen you would refuse to buy it as it would be ugly crap?

[Canvas25]

Today's photorealism is always tomorrow's ugly crap.

[Trooper117]

48 minutes ago, Canvas25 said:

Today's photorealism is always tomorrow's ugly crap.

True that!

[ZachariasX]

3 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

I take it then, if the 'map' option is chosen you would refuse to buy it as it would be ugly crap?

It would be definitely a the main reason to take a pass, as paying something like 80 bucks or so to fly around a palm tree or a ship mast… is a lot. The world has moved on from that.

[Trooper117]

1 hour ago, ZachariasX said:

The world has moved on from that.

In your eyes maybe, however, you would have thought using that premise, we would all have moved on from IL2 1946, yet it still has a following... strange that.

[ZachariasX]

10 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

In your eyes maybe, however, you would have thought using that premise, we would all have moved on from IL2 1946, yet it still has a following... strange that.

You bring up a great point, and this is about what makes that one a great game. IL2 1946 has one on all other sims: this is the amount if content, quantity rather than quality. The other exreme is DCS, where content is available in quality, but not quantity. Enigma on his channel made a rant about that concerning DCS on YT, and I think he has a good point.

Quantity has a quality in its own. Plus, by now the game is free and moddable to each ones liking. You can do there what you want to do in all things dakadaka, if that is what you ask for. The ongoing popularity is understandable.

But then, what IS the PTO? What do you do there actually and what are the challenges?

Is it just Wildcat vs Zero with a tree or a ship in the middle? If so, then ˋ46 does a great job and you are served. Is that how the pilots lived through it in their service? Definitely not, but it may still be a fun game to some.

For the game just described, I truly do not need Jasons current effort at all as I can still use ˋ46. Just giving the planes and ships more polygons adds nothing to the gameplay. Flight as such is no challenge at all, weather doesn‘t exist and generally less than one percent of what is important to real pilots matters to a gamer in ˋ46. Who still plays ˋ46? Is this a number of clients you would think is viable as a busines?

I would cater a different experience. MSFS has proven that „just flying“ can be rather gratifying if you make it such in your game. I can hardly think of a more pointless exercise than „just flying“ in ˋ46. Just flying real aircraft in real life can be (and sometimes may become extremely so) a challenge in itself. Even in Europe, during most missions, pilots didn‘t see enemy aircraft. The PTO was even more peaceful in that regard, not counting occasional Flak at destination points.

So what is flying in the PTO? Most of all, it is long range flying, three hours an a half for fighters, eight and more hours for bombers over distances between 500 to 1000 km. All over grounds that are essentially lethal to the pilot. A partly beautiful, mostly bland hellscape. It is evident that the PTO as I just described just doesn‘t work from a gaming perspective as we are used to it, where anything beyond taking off, bombing your own carrier (or a ship next to it) and then land on it again gets to be a stretch.

The challenge for this game I don‘t see in putting the right numbers of rivets on a Tony. It is providing half the globe (as depicted above) with areas of interest in suitable LOD and provide game mechanics that allow completing missions within reasonable (and family friendly) time. There must be means for achieving that, such as time compression or skipping in a meaningful way, that does not take away from the challenge of navigating to the target.

If this new game could actually replicate the tasks as presented to the pilots back then and allows for following these procedures in game, then I‘d say this game has a bright future, regardless of what Han or Nick Grey might come up with. Neither could be fussed with such subtlties. In ˋ46, airmanship is a joke, but the planes in all their crude simplicity offer for meaningful gameplay.

I sincerely hope that @Jason_Williams will set his priorities accordingly, and not deliver what we essentially had in ˋ46 (or in a minimally improved manner in GB). Going that road is a terrible path of sunk costs that trap you after a reasonable and very straightforward depiction of Midway, then Wake. But as soon as you go towards the Solomons you get stuck with artificial island maps. (Geodata won’t even fit anymore and have to do the wrong thing the hard way.) While the island maps are fun in RoF and fast fragging MP servers in general (they WILL be required), it is NOT the PTO that the game actually promises.

To illustrate how absurd the idea of shrinking the theater is, it is revealed in the argument that you might just make planes twice as fast as well with a similar result. ANY plane cannot be remotely realistic or plausible, if it is not placed in a world like we have it. It is downright disingenuous asking for a precise depiction of an aircraft, if in the end basic metrics don‘t match the real world. You know, in a world half the size, a 109 has a pretty good range. Or shall we give it 30 min endurance, but pester devs for the correct label on the dash? During the history of human kind, then and now, the argument has been made for a flat world, consisting mainly of the proponents area of interest. Then and now, it was and still is is a dumb one. With no exceptions.

Building the game for the actual scenario might sound daunting given its size, but that at least doesn‘t exclude any artificial modes of playing that MP does require. Going for small maps gives no real benefit other than producing fast fragging maps, while precluding any meaningful depicion of the world pilots flew in. The latter I consider a built in death of the game. Failure as a feature. Saying that nobody needs a simulated world that resembles our world is like the statement that nobody needs more than 640kb RAM. Given that most of us are old enough to have witnessed the invention of the abacus, 640kb might indeed seem a lot. But the deliberate choice of restricting yourself drastically in your scope for no reason other than the traditions is fatal for sure.

So please Jason, nobody cares about the correct number of rivets on exotic planes, as long as we have that plane in a somewhat plausible manner. People who are happy with a flat world are also happy with simpler planes. (That is why they like ˋ46 as well.) We will bitch and moan about everything anyway. But you know that. What we need is a suitable gameplay to fly those long missions with the little of me-time life permits us to have at hands. THIS doesn‘t exist today and with that you have a game that sets itself apart from everything your old team and the rest of the competition ever might come up with. If you provide a way to make a full three hour mission reasonably playable in just one hour, you are the king of the hill.

And if the monumental success of MSFS teaches us one thing, then it is that for a flight simulator the world is more important than the aircraft.

[Feathered_IV]

C'mon fellas. The dev team is much closer to Team fusion in structure and output than it is to Asobo.  You might want to temper your expectations a bit.

[ZachariasX]

18 minutes ago, Feathered_IV said:

C'mon fellas. The dev team is much closer to Team fusion in structure and output than it is to Asobo.  You might want to temper your expectations a bit.

Team Fusion started with one item: sunk costs. And that is why they remain in the dump, no matter what even if they release version 7 in hundred years from now or whatever.

Game engines are for rent -> UE5

Clouds are for rent -> Truesky

Geodata is for sale.

Doing things wrong is actually more complicated today than doing things right from the start.

 

Just think of it. Every idiot can render a sphere on a PC. But for flight simulators, it‘s ok if the sphere is flat, because they say it‘s too complicated making it round…

[Chief_Mouser]

1 minute ago, ZachariasX said:

Every idiot can render a sphere on a PC. 

Hooray! I'm not every idiot 😁. I can't.

 

Mind you, back in the day I could produce a paper map from the earth's curvature using whatever projection you gave me. Probably can't do that now either... getting old is a bummer 😪.