I agree. Modelling flight physics isn't easy, if it was, every single title in the genre would have ultra realistic physics. But what makes modelling racing physics so difficult are the tires/tyres. They're just insanely complex. Dave Kemmer, iRacing's physics genius with 20 years experience building racing simulations has spent the past 3 years working on iRacing's new tire/tyre model and he's still not finished.
Tire coding is not that difficult. It is all about the friction coefficient. Once derived, it can be modified with rather simple equations to compensate for heat, track conditions, wear, and so on. Tire sidewall flex is a separate component which can also be represented with one value.
Getting all of it down to where it can be coded is the hard part.
There is nothing more difficult to model than flight. Take everything you would need to model a car, and it is also done for flight, then add all the dynamic aerodynamic equations on top of it to model flight.
ExJazz, all I can say is you over-simplified how it is actually done.
As far as time to model, it is about the same. Takes us about 6 months to do a new model. It is more difficult as there is no one stop shopping for all the data required to model any given WWII plane. I think it is fair to say, they spend more time on artwork, where we spend more time on research.
I disagree simply because you say so. I've known some out of touch people over the years but your finger is so far from the pulse on so many issues, it seems to be pressed firmly against the foot of the coffin.
AH has nothing to worry about because you say so? No. AH has plenty to worry about. It's engine and code are over 10 years old and even 10 years ago it looked dated. HTC refuses to modernize anything, because it can't? Who knows. Oh yeah, because it would lose customers on an OS that is.... over 10 years old - shocker.
Maybe WoP hasn't gotten it right with gameplay, but soon, a game will and if it isn't AH, then AH is dead and your finger will be on the foot of the coffin, looking for the pulse and telling the world everything is fine.
You have no idea what you are talking about. For example, the game is on its third graphics engine re-write. The game models are on thier third update (there are still some old models in the game, so you can visually compare if you have any doubts). The flight model has been updated three times, to include more elements. The terrain engine needs another update, but it is on its second update as well.
Getting very tired of people making claims about Aces High that are complete and utter fabrications, misrepresentations, and/or lies. Thankfully we do not have to put up with it on our board. Take that as a hint. We are one of the most open game companies in the business. We answer questions all the time, however, we will not give away anything related to the business itself.
Why would anyone care what version of DirectX we use? You do realize that changing to another version of DirectX gains nothing? It actually would hurt frame rates due to the higher overhead required.