Other Flight Sims? Compared to AH?

[Obear1971]

OK this is gonna upset a few AH players....(puts on Flame proof jacket)

I think that AH is THE best online WWII dogfighting sim there is to date.

IL2 is a great game but not as good online

I actually think though (and this is were i get flamed) that WWIIonline has the better flight modle or more realistic flight modle that AH

Reason being is that when flying in WWIIonline (as long as you have a decent system) you REALLY feel like your flying at 200 mph plus. Alot of this is due to the ground terrain and the fact that there is lots of it.

But also if you shut down engines in Aces high, no matter what you are flying, you can GLIDE for miles.

In wwiionline you can also glide a fair way but as you slow down your plane REALLY starts to sink, you really fell like the aircraft has mass and weight.

It fells like you almost have to be at a stand still in AH to stall or sink.

Also i like the way in wwiionline you can scrape the ground with wing tip or slighy bump another aircraft or clip a tree and not instantly EXPLODE, you rock and sway and somtimes loose control but somtimes are able to regain control with maybe minor damage.

On the ground it takes a while for your aircraft to get off the ground and you really feel like your trying to get a ton of aircraft airbourne.

Ah your aircrat seems to be rather light.

Haveing said all that WWIIonline dogfighting dose not compair to that of Aces high for shear enjoyment, why? i dont know it just is that way.

AH is stilll the best WWII dogfighting sim there is, but WWIIonline seem to have things more realistic.

But then what do i know right ?

[Turbot]

Originally posted by Obear1971
Also i like the way in wwiionline you can scrape the ground with wing tip or slighy bump another aircraft or clip a tree and not instantly EXPLODE, you rock and sway and somtimes loose control but somtimes are able to regain control with maybe minor damage.

Warbirds is this way too, and you can hear the scrape.

I do beleive you are the first person I ever heard talk kindly about the ww2online flight model though, I mean ever.  (I can't keep a straight face ever since the helicopter 110 film though)

[Wlfgng]

anyone know what the chances are in RL, of a prop driven aluminum or wooden construction plane, say going 200 knotts, scraping the ground and the pilot being able to fly away.. ?

it doesn't sound feasible to me but I have no proof either way

[Revvin]

I think the ground clipping ability in WW2OL stems from an inadequacy not by design. In version 1.66 I took a Blenheim up for a spin. I had to ditch for some reason (memory fails) so as I came down I lowered my gear and proceeded at a speed where normally I'd expect my gear to break to cross a field. I pssed through a line of trees without breaking a thing came to a stop then realised I was not as damaged as I thought...hmm I thought lets give this a try. I throttled up and spun the thing round and taxi's through another set of trees then across a bumpy field and took off undamaged and continued my flight home.

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

The plane scraping the ground Wlf? If so... it wouldn't fly away, the prop would be all bent to hell...

The prop edges, there were a couple of instances where planes would scrape their props against other planes, trees, etc, and make it home with a badly mangled prop.. of course they had to fly at low speeds/throttle.
-SW

[Wlfgng]

kinda what I was thinking Swulfe... (is that short for Sea Wulfe?)

can't imagine how badly a damaged prop would vibrate either!

but how 'bout just a wingtip.. seems to me that it wouldn't matter but I have no data to back that up...
seems it'd still take ya down

[zarkov]

At one point in time, I had WB (2.77 and III), AH and WWIIOL installed on my hard-drive.  Right now, I only have WBIII and WWIIOL.

I liked AH a lot - I actually like the graphics although the lack of metric gauges in planes that should have had them threw me off a bit.  In the end, I realized it was getting a bit ridiculous subscribing to so many on-line games so I finally closed my account at AH.  The primary reason was that my squad was at WBIII and that I liked the combined arms aspect of WWIIOL and I liked the idea of being involved in a persistent war.  Had I stuck around long enough in AH to join a squad, I think making this choice would have been a lot more difficult.

My primary complaints about AH were in regards to the three-sided war set-up in the MA and the lack of any real historical match-ups on a regular basis (CT was mainly empty whenever I poked my head in there).  I started hanging around here again after I found out about the new mission-oriented arena - is this going to feature historical set-ups or be more of the "everyone flies what they want" thingy?  The FM's seemed to be rather generous and certain things like drag seemed to be "undermodeled".  Anyway, these are only my perceptions since the closest I've come to flying a WWII aircraft has been in one of these sims.  I never experienced any of this "laser gunnery" thing, at least from my end.  I think I was a worse marksman in AH than I was in WBIII.

IL-2:  I have that on my hard-drive but I've never played it on-line.  For me, it's primarily an off-line sim.  And as an off-line sim, it doesn't have much replayability because the campaigns are composed of canned missions a la CFS1.  However, FB promises to have a campaign system similar to the RB3D system (which, BTW, is IMHO, the BEST campaign engine out there), so I will definitely look it up.

[Wlfgng]

the mission arena is delayed a bit while HT works on some gameplay issues like side-balancing mechanisms and more strat.

I beleive the idea is to have historically accurate matchups but none of us dweebs really knows for sure.

at least not this dweeb.

Pyro's post:

We are working to finish up 1.11 and get it released as soon as possible. Most of the focus on this version is in quality of gameplay with new additions like side balancing mechanisms and improved smoothing and latency reduction. We did make a change of plans regarding 1.11 and our upcoming development plan and decided to push back the release of the mission arena from 1.11 to the following version. This is going to be something that we want to redefine online simulation with and it warrants some other major renovations to the game to achieve maximum impact. Expect some exciting news following the release of 1.11 about what will be coming in Aces High.

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

Yup, short for SeaWulfe....

Just a wingtip? Well, it depends... if it comes into contact with something jutting up from the surface of the ground, it'll rip off or damage the wingtip, and the plane will sway... if you anticipate this with counter-rudder, you *may* survive...

But in the case with most flight sims, people don't usually lightly scrape the ground with a wingtip, and I doubt it would be very possible to do it very lightly in real life. Most times you would just dig the wing into the ground and auger in.
-SW

[JG80 Fokker]

Just thought i would pop over here and check this thread out

IL2 is hands down the best offline boxed sim for WWII flight sims you can buy (imho). It has the most to offer in a richly detailed sim from both a graphics viewpoint and flight management. It has a few issues, but its worth the buy. Destined to become one of the classics.

I was a big MSCFS fan. Especially a CFS2 fan, but boy did CFS3 leave me very dissappointed. I am almost regretting that I bought it. Although the missions seem to be pretty good, and may be its only saving grace. Graphics are also pretty nice, and cockpits were pretty well done, imho.

Janes - I think that was a great sim for its day, and every now and then I still like to hop in and fly it. It is getting pretty dated anymore. talking the WWII janes here.

Red Baron -  A true classic. Its what got me into flight simming all those years ago.

Red Baron II - Its a decent game, and I still enjoy hopping into it now and then.

DOA - (dawn of Aces) Its the only MMPG for WWI flight simming that I know of. Its pretty good. You can even fly zepplins !! hehe. DOA3 is due out pretty soon, and it looks to be excellent graphically.

WWIIOL - I also thought it did the best at representing actual flight speeds in relationship to the ground. I dont know what tehy did, but when you fly low to the ground there, it is VERY convincing that your doing the speeds you are. FM's seemed pretty good to me. Limited planes, horrible latency issues, tons of bugs, and big system demands made me close my account.

AH - well, no need to talk about that, this is your BBS and all of you know what its all about. I personally didnt care for it in the end(although I still havnt cancelled my account yet), It's more a matter of personal taste then any real AH short-comings. AH does its job well enough, and it is a very good sim. I guess I just feel it is becoming graphically dated, and since I fly the WWII arena in WB3, i don't find the MA setting to my liking, and the equivilent of that arena in AH is kinda dead in comparison to WB.

WB3 - thats my stomping grounds. there was couple posts above that really don't give a very good representation of the sim at all these days, imho they are WAY off base. Just last night there was over 150 players in WB3. Maybe they have a personal reason for not liking it, but honestly those bashes on it are very unfounded these days. IMHO the similiarties between AH and WB are far greater then their differences, and I choose to back WB3 because of the greater potential I feel it can deliver. (Yes it is lacking in some areas yet) Anyways, I only have one long comment regarding WB3 scraping. If you scrape your prop, your done, it will be crunched and you will be without an engine. If you hit your wingtip or other part on the ground you are going to crash and burn. If you are in a fight low and slow, and you ever so gently scrape the lower plane of your wingtip across the ground, it will throw your plane hard in the direction of the scrape. If you are alert, you can recover before you get "smacked" into the ground. It is quite a hair raising experience hehe. I have had it happen to me about 3 or 4 times in the past year. Every time it was an "on the deck" turning stall fight at very low speed. I was able to recover( with a brown stain in my shorts) every time except once (I crashed and burned). Real ? I don't know, it did seem reasonable and real to me based upon the circumstance, and as to the scraping sound, well, it definitly added to the intensity of the situation

Thats my 2 cents.

Oh I guess I forgot some of the other old dynamix classics that should get an honorable mention for their day in the sun many moons ago.
Aces over Europe, and Aces of the Pacific. Both great sims for their time They rocked once upon a time..what 10 years ago ? hehe

[Wlfgng]

Fokker's post illustrates a good point.

Most of us (flight simmers) are of the same breed...
we've done our share of boxed games and then 'found' mmog !
each offereing has it's good and bad points and a lot of us just found the game we like.
A lot of us like 'em all, for different reasons.

[Revvin]

Euro times around 7pm-11pm you're lucky to see 35+ in the WB arena's this was one of the reason's I don't fly there as much as I used to do. Strange it went that way because before the boxed release and during the summer (traditionally a low arena population time) it was around 60-80 players during that timezone. The boxed version was released and many including myself had hoped for higher numbers but strangely it went down.

[humble]

we're missing one of the old classics...Chuck Yeager "air combat" or whatever the title was. Was great for it's time...still miss the "abbeyville boys".

Actually for now I think that AH has the niche to itself. Amazing how quickly AW & WB's have fallen by the wayside. I'm sure someone will take a run at AH in another year or two.

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by humble


Actually for now I think that AH has the niche to itself. Amazing how quickly AW & WB's have fallen by the wayside.  

It took over 15 years for AW to 'fall by the wayside' and it was due to lack of interest from EA and not from another MMPOG.  


Ack-Ack

[Beegerite]

Well, let's see.  WW2OL managed to get me and my old time wingie RAFBADER to stray from AH after about 3 years.  Personally I love it and yes, they have worked out quite a few bugs which gave it a bad rep and kept at least me from trying it.  Not 100% but damn near and well worth a second look.  I finally did when I had a connex problem while flying WB and since I had just gotten broadband I thought I'd give it a shot.  Haven't regreted it since.

Now, some others mentioned the great graphics in AH and WB.  No arguement there but is that what real flight looks like?  I don't think so and I've spent over 4000 hrs. as a pilot.  What do I find so realistic in WW2OL?  In a dogfight the enemy isn't painted onto your view in great and stunning graphics which allow you to almost see every rivet.  Instead like real life, where one loses focus, an enemy aircraft can actually escape you by letting it's camouflage fool your eyes (in case nobody's noticed, that the reason for them weird colors).  Likewise you can actually escape alive out of a dogfight.  Can count on the fingers of half a hand the times I've escaped in either AH or WB when overcome by superior numbers.    Over and above that, it gives you a terrain that is amazingly realistic with tons of trees, mountains, rivers, towns and villages.  This intense scenery is a real resource hog so if your running on a budget you may not be happy.  I run 1 ghz PIII, 512mb RAM and a 128mb nVidia based card and get about 35fps on average vs. 80 when in AH or WB.  In addition to very enjoyable flying you additionally have the option of single or multicrewing of various British, French and German tanks, vehicles and boats and a really unique thing, you can play as infantry with various weapons at your disposal e.g. rifles, sub machine guns, AAA, grenades.  Only thing I haven't been able to do is stab an enemy.  Oh, one last thing the whole thing takes place in 1940 so you will not be jumped by any ME262s while flying your early Spit or Hurc.
Beeg

Originally posted by muckmaw
Would you be so kind as to elaborate on WWIIOL.

I'm tempted to try it, but I've never heard good things about it. I'm wondering if they have th bugs worked out, yet.