Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: BnZs on October 27, 2008, 09:57:49 PM
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Would like a Great War flight sim to muck about with. Looking for graphics, sounds, flight modeling, reasonably useful view system (without using track IR), good AI, online play good but not a requirement.
Also, what is the most realistic stand-alone WWII sim out there? Besides Il2? The graphics, sound, and details are pretty good, but I am not entirely satisfied with Ubisoft in other aspects. I was wondering if there was anything out there that can trump it?
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AHII trump's them all....IMHO Il-2 comes in second, but with very nice graphics.
CFS is some eye candy though and has some nice offline missions.
There was Jane's as well, the FM there used to be interesting.
Fighter Ace has action, but the FM is a joke.
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I had CFS3, had some good aspects to it but the viewing system was just garbage compared to AHII, as well as some bizarre things with some of the flight modeling. The "1%" project fell through too. Pretty much my biggest disappointment with Il2 was the viewing system and the bizarre and uncontrollable nose-bounce.
Someone posted on another thread about a modern jet sim that was just insanely realistic and I was wondering if something like that for WWII fighters had been created.
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On this day in history Rickenbacker claimed two kills (#23 & 24) William Barker claimed four (#47-50) but was wounded in action and Arthur Rhys Davids was killed in action (probably by Karl Gallwitz). Knights of the Sky by Gennadich should be a really good game if it ever gets released but its made by the same guy that did IL2 so no bets.
Rumor has it that Aerosoft is working on something for FS11 concerning WWII but it most likely wont be an ACM game.
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Over Flanders Fields is a very professional mod for CFS I haven't tried it out since the earlier phase 1 stage and it had some great features back then. Might be worth a look again.
http://www.overflandersfields.com/info.htm
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=mHj8n0Zy0NE&feature=related
<S>...-Gixer
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AHII trump's them all....IMHO Il-2 comes in second, but with very nice graphics.
CFS is some eye candy though and has some nice offline missions.
There was Jane's as well, the FM there used to be interesting.
Fighter Ace has action, but the FM is a joke.
AHII has great gameplay, but as an actual flight simulator Il-2 is superior, in my opinion. AHII gives you a riding on rails feeling that facilitates gunnery, whereas in Il-2 you feel your aircraft buffeted around because of the weather effects. In Il-2, you will auger quickly if you try to stick-jerk on the deck, departing from coordinated flight.
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AHII has great gameplay, but as an actual flight simulator Il-2 is superior, in my opinion. AHII gives you a riding on rails feeling that facilitates gunnery, whereas in Il-2 you feel your aircraft buffeted around because of the weather effects. In Il-2, you will auger quickly if you try to stick-jerk on the deck, departing from coordinated flight.
Dude...that uncontrollable nose bounce is NOT realistic. It happens whether or not you have wind or turbulence turned on. I have tried lots of different flight sims. I have been in airplanes. Their noses don't waggle randomly like a dog shaking a chew toy with every control input. If Il2 was a realistic representation of fighter stability and gunnery, there would have been like 3 a2a kills in the entire war.
And stall avoidance and recovery is really little harder than AHII. You just got to get used to a quieter "buffet" sound is all.
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I had the same experience when I first tried Il-2. It's a tough adjustment from AH.
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Il-2 is certainly prettier and more detailed (manual shifting of Supercharger settings when appropriate, magnetos and fuel mixture all controlled manually, operation of cowl and cooling flaps) but has a LOT of flaws. All the aircraft fly exactly the same: I see VERY little difference flying an F4U vs. a Spitfire. All aircraft have the same flap positions in the game, regardless of the actual aircraft. Sound effects are awful (their Browning .50cal sounds HORRIBLE, not to mention none of the engines sound like the historical ones). The PTO setup was a half-assed tack-on. The AI direction finding is horrible. I've gotten completely lost listening to the tower because it turns out they're feeding headings to some other group of aircraft about 100 miles away from my position.
Personally, I still think Aces of the Pacific II is the best WWII sim.
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BnZs You might try Thirdwire's First Eagles. I've never played it but I like the other sims they've put out. Wings Over Vietnam and Strike Fighters
https://store.thirdwire.com/store.htm
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I had the same experience when I first tried Il-2. It's a tough adjustment from AH.
Man, I've flown flight sims before AHII, with manual trim, which gives me no problems in and of itself. I had no problem with gunnery/stability in them, but I just can't make things steady up in Il2, no matter what scaling I put on my stick. I also haven't seen where light planes I've ridden in bounce around like those in Il2, except in very heavy summer turbulence. There was a guy on the BBS a few weeks back who didn't understand how a 110 could POSSIBLY hit a Spit doing a flat turn because of his IL2 experience...that makes me suspect AHII is closer to the mark. I think Ubisoft has done that because a certain % of customers will think harder always=more realistic.
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Well, landing and taking off in AH is way too easy. When I take off I just go from 0-100% throttle no problem. When I land I can have my toes all the way down on the brakes and it's no sweat. In Il-2 if you just firewall the throttle taking off you have a good chance of crashing, and if you land with the breaks on you will flip over your nose and die.
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Carrier landings in the Corsair are actually a frightening experience in Il-2. Firewalling the throttle in AH with flaps out at stall speeds is nothing to worry about. In Il-2 it flipped me right over. :O
I'd really like to see some of Il-2's features (weather behavior, graphics, complex engine management and some of its plane set we're missing here--you have to admit Il-2 has some nifty planes we'd love to have) with AH2's flight model.
Oh, and for good measure let's add AotP's LSO on the carrier approach. :D
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Well, landing and taking off in AH is way too easy. When I take off I just go from 0-100% throttle no problem. When I land I can have my toes all the way down on the brakes and it's no sweat. In Il-2 if you just firewall the throttle taking off you have a good chance of crashing, and if you land with the breaks on you will flip over your nose and die.
Eh, I don't find it all that hard in either. Torque maybe a little weak in AHII, but not all that much. My brake in both games is the space bar, so I don't generally do landings with brakes locked.
Something I got to point out though Anax, everyone I've read who flew a P-51 commented that torque on takeoff was less of a problem than they expected, less "rudder dancing" than with some GA tail-draggers in fact.
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I HATE having only one brake in Il-2. I want my left and right wheel brakes, dammit! :p
Oh, and then there's the matter of being able to accidentally map axis inverted....
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Im not an expert in Flight sims but after 3,5 years in AH I have tried IL2, offline and I realized that the task to fly a plane, and I mean WWII era plane, is indeed a very difficult one. I mean just to up a plane in AH and to fly it is way too easy. Im not sure if that was the case in RL. Otherwise everybody could have been a pilot, with no sweat, like we all do here in AH. In AH I can input very violent press in my stick and still the aircraft doesn’t suffer any serious lack of control or loose its stability, and if I loose control the aircraft comes to rest very easily and very stable, giving the feeling that the nose is running on rail tracks. I tried to pull some aerobatics in IL2 things that I do in AH at low alt and the outcome was to crash. Maybe the “numbers” –as it concern the performances of the aircrafts- are by the book in AH but I think the flight model is deliberately on an easy mode for not to discourage new players coming in AH and leave the game afterwards.
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I disagree with you there. For the most part the F4U handled in Il-2 much the way she does in AH. Almost everything I could do in AH I could do in Il-2. The main differences are:
* RIDICULOUS engine overheat: The Corsair's engine in Il-2 overheats after only a few minutes of operation at full power even with cooling flaps completely open. This was a flaw in the modeling Ubisoft never addressed despite constant bombardment on the boards about it.
* Generic Flaps: All aircraft in Il-2 had the same flap positions: Up, "maneuvering," "take off" and "landing." This lead to a degree of genericness, and IMO was detrimental to the Hog's handling (not enough flap positions, especially not having the two "maneuvering" positions the real F4U possessed). As a result, she didn't feel much different than any other plane in the game
* Engine torque much more noticeable: The biggest difference is that engine torque is actually a factor. At stall speeds she STRONGLY resists rolling to the right. In landing configuration and reduced power throttling up too suddenly will cause her to flip over uncontrollably (which is correct). It ALSO supports a fact pointed out in previous discussions on the F4U's handling in AH: It's not that her combat handling and maneuverability is overdone, it's that low-speed stability in takeoff and landing configuration is weak.
* Can't put her into a snap-roll. I try and end up in a flat-spin.
There's some other minor details as well: There doesn't seem to be an option to switch between fuel tanks, the previously mentioned differences in engine management, (Corsair you have to manually shift the supercharger gear) turbulence/shake caused by lowering your landing gear to the dive brake position. And the gauges are IMPOSSIBLE to read. :p
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Otherwise everybody could have been a pilot, with no sweat, like we all do here in AH. In AH I can input very violent press in my stick and still the aircraft doesn’t suffer any serious lack of control or loose its stability, and if I loose control the aircraft comes to rest very easily and very stable, giving the feeling that the nose is running on rail tracks. I tried to pull some aerobatics in IL2 things that I do in AH at low alt and the outcome was to crash. Maybe the “numbers” –as it concern the performances of the aircrafts- are by the book in AH but I think the flight model is deliberately on an easy mode for not to discourage new players coming in AH and leave the game afterwards.
Once again, I think people are VASTLY overestimating the handling difficulties these airplanes should have. Face it, most WWII pilots had FAR fewer hours than most of us have in sims. If the airplanes were all widowmakers, no one would have made it.
Real pilots had to deal with lots of things besides airplane handling and ACM, most of all they had to deal with real consequences. That is the difference.
You can certainly stall/spin a plane in AHII if you push it too far. I think the difference must be the warning. The warning of oncoming stall in Il2 is quieter and subtler than AHII's horn blaring in your ear, so maybe you push it too far easier.
Your "nose on rails" remark...I keep hearing that. First of all, its not true. Adverse yaw is obviously in play in AHII, for instance. (Fly a Ta-152 if you don't believe me.) Second, from my own experience both with sims and planes, Il2 is the "odd man out" with its constant nose bounce. Remember, like I said, they didn't have as many hours as most of us do in this sim. The most commonly cited reasons I've read in actual accounts for misses were being out of range and not putting in enough deflection. What we'd call "noob mistakes". Not, "I couldn't make the plane steady up for anything." The shooting in AHII isn't too "easy mode", the thing is, too many players are really, really good shots.
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BnZ,
I will say that the gunnery may be a bit easier in AH than it should be. AFAIK even in scenario/etc play where wind is in effect gunnery isn't impacted by windage (this could be easily tested and confirmed using the target and setting a crosswind while offline). It's not just a matter of nose bounce, but a simplified gunnery model. Additionally, the player is unaffected by environmental factors a real pilot would have to contend with that would negatively impact his aim (adrenaline/fear, G forces, etc).
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IIRC, real tracer rounds had a different flight path than the rest of the bullet stream, too.
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Sax:
Haven't found the gunnery super-easy myself. And I'm not talking about artful dodgers, I'm talking dead six shots on planes that aren't maneuvering much. With high closure rates even that can be a little difficult.
When I test on .target, the bullets don't make a small group, they seem to have random dispersion increasing with distance. Are you saying not enough?
If windage effects aren't there, that is something, but I shoot within 300 yards myself, I don't see most cross-winds effecting a hail of .50s at that range enough to make you miss very often.
Yeah, we don't have fear, or pain, etc. We're also not freezing and we're not really loosing blood when we are trying to land with a PW, whats your point? ;) I don't think gunnery or flying should be made harder just because its easier to shoot or execute dangerous maneuvers when death isn't on the line...I have reason to suspect this line of reasoning is EXACTLY what led to Il2's gunnery/flight modeling.
BTW, Hub Zemke mentioned in his book having a bit of "buck fever" when attacking his first airplane in real combat. He shot, the target split-S'd, he landed a few hits when it did and then it was diving and gone. They reviewed the gun camera footage, he had opened fire at ~1000 yards! Sounds like 1. he was missing for the same reason new guys miss in AHII 2. The weapon platform itself was capable of some real accuracy.
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I remember when that stupid WWI air war film came out a few years ago (so forgetable I can't even remember the name) they had a free on-line WWI flight sim I think based on AW? It was totally gamey and silly...