What do you think it is that Luthier thinks will have Competitors squirming?
 

Luthier said:

"We also have a rather cool new major feature almost ready. It’s not going to make this patch. In order to keep the competitors squirming, we won’t say what it is until we’re ready to release it."

For the sake of keeping the posts short and to the point you get three guesses (not including Luthier!) to see if you guess right when it's released, so here are mine.

1) Pilot visible in the cockpit from the player POV when inside

2) Dynamic Campaign Generator

3) Ability to view aircraft in online battles on a 3D battle map like you were in a map room with a virtual environment showing all the aircraft in the sky (imagine Map view with Red and Blue icons, but larger view and the aircraft are in 3D, the map fills the screen?

Okay, your turn ;) cheers, MP

Aditional comment after looking at replies;

Thinking more about the wording of competitors I have to assume that Luthier is talking about WW2? If that is the case it must refer to World of Planes and World of Warplanes, two 'competitors' in the WW2 flight market.

Now, if that is the case, these two pieces of software hinge on the fact that they will have an online experience that is a dynamic free-flowing war arena, where events change the way missions are loaded and the results of those change the ebb and flow the Mission/Campaign/Map that is loaded.

If they released something like that, I can imagine that making the competitors 'squirm' as it would pre-empt their release by months and dilute the enthusiasm for their products?

Cheers, MP

If its HurriGirl then im going to visit Luthier in person. :)

1- dinamic weather
2- bomber packs ( some kind of AI tweek wich allows huge, 200+, bomber formations without bringing the game to an alt)


i like your 1 and 2 Mysticpuma, 3 doesnt appeal to me.

any of these would make my day.

Nope - it will include a built-in train, tank and ship simulator. ;)

Just kidding (I think). I'd guess it is more likely to be on-line than off-line related, but beyond that, who knows? We should have enough to keep ourselves occupied for a bit anyway, when the patch arrives. I'm happy to wait and see...

maybe 2 but even then this isnt some complex and like unheard of feature...i dont see 1 being that big of a deal...im the pilot and i can see my hands on my joystick and so on...same with 3...i didnt buy the game to watch battles play out on a map...

in reality all they have to do to make their competitors squirm is to simply refine the game and work out all the bugs, the fact that this game even exists should be enough to make competitors squirm...

1. Dynamic/historical weather
2. Land to refuel and rearm (hopefully animated)

1.- After successfully parachuting on enemy territory, being able to control the pilot in order to escape capture and return to the friendly lines (FPS style).

2.- Control of ground units or groups of units.

3.- Voice activated commands to the other pilots/crew.

Just wishing :) ....

1) A flyable Wellington, please!
2) Living breathing airports.
3) Pilot control out of the aircraft.
4) Wing walking on the Tiger Moth which now has a crunchie skin!


http://www.jr-creative-images.co.uk/...hie%22-003.jpg

Controllable AA and torpedoboat.
Or indeed lifelike dynamic weather with airlayers ,temperature and so forth.
Both would be fun but my preference goes to dynamic weather.

I am going to take a shot in the dark...

1. Auto battle recording so you can watch your online battle after the fact, sort of like DCS and lockon series... And they have been working with the makers of Tacview to incorporate it with IL2.

2. A built in scripting IDE with full tooltip help on all functions

3. A new first person shooter added for after you bail, having to walk back to base without getting captured with only your side-arm.

playable Panzer

Drivable U-boats.

St Paul's bleedin' Cathedral

Fsaa ;)

Three new locomotive models?

I hope its an animated refuel and rearm feature.

Weather

Weather seems most likely.

I'd hope to be dynamic weather and new clouds, but I think we'll get something obscure that 2% of the players asked for.:(

I just hope for something that will pleasantly surprise me :grin:

The ability to import aircraft , vehicles , maps from previous IL-2 titles would be the titts!

Been reading through the thread and THIS guess is the only thing that would make the competitors squirm, IMO.

Nukes!!!!!:eek:

well. it would be awsome, but 1940 panzers would probably piss off a few

lol yeah! 1940 Panzer II=Tin can with pea shooter.

Hehe

They also forgot this huge historical area.


http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=roya...oid=po-6881752

Maybe manable AA guns, pilot fatigue, aircontroller strike or moles causing havoc on your airfield?

1. Added a greenish hue to the cloud layer over England.
2. Malicious code that deletes all other flight games from your hard drive.
3. Driveable trains!!!!

a feature to enter the aircraft or leave it

That Su plane that was supposed to be included to demonstrate the filight model, but is not there yet.

Oh, drivable panzers during battle of britain, that'll be a great idea :grin:

playable aaa would be great and probably already implemented, just not yet unlocked.

1C has taken over silent hunter 5 and integrated in the game.

we can choose the career of a mechanics collecting points by being the fastest in discovering and repairing damages.

Integrated facebook status updates.

Killstreaks, if you get 5 kills you get to call in a cobra, get a few more and you get a huey or an SR-71 spy plane that shows up every plane on the map, get a few more and you get dogs...dogs with parachutes. Also if you get close to the enemy you can jump out of your plane, rip the canopy off your opponents aircraft steal his plane which then opens up a series of missions like flying a drug dealer to his next meeting or doing a fly-by shooting. If you are lucky and you manage to beat your opponent up in a small side scrolling beat-em-up screen you'll get to dual wield his aircraft and yours. I think that is what is planned...I think.

the redone-from-scratch clouds

so far (excluding obvious sarcastic posts) not many of the ideas have been really that great and certainty not enough to get their competitors squirming...come on guys think BIG...i dont know what will make the competitors squirm, i mean i hope its something that is something that is so far unique to the genre...who knows...it could be exaggeration on their part...

lets get serious

for starters do you think this announcement has something to do with something we might have to pay for down the road ?? say an expansion that they havent announced, i know they hinted at such with that silhouetted picture, and announcing their attentions to expand on the battle of Britain with other theaters and period, but have they officially made an expansion announcement??

or is this a free content release, perhaps a whole slew of ground vehicles and artillery and armor and ships and so on (plus the 109e4)

or like some have speculated existing possible features that have yet to be unlocked, such as artillery that we can control, which could seem plausible, but not so much tanks...though in an flight simulator this would seem to be more of a novelty...

I have already seen an early dev video that showcases a Bofors being controlled by human and shooting at AI planes.

Btw, did you see the lonely bofors in the vid that just sat there and did nothing?

1) Perhaps that's the clue, you can now control AA?

Either way it's a cool feature they've long talked about and to be frank, it would be awesome to have ingame.

2) What would really be awesome was if they upped the view-distance LODS on ships so you could control ships and wage naval warfare :)

3) Pilot walk outside aircraft (view damage after a fight for instance, or able to get in/out of aircraft and pilot them. This is a logical possibility since they already allow players to "swap" aircrafts mid-game with no delay whatsoever)

4) Final guess would be implementation of a bailout sequence :)

A cash bounty for shooting noobs down. Or a BBQ grill for baggin the first 100.

Being able to man Bofors etc

How about getting vectors from the radar controllers?

binky9

My vote goes here :rolleyes:

I remember that talk about controllable AA, and be able to swap planes controlling the pilot can be a awesome feature for online and single games, is a form of rearm and fueling.

From graphical point of view, I recall that there new clouds and water (current water is a place holder), and dont forget DX11 support.

player controlled AA, as several people have already mentioned.

You will be able to catch VD from a slapper at a village bar near the airfield?

Open source the game.

Maybe with the new look terrain they have manged to increase the area of maps to go all the way to Berlin? That way we could have a Bomber Command missions to the Ruhr.

Well, who are the competitors? Certainly no WWII sim can compete with Cliffs of Dover as far as historical accuracy, object detail, or realism. If there is a game that gets close (arguably) to a certain element of CoD, it would probably be WWIIOL. ...with it's equally large and detailed terrain.

So, given vehicle commands are already in the keymapper, I'd say they will add "playable" vehicles and/or ships - just like WWIIOL has.

Just my 2 cents.

rfa

My guess:

Dynamic online campaign which alows battles to go on over a couple of weeks...

This would definitely be something totaly new as far as i know?

Dynamic campaign would be my wish (but would hardly make the competitors squirm) but weather is my guess.

Create your own pilot model ingame.

An easy way to make skins ingame without needing to edit templates in seperate software.

Animated groundcrew who guide you during taxiing.

~S~

Rof and Clod will merge ... :)

ATC to be able to vector air units i.e. a ground controller

How about more detail on the ground, like farm animals, humans and buses and cars (that we have seen in past updates) grazing, walking and driving about.

The option to use a scrotum sack image for kill mark over the swastika.

Well, in Luthier's words, it has to be:

A. Cool :cool:
B. Major
C. Able to make its competitors squirm

So here's my 3:

1. First person scramble along with all those 'shelf loads of crew animations' that Luthier mentioned a while ago.
2. Dynamic weather (though we all thought we'd got this when we bought CLOD in the first place)
3. Playable AA ground crew or, at a push, playable air-sea rescue for downed crewmen.


My money's probably on dynamic weather, though thats been talked of a lot as a feature that was not finished and hit fps badly. Luthier's comment makes it sound totally new and unique, i.e. Not something previously talked of as planned or originally intended, but its hard to imagine theyve had the time to implement something completely new AND major, I hope he meant it! :rolleyes:

Theatre of War uses a modified IL2 engine maybe add RTS ground to online games?

Probably that naff feature of abandoning your aircraft to fire an AAA gun that he always wanted.
When luthier talks of great new features and "Holy Sh*t" moments, I tend to think of spitgirl and the buggy campaign.

Or we get now the expansion towards a farm simulator. The cows are already there ...

In all seriousness, the thing that would make the most fear in the competition would be a DC. That would even make jet the sim competition squirm.

1. Dynamic weather based on the reports of the time period.

Or my real dream, flyable Walrus with points for rescuing pilots downed in the Channel.

The water may be the clue. transparent shorelines.

Could it be subs that you can see underwater?

Or maybe be AA you can man on trucks and trains.

In time I think all this will be possible in CLoD.

Cliffs of Dover- Planes, Trains, Ships and automobiles all derivable and all have manageable gun stations by different people in MP.

Now that would make the competitors squirm.

Long Live Cliffs of Dover.

I see 'squirm' as a 'g*d dammit why didn't we think of doing that ' moment. If he's not saying yet, then surely its something never prevously mentioned or promised. He's a tease that Luthier chap.

Perhaps we get to paddle on the newly enhanced shoreline, that would be 'cool' ;)

1) Persistant online dead is dead dynamic campaign engine with in game squadron tracking and management tools, including real commander positions akin to the battlefield games system with situation rooms.

2) Free to play integrated AAA/Spotter game for non-fliers with a structured communications system to allow reporting of incoming enemy aircraft.

3) Community relations personna who will interact on a daily basis and keep us kids in check ;)

Battlefield Commander

Code that allows the game to run properly. ;)

Working radar implementation that they mentioned years ago.

The only thing clod could do to make the opposition squirm is release an A-10 and a Sopwith Camel.

3d..!?

Dons goggles.. :cool:

Well who are the competition? The only thing close is World Of Planes as they are in the same time period. So what would make the WOP guys squirm?

Maybe something to bring in the 'aircade' players?

As we are on Steam maybe it's all about hats, like in Team Fortress 2.
http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Hats
We get to collect hats and trade them with other players!
The open canopy aircraft will be all the rage because other players will have unrestricted view of our magnificent hats. Oh the jealousy!....

An actual working mirror that I could use to check my hair before flight to make sure Im looking goooood!

Now this makes a lot of sense. An integral part of history missing in most sims since Falcon4.

MY BIGGEST GUESS IS WE WILL FLY IN THIS MAP AVATOR.MAP
SECOND, WE CAN USE 3D MODE WITH GOGGLES :)
http://cg.creativefan.com/files/2010/08/image_432.jpg

THIS IS ONLINE NEW MAP :cool:

Just cause 2 style plane stealing :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZpDw...eature=related

So Mysticpuma must know something we don't know ;)

and yeah ... who is the "competition" to CLOD?

Mindblowing realistically looking dynamic weather.

exactly, it should as i understand the phrase "to make your competition squirm" as doing something that the whole or most of the flight sim genre (their competition) either says "why didnt we think of that" or "i cant believe that they were able to implement this so soon"

Well they do have vehicle control assignments already :)

I've yet to see a flight sim that allows you to control the tanks, vehicles, AAA etc., but I don't exactly think we are anywhere near that stage yet.

I'm hopeful it has something to do with the water or clouds/weather, and of course, hoping we see many of the bugs squashed in upcoming patch(s).

I just want to properly be able to hop into an all human controlled bomber. Then I can sit back and drink my bourbon while Borris does all the work :D

Smellavision..

That's pretty much my guess as well.

As for the dynamic campaign, it would work both online and offline and have the ability to pre-plan sorties from within the game lobby and not having to go to the FMB: if the map is populated by scripted actions, it's not much of a deal to create a friendly AI group and give it a few waypoints, in fact it can almost be done already.

Send a blenheim over to france, if it gets back you get some pictures (that's another one along with pilot rescue, photo recon). Then, assuming something important is there set up more blenheims to bomb that place.
Have them start as an AI flight but choose one aircraft as your own (plus maybe a spare in case the first one gets shot down) and set it up with a password.

You are still at work, but your bombers are starting up and warming their engines. You go back home, eat dinner and your bombers are over the channel now. By the time you sit in front of the PC and join the server, they are almost at the enemy coast. You select among your previously marked aircraft, enter a pre-selected password and spawn into your bomber.

Not very crucial for the short distances we currently fly, but it would enable us to fly the interesting parts of long missions in the future, without having for example to sit down for a 6-hour session to Berlin and back. At the same time, the actual aircraft in the sim would not be magically spawning with airstarts and the opposition would have a way to shoot them down and affect the outcome of the mission, results and casualties would be tracked by the campaign engine and all would have an effect on the final outcome.

Add ground spawning areas for ground units and infantry, have those areas move according to frontline changes and supply routes and you have something that can draw in pretty much everyone, sell in huge numbers and be absolutely awesome to play:

Are your trucks bombed before reaching the spawn area and your marshalling yards in rubble and congested? Then you have no supplies to move forward and the spawning area stays the same.
Are your supplies reaching the front? Then as soon as you capture new ground and hold it for some time, the spawning area moves forward so that ground players can join the action easier.
Of course, supplies would not be just for show...if fuel or ammo is not enough, you might have to start a mission (air or ground) with reduced fuel and rounds in your aircraft/tank/etc.



Call me crazy but that's where i think this is all going, plus why it took so long to develop and had so many problems
We already have scripts with moving frontline markers and AI units spawning behind those markers (check the battle of France scenarios running on the Repka servers, it's exactly the basic premise of what i described above), as well as the difficulty options for the server to control if we even can spawn our own aircraft or change positions within a multi-crewed bomber, heck if we even can change sides.

In a couple of years time we could be having online campaigns that span weeks or months and strategic planning would be somewhat important in winning. Maybe we'll have to register which side we'll fly for before it starts and then we can't change sides for the duration of the campaign, because a server-side add-in takes that date from the website and assigns us to the team we selected each time we join. The possibilities here are endless ;)

Blackdog, yep your crazy! :)
At the moment they cant get the AI to have the same roll rate as human pilots, you think they are going to get all that right?

I would be happy and amazed and think of it as a MAJOR feature that would have the competition squirming if they just fixed the AI.

I'm wary. The statement sounds too much like a statement for the press (you know, those "We're the best, we're the coolest, we know da Shiznit!" statements publishers throw around constantly) ... I'm adopting a wait and see attitude 'cause I suspect it'll be something I have absolutely no use for. :rolleyes:

Well. driveable tanks, trucks and AA was already in Airwarrior II running on win95 :-P
Oh well... since it can't be seen as a competitor anymore... ;-p

Blackdog's description might well be the way CoD develops. I remember reading somewhere that the devs understood that the longevity of IL-2 was mostly due to the online wars - makes sense that they should build on that. Whether it is true or not? Don't know...

I also think it'll be the dynamic weather. Would be fantastic to see proper cloud formations and their effect on the weather, would really bring the channel battles to life as I doubt they were always so sunny and relatively clear. :P

I suppose it could be the dynamic weather, but its a feature already known and in the sim, albiet not working yet. Its not a big secret to the competition.

voice activated commands to the ai would be awesome!!!nice idea!it first came to my mind when someone posted a video with some software doing this some weeks ago. i thought..why not implement this directly into game!?

If it's a real jaw dropper then it's odd they couldn't hold off with the US release as it may have helped with sales?

As they didn't I imagine it will probably be something for mission builders, modelers or something and not something that the average player would use but which will definitely benefit the game in some way in the long run.

HELICOPTERS! they have added helicopters.. my dream has come true

1) Mediterianian theatre of operations (they have almost the enitre planeset already. Only need to add CR42 and Glad) I am talking battle for Yugoslavia/ Greece here and maybe even crete and not the North Africa campaign.

2) The Royal Navy, criusers, destroyers and battleships (swordfish and carriers as well) and Germany gets the Uboats, destroyers and Bismark... Help with battle of Norway scenario?

3) Most likely in my book is translucent water with depth. Like Oleg showed us in one of the ship demo's Instead of the water being a flat layer as is the current place holder water it will now enable ships to sink properly :grin:

It's not a case of can't, it's a case of working on other things. The AI's roll rate was fine initially, some people complained the AI was too easy and we got the new roll rate as a result to make it harder. I know, stop-gap solutions and all that, but we're getting there: if it was that easy to change it in one patch, it won't be hard to change it back in another one :-P

Back on topic though, my description was more about long term possibilities. Luthier said at one point he had a few hundred pages of design documents simply detailing how a dynamic campaign should work and that it would take at least a year for it to come to fruition, so it's not like my little scenario is something we can expect in the next patch or two.
I just like to see a few yards beyond my nose in terms of what's possible with the sim (and by possible i mean as of right now, people who can code in c# are making it happen as we speak, the rest of us will have to wait for the SDK), instead of focusing completely on short term issues to the exclusion of the awesome things that loom ahead in the distance.

As for this mentioned mystery feature i don't know if it's going to be the weather (since that is not new), but weather will affect gameplay in more ways than one.

First of all, altimeters and everything that comes with it. We would need the correct pressure from the tower controller to calibrate our altimeters and even if it's set for us on mission spawn other things can go wrong during the course of a mission.

Flying low through the soup to evade bandits? Not reliable anymore if there are pressure changes. Back in IL2 if i knew a certain part of a map i could fly blind through the clouds, simply by knowing the minimum safe altitude. Well, with truly dynamic weather and ambient air pressure changing, that altimeter might show different readings every time i go through a cloud.

Level bombing? Same as before. Flying to the target only to have your altimeter showing an incorrect value because the weather over the target is different, using that wrong value in the bombsight and missing completely.

Then it's the effects on CEM. Engines will be harder to start but able to be pushed for a longer time during cold weather, flying in low ambient pressure limits the initial manifold pressure available to the pilot, which in turn lowers the supercharger's ceiling and drags down performance across the board, etc etc.

Come to think of it, i don't know what the new feature will be but i wouldn't mind if it was the weather, in fact i can't wait for another slew of "my plane is porked/bugged" threads with the real cause being a completely valid and realistic feature :-P

These two make sense...very likely it could be something like this. Members have been begging for some RN ships for some time now, so it would be really nice to see the RN in the channel.
Some of the ideas put forth are realy good, but I don't think the team has the time for implementing something really major at this point.

The graphics & sound are being worked on extensively, so I'm guessing it's something along those lines. It could be some online feature though, but my guess it's going to be a visual implementation of some sort.
So my guess is, in order of likelihood, one of these:

1) Proper translucent water
2) Fully dynamic weather
3) DX 11 support

the bailout sequence would be nice to have.but they already showed a video with it, so its nothing really new.i think they just took it out of initial release because of the many problems they were facing.we will get this feature sooner or later anyway i think.
but i think luthier is speaking about something different, as he refuses to say more, it has to be something never mentioned, or an unexpected big step forward in developement.
so it could be that vehicles are driveable now and aaa can be controlled by the player.
but i dont think it will be the dynamic weather or the dynamic campaign, cause those features are neither secrets nor really new.we had dynamic campaigns in il2 and the dynamic weather was already mentioned six years ago. so the "competitors" already assume that those features will be implemented sooner or later.

but of course luthier's terms could be exaggerated.

If that was the case Blackdog then why hasn't it been simply changed back in the last 2 patches?
To be honest the AI is such a tough thing to get right that i cant see it ever being good.
Thank god im a online player.
Anyway, like your thinking of future stuff, though how practical it is i dont know. :)

We also have a rather cool new major feature
Did not see it was a major new feature. New scenarios would not be a major new feature would they. Neither would ships or new planes...

1) My guess it is radar related. The ability to play radar operator and direct both AI and human flights?????? Most likely set in a control bunker. Could even be limit First person like in Silenthunter 5.

2) Online war 24/7 using a dedicated server sort of like ADW, but 24/7 with online stats recorded.

Come to think of it, the only thing that would really make the competitors squirm is if clod suddenly went free-to-play and started selling new cockpits...
:rolleyes:

Remember that he didn't say the new feature would make the competition squirm. Rather, it was him not saying what it was that would make them squirm.

All he said about the addition was that is was "a rather cool new major feature".

"We also have a rather cool new major feature almost ready. It’s not going to make this patch. In order to keep the competitors squirming, we won’t say what it is until we’re ready to release it."

Ive got it!!!

Its the community manager!!! :grin:

Sorry...il get my coat.

Working in software development I have some idea of the complexities of managing software projects and the issues involved - and I've got to say I think Blackdog may have something here. I feel something big is coming. I say this because some of the fixes the community has been pressing for (i.e. SLI, better AI, gunsight bugs etc) seem to me to be the trivia jobs... but when we do get an update what do we get? A new German minelayer and some trains, i.e. stuff to the community that is not that important right now. Thing is... maybe this stuff is all going to be important? Clearly the team are working on things other than just the fixes that are required.

Just my thoughts... but longer term I'm seeing a much larger online battlefield with not just aircraft being player controllable. Maybe the MG strategy has been all along to get more involvement from 3rd party developers to make this all happen... hence the release of the SDKs? Not sure what the business model is though.

Business model for that concept could be interesting. You could imagine a subscriber arrangement for large online battlefields, especially if protracted campaigns.

The biggest thing would naturally be that he named the competitors ;)

Other than that I agree with many here that the only major thing that no competitors have which also has been mentioned many times is mannable stuff on the ground... And that would be awsome, especially combined with the ability to use your legs :)

World war 2 online has the above. Although is its dismal to play ;-)

How about a game thats bug free an runs like a dream????