Was Oleg Maddox too far ahead of his time?
 

Hi all,

Was he?

Best Regards,
MB_Avro.

Well, his vision certainly was/is.

He wanted to make the best WW2 combat simulation ever, but the technology was not there yet.

I hope he comes back to the genre and has another go at some point.

He deserves better than what he got.

Just my opinion.

Yes I think that is true...he failed to envision a world wide recession though, so many people still running old hardware...including me :)

FYI, the CLOD project was restarted 3 times under his watch.

I know the history, I've been here the whole time.

Funny you only show up after the sim is cancelled. Enjoy gloating, or just indulging in some good old fashioned schadenfreude?

Oleg is a genious.

Simple as that. IL-2 Sturmovik is the best PC combat flight simulator ever made.

I was here long before the sim was cancelled and had high hopes for its success. And no, I'm not enjoying gloating - just trying to point out that all was not rosy with Oleg and Luthier as some people here like to think.

No, Oleg was not.

His ideas for CoD were taken directly from the wishes and requests of IL-2 flight sim fans.

Unfortunately his publishers did not have the patience or vision he did.

Yes. He consistantly broke new ground, always with visual balance. A rare bird indeed.

The game has been a financial loss for the publishers. What else did you expect them to do?

What exactly are you doing here Luke?

You don't fly CLIFFS OF DOVER, you didn't lose any money by purchasing it.

So why do you find it necessary to contribute your entirely negative opinion?

CoD may have not achieved the success which everyone (except it seems, you) had hoped for, but it actually is quite a bit of fun for those who actually fly it.

This is a forum for CLIFFS OF DOVER.

So why don't you head down to the new BoS forums, where you can contribute your opinion in an arena where it might actually have some use?

I'll be happy to hear your opinions of BoS there, I'll be watching the developments there hopefully too. Looks like we might have a nice new sim coming out.

But here?

You're just another ugly stray dog, p*ssing where you are not wanted.

7 years in developpement...Probably 5 to 7 million $$$... A very narrow niche type of game with so little market...At release the game doesn't even work at 100% with more than half the features removed and you dare to say that whoever was putting the money was not patient enough ?
It was obviously a good decision, since after almost 18 more months of "developpement", the game is not even running well....NO one could fix it without shedding another fortune...
So who is the real responsable for this fiasco ?
We may never know....

IL2 proved a flight sim could be a success, financial success ? I assume so that's why Oleg got the go ahead for CLOD. Yes, Oleg was ahead of his time, he was CUTTING EDGE as they say. problem is technology at the cutting edge is flakey. even so CLOD is great game for me on my powerful desktop .. pity more simmers aren't also traders .. pity more people aren't traders .. good having more than 1 source of income. I bet in 2-3 years time, CLOD will be the sim-of-choice .. that's why some want to kill it off now .. :(

.

I'ld say he was quite a bit ahead in his vision. You keep on hearing about Moores law and the computing power doubling every 18 months or so, but that doesn't apply to software development.

Most of the software development practices for thing like Il2 is just not keeping up with the hardware. Just need to look at our CPU usage for that.

Funny thing is I was just over at the ROF forum and there are quite a few people (I'm not talking about the people who are at the new IL2 site) expressing their doubt that the ROF engine will be able to handle City/Urban locations like Stalingrad or anything like a reasonably populated map. (There are a lot of them that seem to have fairly realistic understanding of the limits of the engine!)

Hmmm! It's an interesting trip we're on here!

Cheers!

Some people don't realise yet what we just lost, with both Oleg AND Ilya. They had true vision, and were not just after a quick buck.
Others are here to gloat, or to push their own agenda. Funny how a lot of the main detractors are now fawning at the new forum, and, it turns out never actually owned CoD in the first place.Who would have seen that coming.
I won't say what I really think, because I would have to ban myself.

That is interesting, I thought that they had a long history and were friends to each other.

This.

+100

Great post.

Oleg was certainly ahead of his time with the original Il-2 series. He fell flat after that though, trying to make the last ever flight sim, rather than the next one.

Btw: Good post Uther. It certainly is a significant moment for the flight sim genre. I hate to say it, but I'd already seen it coming and resigned myself to it much longer ago than I care to recall. I've mourned all those lost tomorrows already.

Certainly Oleg was far ahead of his time! This is what is needed to make great things happen.

My belief is that the game did not become a success not because of it massive requirements in expensive HW but, because a lot of bugs and important functionalities (AI, Radio control) were not ironed out as fast as possible.

This is what I will always remember about CoD
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...ml#Post3360767

"too far ahead" is a very delicate definition. "far head", too.
Interestingly, you may want to notice the last comment about Oleg in the chat window on the first picture in the thread I posted above ;-)


~S~

Yes a surprise to me the people who never even bought the game. Crazy, without support did they think it would last forever...I tried my best to squash all the bad press that would show up in posts, if I knew for sure it was unwarranted. Such things as the CTD, AA (unimportant so early really), 303's being ineffective and the 109 stalling etc. etc...a strong sales report was needed for, to buy time for the engine to survive...just a huge waste, and very sad for MG

I disagree El.

The technology was there; the failure it's been because of the inability of the developers to use it correctly (lack of DX11, multithreating, 64bit ect... bugs with texture's compression rate, textures loaded directly from HDD, ect).

As full time software developer I can say that it's not easy to use new technologies at their full potential: you need guys who have the correct know-how... my first applications with WPF (coming from "window forms") and ASP.Net (from php) were horrible.

I think that Oleg didn't surrounded himself with the right pros.

It's cruel, I know, but if you want to develop a master piece you have to work with real pros who actually know about new technologies... because of this a programmer has to learn the new technologies, or he will be surpassed by other guys.

Points taken sir.

:cool:


I've posted on our forum that I don't think BoS is going to be, well, I'll say very good here, as to not have Uther ban me.

The RoF enigine is an older development and has severe limitations.

I hope I am wrong, but I don't think I am.

BoS on the RoF engine, I believe we are thinking the same thing El. Still, time will tell.

You're not wrong, imo.

As I said in the past, I really don't like WW1 planes but I've bought many ROF plane packages: I hope others will do the same with BOS even if the engine is outdated. In that way we can support 777 to develop contents (planes and theatres) and above all a new generation of their engine.

The only thing I ask to 777 is to be honest with the customer: they already wrote about their clear objectives on the first "developer diary"... it's enough for me.

But you also have to keep in mind that programming a real time flight sim is not anywhere close to any other kind of software. I consider myself an exceptional application architect and developer and have created everything from quick and dirty 5 minute scripts to 500 million record enterprise level databases and I will be the first to admit that I couldn't even touch a flight sim. And I'm a mechanical engineer!

Without post graduate work very few engineers will truly understand the differential equations used to APPROXIMATE flight dynamics, let alone be able to actually program them. Putting together a top notch flight sim is a black art in and of itself. Merging it all into an actual game is staggering.

So, it is very difficult to find the, "right pros", when coding for a hard core PC based flight sim.

Just my thoughts.

--Outlaw.

I've not said it easy, otherwise every game out there would be a master piece.

Anyway I'm talking about those engines who are directly linked to technologies.

Of course the development of a physic engine from scrap required very smart people: probably guys who know to works with PhysiX can reach the target easier, but knowing how to develop a multithreading application is a little different from designing a complex physic engine, IMO.
The same about a Dx10 graphic engine: an experienced Dx10 guy can work easily and with better results than a guy who only worked with Dx9 library or, at worst, OpenGL.

This was my point, otherwise they would have used the newest technologies in CloD, but they didn't.

FYI, if it wasn't for Oleg and Luthier none of us would be here so why don't you just go and gloat in your own forum, we know what your here for, you spend enough time on your knees in-front of Jason & no we don't want to watch.

I can't understand why someone that lives in Riverside, is constantly trolling forums when there is so much to do and see outside, just goes to show the type of pond-life you are.

Your a legend JG52Uther!

I tip my hat to you 1000000000000000000+

Surely he was. But that is not the worst sin in the world and I admire him and the team for trying to create something beautiful and significant. What we learned along the way is not lost, it will be reused by others to reach even greater heights. I sometimes find so called failures like that to be more inspiring than most of the safe and mundane successes I see every day. What if nobody dared to write novels or symphonies or run for office because they were afraid of a flop; we would all lead poorer and less inspired lives I think.

Well said :grin:

Having been sitting rather quietly on the sideline, my impression is that Oleg was too ambitious when he did the basic design for CoD. He clearly wanted it to be perfect in so many ways, and in the end he had neither the resources nor the time needed to fulfil his ambitions. One could always criticize him for not prioritizing harder and drop features to get a workable game, but he clearly stated he never wanted to make a beefed up IL2, but something new and spectacular. As one who do creative work professionally, I can certainly emphasize.

At some point 1C needed a return on their investment, apparently replaced Oleg and some other people and hoped Luthier would be able sift through Olegs work and put together something workable. As I'm sure Outlaw can confirm, switching rider mid-ride will newer be easy. Luthier probably did as well as anyone could, but in the end he too came up short on money and resources.

In the end, I don't think Oleg was too far ahead as much as too ambitious considering the amount of manpower and time he had at his disposal.

The problem isn't that he was too far ahead of his time, the problem is that they wasted a lot of time on stupid things like Spitfire Girl.

Salute

To address the question put forward by the original poster:

Oleg had a definite vision of what the STORM OF WAR was going to be. That would have put it far ahead of anything else produced in the Flight Sim genre.

However, for reasons we are not privy to, he left for an opportunity in industrial graphics, taking with him his chief code programmer.

Whether his leaving was primarily to do with an opportunity to explore a new field, or whether it was a function of issues between himself and 1C is a question which has not been answered.

Those who remained in the development team were not able to accomplish the goals which Oleg had originally set.

Luthier was an individual who had entered the Flight Sim business from a starting position as an amateur enthusiast, who started by doing volunteer graphics modelling. (remember the Bi1 in IL-2?) For whatever reason he and the team of programmers and coders were not able to implement the business plan set by 1C and the Maddox development team after Oleg left. Perhaps that plan was too ambitious? Perhaps the decisions made were not achievable with the skills remaining in the development team. I think personally quite a number of aircraft and objects included in the game were superfluous to the basic requirements of a BoB scenario. Perhaps the effort put into those objects was a factor in the lack of attention put to more basic and important concerns.

In any case we were left with a published game which was seriously lacking, full of bugs and not ready for use.

It took another year and a half to get it into reasonable shape. Now it is actually a well performing online game, more than able to accomodate 80 players, with most of the graphics bugs gone.

However, many issues remain, the primary being the failure to model altitude performance correctly.

Could these have been fixed with another 3 months of focused work? Perhaps. Perhaps the decision to focus the efforts of the development team on a BATTLE OF MOSCOW sequel should have been put aside until the basic game was performing as it should have.

1C made a financial and managerial decision, which we do not have the details of, to drop the game. How much of the decision was a function of their evaluation of the code's failings, and how much a function of their evaluation of the development team failings is unclear.

So we are left with an unfinished dream, which any detailed examination will tell has enormous potential, but which is now a seeming dead end.

A waste? Perhaps. Oleg's vision has not been fulfilled by the publishers. Maybe the goals were too lofty.

Now it is up to the community to take it further. If people believe in CoD sufficiently, they will step up and move it forward. Otherwise it will be just another dream unfulfilled.

We are where we are.

I'm here because I want to be here and to add my own my opinion to the question originally asked.

Who died and left you in charge?

My point exactly.

I didn't mean that the two of them didn't get along with each other - rather that there were things going on behind the scenes that most people don't know about.

(And no, I'm not going to go into details. What was told me was told in confidence).

You don't have the 1st clue what happened. You don't even know what team members are there from the old team. You weren't here when IL2COD was active, so please don't come here now that it's closed.

A WWII sim on the ROF engine is gonna be an insult to WWII itself.

Spit Girl
 

Define 'A lot of time'; it was a simple mission using a stock spitfire with a stock person jammed in the cockpit to restrict the view.

Do you realise that this happened in reality? A pilot whose name I forget actually did land at Biggin Hill, stop in front of a senior officer and let a girl out of his cockpit. They tried to court-martial him for endangering one of His Majesties aircraft to which his defence was that there was no added risk and he would be happy to demonstrate it again with a girl or a dummy :-) One of his fellow pilots (more senior?) backed him up by saying he has also done it on several occasions and pointed out that there was nothing in the regulations to restrict carrying passengers in a spitfire. He got away with it!

There are also a couple instances where Alied pilots flying in Northern Africa rescued their comrades by landing and doubling up on the way back to base. If memory serves me right one instance actually occured on the edge of an Italian held airfield.

Imagine a mission where you got to reproduce those events!

From the implementation of Spit Girl I doubt it took up much of their time.

Cheers!

He made one big mistake, he made clod under ubisoft. He should make this game the way ed and rof did. On his own. Then he would realize he cannot deliver without puting this sim on market in time because he would ran out of money.

Second mistake he made, he wanted to get all features in final build. Impossible!!! He should take the road of adding features in paid updates.
Its Too bad because i think that clod is real gem.

I believe that Oleg's vision for this sim as others have said was to produce the best he could technically. Oleg left or was pushed before the release of C.o.D. so he never was able to see his dream fullfilled. Don't blame Oleg for a sim that was released half done it wasn't his decision.
If he ever comes back into this genre he will have my support, when the original Il2 was released we had a playable demo. From that he gathered a huge support group even though our pc's weren't capable in a lot of cases to give the best results.
A lot of people rubbish UBI but at least they supported him through the series, and from that series has come the true flight simmers that love this genre.
I have both C.o.D. and R.o.F. (and all the original il2 releases), of the C.o.D. and R.o.F. Cliffs is by far the best.
I have always had an issue with Sli not being finished (and I have voiced my opinion about this often), but with the last release to Steam and Luthier's Sli code (plus another alteration I have made) I now have Sli working to where I can run my Hurricane/Spitfire at roof top level over London with smooth game play. Ok I have taken a lot of time to get to this point but I kept trying different things until I got it to work.
Luthier and the team were so close to success with this sim, too bad they weren't given the time.
I wish Luthier and those of the old team success in their new fields, may they find somewhere to expand their dreams with success.

I wish people would give up on the Ubisoft bashing. Ubisoft had almost no influence on the development of Oleg's sims. They were the publisher/distributor for western markets, that is all. Every major decision about financing, release timing, etc. was done by 1C, not Ubisoft.

After 10 years I'm still amazed the people still do not understand this.

You and me both.

Yes he was infront of his time, but he could made it too, the big mistake was to release it too early, ubisoft put the release mark rigth? if they put them in these days , and fund the project one more year, theyr earnings could be incredible, and athe game could be a total sucess, we dont know what we lost, and what would have been whit the series. and never we will know it

reasons?
BIG mistake of early release
Magazines doing the review under other reviews, ex they saw some bad marks and they gonna do it too
Fanboys of other sims, yes, its sad but some of them, are married whit their sims
whiners.

UBI had nothing to do with it.

1C not ubi. Amazing how many people just don't get it.

That is where you are TOTALLY wrong, Fruitbat!

It was EA Games..... who doesn't hate EA Games? :D

lol:grin:

EA...tsss. How about ACTIVISION *insert devil picture of choice here*

There is no way Oleg or Luthier were ahead of their time. Look at all the newer awesome games and their graphic environments.

What about COD. Is it a significant improvement over modified IL2 ?
The graphics... ? Anything else you can think of?
Is the COD AI improved over the modified IL2 or BOB II WOV?

Was the COD development team ever up to the task of building a better air combat simulator game than IL2?

Do you really think COD is better than IL2 with modifications?

You can answer all the questions yourself

Enjoy what we have now, you won't be disappointed.
The BOB II WOV is soon to release a huge new improvement patch, and the IL2 is constantly being improved with modifications.
The WW2 Air combat simulation world is not collapsing.

Then 777 Battle of Stalingrad is over a year away (2014) and it may take longer.

No reason to complain... We all loved Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and other great stars. It is time to pull ourselves together, quit grieving over something that cannot be and enjoy what we have.

Happy New Year!

Well said nearmiss! Hope you (all) have a great new year:grin:

Oleg was so far ahead of time during COD's development, he got another job.

It is, but the improvements were not used by MG to give the player an improved experience.
Eye-candy, and ability to change the types of bullets in the fighters.
There are more options to modify COD AI behavior -- but not in a Quick mission without editing the mission file :rolleyes:.
Was there "a team"?
Best I can say is they are equally appealing, but for different reasons.

Better to say 2 years to get a BoS in a useful state.

Hope yours is happy too!

Hey! Activision are great! Remember they are the creators of...

Call of Duty
Call of Duty
Call of Duty

and who can forget.....

Call of Duty?

:D

Yes, I do.

Wrong again.

I was here long before CloD was released. January 2008 to be exact.

The only thing that's insulting here is your attitude. Let it go already.

Hello LukeFF,

Do you have information about the " Oleg/1C/CLOD" story that you could share with us ?
It seems you know more than we do ...;)
Now that IL2 franchise is gone and Ubisoft is no longer in the loop, maybe we could finally know what is the "real story" behind CLOD...

Salute !

old news,

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y29...1Dec210255.jpg

For seven years we heard about the " next generation flight simm". roughly one year after release the entire code had to be rewritten. Eight years and what happened. Next go around, hire a marketing firm to research what theater of operations will bring in the most paying customers. Starting with BOB was the first and largest mistake, releasing it DOA wasted the time and money of all concerned . Pandering to the Russian market with BOM would have been the end if it had made it that far. The world is full of people with vision, 'unrewarded genius is almost a proverb'. Havinga good idea and making a sucesful business venture require marketing strategy's and and a management with business acumen.

A lot of us grew up hearing about the BOB...I like the concept wish it was a smother presentation

Where I grew up up we heard about Pearil Harbor. If 1c starts with this battle, it suffers the same fate as BOB. Not much much global market share captured with either title. The battle of Stalingrad will suffer the same lack of interest.

Odd analogy.

One is a one morning battle, the other two are campaigns over many months, but I digress.

While you might not be interested in the Battle of Stalingrad, but there's plenty of people who are regardless, including myself.

Hmmmm...im sure the people of mother Russia might disagree, and there are lots and lots of them, more than enough to make up the numbers.

If CloD had been successful out of the gate, and quickly followed with follow on patches making more of the AIs flyable, we would not be having this discussion of which theater was the ONE to start with.

Personally I am looking forward to going back to the Russian Front. It's where I really got totally involved in flight simulation, and I have fond memories of it. And I'm from the US.

Information on 777 Studios

http://companies.findthecompany.com/...in-Redlands-CA

I looked up the address for 777 studios 1411 Thames St Redlands, ca 923742640

Just FYI you can drill down to view exact address and the associated company location by moving the little man over the address.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?as_epq=&a...ed=0CAsQ_AUoAA

I don't have an opinion.

Yup, if the sim is good enough I'll take ANY theatre. I don't get why some people get so hung up on which theatre it has to be, I fly DCS a lot nowadays and all I've got is the Caucasus but I don't care as long as the guy on my behind will end up in my crosshairs. I also look forward to the eastern front, it's been a loooong time.

Take a look at the unit count for the IL-2 series, the most sucessfull "add on " was Pacific fighters. Much more of a global appeal to more affluent market. You cannot not argue the final results of COD, there was next to no interest in BOB. Weather it was flawless out of the box or not. To make this niche sucessful you need a greater number of first time buyers. Who will turn into repeat customers to supplement the small number who will buy any title.

The same comments were said about the choice of BOB, plenty of interest. The results tell a different story. It is a flwed business plan to take a miscule market segment , flight sims ,and narrow the scope of interest to a theater with a very limited market appeal- BOS.

There is a relatively small group who will purchase any title. Attracting the new blood and keeping them interested enough to be repeat customers is how the business will flourish.

BOB and BOS are the same Sim. Fly 15 miles to the front to attack a small group of twin engine bombers attacking a ground target or escort them . A map with a large city essentially useless except to drain computer resources surrounded by mundane scenery.

I hope they succeed. I like that they are starting small and intending to build upon it from there. RoF development has had a remarkably clear trajectory since 777 took over from NeoQB, and as long as this community does not try to murder it before its begun, I expect BoS will enjoy a similar progression. Modern simulations are becoming so complex that study-sims and the strategy of incremental builds are the only sensible way to go.

Lessons are never learned when egos get in the way. The most successful MSFT air combat simulation game was CFS2, not the CFS1 or CFS3. CFS2 and the Pacific IL2 are the most successful releases for both companies. What is so hard to understand about that? :confused:

The Battle of Britain was a loser for Rowan and he just yielded up the code for it to the community. The Korean war by Rowan was a loser as well and he gave up that code as well.

The best war theatre is the Pacific war, because it had huge variations in aircraft, carrier operations and the scenery was awesome. Gaijin did some things Pacific, but it was just arcade stuff and no one goes for that.

Anyone taking on another European Front will just learn the same things over again. Sadly, if you really consider the Battle of Stalingrad it was a depressing battle, there were limited early war aircraft, the weather and scenery were awful. The battles and engagements were boring as well.

This is free advice, but we all know free advice is worthless and paid for advice rarely heeded. The only thing that seems to matter to the those who produce games, especially air combat games is the devs egotistical imperatives. It seems, all we get in the end is excuses for predictable subsequent failures.

Why not start in the Med. theater? It seems a natural progression for the ROF crowd. They can fly the Italian CR ,and Gladiator and get their Bi-Wing fix. Diversify the missions to include the interdiction of shipping. Appeal to the RAF,US, Italian, German AUS.NZ,and South African interests broaden the customer base etc.

If the COD code is released it should be a natural progression, since the scenery in the Mediterranean, Malta and Southern Italy are beautiful. The northern areas of Africa would be a real changeup as well. There were plenty of engagements over water and along the coastlines during the Mediterranean battles.

Very well said! Instead of a business proposition it becomes egotistical drive fueled by some twisted sense of National pride.

Hell you could make a non combat sim in the Pacific that would be exponentially more interesting than any air battle in the East. I had more fun and excitment trying to navigate to my carrier in foul weather as darkness was closing in with my fuel gage on empty. Wondering if I had enough fuel to swing around for a second pass ,assuming my aircraft carrier was still afloat and not burning. Hoping the pilot before me did not mess the flight deck up with a poor landing. Always looking over my shoulder as I heard my ships AAA fire up hoping the were not trying to shoot someone off my tail. There was always a rush, no matter how many times you you flipped your dive bomber over and saw the huge Battleship or carrier fill up your sight.

Instead lets rush off to make some boring mundane russian sceanery and cover it with snow for a little more monotony.So I can fly my disposable under armed, under powered, slow russian aircraft with a thimble full of fuel thru the weeds . Assuming the adhere to historical accuracy, looking thru my yellowed windscreen, flying with the canopy open to cool down the overheated cockpit reaching for a rag to clean the perputully leaking oil off my googles.

Would this be accomplished by third party? I thought the best looking maps in IL-2 were made by third party contributors. The Solomon's and Romania/Moldovia

1C will NEVER release the CloD code.

Why would they step on the toes of their own new development?

You lot have to get over it.

It's a dead duck.

Also, it's good to remember that 1C's primary, and most profitable market is Russia. Playing to thier home crowd makes very good economic and political sense.

Why not wait and see how things go instead of pushing the Pacific again?
You realize that the NG agreement is still in force so 1C has no incentive to go to the Pacific?

Selling more units would imply, more profitabilty. They would clearly sell more units of a globally appealling title. 777 can negotiate with NG regarding copyright infringments they are the Parent company , are they not?
As far as the pushing the Pacific, history has a way of repeating itself, for the good or otherwise. BOS is BOB covered in snow.

yes, history does have a way of repeating itself...
It has been remarked that the most popular sim was CFS2 and what with long time fans seeking an upgrade to that, by way of better scenery and working online bombs, we got CFS3 (back to part of Europe[CFS1], which fell over. CFS2, was a Theatre of Operations.

After MG released Pacific Fighters, the PTO (now, the 'Theatre of Operations is the important bit) was immensly popular. We didn't get The Battle of the Coral Sea, or The Battle for Midway, or The Battle for this beach or The Battle for that Island... we got a Theatre of Operations (albeit with some limitations, like not enough of the northwest).

BoB (cod) was a battle, BoS was a battle... WWII was The Western front, The Eastern Front, The Mediterranean and The Pacific.



and the pacific was covered in popularity by users

Pacific would not be a so globally appealing title as you think. Sure, US users would be crazy about it, but US is not a whole world, and if you take decreased attention span of current user base, Pacific might be unpopular even in US as it would cover large, monotonic areas (lots of water), include lots of IFR flying, and have low average target density. Player has to be either a hardcore simmer or be driven by national pride to enjoy that, and this does make PTO risky for the beginning of series.

If the BOS is a success, i can see a PTO in its future...right after the MED. :grin: i hope.

http://forum.il2sturmovik.net/topic/...nsion-modules/

Maybe Grumman can cut a deal with a Californian ;)

When PF was released, IL2 already had two versions (original and FB) on store shelves. It already had a fan base who were familiar with MG. It takes a while to build a fanbase so it's only natural that early sales wouldn't match later versions of IL2/PF. PF dovetailed quite nicely into FB/AEP, thus expanding the playability of IL2. That was a no brainer PF would sell. To play Sturmoviks Over Manchuria and Pe2 you had to have the series from FB to PF. Combined with the natural interest of the Pacific theatre from sim flyers whose favorite theatre is the Pacific and the resultant sales, you can see it makes sense that PF was 1C's best seller.

IMO it wasn't the theatre that made PF successful. It was a quality product with a good marketing plan. How many people ONLY bought PF? I'd be willing to bet it would be a much smaller percentage compared to those who bought all of the series and combined PF with them. How many bought PF as a first purchase and because they enjoyed the games, they expanded by purchasing the previous games? If 10 percent (and I'm being generous with my guess) of all IL2 sales were PF ONLY, I'd be extremely shocked.


Rowan's Bob did poorly because the game was an ugly unplayable mess. Tt wasn't even remotely playable until the modders made significant improvements, though I personally still didn't like much of it's looks. It does have the best enemy AI I've played.

I am a Brit who loves flying off carriers (even though I suck at 'landing on' carriers :)) but we have to bear in mind that it was mostly a USA v Japan thing.

Britain did have carriers in the Far East but few people, outside of Brit enthusiasts like me, know much about what they did there and the rest of Europe had no active carriers at all. While the US may be a big market it does not make up for lack of interest from the whole of Europe & Russia. Such a shame the Graf Zeppelin was never completed; maybe someone could just 'pretend' like they did with IL2 1946 :-)

Re-supply of Malta would have been a good scenerio;)

Cheese

777 can barely raise the money to keep RoF afloat. No way can they afford to pay NG anything. Besides, they are operating under the 1C umbrella for this new venture, hence NG's previous "settlement" with them still applies.

It will be pretty hard to satisfy all you rabid PTO fans if they cannot model the correct carriers, battleships, aircraft, etc... for the USN, as most fall under NG copyright.

Pearl Harbor with KG V class battleships ring a bell?

777 is still a startup company.

They can do as they wish, but before it is over they will probably go over to the Pacific theatre. They will have no choice. They will have no big government or UbiSoft to front money to them.

If they stay with BOS, they will probably have to relocate or outsource large parts of their project to Russia. There they can hire programmers for 1/10 the wages in America. This makes it a great deal easier to acquire investors when the cost of development is low. The only problem "at this time", there are just "more" qualified people for game programming in America at ten times the wage. Maybe, they could outsource the graphic products, aircraft,vehicles,maps, etc. and have the actual flight and damage programming done in the US. The internet could make that viable way to do things, if the carefully planned things and communicated well. We are all familiar with Skype. You can send files, pictures, back and forth instantly from all over the world. This is greatly facilitated with broadband connections in the respective countries.

You can't perfect a product like COD, when you don't have the human resources that can do the work. We are experiencing that...right now, aren't we? Oleg ran out of the right kind of help as well after releasing IL2, that is why all we ever got until PF was graphic improvements. It was easy to hire people to draw pictures than program.

Luthier put alot of pazzazz into the old IL2 with Carrier Ops and a new cadre of aircraft. Yet, no other changes in the IL2 application,except Carrier Ops. I'm not ignoring the maps, but the best maps for PF came later when 3rd parties started pumping out map mods.

The 3rd party mods are preserving the IL2 as a viable air combat sim even by today's standards of graphic excellence. LOL

I realize this being an international forums there will be many dissenting voices to a Pacific theatre. Everyone wants his own country represented and in most cases has a strong motivation to see his own country's history shared in an air combat sim.

Sharp investors know to go with known successful projects or they get zip, nada or nothing in return. The gamer business is almost a boom or bust.

I'm pretty sure the entire RoF and BoM dev teams are already based in Russia.

Always have been.

777's main office may be in the US, but all the worker bees live in Russia.

I would say... you are just guessing on this. Maybe, you could share some facts to corroborate what you are saying.

Not calling you out or anything. I think you made an interesting point, and if it is as you say I would certainly think everyone would like to know more.

Nice (biased) POV, but the point is that major market for 1c today is Russia and Europe, not somewhere people grew up hearing that WWII start in Pearl Harbour (and end in Normandie -beachs). So Battle of Stalingrad make all sense. ;)

In someone dont like the crap (and inferior, underarmed, blabla...) Russian Planes, fly German ones. Or go fly DCS P-51...

Sokol1

Hmmmm exactly, except for one of the largest and most pivotal land battles of WWII being fought below, as opposed to no land battle being fought below full stop, lol.

Of the top of my head can only really think of Kursk as being as, if not a more significant land battle in WWII.

And please don't say Normandy.

World is very small when it comes to development of combat flight sims.

The history for RoF devs goes like this: Gennadich Team -> neoqb -> 777 studios. Gennadich and neoqb were Russian teams. When 777 bought neoqb, only the name, "head", and what "head" says has changed. Core team remained the same.

Current list of 777 devs (involved in RoF at least): http://riseofflight.com/en/about/team

Some people are known in other flight sim communities:

Internal producer Albert Zhiltsov (aka Loft) was general manager in Gennadich Team. Lead level (game) designer Viktor Sechnoy (aka Viks) also belonged to Gennadich Team. Gennadich Team should be pretty well known in IL2 community as creators of ADW and IL2 Server Commander.

Project manager/lead tester Daniel Tuseyev (aka Han) worked in Eagle Dynamics (creators of LockOn/DCS) as lead tester. Lead engineer (FM guy) Andrey Solomykin (aka An.Petrovich) worked with FM in Eagle Dynamics.

Let's not take our eye off the ball,were talking about flight sims, right. Unless you expect the building to building, hand to hand combat to be simulated. It certainly does not interest me.
The other major difference in BOB vs. BOS is the most successful pilots were Polish in BOB.

Most significant battles of WWII were BoB and BoM in winter of '41. Everything else was either a product of these two battles or a side-show.

Rather biased, what makes you think the German planes were any better ?

BoS air warfare is something like this: Luftwaffe air superiority mostly until Soviet counteroffensive, lots of bombing/ground attack sorties for Luftwaffe, lots of night sorties for Soviets. Kuban would be way way better for dogfights.

1) it makes a huge difference, because of groundpounding, tankbusting and close support, none of which was involved in BoB, and which you can recreate well in il2. Battle of Stalingrad wasn't just the City.

2) a) irrelevant and b) incorrect, they were German.

The most significant battles of WW II were political, the war was the sideshow.

Very true, come to think of it why has nobody done a bletchley park simulator, that's arguably the kind of place where the war in europe was really fought from.

paper aeroplanes?

imagine the fm whining.

1) Either battle , as a fighter you are escorting bombers/attack aircraft to a ground target or intercepting them. In both instances a very short distance.

2) Maybe the contribution of the Polish fighter pilots were insignificant to you but not to the BOB. They fought less than half the battle and their kill ratio per sortie was better than any german unit, it depends on your definition of success!