[irR4tiOn4L]

You know, I want accurate flight models and aircraft performance, more content and better performance as much as the next guy, but CLoD a joke? Not to me.

What I find is that, apart from show stopping technical issues which have generally been resolved already, inaccurate and unrealistic details like no 100 octane, sometimes bizarre CEM behaviour (apparently oil temperatures change more quickly than water temperatures), flight models not matching real world performance etc actually don't really detract too much from my overall experience.

Does it bother me that hurricanes are better performers than early spits in CLOD, that the spit IIa is without peer, that the G.50 is a brick and that the 109 is a bit too strong against most RAF aircraft? Yeah sure.

But does it really make a marked impact on my overall flying experience if I look past the fact that the performance differences I am learning to use are different to the real world ones? Not particularly.

Maybe its all in approach, but to me, the real pilots had more cause to complain yet still went up even in markedly inferior planes. At the end of the day I'm still just picking an aircraft, going up with its limitations (as found in the sim) in mind and doing the best I can, knowing that my skill is still undoubtedly the most important limiting factor. While doing so, I am still enjoying an outstandingly beautiful game, a wonderfully complex flight, damage and engine management model and some wonderfully immersive online (and even offline, with the right missions) gameplay. I enjoy it so much, that many times I do nothing more than take an aircraft on a cruise through an empty offline map for as long as 1 to 2 hours.

I think its important to step back and ask yourself why you play a combat sim. Many will say "to simulate reality" and for some this is undoubtedly the aim, although these people generally use more detailed simulators. For most, however, I think this is not the true reason.

Personally, I think I play sims because what I am really looking for is the complexity, detail and immersion that only reality, and portrayals of reality, can provide (without actually having to do the associated real world activity). I play many kinds of games - first person shooters, space games, etc. And what I notice is that there is a definite split in most of them between 'arcade' or 'fun' focus and 'simulation' or 'complexity' focus. I do not believe this is because most games and their subjects naturally fall into these categories. Rather, I think that it is the limited imagination and difficulty in justifying complexity in fictional games - and the acceptance and relative ease of justifying complexity and challenge in simulators of real world phenomena - that defines the split.

I know I would very much appreciate a space sim like X3 with the physics and damage modelling of CLoD. But because we have never been in space, and no developer can imagine such complex and futuristic machines for a space game, we do not have a game with very detailed damage models for space ships. It is of course possible - you only need to look at things like Orbiter, or the detail and love with which star wars game worlds are crafted to know that it can be done for a vehicle too. But so far, no one has seen fit to make a simulator of a vehicle that does not actually exist. And that, to me, is a shame. Because the real reason I play sims is because nothing else can feed my mind with such beautiful complexity.

And I think this is ultimately what matters. Yes, the game has problems. But isn't it testament in itself that it is not a 'joke' that so many no longer wish to go back to once perfectly serviceable sims like IL2 1946?