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If it was a mod for IL2 it would at least have cockpit damage. ROF doesn't even have that. This is like 20 steps backwards.
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I agree, but wanted to be kind.
My initial impression is that CLOD has been judged a project too complex to be developed with enough economic satisfaction.
The ROF engine at the moment is not as advanced as CLOD engine, but can do the job to give a working title in less than two years.
They seem to have reduced the target to a less ambitious goal, to avoid being involved in something that cannot be reached, or reached with too much difficulty.
I have bought a computer able to run CLOD one month ago and can say (but it's only an opinion) that with a machine capable to run it, the game is amazing in a lot of sectors.
The game anyway seems uncomplete and cannot compete with IL2 (but can with ROF...) in terms of variety of features, planes and scenarios, not to talk of the larger online community.
This is not a new scenario in Flight simulations. It remembers me the Falcon 4 saga. Falcon 4 had & has (now) features so advanced that all the simulators that came after gave up to use. I refer to the virtual battlefield which is the only or at least the more advanced real dinamic campaign ever realized for a simulator. Falcon is built around a battlefield where the plane is the latest piece. You play realtime and you have an entire geoographic area living below you, reacting to your moves and to the moves of hundreds of objects living on it. You can live a server alone 24/24 and he "plays" itself, conducts the war, even if there are no humans on it. You can join anytime and take the role of one of the planes that the server has already programmed to play the war.
Unfortunately the system was so hard to fix that at a certain moment Microprose realized that the money spent on it would never be recovered and abandoned the project.
The community developed the initial project cleaning, fixing and updating it.
At today Falcon is still alive and is still the benchmark for modern flight simulations at least in some areas (DCS product are a good competitor....), and has a strong community even if cannot compete in terms of graphics with more advanced projects.
Now what we have to hope is that 1c and 777 will sum up their competences to raise up the standards of WWII flight sims, instead of the contrary.
I do not have the technical knowledge to judge if considerations based on actual ROF engine are worthy in future perspective.
If the engine can be drastically enhanced and (even more) if programmers have the project to push up the standards of WWII flight sims, instead of searching for a compromise solution, able to give a complete product in a shorter time, our worries are not justified.
The business model seems to guarantee more money than CLOD. This can be bad because we have to spend more, and because will sure limit the production of third party addons, but can be good if they will use the more money to give us a richer product and guarantee the life of the genre.