Regarding SEOW's ground campaign stuff (I'm not sure what you're specifically trying to point out as an example, I'm assuming controllable ground vehicles within CloD or something) I don't understand why you'd want to focus on controlling a set of ground vehicles when you're loading up a
flight simulator. If you're into that stuff and it's very important to your simulator experience, you should probably stop looking in Cliffs of Dover's direction. I think DCS Combined Arms is more what you're looking for (
http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.co...combined_arms/). Besides, how would it not be possible to upgrade the Digital Nature engine in a year's time to support threading and multi-core CPU instructions allowing a greater number of objects and scripting? The DN engine was made in what, 2008? And hasn't had a significant core upgrade opportunity (or reason) (aside from content additions) until now.
Yeah CloD engine was great in the scripting department, awesome, I agree. Does that make up for things it cannot do or does horribly? Do those great scripting opportunities present itself every day with the given community online or offline? No. I don't see anyone flocking to a vehicle ground war/scripted territory battle/control server on the Cliffs of Dover server list.
The clouds look absolutely gorgeous in the Digital Nature engine, btw. Have you seen em? Gorgeous.
You say "dx9" as if Direct3D9 is a horribly bad thing...do you even know what the differences between DX9 and DX10 are?
Take a look at this comparison from Crysis, this is the case in MANY other games:
There is no discernible difference. Seriously.
In any case, look at this
http://forum.il2sturmovik.net/index....ic=21#entry912
Just because a game is written for DX9, it hardly means it's incapable of today's graphic standards. I believe the correct "critique" aspect of Rise of Flight you're looking for is "art style" or "art direction". SweetFX fixed a lot of the color washout issues that made things look cartoony.
I explain all this to you with hopes to ease your worrying. I'm not saying you can only enjoy one or the other, of course both sims are good products...but Cliffs of Dover is no longer being supported, so its popularity is easily toppled by any other similar product being released. Don't expect Cliffs to entertain forever...and especially don't expect Rof, a 5 year old game (will be 6 when BoS releases), to be just repackaged and sold without some
significant enhancements.