Oleg's Russian Interview Translated

[JVM]

Originally Posted by P_Zangusu

I'm not worrying about Oleg making money, I'm worrying about 3rd party developers who are abusing the scene with over the top prices.

anyhow, if you read the interview and previous statements carefully then you'll notice that MSFS is being mentioned several times and that BoB add-on policy will be alike. In that case, if you want to have same on-line content as any other virpil then you actually are obliged to buy the same add-ons. Either that or people will get stuck with "off-line" content which becomes obviously obsolete after a certain amount of time as you can't use it on-line.

Hello!

I do not think that you need to worry too much:

- Oleg has stated long before this interview that there would be two categories of "additions": the ones officially sanctioned by MG which have vocation at being integrated in the "official" line; those ones would be distributed via Maddox Games as free or paying add-ons.
This does not prevent commercial third parties to make such work, only that it will have to be distributed via MG if this work is to be used on-line. I am not in OM shoes but I would guess nothing prevents a commercial agreement between such third party and MG to get retributed on contract or on units sold.
I suspect the pricing would be such as allowing all soW series owners a relatively easy access to these add-ons thus avoiding the situation you describe to a large degree.
OM made very clear that he will keep a very close eye on fair online play!
The second category of "additions" covers anything else: there you would find the equivalent of the IL2 MODs work but strictly limited to off-line use (or maybe private on-line play i.e. within a squadron for instance? I do not know). There again commercial third parties may be interested but here comes in the catch:

- The development of an aircraft (and to a lesser degree other objects) is I believe more complicated in BoB-SoW than in FSx mainly due to the Damage Model and also to limitations in polynumbers (at least at this time; it does not mean that the engine will not support bigger numbers in the future, exactly like FSX does). The sophistication of the DM makes necessary to model the internal structure to a large extent (just look at the He-59...), which FSX does not need, and I can guess many operations like LOD, ghost parts, damaged part dynamic behaviour etc etc. I also suppose that the FM will be better written than the FS one but even then this will take quite a long time. On the other hand, no need of "commercial airliner"-type avionics complexities at least for the moment (as far as complexity is concerned, I mean! Vietnam-era jets were becoming to be items on this issue...)
On all these points a commercial developer will need to be up to the MG level if he hopes to succeed in selling his wares...and he will have to compete for player's money with a solidly established line of MG add-ons, some of them free: this by itself should help into establishing a certain moderation in pricing, I think!

But hey, it's only my two cents...

JVM

[Chivas]

I'm not worried yet. Off-line there is obviously nothing to worry about, and it would be a huge boost to the sim. Online it definitely would be more complicated depending on the security features.

If the aircraft is approved by the server and can be easily added to the server without everyone else having to buy the same aircraft it would be a big bonus. I'm not sure if it's possible, as those who hadn't bought that particular aircraft would need a nonflyable visual copy to see it in game. I personally don't care if one person on a server has a few extra flyable aircraft, if I don't want to fly those particular aircraft. I suppose it could work if the seller of that particular aircraft would have to provide a nonflyable visual version that could be downloaded from the server before flying on that particular server.

[SlipBall]

Maybe Luthier will stop back and give us some insight on this matter. I'm sure that they have a well thought out plan for use of the third party content, without costing us a small fortune.

[Robert]

I wonder how many 3rd party developers are attempting to work with X Plane?

I like how you guys can workout that 60% complete means that it will be out this year, it means quite simply that there is 40% more work to do on it, it doesn't matter how you juggle the figures, if work started in 2007 (which i find very hard to believe because Oleg stated in Birmingham that he hoped for the game to be released in Q4 2007, was he on drugs?) its still got at least another year or so in development.

[HenFre]

"A: Quality will not be affected. Timeline – we shall see. Right now we’re about 60% there, probably even more. [Luthier’s note: not 60% in terms of time, but 60% in terms of features.]"

That was what said in the interview. You read into this that the 60% still regards time? How?

The remaining 40% of features could be the easy part and will not take as long time to do..

[P_Zangusu]

Well, I'm not really at ease but I think it's only natural. Having spent countless years in the MSFS community and 5 or so years in the Il-2 world I'm just voicing the concern that BoB add-on system has all the right parameters to venture onto the road called "making money like MSFS". Ofcourse I've read about the OM approved servers and stuff, but potentially we could end-up with "pure BoB" with fewer content we have right now for Il-2 for more or less the same price or going into the extreme where Oleg just approves add-ons from 3rd party with sky high prices just to make one extra buck...

Again, nothing wrong with making money and OM deserves that for all the hard work, but! But everything is wrong with making money like the developers around the MSFS franchise do. I'll give you an example: would you buy an add-on of a fully functional B-29 for Il-2 (if it would exist) for merely 80 dollars? Bright people would answer "no" just for the sake of it, but if you look deep down into your heart, lots of people would. The other lot which wouldn't buy this add-on could probably not fly on the OM pre-approved servers as the add-on is in the "official" OM line. How's that for a prospect? OM is making his well-deserved money and the users are stuck somewhere in the middle because it's pre-approved, but not really wanted by everyone other than the B-29 fanatics...

Originally Posted by HenFre

"A: Quality will not be affected. Timeline – we shall see. Right now we’re about 60% there, probably even more. [Luthier’s note: not 60% in terms of time, but 60% in terms of features.]"

That was what said in the interview. You read into this that the 60% still regards time? How?

The remaining 40% of features could be the easy part and will not take as long time to do..

Well, call me 'Mr Picky' but i would assume that generating the features takes 'time', thus if the features are 60% done and they have taken 2 years, one would assume that the remaining 'features' would bear some relation timewise to the ones already completed. That's how.