Oleg interview

[Raw Kryptonite]

You'd be surprised what you can program onto a controller. Plus, both consoles can use a keyboard or a keypad that plugs onto the controller. It's not a matter of buttons to push.

Black Shark IS a small product. It's huge in the flight community, at least in reputation, but that's a small community in the world of gaming. Most won't play that game on full realism, which is why you can tone down the controls so much...like on IL-2. A game doesn't have to have every single control an actual plane has in order to be called a sim. If that were the case, then most "sims" wouldn't be sims. The physics of it are what is most important. The minute level of the controls is the icing on the cake. Some might say that hitting E to start the engines isn't a true sim. You should read the flight manual and be able to find the cockpit buttons to toggle to build fuel pressure, start engines, wait for a certain temperature, oil pressure in the right area, bring up the RPM's...then you can move.

Many want a sim, but they don't want to have to do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q_XNf4elAI

"Quick" start up. LOL They do have a simplified manner of doing all of that. If you use the shortcut is the game no longer a simulator?

But then again, if all you need to do is click around the environment to toggle and push buttons and watch a gauge, then that just takes one button to act like a mouse button. Hardly a lot of controller buttons involved in that. MS is even working on a peripheral that could work like TrackIR, without the funky points on a hat for reference. (hope that comes through)
Looking at the specs for the game, it looks like the 360 and PS3 hardware could run it perfectly--and no resource hogging operating system and extra processes running in the background.

Just saying, I love my pc, but I love gaming on my 360 too, and probably later this year or next year a PS3 as well. I've been waiting for that A-10 expansion for Black Shark and will likely get that, but I have no interest in na Ka-50. I think there will be an Apache after the A-10 which will be a buy for me as well.

It takes time, money and a publisher to put games out on a console, other than a few exceptions. Black Shark is self-published by DCS I believe. THat's the big hang up on getting games on a console, along with market. Not the hardware. If IL-2 is done right and hits it big, maybe we'll see more sims making the move. That could be what saves the flight sims---it's a lot leaner out there now than 10 years ago when you'd see shelves FILLED with sims.

[Herbie McHerbster]

You kinda skirted the issue here didn't, you? Keyboards may be hooked up to consoles, but that doesn't matter, because BoP wasnt designed to be used with one. Hence the dumbing down of the controls. It wont be anywhere near as realistic as IL-2 on the PC. Which brings us back to Oleg's quote

"true flight simulators can only be made on the PC and not on consoles"

Your response to that is to simply dumb them down enough to the point that they CAN be played on a console? That's moving backwards. You noted how realistic Blackshark is, you see that as a negative for some reason, but guess what, that's the future. And believe it or not there are many players out there who love the detailed realism of it. That's why we play sims in the first place, for the realism. I don't buy a sim like Blackshark just to go into the options menu and turn on arcade mode, I do play on full realism, just as the developers intended.

And yes, there does come a point where a game's realism makes it a sim, and where a sim is dumbed down too much to the point where it is a merely a game. And as of now no console game can be realistic enough to be called a 'sim', and no sim can ever be ported to a console without becoming a 'game'.

[Raw Kryptonite]

I'm addressing that broad statement that Oleg made, not IL2BOP. Whatever it ends up being, whatever LEVEL of sim it is, I'll enjoy it. I'm not a sim snob, I like all kinds of games.
Not sure why other pc gamers love the term "dumbing down" when it's often simply a matter of making a logical layout. Probably just for the derogatory tone. Half of the possible controls on IL2 aren't even assigned when you install it. That implies how they intend the game to be played IMO.

However, you skirted the issue that in Black Shark many things are controlled by looking at it in the cockpit and hitting it with your mouse. A simple click of one button. That could easily be done on a controller.

Saying it "can only be made on the PC and not on consoles" is bs. That's a statement about hardware. To me it just says they don't want to bother with having to come up with ways to map the controls. Easier to stick things on random keyboard keys with no logical layout. SO much easier to be random than apply thought to cover the bases. At least there would be no need to map comm controls since most have a headset anyway. Nah, it could be done, but it would take thought, patience to suffer through quality testing by MS or Sony (another big deterrent in their minds) and again, a publisher.

The hardware can do it, it's PEOPLE that are the problem. The game buyers as well as the game developers. In all of the console gamers, there are probably enough to support a flight sim as there are to do so on pc. A small percentage of console gamers, but that's a small percentage of a very large number.