Schatten 
|
 Posted on: 2005-04-19 14:02:32
|
Well I've been out of town for a while and generally cranky about having to come back so I've been neglecting in my commently duties appearently. But here I am and I'll see what I can do here.
Raster,
For the blackout-redout issue it could be a controller issue, I'll give you that, but that would make it the first sim ever that my default settings were all wonky on. I've never had stick settings cause me any problems and they've remained fairly constant from EAW through Falcon 4.0 through the IL-2 series and everything I've tested inbetween. So if the settings I always use have consisitantly worked through all of those things yet are somehow "wrong" for Targetware planes then that would indicate that the problems with how the software handles the settings not with the settings themselves, if that makes much sense at all. In any case that was my experience, haven't seen it anywhere else. I specifically didn't look at the TW boards to get info on it for a simple reason, lots of hardcore simmers assume that people will thrice daily check the boards to see what the new additions are, commentary on flight models and history of planes, etc. but that isn't the case, most people that buy a sim want to sit down and fly it so it should be understandable as possible from what you get with the sim without having to do lots of research. I went into it trying to look at how a complete newbie that saw something that looked neat would go into it, not as someone who's had lots of flight sim experience would go into it. See what I mean?
As for planes I've flown, that's a question that's always amused me to no end and always one that pops up when someone discusses a flight model, at least it pops up when people don't like what someone says about "their" flight model. I never have flown a Corsair but I've studied them for many years, I know what the performance variables are on them. And yes I have flown relatively high performance civilian prop aircraft, and therein lies the problem. WWII fighters were high powered machines built to undertake a wide variety of maneuvers and do them as quickly as possible. So knowing what a Corsair was capable of and then seeing it perform maneuvers in a much more sluggish fashion than a Warrior, for example, doesn't bode well in the comparison. I've seen greater acceleration out of a Cub than I see out of a TW Corsair -5 and that is in no way right. So saying that unless someone's flown a WWII fighter that they're clueless on how they should perform and unable to make an intelligent comment on it is somewhat akin to telling a professor in midieval studies that he doesn't know jack about weapons of the Crusades because he's never killed a Saracen with one. Yeah that's an extreme example but you can see the point.
Okay now Stiglr...Go back up and reread what I said about my stick settings, take a small moment out of your busy schedule to ponder it and then think about your "take as much time" comment. There ya go.
As far as the IL-2 franchise goes it may seem that I think it's the holy grail of flight sims, I don't, in fact if you thought this article was a tad harsh then you should see the PF one that is carefully locked away for another time if necessary, it makes this look like a glowing endorsement. But that's neither here nor there. Yes I did already have a negative feeling about TW before I even did this, but it isn't something new but something that is related to things going back years. Glad I got some brownie points for admitting it, I like brownies, everyone who does any review/preview/whatever has their own biases either for or against any given subject, if they say otherwise they're either looking for a job or a saint who should be out healing the sick instead of messing around doing computer games articles. I'm neither.
I don't know what version you're running but the one I was, which was current for whatever date I wrote this, had clouds that looked terrible. Yeah that's an eye candy issue, but eye candy is important whether anyone really wants to admit it or not. Sims are trying to get more people into playing them, to do that you have to have graphics that don't look like (or in this case look worse than) the ones in the original Red Baron. High altitude sight range is attrocious and having cotton balls floating around isn't the answer. IL-2 doesn't do this in a very good way either, I mean the AI can see and shoot through clouds too, so trying to make me out as an IL-2 vs. Targetware guy isn't the right way to go. I do think IL-2 does a lot of things better, but I do not think IL-2 is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
And yes I did trim the Corsair, this is something that a pure newbie to flight sims wouldn't do, but I always do. I know what the trim settings for a Corsair are, that has nothing to do with the weight issue. The plane feels too heavy no matter what the trim state is.
On the cockpits I didn't have any point, except that some of them look like crap and some are very well done. I did give some compliments to TW in there if you look, it wasn't a bash the hell out of everything article, it just seemed that way because the things that I didn't like outweighed the ones I did. Oh no! I lost expert points? If I go back and redo it can I get enough of them do I win a free trip to Epcott Center? The Jack is a good looking plane, with an unfinished looking cockpit. I thought neato was a compliment, want me to call it a Duracell with wings instead? Is that more expert?
I don't have an end goal, none whatsoever. I don't own stock in Ubisoft, I'm not on any dev team for some super secret project that's going to steal all the good TW ideas and I'm not getting paid to rant. Yep I said rant. If you'd take off the "must defend TW" glasses for a minute and read the way the article was written you'd see that I don't take myself very seriously when it comes to this sim, neither should you. And like I said there were some things I was very impressed with, just happened to be more that I wasn't. Which comes to the tangeant...
What I don't like, vis-a-vis the whole "Targetware vs IL-2 Series" deal is the propensity to jump into mulitiple threads on occasion and start talking up TW as if it was the Holy Grail and that the IL-2 series is horrible, neither are the Holy Grail and neither are horrible. Yes I said TW isn't horrible, I just don't like it, it's like art. Hell, in some of your posts on the IL-2 forums at Ubi I could even agree with you about some of the deficiencies of FB/AEP/PF, now whether I think that TW treats these deficiencies better or not is beside the point, the point being that if people that support a game go into another game's forums and start talking up their game as if it is the cure for all the sim world's ills then it better be on a level where that sort of enthusiasm can be backed up. Targetware, at this point, isn't. I hope it does get better, I really do, but if you have people clustered together saying that thier "thing" is the best and don't want to hear anything otherwise then it leads to complacency, I can point to several games where the yes men have pretty much stifled any valid concerns about "their" game to the point where the devs start agreeing that they are indeed the One True Way and damn all dissent...I'm sure you can think of a few too...
That being said, nothing personal against you or anyone else who likes or works on Targetware, I actually find a lot to agree with on your comments on IL-2 "over there" but not always (okay almost never) when you say TW does it better. Go back and reread the article, put down your One True Way hat for a minute, plant your tongue in your cheek and you'll see that I wasn't out to simply blast TW, I wanted to like it even though I was predisposed not to.
Oh and in Doug's defense, he didn't come up to me and say "Hey go write something about Targetware", I did it on my own because I was honestly curious at the state of things at the time. So don't confuse me with the "Combatsim opinion" it's my opinion, and everyone knows what those are like.
Comment #4
|
|
Targetware's line of massively multiplayer online air combat sims has been in open beta for a loooong time. We were waiting for it to finally go commercial to review it, but since we wanted to get this sim covered before North Korea goes democratic, we thought we better do it now.