Russian dominance in flight sim development

[Lav69]

After reading a post from Safari Ken in another thread I want ask you my fellow flight simmers why you think the Russians have cornered our niche market?

 

IL2, Lock On, Black Shark and the coming Rise of Flight (Oleg/1C, ED, Neoqb) - the publishers were maybe not Russian, but the developers all are. And these titles are arguably the cream of the crop through the last decade - give or take.

 

Is it because we are such a niche market that developers in other nations don't see it as a worthy venture?

 

Are the Russian teams just plain better at it?

 

Your thoughts?

Edited April 5, 2009 by Lav69

[element1108]

Thank GOD for the Russians or I'd have to spend MORE time outside and LESS flying sims ;)

 

It's funny cause computing power is MUCH more capable now than back in the 90's (flight sim's hay day I think) yet we're not seeing nearly the amount of titles dropping as it did before.

 

Also not sure if this is true or just the nature of information and the internet, but we wouldn't hear about sims until a few months before they were released. Now we're getting info YEARS before hehehe.

[Safari Ken]

If you search around the Tubes, you can find a press release for Battle of Britain, announcing a June, 2003 release. :doh:

 

The Russian developers, and other developers from that area of the world, seem to be the only ones who give us any credit for wanting complexity and realism. Every time I see a game like Hawx, I die a little inside...

 

This is a little OT, but why can't someone make another good Korean sim? It's such a fun era for air combat, and MiG Alley has not aged very well, imo. I can't think of a single other sim for that war. Everything is either modern(ish) or WWII. I think that's why I'm so intrigued by Rise of Flight; it'll be a refreshing change of pace.

[Kwill]

 

This is a little OT, but why can't someone make another good Korean sim? It's such a fun era for air combat, and MiG Alley has not aged very well, imo. I can't think of a single other sim for that war.

 

It's being made by Ilya Shevchenko, it's an add-on for the up coming sim by Oleg/1C.

[Maximus_G]

This is a little OT, but why can't someone make another good Korean sim?

It's in the process of making. And guess who's doing it? :doh:

To be serious, it is a planned addon for the Storm of War title, made by the good old Maddox's partners. And i guess their team is American, though 2 its founders are Russian. A good example of cooperation, i think.

---

As it was stated, the title should hit the shelves in a year after SoW release.

Some models:

http://sukhoi.ru/forum/showpost.php?p=1200375&postcount=1156

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=43174&postcount=7

Edited April 5, 2009 by Maximus_G

[fox_111]

Maybe because over there in Russia, they are less infatuated with stupid Xbox consoles and think it's worthy to invest in a game that won't be playable on a console. All the new major games in the US are ment to be played on a damned console, wich ruin the game IMO.

[element1108]

Yeah the younger demographic is definitely into the consoles. Consoles are good for certain games, but flight sims are NOT them. Hawx is an action game that takes place in the sky heheh. (if that's your thing that's cool).

 

Still the majority of console games are bombs. There are only a few series that REALLY dominate and keep the market going. Sports games EA series, FPS series like COD and HALO/KILLZONE and a variety of racing games (need for speed, forza etc).

 

I wonder if marketing would help the genre out a little more? Glowing A makes some cool a$$ vid's (as does a good amount of players) if only they could push that to a more broad market perhaps it would intice more people into sims?

 

Who knows, thinking out loud.

[spyda]

i think the west is to involved in the console area now days, remember the windows 95 days (ah the memory's:joystick:) there was an unstoppable amount of games coming out.

 

maybe its cause of piracy, not sure

[Kwill]

I wonder if marketing would help the genre out a little more? Glowing A makes some cool a$$ vid's (as does a good amount of players) if only they could push that to a more broad market perhaps it would intice more people into sims?

 

Who knows, thinking out loud.

 

I don't think so, theres are reason why Pop and Country music are really really popular and music like Progressive Rock is not: they appeal to the mainstream.

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

After reading a post from Safari Ken in another thread I want ask you my fellow flight simmers why you think the Russians have cornered our niche market?

Russia has human resources capable of designing hi tech flight simulators. ED and Oleg also found the way to successfully publish flight simulators in today's tough markets.

[AlphaInfinity]

Anybody think a Russian development team will pick up a standard flight simulator? Microsoft let all 1500 employees go and that product was the first to be cut.

[spyda]

Anybody think a Russian development team will pick up a standard flight simulator? Microsoft let all 1500 employees go and that product was the first to be cut.

Microsoft should have franchised the name out, surly there is a big fan base out there for it still??

[Zakk]

Maybe because over there in Russia, they are less infatuated with stupid Xbox consoles and think it's worthy to invest in a game that won't be playable on a console. All the new major games in the US are ment to be played on a damned console, wich ruin the game IMO.

 

This is the exact reason IMO, along with American business greed equals instant gratification for all the dummies that own and play consoles; I had the Atari 2600 console as a kid and it was the most advanced gaming in it's day--I never ever expected we would GO BACK to consoles after the PC. It's the same reason why that dumb Guitar Hero is such a hit; no American wants to take the time to learn the real thing. Add the stupid TV shows like American Idol, and So you think you can dance crap and we are all doomed over here. The Japanese hate the Apple I-Phone and I don't blame them--I would never own one either--but try telling that to my kid. For years American car companies have been producing JUNK and it has finally caught up with them. I say good for Russia and any other country that wants to take the time to produce a highly detailed polished sim/game. That HAWK game is a joke and I might as well play Pac-Man if that's all were going to get from American developers.

[EvilBivol-1]

To be fair, let's not forget that Eagle Dynamics' long-time business partner is The Fighter Collection, a UK company.

[uhoh7]

Well the only real signifigant market penetration so far remotely comparable to MS is Il2.

 

I flew Il2 online beginning before the relaease, with the demo. What alot of fun.

 

When you think about how many upgrades IL2 went through---god more FMs than I care to count, and more and more planes to fly all the time---well he was committed and he delivered. We can only hope SOW works out as well, and we get FMs on the level of EDs SU25, which still stands as the best fixed wing FM yet.

 

I hope Oleg will step up on the avionics and make us do some more work in the cockpit with SOW.

 

The market is there for a a good online sim with realism, graphics and variety: but what's missing is the will.

 

I hope ED has made some money on DCS and will keep it up...for now it's a niche in a niche, with brilliant aspects and alot of leftovers from Flanker. In the end the ability to create balanced online combat with realism is what any new sim needs to really take off.

 

The patch is sounding like a good step forward in a resonable time frame. But compared to console development, overall progress, like SOW is in slow motion--I mean the game is optimised for XP--- Maybe the A10 module can catch fire.

Edited April 6, 2009 by uhoh7

[Maximus_G]

I would not call MSFS "standard". It is the king of flight sims; IIRC the sales numbers, it holds a bigger part of the whole PC flight sim game market. That's a business which has other businesses grown in its shadow. It's just enormous if we compare it with Maddox or ED production.

 

And we can count about a dozen of selling non-amateur flight sim titles in the whole world. This market is just incomparable with other genres. That said, we're not a dying breed, we are just a very small market niche, which could be used to make money for a living by a relatively small company, but not so profitable for bigger ones.

 

And surely console market is not prevailing yet in Russia, so investors still put their money in our games :)

It's just the usual Russian outdated situation :lol:

[Grimes]

And to be fair Hawx was developed by Ubisoft Romania....

 

<slightrant>

Sadly the US studios which developed flight sims have mostly shut their doors for more than a few reasons. The question I ask is "so what?" The studios which are still making flight sims are still at it, its not like Eagle is going to go off an make a j-rpg if DCS doesn't pan out. Obviously if you make a financially successful game that expands a niche market more studios will get interested in that market. Guitar Hero became such a hit because they finally figured out a way to be successful at that niche market. Four years ago rhythm games hardly existed. Publishers thought that forcing people to buy a peripheral to play a game was financial suicide. To some extent, they were proven wrong. You just need the right game to make it work.

 

Who cares about the Battlefields and the Hawx. So what they arn't "realistic" People sometimes want to play a game rather than simulate reality. Yes I have a little laugh sometimes whenever I read about them in the press, but think about it. They increase interest in air combat games. Some may decided to take it to the next level and try realism out, others won't, but you wouldn't want that type flying anyways now would you?

</slightrant>

[morsmortis]

Su27 1.0 through DCS and I-L2 are the best things to come out Russia either since Anna Kurnikova or the AK-47... hopefully the Russians can keep it up.

[SuperKungFu]

Well for one thing I think the Russians are serious enough to undertake flight sims since let's face it, us Yanks in the West have been playing with too much 1st person shooter arcade games.

 

Plus from an economic standpoint, I think its cheaper to pay game designers to produce a game/sim in Russia rather than America.

[Safari Ken]

Flight Sim X is actually pretty good, now that hardware has caught up a little. There are some add-ons, both free and premium, that can really add to the experience, depending on the experience to which you want to add. There's a message somewhere on Microsoft's site which says that even though the whole team was let go, they still plan to release further flight sim titles... whatever that means, I guess we'll find out. MS Flight Sim has been around since the beginning, although the first edition was pretty much a pixel-for-pixel theft of a previous sim. Now that I'm typing about it, I can't recall who made that other sim; was it MicroProse, Sierra, anyone remember?

 

News of a Korean add-on for SoW is the best news I've heard all year!! :pilotfly: If it's slated to arrive about a year after SoW, we'll get it around 2012, by my rough calculations.

 

I didn't mean to dump on casual games completely. Games like Hawx have an audience. I play casual games too. But I also remember the days when you could find plenty of reasonably realistic sims at a time on the shelves. And not just flight sims - anyone else here old enough to remember tank sims? :)

[Slayer]

It's simple econonomics. PC gaming is on the decline and consoles are on the rise. Developers are just catering to consoles where they can sell a million copies at 50 bucks each instead of 100k copies to PC users....It's all about the money. Even Microsoft want's to kill PC gaming but they can't. Theres some interesting articles on the subject if you google it.

[Grimes]

Theres also interesting articles which argue counter to that saying PC gaming is still alive and well. Really when you look at the whole picture everything is just changing. Everyone used to think that consoles were for simple games, that couldn't pull off certain genres in them. Goldeneye changed that and FPS on consoles is now one of the largest markets for them. PC Gaming still has mods and other free content. Team Fortress 2 on the 360 is nearly a year behind the PC version in terms of updates and patches to the game.

 

Look at it from a pure game development standpoint. Flight Sims cater to realism. Details must be strictly adhered to. The games generally have no plot or characters or overall sense of drive behind them. Yes there are campaigns, but if you played each mission out of order and by itself, would you notice? The only thing that makes someone want to play a flight sim more is their own ambition. Ambition to learn, get better, to have a better flight than last time. Its a mostly user created and maintained experience. Conversely pretty much all non-flight sim games are opposite of this. As you play you become acquainted with the stories, main characters, unique worlds. There is always something different. You keep playing to see what happens next, or the fun factor is just so high you enjoy it despite its flaws.

 

There is more creative freedom in creating a game when its not a flight sim. But in the flight sim, theres more freedom to how a singular person PLAYS the game. It is unfortunate that sims have steep learning curves. I know thats how many here like it, but its a huge leap of faith for other gamers.

 

I'll get off my soapbox now.

[Kwill]

Even Microsoft want's to kill PC gaming but they can't. Theres some interesting articles on the subject if you google it.

 

I seriously doubt that, if they do that they would lose the main advantage they have over MacOS or Linux which is DirectX.

[Dudikoff]

MS Flight Sim has been around since the beginning, although the first edition was pretty much a pixel-for-pixel theft of a previous sim. Now that I'm typing about it, I can't recall who made that other sim; was it MicroProse, Sierra, anyone remember?

 

Sublogic? I played it on my Atari ST along with their "combat" variant called "Jet" (now that I think about it, it was already some 20 years ago; damn, time flies).

Edited April 6, 2009 by Dudikoff

[Safari Ken]

Yeah that's it! I played Flight Simulator on an Apple //e, and Jet on someone else's Commodore 128. I also remember, earlier than that, playing a text-based, turn-based flight simulator on the Apple ][+ at the library. Can't recall the name. I've looked for more info about that one on the Tubes, but no dice unfortunately. A little too obscure, I guess. 8)