What wonders me...: the "Realism" discussion

[PFR_Bearkiller72]

Just to make it clear from the start: to me ANYTHING on my PC, apart from tax forms and in and out payments *xcel sheets, is considered VIRTUAL REALITY.

Games, "faire du temps", "Zeitvertreib", "waste of time", anything you like to call it. But nevertheless: fun!

I love to create skins, I love to take a ride in my favourite warbirds, I like to give headshots - you know the score.

 

But I will never understand how people can seriously debate about things they never experienced personally and talk about "realism" in conjunction with a wholly virtual thing.

 

I remember discussions on old Il-2 forums, charts, scales, "from my knowledge" statements, the lot.

Now here's the same old thing all over again, with a new look.

 

But with a completely different feel.

 

Back in old Il-2 times we were told how realistic it all was, or perhaps, what could/should be tweaked.

Hmm.

 

Now we're there again and it's all sooooo realistic and again here and there "professionals" pop up to tell you what to believe.

Hmm.

 

Only the aircraft behave completely different. So is this "tweaked realism"? Or were all past debates fruitless efforts?

 

Perhaps it's only me, getting old. Have fun with your new toy and ignore the past...

But don't, DON'T take that new toy too seriously; don't waste your valuable time on virtual worlds...

[BraveSirRobin]

Or were all past debates fruitless efforts?

 

Yes.

[Gambit21]

Yep - move along.

[Finkeren]

Progression in realism is gradual. Hopefully some day BoS' "realism" will one day seem antiquated and primitive, because some even better has come along.

[senseispcc]

Do not forget the hardware, the machines, PC's must follow this trend and give you the means to play this ultra realism games without to much problems and a normal budget. The budget is the problem for many of us?!

[LukeFF]

 

 

The budget is the problem for many of us?!

 

I don't think so. Flight simmers by nature are cheapskates. They will spend hundreds of dollars on the latest hardware but balk at paying 50 bucks for a piece of software. 

[Nage]

Just to make it clear from the start: to me ANYTHING on my PC, apart from tax forms and in and out payments *xcel sheets, is considered VIRTUAL REALITY.

 

 

 

 

Nobody said we expect from sim to be like in rl dude...then again there are real life prop pilots amongst us....

All we did is comparing FMs with some available data and comparing FMs within various sims.....nothing like comparing RL with virtual flying...

Also the biggest problem here is some "stuff" in FM (and DM) behaviour which was either impossible in RL or should happen in different way (some of the topics are discussed to death here)...

Then there are obvious innacuracies in FM like LaGG rolling almost as fast as FW190 which was well documented it wasnt so....in fact the difference was huge...

Ok so I gave you just few examples

Edited September 5, 2014 by tikvic

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Old men talk about the weather and fishing. Old ladies talk about their grandchildren and old men.

 

The only thing RL pilots like more than actual flying is bench flying.

 

The only thing sim pilots like more than virtual flying is debating about their virtual rides.

 

Better get used to it

Edited September 6, 2014 by HerrMurf

[Gambit21]

You're coming dangerously close to a Randy Travis song there...

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

I did recognize that after it was completed. I prefer Shania Twain frankly.

[Gambit21]

I saw her in concert years back during her heyday - good show.

[AbortedMan]

@OP: agreed. Tread the forums appropriately.

[39bn_pavig]

Sims are always an artistic interpretation of realism. The developers choose what to simulate from reality in order to create the best feeling of immersion and fidelity with real life. This is why there are different approaches to what is the best representation of reality, just as there are different interpretations in art. Some people warm more to one artist or sim than another. It must always be interpretation though, for if they truly tried to simulate reality, they would fail, or the game would be unplayable. The most realistic simulation you would get one life, and after your first crash and burn the game would lock you out with a black screen that says "you are dead".  In truth, that's the experience of most combat pilots during the war. 

[hiro]

I think its progress of the computer system.  In WW2 they said the bomb sight could hit  pickle barrel, but it wasn't so. The computer took warehouses of space and electricity for a small city, and the only thing could it do was give a rough calculation of an artillery shell arc.

 

 

Today's computers allows a bomb's nose to not only to get inside a pickle barrel but now pick the quadrant of that pickle barrel and it can be done with minimal power to figure out the calculation. 

 

 

Before the a good sim was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zplLHd-vYlE

 

but look at what we have now . . .

 

 

same with flight sims . . . they are getting better. Heck even the airforce has sim (with movement) to help train pilots  . . .

[RydnDirty]

The general trend has been for higher detail and closer approximation of flight over the years.  BOS has the best feeling of flight so far in my opinion. The constant debate in the forums is good for the sim too. Lots of people posted about the roll rates being too fast and the devs stiffened the ailerons them and made them closer to reality. Same with the FW190 cockpit. 

 

It will never be perfect but in politics and science rigorous debate is a healthy thing. I think that for this flight sim the debate has been a good thing too. 

[fjacobsen]

Though I regard myself as a hardcore simmer, I tend to agree with the OP...

There are still too many things missing in even the best flightsim, to make it even come near realistic.

 

Some of these things cannot be fixed. F.ex the fact that most of us fly with the hindsight of history.

Today we know what the best formation to fly combat in would be.

 

We also don´t have to fear dying. If we get shot down we can evaluate what went wrong and then "Enter coin to start game".

How would You fly if You really would risc dying getting shot down in the sim ?

 

We also miss the pants in seat feeling and periphical vision.

 

For me flightsims like IL-2 BOS or DCS are merely study sims in the sense that I can try out technology and tactics.

 

Offcourse a FW-190 should behave very much like a real FW-190, but again since I don´t get the right feedback from my body when rolling over uneven ground, the G-forces and the vibartions of the engine and also only flying with tunnelvision looking into a 24" monitor, I will never be able to get the right feeling anyway.

 

I also know that I shouldn´t to outclimb a FW-190 in a Lagg-3 or enter a turning fight in an La-5 against a BF-109. But back then when it was real, this was lessons that first had to be learned.

 

In multiplayer I can also confidently through myself into a swirling dogfight against another human, who I know is far better than me cause he now has killed me 20 times before, not having to fear that I won´t be able to leave my computer room alive.

 

 

Just my thoughts...

 

 

FinnJ

[J2_Trupobaw]

What people really mean when they say "realistic" is "requireing least suspention of disbelief - from me". People come to fight sims for different reasons, from different directions, and with different expectations of what they are willing to believe in. Hence we have real life scooter and bicycle pilots arguing where simulated Harley Davidson is nothing like their RL experience and where it's OK, people with different motocycling books argue whether you should start losing control of simulated HD when trying to turn at 85 or 90 mph during rainy weather, fans of other motocycle sims who refuse to accept things they are not already used to as believeble, people arguing that sim is unrealistic because when you try riding HD on top of a wooden fence - on forward wheel only - it's behaviour is nothing like what real bike would do  ... 
 

The "real" meanig - that realistic means as close as possible to "historical truth" (another stipulated term with no objective meaning) - is impossible to verify without a time machine to observe real fights, or at leas 100% replicas of planes and deadwish test pilots. 

Edited September 6, 2014 by Trupobaw

[Mac_Messer]

I remember discussions on old Il-2 forums, charts, scales, "from my knowledge" statements, the lot.

Now here's the same old thing all over again, with a new look.

 

But with a completely different feel.

 

Back in old Il-2 times we were told how realistic it all was, or perhaps, what could/should be tweaked.

Hmm.

 

Now we're there again and it's all sooooo realistic and again here and there "professionals" pop up to tell you what to believe.

Hmm.

Saw it all. Was very interesting for the most part. I actually followed those threads on all topics, be it FM or DM or ballistics.

Constructive debating over historical stuff takes energy and time. Back then it was and important thing, now I don`t care about it too much. I mean I do want it to be realistic but will I debate over it, no.

 

But hey, I bet new people come into place over time, I say let them have their fun.

[ShamrockOneFive]

I get where this comes from.. and in recent months and years I've been more interested in making sure the feel was right than counting rivets so much. Others are far better at counting the rivets than I am anyways. I think we need to appreciate that there are players interested only in the subject casually while others are interested in the extreme details (the rivet counters so to speak) and that in some ways both groups are chasing the same sort of thing - an authentic experience of the World War II aviation environment and something that lives up to the notion of this being a simulator instead of a game.

 

I will disagree with the OP on the one point. The aircraft do very much fly the same and I was impressed and somewhat surprised how similar some of the basics are. I agree that the feel IS different but the basics are there for sure. I'm attributing the changes to the fact that computers are more powerful and the engine that runs behind BoS is that much more sophisticated than 10+ years ago when IL-2 came out or maybe 5+ years ago when the updated FM system hit IL-2 patch 4.01. But if I fly a Yak-1 back to back on both systems... it feels remarkably similar but with far more nuance than before. Something I expect with the ability to crunch even more numbers

Edited September 7, 2014 by ShamrockOneFive