Am I missing the North American players?

[WWDubya]

I've been thinking about this recently ... (let the rambling begin)

 

The problem -as I see it- is that folks want a sense of community but don't like constant auditory overload and the interrupted flows of thought that occurs when many people want to voice themselves -at precisely- the same moment. I call it "stomping on comms." Chit-chatting in voice about myriad subjects all at the same time is draining and is cause for many a hard feeling.  Breaking a voice communications program into several channels is useful in that it creates "rooms" to help organize groups of people and reduce chatter-overhead, but it also excludes others from a variety of interesting topics that they might want to monitor or interject their thoughts into in an easy manner... not without having to bounce in and out of those channels or rooms.

 

To me, voice comms is best employed when folks are ready to 'get down to business.' We are focused on the mission and most comms are dedicated to fulfilling a specific purpose. i.e. Voice communications is reserved (mainly) for managing the battle. This is why I think that the IL2 Community TS server is under-utilized. Folks just don't like sitting in a room full of noise or unfamiliar people while they wait for the action to begin.

 

This is why I think it is important for the community to have a central text-based hub to hang out in. Gamers can join the hub and see who's milling about and follow a poo-ton of interesting conversations and add their own 2-cents worth about any of them -at any time- without actually interrupting anyone's conversation. While they are shooting the $hit, they can also monitor game server activity and see who's playing in which ones. Yes, I'm talking about HyperLobby.

 

But not just HyperLobby. I'm talking about a two-pronged approach, here; I'm suggesting a centralized lobby for hanging out and monitoring servers, and also some sort of integrated voice communications for when it's time to get to business. Or maybe (more likely?) some sort of quick link from the lobby to privately (or community) run voice comms server/service. Something as seamless as possible to move from chat to voice. 

 

Lobby-to-voice would require some sort of mechanism for the admins/owners/renters of a voice service to be able to share their service with others (at the click of a button), but it could allow for flexibility in that it would not matter (or not matter quite as much) what voice comms client you use. For instance, squad A who is hosting a mission normally uses TS and squad B who is invited to join the mission normally uses Ventrillo. The "Lobby" feature would recognize that squad A is registered as sharing their TS services. Squad B has the option of accepting the shared use of squad A's TS service (provided that squad B members have TS installed locally), offering their own Ventrillo service to be shared (provided that squad A has Ventrillo installed locally), or of selecting their own Ventrillo service for themselves for the duration of the mission. (Or parties may elect to use the IL2 Community TS server.) Since both squads have registered their services (server address, channel assignments, guest passwords, etc) with the lobby, participants would not have to worry about lengthy lists of voice comms bookmarks. However, they may need to install several voice comms clients. Or none if they do not wish to use voice comms at all, or just certain comms clients and not others.

 

Once the players drop from the game, they are dumped right back into the lobby and their local copy of whatever voice comms client they use is automatically shut down. The lobby merely manages game-server and comms server/client operation while also providing a place to share war stories and BBQ recipes between bouts of shooting each other down in the virtual skies.

 

At any rate, it appears that 1C/777 are preparing to provide some sort of gathering place for the community to use as an "Officer's Club"; this I see as a most positive step in rallying pilots and creating a closer sense of community. This, plus the IL2 Community TS service that Jason has put up for our use, might do more for the genre than many people may give credit for. 

 

(Side note: I firmly believe that HyperLobby is hugely responsible for legacy IL2's eventual success and longevity. My recollection is that within about a year of the original IL2's release, it was beginning to fade, and the IL2 community (Ubi-Zoo) just did not gel with itself. There was just no place for everybody to "hang-out." That is, until Jirri released HyperLobby. Then things really started popping.)     

[6./ZG26_Gielow]

Let's make combat flight simulation great again!!

[ShamrockOneFive]

I am still praying for a FMB ''Lite'' version with just one click object placing for example putting

down a flak gun and not having to hold it by the hand and tell it everything it has to do.

 

Just place it ...shoot at the damn blue or red aircraft with a simple altitude firing  specs from 1000m to 6000m.

 

Put down a plane on the map tell it to fly at 3000m from point A to point B and attack the enemy planes

with just one click.Take off-fly-land instructions with one click settings to put the aircraft in the mission

and one click waypoints and landings.Attack air/ground targets nothing fancy just one click instructions.

 

It is nice to dream.

 

That would be great. Something that the old IL-2's FMB had was its utter simplicity. It had a learning curve but it was a fairly short one and once you figured the basics you could do a ton with it without needing to do a lot of work.

[DD_Arthur]

248 people online last night at 8.55p.m. British Summer Time.  Not bad for a Monday night.