flight simulators

[Michael Haney]

I've noticed that "real" Flight Sims are starting to become a rarity
these days.  Back in the day there used to be a great deal of them,
and they paid a great deal of attention to realism.  Joystick
manufacturers made controllers which looked and worked like the
authentic controls from F-15s and F-16s.  Whatever happened to those
days?

Now everything is being made more arcade like and dumbed down.  Gamers
aren't stupid yet the industry is treating us like we are.  More and
more PC games are being made like console titles ... and sometimes
that works and other times it doesn't.  Now ever game makers is
pushing out console crap on the PC (cough, cough ... EA, LucasArts,
Activision ... cough cough) but too many are going that route because
it supposedly makes more $$$.  And before you say "well thats the
point, it makes them money", consider this ... PC games have always
had a leg up on console games because of their depth and complexity.
Now that playing field is being leveled flat and there is little
distinction.  Don't give something like "Crysis" as example that I'm
wrong because fancy graphics don't make a game great, its the
gameplay, story, and the overall experience.  A game can have the
greatest graphics in the world but if it plays like crap, has a crappy
interface, and the controls are crap then all it is a really neat
looking pile of shit.  I'm not saying Crysis isn't a good game, it is,
but I'm using it as an example ... the game could have easily have
been done on one of the consoles.  Despite its graphics prowess the
game doesn't really bring anything new to the table that we haven't
already seen in other FPS games for the PC before.  Oh, and then there
are games that just get abandoned for no reason at all which were
great.  One game in particular was the Freespace 2, an excellent
first-person space combat sim game.  The game was dropped like a bad
habit all of a sudden, you couldn't find it in the stores anywhere,
and you couldn't get it online either.  Now its been made Open Source
and is being maintained by a community of programmers who have made
improvements to the game.  www.hard-light.com I believe is the URL.
There is a Windows, Mac OS X and Linux version of the game including a
port of the first Freespace to the new graphics engine.

That's my 0.02$ on the subject.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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