VR seems to be catching on. Is the experience that much better than a normal screen?
It’s different, not necessarily better.
MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
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Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#12VR seems to be catching on. Is the experience that much better than a normal screen?
For games specifically designed with VR in mind? Yes, the experience is dramatically different. For many people, the suspension of disbelief is there, and you absolutely feel present in the space.
Good VR titles force you to move many more muscle groups than keyboard/mouse or controller games. Your brain stays much more engaged when you have to, e.g., duck out of the way of an incoming projectile.
For games where VR is tacked on, or not deliberately handled, it can be a vomit fest. Playing Half Life 2, for instance, is possible in VR but it's very unpleasant. Playing Half Life Alyx, which was built from the ground up to be a VR experience, is incredible.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#13When will we get a Tie-Fighter Remake for any VR headset. Battlefront VR experience showed the viability. I'd fork out 1000€ plus for that game.
I'm not sure how TIE Fighter's mechanics would translate to modern sensibilities, and I say this as someone who loved the LucasArts games (at least part of the reason I'm a graphics programmer today!) and currently has, well, a not-insubstantial investment in flight simulation hardware for modern titles like DCS/Falcon BMS/various IL-2 things.
House of the Dying Sun (https://store.steampowered.com/app/283160/House_of_the_Dying...) might be the closest thing going I'm aware of on the current market, as an arcade space fighter game in VR. Doesn't have the same theming, but it's at least space fighters doing space fighter things in space!
For me, the question of how you'd do a modern TIE Fighter remake becomes "how do you make assumptions about how space combat works in your game-universe that line up with the Star Wars films, and also lead to fun gameplay?" Since the space combat from Star Wars (at least ANH) was basically "Dambusters, in space!" you can draw lots of inspiration from World War 2-era aviation and combat. However, given an environment where gravity doesn't play and everything has ridiculous thrust-to-mass ratios, you lose some of the interesting bits re: altitude/energy trades and everything just turns into a "Pull as hard as you can" circle fight in the within-visual-range (WVR) / basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) space, which is where most of the iconic Star Wars dogfights-in-space happen. Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat isn't really a thing in Star Wars, because Rule of Cool indicates that dogfights are cooler than slinging missiles at each other based on sensors. In the films, the writers/VFX people created the scenes they wanted by creative fiat -- in a game you need the mechanics to drive to the experience you want, and that's a challenge given Star Wars' apparent assumptions about how space combat works.
Of course there's all sorts of interesting assumptions you could make instead, but then you're just making a space arcade-sim game, not a Star Wars game.
Nope, I've clearly never thought about this. At all. Clearly.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#14I wonder how much of a sim it will be. Not sure I'd want to be the bombardier and have to sit for a long time only to get to stare at my screen and push a button ... once. Granted I still like the idea, it will be interesting to see how much they gamify it and how much they do not.
In the late 80's and early 90's real time was a feature of simulations. It's what made them simulations. And as dull as flying a WWII airplane out and back sounds...Microprose's Silent Service let you operate a submarine across the Pacific in real time. Of course, you could also speed time up if you wanted. But a "base frequency" of real time means the game play is not centered around "story mode." In simulation it m…
OH man I played a TON of Silent Service.
That could be some seriously tense gaming.
I wish they'd re-release that somewhere ... granted I haven't looked. It might not have aged but I could go for a something like that again, maybe not full sim... more casual friendly.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#15For anyone interested, this company is unrelated to the original Microprose from a corporate history perspective, it’s just some people who bought the name “Microprose” at an IP auction. However they have enlisted Wild Bill Stealey as some kind of advisor, so they are at least attempting to connect with the history. (Wild Bill was one of the two founders of Microprose. The other, Sid Meier, has his own things going o…
Interesting tidbit, thanks. Where does an IP auction tend to happen?
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#16This is such a great idea for a VR game, minus the time issues and the whole thing with some of the crew members having nothing to do lots of the time.
It has no issues with needing to walk around, but still has a bunch of different types of gameplay.
Of course the only thing with all this.. they're trying to make a game that avoids motion sickness.. but flying in these planes during maneuvers could be a vomit fest anyway.. so the game still might make some people sick.
Still.. this is the genre that would make me consider getting a VR headset. I'd echo the call from others for a Tie-Fighter/X-Wing remake with a VR headset.. that'd be really fun.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#17VR seems to be catching on. Is the experience that much better than a normal screen?
For games specifically designed with VR in mind? Yes, the experience is dramatically different. For many people, the suspension of disbelief is there, and you absolutely feel present in the space. Good VR titles force you to move many more muscle groups than keyboard/mouse or controller games. Your brain stays much more engaged when you have to, e.g., duck out of the way of an incoming projectile. For games where VR…
What's the big deal? I had that suspension of disbelief in Zork I.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#18For anyone interested, this company is unrelated to the original Microprose from a corporate history perspective, it’s just some people who bought the name “Microprose” at an IP auction. However they have enlisted Wild Bill Stealey as some kind of advisor, so they are at least attempting to connect with the history. (Wild Bill was one of the two founders of Microprose. The other, Sid Meier, has his own things going o…
Interesting tidbit, thanks. Where does an IP auction tend to happen?
When companies get dissolved, go bankrupt, or just to make a quick buck they sell or license IP, trademarks, etc. to extract value out of whatever was left. This is how you get the Polaroid and Kodak brands on all kinds of cheap electronics, or company revivals like this. Sometimes only the brand name and logo survive, with no actual IP, tech, knowledge, or personnel being passed on.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#19Wow, seeing the old MicroProse logo immediately transported me back to the late-80's/early-90's and the cool joysticks (Epyx were the best!) and all of the fun games I played on my C64 and Amiga.
Re: MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the late 80's and early 90's real time was a feature of simulations. It's what made them simulations. And as dull as flying a WWII airplane out and back sounds...Microprose's Silent Service let you operate a submarine across the Pacific in real time. Of course, you could also speed time up if you wanted. But a "base frequency" of real time means the game play is not centered around "story mode." In simulation it m…
OH man I played a TON of Silent Service. That could be some seriously tense gaming. I wish they'd re-release that somewhere ... granted I haven't looked. It might not have aged but I could go for a something like that again, maybe not full sim... more casual friendly.
You might want to look at Wolfpack, mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It requires multiplayer, 2-5 players control a German u-boat against Allied convoys in the Atlantic). It's an interesting combination of sim-lite (engines, battery and buoyancy are modeled relatively simplistically) and deep nerd simulation (fire control/torpedo solution) aspects.