Will future subsims be called simssubs?

[Rosencrantz]

I have a dream... to play a decent subsim before retirement. No, I'm not talking about talking with some virtual moron with a mental age between 0 and 1 and who is called exec or IWO, nor do I want to shoot the cook in an attempt to be a successful commanding officer. A subsim calling for those actions I would call descent, not decent. Descent from high quality subsims to totally something else. To simssubs?

But maybe it's just me who is getting old and outdated? A man with a wife, children, friends and foes. A lot of people to talk with. Sometimes even too many. A man with a real life - no need for AI zombies to talk with. A man who would like to see 4 engines and 2 auxiliaries in a fleet boat - not 2.

There is 7.4 billion people in this planet, but we can't get our subsim's fuel usage algorithm right? A sub running 6 knt does not use more fuel per BHP than a sub running at 11 knt. That has been an unsolved problem in SHIV since date of release. Get the basics right.

What I really miss from DW is the radar able to light up land masses also. I will probably never forget the strange feeling when I got my first radar in SHIV and I realised I still could not pick the ********** Oahu up with my set. That's something I'd call an imerrsion spoiler - not my crew with only a very limited vocabulary. Once again, get the basics right.

Where are the subsims heading in the future? At the moment it looks like my dream won't come true. Sure, UBI and others have read their Command at Sea, Naval institue Press. Quote from page 3, Fifth edition: "To achieve success in command, the captain must work through those whom he or she leads..." Right. In my books that belongs into something called RL, real life. I'm not against morale or fatigue factors in simulations. But still nowadays trends raises a question: will future subsims be called simssubs?


Greetings,
Rosie

[CCIP]

Well, first question is, what future subsims? :D

The real issue is not the possibility of getting something right, the real issue is costs and marketing of technical simulations. As you can see, Sonalysts for example know a lot about technical simulations - so much so that they mostly work for military customers and haven't made a commercial simulation in over a decade, even though they'd like to. The market for this is very limited. On a site like Subsim, you might get a skewed picture, but in the real world as you say, most people deal with real people. Although I totally sympathise with your perspective, you have to realize that most people out there in fact do not know and do not care how accurate fuel consumption or radar modeling is. They don't think in technical terms and don't understand the appeal of accurate modeling of a sub. But when you give them something that revolves around virtual characters and human terms, that they understand the fun of. When you put that in the context of a game that has to be published and marketed, especially if it's to be marketed by a major company, you might see what the problem is.

I think it is possible to make a technically more accurate simulation than what's out there. There's people out there that are able to do that. But, like most people, they also have these so-called real lives and families, which require a paycheck. It's not enough to have skills and passion for something for a product to be created.

If you want something other than what's on offer, the best you can do is to help prove that there is a viable market case. The first step to doing that, perhaps, is supporting independent submarine-related game projects in general.

[Eichhörnchen]

A similar dichotomy exists in the world of flight sims: there are purists who will always want to start their aircraft 'cold and dark', conducting all of the preliminary checks just as a real pilot does, before taking off with a fully worked up flight plan to spend hours at the controls, 'flying' their computer in real time to Tokyo or someplace over a photo-realistic world. They have many software developers giving them just what they want, in the form of sim aircraft almost complete in every detail, but these aircraft can usually also be flown on a dumbed-down setting by those of us who don't have hours and hours to spare and who just want to jump in and take off with a minimum of preparation and knowledge.

[Aktungbby]

^indeed! https://flyawaysimulation.com/news/299/ (https://flyawaysimulation.com/news/299/)

[Eichhörnchen]

Thanks, Aktung.

PC Pilot magazine is the one to get if you're into all this; they publish flight plans, navigation tutorials, Virtual Airline news etc. with a CD Rom on the cover usually containing demos and freeware.

And you can buy software which loads worldwide scheduled AI traffic into your sim, something you would have to have if you were taking your Civil flying this seriously.

I just like to jump into a plane with guns in it and blow stuff up, but I am shallow like that (PC Pilot does also feature the latest for combat sims like Rise of Flight and DCS World, however).