Yeah, in fact, from an exclusive technical point of view, the "old" sims often were far more accurate than those of today. They lacked a proper physics model, maybe even a proper "3D as it would look in Real Life" model, but they got the numbers and facts down pretty much accurately. SHI is an excellent example for that. The radars alone were really excellent. And I tell you, from reading some first hands account about Submarine Warfare in the Pacific, they read just like my patrols from SHI, all things considered! Having this destroyer coming up on you in the moonlight, not yet firing cause he can't quite see you, but has a general idea about your pos. Angle on the Bow Zero, bearing 180°, speed - don't matter for that - range - irrelevant. You fire 2 torps from your stern tube. They go directly for him - but hold, he sees the wakes from your steam driven torps, makes a hard turn for the right. Should have fired a spread. But anyway, cause of the brake he had to make, you have enough time to disappear into the darkness, make a turn, and he never finds you again.
It was almost eery when I had this encounter in SHI, and only a few days after read exactly that kind of account in Edward's L. Beach "Submarine!".
Another good example would be "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe", a flightsim from 1991. When you flew a Mustang or similar plane that was more maneuverable than the German 190, and you did outturn him, he did not just continue the turn like an idiot waiting for you to get a lead solution on him, but instead he bugged out and used his superior acceleration to seperate and then came back later. In "Il-2" or "Forgotten Battles", or any other WWII flightsim which came out in recent years, the "non- Turnfighters" are dead meat cause they will keep try turning against you even when you are in a superior turnfighter, instead of using their speed or climb advantage against you.
Yet another example is Jane's F-15 vs. Jane's F/A-18. In Jane's F-15, you got an EXCELLENT air to ground radar, where you could take accurate radar pictures from any given area on your scope, under realistic constraints like the real thing - in Jane's F/A-18, which came out only 2 or 3 years later, they changed some things about the graphics engine, and your air to ground radar was basicly gone - it was just a blur with a few "spikes" on it, worse than Falcon 3.0 or Tornado had in the early 90s.
I sometimes really wonder what the heck is going on in the minds of some devs.
Not to bash SHIV though - I really think it has a great feeling to it and in many ways indeed has resemblance to the sims of the golden sim era. But still, there are simply things being done or not done which make no sense and I simply have to ask myself "WHY (did you not stick to something that has already been done perfectly 10 years ago)???"
|