First sim?

[33lima]

Originally Posted by Scotty

I would not call PE out of the box better.. the gunnery was more fake than any arcade game.. I mean instant flight time brought me away from it... I like the challnge to have to lead off on something that is 700 meters away... kind of like REAL life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not point at it, adjust for spin and CLICK=DEAD instantly..
Heck, Battlezone of 1980 by Atari was even more realistic.. you did have flight time (slow, but it had it) in it.

The infantry if you want to call it that.. looked like cardboard figures moving around the battlefield.. I mean the enemy in Wolfenstein 3D of 1991 looked much more real.. almost made a whole decade earlier.

So I would not agree with you about "out of the box" PE!

I reinstalled PE some years later 2003-2005, but never seen a flight time mod then, I eventually gave up. Also Panzer Commander would not run on a Barton core CPU of the time later I figured out a CPU slow down utility helped big time.. The blocky forrests were hard to get used to.

As far as Panzer Elite being the most realistic tank sim NOW??? From the mods you guys tell me, you may be right..

Sometimes out of the box sims are worse than others, but modded, the one that was lesser, ended up the best.
Seems PE has come a long way.. like I said, thanks for enlighten me on this.
maybe it should Be Steel Fury Kharkov 1942 vs Panzer Elite (and not T34-vs-Tiger)
----------------------

Red Baron 3D and EAW, used to play those A LOT..even online some.. what has happened with them in the past 6-7 years.?? how are they with mods vs say Il-2 1946 with mods?

later

RB3d with either the Western Front, Blue Max, Hell's Angels or other mods is still one of the best. Graphics even modded are primitive by current standards, the planes still swirl about the sky a bit, friendlies 'ghost" thru each other, and the AI has repetitive routines and still can't kill you if you fly at ground level, but even so, the range of flyables is supreme, the feeling that you're really operating in a living battlefront with all kinds of flights going about their business is as utterly immersive as ever it was, and the nice little touches like the escape and medal award videos are as present as they are absent in more modern sims where Eye Candy is King.

Much the same with EAW.

Il2 I have played a lot [offline, not into MP] in all its successive variants and I still hate its improved but still small-scale and utterly soul-less campaigns, its truly horrible external engine sounds and its frustratingly game-killer 'uber' AI gunners. Rowan's BoB [1 or 2] and Microprose's B17 Mighty Eighth I still rate as much the best pre-jet-age combat flight sims you can play today - now, those ARE sims, whose less serious shortcomings you can more readily forgive. Modded CFS2 maybe next, then modded EAW or modded RB3d, then modded CFS3. CFS3/OFF [WW1] looks like a really good bet, I helped Winding Man with some of the early research for that but my always-budget hardware didn't cope well with the freeware version and while my kit is slightly less budget nowadays, I haven't invested in the payware OFF yet. The Third Wire stuff like First Eagles and WoV is fun for a blast now and then but they all have soul-less, un-immersive campaigns [Yankee Air Pirates might be an improvement?] and even the WW1 planes explode like arcade targets. Rise of Flight looks good but the substance seems rather limited - after RB3d levels of flyables, a Camel, D7 and SPAD (and Dr1 at extra cost] are really big step in the wrong direction, no way compensating for the eye candy.

I would not write off PE, even without time of flight - which it now has - and even in comparison with current tanksims. The PE tanks still tend to jerk about like they are made of cardboard on uneven terrain and the graphics are inferior even modded but good graphics do not a good sim make, nor does a lack of the latest eye candy make a bad one. PE still has many of the other elements that DO make a good [tank] sim. Elements that more modern games do less well. In SF42, the gunner sight view jerks not much better than PE's when you move, much as you'd expect if you were staring down a magnified sight in an unstabilised mount in a vehicle with basic suspension moving cross-country.

For that matter, there is much more to tanksims than gunnery, popular tho that is. I prefer to play as TC and troop/platoon commander and if the sim lets you do that effectively, then that's a big plus. PE and SB are two of the few sims that reasonably realistically simulate the TC and troop commander roles. I loved M1TP2 but you really HAD to play as from the gunner role [when you weren't at the Ivis screen 'watching little red and blue dots shoot pixels at one another' as one reviewer put it, and trying to stop the horrible uber artillery killing your light forces while killing the enemy's with yours]. SF42 seems to work best that way too, played as gunner but with the magical ability to give TC orders to your driver - fun but not so good as a simulation. I have yet to force myself to play SF42 from the TC position alone, maybe it is actually quite good at doing that, but the lack of simulated radio traffic apart from the canned and repetitive chatter, and the reliance on dropping out of the 3d world to the 2d map to exercise control of your troop/platoon, seem to make SF42, despite the fact that's the role it casts you in, a much inferior simulator to PE of the platoon/troop commander role. In that role, SF42 is much better than TvT, but PE is much, much better than either.

Original SB was best in every technical respect - at least when they finally modelled the 'moving reticle' - but the canned missions and lack of most of the features that made RB3D, EAW, F4, Mig Alley, BoB or B17-2 great sims, limited its appeal for me, and I daresay SB Pro PE would be the same. The empahsis on max fidelity with the M1 and Leo and the consequent certainty you were never gonna get even a basic playable Chieftain, Centurion or T72, to me was devotion taken to too much an extreme - I'm more of a survey sim person I guess, variety the spice of life and all that. Anyway, like great graphics, technical perfection isn't everything. The tanksim you chose depends on what you value most. For me, it's SF42 first, PE a very close second, SB third. TvT [which I also have] is so very limited as to be of similarly limited value even to a big Tiger fan like me, with the Zeewolf mod a WiP. T72 BoF/IW I also have but while I like T72s like TvT it's really rather severely limited as a tanksim - you just play your own tank in canned missions, no radio no comand and control, no nuthin'. Others will differ.