New WW1 Flight Sim In Production!

Southside Bucky · 23 July 2005, 01:01 PM

Great news!

You'll have to register with 'em, but it's worth doing.

Check it out: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/

Then click on "Inside Peek".

All the best.

Bucky.

FlyXwire · 23 July 2005, 05:30 PM

Thanks for the heads up Bucky!!!

Here's a few of these recent Third Wire screenshots:

Some superb looking modeling and skinning on these "works in progress".

Southside Bucky · 25 July 2005, 08:36 AM

Dunno 'bout you, but they're the best I've ever seen!

Note the subtle weathering and the stitching on the DVII's wing lozenge.

They're being modelled by someone who really knows his stuff!

Lets hope the gameplay does 'em justice.

Bucky.

James Dietz · 27 July 2005, 08:53 AM

Yes! Just saw this over at Forgotten Battles General Info site....with many replies & more info...Any one here know more about it???

BarkhornXX · 27 July 2005, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Dietz

Yes! Just saw this over at Forgotten Battles General Info site....with many replies & more info...Any one here know more about it???

Third Wire Productions is run by a fellow nicked "TK" - he was the dev. that put together that old WWII favorite EAW. About 2 years ago they put out Strike Fighters Project 1 - an open architecture sim featuring jets from the early to mid 60's. The sim has a "Lite" FM, decent DM and Sfx and excellent a/c modeling. Since then they have supported the product w/ 3 major patches and another sim called Wings Over Vietnam.

Given their history I believe what you will get - in due time - they go kind of slow - is:
- A decent a/c line-up - nothing too exotic tho'
- Some nice terrain - not the whole Western Front tho'
- Decent FM - not quite hard core tho'
- A campaign - not RB3D standard tho'
- VERY open architecture

The good news is that the modding community are sure to take the release and improve on it substantially - better FM's, more planes, campaign's, etc. and Third Wire will continue to support the product.

All in all, this is excellent news.

Barkhorn.

29 July 2005, 07:14 AM

There are more screenshots and some more info at the Third Wire site.

According to the developer the game will "focus only on the last half of 1918 (Jul-Nov 1918)" with a "long-term plan to have follow on titles that cover different years". The Sopwith Camel gets left out of the initial release, but I'm sure modders will provide one.

FlyXwire · 29 July 2005, 05:23 PM

Perhaps the Camel might make the second installment if we're lucky.........as Guderian mentioned, the initial release will cover the latter half of 1918, with successive add-ons planned covering earlier aircraft, periods, and campaigns.

I like the concept of growing the sim thru "modular" add-ons.

(gets compatible content to market quicker, while support/follow-ups work through the pipeline)

Xeidos2 · 30 July 2005, 08:45 AM

Very interesting,

The world of flight sim development seems to be pretty small. I had a chance to meet TK for a few seconds back when I was working for Eidos, working on a WW2 flight sim called Confirmed Kill. TK and some others from Origin had gone out on their own and had a small company called Check Six and they did some work for us.

The publisher for Third Wire's, Wings Over Vietnam, is Destineer, which is the same publisher that broke it's contract with Aspect Simulations, which put Knights Over Europe out of business, which cleared the way for Take Two to release Wings of War. If Destineer is the publisher for TK's new WW1 sim, I certainly hope they do a better job of keeping their promises to him than they did in keeping their promises to Aspect.

From the few posts that I read on their forum it sounds like TK isn't getting any kind of support and everything has to be done on a small budget. Which means the player is going to get a "lite" sim because it's basically a modified version of the Strike Fighter engine that will now allow prop planes. But TK has one thing that Aspect never had and that's an "open source" set-up, which means players will be able to make their own planes.

I think the models shown in the screen shots are as good as the ones we had in KOE. I can see signs that their model builder/s probably used the same reference material from the internet that we did.

Me and my co-worker from Aspect hope that TK does well with this project. We believe the market is big enough to support more than one WW1 flight sim. Now that the movie Fly Boys has gone into post-production and who knows what Peter Jackson is cooking up, the future for media related to WW1 seems much brighter than it was 12 months ago.

James Dietz · 30 July 2005, 09:05 AM

Inquiring minds want to know:"When? When?"

Xeidos2 · 30 July 2005, 01:04 PM

In software developement, that's the hardest question to answer. The classic answer is, "two weeks."

If TK's team is as big (or should I say small) as was our team was at Aspect and they still have to tackle the terrain system, we're looking at the middle of 2006 if you want to be realistic. BUT this is just an outsider's guess.