@tuomaspap I am the reviewer you may be mentioning. I played the game in VR using pc tools that simulated VR. Its not as good as the real thing but it was very close.
RaptorElite
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A member registered May 08, 2017
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There are two techniques you can utilize in different situations. You should have already noticed that when the missiles get closer the triangle gets larger and the alarm rings faster. The alarm sound is the most important part of missile detection.and avoidance. If the alarm is sounding off rapidly you can choose to either use your flares or you can use maneuvering. If you choose the maneuvering you can use the shape of the screen to choose the direction of your maneuver. The best practice is to overcome the maximum turn rate of the oncoming missile. This can be done be analyzing the direction the missile is homing in from. Once you have determined the angle the missile is approaching, begin turning the same direction where the missile is coming from. This will force the missile to turn sharper to strike a hit. If the missile is continuing to home in closer even while using this evasive maneuver pop flares. This combo will defeat 99.99 of missiles coming your direction.
I love this game. After playing Ace Combat 7 for myself, I am so happy this game exists. The things I have been praying to see in Ace Combat 7 don't appear like they will make it to the game. But Project Wingman has them and then some. What is being done with the HUD is my absolute favorite feature. I love being able to turn off almost everything and just go completely triangle hold. I really think that if the minimalist HUD had a small (life-like) medium and large option it would be perfect.
The AI is finally perfect in my point of view. Having the enemy try to nail you with cheap cannon shots before the merge is so satisfying. It seems hyper real. I love the accuracy of the AA from the HVT. Now keeping my distance is actually in my thought process while engaging them. Instead of just oh here we go again with these guys. I especially enjoy learning the different styles brought by specific formations. This game has gotten so deep and I can't believe its come so far.
The only things I think still needs some polish are the graphics. In this update I don't know whether I like how the F-18 looks in the hanger, something just feels off about it like the textures are too soft. The SU and the Viggen dont give me that vibe. IDK. But I think the motion blur needs to be per object having it blur the hud too doesn't really work for me so Its been off practically since 0.3. I think the font of the subtitles needs some help. But besides those minor gripes. I love the game. Would purchase on multiple platforms even if it released in this form with only a few more jets. Thank you for the hard work.
PS. Post processing is messing with the textures on the F-18. It looked better in the previous launch. But I think the frame rate is higher in the new version.
I agree with this as well but i think it would be a bad move to scrap all the progress made on the hud so far. There is a lot of things that are great for arcade flyers and there is a lot to be desired for flight sim enthusiasts. I would say if you had the time. An advanced hud option would be better than minimalist hud. If( like he said) you allowed us to remove all hud elements including the holographic display. And have them to be enabled individually. Also if we could rearrange them in sectors on the screen ourselves on the fly. You should eliminate the complaints about whats on the hud. Currently since the internals of the cockpit aren't 1:1 yet and all the buttons in the cockpit are mainly useless. It would be awesome if you could add some remap-able indication lights somewhere in the cockpit. Like in the SU27 there is a missile warning LED flashed between RED and Yellow for warning an alert. If we could replace the on screen warning with an indicator light in the cockpit mode it would greatly reduce the headaches. The missile lock on tone lock sounds also need some help. They are way to loud even after adjusting the volume. We already get pretty clear indication when missiles are locked visually, to hear it audibly at such a high frequency for seemingly the entire game is very exhausting. A volume slider for missile lock and missile inbound beeping would be a great addition. And for people like me who hate high frequency sounds a pitch slider for those two noises would make a world of difference. Since they are the main noises heard in the game.
Oh boy this game had me in tears of joy. Conquest felt like playing every ace combat boss fight one after another. Conquest absolutely destroys Gauntlet mode in AC:Zero. Absolutely loved it! Once you get passed level 7 oh man oh man. And dem Su-37s! they literally had me thinking back to Ace Combat 4. Not gonna lie I thought I was gonna be able to smash the crap out of this mode with the SV-37 I did make it to the 2nd to last level then I ran out of missiles and machine gun ammo. I tried to down the HVT with my rockets as a last resort. They didn't work unfortunately lol.
After that just saved up to get that F-18 and it basically put the game back on a regular difficulty. I feel like this game mode will need some tweaking though. At some points its super easy and at some points its kind of overwhelming. But I dig it. If it made it to the final game in this form id still be happy. Honestly Im overall very impressed with this update. Great work!
1: Take offs are confirmed in PW kick starter trailer
2: My Standard missiles hit target when fired from any axis. So Im not sure if you are targeting the flight lead who will usually evade the missiles.
3: At least a few of those aircraft are being worked on. Their outlines are shown in the kick starter funding page.
5: RB-D2 has responded to free flight in the past and stated he would put it in the game.
7: It's not safe to use names of aircraft with no licensing arrangements because of potential legal liability. Your example of F-15 Eagle as it just may seem like a military designation when its really a registered trademark from McDonald Douglas.
Not trying to interject its just that these questions have been answered before.
umm not true. One enemy yells oh SHIIITTTT as hes being blown up in 0.4.0b mission 3. but its not noticable and no text on screen to indicate it. Honestly sir you got nothing to worry about you can change the voices to 0 volume so you cant hear anyone talk if you think something may slip. This is a war game though. People routinely curse in war. Not meaning to down play but if someone gets shot down in a multimillion tax payer dollar state of the art fighter jet. Their last words better be FUCKING MUTHERFUCKER! lol
I believe it is natively supported even though I did not see it mentioned in the settings. I can attest I was extremely surprised when I noticed the DS4 rumbling.
Since update release 1 I have been using the DS4 through steam which supports it natively as well. You can button map all the PS4 controls through steam and play exactly like Ace Combat on consoles.
Short answer yes. One way or another.
Just keeps getting better and better.
V.0.4.0
Things I love: The new explosion sounds. The explosions sounds now make the game feel more visceral. The only thing that could make them better is if you added sounds of metal on metal when you fly though an explosion. We always fly through explosions in flight combat sims but real life fighter pilots know that potential lethal for their planes I think you should implement it.
Thing I loved the most: The perfection you made of the aircraft reticle. It now tracks properly and is very realistic. And now actually shows you where the aircraft is projected to fly so if you crash into a mountain or graze the ground its your own fault. Love it, I feel like its made my fly with much more confidence.
Another thing I noticed was that you added a low altitude warning that is actually helpful. Too often is there this tiny little message on screen and a tiny little proximity indicator. The one you use is great. It actually warns me when Im about to kill myself.
More things I like, the 3 mission updates. I love them you, see the targets on the ground and you cant hit them until you knock out these defenses first. Thats great! It has a good flow to it that seems familiar and new at the same time. I think you should make Hard mode HARDER. Mercenary needs to have SAM sites ripple fire. Since in real life they can fire 6 missiles rapidly. AA sites need to never stop shooting at you. Let the tracers rounds scare the crap out of you. And hell why not make low altitude flying come with greater risks ? Making the AA guns actually dangerous would be a good update. Oh another great thing. The 3rd wingman. We need to hear more of her, some of the banter back and forth was actually funny.
The things I dont like: The AI is good at evading but terrible at engaging. We need to see the AI try some gun kills.
More on the AI: mother ships seems to spiral to their deaths but dont die after you take out a wing. Since its technically only the AA guns that get damaged the should remain flyable until we take out an engine or a whole wing. If your intention is to take out a wing dont add that too the bosses please. We should need to hit every vital spot on those monsters to make them drop out the sky.
Last thing the models for the tanks seem to either keep driving on after they have been blown up. Either that or they have been launched into the air for miles hugging the ground either way seems a bit buggy.
honest rating for a fully developed game id say your at a solid 6 right now.For an alpha your at 9/10 best alpha Ive played. please keep it up.
Man Oh man, this game is a dream come true. I now think this game is perfectly balanced as far as difficulty is concerned. When the SU 27s go in to spiral loops in hopes of evading oh man I just couldn't stop smiling. It was absolutely amazing! The weapons are going to need some more time. Especially the High Manuever Missiles. They will literally follow an enemy to 3+ minutes if they miss the first go around. Maybe dial that down to 1 minute lol. Optimization is wonderful my 970 is running it well on high. I do think that the post processing may be a bit extra. I'd probably say that is a bit on the extreme side, but it makes the game look just that much better. It is a bit hard to run that and record though on my 970 got me thinking of upgrading. I think a big thing missing now is actually a warning alarm for collision or at least a pull up proximity alert. I've crashed a few times now that its completely pitch black into a storm clouds.
That being said this game is perfect for VR. You need to make some strides into that front because of how easily I converted this game into VR. Your game is amazing and I'm certain if you just spent about a weeks worth of work you can code it for Steam VR.
I used TrinusPSVR it literally took me 10 minutes to configure to work with your game.
It must be pretty annoying to constantly have your hard work compared to an existing franchise. Please everybody this isn't Ace Combat. RBD has a good shot of making a better fusion of combat and arcade with what he's been doing so far. All I can say is the game is going beautifully. Make the perfect game you always dreamed of. If you keep this up it will PAY off!
I too share concerns of the Missile tracking and Target Acquisition System in the game. I was going to mention them In my previous review but it started to get way too long. Im not going to say that either system is currently broken. The TAS in the game should be adjusted though. It seems to be looking for the closest enemy in the field of view out to like 140 degrees. This or a system similar to this makes it difficult to track the target we were originally pursuing. Forcing the player to smash the target button over and over before we get the right one. I think the system should look for the closest target in the direction the player is pitching towards primarily. A double tap of the target button should scan for the nearest target secondarily. That would fix the current situation. But there is room for you to integrate Intel's eye tracking technology in this system as well. For the most part our eyes usually remain fixated on targets we are having trouble getting the game to acquire. If we had a system that automatically targeted what we were looking at, needless to say would fix a decades old problem.
Now as far as the missile system goes. The game loses its arcade feel the more that missiles seem to miss there target for no reason at all. The missile mechanics seem to be from missiles early in the development of long range Air to Air combat in the 70s. This may be by design however it will start to run you into (realism) problems if you try to add in aircraft like the F 22 with Aim 9x and Aim 120D missiles that have extreme maneuverability and Su 35S/F35 with its helmet mounted bore sight missile tracking system. You will end up with a choice do you add overpowered missiles into your game that never miss. Or do you add a meta game into the current system to explain why missiles dont track when they should?
So currently missiles right fully do not track when the player is engaging in a high G turn. However, if you were to incorporate the AIM 9x in a future update. That missile can be fired and accurately track a target at mach 1.8 at 9+ G. This will be an issue to use this missile because it will either never miss if its its coded for reality or will miss all the time like they do in the current system. I say keep the missile track system currently and add a feature in the HUD that shows 3 new things. 1 the G force being applied to the plane. (granted it may make you want to add some kind of G lock to the pilot for black outs and red outs) If the player can see the g forces being applied to the air-frame then they are able to understand its meaning as to why there missile seem to go off in the distance when shot at close range. This will make 1v1s that much more nail biting because mistakes from over zealously will be punishing. The second and third thing would be aesthetics by having the HUD have two modes and missile mode and a gun mode. In the missile mode. Have the theoretical path of the missile follow the intended target via a line that curves to show how the missile would track. This would show the player whether or not the missile has a good chance of hitting the target. This system can be seen in real life modern day aircraft now in training sim mode. With this amount of info to the player you could drastically reduce the amount of missiles to a more closer to a realistic situation and also increase the enemy AI difficulty. Having a similar system to the guns to show how much the player needs to lead the target in order to land bullets on the targets trajectory would also be a nice touch.
So after playing this game for several hours now. I am pleased with the progress of the development of this game. I understand this is indeed a work in progress. However, there are a few things that should be considered in near future updates. Mostly there are only minor cosmetic details that are still missing the game-play is right where it should be. In-between Ace Combat and DCS.
Cockpit: So far, the cockpit looks great. Having some indicator lights corresponding with messages from the on screen HUD would be nice EI the 'warning' and 'missile' messages in the middle of the screen are kind of awkward and hard to see. Having micro scratches and abrasions on the cockpit glass itself, would be a nice touch towards attention to detail. Maybe a visible moving joystick in-between some olive green legs would also be nice (especially for VR).
HUD: The HUD for whatever reason seems to display incorrect altitude and speed information. This maybe a result of the engine but it is something I'd look at early. The ceiling in game seems to be 13,000 but not sure if its feet, meters, kilometers. There should at least be a method to change the speed from Knots to MPH or KPH. This would at least eliminate confusion for gamer unfamiliar with aeronautics.
Graphics: Graphics are great. Having dynamic weather systems you are almost forced to fly into is a great touch. While traveling through the rain storms there should be an occasional lightning strike similar to ones in DRIVECLUB (for reference). Also while traveling through dense clouds and rain bands there should be a light camera shake in the cockpit mode to simulate turbulence. After pitching the nose beyond cloud cover which should be around 30,000 feet contrails should be still visible and thick and long lasting. At around 50,000 feet contrails should be skinnier and shorter. The game looks as if the ceiling is around 60,000 feet. You should exaggerate the Earth's curvature at that altitude if possible. So to upset the flat Earthers.
Sound: The sounds in the game seem very good. I'd only add one sound effect from my perspective. The sound of sand or small particles colliding with the fuselage of the air frame when flying into smoke or close to debris from an explosion. Maybe the occasional enemy radio chat interference. That would hearken very close the Ace Combat but by the time this game is done you will be competing with Ace Combat 7 directly so why not?
Game-play: There needs to be more indication on which settings are being adjusted in the view padlock configuration. This will prevent the need to invert some settings. There needs to be some type of countermeasures for missile lock. The visualization for where a missile is coming from is confusing. There needs to one primary method (radar map) and one secondary method. The secondary method would be better off as something that doesn't obscure the missile and the path. But shows the angle where the missile is coming from, Im thinking like a red arrow that gets larger as the missile gets closer. Enemy AI should also be coded to evade/hit the deck when they are last alive. Its very easy to kill a single enemy so the last alive should be the most difficult if they are trying to leave the engagement to regain a better position. Having them use the beautiful terrain as cover would make for an epic experience.
Honestly so far for what this game has already done it is amazing, you should ask the community for help. Im sure if you detailed the right formats to follow and had the right agreement you could get quite a bit of help from the community. Keep up the good work. Ill be donating to see this through.