[galcerte]

I never expected this to be on the front page of HN, it brings back so many memories. I was big into this game when I was a teenager back in 2010, 2011 until 2015, also being very active in the community that made this page in that period. Sadly, even all those years back, the online scene was still what most would consider dead. I have a bit of a thing for "dead" games, I wouldn't really consider 1-2 full servers at night to be dead, which is what we had. In the following years, however, server population declined even more, to the point where I would really consider it to be dead. I'd love to be proven wrong though, but that was what I percieved.

If you really wanted to ride the wave, I'd tell you to get yourself a time machine and go all the way back to 2005, 2006 or 2007. Servers were ablaze with squadrons (~groups of people having their own paint schemes on certain aircraft, playing air-to-ground missions and air-to-air missions against other squadrons...) fighting and calling each other names. It wasn't pretty, but according to what I was told, passion wasn't exactly in short supply.

Fun fact: the game looks like that because it has no textures. Instead, every polygon is colored individually. Through a recent update did give the terrain textures. Aircraft still don't have them.

[ehnto]

> I have a bit of a thing for "dead" games,

I feel your pain. Unique and interesting games are rarely the most popular.

I have come to realize that you need to grab a multiplayer game by the horns and jump right in when it's popular, because every game has a "golden era", before which it dies. These communities are all moments in time.

[sslayer]

I've come to learn that anything online is impermanent. Websites/communities/gaming/business/programming languages - it will all eventually be deprecated for something newer/faster/better - Honestly, the only thing that is mostly untouched are the underlying protocols - and there are plans to change those as well. The absolute worst part about it is the loss of history, however even the physical world can't escape that - like tears in the rain.

[tomjakubowski]

It sure seems like stuff online obeys the Lindy effect. If some sites have been around for ten years, expect them on average to last another ten.

I would love to see any data or research that's been done on this.

[anthk]

Still, Nethack/Slashem, IRC, Gopher, ZMachine games... get played and launched even 20 years later.

[FredPret]

I hope against hope that 100 years from now, they can still read this message

[cpach]

Indeed. HN has been around for quite a while though. I’ve been a member for over thirteen years.

[matheusmoreira]

> I have a bit of a thing for "dead" games

I know how that feels. It's so sad to see a game that once brought so much joy now has zero players. I have so many dead games. Sometimes I install one and join one of the empty servers. Maybe someone else will see me there and join too...

[nix23]

10 Minutes ago i played Gabriel Knight 3 it's a fantastic game...no i don't care what others say ;)

[meheleventyone]

If you want to get back into it IL2: Sturmovik is great for online play and even has stellar VR support.

[app4soft]

> IL2: Sturmovik

It is fully another sort of flight simulator.

YSFlight core pros is that is almost "just polygonal flightsim", instead of "textured flight simulators" (such as IL2: Sturmovik, FlightGear, DCSWorld, MSFS, X-plane, etc.).

And, yes, YSFlight is fully capable for online gaming[0], and in part could be used with VR (with some tricks).

[0] https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewforum.php?f=301

[1] https://ysflight.org/serverlist/

[meheleventyone]

I wouldn't say that a minor aesthetic difference is all that important if you want to fly air-air and air-ground with a load of people. My suggestion to the parent is that there are other fun flight sims to fly about in and do similar things if they find YSFlight lacking at the moment.

[app4soft]

> My suggestion to the parent is that there are other fun flight sims to fly about

But this is thread about YSFlight, not about IL2: Sturmovik.

You may create new thread to discuss your favorite flight sim.

[meheleventyone]

This is not how HN tends to work with discussions. The parent I originally replied to said what they liked about YSFlight but that they've since found multiplayer to be too quiet for them. I suggested an alternative which does what they seem to be interested in and has a more lively multiplayer population.

You seem to be taking this as a slight on YSFlight which is not the intention and perhaps a bit overly defensive.

[runjake]

The irony here is that app4soft themselves bring up other flight simulators in this post discussion. Somehow, in their logic, it's okay for them, but not you.

[app4soft]

> This is not how HN tends to work with discussions.

To be clear, I posted YSFlight on HN to look on it from software developer point of view — not as a game suggestion.

That is Hacker News, not a Game Wiki.

[app4soft]

> This is not how HN tends to work with discussions.

Of course no, but I'm really not seeing any relation between YSFlight and IL2:Sturmovik, except both are in "flight simulators" category — those two software are totally different, from hackers point of view.

Also, YSFlight is freeware & partially open-source personal/hobby project, IL2 instead is a commercial product made by big company with a lot of devs specially for selling and marketing.

[usrusr]

Does VR really work out though? I used to be deep into IL2 back in the days of endless zombie 4.09 (writing server control in scala deep) and the main thing I remember about what that virtual flying was like is staring at a 2x2 pixel disturbance on my 1600x1200 at max zoom trying desperately to tell axis from ally. Put that on an HMD and you have to almost crash into them before you can identify. At least that was my impression in a quick test running BoS on Valve Index. Well, that was without fully deployed cockpit controls where I'd have zoom on dedicated buttons.

The ironic part is that my IL2 past was the biggest lure for getting the Valve Index, because I spent too much time toying with headtracking (writing pascal and assembly, what a contrast to the scala of my server control adventures!) to not want that Lighthouse thing. I might have bought Lighthouse standalone if they offered a version without the HMD!

[meheleventyone]

Yeah they've improved spotting in the game immensely after a rocky couple of attempts. The lower res of VR actually helps a bit there as well. The hardest part is ID though where the res does work against it a bit. There is zoom in VR as well which works pretty well. I find it a bit easier than a flat screen overall.

VR absolutely shines for gunnery though, I got a lot more accurate just making the switch. In particular I never really got comfortable with a TrackIR it never felt quite connected in the way VR does.

And then just for immersion its really fun, personally I don't think I could go back. I'm just running it on the Oculus Link with the OG Quest so no worries about lots of hardware needing to be setup. I just plug the cable in, use the hand tracking to start the link and launch into IL2.

[ummonk]

Yeah the immersion is surprisingly good - like when I go through a cloud and droplets accumulate on the canopy, my brain gets tricked into thinking I'm smelling moisture.

[meheleventyone]

Yeah particularly with the new clouds, flying between two is pretty magic.

[davidandgoliath]

DCS world is where it's at.

[xwdv]

If time travel of information is possible we could send and receive packets back in time to play with players located in the years of 2005-2007. It would solve the problem of dead servers and allow us to play during the golden ages again for many games.

[jaywalk]

You were playing with info time travelers back then and didn't even know it.

[xwdv]

Wow it’s possible I could have been playing against myself.

[dr_zoidberg]

> Fun fact: the game looks like that because it has no textures. Instead, every polygon is colored individually. Through a recent update did give the terrain textures. Aircraft still don't have them.

Of course that description made me think of Red Baron[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Baron_(1990_video_game)

[plafl]

My mind exploded. I played that game on my first computer, a 286. I think it was the first game I owned, it came in a pack with Silent Hunter I think, maybe Panzer General and another game I don't remember...

[Aethylia]

Interesting what you say about textures, on the main page there are two commercial jets with decals including text on the side. Perhaps they did add them eventually? Or are they just very high poly and still coloured individually?

[galcerte]

No, Soji Yamakawa (the sole developer of this game) never added texture support to vehicles. Those letters you see there are entirely made out of polygons and have their own color, distinct to the rest of the plane's body. Sometimes those polygons are embedded on the plane's mesh, and others they're just floating above the fuselage. The latter technique simplifies the entire plane's topology quite a bit.

[app4soft]

> Or are they just very high poly and still coloured individually?

Yes, all what is flying, moving or is infrastructure object ("aircraft" or "ground" addons) is just fully polygonal 3D models without texture support.

Textures used only for the next objects:

- "scenery" ground surface ("elevated terrain" has texture projected from behind surface texture);

- "clouds";

- "explosion ball" and "explosion smoke";

- "smoke from smoke generators" (which could be enabled for aircraft).

Thats all, and all those textures could be disabled in YSFlight options.

Read «YSFlight Handbook»[0] where all file formats and YSFlight options & internals described in details.

[0] https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?t=8172&p=92286#p92286

[usrusr]

Ever since the days when early geforce displaced late 3dfx I've been wondering how computer graphics might look like if it wasn't all buried under deceptive texturing. Doubling polygon count gives laughably low visual improvement, compared to what you can achieve with clever texture fx along the lines of bump mapping, but modern polygon count capabilities should be so big that difference might well become meaningless again.

[momothereal]

The polygon-based graphics remind me of Need for Madness! I played it in elementary school every day between 2008-2012. No multiplayer until a few years later though.

http://needformadness.com/