Dear Pilots!
Today we proudly present our first multi-seat and multi-engine aircraft in Rise of Flight; introducing the Handley Page O/400 bomber! We have worked hard to make this plane available to you for the Holidays. To meet our goals we had to create several new technologies for ROF, mate this new tech with the bomber, tune it, test it and then tune some more. We also had to make it available for online play, create a working bombsight, model gunner stations and solve many more technical challenges all in record time. It’s not just a new large plane for ROF, but a very detailed replica of an iconic warplane and a new way to experience Rise of Flight. We hope you will like it.
This aircraft is very interesting to fly as it is quite complex and requires skill. Taking off with maximum fuel and bomb loads requires a lengthy takeoff run and leaves the ground very unwillingly. Seeing these beasts flying in a formation is reminiscent of migrating whales. It’s fun to coordinate with escort fighters who are trying to protect you. And it’s a blast to try and repel attacking fighters, especially due to our modeling of the gunner positions and turrets.
Typically, a gunner’s head is “nailed” to the top of the machine gun and moves together with the gun staying in-line with the gun sight. Our gunners, both human and A.I. controlled were created to mimic the restrictions of the human body and they cannot exceed known physical limits. The question during development became; how do you model the operation of a nose turret that has a complex system of rotation and known limits of rotational speed with gears and interesting bungee apparatuses. In past combat simulations, machine guns and turrets we modeled with zero weight and no inertia. The result was immediate movement and ultra precise aiming with your mouse like a FPS shooter. This is not very realistic. So we have attempted to model the machine gun stations with weight and inertia along with an accurate reconstruction of the turret’s behavior and mechanisms. In reality, aiming such a weapon was no picnic and many adjustments had to be made to hit a target, often unsuccessfully. To model the gunner’s positions in any other way would, in our opinion, not be an accurate representation of aerial combat for the time period. This means the turrets and guns move in accordance to their construction and design and you should be able to aim with the speed and accuracy of the average WWI gunner. However, for those that want to have a perfectly sighted eye position, we are preparing a special camera fixed in a special way which will be made available sometime after version 1.016 is released. We did not have enough time to include it in this update. Some of you may not like our gunner solution, but since we see so many requests to make things as real as possible we have tried to do just that. Although, some compromises are always necessary to make a functioning product. Our computers put limits on what we can build at times.
Assuming you have purchased the Handley Page bomber, you can fly as a gunner in online missions as well as perform the pilot and bombardier duties. We will also make gunner positions available to users of the ROF Demo, but only if the owner of the plane allows human gunners to take those positions. Also, you can leave a gunner position during online play and if you do, someone else can take your place during the flight. This means new crew members can be swapped in and out quickly. In addition, if your predecessor has expended ammunition, his or her ammo count will then be passed along to you when you join the plane mid-mission. To hit a maneuvering fighter takes great skill and practice even at the low flying speeds of WWI. A pilot can play a large role in this process. During defensive operations, pilots often worked together to make sure there gunners could act in concert and not let fighters get too close to their vulnerable zones. A good pilot should learn how to control his or her plane in a way that helps the gunner hit the target. A.I. gunners will stop firing at sudden strong maneuvers or steep angles that place the target out of the firing solution.
Separate engine controls have been modeled for each engine which helps when driving at airfields and for preventing engine damage. We have tried to make it convenient for everyone; for those that have devices with additional axis for engine control and for those who have only a single axis for engine control. We offer an opportunity to choose a current engine or all engines. I have found this solution to work quite well on my single throttle axis controller. We hope you will too.
To help demonstrate some of what I have described here in this blog, please check out this video and of course these features will be available to you soon for your own enjoyment.
For those that have already decided that you want to buy this beautiful bomber, we have decided to take Pre-Orders for the first time with a little discount to save you some money. The Pre-Order price is $11.99 and the regular price will be $14.99. After you update ROF to ver. 1.016 simply log in online to sync your account and your bomber will be waiting for you. We plan to release the HP O/400 in approximately two weeks time.
Next week I will talk about how to use the bombsight along with a video showing the bombsight in action.