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.
I would love to see any data or research that's been done on this.
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...
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).
But this is thread about YSFlight, not about IL2: Sturmovik.
You may create new thread to discuss your favorite flight sim.
You seem to be taking this as a slight on YSFlight which is not the intention and perhaps a bit overly defensive.
Where 'meheleventyone' droped IL2:Sturmovik in actual thread just as "alternative game to play" — there is nothing about its software development described here and IL2:Sturmovik is not in whole or even in part open-source app.[1]
Lets not manipulate in the middle here.
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.
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.
> 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.
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!
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.
Of course that description made me think of Red Baron[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Baron_(1990_video_game)
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
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.