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Comment by meheleventyone | Hacker News Reader

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

> 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/

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

The irony is that I'm telling about open-source software flight simulators[0] and comparing them to YSFlight (which is partially open-source) from point of software.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30299850#30302334

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30299850#30301295

> 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.

For crying out loud, since you seem to be being willfully obtuse on this, he suggested a game with a thriving multiplayer experience which is where the original poster found this particular game to be lacking.

> 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.

The relationship to the discussion I've pointed out twice to you. Let's hope a third time helps:

> 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.

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!

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.

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.

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

DCS world is where it's at.

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