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Introducing myself, the forum, and my (not so) brief story of flight simming


Colonel_Novak

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Greetings everyone!

 

My name is Dante, I'm one of the developers of the Fox One action flight sim. Myself and 2 friends form a development team that we call "SkyFox Games", and we're based far across the pond, in the Southern region of Brazil.

First and foremost, we'd like to give our sincere thanks to FlightSim.com and Staff for the article about us, the forum and all the support we've been getting.

 

But I think that I'd start with a bried story of how I got into flight sims, so you guys can rest assured that you are in good hands. ;) Back in the 1980s in Brazil, we got the ZX-Spectrums and early IBM PCs like the XT, but one platform that thrived here was the MSX 8-bit line of computers. I got one for Christmas 1985 or thereabouts, and (already interested in aviation early on) I've tried some flight sims, which were a novelty at the time that no one was able to play properly as they were deemed "too complex" :D (things didn't changed that much in that regard!!!)

 

One of the first ones is the F-16 Fighting Falcon by Ascii Corp, which according to some sources, is the embryonic first trace of the huge Falcon franchise by Spectrum Holobyte (Falcon 4.0, Allied Force, etc). Back in 1986 it looked like this:

 

 

Not too much, but even as a kid I noticed that it tried for a bit of authenticity despite the extreme limitations of the hardware involved: it has 2 radar modes, the weapons loadout match that of F-16A in air-to-air role, had missile warning and ECM system

to jam enemy radar lock, and other features under the hood.

 

Fast forward a few years and I got a Commodore Amiga: this one was paradise for flight sims in comparison, with

as one of the staples of this era. It was a flight sim that hit a sweet spot between realism and sheer fun. Something that proved quite hard to achieve later on.

 

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As many readers may remember, in the 1990s, the flight sim genre had its Golden era, with several full game releases each year: Falcon series, DiD Eurofighter series, Janes F-15, Janes Longbow, Novalogic F-22 series, etc etc. Regarding MS Flight Simulator, I think I had my first 'stable release' with MS FS 95 (had experimented with early Flight Simulator on the Amiga when it was Sublogic, before MS acquisition of the

company). X-Plane was not even in the horizon yet.

 

Then the 2000s came and it them, the so called "crash of the flight sim genre". Several flight sim studios went down (Microprose, DiD, Janes etc). There are only a few surviving studios doing flight sims (there are many people doing expansions and add-ons for the MS FSX platform and such, but the sims themselves(platforms) that receive these expansions can be counted in the fingers of one hand). I have myself a so-called "pet project" of myself for a new flight sim platform, standalone, unrelated to Fox One, but this is a very long story that should be told another day. :)

 

The terrifying difficulty of creating a new sim platform on the PC today from scratch, is the reason that SkyFox Games opted for the "baby steps" philosophy, choosing the mobile platform which resulted in the FoxOne series of action flight sims, which we explained in the interview brilliantly conducted by Dom.

 

But what is an "action flight sim?" I consider myself a very eclectic type of flight simmer: I know simmers that only enjoy civilian ones, some that only enjoy WWII ones, and some that like the fast paced arcade oriented ones (like Ace Combat or War Thunder). I like all types of sims, as long as the game itself has quality and is able to provide an enjoyable experience.

 

As I teacher myself, I interact a lot with people in the late teens and early 20s, students, and I often ask them about flight sims: awareness of flight sims in newer generations is *very rare*. However, one brand is quite well known among the newer generations: "Ace Combat". It's a very successful series of action flight sims, and Fox One is heavily inspired in those games. Yeah, they are games, the parameters are not real, there are no real procedures, but the basics of the combat flight sim genre is present: multiple cameras including a 3d cockpit view with padlock, several mission types like intercept, ground attack, CAS, countermeasures and even wingman comms (able to give orders to them).

 

It did a very good job to bring 'new blood' from the Playstation generation and Millennials to the flight sim genre. I'd not be surprised if many of them acquired a taste for this hobby and climbed to the next level (like DCS Series for example). We are aware that many seasoned simmers could see our FoxOne gameplay videos and think "dumb arcade sim, not realistic" and disregard it right away. But in the baby steps philosophy, the entry level accessible and fast paced action flight sims must exist to serve as the base of the pyramid for the slow-paced, in-depth and complex sims that are in the top. :pilot:

 

To end this long post, I'm leaving here two videos were we show many kids at a games event, playing and enjoying our flight sim when it was just a Beta.Maybe some of them will be future simmers! ;)

 

 

Cheers and have a great week everyone! (and sorry if I got carried away and wrote a wall of text, but feel free to criticise me for doing so, but I'd love to hear your guys early simming experiences as well) ;)

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