TX-Gunslinger
08-19-2006, 03:36 AM
After many very long and grueling work weeks, particularly this one - I dragged myself home on Friday evening for a round of online IL2.
After scanning the servers and not finding exactly what I was looking for, I roamed around teamspeak looking for friends. After a empty logins to TS, I finally located some of my friends on a TS server. They were in the midst of playing a little, non-serious game of tag. You know, where you all take exactly the same aircraft that someone (anyone) calls out and the host selects a map, you split the group and the beat the **** out of each other, like 11 year olds with guns/rockets and bombs.
No rules, no seriousness, no moaning about this plane and that gun. Just pure, unadulterated, adolescent, and interactive entertainment. We started with the P-38L, then went through Gladitors, CR-42's, MC-202's, P-40's, Ki-61's, Me-109E4's and finished the night (all 5 hours or so) dogfighting in A-20's. No ego's, no whining, no worries. JUST FUN! Immelman's, negative manuevers with smoke on, stalls and spins - controlling a Ki-61 so freely I could get it into a tailslide. We all pushed these aircraft to their limits, again and again and again. I remember just how different the spin and stall onsets and their "feeling" were. How beautiful the MC-202 flies in it's regime, how it's cockpit must have taken forever to build and the wonderful peculiarites of its machine guns. All these things that I probably would'nt do or notice in the middle of my usual, serious online dogfighting with aircraft that I consider myself proficient in.
What I left with, other than the great company and removal of my "real-world" worries, was a renewed appreciation for this software and it's ability to entertain and bring folks together.
It's very easy these days to get too caught up in your own performance, your favorite aircraft's performance, what your wingman, squad or yourself, did or did not do - all the things that can take the fun out of things.
As most folks who know me can attest, I tend to gravitate towards serious and focused (sometimes too much so). I'll freely admit that. There are times when I've let the focus of my own performance, the desire to improve or excel, dampen my, well, fun. I laughed and even enjoyed for a change, "vulching", "kill stealing", "mid-air collisions", insane "head-ons' and things that would get you kicked on most servers or banned on others. It even seriously occured to me during this rough-housing, that perhaps what was truely missing from our normally serious on-line server pool was the "Banned Planes Server", "TB3 Dogfight Server" or "25lb Spits vs P11 Server".
The thing that I was struck by after I got off line tonight, was just how much enjoyment many of us may miss in our flight simulation "ruts". As a "flight-simmer", I'm about as hard-core as they come. I'm usually immersed in the technical, historical, training and competitive aspects of our community and this software product.
Now, of course, I still love all my FW's, having flown them through thick and thin, when the guns were great, when they were'nt, when you could'nt see what you were shooting at during the time of the "Blind German muzzle flashes" and "itsi-bitsi" Revi, when the A9 zoomed like a bullet, and when it did'nt. I have my own opinions on historical aircraft performance which differ from others, but I also realize that even 5% of error in an aircraft performance aspect can mean a great difference between the relative performance of two competing planes.
The best thing about tonight was, I never once had to think about any of those issues as my friends and I pounded the living mess out of each other, with randomly selected aircraft laughing and bs'ing all the way.
Having seen several folks whose company I've enjoyed over the years, fade from the scene, many with this dissapointment or that - I want to say to you, that if your bored and/or frustrated with this simulation perhaps you might consider rounding up some friends, putting a private server up (with no stats of course) and play "tag".
Here's to having real stupid fun again, at least every once in a while. Thanks guys, I needed that http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
S~
Gunny
After scanning the servers and not finding exactly what I was looking for, I roamed around teamspeak looking for friends. After a empty logins to TS, I finally located some of my friends on a TS server. They were in the midst of playing a little, non-serious game of tag. You know, where you all take exactly the same aircraft that someone (anyone) calls out and the host selects a map, you split the group and the beat the **** out of each other, like 11 year olds with guns/rockets and bombs.
No rules, no seriousness, no moaning about this plane and that gun. Just pure, unadulterated, adolescent, and interactive entertainment. We started with the P-38L, then went through Gladitors, CR-42's, MC-202's, P-40's, Ki-61's, Me-109E4's and finished the night (all 5 hours or so) dogfighting in A-20's. No ego's, no whining, no worries. JUST FUN! Immelman's, negative manuevers with smoke on, stalls and spins - controlling a Ki-61 so freely I could get it into a tailslide. We all pushed these aircraft to their limits, again and again and again. I remember just how different the spin and stall onsets and their "feeling" were. How beautiful the MC-202 flies in it's regime, how it's cockpit must have taken forever to build and the wonderful peculiarites of its machine guns. All these things that I probably would'nt do or notice in the middle of my usual, serious online dogfighting with aircraft that I consider myself proficient in.
What I left with, other than the great company and removal of my "real-world" worries, was a renewed appreciation for this software and it's ability to entertain and bring folks together.
It's very easy these days to get too caught up in your own performance, your favorite aircraft's performance, what your wingman, squad or yourself, did or did not do - all the things that can take the fun out of things.
As most folks who know me can attest, I tend to gravitate towards serious and focused (sometimes too much so). I'll freely admit that. There are times when I've let the focus of my own performance, the desire to improve or excel, dampen my, well, fun. I laughed and even enjoyed for a change, "vulching", "kill stealing", "mid-air collisions", insane "head-ons' and things that would get you kicked on most servers or banned on others. It even seriously occured to me during this rough-housing, that perhaps what was truely missing from our normally serious on-line server pool was the "Banned Planes Server", "TB3 Dogfight Server" or "25lb Spits vs P11 Server".
The thing that I was struck by after I got off line tonight, was just how much enjoyment many of us may miss in our flight simulation "ruts". As a "flight-simmer", I'm about as hard-core as they come. I'm usually immersed in the technical, historical, training and competitive aspects of our community and this software product.
Now, of course, I still love all my FW's, having flown them through thick and thin, when the guns were great, when they were'nt, when you could'nt see what you were shooting at during the time of the "Blind German muzzle flashes" and "itsi-bitsi" Revi, when the A9 zoomed like a bullet, and when it did'nt. I have my own opinions on historical aircraft performance which differ from others, but I also realize that even 5% of error in an aircraft performance aspect can mean a great difference between the relative performance of two competing planes.
The best thing about tonight was, I never once had to think about any of those issues as my friends and I pounded the living mess out of each other, with randomly selected aircraft laughing and bs'ing all the way.
Having seen several folks whose company I've enjoyed over the years, fade from the scene, many with this dissapointment or that - I want to say to you, that if your bored and/or frustrated with this simulation perhaps you might consider rounding up some friends, putting a private server up (with no stats of course) and play "tag".
Here's to having real stupid fun again, at least every once in a while. Thanks guys, I needed that http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
S~
Gunny