Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Anybody who’s been feeling the recent drought of serious flight sims, anybody who’s been eagerly anticipating the next project from Russian aviation engineer / game designer / genius Oleg Maddox, anybody who’s been thinking fondly of the days when flight sims came with thick manuals, take a deep breath. Your troubles are over. IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover will be released on the 25th of March, and the press release has even got me excited, and I’ve never been into a flight sim in my life. Tell you what, though- I reckon I’ll be playing this.
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[This interview took place in a Manchester Hotel Bar, with Oleg chain-smoking and chuckling to himself all the while. He was also agreeably outspoken against most Flight Sims - usually while doing that chuckle - in a way which not many developers are about their peers. I have to applaud. This interview originally appeared in PC Format magazine, in the lead up to Pacific Fighters]

Assuming we put aside all the ones about giant harems and chocolate syrup, it’s arguable that the flight was man’s oldest fantasy. It took thousands of years to achieve, following the efforts of some of humanity’s greatest minds. Then, for some, came the next challenge: successfully making something which offered a convincing facsimile of real flight. “It was my dream to make Flight Sims from the very beginning,” says the softly-spoken Oleg Maddox, whose English is far better than my Russian, “In 1993 though… the power of the PC just wasn’t enough. It was possible to make some little thing like Wing Commander, for example… but that’s not really a flight sim, because there’s no real physics and no real simulation of the movements.”
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