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Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming news
A is for Altfuture's abject apology. From the tone of Altfuture's last announcement you'd think unconventional, timetable-shunning train sim Derail Valley had run over the last northern hairy-nosed wombat or trumped during an audience with the Queen. Jan 18's “very bad” news turned out to be news of a piffling seven-day release delay. The rescheduled ribbon-cutting should happen today. Expect some thoughts on the sim's 200km…
Feature: 2017's most unusual flight simulator
The dystopia at the heart of singular RPG Way of Defector is a truly grim place. It's a country where you can be imprisoned or killed for criticising the government or for being related to someone who has criticised the government. A land where the state routinely uses detention without trial, torture, and sexual violence against the people, and many go to bed hungry every night.…
Feature: Sim and wargaming news
Crisis! Geoff, the retired sailmaker who usually stitches together FP news stories, phoned in sick this morning (housemaid's knee). We've experimented with alternative fastenings - velcro, staples, bulldog clips, ant-head sutures... - but none of them are strong and flexible enough to join this week's selection of topical sim and strategy snippets. Unless Irma's ongoing porridge experiments prove successful, I fear today's column will have…
Feature: Sim and wargaming news
I remember the days when you could get a hundredweight of hand-picked sim and wargaming news delivered to your door by a man in a tailcoat and a velvet top hat for sixpence. Now look at us. You, peering into your digilink screen like a person who's dropped their monocle into a bowl of consommé. Me, stripped to the waist in a bomb-damaged Pat Garrett,…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
A flurry of local airshows and BoB commemorative events meant Spitfires and Hurricanes were regular visitors to my corner of Southern England this summer. Seeing six Messerschmitt maulers fly over in formation on September 15 really should have been my aviation highlight of the season, but that accolade actually goes to an encounter a few days earlier when, tramping along a Wiltshire footpath, I was repeatedly buzzed…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
No man is a Britten-Norman Islander entire of itself; Every Manston is a piece of the continent, a part of the main plane; If a CLOD be washed away by the Sea Fury, Eurofighter is the less, as Wellington as if a promontory were, as Wellington as any manor of thy little friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes Me 262, because…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
Tim's pre-FP checks Is it Friday morning? Is coffee pot within reach? Are biros arranged according to ink content? Are members of Perry Miniatures SAS squad a) upright and b) equidistant from each other? Do all visible D6s display odd numbers? Has photo of Neville Duke been saluted? Yes? COMMENCE WRITING
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
Forestry was one of the industries the Industrial Revolution forgot. The tools used by a British forestry worker at the start of the Twentieth Century would have been instantly recognizable to a forestry worker of 1700. It would be another two decades before the oil dripping, smoke breathing dragon of progress appeared in the UK's pine stands and oak woods. First came the lumbering tractor, then…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
Are you 'feature complete' yet? Have you written that novel, made that parachute jump, found that special someone? By my calculations my own personal beta test still has about 250 years left to run. Circa 2264 the handful of people that backed my 1970 Kickstarter campaign will get an email thanking them for their patience. The email will include the following changelog. New in Version…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
Today's column bestrides Europe like an unusually colossal colossus. Quite why an unusually colossal colossus would be standing with one foot on Fort William, Scotland and the other on Volgograd, Russia is, frankly, anybody's guess. He could be doing his pre-breakfast callisthenics. He could be admiring the Northern Lights. He might have got a sudden urge to urinate on Finland or Algeria. There's just no…
Feature: Early Access Ascension
Ever since witnessing an unfortunate accident involving a home-built Fieseler Storch and a cement works chimney, I've made it a rule never to go aloft in incomplete flying machines. When it comes to incomplete flying machine simulations however, I'm a little less Beardmore Inflexible. 777 Studios and 1C Game Studios claim IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad is now 70% finished. In an effort to find out…
IL-2 Sturmovik blew me away at Gamescom last year. With only a couple of weeks until I fly out to Cologne again, I'm enthusiastic about the prospect of another unexpected champion of gaming emerging from a cloudbank and peppering me with excitement. A year has passed since I took to the skies and development has continued at a steady rate. New planes are appearing and…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
“Another helping of Enigma machine gibberish from Rock, Paper, Shotgun's resident sim gimp.” The Coventry Herald “As usual, Stone switches subjects with the gracefulness of a derailing freight train.” The Aldershot Bugle “The last time I saw that many commas that close together, I was visiting the National Museum of Printing.” Caravanning Today “After reading this week's pieces on IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad and BOMB, the fatwā calls…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
When a Flare Path Friday falls on November 29, the 333rd day of the year, it's traditional for all the stories to have a topical tripartite slant. Back in 2002 that meant detailed scrutiny of a just released Fokker Dr.I add-on for MSFS, coverage of Bronze Tide, a WIP Battle of Arginusae wargame, and an interview with Trilobyte Interactive, the makers of Lucy Lyme, a Spelunky…
Feature: A Rift In The Sky
I didn’t believe in the Oculus Rift. Not in the way that I don’t believe in Derek Acorah, the phantom of credibility, but in the way that I don’t believe in matter transporters or eating only one biscuit. The Rift had seemed like an impossible dream, a product of improbable technology and the overly forgiving impressions of excited humans. Now I believe and all it…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
Flare Path knows Eastern Europe like the Baku of his hand. In 2011 he hiked the length of the old Iron Curtain. In 2012 he unicycled the entire Bordurian coastal path. This year he's planning to fly to Moscow, hire a C-65, and do a tour of all of the grads - Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Svetlograd, Retrograd, Upgrad, Downgrad, Biodegrad etc. He's particularly looking forward to…
I would have written this post a great deal more quickly but I accidentally got Stoned while doing a quick spot of research. Fear not - nobody's been pelting me with rocks and I haven't decided that the only way to write about flight sims is in a herbal haze. I did make the mistake of checking the writings of Tim Stone in historical Flare…
