BMS Community size: just how big is our community anyways?
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VR devices spreading could be key to attract new players.
Flight sims could benefit from this devices cause immersion become almost real.Once VR prices will go lower and considering BMS as lot less hardware-requiring software , you will have a boom.
HUD display is still an issue for VR I believe
MFD resolution as well
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VR could be the future, probably even is, but it will take a few years untill they are avaliable for common folk, and will work properly, without giving you a headache after a few minutes. I am really looking forward to them… had the pleasure to use some, and it was a pretty cool experience.
On the other hand… can you imagine having a home made pit, VR googles AND direct hand movement in the game ? Sure you would have to sell a kidney for that kind of stuff but i mean… you have two, right ?!
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Well for people that want military sims they have only two choices
As you are questioning abut BMS dying soon , I just say that we will not and might bring back the DCS players that have shamingly moves from BMS
errr where did I questioned that Mav?
Please don’t put words in my mouth.
I didn’t even imply such thing. You said look at the welcome and I said I believe they are more than what is depicted in the welcome threads.
I don’t imply that stopping bms means they go to dcs.
Example I stopped bms but I don’t fly anything else, I just develop for bms theaters and in general.
Others just stop cause of family, or work, or interest, or free time, or zilion other reasons.Is dcs haunting u or u see it in a manner of competition?
if yes u shouldn’t.
BMS is fine, competition is just not there.
It’s a different path.
One is religion the other is money. -
You guys need to at the stats for Falcon 4.0 sales per year believe me FALCON is doing juuuuuuuust fine.
They get their updates for free from BMS (damn near criminal but thank god we get it).
Basically Falcon4.0 on steam alone is making about a mil a year in sales alone. So the player base is there.
Some things that would help a bigger community is if the game had an internal way of connecting say like BMS hosted official server for dogfights that had leaderboards at different simulation levels. BVR WVR TE competitions.
You know like E-Sports. You could even do cool things like the best E-Sports team versus the real thing as a promotion.I have though about starting something like this but as I research it really needs to be done in game out of game ways dont catch on enough to drive any sponsors or business. Too much friction.
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Perhaps some food for thought.
I’m 38, and I began playing sims when I was a teenager. I bought my first own computer in 1998 with my first wage mainly to play combat sims (no internet where I lived anyway). And I remember what combat sims were at the time. But I can’t remember what the dedication of teenagers toward hardcore sims was at the time, because there simply was no “hardcore” combat sim in the 90’s. If a game similar to the 1998 Falcon 4.0 was released now, most people here would mock it as pitifully softcore. Even the 2005 Falcon 4.0 Allied Force would be considered midcore at best. -
Even the 2005 Falcon 4.0 Allied Force would be considered midcore at best.
I always considered Allied Farce softcore compared to openfalcon ….
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I know.
And Open Falcon did set a highter standard. -
When I was a young boy, all passengers in the plane where clapping their hands on touch down.
Now I am the only one clapping - the others open their belts and bag hatches instantly on the first squeek.The difference of a
non-mainstream market to a non-mainstream part of a market
is not comparable with the difference of a
mainstream market to a non-mainstream part of a marketdeclaration:
non-mainstream market: Gamers (… - 2005)
non-mainstream part market: FlightSimGamers
mainstream market: CandyCrush Gamers (2005 - 2029)Simply put - if you don’t like candycrush - mask it away
Edit: btw. tbh I play mainstream games too - simply because I don’t launch falcon if I only have an hour
Edit 2: But no CandyCrush! -
…even more non-mainstream - people who know and honor the difference between a simulation and a game.
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There is r/hoggit, the largest subreddit for DCS/BMS with 12,356 subscribers. A few hundred are active anytime. While the description says the subreddit is for DCS/BMS, most of the topics are about DCS as the name implies. There also is r/falconbms subreddit with 1,858 subscribers, which is also linked from hoggit page.
r/flight sim which is mainly for FSX/P3D/XP but okay to post about any flight sim has 27,911 subscribers. r/battleofstalingrad which is for IL-2BoX series has 1470 of members.
I often saw someone there tried BMS but gave up setting up their joystick. Thankfully, after I released “Alternative Launcher”, everytime someone posts “I would like to start BMS” other guys recommend the app.
What I now see so often is “I loved playing BMS but after I experience VR I can’t go back to a flight sim without it” posts. Like BMS 4.33 trailer starts with so many posts of questioning “When will be 4.34?”, I also can make “I can’t fly without VR” version of that intro from r/hoggit, or even from r/falconbms.
At Twitter, I sometimes search for Japanese account tweeting about DCS or BMS. I can find someone constantly playing DCS so many, I assume about a hundred there. I am not sure.
For constant BMS player, as long as I find…I can count all of them, it’s 7. There may be someone I don’t know. If including someone not playing BMS constantly but have an experience of touching it, maybe it is about 20-30…I assume.
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The increase of the BMS community has been clear and is a consequence of the release of first BMS 4.32 but more obviously BMS 4.33
that was in novembre 2015, 2 and a half year agoNowadays the community already started to decay.
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Lorik Eolmin and Unleashed Code’s BMS video had a good reputation at hoggit. Nice MP session video may catch up attention of non-active BMS user constantly.
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Decay is natural for games on release cycles of years.
BMS release cycles are slow and when they release 4.34 if the enhancements are significant enough than you will see a larger rise again.Again go look at the steam sales figures.
The combat hard core people are usually sticking around in BMS. SOme are doing both.
Like I have previously said all you need is better graphics and get better avionics on F-18 F-15 and a few of the other popular foreign planes and anyone that is interested in combat will be spending the majority of their time in BMS.
Especially since BMS caters to those who can not afford to upgrade their PC’s.Regarding DCS its not a good comparison. BMS is 100% combat based focused. In depth sim on only one plane at the moment.
DCS can be a lot of different things due to the modular nature of the sim.
That is a double edged sword because while DCS has the ability to add more planes by third parties it loses its coherency in combat with different simed packages and how weapons work etc…When you want a coherent package where things work properly together you dont want that much modularity. DCS is the shiny new toy for alot of people right now especially with 2.5 release just a month ago.
But I see new BMSers all the time as well more DCS players see other people playing BMS so the try it out and alot of crossover.
Having more people playing flight sims is never a bad thing wether its BMS or others.
BMS is already the best coherent combat sim available commercially and with faster continuous improvements really there is no parallel.
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So, my generation has the attention span of a goldfish, is egocentric, and dumb as bread left to mold. Do you want these players ? No. You want the dedicated ones. Those that invest time to learn how to fly this monstrosity.
I think that’s a quote from Socrates, the ancient greek philosopher, no? Let me see:
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” – Socrates
Yep, close enough
Thanks for sharing your inside view from a game developer’s perspective. I can well imagine it must be hard trying to survive and finding the next big “blockbuster” title that makes everyone in the company rich.
Compared to BMS, where people devote their free time and passion to improve the code, the models, the theaters and the mods, train new pilots, design missions and so on to share them with the community, it’s a completely different world.
“The best things in life are free” as the saying goes, and that’s not only apparently true for love & friendship, but also for operating systems and (simulation) software (I’m biased because I’ve been mostly lucky and sometimes smart enough to make a decent living off the latter for over 25 years now).
I’d say let’s not give up hope on the next generation just yet. Growth isn’t everything, sometimes stability is preferable. I think it was Mower(?) who once wrote “I love how this sim vets itself”
All the best, Uwe
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I think it was Mower(?) who once wrote “I love how this sim vets itself”
Ah ? I thought it was Socrates too.
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I wonder how many are missing the point? I’m sure BMS Devs know who their market is, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the work they do. They make no money from it, and they themselves are striving for an F-16 sim that is as close as can be. We are just VERY fortunate that they share it with us - after all, they don’t have to.
I don’t think BMS needs to add more planes at the level of the current viper to stay valid. It is an F-16 sim and always has been since day one. There is still a lot more to know about the viper than can be modelled, and I’d personally rather see BMS continue down the path it is already on.
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Agreed, i can´t speak for every dev team, and i am not fond of casual games, yet… i actively work with them, work ON them… but that is the difference between a job, and a hobby, isn´t it ? You get paid for it, and it takes your freedom away, quite much. Here, there is no limit as to what the community can, or can not do. If you take it as a hobby, and work on it purely for the love of the project, and dedication… that is a win. I myself have a pitch for a game and can see the gigantic gap between what i have to do, and what i love to do. As long as it stays a hobby, something you love… untill then there is no rest for the wicked, no end to a project (preferably, since reaching a point of perfection might no be possible at all…) and can be expanded upon, untill you reach the point where the source will no longer be compatible and break down.
BMS should stay a Viper sim, sure its cool to fly other frames but… i agree that the hearth is the F-16 and it should stay like this. But opinions might be different, and if there are dedicated people that want to add a pitch perfect F-15 ? Hell, do it.
Esports, competitions, leaderboards… not my cup of coffe. I would much rather help my teammates and cooperate than grab kills, do crazy “lone-wolf” actions and such. But sure, there might be players that get a kick from being the “Ace of the Base”.
I still don´t get what people mean by the graphics, they look darn good to me… might be because i don´t play as much modern games like i used to, or just my simple minimalistic style that i prefer… it serves its purpose.
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…even more non-mainstream - people who know and honor the difference between a simulation and a game.
Well lets group sim-games together, otherwise comparing one simulator against the whole mainstream gamingscene would be even more hilarious
And don’t let us be too picky about the term “Sim” because that would open a new (and endless) discussion
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Yes if they can make it even more realistic and keep adding things just to the viper like more detailed Jamming I would love that.
More detailed modeling on the sam systems and AI would be great too.
I would be very happy the more realistic it gets.Regarding E-Sports being all about being ace of base is not correct at all.
Team E-Sports is HUGE. And with the complexity of this sim would be pretty bad ass to set up some competitions that require teamwork.
Examples: Something like a offensive deffensive mode.
Each team takes turns running a complex mission that requires planning.
Just ideas not necessarily for the bms game but something we could organize outside of it.Getting off topic. I can concede that we wont need to get other detailed airframes if the Viper is getting closer and closer to reallife as the title is Falcon.
Hopefully we will just keep creeping up and up to gettting closer to real life on the weapon systems and viper avionics. Electronic warfare campaign AI… these things slowly but surely can keep BMS relevant for a long long long time to come. -
@Red:
The increase of the BMS community has been clear and is a consequence of the release of first BMS 4.32 but more obviously BMS 4.33
that was in novembre 2015, 2 and a half year agoNowadays the community already started to decay.
As Shisabandit wrote, it’s quite natural. We get more Falcon players when a “big” version is released, and fewer players when the last big release happened 2 or 3 years ago. It’s been the natural cycle for as far as I can remember, i.e. the past 14 years.
I don’t worry anyway : there are enough Falcon players around to get fun, and that’s what really matters.