
MicroProse Returns with the Mighty Eighth, a 10-Player WWII B-17 Simulator - evo_9
https://www.vrfocus.com/2020/05/microprose-returns-with-the-mighty-eighth-a-10-player-wwii-b-17-simulator/
======
acheron
For anyone interested, this company is unrelated to the original Microprose
from a corporate history perspective, it’s just some people who bought the
name “Microprose” at an IP auction. However they have enlisted Wild Bill
Stealey as some kind of advisor, so they are at least attempting to connect
with the history.

(Wild Bill was one of the two founders of Microprose. The other, Sid Meier,
has his own things going on.)

I’m unclear as to whether this new Microprose has rights to any of the
original Microprose games, either in a “rereleasing the original” or in a
“doing a remake” sense. Obviously TakeTwo has a lot of the rights — either
that they bought directly or that Sid/Firaxis had and they acquired when they
bought out Firaxis — which is how they can release new Civ and XCOM and
Pirates. I think Sid owns Silent Service too, to pick a random example of one
they haven’t done anything with, though I don’t remember for sure.

~~~
egypturnash
Their site sure is leaning on the history of the name they bought; the front
page has a big image of every single Microprose game cover ever. A little
further down there are some big statistics: Games developed, 93. Games
published, 201. Awards received, 53.

Then a history section that starts off with "American video game publisher and
developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982."

And waaaaayyyyyyyyy down in the footer? Contact info in Australia.

Nothing about who runs it now. Nothing about their personal relationship with
Microprose or the general genre of "war-themed games". Nothing about how
delighted they are to be able to revive this much-loved brand and their hopes
to carry it forwards to new glory.

\----

In their subreddit, I did find a link to a Kotaku interview with the CEO of
New Microprose: [https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/05/the-australian-who-
brought...](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/05/the-australian-who-brought-
microprose-back-from-the-dead/) \- he used to run the Australian division of
the folks behind ArmA, including a spin-off designed for military training,
which feels like something he should be _crowing_ about in the "who are we"
section. He does claim to have been profoundly influenced by Original
Microprose's games.

Kotaku asks him about the rights to Original Microprose stuff and his response
is a whole lot of corporatespeak that I parse as "hahaha yeah that sure would
be nice, but nope. Maybe someday if we can cut a deal with the various
companies that own them, don't hold your breath though."

~~~
stronglikedan
I suppose paying good money for IP rights only to _not_ take full advantage of
those rights wouldn't be the wisest business decision in some people's view.

------
hypertexthero
In the meantime, play [IL-2 Sturmovik][1] for an amazing VR experience and in
my opinion the best feeling of flight of any flight simulator.

Planes feel weighty, wind is simulated well, the damage modelling and physics
are minutely detailed, and graphics have recently been updated with deferred
shading and other enhancements.

The latest [map & battle][2] also includes Western favorites like P-51, P-38,
P-47, Typhoon and Spitfire Mk.IX.

Here is a [blog post][3] I wrote about it. More to come, including an imminent
one discussing ideas to make the game more approachable to a general audience
that is more used to War Thunder, and some wishes for the powerful-but-tricky
mission editor.

[1]: [https://il2sturmovik.com/](https://il2sturmovik.com/)

[2]: [https://il2sturmovik.com/store/battle-of-
bodenplatte/](https://il2sturmovik.com/store/battle-of-bodenplatte/)

[3]: [https://hypertexthero.com/il2-flight-
joy/](https://hypertexthero.com/il2-flight-joy/)

------
ndonnellan
My first thought upon seeing the images in the article: that's not a B-17! But
the microprose announcement makes it more clear that the B-24 will be added,
[https://www.microprose.com/games/the-mighty-
eighth#](https://www.microprose.com/games/the-mighty-eighth#)

[edit] historical note: my grandfather was a tailgunner in B-24s.

~~~
burnte
An on-again-off-again Murphy's Romance kind of boy friend of my mother in the
80s was a pilot of a B-24. He flew it limping home full of bullet holes more
than once. Impressive stories.

~~~
zip1234
Some truly crazy things happened. One that I always thought was interesting
was about two B-17s that collided and then they kept flying on together and
even attempted to land: [http://overlord-
wot.blogspot.com/2015/07/piggyback.html](http://overlord-
wot.blogspot.com/2015/07/piggyback.html)

------
duxup
I wonder how much of a sim it will be.

Not sure I'd want to be the bombardier and have to sit for a long time only to
get to stare at my screen and push a button ... once.

Granted I still like the idea, it will be interesting to see how much they
gamify it and how much they do not.

~~~
brudgers
In the late 80's and early 90's real time was a feature of simulations. It's
what made them simulations. And as dull as flying a WWII airplane out and back
sounds...Microprose's Silent Service let you operate a submarine across the
Pacific in real time.

Of course, you could also speed time up if you wanted. But a "base frequency"
of real time means the game play is not centered around "story mode." In
simulation it means the player experiences the simulation at the same pace
real world events might unfold.

The quintessential game of the period might be Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
Which is only a game in the sense that the consequences of a bad day don't
cost very much.

~~~
duxup
OH man I played a TON of Silent Service.

That could be some seriously tense gaming.

I wish they'd re-release that somewhere ... granted I haven't looked. It might
not have aged but I could go for a something like that again, maybe not full
sim... more casual friendly.

~~~
rspicer
You might want to look at Wolfpack, mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It
requires multiplayer, 2-5 players control a German u-boat against Allied
convoys in the Atlantic). It's an interesting combination of sim-lite
(engines, battery and buoyancy are modeled relatively simplistically) and deep
nerd simulation (fire control/torpedo solution) aspects.

~~~
duxup
Thank you.

------
jedberg
In my gap semester between High School and College, I worked at a retail
software store in the mall (yeah, we used to sell software in boxes at the
mall!).

Since I was the only one on staff who didn't have school in the morning, I
always got stuck with the crappy morning shift. Which means I had to clean the
store and restock and reprice all the shelves, and I barely got time with
customers, which was actually the fun part.

But there was one shining star in that morning shift -- that's when all the
reps came in to talk to the manager about which software would be on the prime
shelves, and handed out free copies for the staff so we could play the games
and then talk them up to the customers.

The Microprose rep was always awesome. They would bring a bunch of copies of
the games for us to play and keep, and they had the rights to the coolest
properties (Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, etc).

That job sucked but I think I still have some of those free games in a box
somewhere.

------
exDM69
In a same vein, check out Wolfpack on Steam. It is a 1st person coop submarine
simulator with WWII era Type VIIC U-boats for max 5 players per sub.

I've done a dozen patrols with different 2-4 player crews and it's kinda fun.

------
esemor
When will we get a Tie-Fighter Remake for any VR headset. Battlefront VR
experience showed the viability. I'd fork out 1000€ plus for that game.

~~~
rspicer
I'm not sure how TIE Fighter's mechanics would translate to modern
sensibilities, and I say this as someone who loved the LucasArts games (at
least part of the reason I'm a graphics programmer today!) and currently has,
well, a not-insubstantial investment in flight simulation hardware for modern
titles like DCS/Falcon BMS/various IL-2 things.

House of the Dying Sun
([https://store.steampowered.com/app/283160/House_of_the_Dying...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/283160/House_of_the_Dying_Sun/))
might be the closest thing going I'm aware of on the current market, as an
arcade space fighter game in VR. Doesn't have the same theming, but it's at
least space fighters doing space fighter things in space!

For me, the question of how you'd do a modern TIE Fighter remake becomes "how
do you make assumptions about how space combat works in your game-universe
that line up with the Star Wars films, and also lead to fun gameplay?" Since
the space combat from Star Wars (at least ANH) was basically "Dambusters, in
space!" you can draw lots of inspiration from World War 2-era aviation and
combat. However, given an environment where gravity doesn't play and
everything has ridiculous thrust-to-mass ratios, you lose some of the
interesting bits re: altitude/energy trades and everything just turns into a
"Pull as hard as you can" circle fight in the within-visual-range (WVR) /
basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) space, which is where most of the iconic Star
Wars dogfights-in-space happen. Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat isn't really
a thing in Star Wars, because Rule of Cool indicates that dogfights are cooler
than slinging missiles at each other based on sensors. In the films, the
writers/VFX people created the scenes they wanted by creative fiat -- in a
game you need the mechanics to drive to the experience you want, and that's a
challenge given Star Wars' apparent assumptions about how space combat works.

Of course there's all sorts of interesting assumptions you could make instead,
but then you're just making a space arcade-sim game, not a Star Wars game.

Nope, I've clearly never thought about this. At all. Clearly.

~~~
meheleventyone
Having different energy retention and ‘flight envelope’ would at least let you
make distinguishable ships to fly around. Couple that with the ship power
management, stuff like shielding and so on could end up plenty complicated.
X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Allegiance are two games that did movie space
combat really well. I’d love a more detailed model in a version of either of
those games.

~~~
rspicer
Allegiance! Now there's a name I haven't read in a long time. tried to get
into that community around the time the first Free Allegiance release
happened, but I didn't end up with the right combination of personality and
time to get really involved, and even though I think the gameplay might be
more my jam today, I think the community has largely dried up, and I don't
have nearly the time I used to for gaming. (A few years later, I got DEEP into
ArmA and DCS, which led my career into academic research connected to defense
training and simulation.)

Incidentally, this is another reason to be excited about the second coming of
Microprose -- I'm unclear on the exact relationship, but I believe I read that
some of the same leadership responsible for TitanIM is associated with the new
Microprose.

TitanIM is a defense simulation engine, using Outerra, which is a world-scale
3d+terrain engine. Tech demos of Outerra are around, and there's at least a
few TitanIM videos floating around. I've been out of the sim/training niche
for a couple of years, but I believe Titan is still being marketed as a
competitor to Virtual Battle Space (VBS) which is the ArmA engine, but
expanded and specialized for training, and sold into government with the
associated contract support, etc.

I have no idea if this overlap in leadership means Microprose might have
access to/be using the same tech stack as Titan for the new Microprose games,
but if they are, it could be pretty darn cool.

------
MrGilbert
I have MicroProse always connected to Grand Prix 2 and my childhood. We used
to play that on my friends computer 25 years ago. Turn by turn - first him,
than me, and vice-versa.

This game was so much fun. And the damage model was superb. I really miss
that.

~~~
benologist
They were a big part of my childhood too through their simulators like F-117A,
and also through their published titles. They had a massive breadth of games
like Darklands, X-COM, Transport Tycoon, Ultima, Pirates!, Master of Orion,
Civilization and Colonization.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MicroProse_games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MicroProse_games)

------
ben7799
This is such a great idea for a VR game, minus the time issues and the whole
thing with some of the crew members having nothing to do lots of the time.

It has no issues with needing to walk around, but still has a bunch of
different types of gameplay.

Of course the only thing with all this.. they're trying to make a game that
avoids motion sickness.. but flying in these planes during maneuvers could be
a vomit fest anyway.. so the game still might make some people sick.

Still.. this is the genre that would make me consider getting a VR headset.
I'd echo the call from others for a Tie-Fighter/X-Wing remake with a VR
headset.. that'd be really fun.

~~~
etse
Yeah, isn't VR perfect for space combat? \- Your direction is controlled by
the joystick and not the direction of your vision, so you can sit in one
direction \- You sit in a tight cockpit, so there's no need for fancier VR
that tracks positioning of the headset to the room \- Inertial dampeners and
artificial gravity lessen the need for force feedback (although vibration
units in the headset and joystick would be cool

------
khrbrt
For those interested, check out this training film for B-17 gunners voiced by
Mel Blanc, better known for his role as Bugs Bunny.

[https://youtu.be/vtgAyGa79F8](https://youtu.be/vtgAyGa79F8)

I wonder how accurate they'll keep the shooting mechanics. As a casual player,
I never would have thought to aim three crosshairs to the side of a
Messerschmitt coming side-on.

~~~
TeMPOraL
A "lead indicator" is a standard feature of most games even remotely similar
to a fighter sim. You get a box on the HUD that tells you where to shoot to
guarantee a hit if the target won't change its velocity vector in between you
firing and the projectile reaching it.

I assume the same thing exists on real combat planes now.

(Of course these are next to useless in space combat sims, as in most games
ships maneuver like fighter planes with zero inertia. They're also useless in
real air combat these days, as everything is done with missiles from beyond
visual range. But sure looked nice on Top Gun.)

------
basementcat
Somewhat off topic but the last time I visited the Palm Springs Air Museum,
they had a B-17 Flying Fortress that you could crawl inside! I've never been
so thrilled to bang my head inside a cramped space.

[https://palmspringsairmuseum.org](https://palmspringsairmuseum.org)

------
Blackthorn
Are these accuracy-obsessed simulators an important part of the historical
record?

We can't personally go back in time and experience what it was like to be part
of a bomber crew. But for a museum-sort-of piece, maybe this fits the bill.

~~~
meheleventyone
I’d say not particularly. Most of them are “accuracy obsessed” rather than
accurate. Some of that is purely down to lack of horse power for accurate
models but also in terms of lack of information, lack of complete simulation
and a lot of focus on making a game rather than a simulation.

They’re plenty of fun but not really important in terms of illuminating
anything about the era of flight and combat they reproduce.

------
hudibras
If you have a VR setup and you haven't tried either IL-2 Sturmovik (for WW2)
or DCS World (for modern jets and helicopters), you're missing out. You can
even try out DCS World for free, with two planes.

------
princevegeta89
Man, what a coincidence?!! I was just thinking of random things yesterday, and
my beloved childhood game Transport Tycoon came into my mind for a bit. Then I
immediately recalled Chris Sawyer and his genius, along with his less-known
company MicroProse.

Totally stunned to see this post on here today!

~~~
garaetjjte
There's great open source replacement for Transport Tycoon:
[https://www.openttd.org/](https://www.openttd.org/)

------
geoelectric
F117A Stealth Fighter just showed up on Nintendo Switch of all places, too.

[https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/f-117a-stealth-
fighter...](https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/f-117a-stealth-fighter-
switch/)

------
HugoDaniel
VR seems to be catching on. Is the experience that much better than a normal
screen?

~~~
Pfhreak
For games _specifically designed_ with VR in mind? Yes, the experience is
dramatically different. For many people, the suspension of disbelief is there,
and you absolutely feel present in the space.

Good VR titles force you to move many more muscle groups than keyboard/mouse
or controller games. Your brain stays much more engaged when you have to,
e.g., duck out of the way of an incoming projectile.

For games where VR is tacked on, or not deliberately handled, it can be a
vomit fest. Playing Half Life 2, for instance, is possible in VR but it's very
unpleasant. Playing Half Life Alyx, which was built from the ground up to be a
VR experience, is incredible.

~~~
thanatos519
What's the big deal? I had that suspension of disbelief in Zork I.

~~~
Pfhreak
VR can trigger reflexive behaviors in people, e.g. trying to avoid an incoming
projectile, putting their hands up to protect their face, stepping back from a
high place. Many folks can get deep suspension of disbelief from just text.
Many folks can't. I don't think it's reasonable to say, "Well, _I_ do just
fine with X, so that should be good enough for anyone.", as your comment seems
to be implying.

------
stuff4ben
Wow, seeing the old MicroProse logo immediately transported me back to the
late-80's/early-90's and the cool joysticks (Epyx were the best!) and all of
the fun games I played on my C64 and Amiga.

~~~
smacktoward
I would _love_ to find an Epyx/Atari-style joystick that connects via USB. The
only joysticks anyone makes anymore are big hulking flightsticks, but so many
older games were designed around those smaller joysticks you held in the palm
of your hand. They just don't feel the same with a giant flightstick.

------
mezod
Grand Prix 2 was so epic

------
dTal
I remember the original game had the most haunting, ominous menu music, which
managed to re-contextualize the dreary tedium of its accurate simulation of
daylight bombing raids into a memorial of those who died doing it. It was an
integral part of the sim. I hope the score of this remake is a worthy
successor. Apparently the online versions don't have it, only the CD versions;

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggfdrtpFT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggfdrtpFT0)

This appears to be an exclusive press release to vrfocus.com. However they've
apparently been sent many more images than they have chosen to display, for
some reason. They seem to have modeled an entire B17 interior, and it is
gorgeous:

[https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-02.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-03.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-04.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-05.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-06.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-07.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-08.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-09.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
eighth-10.jpg) [https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-
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might...](https://www.vrfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/the-mighty-
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