The Hunter

[Spike88]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Preserve that attitude and recall it next time you embark on one of your flight sims. You then can save time by immediately switching off your computer instead of wasting your time with not smelling the kerosin, not doing the radio comms and not feeling the Gs and not doing accurate paper work before and after the flight. What worth is a flight sim without fresh filled vomit bags? Doesn't deserve to be called a sim then.

It's all about running head movies.

I have to disagree with you on that, anyone can hunt, but not everyone can fly a plane, especially larger Commercial airliners.

But yes, he shouldn't be calling you out on your sim.


Edit: Correction, mostly anyone can hunt(the crippled can't), but there are more people who can hunt than who can fly a plane.

[Oberon]

I'm against hunting as a whole, with the exception of the rules that 'if you kill it, you eat it' and 'don't overhunt the area' however I have to disagree a little bit with you there Spike.

You accurately state that not anyone can fly a big commercial airliner, that's true...but in the same way that if you went out on your own with a gun and tried to hunt down a Leopard, I would have you sign your last will and testament before you left.

Sure, there are easy shortcuts in hunting, having the pheasants too fat that the poor sods can barely fly, using a shotgun, having a tracker lead you to the target, but there are also easy aircraft to fly, well easier than a commercial airliner.

Sure, The Hunter can't replicate having your arms up to your elbows in deer guts, or spending two hours plucking and gutting a pheasant, but FSX can't accurately replicate the paperwork, enginework, G forces and other nuances that a real flight can...although to be fair with some of the addons out there it comes damn close.

Now...we just have to work on giving the deer weapons to shoot back with...

[Spike88]

Originally Posted by Oberon

-snip-

Yes, but most people don't hunt Leopard in real life or in hunting simulations.

The Hunter is about hunting deer, not anything that has a chance of fighting back.

My point was more about the fact that it's a whole lot easier to go out and hunt than it is to fly a plane. Even if you're just saying a basic 2 seat-er plane.

First getting a plane is a lot more expensive than getting a gun or a bow. Second the licenses required to hunt is just a small fee(you don't even need one if you're hunting locally, at least in my state), while a pilots licenses is like a drivers license where you need to pass actual tests.

Anyways, the point is that if you wanted to hunt, you could go out and do it easier than you could go out and fly a plane, which is why Plane simulators are kind of a different story compared to Hunting simulators.

Most people who are interested in hunting would be more interested in going out and doing the real thing than playing a simulator. While most people who are interested in flying a plane end up playing simulators because they don't have the means to do it in real life(plus I'm fairly certain more pilots spend time in simulators for leisure than hunters do). This holds true for most other sims too, it's easier to go hunting on your own than it is to work on a farm, drive a semi-truck, drive a bus, drive a train, etc. Most of these have some sort of qualification or limitation that keeps the average Joe from doing so in real life, so simulators let them experience it.

Either way, if someone finds interest in a particular simulator, you shouldn't knock them for it. Even if some of the simulators out there are a bit... niche. We're all on a forum dedicated to submarine simulators for Christ's sake.

Edit:

Originally Posted by RickC Sniper

-snip

Yes, but he can't do so without the help of another person. Although to be fair most quadriplegics can't play computer games either. But where there is a will there is a way.

Technically someone who is missing their legs can sit up in tree platform and wait for a target to come by, but it's rarer for people to have the dedication to do so.

[RickC Sniper]

Originally Posted by Spike88

Edit:

Yes, but he can't do so without the help of another person. Although to be fair most quadriplegics can't play computer games either. But where there is a will there is a way.

Pfffftttt

I'm the quad in the pictures and I sure as hell play computer games. Once loaded and set up, I shoot that rifle on my own.

Most hunters need help hauling the Elk or Moose meat out of the woods so I might argue that they aren't alone either.

[Spike88]

Originally Posted by RickC Sniper

Pfffftttt

I'm the quad in the pictures and I sure as hell play computer games. Once loaded and set up, I shoot that rifle on my own.

Most hunters need help hauling the Elk or Moose meat out of the woods so I might argue that they aren't alone either.

I admire you for what you are capable of doing, but my point is that most handicapped don't, or wont. I should not have used the word can't.

If you're hunting boar, duck, quail, deer the average hunter could hunt by themselves. It's still a lot easier for someone to hunt in real life than it is for someone to fly a plane.

Edit: I personally can't fly a plane(at least I don't think I can) as according to MEPS I have no depth perception(I haven't looked more into it).

I also don't mean any offense, so I hope none is taken.

[RickC Sniper]

Originally Posted by Spike88

I also don't mean any offense, so I hope none is taken.

I'm too old and thick skinned to let things bother me so no offense taken, but you really have a poor perception of the desire of the disabled to get out and DO. The ones who haven't the desire to live life to the nth degree usually waste away, so if you see someone who has survived for a length of time, you would probably be very surprised at the amount of things they've found they CAN do.

Rant
This thread was about a hunting sim. At a website dedicated to subsims I'm really surprised at the negativity about it. No sim is a pure sim. It does what it does as well as it can.
OFFRANT

[Spike88]

Originally Posted by RickC Sniper

I'm too old and thick skinned to let things bother me so no offense taken, but you really have a poor perception of the desire of the disabled to get out and DO.

That's partially because I have a step-grandfather(I don't know if that's how you'd put the term) who constantly goes on about how he's 100% disabled by the government so he can't do this or can't do that, from the fact that most of our homeless around my area are missing limbs, and from the one or two dealings I've had with handicapped customers at a previous job. This doesn't make my perception right, but It's what I see the most.

However, one of my strongest memories on the matter is from about 3-4 years back. I was leaving a home depot when a man hops out of his white pick up truck, grabs his crutch and goes on with his business in home depot despite missing a leg. That scene has stuck with me since then. I've always admired that man.

As for your rant, the only person being negative about The Hunter is Red October. I've personally looked at it ages ago and thought about getting it(I think I came to the conclusion my computer wasn't up to snuff at the time).

My whole point thus far isn't against Hunting Simulators, I just didn't like the analogy between a hunting simulator and a flying simulator.

[Red October1984]

There is a degree of complexity to hunting though. You can't just get a gun, camo, tree stand and go shoot a deer.

You gotta watch the wind, terrain, eating habits, trails, what kind of food is in the area, how the animal avoids predators and how it can detect you. Take normal Whitetail Southern Missouri deer that i'm used to. My hunting ground is a small mountain. If you don't get your wind correct, they'll smell you and you won't see anything all day. If i get my wind wrong, I lay in the rocks at the creek where they cross every night to get to the fields. I bagged this year's deer that way. You gotta watch all the time. They'll walk up out of nowhere.

There is a bit of a learning curve and it looks a lot better on paper than it does in the woods. Ive hunted deer, squirrels, and various birds for years. It is a wonderful sport and i think everyone should get a chance to try it out. Hunting is a great part of America if done correctly. In a game, you don't have to worry about the farmhouse where a man lives with his wife and two kids. This farmhouse happens to be over the horizon or behind the deer somewhere. You have to watch so you don't hit anybody or anything. In a game, there aren't usually other hunters. I had to pass up a deer last year because I saw the bright orange hunter's vest in the area behind the deer. A game won't allow you to shoot other hunters/people. (I have tried in several games just to see if i could.) I have played my fair share of hunting games. I have also shot, tagged, gutted, and eaten several animals of my own. Now, if i was rich, I'd sure as hell jump at the chance to go fly a P-40 over Guadalcanal. I'd jump at the chance to fly in a B-17 over Europe. The fact is, that stuff cost's a whole lotta money that i don't have. So, I settle for a semi-realistic simulator.

If hunting is unavailable to you, by all means play a sim of it. Sailing the waters in a German U-boat is unavailable to us, so we settle for a "close but not quite" representation. If you can't farm, and all you wanna do is farm, by all means, buy the sim.

Simply my opinion. I think computers live for simulation games. I can't get enough of them. I do have some complaints here and there...but overall...I am glad that every once in a while, I can just slap on headphones and pretend to fly a bombing mission over Europe.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Red October1984

There is a degree of complexity to hunting though. You can't just get a gun, camo, tree stand and go shoot a deer.

You gotta watch the wind, terrain, eating habits, trails, what kind of food is in the area, how the animal avoids predators and how it can detect you.

These variables are represented in the sim. They all have a perceivable effect, which can be big or small depending on your behaviour. One could argue whether or not they are correctly matching the real things. I say: they don't. They made it all easier a bit, to not threaten their own customer basis. While the herds of species forming them are of realistic size and composition, they have too many such herds in the given piece of land, I think. But they had to make that concenssion to the gaming market, I assume, most players would not be satisfied like me by just walking around and never see any animal at all.

The species' behavior at different times of the day also is individually tialored and changes. Some species form groups, some even mixed ones, others don'T and stroll as nomands. Others do both. Some species prefer dense woods over the day, and seek open meadows and water only ad dusk and dawn. Some are easy to approach and are not suspecting, others are almost impossible to sneak on wiothout using aids like blinds, lures, and baits. Some species even can turn against you: feral hogs, wild boars, mooses.

Depending on how well you aimed and hit, the animals drops dead in place, or flees, wounded, and you have to trail it. If the wound is severe, it gets only some hundred meters, crisscrossing maybe. If the wound is not so severe - well, two days ago I was spending on hour ingame-time (gametime runs and double speed) to find my first elk I shot. It was almost one and a half kilometer away, still living, but tired, it just stood while I approached. Lesson of the day: for arrows, an elk definitely is too big a prey.

I do not shoot at female deer. That turns the game into a subsim, almost. Avoiding the escorts and not avoiding them while going for the heavy target that might be around. So there you are, sneaking and hiding, being aware of the wind, listening to footsteps and watching out to avoid being detected by the females, which then would flee, alarm the whole group and the antler getting away, too.

I am probbaly sooner or later wil not use scent blockers, special cloathing and blin dsatands, to just make it all more difficult, in parts it is like you say: the functionality you ask for is there, but it is tailored to be too easy, to adress the demands of the game market. But it is like with a lfightsim: you gte what you put into a sim. Plan your flights semiprofessionally, fly realsic routines even if tghe sim doe snot demand them, and the game that FSX by default is suddenly turns into a simulation, and when using a high quality aircraft addon, it turns in to a simnulation with stunning system depth that leaves you clueless at first. Same with many sims, same with The Hunter. The way you approach it definings the experience you get from it.

And do not underestimate the tremendous beauty and sound envrionment that you get! It beats everything I have seen in this rehgard, easily, hands down. On White island, there are forest with so dense underwoods that you are wondering that a PC still can handle that enormnous volume of graphical detail. The chnage of light, mist and fog, sunset and dawning - stunning, simply stunning.

I was in the "German" reserve, trying to go for some red deer. I laid in wait on a hill, looking down on some fields separated with some ditches and bush/treelines. When sun had set, some roes came out from the nearby forest indeed, all females, somewhere a male was calling. I realised that I was too far away, my shooting skill is still low, so breathing still have my sights moving a lot. I started to crawl down, the wind was constantly changing on that day, which had me needing to check it several times, and crisscrossing a bit. While it got darker and darker, I got more and more exposed in the open , crawling from bush to bush, since little embakement lines, maybe 1-2 meters high, blocked vision between the fields, but when climbing on them, would expose my silhouette against the empty sky. I just heared the deer tranmpling around, roaming, and I had no clue what was going on around, and where the boss might be. I finally jumped the time window, and ended up being all alone. But when then cray<wling on a little hill, I saw in my bionos some round, dark spots starting to emerge against the darkness of the forestline on the other side, 200 meters or so away. Wild boars, a while groups, using the protection of almost darkness to check the fields for eatable stuff. I got the buckshot out of the shotgun, and stuffed slugs in. I waited, observed. It was a big family. And finally I got a shot, a good one at around 40 meters. the rest of the group went on stampede, racing as dark, round shadows over the fields and back to the forest. The one I aimed at dropped dead where it was hit.

I play this game carefully, and in a sneaking fashion. I took very long to get there^. And there were surprising twists in the action. And visual beauty all around me, and a great sound environment.

So just nobody should compare this to any other hunting game he happens to know. Ten years ago, I played Deer Hunter 2003, which before Hunter came out as considered the best there is, for years. But it does not compare, it just does not compare. It was simplistic, with smaller places, visually hopelessly inferior. It does not compare.

the Hunter also seems to have a very active and vivid community. The game'S design links every game session automatically to the online leaderboard system and statistics board. Become good enough (will take you much time, promised, for the number's way is a long one), and you will become a known name automatically. Since the game is to be started online exclusively, you cannot avoid being included in this system.

Another detail: stuff you leave in the wilderness, will stay there if you end a session. All equipement like tents and stands, will stay. Sometimes, like any good sim should and must do, things have a abstracted function. Tents for example allow you to not start a new session in one ressort at one of the two lodges only, but at the place where oyu have left your tent last time. Camoping equiment are taking less place in your Rucksack, but allow you to add additional time to your session nwhen yoiu git "tired" (after 10 km or 4 ingame hours), or use one of the twop or three camping sites in the reserves to start from ther next time. And then there are bear barrels. You leave them in a place that looks promising,l and you have to fill them with bait. The bait gets consummed over time, and it will take the animals around several days of real time (!) to realsie the presence of it, to memorize it, and to develope a pattern of frequently chekcing the barrel. You have to check it yourself, too, for the bait gets consummed and can run empty - then you have to fill in new one. Maybe you have also left a high stand or a blind stand close by. So you left a barrel, and four days real time later you start another session, make your way to the place, climb in your stand you left, and hope the place you have choosen for the trap was a good one. Nice, eh?

In Deer Hunter 2003, I recall they even had camera traps.

The five reserves in the game can have a maximum size on either axis of around 6 km. Some are islands.

The game can be tried for free. You have to log an account, and download it (~900 MB). You then have access to one or two reserves, you have one basic rifle and ammo, and the licence to hunt whitetail exclusively. You can already exchange real money for virtual money to buy additional equipment. But for getting access to all reserves, you either by licences for single species in single reserves for 1 day or up to one week, or you buy a membership for up to 1 year. Then you have full access. After that membership ended, you are back to basic visitor mode. But if you buy another emmbership time, you then still have all your bought equipment back, you do not need to buy it again (except items that get consumed: scent sprays, certain special arrows - default ammunition is unlimited and free), but ten shots will take one slot in your rucksack.) Stands and tents and such stay where they are when you left.

I admit the business model of theirs seem to make this an expensive game. But you get quality delivered, really, and you must admit that the constant small cash flow allows them to stay in business and continue ongoing developement, which they do since several years how. There seems to be a constant stream of patches and updates and tweaks and upgrades. Well, people pay 100 dollars these days for SBP, and every 12-18 mouth another 25 for the new upgrade. Compared to that, The Hunter needs several years to reach to that level.

Full access license for all and everything costed me 20 dollars for 6 months. The DVD I got is a Germany-exclusive deal which gave me an equipement costing roughly 20 dollars again (I have not precisely calculated it) - and I do not mean the free equipment you get by default. This is an almost complete package of things, plus half a dozen weapons additional to the default rifle. Needing to buy that in game would cost you an additional 20 dollars or more. So everybody thinking to buy himself into the game: order the DVD via German Amazon. It's a very nice deal within their system.

12 months membership costs I think 45 dollars.

I admit this and the online thing has kept me away for long years. Big mistake of mine. They are also not the only ones doing this model either. iRacing for example plays by comparable rules - and is considered to be the best racing simulation out there, by many.

P.S. the most exotic weapon they have must not be the simple recurve bow, but the civil war style front muzzle loader. Big punch, short reach, miserable precision, one shot only but a long reloading procedure, and plenty of smoke hindering your sight for seconds.

[Aktungbby]

No mongol bows are available in the strong version?

[RickC Sniper]

Originally Posted by Spike88

Edit: Correction, mostly anyone can hunt(the crippled can't), but there are more people who can hunt than who can fly a plane.

Hmmmm

Electric trigger operated by a sip on the straw\tube. Quadriplegic shooting prairie dogs.
Crippled?
Yes.
Deadly?
Yes!!!!




Yeah, yeah, not walking around in the woods stalking, but then........they are 400-500 yard shots!!


The sim is for days when you cannot get out there and do it. The most avid flight sim player I know happens to be an A-10 combat pilot.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by RickC Sniper

Hmmmm

Electric trigger operated by a sip on the straw\tube. Quadriplegic shooting prairie dogs.
Crippled?
Yes.
Deadly?
Yes!!!!

<photos>

Yeah, yeah, not walking around in the woods stalking, but then........they are 400-500 yard shots!!


The sim is for days when you cannot get out there and do it. The most avid flight sim player I know happens to be an A-10 combat pilot.

Great photos, my friend. Is the young man behind you one of your's?

[RickC Sniper]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Great photos, my friend. Is the young man behind you one of your's?

Yes, my older son, Eric. Would you believe 40 years old now?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by RickC Sniper

You are in urgent need to link that setup with a tablet with the Leopard's virtual gunner's seat from SBP!

The sim is for days when you cannot get out there and do it.

That. Or somethign that you will never try in real life at all. Like flying an airliner. Much of the virtual possibilities of modern internet is for that, too. For example Google's museum project (kind of streetview inside some of the world'S most famous galleries).

---

I admit that concerning reality I share Oberon's attitude: hunting only if you eat it yourself and avoid overhunting. I would enjoy the hunt itself - but I would use a camera rifle only. The moment I have ensured that the prey got defeated and the hunting process was successful, the deal is done for me. I do need neither the kill nor the trophy on the wall. And the picture only to silence those who do not believe that I got there. But in principle I do not even need the photo. I have killed just once in my life, a straying dog near our camp in the desert which looked sick, and my concern was that it would bite while we are sleeping, giving us some disease (in that part of the world sick dogs are a concern for sure). Did feel neither triumph nor pity, but did what I think needed to be done. Killing a prey is not what I am about, I'd do it only if needing to eat. For me, it'S the hunt itself - exclusively.

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I admit that concerning reality I share Oberon's attitude: hunting only if you eat it yourself and avoid overhunting. I would enjoy the hunt itself - but I would use a camera rifle only. The moment I have ensured that the prey got defeated and the hunting process was successful, the deal is done for me. I do need neither the kill nor the trophy on the wall. And the picture only to silence those who do not believe that I got there. But in principle I do not even need the photo. I have killed just once in my life, a straying dog near our camp in the desert which looked sick, and my concern was that it would bite while we are sleeping, giving us some disease (in that part of the world sick dogs are a concern for sure). Did feel neither triumph nor pity, but did what I think needed to be done. Killing a prey is not what I am about, I'd do it only if needing to eat. For me, it'S the hunt itself - exclusively.

I would expect a European to think like that. No offense, but hunting is also an American tradition (it's how we control our animal population) and I think there will always be good hunters here in the MidWest. You guys in Europe have had enough war and plague in Europe. I couldn't expect that all of you are armed and shoot animals in your free time.