I was looking at Star Citizen recently and something caught my attention.
Players can just walk normally inside a spaceship, even when the ship is flying in space.
My first reaction was: where does the gravity come from?
Of course, Star Citizen has an explanation for this. The ships use artificial gravity. It is fictional technology, but at least the game builds a system and some lore around it to make it believable.
And that actually made me think about War Thunder.
Star Citizen has to invent technology to make fictional spaceships feel believable.
War Thunder has a completely different advantage.
Most of the vehicles in War Thunder actually existed.
Their engine sounds existed. Their tracks, suspension, transmissions, exhaust, turret mechanisms, controls and handling characteristics all existed in the real world.
So War Thunder does not really need to invent realism. A huge amount of it is already there in reality.
It just needs to reproduce more of it.
Maybe realism in a game is not simply about whether something is 100% physically realistic.
What matters is whether the machine and the world feel believable when you interact with them.
Star Citizen has to create fictional details to make fictional machines believable.
War Thunder already has real machines to work from.
That is why I think improving engine sounds, suspension behavior, track noises, water effects, mud, exhaust, vehicle controls and other small mechanical details could be just as important as adding more vehicles.
Sometimes these small things are exactly what make a vehicle feel alive.
What do you think?
Should War Thunder put more development time into improving the experience of operating existing vehicles, instead of mainly focusing on adding new ones?