SFJackBauer

Yes EtherealN I know about Nevada. We had a taste of it during the beta and even though its nice, its also a training site with a limited size. I'm referring to large, full-scale theaters. Didn't knew about the 'Stan and Manchuria. Where can we get more info about the state of those?

I see that ED is putting a tremendous effort on bringing new planes, with the announcement of a "popular american fixed-wing aircraft" down the road. But what about new theaters? Are there any plans on it? We are stuck in Black Sea for what, 16 years (since Flanker 1.0), and I would even be ready to shell out some bucks to get a new one.

My bets: DCS: Cub DCS: DC3 DCS: UAV

I have to say that Outerra does not use cheap tricks in the sense that they are not cheap, combining everything like a planetary elevation model, realistic atmosphere lightning, landclass information that gives the right texture for the right altitude at a certain part of the globe, splines for roads, and making everything run at interactive speeds is not an easy task for a bunch of developers, let alone for a single guy (or two?) like it is at Outerra.

Good for checking your hairdo and makeup before (or during) the mission.

To the OP and all others who think "Why DCS can't have top notch graphics" or "why DCS can't have multi-threading" or something along these lines. The things being discussed here are, in fact, subject of study for a large number of computer scientists. Do the people who use words like "offloading to GPU" or "multithreading" actually do understand what those words mean, or ever picked some book on the subject or even fired up a development environment and tried do a prototype of these concepts? Because it all sounds like ED "dont want to do" or "do not have resources to do", when actually lots of things are in fact technical barriers that need to be overcomed. And these barriers are not solved by adding workforce... its the "adding mothers doesn't make the baby come earlier" problem. Again - HAWX is pretty because a number of factors: - Low terrain complexity - Small worlds - Unsophisticated AI / flight dynamics / weapons modeling Even with the largest bugdet of the world (Microsoft?) you can't have everything at once. Perhaps all those developers are wrong and the general public is right... So what you would trade-off for that graphical fidelity in DCS? Either that or wait a couple of years until the Moore's Law give a "brute force" solution.

First, FSX can look as good as that if you are using photoreal terrain and enhanced terrain meshes: But then where are the working road and rail networks, cities, forests, powerlines, bridges, tunnels etc. that actually are part of landscape also? You can't just paste those things over a photo and get away with it, you will have issues of seams, alignment, shadows, clouds, time-of-day when photo was taken etc. Thats why you have both camps for FSX: companies doing high resolution photo-terrain, with the drawback of not having much detailed terrain features (good for mountain areas), and companies doing proceduraly-generated terrain (e.g. using FSX tiling feature) where you can use your own textures with roads, cities, trees aligned to them (check GEX, OrbX). Obviously I'm talking about creating scenery for a large chunk of terrain. I don't know how big are HAWX "worlds", but I bet they are much smaller than even DCS Caucasus, which by itself is much smaller than FSX "entire globe". ALSO, HAWX developers do pretty graphics because thats the only thing they can do. If they had to add the flight model, AI, visibility range, ground units and weapons modeling etc that DCS have, they would have 5 years of development ahead to get to DCS level.

Correct!

Nope it doesn't silence her, quite the contrary... oh wait, you talking about the sim?

Dang some1! Just had to dig some old archives to remember the good days when I had more time to fly... I've selected a few shots to post here.

How do you know it is much more taxing? Feeling? Do you have any technical backing to this? Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but still there are crap opinions :P Look at the ATC, visibility range, weather system, map size/airport database, aircraft variety on VANILLA FSX and see if there are any simulator currently in the market rivalling it. Closest seems X-Plane, which given its still under development, sooner or later will catch up/surpass. DCS is military-focused, period. On top of that, it is airframe-focused. Slowly some features are being added that improve the environment, but still is a long-way to go, which also I believe given enough time they will arrive fully. And BTW, FSX and ARMA2 are some of the current heavy-CPU titles in the market that better make use of multi-core processors, given how HARD it is to program for it.

Surprised no one mentioned the "Sayeret Matkal" (http://www.shadowspear.com/israel-special-operations/sayeret-matkal.html) - IMHO one of the units that saw more action in the 2nd half of 20th century.

And how many FPS are we talking about exactly? Because I have a rig with slightly more punch than yours, yet I can only fly reasonably (e.g. no stutters, smooth FPS averaging 40) if I turn off lots of stuff. And I mean in missions, not in an empty cold world :)

Its all largely speculation, I agree, but honestly I think its not too far off. Look at how it is constructed, two engines with straight ducts, EO dome right in front of the canopy, grilles, a large radome... All the little things contribute to RCS, even panels alignment etc.

Why would the US upgrade their F-16s, while the new toys are coming? (F-22, F-35). Also the comparatively small F-16 cooling and space compared to other alternatives limit current-generation AESA use on it. Although your next paragraph kinda reveals it, I'm not so sure what comparison you want to do: F-16 AESA vs F/A-18 Pulse-Doppler or F-16 Pulse-Doppler vs F/A-18 Pulse-Doppler? I don't have much mathematical ability, but given 40 sqm is a rather large RCS, I would not be surprised. But: One guy posted some calculations on F-16.net: Source

First, given the English language first appeared on England and is also the primary language of 35 countries and territories around the world, its not terribly obvious that you are from U.S. just because you speak it. Second, look at my written english and take a guess of where I'm coming from. If you think its from any english-speaking country, you will be very mistaken.

I have thought about missions also but since I don't have the time to put it all together... I'll share with you some views on subject. Good MP missions to me require teamwork, period. If its a mission you could do reasonably well alone, then its not fun to me. For example, your airbase is being threatened by two (or more) sizable groups of enemy converging from different directions at the same time, thus you need two or more A-10C to: - either tackle one group at time, land, rearm, and then tackle the other OR - each A-10C (or each A-10C element) targets one group at the same time. Another mission could involve only one A-10C having the TGP and smoke rockets, as a FAC, and the other Hogs have only dumb bombs and Mavericks, thus "enforcing" cooperation. Not realistic obviously, but anyways. Now extending the SAR idea above, I had an idea now of the following scenario: - There are three enemy groups in combat with our forces, each one spaced by a large distance (like 50 miles). You are initially tasked to attrit one of those, while the others are being attacked by other friendly aircraft. Now if one friendly aircraft is shot down (this could be random or be actually triggered by a friendly loss), you are redirected by a fictitious Air Command to conduct a SAR there, with a set time. Meanwhile enemy groups are activated and start converging into the ejected pilot, if they reach there and stay for a certain amount of time, he is captured and the mission is lost. Otherwise, if you get there and clean up the area, you save the pilot and is tasked back to your original mission, and it goes on...

Uncheck "Full screen" in options, Alt+Tab works better this way.

Upwind is the same as your departure heading. By the way, military aircraft often (always?) use the overhead break pattern for landing. A good tutorial using Falcon as reference is located there: http://www.72ndvfw.org/resources/train/OverheadBreak.pdf

180 knots = 180 nautical miles per hour. Therefore if you hold that speed, you will travel 3 nautical miles per minute. Easy to measure using a clock :)

I agree fully with you here. Even after optimization, the FPS "budget" the developers will have will be not that much big. Now I don't see why people complain about explosions, they seem fine to me. Problem is people get spoiled by arcade games in which the complexity is several orders of magnitude lower than the sims ED is making. I hardly see any Falconeer complaining about A-10C graphics for example... Also getting a fluid graphics experience (no stuttering, high and constant FPS), even if a not-so-good-looking engine to me seems more advantageous and immersive than a pretty game that runs like a slide show. Unfortunately currently in DCS to attain this means turning off buildings, civ traffic etc. I can only hope that optimizations take place for us to be able to enjoy what is ALREADY in sim, I would not dare to ask for more.

You can receive intel about the general area of the enemy, and use the FLIR/eyeball to search for the enemy. Remember that in the Balkans A-10A pilots only had binoculars and sparse ground intelligence, they had to visual scan the ground and loiter quite a bit of time over the target to find artillery pieces and armor camouflaged. Actually they were the FAC themselves to other allied aircraft. Also remeber we have digital maps from Blackshark that, although still not covering the entire new terrain, are quite complete and useful to know your surroundings. If you keep your situational awareness of where you are and the general location of the enemy, waypoints aren't that much need.

Sorry to burst it, but two-stage missiles are not new to A-10C :)

Dont know if thats precisely what you are looking for, but http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=29338 has a wealth of information.

While most companies go for modeling small theaters, the guy went for the ENTIRE EARTH. And its not like its being built on sand... This looks like having solid foundations.