Koriel

Exactly! I'll hold off just because of this buying any LN modules until I know this BS (Not blackshark) is over with.

The single item that I miss most in DCS is having the feeling that I'm part of a living breathing world. While DCS looks great, it's not the graphics that make a game. It's the immersion, playability. Let me use an off-the-wall example. The single most popular game these days is Minecraft. It looks kinda bad and dated but it has playability in spades. When I enter a mission, apart from the civil traffic and some animated cranes, nothing moves that hasn't been placed there by the mission designer. It's an empty, dead world. Even the AI placed in a mission behaves really really poorly. Mind you, I'm not talking about combat, I couldn't comment on that, I'm talking about normal flight profiles. Just a few items I get upset about: Excessive use of afterburner or airbrake to maintain a certain speed. Multiple planes arriving at an airport are really messing up the approaches, sometimes even causing crashes. Planes stopping on the runway, or using the whole runway instead of vacating at the first possible intersection thereby blocking the runway for other traffic. For fighters it should be allowed to land in sequence depending on conditions. A flight of multiple fighters should be able to join a close in traffic pattern after an overhead break. What all these AI planes lack is common sense, no real pilot would fly like this, and I find this very aggravating. Years ago I alreay wrote a paper for Wags on how to improve this, but never got a response and I haven't seen any progress on this either. DCS is pretty graphics, nice planes but no immersion for me.. :-(

Irregardless of number of modules, ssd or other factors. Once you have clicked the icon for 1.5 it should show something while it's loading everything in the background. That can't be too difficult to change. I have tried to start DCS a few times in a row as well since nothing seemed to happen. In my case it takes between 15 and 20 seconds with all modules installed on a 3 year old ssd.

I have owned the 21 since release, never really flew it and just decided to get into it... I find it very difficult to land properly. Seems like that when I get close to the runway my fps goes down the drain as well... so far I'm hitting 6 out of 10... Still a ways to go.

A Bonus system should, ( in my opinion ) reward loyal customers.. Now you say that the very loyal customers should be less loyal if they want to benefit from a loyalty program... That doesn't really compute..

The flight-sim crowd is a tricky one. Here on the forum you'll find people who have spend over $500 on ED products. Remember ED started in 1995 with Flanker 1.0 (win/dos). When I go into my account on this website alone I have a grand total of $548 in purchases. This excludes all the Flanker 1.x, 2.0 purchases and my $80 kickstarter backing. Until the Mirage I have bought every module in the pre-sale. Regardless of my actual interest in the plane. And I am not alone in this one. I'll bet there are quite a few here who have done the same thing. All these are very avid fans of DCS. They get bonus after bonus, but because of their level of support they never get to use it. To me this just looks very wrong. IF you start up a bonus program, it should benefit your most loyal supporters. Fortunately I am in a position where I don't need discounts to buy stuff, i don't NEED the bonus. For all I care it get's donated to the guys doing the actual coding for a good party with lots of Stoli!.. All I care about is that I should be able to use it. Right now the only way to use it is to NOT buy stuff as soon as it becomes available, but wait until I can use my bonus on it...

Second that

And still most people have already everything bought.. So theirs (and mine ) bonus dollars remain unused.. ED really needs to think again with their bonus system. It fails the most loyal supporters they have.

Plus One! Completely agree.

So by learning to type really well you somehow have the "in-plane" experience? Don't think so. There is no good solution here. It all depends on what you are looking for. I am looking for the in flight eperience. Others get their kick out of hitting each and every button and switch and being able to coldstart every plane. With the advances of technology, Track Ir, and Oculus Rift the sense of being there is getting better and better. So who knows what else will be in store for us in the coming years.

All known issues.. basically it's ride along only for now.

Thank you for your kind words. I've been thinking about this a lot. Been flying Sims since I got my zx spectrum. First flight lesson was in 1984 iirc. To me a flightsim should recreate the feel and ease of action, not necessarily all actual buttons, dials and other controls in minute detail. I do love it when the fm, performance, weapons and radar perform as they should though. In the DCS world I'm probably a minority, welcome to our small niche.

Thought about asking this as well. Curious too.

All in all it's very difficult to simulate something so complex as a flight model properly on a desktop pc. I have experience in 0-, 1-, 2- and 4- engined planes, recips, turboprop and jet. Been flying for just about 30 years now and stopped really counting my hours at 14k ( and that was a while back ) One of the most difficult things to model properly in a sim is the transfer of a real life feel and ease of use of systems and flightmodel to a program. Let me give a few examples.. When I program or use the FMS in my "office""my hands and fingers have it's own memory and inputs can be made instinctively and "on the fly". When I do that in a PMDG sim it takes up a a lot more of my resources, attention, and physically hands on then in real life. An A10 pilot will most likely have the same feeling when hitting all the buttons in the sim. It's soo much easier in the real plane. Same goes for something like using the gear in the Mig 21. Doing it in the plane will be a matter of fact and won't require as much attention as hitting a few keys or trying to hit the right spots with the mouse while trying to keep your TIR stready. When you talk about flight model there is again a very big discrepancy between sim and rl. Some planes have high control forces or a big difference between roll and pitch inputs. Different feel between high and low speed flight. And ofcourse the lack of physical feedback. A lot of sims model a high speed stall with one wing just dropping violently. Since there is a complete lack of feedback you ( Well me personally.. ;-) ) find yourself too quickly at the limits with a consequent departure of normal flight.. ;-). Since there are a lot of different hardware setups, settings and curves it's very difficult to recreate the right "feel" for everyone. Personally I do have the feeling that the flight-model is acting a bit strange in some parts of the flight enveloppe but since I have no experience in the -39 or any other of the DCS planes I can't really comment on that right now. Since the release of the beta there will be a few more people flying it who do have -39 experience who can hopefully make some educated comments about the flight model. On a personal note, I like where the FC3 planes are going. Proper performance of plane, systems and weapons. Using radar and other systems take the same amount of effort to use as irl. Giving an experience that is comparable to real life. By making the interface to make the systems do what you want them to do easier you counter the extra attention required to do so behind a screen with hotas and mouse. I am exaggerating now >> Just think of yourself driving a stickshift.. in the car it's done without even thinking about it. If you model it on a pc you need to hit a key for the clutch, then shift , then ease the clutch back up. When you do that with a mouse you will have all your attention on just accomplishing that task. Easing that whole input procedure with a single up and down keystroke or keybinding makes sense to me. To me the FC3 planes are like that. Like I said this is my personal take on how far complex systems should be modelled in the sim. If you want to mouseclick all over the pit to make it do what you want, go for it!

You could always start a PayPal tip jar for the guys... :-)

Don't know the -25 well, but unless it has some kind of protection unintentional great retracting could very well be possible. Some planes use a ground sensing squat switch to inhibit among other things unintentional great retraction. It could very well be accurately modeled in DCS. Question is, well it extend again? [emoji6]

No you can't.. When you buy a module you get a bonus. You can only spend the bonus on a module which is at that point selling for it's Full Price.. When you pe-purchase you get a 20% discount. When you buy it at full price you can spend you bonus up to 30% of the full price. If you really want to spend your bonus it's better to wait until it sells for the full price. If you can wait, it's even better to wait for a sale, they accur a couple of times a year with up to 70% discounts. It's a stupid system... but it's what we have to work with (or not .. as is usually the case )

Yup, my idea... park, grab a beer, relax and enjoy the scenery!

Useless system Hi All, I've been a lurker for the last year, too many things to do at home, kids, wife, work.. I have been following the news nearly daily though. Pre-purchased the 39 as soon as I got the news. I have been involved/flying with Eagle products since the Flanker DOS beta came out in '94 or '95. I have bought all versions, some even twice over the years. (Russian and English versions for the collection, or just the full BS2 so i don't have to dance every time I want to re-install it). I just looked at my personal account on the website. I have spend $546 thru this website alone over the last years. Never spend any "bonus" and I have a current balance of $30. I have really no clue at all how this will benefit me. Can't use it when a product is available for pre-purchase.. Can't use it in a sale, and when I can use it, it's only for a percentage of the full price.. The bonus system is supposed to benefit loyal customers. But loyal fans will pull out their credit card as soon as something can be bought! If supporters can't afford to buy products at pre-release prices then they'll usually wait for a sale. So any which way you're looking at it, it's useless!! I actually find it a bit insulting.. a bit of an empty present. While I am very disappointed with this bonus system, I must admit that on other fronts ED is doing right by me. I was a $80 backer for the WW2 kickstarter and ED covered most of the promises made in that campaign. I was also an early buyer for the A10, and here again ED will provide me with the vastly improved NTTR map.

http://www.combatairpatrol2.com/ Noticed a post on Mudspike about this new Flightsim. http://www.mudspike.com/combat-air-patrol-2-preview-interview/ The devblog: http://devblog.sim155.com/ In order to implement addictional features they have started a kickstarted project: And it's greenlit on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=dutch&id=353863895 The reason I'm posting this here is that they need the additional support on Steam. I'm a backer... will you be one too?

Very interesting video. Gonna get it....

Old, but amazing landing there at the end.

Dear Nicolas, Cobra, Please stop announcing news and "teasing" people like you have been doing. You can't seem to release them on time or complete. Take Wags as an example. Just release when you have something. I'm curious and impatient like most of us and to be honest, I don't like being treated this way. Especially now you're officially "evil" you need to act like it. (I support you guys in going corporate btw). So in short, when you announce something, do it on time and completely. Otherwise use your time building the Tomcat.

I would like an early adopters plan. Get early access and some "extra's" (no clue what I'd like 2b honest) for a hard core fan with a higher price tag. $60 - 80 or whatever. Release at $60 which is what the A10c went for initially. Then after a while drop the price a bit.

So true... how about a DCS Smart AI add-on?....