Gunfreak

Thank, you that is reassuring. I found it very nice to ground skim in the Kiowa in the well made parts. If I can do that going down Helmand river in the future. I'll be very happy. I was one who was very positive to the Afghanistan map while others just felt it was another sand map. Given this was the first major combat theater for Norway after WW2 with both ground and Air. And the myriad of books about fighter and helicopter combat. I was really looking forward to escorting Chinnocks down Helmand valley in my Apache. So that just made my disappointment even bigger when I literally thought something was wrong with my download. So for now I'll keep an eye on the map and look for texture and graphical improvements.

First Kiowa mission in Afghanistan.

I use steam. I got the refund even though I had gone past the 2 hour limit

Kola is still in very early early access, and only been out for 2 months.

Can't blow up bridges either.

Have not noticed it. Make sure the helo is balanced. If you have stores on one side but not the other, I've found the small helicopters want to roll and kill you. If you try a low hover when you take off.

It means it's on uneven ground.(so you know you've just placed an SA-2 that would have fallen over in real life.

Thanks! A bit of a chore having to set up that trigger. But at least it can be fixed. It seems like they run out of ammo and can't resupply. As they didn't even fire at when I was hovering righer over them.

Except for my disappointment in the quality of Afghanistan down low, even in the high fidelity areas. I'm looking forward to all the major improvements. Will take weeks to go through it all. Everything from winter on Kola, to new missile smoke etc.

If I set infantry or any other to ground units to fire at point and set an truck next to them. They will fire of their ammo, reload and begin firing again after not too long a time. However in my latest mission that didn't happen. Infantry stopped firing and so did the mortar. Added track afganistightseeing-20240715-114135.rar

I like the concept but untill recently the quality of ground/helicopter combat and graphics hasn't really made that useful. No point in having super high detail terrain when you only have 3 choices of infantry. Us/Russian/insurgents and some off those models looks like their from the original red alert game. And their animations might be worse than red alert. But with new infantry models with much better animations. These kinda things can be possible. But we will need lots of assists both ground and air. Can't really do Mogadishu without Blackhawks and little birds. Or without somali fighters. You are basically adding a whole new type of gameplay to DCS, instead of sandbox random stuff thrown together. You need complete packs. Kinda like those other flight games. The pack includes map, and a handful of assets to make a proper operation. Some of the assets already in DCS can of course be used and those assets added in those packs. Will populate main DCS(falklands war British infantry would be perfect for any cold war British war or what if war. )

I would say ground textures on a map is just as much a feature as a weapons system is on an aircraft. I do hope it's just standard bad communication from ED's part. They are very good at not communicating good. And that they can fix it. The reason I'm so miffed as I am is I genuinely thought something wrong had happened to my download. It looks so bad I didn't think that it was supposed to look like that (and I wouldn't have thought so even if ED has clearly stated that also South West Afghanistan is far from finished and very early access.) It did ruin my day. I refunded the full Afghanistan map and bought just the South West. I'm willing to risk 25 bucks to see if it does get better. And tomorrow I'll try another flight in just the limited hand made parts around Lashkargah.

I do hope the new infantry models/animations doesn't just include insurgents and US troops. But particularly British. The second biggest NATO contingent in Afghanistan, British also had very distinctive uniforms with helmets and gear that does not look like a generic American soldier. I would love to recreate missions a long the Helmand river. With correct British infantry and vehicles. With American Apaches and Chinnocks as stand ins for British.

Which part of Afghanistan is that. Only the south western part of the map is somewhat developed.

Do you have a picture?

They not gonna do any major changes to their plans now. They planned on the whole of Afghanistan and that's what will get. I get no performance issues in the areas that are hand made. So I would have them remove the low texture satellite stuff and replace as much of it as possible with hand made stuff.

Seems like it's mostly the area around Lashkargah. If you stray to in any direction you encounter low quality textures. Probably some of the other towns of some size is OK.

Except they stated the South Afghanistan is feature complete. These aren't just bugs. These are either unfinished (i hope) or the best we can expect from EDs terrain engine ( at least for the foreseeable future. Unlike SA map and Kola. ED showed just the most perfect glamour shots that gave no hint that we could expect the standard low quality satellite stuff we got on south Atlantic map. They released a map were a river is the main feature, and where the majority of the fighting happen in that part of Afghanistan and most of the river and area just around it has just low quality textures and graphical artifacts. These things should have been fixed(if they can be fixed) before it was released. Because right now only a small part of the 3rd of the map released has any quality. I was looking forward doing Apache CAS and escorting Chinnocks in my Apache down Helmand river. But as it is now. If you move slightly down river from Lashkargah. All you see is low quality textures like someone use some spray cans on cardboard. And terrain geometry problems.

I haven't left the high resolution area once. That's not what people are complaining about. Just flying down Halmand river which is THE major geographical feature on the south western Afghanistan. There are terrible low resolution textures, terrible terrain geometry everywhere you look. When flying down low in a helicopter. There's actually just a few km2 of the map that looks good down low(the hand made parts) and those do look great. But just a few minutes of helicopter flying in any direction and you'll stumble across bad crap. Some of it might be fixable, some of it might not.

The difference is, we knew all along that Kola was gonna be made with satellite date. We also had plenty of pictures from Kola that clearly showed this was gonna be a South Atlantic type map. So really there shouldn't be any surprises there. Afghanistan on the other hand had just a handful of pictures and a few seconds of perfectly choreographed beauty shots in video

Doing a double test of Air Boss station in vr and checking if the Quadview fix works(it does)

But it's not bugs though. A lot of it is just how DCS engine is. It's exactly the same on Kola and South Atlantic map. Low quality textures. Texture meshes overlapping. And incomplete again can obviously be related to missing parts of the map.

Afghanistan was hailed by ED themselves as showcasing the best of EDs map technology. And it looks worse almost all other maps. (And that's just the high detail area) The building assets and a few of the new trees etc look good. But on the whole it looks worse then other maps. South western Afghanistan was also touted as feature complete. And so one would assume the early access parts are for the none finished parts of the map and not south western Afghanistan.

They could at least add Taliban as a faction. Like it or not they were the de facto government of Afghanistan in the 90s and are it again now.

Both Afghanistan and Chinnock could have waited several more months. We got Kola, F4, and Kiwoa in about a month. Nobody would have battend a eye if both these came in October or november. Everyone was surprised when ED said than in a couple of months Afghanistan and Chinnock will be released.