GEIST

Loving the new map. Great addition to DCS and free - thank you for this ED! Given the small size of the actual map I am just a bit disappointed in the textures. Things are in the right place but really quite rough when it comes to the terrain itself. Quite some differences compared to the real data - which is available and this took me 10mins. I realize making it work for the game engine is a bit more involved, but at ultra settings I was hoping for a bit more of the real thing (this is all settings at max compared to google earth overlayed in photoshop). The water seems to use the satellite data and looks really great, but that suddenly stops on the land and becomes rather simplified textures with a quite basic blending. I know this map is free, so please understand this comes from a good place and I hope this will find it's way into the game in some form eventually. Thank you!

Are we playing the same game? I think it's one of the biggest issues with dcs. Compared to MSFS or Star Citizen which even cover entire planets the detail is much higher in those games. I really hope there will be a substantial upgrade soon - given the quality of the clouds I am optimistic the ED can figure sth out

Agreed! I think the Marianas island map does look promising. However, I think fundamentally that map is covering up the engine's limitations nicely. Mostly water and land covered in trees. When looking at the images closely it's still a lowpoly ground with a tiled grass texture on it. If you compare that to the latest UE5 (which is admittedly brand new tech from one of the biggest engine developers) the differences become clear. I am still super excited for the Marianas map as it does really look nice what they were able to get out of the current engine. I am just thinking for the next desert map it's not going to cut it anymore.

Hi Comrades, first post here with a suggestion. The game is fantastic but there is one thing that's been bothering me. It seems there is a disconnect between the highly detailed planes/vehicles and the provided maps. At the max settings the blended tiled ground textures are actually the most apparent. It's a bit 1990s. The newer maps are a bit better, but fundamentally that's just covering the low-res ground with more trees and assets. I think an engine upgrade with a feature like Nanite(UE5) or Turing Mesh Shaders(Nvidia) - whatever it's called - would push DCS to the next level. This would mean an "unlimited" amount of polygons in screenspace which would allow for highly detailed terrains and textures. What I've seen from UE5 it doesn't even necessarily mean a lot more strain on the GPU, but more on the memory and hard drive. With SSDs and more RAM becoming the norm I think this is a logical next step. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/introduction-turing-mesh-shaders/ Make the maps look more like the right side and less like the left (taken from a dcs/msfs2020 video on youtube) With the newly implemented clouds (which I prefer over the MSFS clouds tbh) I hope the engine team can move on to a new task like this soon. AA is fantastic now with the clouds, now AG needs a bit of a facelift. Hope this finds some support and consideration in the EG team. Keep up the great work! Cheers!