Wacky

Kudos to ED! I am happy to see that the detailed area of the DCS: East Afghanistan map is now extended to match up with the eastern border of the DCS: North Afghanistan part. With the recent air battle between India and Pakistan over the Jammu and Kashmir as well as Punjab regions, if we could get another 100 km / 60 mi in the eastern direction to include Srinagar, Amritsar, and Jalandhar (depicted by the yellow rectangle in the image below), the map would be perfect to accommodate this entire scenario, as described here: Incredible Pakistan Air Force debriefing about India-Pakistan air battle So, it would allow for scenarios related to the Afghanistan theater and offer additional value of scenarios involving contested areas between India and Pakistan. How many of you would love to see that in DCS?

Nice shots! Depending on the satellite imagery source material used for the surface textures, strategically important areas may have been pixelated or blurred out by the imagery provider. You can see the same thing happening on Google Maps and others. Satellite imagery provided by national services may be a better way to go in this context - and of course, the best is to model those airfields / airports / installations in 3D!

Have you tried Compactor or CompactGUI yet? They're both on github and can be used to shrink the DCS footprint by 20-30% without noticeable performance hit.

Italy alone might only make sense in a WWII setting. However, combined with Ex-Yugoslavia/Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Serbia/Kosovo etc. - as seen in Falcon BMS with the Balkans theater - it might be more appealing to DCS and the community if set in the 90s?

Have you considered compacting your entire DCS folder? There are some tools available which allow for easy compacting, such as CompactGUI https://github.com/IridiumIO/CompactGUI Compactor https://github.com/Freaky/Compactor/? The latter allowed me to reduce the DCS footprint by 20-30%, at no noticeable performance cost. Your mileage may vary, of course.

It has been requested before, but on this occasion I would like to reiterate that it would be awesome, not least for our pilot friends from Denmark, if Skrydstrup Airbase in Southern Jutland could be added as well. Its geographic latitude is less than Copenhagen Kastrup and Malmö airports which are included, and it used to be an important F-16 base and essential part of the BALTAP command: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Wing_Skrydstrup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_the_Danish_Armed_Forces_at_the_end_of_the_Cold_War This would also allow for a more coherent inclusion of the airbases in Schleswig-Holstein. Thank you

+100

+1 And while you're at it, please include Fliegerhorst Husum (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husum_Schwesing_Airport) as well which has seen substantial Fiat G-91 activity during the cold war era. Thank you!!!

Thank you KarlRadek for pointing this out and providing so much detailed information! When modelling coal mines in more detail, please also include the lignite mining areas west and north-west of Cologne which has hosted vast coal mines during the cold war and up to this day: Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier (Wikipedia) Rheinisches Braunkohlenrevier - - Flächennutzung um 1980 (Diercke) Rheinisches Braunkohlenrevier - - Flächennutzung um 1980 - Nordrhein-Westfalen - Rheinisches Braunkohlenrevier - Landschaftswandel durch Bergbau. Source: Diercke These areas are already visible in the surface textures of the sim, so I hope detailed terrain mesh, 3D objects and structures will be added in the upcoming phase 2 or 3, as they are major landmarks typical for the region. Kudos, deep appreciation and gratitude to the developers, and please do keep up the great work!

+1000 Plus, the landscape and mountains would be an amazing addition.

+1

First of all, thank you for this wonderful addition to the DCS World! The pre-release, albeit of course still work-in-progress, looks very promising so far! Not sure whether this is an oversight: the airports Kassel/Calden Airport (EDVK, map sector NB) and Paderborn/Lippstadt (EDLP, map sector MC) seem to be missing, although they are indicated on the in-game raster map view and were opened in 1970 and 1971, respectively. They do not appear on the airport lists for phase 2 or 3, either, which seems a bit weird since the city of Kassel has been modeled in detail already. Some info on these airports: Kassel-Calden Airport (IATA: KSF, ICAO: EDVK) Paderborn/Lippstadt Airport (IATA: PAD, ICAO: EDLP) Maybe you want to consider including them in phase 2 or 3?

It seems the Eurofighter entered service in 2003, ie. obviously after the cold war. However as I remember, in addition to the Phantom, A-10s and Tornados were flying rather frequently in Germany back in the 80s.

+1 absolutely! I'd totally love to see Karup Airbase, too, but it seems to be a bit too far up north... Adding Skrydstrup and the area of South Jutland as you have marked on the map would be really awesome, not least for Baltic approach missions.

Good question! There is this video tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwzU3VKijoM which explains how you can create missions that span across adjacent terrains (case in point: Syria and Iraq). I would assume that you could extend this further to the Persian Gulf and/or Afghanistan terrains in the overlapping areas, and place a few tankers en route to ensure you have enough fuel to actually get there.