Wacky

Thank you for getting back on this! ED Support has kindly helped in the meantime and disabling DLSS upscaling solved the issue in my case. Thanks again and best regards

Alas, the issue with "anti-aliasing artefacts visible under some conditions when clouds are low on the horizon" appears to be back in the latest DCS update 2.9.17.12034! This is especially visible when the sun is low, on the horizon opposite to the sun in the F-16C free flight mission on the Kola map, or in the F/A-18C free flight mission on the Syria map. Zooming in (using the scroll wheel when the clickable mouse cockpit mode is off), the anti-aliasing artefacts disappear and zooming out again, they reappear. This seems to be independent of the visibility range setting and even with clouds set to "ultra". Please note that version 2.9.13.6818.2 does not exhibit this issue, so maybe this was reintroduced with core changes and/or new terrain additions in later versions. ED, could you please look into this? Thank you and keep up the good work!

In the meantime, maybe the following information can be of use for those who like to do campaign and mission building?

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.

Indeed. Keeping fingers crossed this will be addressed and enhanced when Afghanistan: North map is developed, although the above mentioned areas seem to be part of Afghanistan: East as well, according to https://forum.dcs.world/topic/346038-dcs-afghanistan-faq/

... or they could cover the flat ground texture with some 3D vegetation like bushes and trees to make the scissor-cut edges less apparent. Obviously the green areas in the satellite imagery are covered by vegetation in reality.

+1 IMHO the impressive mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush and western Himalayas really are what sets this map apart from the other DCS maps. It would really be great if the developers could show the terrain mesh and surface textures as much love as they can, especially in the eastern half of the North Afghanistan area, as outlined in black on https://forum.dcs.world/topic/346038-dcs-afghanistan-faq/, and all the way up to the border with China:

Nealius likely has a point here. These kind of scenic videos are often given more "punch" saturation-wise in order to impress more. Without first hand experience, though, it is difficult to know what colors should look like and how much of an impact sand and dust do have on overall color saturation of the vegetation. Having said that, as a simulation which strives to be realistic, it would make sense for DCS terrain developers to keep the default color rendering as close to real life as possible. Anyone wishing for cinematic effects or different color rendering can choose one of the color grading presets in the game settings, or use Reshade to create a custom profile.

Not sure if this is actually a terrain issue or unit-related, but I can confirm that the car-in-car issue also seems to happen with moving objects, as in the following "car/tank drive-through" scenario. The tank appears to be the offending object here, as it insists on driving on the left hand side of the road, even though Argentina is a right-hand-drive country (observed near El Calafate):

This may be part of the upcoming North Afghanistan map, however I want to report this anyway as it also affects the East Afghanistan map. In the current DCS release 2.9.13.6818, sector XE in the northeastern part of the Afghanistan terrain exhibits low resolution, checkerboard-like surface textures throughout a substantial part of the mountain area (you may have to zoom the screenshots to 100% to view the issue): On the mission editor map, the difference in texture resolution can easily be viewed by switching to satellite imagery and zooming in until the map scale indicator shows 600 m or below. Furthermore, creeks rendered as water on mountainsides can become unnaturally "shiny" under certain lighting conditions - even when in the shadow of the mountain - as their surface reflects the sky colors. This may affect all creeks on mountainsides throughout the map: Also, as already has been reported by others, there seem to be base mesh / altitude issues with rivers throughout sector XE and possibly adjacent sectors. Apart from the above, the ambience and feel of the terrain is awesome and a joy to fly in. Keeping my fingers crossed that you will bring the quality of the entire mountain area east and northeast of Kabul and Jalalabad right up to the Chinese border up to par, as this area offers spectacular high-altitude mountain terrain truly unique among the available DCS maps. Thank you for keeping up the great work!

The map and aircraft load fine, however in the quickstart free flight mission some weird flight control behaviour occurs. It is as if it develops a life of its own: the trim setting seems to jump randomly, and sometimes the stick movement along the pitch or roll axis seems to initially go in the opposite direction or not respond properly. The issue also appears when the weather is set to clear sky and 0 wind. I've checked the joystick controls and calibration as well as the profile config for the aircraft, all of which are confirmed ok. NB. this issue only occurs with the F-16 in the quickstart free flight mission that comes with the map! Loading this mission into the mission editor and flying it with another aircraft does not exhibit this strange behaviour, so this does not seem to be related to atmospheric thermal conditions, either. Also, F-16 flight control works flawlessly in the other maps, as well as on the Afghanistan map when a new mission is created from scratch. Good luck in figuring that one out, and thank you for keeping up the great work on this wonderful terrain!