HerrKaputt

stuart, I think that perhaps the sim market won't pay 150$ for a very realistic dynamic campaign. On the other hand, the gamer market, which is huge in comparison, would pay 50$ for a game that has a compelling campaign (doesn't need to be extremely realistic). ED can get their profit from quantity instead of unit price, since the cost to produce extra copies of an already-developed software is minimal. The full-on Ka-50 sim is too hard to the casual gamer, but with the dumbed down avionics and flight model it's quite accessible. A few extra features, such as a DC, could turn it into a full-on game and make it more appealing to sim fans (and make it competitive with old games like EECH for sim/gamer hybrids like myself).

By the way, I just read this from the DCS: Warthog manual as the first reason why they chose the A-10C for the second aircraft: It makes sense: if ED are developing simulations for military clients, and if they can agree with them to make entertainment versions of those simulations, it'll allow them to capitalize on work already done (such as 3D models of aircraft, cockpit models, weapons, etc) and to use high-fidelity data. This also means that ED will likely care 0% about our opinion here :)

I'm a big fan of helis, so I'd vote: 1) Ka-52 with option for two-people LAN co-op AND two people in the same heli through the internet (I know it's not going to happen at least until Ka-52 is actually deployed) 2) AH-64D (as many have said, it's probably too classified) 3) AH-64A (this is probably the most realistic vote) 4) F-16 Excluded from these votes was the RAH-66 because it never happened, sadly for us heli-fans :(