rootango

can you give some details on what the damage model problems are in DCS for ww2 aircraft ( or links to threads where this is discussed in detail), and is this a problem specific to the DCS ww2 aircraft or all of their aircraft ? (as well as buildings and ground vehicles ?) and is this problem a lack of visually detail in the damage to the ww2 aircraft being modeled, or is it a lack of precision in location (and effect ?) to specific aircraft structure/systems and the effect it has on flight models and aircraft systems.

the only thing i see in those lists are missions, either multiplayer or single player. most of these afaik also will be limited to only having a few active AI units/aircraft when you are on the way to the target zone or over/at it, and AI ground/air activity at the airbase is always very minimal (unless i have overlooked an option to set this correctly ?). what i am after is more a training-area type map that is heavily populated with active AI activity both on the ground (civilian mostly on roads going from A to B or randomly, and maybe some convoys military in certain area's) as well as AI in the air (again both civilian light and heavy aircraft). also at airfields i would hope to have some other aircraft moving around and landing/takeoff, and have ground vehicles moving around. at least have SOMETHING moving around and showing activity and sign of life rather then then the current "Easter Sunday" or post apocalyptic type silence and lack of movement. basically having a dynamic living map that has life in it. the purpose being to get used to locating and identifying objects from various distances/altitudes, navigation, getting familiar with aircraft models and systems etc, and maybe some type of firing range (for free fall munitions and gunnery practice etc). right now from what i can see, and i hope i have overlooked something, is you either have a pretty lifeless free flight map, or load missions with hostile/defensive activity limited to (and at) the mission objectives i am not looking to have 1000's of active AI object, but a couple of 100 would provide most of what is needed (partic since the map then doesnt need to include a war scenario where many objects are placed very densely in a small area related to the mission)

Hi Folks, can i create a single player (or multiplayer) DCS world map with lots of continues active/dynamic ground and air activity ? the purpose would be to make a practice environment to get used to the various aircraft, weapon systems, navigation, and locating targets (stationary or moving convoys on roads etc). my hope would be to make the learning environment more interesting and immersive and so specifically would want to include: - active/busy local airport for takeoff and landings, with refueling trucks and other ground vehicles moving around. - have both tasked and random road traffic, with for ex moving convoys from point A to B (for target identification), - have other aircraft moving around, either doing local airfield landings and takeoffs, or moving to/from various other locations with activity in the sky and if yes, is it possible to populate the map with both civilian as well as military ground/air activity that move around dynamically ? and lastly, is it possible to have that type of environment in an online server running 24/7 ?

from kickstarter update 12, stating what i referred to earlier in a previous post about the ww2 game development approach for their first installment (normandy) if you then read through the updates from the last few months, you can see they are pretty much on track :)

i fully agree, but then again however much we personally care about this project (as fans) and wish it to succeed, it is also their right to mismanage that part if they so decide. personally i think luthiers team is peddeling as fast as they can on their little bikes to make progress on the most essential parts of the project, eg the game itself, like aircraft, map, game objects etc... once they have a few milestones covered and gain confidence with various elements working as they should and on schedule, they will worry more about promotional elements or customer relations. i have been following this project from the start and see in their kickstarter updates all the indications they are on track.

from its inception the layout of this ww2 project has a number of elements that give it a very strong chance to succeed and be delivered on time. the grafix engine (EDGE) and game engine are provided as finished products by DCS, and they already have a working highly detailed aircraft with fully modeled flight physics (and other aircraft parameters) that is fully working in that environment (as well as the other game elements like vehicles, munition ballistics, weather etc). those 2 main elements are usually the great unknown quantity that can make or break a new game, and DCS provides those elements to luthier as fully working finished products which he only needs to make minor modifications to (if any) luthier and his team then create 3 or 4 additional high fidelity new aircraft (external aircraft and cockpits, plus obtaining detailed flight physics data). the development time needed for each of those aspects is well known (and has already proven to be reliable). as you might have noticed in the latest kickstarter update, luthier then simply (sic) imports the new finished aircraft and "plugs in" the flight physics data, and basically it should work :) obviously minor bugs can be present and cause some delay (as was reported in this weeks update), but whatever bug they fix will make it even easier to import the next aircraft trouble free etc.. the new map is populated with objects and landscape detail, again this can be done at a known pace and rate (and has been done for a number of other projects in the past by both teams). this is usually a time consuming elelment, but it is fairly easy to predict the time required. other elements from existing DCS products are added and modified as required to become part of the ww2 environment (like elements of combined arms or DCS world). luthier already specified not to expect many changes from the currently working DCS format, eg the number of online players (net code) possible, weather, ballistics etc. all that will be modified and adapted from current working DCS elements, and only in later years as various new aircraft and new maps are added will they take the time to develop those low priorities further. and for those that have been following the development updates in that context, they will ave observed that luthier exactly described the ww2 sim project development in that context and from the updates we can see so far that everything is progressing nicely and on track.

in the privacy of your own home, sure. but once you are in a public place and shared environment you have obligations towards others as well, and the unspoken understanding obviously in this type of forum would be to communicate in a civilized and constructive way to the developers. and if they dont reply to you dont start huffing and puffing about your misplaced sense of entitlement. and that is exactly where your current problem lies :) YOU do NOT have ANY "rights" to make demands for them to "do" anything (beyod providing you with the sale of goods as described), and why should you ? if you dont like the product just ask for your money back, aside from that you are "entitled" to zip, denade, rien, nothing ! only because as it turns out you have nothing valid to complain about (since you now say you have received your p51 key, and also agreed it is only logical for you to get skype observer access in the latter parts of the beta stage). its up to luthier and DCS how they manage the communication about their products development, dont like it ? then just come back in 7 or 8 months when it is done you can sleep soundly and be assured luthier is keeping watch on the wall to keep you safe from your darkest fears of their projects failure, and all indications still are that the project will be delivered on time and as planned :) lol, you'r struggling a bit with that one arnt you ! and saying pretty please and 'mam doesnt increase your entitlements or their obligation to you either, i wish the world was that simple :megalol:

if you are one of the few people who hasnt received their p51 key, then get yourselves organized. create a poll on the right forum and get an approximate idea of the number of people and their forum names. then collectively notify the forum managers here, then the DCS management directly (by forum post, by email and if so required by registered mail), and also luthiers group directly. also post it in the kickstarter feedback posts. i am confident that if you stay civilized, address the right people via the right channels, this WILL be corrected. but that i regret to inform you is completely irrelevant, and you are not in a position to make demands for. whatever kickstarter category you backed/paid-for is what you will receive (or get your money back), all the rest is up to them to do as they see best (or have the manpower to do and consider as a priority).

yeps i do, unless we are talking about something completely different and i misunderstand you. there are semi regular kickstarter updates, most people that needed to get keys for early aircraft bonuses have received them, and the project is on track by all indications. in recent years there is this misplaced sense of entitlement by some (i am not saying specifically you) that just because they are passionate and deeply committed/involved in a particular game, that somehow this obligates the developers to be accountable to demands being made (in this case, to be responsive to aggressively made demands of interaction and providing information). this is a pretty good article that puts this issue in a broader context http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-harassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups i think there is a clear difference between supporting our game genre and helping it to succeed, compared to becoming part of the problem and creating a toxic environment. small niche game developers like luthier are putting their heart and soul into developing a game they are passionate about for a very small specialised market place. would any rational person stay committed if all they see is a toxic soup of aggression, trivial complaints, and irrational demands ? as such the line between success and failure is very fine, and i believe if we are seeing ourselves as supporters and fans that we should do our part in creating constructive feedback and contribute to increasing our mutual chances the end product being a success, not undermine it. and if you paid that large chunk of money and still havnt received your p51 product key, how about i give you my key ? i havnt activated it yet so it is valid and working, and you can just give me your key when the oversight is eventually addressed (as I am confident that the few who havnt received it yet will soon be identified by DCS/luthier) there is a place for constructive criticism, it is not a matter of blindly and uncritically cheering them along no matter what happens or errors are made but ffs lets focus on the OVERWHELMING positive side of having the il2 series heart and minds now developing a DCS ww2 project :)

i think this thread should be renamed to "the self-righteous demands in flightsim forums are getting rather annoying" :). maybe some CoD bananaforum travelers have landed here and brought their disease with them ? luthier and his small team are at the start of the project in pre-alpha and are scrambling to get some work done and are trying to overcome the initial main technical hurdles that are nearly always present in these type of ambitious projects, and they are still trying to confirm to themselves that the breakneck milestones of development for release in late 2014 are even possible ! it is NOT the time for bystanders to make lots of demands and seek attention and want their ego's massaged every week with some new fluffy prose. imho you either had confidence at the start that this project was realistic (and now should be patient), or you shouldnt have backed it ! my sympathies to the wizard guy who put down 500 or 1000 $ in the hope to sit in on skype'd development meetings, but i strongly suspect that it is WAY to early for that, and the logical time for that type of observer participation into luthiers team discussions would be during the open beta. and for the very few who havnt received their p51 product keys (most have) and are really stressing out by it, contact kickstarter with a formal complaint and ask for your money back, and then only buy the finished game when it appears on the shelf at your local game retailer.

good to see another update, even if it shows the lack of hard data and original blueprint copies available to luthier's team, it makes their job much harder :book: . still, onwards and upwards we go and the show must go on, none of this is an insurmountable problem :) all that means is that you have full access to the aircraft to inspect (and measure etc) it from the outside. they dont really let you take it home for a full strip down to measure each individual part and nut and bolt to the millimeter, so there are still major limits on the information you can obtain from it.

nice update, good to see work is continuing ! also looking forward to some scenery screenshots showing the new EDGE terrain/scenery/maps with ww2 era aircraft flying in it it could be that some parts of demonstrating this early EDGE scenery in progress is still restricted by the DCS bosses :) keep up the hard work luthier, you have all our support and appreciation :thumbup:

if i had remembered the location and content of the older post i refereed to, i wouldnt have needed to start a new thread to ask what other people knew about it :) that is good news, both wags and luthier seem to indicate in those comments that all current DCS aircraft will be compatible for the new ww2 world (and hopefully vice versa)

i remember it the other way around (an official forum post from one of the DCS reps stating that planes from one ww2 world would not be flyable in the other scenery maps), but hope i am wrong.

with the DCS-ww2 sim being released later this year, i recently purchased the p51 (and another DCS product) in preparation, so i could get used to the flight models and detailed procedures but i now noticed in another thread on this forum that the older DCS planes will not be compatible with the ww2 world (which seems an odd decision) anybody know what DCS's official position is, will the current p51 work in dcs-ww2 released later this year ?

does that mean the fw190 is finished and they are moving onto the next aircraft ? :D

dont bring ww1 into it, most aircraft they were trying to locate/identify were significantly smaller then ww2 or modern aircraft, and the "spotter platform" (your own aircraft) was very unstable and had lots of vibration. being able to spot a tiny ww1 fighter plane from 8 or 9 km (against open sky) sounds very improbable, 3 or 4 km would already be amazingly good. the main point also is that there is a huge difference in visibility and spotting-ability if you compare looking at a distant aircraft against open sky (easy) versus looking at it against terrain background (much harder). additionally, much depends on the angle you are seeing the distant aircraft from etc.. against open sky, on a day of good visibility, most commercial pilots will report they can spot nearby traffic anywhere between 10 and 20 km. for ww2 flightsims you should be able to spot nearby fighter aircraft (roughly 10 m wingspan) at least up to 2km against terrain background, and 7 or 8 km against open sky, and most current flightsims dont correctly simulate this (with the exception of Cliffs of Dover, where the latest ATAG mod addressed this issue effectively). for a ww2 combat flightsim, having a correct and realistic spotting (and tracking) visibility distance for other aircraft in your vicinity is essential. and if current pc technology is limited in how it can reproduce what we see with the human eye (resolution, FoV, contrast, light reflection on metallic surfaces, etc), then the dot/lod-models representing these distant aircraft on our screens need "visibility enhancements". this could be in the form of making the dot/lod model larger, darker etc, but what counts is not that it is pretty for the art fans amongst us, but that it represents correct historical visibility. recreating the correct situational awareness experience with the right visual clue's and visibility information is essential to simulating a ww2 fighter pilots experience, otherwise you end up flying around in a mini visibility bubble or playing "find the dot" by zooming in and out all the time (and obviously no ww2 pilot had a zoom feature)

my previous post mentioned my limitation of monthly mb limits, torrents "waste" a lot of mb by also uploading simultaneously (good when you intend to share or contribute, but bad if you are on a monthly mb limit and near the end of your quota :) ) solved my problem by truncating the .part tag added to the filenames by doing the browser dld, then succeeded in resuming the files from the russian ftp site (even though i couldnt see any actual files in that folder) hope that might help somebody else in the future :)

the downloaded bin files i have for DCS world and the p51 were broken when my browser crashed (they were almost completed) browsers dont alow resume download functions unless you previously used a download manager when you started the file (which i didnt), and i dont want to completely restart the files (limited monthly mb limits here, dont want to waste several GB of what i already have in files) i am able to log into the russian ftpp address the files came from, but the folders are empty and i cant see any content in the folders (tried pasv and non-pasv, no difference) what ftp address can i login to resume the files plz ?

the main difference is that for army simulators like that the scenery is MUCH less important and is not a priority. They instead mainly focus on getting all the controls right, have the movement/flight behavior of the tank/plane correctly simulated , have the ballistics of the munitions correct, AND have a fully simulated battlefield environment with a large number of other objects (vehicles, tanks, planes etc) all moving around at the same time and interacting. as such these military simulators are much more demanding on pc resources, and making the scenery look pretty is the last priority on the list.

restarting the kickstarter would be a bad idea imho and is pretty much out of the question. it would also give fuel to the project critics, let alone instill doubt and undermine the resolve of many people who already supported it so far but there is enough vagueness in the wording of the current kickstarter to give the 3 planes to all current backers (even the 1$, 10$ and 20$ ones) and make it "free" to all kickstart supporters (as luthier recently clarified), but not make all 3 planes for free to "outsiders" upon release time and give them nly one less important plane (the kickstarter wording is not a binding business commitment to prospective future customers in september 2014, the "content description of the project" is aimed solely towards the kickstart supporters only). that would be a workable compromise imho. it would increase commitment from those still willing to pledge more money, and adds revenue at game release time.

even worse, since after your 40 pledge RRG wont be giving you the fw190 before release of their completed game (sept 2014), and the 190 is likely to be released long before then already. so it is a disincentive for people to give money to DCS in the meantime (and if you want your free fw190 you'd have to wait longer to start using it)

the way the kickstarter is so badly worded in a few places, luthier can easily "clarify" that the free game on release in september 2014 means: 1) "for free" you get the new dcs-ww2 world, and the su-25 (so you get a plane to fly around in, and can explore the new world and shoot up a few AI things and ground targets). alternatively they can create another non-combat ww2 plane to give away with it, but that is more work (= less time and money to work on improving multiplayer etc) 2) the 40$ + pledger's for the current kickstarter get the first 3 new planes for free on game release (spitfire, p47, and the me109). that would be THE big incentive to support the kickstarter now !! and i seriously hope that that is indeed what luthier meant in his kickstarter, giving the whole game away for free and undermining the incentive for people to contribute now is madness imho (and i really want this project to succeed) by current indications we'll be lucky if the pledge reaches the 100.000 goal, and any dreams of 300.000+ seem very far fetched. that makes it even more important that the game release in september 2014 actually makes money, rather then be forced to gie it away for free and have no other revenue while they work on more new planes and maps for the next 12 months.

I also still find this confusing, and i can see no sense in anybody making the initial game for free with 3 free high fidelity new aircraft (p47, spitfire and 109) and a full new map that will be the main game environment for the 1e year or more. if that is indeed correct, it really undermines the whole pledge project itself, because even if you dont give any money to support it now you will still get the game for free and have the same product everybody else now pays 40$ + for. compared to the smaller number of people that still would give money anyway to support them, giving the majority of people an incentive NOT to support the pledge is a bad idea imho. a much better model would be: - provide "dcs-ww2 world" for free with one less important (or dated) aircraft, like a tigermoth, stork, or even a training aircraft: that way prospective customers can download the game world and get a taste of what it offers. it is what DCS does right now with the su-25, and it is a good model. giving away 3 high fidelity brand new aircraft that takes them 1 yr to create is madness. by all means use it as THE main incentive for the "pledge drive" we have now and offer all 3 aircraft to people who pledge 40$ or more, but offering those aircraft for free later on game release in 2014 to people who dont pledge right now is a disincentive to support this project (and i am one of its biggest supporters, having been with the il2 series since its first beta demo they released 10 yrs ago) for ex, i bought the p51 tonight from DCS so i can start getting used to the DCS prop plane flightmodels and controls (because there was no ww2 scenario or other ww2 aircraft i hadnt purchased it before), so there will be cross pollination between the DCS and RRG-ww2 project to provide new customers, which is good for both companies. now that i think of it, the initial il2 free demo 10 yrs ago had several free planes in it (p39, 109 and something else ?), but iirc it only had one small demo map (but did include a multiplayer server even), and once you bought the game on release there were 7 or 8 more flyable aircraft that came with it and a bunch of new maps etc. maybe luthier is trying to emulate that, but i fear he has overdone it this time with the freebies and doing so will undermine the pledges we need NOW and it would remove their financial income they can obtain from sales in september 2014. luthier, please wakeup to this !!!