CheckGear

If so, here's some source material for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%9312_Strait_of_Hormuz_dispute I hope we have a number of campaigns associated with the Strait of Hormuz map. Maybe each set at different "inflection" points. For example, we can have a hypothetical U.S. retaliation for the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, the 2011 - '12 Strait of Hormuz dispute, and a campaign taking place in the future.

Current events can provide a backdrop for campaigns in a military simulation. Gives it a real-world feel. Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations does it all the time.

Thanks! Steam is awesome for including everything in the package!

Interesting ideas. I think the Trump administration's hard-line stance towards Iran provides plenty of room for campaign back-story generating. If the U.S. and Iran do go to war, I think it'd be a limited war. It'd probably begin with Trump declaring Iran to be in non-compliance with the nuclear deal. Eventually, this would escalate into row regarding other issues in the Middle East/Persian Gulf - the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Syrian Civil War, the Iraqi Civil War, etc. As the hostility escalates, it increases the risk of accidents and miscalculations, eventually resulting in a series of clashes that nearly lead to full-scale war.

In case anybody's interested, Fleet Defender is now available on Steam. It's basically the Gold edition, including the multimedia features, although I haven't figured out how to run that particular side of the program. But the sim itself is the complete package and works like a charm. It'll certainly keep you occupied until the DCS module is released!

I don't know if this has been discussed, but how would DCS incorporate the TARPS successfully into gameplay? In other words, if your objective is to take pictures, how will the game evaluate the mission performance based on the pictures you took? In the 1995 sim Top Gun: Fire at Will!, you could fly TARPS mission, but it was an almost entirely scripted affair, as much of the game was. In DCS, it wouldn't be scripted, so how would the game be able to formulate whether or not a TARPS mission was successful?

Has there been any word regarding the campaign(s) that'll be included with this map? I'm guessing conflict with Iran is a strong possibility, given the geography? It'd also be relevant, given our real-world tensions with Tehran, which appear to be on an escalatory trajectory as of late.

Thanks. DCS modules are always expanding, which is a good thing, because, unlike old-school flight sims, you have limitless potential. I do look forward to having totally authentic carrier ops one day!

I don't know if this has been discussed anywhere else in this forum, but I'm eagerly hoping and anticipating a fully-operation flight deck, totally authentic operations, LSO assistance, a working meatball, and the works! The sim with the most detailed carrier ops was a Super Hornet sim, Digital Integration's F/A-18E Super Hornet from 1998. In addition to fully simulating taxi, take-off, and landings, they also had a fully-operational deck crew, which was totally innovative back in 1998. I'm hoping DCS can achieve that same level of detail with this module. Even GraphSims' long-running F/A-18 Hornet series had fairly detailed carrier ops.

What's crazy is that as big of a film Independence Day was, it never immortalized the F/A-18 the way Top Gun immortalized the F-14. I think there was an expectation, however subtle, that Will Smith would become the new Tom Cruise (and there's no question Will Smith would go on to have a huge career), but ID4 never really made the impact on American society that Top Gun did. This, despite the fact it depicted the Hornet as the hottest fighter in the U.S. inventory (at the time).

To this day, still my favorite F/A-18 documentary and probably the best ever made.

I don't know if it's been mentioned already, but VFA-25 and VFA-113, circa-1994, please!

I know I'm late to this, but AWESOME!!! Atmosphere is 90% of good gameplay. You have to 'feel' something when you play. The prevailing trend in many hardcore study sims was a very cold atmosphere in which buttons and painstaking detail were emphasized over entertaining players. Sims are, after all, just a game.

DCS: F-14A/B - The Gift That Keeps on Giving

That's incredible - two generations, each appearing in F-14 films! You make me jealous. :thumbup:

THAT. WAS. DAGGUM. INTENSE!!! Right now, Fleet Defender is still the bone fide Tomcat simulator, but one of the things I never liked was how they made the F-14 feel like a pig. It looks like Heatblur is going to simulate the Tomcat accurately, as the highly-manueverable bird it actually was.

That song might as well have been the fighter pilot's anthem during the Vietnam War - they indeed went "downtown" to Hanoi! :pilotfly:

'97 - '02? So you worked there during the Half-Life days! Sierra was truly a giant in the gaming industry; its a shame what eventually came of them. Older games, despite being more limited technologically, were more immersive because they always threw in extras to give you the feeling of actually "being there." This helped make up for any limitations that existed in terms of gameplay and visuals. "Virtual airfields" are definitely a top-tier feature that even the old-school sims never really capitalized on. But with the technology of DCS, a lot, if not all, of what you wish for can be implemented. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that a pilot who ejects and lands can walk around! If that's possible, I'm sure we can create a full walkable and interactive virtual airfield (or carrier) and "start from stateroom" if that's what a player prefers. The thing that always got me about The Final Countdown was that the carrier, crew, and flyers participated in Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran in 1980. In the film, we're basically seeing them during their work-ups prior to that epic eight-month deployment. When that production crew came onboard, I'm sure many of those guys thought that'd be the highlight of their careers. Now they know differently.

How about not indulging in pop culture at all? F-14 flyers may have thought themselves as rockstars and athletes, but was that their day-to-day experience, or a Wednesday night experience at the NAS Miramar nightclub or in Subic Bay? Its the day-to-day, on-the-job experience these sims are trying to capture, not all this peripheral stuff. That said, it'd be nice if there was an in-game option to visit the base nightclub (Sierra's classic U-boat sim Aces of the Deep allowed for that). There, you can listen to Kenny Loggins and Motley Crue all you want.

These songs are examples of what I'm hoping for in the DCS: F-14A/B soundtrack: And who can forget: I want to feel like a fighter pilot, not Tom Cruise (and I'm a fan of Tom Cruise).

Jane's F-15 and Strike Fighter 2 (which ended up including an F-14 expansion) had the best soundtracks to date in a combat flight simulator. Hopefully, DCS: F-14A/B does something similar to what those two games did.

Count me as one not onboard with DCS: F-14A/B indulging in the Hollywood Tomcat. I want to feel and know what it was like to fly the Tomcat in the real world, not on the silver screen. The last thing I want to hear is Kenny Loggins in the main menu; I want to feel like a professional naval aviator/NFO. The real world may not be as "sexy" as the fake world, but its still a heckuva lot more interesting.

Would it be a safe assumption to say that the Tomcat's maintenance man hours are much higher than what was written on paper, then? If even the Hornet wasn't as easy to maintain as its proponents spun it, then surely the Tomcat took even more effort? I'm trying to wrap my head around why the F-14 was retired, especially if the F-15C is still flying. The Eagle wasn't an easy aircraft to maintain either.

The video quality isn't all that bad. Personally, I think film/tape-based footage captures what life was like "back in the day" better than digital footage does, but that's just me.

Damn, no wonder they kept the Hornet! Is that for the Super Hornet as well?