REDEYE_CVW-66

What a bunch of whining. You just received the greatest update in an age for free and you whine. You are playing a BETA by your own choice. ED is aware of the issues and are working on them- as stated many times. Like you said, you'd rather do something else with you time unless do your liking; go ahead and do it. From what I hear, VR is already much improved in terms of cloud detail on the first patch. Many more are obviously coming. Since I am at it; the OP as well; the lighting IS improved. The sim looks fantastic compared to pre-patch. You have receive a huge graphical update and your 'contructive' contribution to the team is to add more effects? I am sure they never thought of that themselves- but now that you have reminded them, they will probably get right down to it. It is one thing to lament about issues that have been around for years and years and been neglected. That is fair. This is something else.

How is the extremely low camera angles achieved, where it looks like the cam is almost at the tarmac, looking up at the aircraft? Example;

Dude; this does not look 'good'. This is beyond superb. I have tried every single texture mod since I got involved with DCS many, many years ago. Many have been good, some alright (I have to say I did not love your last version- but oddly I really liked you beta for it), and some have been bad. This is by far the best retexture of the Caucasus and in my humble opinion marks the apex of what can be done given the base material. Why? The choice of colours, the sharpness, the blending- and in particular; your use of brown, warmer tones to shade and break up the landscape. Contrary to what some texture artist believe- summer does not mean flat and even greentones. This looks, 'earthy' for a lack of a better word. Your choice of noise texture (which is very important for Caucasus, since it covers so large parts of the map with a single texture) has an excellent pattern, making it not easily seen repeated. This blends expertly into the towns and forests. Some texture mods have good looking towns, but when you get to altitude, the blending makes them stand out likes blocks or boxing- making a very 'cut and pasted' feel of the texture. Here; everything seems natural. I know one could nitpick some minor items; Georgia has a very particual type of agricultural fields (While others can be seen in Russia etc)- but given the limited amount of base material to work with- this is simply outstanding. That being said; might I offer a humble advise for the other seasons: Some people have an opnion burned into their heads that autumn; = orange and brown. That is very, very rarely the case. Most types of grass remain green through a large extent of the year. Only a very short period of autumn is dominated by crisp oranges and yellows, and then only for some trees. I would recommend a toned down, earthier look- with more green and more muted browns for the trees. For the winter; a completely personal wish (fully understand if you don't), I would much prefer a partly/scattered snow map, which we have not seen in a long time. Plenty of other texture mods do the white carpet just fine- but I suspect that we will very rarely see this in Georgia (I might be wrong ofc). This would allow your excellent ground textures to shine through as well. Other than that- thanks so much for sharing this with the community. It is very much appreciated. Looking forward to see the rest. Edit; this has been said a lot but ED should beg you to integrate this into the base-game. WAGS, NINELINE and everyone else ED; jump in and take a look.

Oh yes!

Seems like you toned down the colours from the last version. Excellent, as they were a tad saturated for me. These screens look great!

You are correct in that there are problems. The main one being the colour toning and the lack of structures that the real countryside in France has. It is to bright, to green, to monotone and to clean cut. As a comparison, the Normandy map has very similiar problems, but is actually a little bit better in some respects- but if you look at the Normandy retexture by Barthek, then it makes sense. That one has much, much more natural tunes, producing a way more believable European countryside. Have a look to see my point; The Channel map has a lot going for it in terms of detail, towns, cliffs and shorelines, landmarks and especially airfields (All of them look glorious). They should have worked on top of satelite field imagery, like they have with NTTR, PG, Syria and (it looks like) the upcoming Marianas.

I can also confirm it offline and online with Tomcats after the catapults have been used.

Huge fan of this mod, but in my humble opinion 1: Fire from burning vehicles is to fast 2: The 'large smoke' effect is too large, and when used with a fire does not look that great due to texture limitations. Other than that- thanks for keeping the mod up to date!

I just hope he gives the same treatment to the Channel at some point. While that map now is very nice in terms of details and objects, I think the colours are off and could use a Barthek workover. This Normandy repaint together with the 2.7 clouds is totally magnificent.

I know that there is a dedicated recruitment thread on the forum, but given that it can be easily missed and buried in threads I put one up here. If admin disagrees feel free to take it down. CVW-66 is a euro-timezone based virtual wing and we are looking for F-14B crews (Both pilots and RIOs). Check out our thread if you want to fly your Tomcat in a dedicated group with mature, friendly and helpful members with lots of training and large scale PVE ops.

F-14 recruitment is open! We are currently looking for long term committed F-14 crews, pilots and RIO's to join our ranks! Make sure to read the first post of this thread and shoot me a PM if you are interested!

Officially no (Will be in 2.7). But you can try the fix mentioned in my post above yours.

Not sure I even believe this yet; I read on some other thread I guy said "Turn civilian traffic off". I did, and just did 3 furball missions of the Channel map in the spit.. No flashes. Don't take my word for it though- check and confirm.

Caucasus actually have decent night-lighting after the half-done light upgrade that was done some time ago, but terrible texture work (solved to a degree by quality mods). The NTTR however, does not- with Vegas being invisible until you are practically on top of it.

Crowebar: Yes, we are- though it is nearing it's end. Then it is time to start preparing for the next one. Pijama: Send me a PM with your credentials as stated in the recruiment post if you are interested in joining.

That would be my understanding as well. Roll down menu with different presets in the ME.

Can't wait to revisit this one with expanded map and new clouds. The Big Show was the first true aviation book I ever read as a kid, and I was riveted. I have read it countless times and to be able to see it play out on DCS is just phenomenal. Can't wait!

Did not read everything, BUT- I did also have issues with not getting damage witht he Rockeyes, until I set fuse to 'nose' (Not nose/tail) IIRC. After doing that, I was able to score at least some hits with resulting destroyed vehicles

More Channe action for the Big Show? I can appreciate that. Especially with Biggin Hill on its way.

It is impossible to gauge update size. Even "minor" updates sometimes vary dramatically in size, often ranging in many, many Gigs if you own a few modules. It is however fair to assume that it will be significant, given the new art assets of the clouds being implemented. Note; assume.

It has been commented a few times yes. 1: The are "optimized and do not... require a "monster pc" (Kate) 2: The DCS requirements will NOT change, save for the fact that Win 7 will not be supported (Big Newy) It is worth noting that modern games very often have volumetric clouds and still good performance. In DCS competitor in the civial aviation (no names named), the clouds are not the biggest performance hitters (textures, polygons etc are much worse).

They are hoping for "end of march" now. Don't hold your breath fellas. It will be awesome when it comes, but we are in for many, many weeks of waiting still.

Bug still there. 17th feb 21. Might not help- but it seems to be getting worse looking in the direction of the sun. Of the missions that set it off the worst for me, is the Spitfire quickstart mission "Furball FW 190 A". At the end of flying it a couple of times an epileptic nightmare and totally unplayable. No mods btw.

Yes. Stated in numerous interviews. Modern will come first though. WW2 later.

Why can't they just hire you already?