Cunctator

That could be a nice future feature. Accumulated engine wear and tear during the course of campaigns, or select an engine state other than factory fresh randomly a mission start. Something similar to the birdstrikes or random systems failure options we have now. Maybe this could be done via an mission editor setting, where you can choose the number of hours the engine was already running in the past, with a consequently increased likelihood of failure when abused.

Discord certainly looks less time consuming to me. I can understand why it is a more attractive solution for small dev teams. It is universal communications platform that can also be used for internal and private talk and all kind of hobbies. Text messages or Voice. Just one window to see everything that is happening. One continuous chat for all things Harrier to monitor, where people write one or two sentences, instead of dozens of threads with long posts as in a forum.

Long ago ED posted a series of videos that demonstrate how maps are created with their terrain tools. However, they are almost six years old by now, so much could have changed in the meantime.

From Razbams Facebook page. APKWS for the Harrier work in progress

Indeed. I hope we will see many more Pacific islands maps in the future. Once ED has created a basic set of 3D models for vegetation and WW2 airfield buildings they should be able to to them with considerable less effort than the other DCS maps we've got so far.

They are answering questions daily on their discord. Just this forum isn't used as primary means to communicate with their user base anymore.

The total land area of the Solomon Islands archipelago is below 40.000 km², that's a 200 x 200 km square. Even today most of it is just covered with jungles and scattered small villages, even more so during WW2. It no comparison too any of the current maps in DCS, that all include some urban agglomerations.

Since we will be flying the Corsair predominantly against German aircraft for some time the paint scheme used by the FAA for Europe based Corsairs would be nice. Colors: Upper surfaces: Sea Grey/Dark Slate Grey Underside: Sky

I've only seen images of Japanese AH-64Ds carrying the wingtip mounted Stingers. Obviously not a capability that was necessary for real world conflicts in the last decades, but it would be very nice to have in DCS were things are more balanced.

Not to mention the FC planes, we already have 2 versions of the Fw-190 and F-14. Razbam has announced more Harriers, with the vastly different Sea Harrier coming next. There is always hope for more F4Us.

Finally! The long wait is coming to an end.

A year ago the showed an Essex Class CV model in game that will be released together with the F4U-1D.

The decision to add the D9 was made when DCS WW2 was not a thing, to have an Axis counterpart that can fight the P-51D on equal footing, just as we only have the F-86 and MiG-15 for Korea. I think the K4 was the real mistake. They should have made the G-6 or G-14 instead, the true workhorses of the Luftwaffe and in service until the end of the war. When late WW2 Europe comes to my mind I think about Luftwaffe fighters desperately attacking huge, escorted, heavy bomber formations. That is the direction I would pursue as ED to flesh out the Europe theater. Expand the current Channel map to the north and east to include parts of East Anglia with some bomber bases and the coast of the Netherlands where the Luftwaffe can try to intercept incoming raids. Most of the new map area would just be water. The D9 would still fit in. A true late 44 - early 45 theatre would require a resource intensive map of densely populated central Europe/Germany. I rather would like to see them spend this resources on a Cold War Germany map than on the very tail end of WW2. Yes, as the first operational jetfighter the Me 262 eventually deserves a place in DCS and I would buy it on day one, but I am fine with it being added later. It is of enormous importance for the development of combat aviation, but the actual combat ops in WW2 were more of footnote compared to the scale of WW2 air war. The latter is especially true for the K4. I wouldn't built the entire theatre around them.

Not always, the first stretch goal was changed midway through the kickstarter campaign, when Luthier begun to believe that the Me 262 would be more popular and thus more likely to raise more money. When would you consider a WW2 theater finished? Every single vehicle, plane and map? Half of them? Just the most important ones, but that would already be the matter of much debate. The entire timeframe or only the most crucial battles? I don’t think that it is possible or even desirable to spend that many resources for each warzone. Adding anything to DCS seems to require a lot of man hours and at some point you just get diminishing returns. Lowering the level of detail and watering down the sim just to get more stuff finished quickly is nothing I’d like to see either. Personally, I would prefer to have spotlight like the most iconic aircraft, their adversaries and some supporting stuff for all theaters in DCS, than just one super detailed one, but I understand that for some the opposite might be more appealing.

The 2013 Kickstarter was a giant mess. It was run by Ilya Shevchenko, with the online nickname Luthier, who is apparently a nice and passionate guy but a poor project manager. All his previous flight sim projects had to be saved by someone else and before that he had some business in the US that he was force to shut down in about 2002. For me the kickstarter was a high risk investment from the beginning. I guess Luthier hoped this would become a flight sim repeat of Star Citizens success story with millions raised. When the money didn't flow in as expected he looked increasingly desperate and promised anything the community wanted to hear. The Me 262 wasn't even the first choice as 1st stretch goal, something B-17 related if I remember correctly. A lot of promises he couldn't keep or would have been economically suicidal. Like a DCS map SDK accessible for all backers or a separate DCS WW2 Europe free to play version with a number of warbirds for free, that was later in the Kickstarter changed to one. But nobody seems to remember that today, or that we sort of got the budget version of the next 275.000 $ stretch goal not achieved back then. I am glad that ED did not stick to the flawed original plan forever and instead tries to make a historically coherent WW2 environment with aircraft relevant to the maps we got and hopefully expanding to the Pacific soon, theater ignored by serious flight sims since almost 20 years.

Originally in the early 2000s, when LOMAC was first released and was the only up to date jetfighter sim left on the market. A few years later I was heavily invested in FSX when Black Shark was released and got a lot of praise, I then returned for FC2 and A-10C.

New screenshot from Leatherneck's Facebook page:

Posted on the Leatherneck Facebook page a few days ago. Possible hint? 9.12. almost 21

The Soviet Union supplied a greater number of I-16s to the Chinese. They fought against Zeros regularly over mainland China.

ED has provided APIs for new features like A2G radar to 3rd party teams before. Why not for (certain) radial engines? It is in their best interest to speed up the development and increase the quality of of 3rd party DCS modules.

I hope they just wait for new DM to be finished by ED before showing some progress, but after more than 5 years and now almost one year of silence since the Christmas demonstration my hope is waning.

There are many more self taught modelers eager to get their favorite planes into the sim than competent coders with the required skill level to code systems and FMs to a level people are demanding. I doubt the modelers see any money from Razbam until their module is actually released, which in most cases will probably never be the case. What happened to the Mirage III, OV-10 or Super Tucano, that Razbam was teasing years ago?

I think that's a sure bet. Probably they need to release a new module every two years to survive as a company. I doubt Razbam will ever finish something as complex as the F-15E to a true study sim level most here expect. Hopefully they will change their marketing strategy and make less bold claims before it will be declared "finished".

My suggestion and as I handle things now: Don't pay for promises. Only make a purchase if you think the current product is worth the price. I've learned my lesson with Star Citizen. I bought the Harrier at a 50 % sale two years ago and I already got enough hours of fun out of it for my 32 €, especially compared to other hobbies.

Out of early access does not equate "finished" or "complete" in DCS these days. This was discussed at length when the Fw-190A8 left early access back in spring. Out of early access??: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=267282