firmek

Probably not but I could imagine Apex Legends at least today and for some time to come not being the most popular title any more :D

MiG-28 pilots are the only ones that won't buy F-14 :) Besides the obvious animosities to F-14, they're still waiting for a full fidelity MiG-28 (the real one, not F-5E with the MiG-28 livery) coming to DCS. Other than that, good luck to the DCS download servers tomorrow :)

It the update is more than just a cockpit and external textures its already worth and actually fair to be paid for. Especially it if's a simulation of a never version of the Ka-50 with more systems. I don't understand why people always expect to get things for free. DCS has already a lot of free content. BS2 is really old. Making a new version for sure does not come cheap and requires a lot of effort. At the same time BS2 - will still work, so not that ED is taking something away. You just keep using what you have paid for. If you have BF1 do you expect to get BFV for free?

We're far far away from there.... Ground units, many of AI planes, long list of airplanes and rotaries. A lot is missing. What you listed as currently in DCS I would estimate to be about 5% of what is needed. Just have a look on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War#USAF_fixed-wing

The new "miles" system is much more transparent. It gives possibility to actually use the accumulated points. Unlike the bonus points which for the most part had been really difficult to cash-back. This is the main reason why IMO the miles had been so generally positively welcomed by the community. Bonus points are just a virtual number in a user profile. At least looking on my own experience, most of the modules I have I bought discounted either as a pre-order (majority of aircrafts) or taking an advantage of the quite often seasonal sales. I hope you can already see the point... To be fair, did you really expect to be able to use bonus points? Frankly speaking I wasn't - again due to the fact that 99% of time I had been buying already discounted products. From this perspective asking to have the bonus points converted to the miles is not fully fair as it would to some extend provide more benefit than we're having right now. At least the points shouldn't be converted one-to-one. Maybe 30% of bonus points converted to miles? The reasoning behind is that currently up to 30% of bonus points max could be used to buy a module and again bonus points are quite virtual while the miles can be used in the same way as a real money, generally without any restrictions. The main challenge to be considered by ED that I see with the way they're introducing the miles is that it creates a risk that those that bought the most modules may actually loose the most. Those are the most loyal customers. Do you see the contradiction? If ED decides to do nothing and keep a defined deadline when the bonus points stop to be honored, those that may potentially loose the most on the conversion are those customers towards which such programs as "miles" (or even old bonus points) are targeted for. The simplest would be not to terminate the bonus points program by a certain date but just let it naturally run-out as the bonus points already have a validity time. This would mean however that for a certain period both bonus points and miles would have to co-exist. In my personal opinion ED should get rid of either bonus points/miles and the frequent sales/discounts and keep just one of those systems.

Man, you should really warn us before sharing such content or at least put it into a spoiler tags. After seeing this... my life is never going to be the same again.... :P

For sure it must have been a great journey for the team and a great moment of accomplishment to reveal the release date. Congratulations for the HB on the job done :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: I'm sure what we're going to see is going to blow our as!@#$ off :pilotfly: Just to get that over us, a few questions on behalf the Community: - is it going to be released on Steam? - is it going to be released on stable DCS version ? - is the full fidelity MiG-29 confirmed (reference to the video)? - is the Tornado finally confirmed? :D ::beer: By the way, after all that years of development you release it on 13'th :) I guess being a Citizen of a country which people invented Surströmming makes you not afraid of such silly things :)

So lets the speculations go wild, this Friday - DCS Dynamic Campaign engine. Thank you!

I had read at least about one real example that pilots actually practiced a takeoff from taxiways. The goal of the exercise was practicing getting into air as many planes in a shortest time as possible. The drill was that one flight would start from one end of the runway, second flight from the opposite and while the first from the taxi way. That was MiG-21 pilots in Warsaw Pact. On the topic - a loop in Mi-8. I'm sure noone with a common sense would do that in a real life.

End of development = free resources is a quite common misconception. Especially with a small teams where it's easy to assume that the same team that did the development during the project will have to provide maintenance. Actually the result of having the same team to make a support of old project is that it ruins any scheduling as by their nature defects occur and have to be addressed ad-hock. In extreme cases such teams are not able to move forward with the new projects at all. In other words if the same team that worked on MiG-19 will work on MiG-23, lets hope they did a good job on the project so there are no bugs at all :)

+1. Frankly speaking to be fair, as long as the never ending early access is an issue I don't understand what the OP wants to achieve. Be realistic, there has been so many things said about EA that everyone should already be able to make out what are the disadvantages and advantages of it - as for the individual consumer and for the whole industry. Do you really believe yet another post will change a whole industry approach? Like it - buy it, don't buy to pass the message. If you don't believe how strong "don't buy" is just look on some AAA titles like BFV. As for the DCS however, consider it's a bit different scenario where the development is quite often done by hobbyists. Flight simulators are really complex, most probably the most complex "games" to gather material, build up expertise and finally to program. On the other hand the customer base is relatively small. I think the EA model was the only one possible to make DCS grow and we should really appreciate that ED and 3'rd party devs overall, from a high level perspective are doing an amazing job steadily keeping the platform evolving in such a difficult environment.

Guys what's up with the A-6 :) Its not super-sonic and it sweeps it's wings in wrong direction. Even putting this aside, it's biggest problem is that it's name is spelled out differently then "T O R N A D O" :)

Get M-2000C now as it has a really great and immersive stock campaign by Baltic Dragon. There is also the Red Flag DLC which one of the positive aspects is that story wise its connected with the stock campaign. Eventually M-2000C will also get another DLC, again being a continuation of the stock and RF campaigns but for the Persian Gulf map. Hornet is a great module and ED is making an amazing job with it, including the constant flow of updates and new features but it does not have a campaign yet as well we'll most probably have to wait for it till the module is more feature complete. Clearly as for today, M-2000C has much more of SP content available. The suggestions to take the Hornet because it'll kick !@# in MP are quite dis-motivating. Everyone has a mouth full of the how accurate and detail the simulation in DCS has to be, how realistic and how perfectly resembling the charts the flight model must be while eventually the reception of the plane boils down to it's capability to reach a high K/D ratio on the air-quake server... Anyway, seems like people flying L-39 in Blue Flag just because they like the plane and enjoy work done by the devs to represent it must be totally crazy...

+1

This means that they use the F-18 as a front runner to create a data link framework. It does not mean that other planes get the data link automatically. It means that rather than starting each time from scratch, using this framework it should be easier (but still it should be assumed that with an effort) to develop data link for another planes (like F-16).

Sorry for maybe a stupid question but do owners of The Enemy Within Campaign get an automatic update to version 3.0 or it has to be purchased separately? The reason why I'm asking is that the old and new versions of campaigns are both available in the store at the same time - in my case the old one has "bought" status while the new one is available for purchase.

You know that the "training" is kind of by default embedded in "simulator" word ;) Anyway, you may not like the trainers and only see a reason for the newest and most complex jets. The fact is that answer to the OP question "is there any benefit to buying a trainer" is yes. None of the developers would invest time to develop something that they would not be able to sell. Neither ED or 3'rd party are running a charity. There is a business case behind such planes as there are people that are able to put them to a good use or just simply have a great time flying them. This even includes MP like a BF where guys fly trainers and put them to a good use for a benefit of a whole team rather than jumping into a modern most complex F-18 just to quickly flip few switches and run into a constant pointless air-quake around Sochi. I wouldn't be also surprised that the revenue gain from a relatively simple trainer/light attack plane is much better than investment needed to develop a complex 4th gen multi-role fighter. If you don't remember, someone had actually approached ED and invested to get a Yak 52 developed. For sure they had a good reasons behind it and didn't spend considerable amount of money just for an amusement. Again this clearly illustrates that there are benefits from trainers in DCS. Especially if you want to go deeper and use DCS as a study sim. Whether you like it or not or whether you deliberately try to neglect this fact.

Probably the sooner the better. The fact is that ED always wanted to give modules a bit of "breathing space" between releases. This quarter is to some extend (considering DCS standards) packed with releases. C-101CC and EFM for both CC and EB had made their way into public just end of last year. The big fish - F-14 is slotted for the release latest by end of March (with many hoping it'll be released sooner). That makes the MiG-19 release window not that big. Mid February worst case? It's to some extend unfortunate that release of modules which take so much time to develop accumulate. There are long periods where community waits for a new module and then there are moment like now when in relatively short time we get a 3 new birds to fly. It must be not that great also for ED and their Partners just from the business perspective as I assume under such circumstances people may decide to get less modules - only those they'll like to focus on for the moment. Another interesting point to think about is if other major titles releases outside of DCS have an impact on the DCS release schedule. There are some big titles coming out Q1 2019 (like new Metro) that can take away some players for a time being from DCS.

And how is it related? Since you're asking however, yes the L-39 does have a training campaing. Actually really a really good one: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/campaigns/l-39_albatros_kursant/. You can also find a lot of good community made missions - for instance to practice IFR. There is also a comprehensive starting set of missions available for C-101 https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=229128 Yes, especially the mentioned A-10C with a SAS system (Stability Augmentation System) which takes from the pilot a lot of the necessity to use the rudder pedals is the best plane to illustrate adverse yaw effect and practice how to counter it... If you insist, yes you can, but an analog plane without a HUD, with analog instruments only, with analog controls and IFR hood makes a basic maneuvers a lot of fun. I'm not trying to forcefully convince everyone to trainers. At the same time trying to explain how good and useful trainer can actually be, kind of reminds of trying to explain someone in 90's how much useful a cell phones are. In most of the cases, you'll never know until you get one.

Looks really authentic and immersive. I'm starting to think what I got myself into preordering this module. Learning how to and then start up everything in the back seat will take a looooot of time.

"You don't need trainers in DCS", "It's a sim and you can train with a real aircraft"... bollocks. Well, I used to be thinking the same way until I got L-39. If you're more up to aviation, want to actually learn to fly, learn a proper weapon employment approaches, not have the HUD and INS/GPS doing everything for you, learn how to navigate, go deeper into VFR and IFR there is nothing better than a trainer. I wonder how many guys out there that say that a trainer are not needed would be able to execute a nice leveled coordinated turn in it... or would be able to fly an approach patter keeping the plane in parameters. You finally understand what are the different nav aids around the map and how properly use them. One can get surprised how many found the L-39 "Kursant" campaign extremely difficult. I wish I would have got the L-39 much more before the MiG-21. C-101 finally starts to shape up for a good module, especially with just released attack version (CC) and the PFM. It's a pity that HAWK ended up a way it ended as we could maybe had a hope for the T-45 Goshawk. There is a beauty in the simplicity of the trainers. Plus the L-39 is just amazing to fly. You can't go wrong with a trainer if you're a bit more into the sim beyond blowing up the staff and flipping switches in the cockpit.

You miss the wider perspective....

Since it seems the original message: wasn't clear enough, I took a bit of freedom to modify it a bit so that it's even more clear: Really looking forward to this bird. In the time being lets enjoy the multiple movies showcasing MiG-19, stop complaining about features not working correctly in a not-yet-released module and enjoy your weekend. Looking at the overall situation with the module everyone having a bit of experience with DCS can clearly deduct that the release is rather close, for sure sooner than later.

Su 17M3 or M4 would fill a huge gap in RU attack planes. It would also fit quite well to already existing as also upcoming maps. I'm sure it would be a hot seller. Aside of that I think there is quite a big community in DCS which prefers ground attack planes over fighters.

Just using the topic, it would be good to have an ability to mark servers as hidden. The goal would be to remove certain servers from the list - for instance those that we know we're not interested in. From the solution side, the "favorite" icon could allow 3 stages - no preference, marked as favorite, marked as hidden. Than on the top there should be a check to show the hidden servers.