twistking

i still don't understand. why would 16gb equal 2gb? is this some kind of inside joke, or am i missing a bit of technical context?

@BIGNEWY any news on this?

Yes, smart weapons is a big one as well...

so what?

you made a disgruntled crawler chuckle...

It sounds bad, because it wasn't sold as "special". When i bought it, i assumed it would be developed at a similar pace to other modules. It wasn't and currently aspects of its simulation are definitely not on par with other ED modules.

Perhaps, the mission designer WANTS the player to do the actual planning. Currently the mission designer creates the scenario AND does the mission planning. Ideally mission designers could choose if they want the player(s) to make their own planning. Additionally there are several rather important things, that cannot be preset in ME. For example CMS programs... It will also be important for the "upcoming" dynamic campaign, where the scenario is procedurally evolving and players are asked to come up with own missions and mission planning...

Good points.

I think the calculation of the apparent size of a light source is so simple, that it can just be done in software without any disadvantage. Modern material shaders, are - generally - way more complicated. For the sprite size, you could probably do the math in your head even. It's basically just the result of apparent brightness and distance. More advanced effects would probably be done in a post processing step afterwards. Atmospheric effects f.e. What we see in DCS is not a limitation of sprites, but just a super lazy and broken implementation. That said, i honestly don't know if there are more advanced techniques emerging. I could see the simple sprites struggling with atmospheric situations like fog, haze etc. But then we're already moving into the realms of volumetrics...

Thud

I think it could be fun to fly against an F-35. You could team-up against it, or design the mission in other ways that gives you at least a fighting chance. Surely would be interesting... That said, i could think of dozens of aircraft, that would make much more sense to add as AI, so i'd still agree with your notion that the F-35 wouldn't be a particularly good choice to add...

You mean as a PP effect that is calculated on a "hardware shader", or do you mean as a material property? I think it would be possible to do it as a PP effect, but the question is, if the benefits would outweigh the costs (both in processing and developing). Sprites are so common for distant lights, because they are easy, cheap and look "good enough". I would guess that those AAA games that have very beautiful distance lights, still use sprites, but add some PP on top of it, to give that distant haze effect f.e. or make the "bloom" more physically correct or "cinematic". Are you aware of games that do distance lights without sprites? I think that you'd always need some form of sprite as a base, because you'd want some uniformity in visibility. A pixel-based effect, could flicker in and out of existence if the light source is subpixel. I'm speculating only, so please correct me if i'm wrong.

it has the polycount of a cybertruck.

I don't know why you want to drag VR into this. Turbulence is equally dull in 2D/pancake. What we have in DCS, i wouldn't even call turbulence: It feels more like small gusts...