Torso

I agree with the Heli fans. DCS really could use a couple more. Mi-24 and an AH-1 would be a good start. I also hope that in 2019 we see some effort and attention put towards lights in DCS. Night time environment needs a serious overhaul. From AC lights to ground/object, and even just night time ambient the current state does just does not work well. ED needs to come up with a new way of doing them that actually works in a somewhat realistic way. It deserves some attention in 2019. I care almost as much about the quality of the environment I am flying in as I do the aircraft I am piloting. F-16 will be cool for sure. Bubble canopy with wide FOV VR is gonna be awesome.

Hear! hear! They need to put some resources on their world environment. It has huge areas that need serious focus and major improvement. They are what, a 75-100 person company now after absorbing Belsimtek? Once you start doing the man hour math, assuming these are actual full-time employees and not a part-time gig for them, the lack of progress in some areas is baffling. We are talking 12,000 hrs per month at 75 emp working only 40 hrs a week(of course not all those employees are devs/artists/coders..some do have admin duties..so shave 1k or 2k hrs off total maybe). And in software, 40hrs a week is actually lite from my exp. So, once you have had a few years with DCS one does start to wonder where the results of all those hours are given the current state of things.. :music_whistling:

Good enough does not mean correct or even exhibiting correct effects. DCS has HUGE room for improvement when it comes to anything related to lights or light emitting anything. I just am pretty convinced at this point the engine is just not capable or the devs aren't. I will go with engine as it is less of a trigger choice.

I agree with watermanpc's opinion of both fx. More wing flex would be nice and seemingly appropriate from the vids I have seen so far. As for the AB, I also know that sadly HB is limited by DCS's engine. Lights of any kind and flame effects are among it's many weak points. Early on I had hopes for night cat shots such as I have seen, with some serious AB flames kicking out, illumination the carrier deck and surroundings and I know that ain't gonna be happening with the DCS engine. I just hope HB does what they can to make it look as aggressive and correct as they can given their restrictions. Less purple in AB is a good start for sure. Turn up the flex, slap on some vapes and we will be rollin. :)

It is sad to see the customers are putting out more effort to fix this than freakin ED themselves. DCS lights are broken, simple as that. Ground, object, nav..you name it. They all are broken. My guess is there is no even acknowledgment of the issues by ED as they know they cannot fix them with their current engine. So, since they can't fix, or simply do not care, they just ignore all the threads and posts and pretend all is fine. Heck it is pretty clear night time DCS is not something anyone at ED uses themselves so why should they care? And yep, after all these issues really got worse once 2.XX made the scene and we have had 0 efforts made to address it I am a little salty regarding it.

Well isn't that nice to hear. 2 or 3 very mature threads on the issue now can die finally. Glad to see someone finally decided to assign out the task to fix this.

It says the same thing they have been saying for a very long time and that is 'We just don't care'. This is applicable for many issues sadly. None of which are issues that really have a reason to be ignored other than incompetence and/or straight up apathy for their customers and the products they sell us unless it is the 'next' thing, and that only lasts until the 'next' arrives of course.

Just one in a long list of long standing issues that have yet to be acknowledged formally or have the [Reported] tag added to it. Who exactly is in charge at ED of seeing these and acknowledging their existence anyways? Is it Wags himself or someone else? I guess if you never acknowledge the issue you can pretend it just does not exist, thus removing the need to fix it., regardless of the customer impact or their view. Quite the development strategy.

HAHAHA..oh man. Even the smallest of things are almost always too big of an ask for ED. But a repeat last msg function would be useful for sure.

Just another on the long and getting longer list of things ED just is blind and deaf too and seemingly don't care about. Whomever the PM is in charge of managing issues and assigning work out should be ashamed of themselves. They are incompetent at their job.

Another +1. C'mon ED, how about you freakin fix this.

Well ED? C'mon man, step up and comment on these issues. Tell us you are ACTUALLY working on them. Somebody there has to care....right? This isn't like some single plane specific and some tough to figure out internal system. This is freakin environmental night lighting, and obviously nav lights and every other lights used at night that do not in any way behave like they should and that affects EVERY module in this title and every single one that will be introduced to it going forward. Don't you think these issues deserve and warrant some dev time to address? Has anyone at ED even tried flying at night?

No comment from ED yet? C'mon man, this cannot be an impossible fix. If it is, once again, your game engine is showing more failure points. How about we get a [Reported] tag on this? How about we get a statement that this long standing issue is gonna be addressed?

These issues still exist. Any chance to actually fix them? In both the KA and the Huey the external lights pass through the model and illuminate the interiors(this also happens on some planes as well. Why can't you fix this ED? How much time would it really take? C'mon man, let's see some movement on these freakin years old issues.

Uhh, this is not at all what we are talking about. We are talking about the world env, meaning Sun, Earth, Sea, Moon, Sky, Stars, LIGHTING(as is being discussed here)..etc. Not the models using or affected by them, though their behaviors on the models matters. Model assets are not an issue for ED, other than the time it takes to push them out. Proper airport or carrier or city or object lighting is not the same as a model asset dropped onto a map.

Other than the initial passes to address the lack of moonlighting when 2.5 was pushed out, which only happened because they were getting railed for it, and changing the fog from yellow to blue, what env work have we seen in the last 6 months? Please, point some of this work out.

Actually, the sim env itself is the 'facts' that back it up. Also, the statements made previously by ED staff that they just can't do it. The engine itself is the issue. It just cannot do what other engines of the genre can do when it comes to night lighting/env. Those engines were designed with night lighting as a consideration when they were being created. DCS's was not, and any 'fixes' are retro attempts to address that which was overlooked when it was designed. Do you think the guys at ED that handle env dev are also tasked with plane module dev? A guy who does asset modelling or texture art for assets or planes system modelling most likely is not the env dev team. So, since we see so little work done on the env, what do you think they are spending their time doing? I mean we have had blue fog in the sim for how many months now? The env team is too busy to fix that low hanging fruit? I think those kind of issues and how they get addressed or don't as is the case speak volumes to ability or focus of the team in charge of DCS world env. Let's do some simple math. Lets say, ED has just 1 employee that handles DCS's env. Lets assume they are a full time employee working 40hrs a week(in software..ha, I tend to see more but we will keep it to 40hrs) and not splitting their time on other DCS related jobs. That is 160hrs dev time a month.. Do you think we see any results of that time? What are the tangible visible results of that time per month? I just don't see it myself. Which means what?

Because those in charge of DCS dev did not think anyone would actually ever try or want to fly at night in DCS. So, they did not take into consideration what would make night time env actually useful, let alone just 'correct'. As a result, their engine cannot handle night time lighting and other aspects that actually make it functional. This is why they are just using textures in place of lights. All the lit up ground at night is just different colored textures. This is why when a object is directly under a light at an airport, the object does not get lit up. There is no light, it is just bright textures, which cannot have an effect on surrounding objects. When the DCS engine was being designed they simply did not envision users actually wanting to fly at night when you can fly at the golden screenshot times of Sunset and Sunrise. Maybe on the next iteration of the DCS engine someone with pull at ED will actually influence it's direction to actually be able to do night time decently and make an effort to catch up to others in the genre. I been on this issue since I 1st launched DCS so many years ago. I hope one day they can do it.

Oh I am very aware of what has been said. I keep up. I also know what to expect because I keep up. I just don't think their current engine allows for some of the things that would improve those areas lacking. It just was not designed with certain things in mind or even considered as important when it was created...like object lighting, ground/night lighting..etc.

Expect a huge let down/downgrade in terms of any type of ground lighting in DCS. DCS just currently/permanently has terrible object/ground lighting. Not anywhere close to what you are used too. I wish they/ED felt it mattered to improve them but doesn't seem to be on any list to be improved.

I agree wholeheartedly with whats been said. I saw they included the new Su-34 model in the MiG-29 trailer. Why don't we have it in sim yet? We saw screenshots of it months ago, but still not in sim as of now. Why not? You would think they would have the ability to put out one or 2 updated models a month. I mean I know quality work takes time but I just don't get how updated models are so few and far between.

They just don't care. This is like a bunch of other low hanging fruit issues that have existed for very long times that could probably be addressed in a tiny amount of time but the higher ups in charge of assigning work in the sim just don't give a crap. Those in charge at ED just fail to see that shit like this matters at all. It does not affect them, so they see no issue. Like night time env/lighting and all the other things that seemingly only affect users and we notice..because we actually use the title. The folks in charge seem to only load up sunset and sunrise conditions to pop out some screenshots.

As they have effectively removed the ability to even correct the bindings it appears it is even worse than previous. Awesome huh? :doh:

Heaney is the most notorious Oculus fanboy on Reddit. To the point of delusion and denial. Most cannot stand him and he is openly mocked in the Oculus sub as a result. So, yeah, no need for ED to contact him. He has nothing at all to do with the tech or Oculus. It would be like needing to work with Apple and sending ED to talk to the guy camping 1st in line at an Apple store a week before it is gonna sell the newest release. Simply pointless.

It is the same for other things in the sim. Lights, objects..ect. DCS cannot draw objects far distances.