Mars Exulte

A community run poll is patently irrelevant anyway. We're not setting policy, and ED already made it clear in the 900 threads vefore yours suggesting the same thing that they don't want to use a subscription model. So, there's no incentive (or point) for anybody to clearly articulate their myriad thoughts, viewpoints, and suggestions. Especially since they would likely already have done so in one of those 900 threads before yours. I said ''search'' facetiously, but seriously, use search. You can read the previous conversations until your eyes bleed. Nothing significant has changed in the last 6-10 days since it was last discussed.

AI isn't game breaking, but it's damn sure mission breaking. Easily the game's weakest point.

Seeeaaaaarch

Due to complicated real life drama, my stuff has been in storage for the better part of two years. Last week, I was able to get moved into stable livin' again and get my cockpit arranged. The following is my experience, to whomever may be interested (presumably nobody, but I'm bored so screw it) TLDR version : Across the board visual, UI, and gameplay improvements with actually a mild increase in FPS stability. Specs : I7 6700k @ 4.6 w/ water cooling Aorus 1080ti w/ water cooling 32gb 3600mhz DDR4 NVMe dedicated to DCS Oculus Rift S Settings mostly high to ultra across the board, 2x MSAA, high clouds, high view range, etc. Shadows on low, terrain shadows on flat. Most other stuff high to max, as mentioned. I have disabled wake turbulence, as it seems to add relatively little (usually) but hits performance pretty hard when numerous aircraft are present. Avg FPS on test flights is a stable 40, dropping into the 30s around dense cities at low altitude. The new prop effects have completely eliminated the stuttering and distortion when flying prop planes and generally fps is higher and more stable in them. I haven't messed with other helos much yet, but I did fly the Hind for a bit and really, really appreciate the absence of flickering cockpit shadows and the more stable looking rotor disc, again, eliminates most the erratic fps and distortion I used to experience. The new clouds, weather, and lighting look fantastic and give me the same feeling when going up in a real plane! I noted numerous UI changes in the controls configuration screens that were long overdue, such as being able to easily clear commands from selected aircraft and categories. Shout out to VKB customer service. Key point : I did not have to contact them in any way, because they provided plenty of spare parts and when I discovered one of my springs broke while the stick sat in storage I merely installed a new one. Final note, unless I think of something else, regarding the Hind again. Oi. What a bastard. I died repeatedly attempting to fly it like a helicopter, before realising you're not really supposed to do that.

Link is dead

....no. It's not nonsense. A basic consumer grade TV (which is what 60hz is by definition) will not have nearly as good an overall image quality as a gaming monitor or higher end TV. In particular TVs almost always have much higher response times, which increases ghosting, and the lower refresh rate results in an image that's not even remotely as smooth as 100hz+ That's not ''opinion'' it's observable fact.

Wasn't referring to you. He said : "Passion"? You mistake me with one of your democrate snowflake'' Thus my remark. There's a couple guys around here that drag that stuff out semi-frequently

I like how the ones that complain loudest about identity politics wrap themselves up in it until they just can't help bringing it up everytime they feel put upon =D

You can create a poll, if that's what you mean. When you created this thread, click where it says ''content'' and change it to ''poll'' then fill out your stuff as desired.

Old complaint, new thread. Instead of placing individual aircraft and marking them as options to select, let us place spawn points with a list of approved aircraft that can spawn there. In other words, instead of loading into a server and digging through literally dozens of selections, just pick a spawn point and choose your plane THE END.

Ah, so the usual routine of somebody reading random articles online they don't really understand, then rushing to the forums to demonstrate what fools the devs are for not utilising Google properly.

Based purely off the link you posted, which includes the phrase ''engine exploded due to compression failure'' I fail to see what flight models and g-limits have to do with the engine disintegrating and destroying the aircraft.

Oi, it's literally every two or three days somebody says this @@

This is a video game. Which is a type of video game. We can ONLY simulate some things. This is a distinct limitation of video games vs real life. I'm not particularly for or against any of the stuff being discussed here, but every few days somebody raises some imagined imbalance or cheat because of *insert crisis*. I've heard everything, including resolution, screen size, and control quality, presented as various ''cheats''. It's a video game, with all the limitations (and concessions to reality) that usually entails. Which is a great goal and why we're all here. But it's still a video game, most of us aren't real pilots, and our experience varies dramatically based on the hardware we're using and personal aptitude. Losing a fight isn't a noteworthy event, especially if the excuse for how it happened was ''He was wearing a low res VR helmet that clipped through the canopy and THAT was the deciding factor''. Pretty damn cringe, like most rationalisations for ''why I lost that wasn't my fault''.

It doesn't matter.

Nobody's losing an AirQuake duel because their VR opponent ''stuck his head out the window'' anymore than they've been losing them for the last twenty years because somebody's TrackIR lets them check six without physically turning their entire body ) If anything, the VR guy is at least having to ACTUALLY physically turn and lean around and therefore subject to fatigue and backaches :p

Yeah, as long as you don't have to carry anything, it doesn't malfunction, you've survived training without any serious injuries, and nobody resists, it's really CoolTM

Short version : No, the F-4 is not being developed currently (at least not publicly)

NVGs are ambient light amplifiers. As a result they are extremely senstive to bright lights like the moon (or cockpit lights, etc). Conversely, a complete absence of light is also likely to negatively affect them as there is not (enough) light to amplify. They also generally have poor overall visibility, low contrast, and shite resolution, and that's if they're GOOD ones. NVGs as portrayed in movies and games is pretty much universally wrong. They're not magic predator-vision, they're just better than not being able to see at all. All that said, the DCS lighting engine is still somewhat simplistic (although improving), so I would say safely you'll see anomalies under certain conditions.

A-10 in Iraq/Afghanistan: You do not need a plane that size, with that payload, that capability, and a 30mm tankbuster to shoot robed men with Aks. ''How it feels to have an A-10 overhead and hear the brrrt'' Irrelevant. Real life is not an action movie. The only thing that matters is whether support is delivered in a timely and effective fashion, whether that's a burst of 30mm gun rounds or a smart bomb or a accurately deployed concrete block is irrelevant. Cost vs reward If you're not engaging a near peer adversary, then it is more reasonabke to have larger numbers of cheaper simpler aircraft for low intensity operations, reserving the more expensive and maintenance intensive aircraft for ''real'' wars. ''Fifth gen CAS platform'' Why? It's not 1970/1980 anymore. A2G is a relatively easy role to conduct, any aircraft with a Tpod is as effective as any other aircraft with a Tpod. CAS can and has been conducted by literally everything, including heavy bombers. The defining criteria for CAS, due to proximity to friendlies, is accurately deploying weaponry on the correct target. In 2020 literally any aircraft can do that, provided the pilot doesn't err. As much as people like to (correctly) criticise politicians, half the ''experts'' and veterans aren't any better. For all of the history of warfare, the biggest mistake militaries have consistently made was NOT adjusting to the times and continuing to do the same things, the same ways, until somebody finally stomped them into the ground (much to their surprise). In modern times, this goes x10 when technology has advanced so dramatically over the last 10-15 years, 30 years, and leave alone the last 50-60 years.A-10 in Iraq/Afghanistan: You do not need a plane that size, with that payload, that capability, and a 30mm tankbuster to shoot robed men with Aks. ''How it feels to have an A-10 overhead and hear the brrrt'' Irrelevant. Real life is not an action movie. The only thing that matters is whether support is delivered in a timely and effective fashion, whether that's a burst of 30mm gun rounds or a smart bomb or a accurately deployed concrete block is irrelevant. Cost vs reward If you're not engaging a near peer adversary, then it is more reasonabke to have larger numbers of cheaper simpler aircraft for low intensity operations, reserving the more expensive and maintenance intensive aircraft for ''real'' wars. ''Fifth gen CAS platform'' Why? It's not 1970/1980 anymore. A2G is a relatively easy role to conduct, any aircraft with a Tpod is as effective as any other aircraft with a Tpod. CAS can and has been conducted by literally everything, including heavy bombers. The defining criteria for CAS, due to proximity to friendlies, is accurately deploying weaponry on the correct target. In 2020 literally any aircraft can do that, provided the pilot doesn't err. As much as people like to (correctly) criticise politicians, half the ''experts'' and veterans aren't any better. For all of the history of warfare, the biggest mistake militaries have consistently made was NOT adjusting to the times and continuing to do the same things, the same ways, until somebody finally stomped them into the ground (much to their surprise). In modern times, this goes x10 when technology has advanced so dramatically over the last 10-15 years, 30 years, and leave alone the last 50-60 years.

This isn't Arma, and the bar for creating content is a bit more complicated generally. Long asked for and generally a great idea. Never going to happen. Maps are a direct source of revenue for ED, and having seen most of what's available on your Arma example... we're not missing out on much. DCS is not Arma. Different ecosystem, different game engine, different requirements to produce content. The A4 was produced by an entire team of dedicated individuals, over several years, operating in a semi-professional fashion. It is not representative of 90% of what the community produces. There is nothing stopping anyone from modding their own aircraft and such now, with some limitations. You can do so if desired. They're not going to just open the floodgates of mediocrity and open up their devkits to the public, though. If you really have what it takes, then submit some work to them and apply for the necessary operating license. Otherwise, content yourself with the already fairly extensive modding capacity available currrently.

@Wavehopper That's literally why I am not diving whole hog into the campaigns. It will really ruin it for me dealing with that nonsense. I ran face first into the AI limitations just with limited experimentation early on in my own missions. It is on their official to do list, but most likely is waiting on Vulkan and improved multicore support. DCS is already pegging CPUs, and AI is verrry intensive, especially when there are dozens/hundreds of active units. Optimisation is a fine thing, but some things are inherently demanding by nature and nothing will change that.

We can't. There's nothing to do on our end, and they don't really need a run down of everything that's wrong. The things wrong have been wrong literally forever. It's well known how and why the AI sucks. Never going to happen for performance reasons. The AI will literally NEVER use the same modeling we do because it would completely obliterate playability. It's also not necessary, they can use a simplified model, the SFM we used to have on FC3 jets is more than fine for AI and was still pretty good. The issue is that some of these FMs need tweaking and have literally forever, they've simply been ignored (I'm looking at you, MiG-15). The FMs themselves aren't the issue persay, but rather the AI's tendency to behave brainlessly and either inadvertently abuse its "strengths" or maybe simply zone out entirely and fall into repetitive behavior. The FMs need to be tweaked in some cases to be more believable and consistent, but the AI itself needs a full rewrite.

That's not anybody else's problem and is a reality for literally everyone on the planet. PC gamers occasionally needing hardware upgrades is a reality. This in the scope of upgrades, is of negligible significance. I don't care about downloading liveries separately, that's fine. The point is out of all the components in his relatively expensive system... that's the cheapest and easiest to expand by a very, very large margin. A 'theoretical' limit, yes. In practice, especially with the small SSDs, you can fit multiple drives extremely easily, even if there ISN'T a mounting point, double sided stick tape is more than sufficient. If he's complaining about harddrive space, he's unlikely to be the type with a whole series of drives, so this isn't really relevant. True enough, but I didn't comment on allowing or not separate downloads, only that complaining about harddrive space is just silly in this day and age. $50 will get a modest SSD or a multi-terrabyte platter drive. ..... no, that's not how the real world works, it's no different than any other upgrade. Buying a GPU is not "ED missing out on 8 module sales". Filling up your drives until you're nitpicking over liveries means you either need to reorganise yourself or... buy another drive. I didn't insult him specifically, though it was clearly taken that way. I dissed microtransactions and that I consider the folks around here constantly spitballing monetisation schemes for ED's marketing department are chumps. Microtransactions are a garbage reprehensible form of monetisation. What companies like EA are reviled for is bad here, too. I post to pass the time and amuse myself, not because I'm concerned with whether anyone agrees with me or likes what I have to say.

DCS has the most resoundingly awful AI in the industry, the worst AI I've seen offhand since Mechwarrior 3 in 1999. The ground ''AI'' is literally entirely absent, they are completely incapable of responding to stimulus or departing from a waypoint. The aerial ''AI'' is marginally better, as it at least responds to you, but is extremely simplistic and relies entirely on broken physics, with certain specific ones being particularly egregious offenders. -edit for reminder that I'm a hardcore fanboi, and still feel this strongly.