Mars Exulte

I think a carrier style walk on is a good idea in principle, but dunno how feasible coding it actually wouldbe. Unlike the arrestor wire, it's not a finite point that you only need to reach for a instant at the right instant. AAR, like formation flying, requires constant adjustment over a prolonged period of time. If a person can't manage that in the first place, it's unlikely they're going to be able to stick it in and hold it... if they could, they wouldn't need the aide in the first place.

Yeah, that ended up being a poor choice. I helped my brother build a new rig with 3600x and 5700XT at msrp... a few months later his card was going for $800-1000. Crazy stuff, yo.

Reminder to the more angsty among us, you downloaded a beta version of a major system update. You are literally mass guinea pigs. Report your specs, specific issues you seem to be having, and try to be actually productive. If you can't handle being a guinea pig, then give it a couple weeks for them to try to hammer out the worst issues. Otherwise, accept your ''launch day blues'' It was the same situation last time there was a major update. And before that. Almost... like...

LoD issue, maybe? @Crouz That's... not how that works. By all means, if a driver is stable, all fine. The driver updates are usually related to optimisations for specific games, typically where something is lagging considerably more than it should. That 20% you mention will not typically be ''across the board'' but rather for a specific game, sometimes even for a specific CPU/GPU that was having issues. So no, your GPU will not be +300%, nor is Nvidia or anybody else making that claim. The old wives tale about drivers degrading GPUs has been disproven repeatedly by every tech site/tech reviewer out there. Launch day compared to ''several years down the line'' benchmarks are typically either identical or even slightly faster. Now, if you're a sloppy overclocker, overheat your silicon and cause it to degrade, that's a different matter, but provided the device hasn't suffered mistreatment, they don't ''degrade''.

All bs aside, if 500gb is all you have for both OS, software, and games? Yeah, that's not gonna stretch far these days. I figured that out 7-8 years ago, before DCS even really entered the picture for me. 500gb isn't enough these days. The good news is, when I bought my 500gb SSD back then, it cost $300. These days you can get several TB for that :D

Not a lot, but I have flown some in RL. The knowledge base I built up over the many years of reading and simming was most definitely tremendously helpful. I will say 2d simming creates a weird false perception, because the scale and FoV are off and its usefulness is most of a conceptual nature... VR on the otherhand, I found to be an extremely useful tool for practicing, found myself making the same mistakes in VR I was making in the plane and I was able to correct those tendencies. That statement can be applied to almost any vocation because it's largely true. Most acts are not that terribly complicated in and of themselves, and ''anyone'' can learn to do them. The issue is whether or not someone has a natural aptitude for a task, which is a somewhat nebulous concept, and how well they fundamentally understand what they're doing. As with any profession, there are people who are very good at passing tests, but suck at the actual doing. Yep, I think the minimum age for a glider ppl is 14yo, which is even lower than driving... which is... so unbelievably ironic. Especially considering glider pilots are expected to learn all the same airspace and what have you regulations as a powered pilot, etc, yet the roads it's just ''here you go!''... probably has a lot to do with the carnage on the highway and why we don't regularly have planes falling out of the sky. Imo, people hang up too much on ''their right to do a thing'' instead of acknowledging that some things probably need a minimal level of education first @@ You forgot time =( It's difficult to juggle a fulltime job and all the ''real life things'' and then somehow find a couple hours a week to go fly. Flying in general has a lot more capacity for learning, there's always room for improvement and expansion, understanding the science of flight and the atmosphere, too. The basic concepts are simple enough ''anyone can do it'', but it takes a lot of effort and education to be ''good'' at it. Those are the best sort of things to learn!

This thread we're posting in right now? It's said that for quite a while. Has nothing to do with the YouTube comments which are much more recent, thus all the excitement.

Actually flying is not that complicated, just some basic concepts and how to manipulate the primary controls. Learning how to operate any particular aircraft is mostly a case of memorising which buttons to push, mostly a case of repetition. Where things get complicated is comm etiquette, interacting with airspace, and the ridiculous amounts of legalistic red tape and regulation you have to deal with. So, sims are more than capable of teaching what you need to know to fly in general, and to fly any given aircraft if it reproduces it accurately. As far as the quality of simulation required, DCS, Xplane, etc, are far beyond what you need to ''learn the basics''. Most ''real'' sims are considerably more basic than what we have here. That third part, though, that's the part ''sim pilots'' tend to completely gloss over. So, they're more than capable of teaching you to ''fly'', but as far as teaching you to be a ''pilot'', that part requires a lot of book reading and study effort. I talked with a kid once, his dad was a pilot who claimed ''landing a plane is the hardest thing in the world'', which is just exaggerated nonsense and ego masturbation. Then again, I believe he lost his ppl after flying drunk and getting tangled in a power line.... so I guess it depends on your frame of reference. Being toasted probably does adds a fair amount of challenge to the process. As far as real world licensing, everything is about the magic FAA sticker. My controls are probably equal or superior to the ''certified'' controls, but they don't have that sticker so cannot be used. Same with sim software. Is it certified? Then it can be counted as sim hours. If no sticker, then no county. That's been the case for some time. It doesn't exempt you from needing real hours, though, for the actual certification. The USAF as I understand it is dropping the big multi-million dollar sim pods for simple VR gaming rigs. 99% of the benefit, 1% of the cost. They still require seat time, too. So no, real hour requirements aren't going anywhere, nor should they. A sim can provide a lot, but you still need practical real world experience, too. How a person behaves ingame, and how they behave in real life, are not the same and if a person screws up in real life, they crater their plane in a Walmart somewhere. You need both, and always will.

You're right, I haven't watched nearly enough grasping conspiracy videos to form a good opinion, I needed one more and now I'm convinced. Btw, just because somebody is in a position of authority does not eliminate the issues with outlandish, unproven claims. Morons get appointed to important positions on a frightening frequency. My favorite example is a many times elected Georgian senator worried Guam would capsize if an airbase was relocated. Leave alone the resurgence of Flat Earth Theory, and innumerable conspiracies. Appeals to authority are meaningless if that authority cannot be supported by facts and analysis.

Nope, first thing that happened after I got the Oculus software running was disabling the crap onboard speakers. I have a wireless Steelseries headset I use for that Much better

But he is not a jedi yet!

Well, you can ask, but he'd have to flash you with a neuralyzer after.

Yeah, honestly weird stuff you see in the real world makes you pause when discussing ''realistic'' stuff. I remember a while back, can't remember if it was here about the Syria map or somewhere else, but some guy was complaining about (or requesting, I can't remember) a certain lake being pink/reddish and the whole ensuing argument about ''HURDUR REALISIM''. Tldr, the lake is actually pink, that IS realisitic. I often see similar discussions around here about myriad things, and it's really funny what people get in their heads about what the world around them is like and what phenomena are/aren't ''realistic''

Interesting discussion, but a lot of you guys are being way too cerebral. Political objections to maps are not because they're worried somebody will wargame a scenario. All respective parties are constantly doing that, anyway, and don't need a video game for the purpose. Any MoD that DOESN'T constantly wargame scenarios needs to be summarily fired. No, the objections to this sort of thing are invariably much more petty and ridiculous. See China complaining because NASA included Taiwan as a dropdown option in an online signup. In specific cases, like Crimea and Taiwan, acknowledging there is even a dispute IS the offense. Typically the, ummm... ''offended party'' we'll say, believes that if they push their narrative hard enough and long enough, it will eventually be seen as fact by enough people that it will become the effective reality, too. Thus the tendency to pursue even very obscure things like video games. It's about public perception. Most places/situations don't have this issue (Syria for example) because the relevant parties are all largely in agreement on the situation. It's very specific gray areas that fall almost entirely within the scope of ''public relations/public perception'' where it becomes an issue. But we've ventured a bit from the topic of ''should we make sandbox maps'' Any new map is a good map, imo, provided it is constructed in a reasonable manner. You know, like this

It's cool, but as BN said, it's purely visual, only encountered under specific circumstances, and has no impact on gameplay. It's probably not a huge performance hit, but definitely not a priority. As for the dustup effects, #1 they're old and been there a long time #2 they do have a gameplay effect, making helicopters flying low much more visible It's more about prioritising resources, cost vs reward. Coding the grass effects is probably an asspain that doesn't add much beside overhead. When juggling all the stuff they're working on at this moment, in the face of weather engine, graphic engine, lighting, etc, most of which are far more impactful gameplay wise... ''grass swoosh'' is low priority.

As a veteran of many online games, ranging from permadeath/loss games to utterly ''costless'', I can say it makes little to no practical difference. A large portion of people almost always play like chickenshits. The issue is not ''a price'', it's that there's no way to ''code'' for what the real issue is : pride. People play the same, even if K/D is hidden, loss costs nothing, etc, because it wounds their pride to be a ''loser''. X10 if they feel it was somehow done in a way they didn't ''approve of''. All these stupid death/respawn timers accomplish is making the game a nuisance. They have some place im persistent campaigns, affecting the flow of enemy forces to the front, etc etc. But outside these sort of ''highly circumstantial'' influences, as far as general ''player behavior'' goes, it makes little difference. They're perfectly right to play however they want. The issue is usually that people go online, join an airquake server, then complain on the forums that they joined an airquake server. See 90% of helo pilots complaining about getting scalped by fighters when they yolo off by themselves on a server almost entirely populated by killwhores.

That's the internet equivalent of a royal flush. In all caps like that it's practically the ''I win'' button of internet discourse.

I'm sorry, that's not how it works here. If somebody on the internet says, ''Akshually, I'm a bit of an ekshpert'' you're not allowed to question their reasoning or credentials. Nobody would ever say that, and then be wrong. It's against the rules.

I think we're just bored. I thought we were talking about real vs fictional maps. I'm for both, biased toward real whenever feasible.

It just depends on the area and nations involved. For example, Syria is an ACTIVE combat zone right now, involving the US, Russia, Syrian gov, Syrian militias, etc etc. It's not a problem, cause the main actors have no real skin in the game, Assad has more important things to worry about, and nobody is apt to care what he thinks anyway. The issue with ''disputed'' areas can vary, even, Georgia has South Ossetia and Abkhazia, they're even dilneated on the map. I keep using the example of Crimea and Taiwan. These are two areas hotly disputed even on ''Google maps'', to the extent even acknowledging the dispute is itself a political issue. It's not a hard ''rule'', ''oh we can't do real stuff cause sensitive''. It just depends on the circumstances of the area and its capacity for being a problem. Crimea? Major hot topic, the Russian government has actively gone after people/companies for incidently commenting on it. ED resides in Russia, so that's a problem. In other words, like with most things ''political'' in nature, it has to be handled with discretion. 1950s Korean War is not reignited anything. ''It's ok to pretend to kill people in your video games, but only if you're pretending to kill the right people.'' Those people can get a life. The revolution in Ukraine in 2014 had a direct impact on me and my future wife. It is a ''hot button'' topic for both of us. When Combat Mission came out with a Black Sea theater directly inspired by the fighting in Donbass (almost immediately), my first thought was ''Woooow, I'm really surprised they did that.'' My second thought was ''Take my money!'' That's because I'm not a hypocrite. Real war is bad, but video games are video games. That's true, and I'm not opposed to it in general principle. My point was merely there are a great many real world locations that CAN be used. Just because there are a few best avoided for practical reasons is irrelevant.

I seriously doubt that I think the internet being banned is a bigger issue If you featured Taiwan, very probably, but unlikely over Korea As I said it's only an issue with a few certain areas. Mostly for the same reason. Taiwan and Crimea, problems depending on what country you depict them as. Possibly the Pakistan/India border (depending on their level of dickishness), but most places? No. There's also the aspect the problem is CURRENT disputes. Nobody cares about the 70yo Korean War or other old history. By your reasoning we couldn't have real terrain anywhere in any game ever except that is obviously not true. Just because there are A HANDFUL of problematic areas doesn't change the fact that 99.999% of the planet is fair game.

We know =D

Or can't spell or grammar gooder enuff

While politics is an annoying reality, it's not a major concern for 99% of places. If they've got time to make Notrealistan, they can just as easily make Korea, Vietnam, etc etc. If they're going to do it, they may as well invest the time in something more pertinent.

This has been discussed dozens of times. We don't need to go through all this crap again. The armchair expert's saying they think this or that is irrelevant. They've said they can't and won't and that's that. Your agreement is not required.