WytchCrypt

Fantastic. This is going to be so much fun :thumbup:

"In preparation for the release of Super Carrier later this month" - WAGS That was my favorite part of the vid :thumbup:

Well played :thumbup:

Absolutely. The smart thing to say is, "Could you wear that smoking hot red dress instead?" :smilewink:

Doesn't seem simple and obvious to this former codebanger :smilewink: This makes a lot of sense to me. Coding the AI to react in a realistic way to every possible action a player could take to not follow the directions from the boat would be a significant effort. Players could ignore protocol in nearly infinite ways, coding for that would be a huge challenge. Likely even more difficult in MP when some player units are following protocol while others aren't. Perhaps that's the issue that made up the MP problems that held up the 4/15 release? Anyway, it sounds like things are progressing well toward a 5/31 EA release :thumbup:

Makes sense and sounds like a good idea... :smilewink:

That's ok, I appreciate everyone who's commented on this thread, I learned what I needed to know...Gotta Fly :pilotfly:

^ Excellent! Thanks :thumbup: So my only remaining question would be is there a reason I shouldn't have both the release & OB versions pointing to the same Saved Games folder?

Been searching for an answer to this but haven't been able to find one so here goes... I've always run the Release version but with Super Carrier on the horizon decided to also have an OB version installed. I have the space so did a completely independent parallel install of each and have that working fine. What I'm wondering is if there's any reason I shouldn't have both versions pointing to the same "c:/users/me/Saved Games/DCS" directory? It seems to me having a single one is cool because all my custom liveries are easily available in both releases. OTOH, I don't know if there are some high level DCS install reasons this is a bad idea. If this is a bad idea, how would I go about having each install create and point to a different Saved Games directory? Thanks!

I'd love this and would be willing to pay for some kind of DCS "aerobatic team flying" tool or mod. You could create your own Blue Angels routine in single player which would be amazing! As others have said though, it would require some attention to the track recorder which can sometimes be wonderfully accurate and other times not so much :(

It is weird...I've been feeling the same way then remembered I need to set up an Open Beta install for SC so got that done yesterday. I've always flown Release but since SC is being released on OB only first it's time to take the plunge and be ready :smilewink:

Just read the article. Cool that they'll have better low altitude power for possible new maneuvers, but bummed as I don't care for the look of the square jet intakes of the Super Hornet (makes them look like this strange F18/F15 hybrid). I might change my mind when I see the 1st Super Hornet in Blue Angel livery. I'm sure they'll continue to be amazing whatever they fly :smilewink:

No doubt...but it's just another day at the office for these amazing pilots :pilotfly:

That's it...same thing I was seeing in the new video. I was looking at that DDI thinking, "that can't be right...who could possibly use that?" :smilewink:

Got it, I see it now..thanks everyone! I thought it might be a display refresh rate issue but what threw me was the way the DDI's seemed to display in steps or waves rather than just flickering on and off. For example, here's 3 screenshots I snapped of the video which show 3 different displays on the RDDI. I was thinking they were 3 different modes or something. Interesting is the 2nd screenshot where you can see the "BINGO" from the previous screenshot fading out while the data that fills the boxes from that previous screenshot is now fully displayed :smilewink:

I was just watching a video of the recent joint Blue Angel and Thunderbird flyover of NYC and noticed something very odd in the Hornet. Take a look at the 10:27 mark of the video. Both the left and right DDI's are in some strange mode where they seem to be cycling through various screens repeatedly. Does anyone know what they're doing? Is this some flight software that is customized or specific to the Blue Angels and why in the world would you want your DDI's to be constantly cycling like that? Seems the youtube hook may not be working so here's a link to the vid.. Also an unrelated question, what variant of the Hornet are the Blue Angels flying in this vid? How different are they to the F/A-18C Lot 20's we fly in DCS? Thanks :pilotfly:

Cool. I'm planning to perform F18 and Su33 Carrier Ops in the English channel :pilotfly:

It is a great move on their part to keep us happy...and the half off sale is great. I just bought the Normandy map and plan to check out the free Spitfire :thumbup:

I now define 'timely' as meeting the 5/31 deadline. If they're not able to release at least the SP version by then, I'll take Kate up on her offer and request a refund on my pre-order. Not because I don't want to support ED, but because I think a missed 5/31 says volumes about the magnitude of problems still in SC. I don't mind giving ED an interest free loan (which is what buying pre-order technically is) for a few weeks, but missing 5/31 leads me to think it will be months before a release and I'll have to take a wait and see attitude before purchasing SC :(

Makes sense. The long term legacy products I worked on got harder and harder to maintain each year as new features were added. The original design of the foundation just wasn't built to handle all the new goodies as we never saw them coming. Sooner or later, we had to tear large chunks of it down to the ground and redesign the foundation. As far as DCS, since the core engine is it's foundation and not an add-on like SC to be charged for, keeping it together and strong enough to handle each new add-on is a thankless job that doesn't generate revenue in and of itself

That's exactly what I thought too. When you rely on new project pre-order funding to pay existing expenses, well...that's just not a long term sustainable business model - unless you have an unlimited quantity of new projects on tap and an unlimited customer base that's always willing to keep buying in (though there's no such thing as unlimited projects or unlimited customers especially in the niche market DCS lives in). Even so, there has to come a point where revenue from the sale of completed (not planned) projects covers expenses - hopefully with some leftover to fund new project development. Otherwise you'll wind up with a constant stream of new projects that never get out of EA because you need more pre-order new projects to fund their development, but then that isn't enough because you have additional labor costs to bring those pre-order projects to EA release. Eventually projects pile up in EA until you reach a tipping point where all the new project funds possible will never catch up and the dog is left chasing it's tail. I seriously hope that's not where ED is heading :(

Unfortunately, as a system evolves and gets more and more complex it's more susceptible to code being tacked on to other code rather than being properly isolated as a separate module/object. Then you have to clearly document how one piece of seemingly unrelated code can break another which can break another unrelated piece and you have a major headache whenever changes are necessary. Hopefully that's not the situation because once on that path, you're building on a broken foundation and sooner or later will have no alternative but a major redesign...

Exactly :thumbup: I wrote C++ & Java for many years, but that was back in the '90's and it was a business not gaming environment so no way I can accurately comment on how ED would approach/structure current development. When we had a large project, everyone was assigned a module to complete and we would write and debug them as standalone functions with their own local variables and libraries. At the end, everyone knew their hooks to tie in to the main codebase and we'd move to system test and recheck the whole thing. The goal was to keep the necessary tie in hook in the main codebase to a single point of contact for each module which returned a simple 'success' or 'fail' code. At least, that was the goal anyway...in real life it didn't always work out so efficiently ;)

I agree about knowingly releasing bad code, but we don't actually know the level of integration of the MP code with the entire SC code base. I'm guessing SC (and all DCS) code is designed in an object oriented approach, as such it could be as simple as not including the MP modules in the final build and locking down any open connections to it in the main modules. That way no suspect code is released and any contact with it is blocked. Conjecture aside, only ED knows how difficult it would be to isolate the MP code :smilewink:

Oh well...I had a strong feeling this was coming so was already prepared. The only thing I don't understand after reading Kate's statement is why they didn't release it anyway for SP? If it was too buggy for MP they could have just included a disclaimer saying that and MP people could have also begun using/training in it in SP now, but whatever...it'll be released when it's released :smilewink: