Vertigo72

I just had an idea. It may take 5 years to materialise .. it may not be possible. But imagine DCSW is released as a FS2020 addon. Then ED can leave it up to microsoft to maintain the underlying engine for anything that is not specific to military sims. We would get a jaw dropping good 3d/terrain/vr/cloud/ engine with excellent performance, the entire world as our scenery and let ED focus on the things they are uniquely good at, making the planes and flightmodels and AI and all the other stuff that holds it together and that no one else does. Man... I dont even care what business model they would apply to that, Id sell my house in a heartbeat.

FS2020 will support third party content, so id guess MS is the gorilla. Now if fs2020 makes for a viable platform for a military simulation, I have very serious doubts and flying a tomcat against 747s isnt all that fun. But just imagine DCSW 3 (or 4 or 5) being a FS2020 addon.. all of the current DCS goodness with a jaw dropping graphics and VR engine. That would be something.

Its completely reasonable to expect bug fixes or delivery of features that are clearly missing like if you bought any EA modules. But you actually expect to receive new features no one ever promised you and upgrades like Vulkan and to keep receiving those in perpetuity. If we push the car analogy to the breaking point, thats like me expecting my car dealer to give my 5 year old car a newer more fuel efficient engine, because thats what everyone else is getting today.

Many actually do in order to have predictable maintenance costs, like VW care plan. But no matter if you prefer to pay for it as needed or on a contractual basis with periodic payments or if you prefer to stop being able to drive the car when it breaks down, .. as an owner you do not expect eternal free service for your car because thats simply not a viable business model. When you buy a car you get warranty and typically get at least your first year of maintenance for "free", but at some point you should expect to stop getting free maintenance. Its not fundamentally different with DCS.

It only works well if you are that one person who is not eagerly waiting for improvements in the underlying game engine. If you havent already been waiting 5 years for dynamic campaigns and are willing to wait another 5 years to get Vulkan API, a new graphics engine that properly implements VR or more stable dedicated server.... If you are not that patient, then you might want to think about a way to give ED financial incentives to make those things happen on a more reasonable timescale, because the current model only gives them incentive to create more (EA) modules and actually penalizes them for doing the other things.

Couldnt agree more. I dont see a problem with selling unfinished modules that are sold as unfinished modules and that may take a long time to be finished. If you dont like that, just wait. But ED needs to come up with a different way to get paid for their work without fragmenting the community or creating avoidable false dilemma's. How do they expect users to be willing to kick the tires of a P47, which itself is quite reasonably priced, but when that means they can not enjoy it online without also buying the normandy map and ww2 asset pack, and then fearing in a few months hardly anyone will be flying normandy and what few popular ww2 servers may exist will switch to channel map until something else comes along, and god know what future asset pack DLCs may be needed on top of that. To fly that P47 online would cost me more than the F5E + F18 + a few campaigns, and Im not even sure its my thing. No wonder WW2 isnt popular.

Id expect it it to be a lot easier to decouple plane modules from a base layer in a civilian simulator. For instance if you change how the radar works in an xplane module, its effects can be confined to the pilot flying that plane. It doesnt really affect anyone else. No one cares if that changes when you detect them, they dont get a spike, they dont use ECM. But even so afaik it doesnt even work in xplane either. planes made for older versions will not necessarily work in newer version. Doing that in DCS could render most of your collection of modules worthless. I cant imagine that being a popular solution.

You still pay for the maintenance (and insurance and road taxes and gas) of your car though. That isnt funded by your dealer selling new cars to other buyers. And I think you'd agree thats a business model that can not work. If your car needs work after some warranty period, someone needs to pay for that.

Indeed it doesnt. But it does do something else that the current model can not: create a financial incentive for ED to work on the base layer, if that is what most subscribers want them to focus on, and feel less pressure to produce new EA content modules if subscribers think there is enough content for now and priority should be on fixing the content thats already there and the base layer. I allows ED to move staff and resources from creating new modules to maintaining existing modules or the game core without that imparting a direct hit on their finances. Charging a fixed price for DCSW base layer achieves a similar result. But to be effective it would need to be a recurring thing, so ED would have to create the base layer updates that would sell DCSW v3 but once most people upgraded, they would need to start working on a separate V4 to maintain their incentive. Which creates a whole new set of problems of supporting users on different versions, problems for MP,... and massive headaches for third party developers. Even just the introduction of a non free V3 would cause that problem, as not everyone will update and so many modules are still under active development. Someone suggested a maintenance fee. As long as you pay, you get updates to the baselayer. If you stop paying, you get stuck on whatever version you are on. The concept I think is entirely reasonable and aligns our interest with ED. Not sure how it would work in practice though. Especially when new modules tend to require changes to the base layer. So if you bought that SC module and you dont want to pay the maintenance fee, you;d never get a working module. Anyone playing MP would also de facto be required to keep paying that fee so for them it wouldnt be all that different to a subscription model.

I suspect it goes even further. Yesterday I heard some really soft repetitive banging noises like every 3 seconds or so. Much much softer than the compressor stall. First I thought it was AAA firing in the distance but it really seemed to come from my plane. Changing the throttle to idle or full after burner made it go away. Changing the mode select made it go away for a while, but then it returned. I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was a bug, maybe it was aaa and pure coincidence. But the f14 being modeled so meticulously actually convinced me there was something going on with the engines and made me check and try things I would never even consider in a different sim.

Do you have g-sync enabled by any chance? I did some tests recently and found that enabling g-sync (on my monitor which isnt certified and only officially supports freesync but does kinda support g-sync) causes weird shimmering, tearing and micro stuttering in combination with trackir. Disabling it and enabling v-sync (either in game or in nvidia control panel) solves that though.

Dont erase the thread, I have the same thing. Just for the F5E, which I dont own and never tried. Using steam edition FWIW. Also the F5 doesnt show in the main menu even as greyed out. Ill try the repair thing see if it solves it edit: did 2 integrity checks, and the problem is still there. I feel silly trying again but hey.. if it worked for you

So you actually believe because of your past purchases, ED owes you 5 or 10 or more? years of ongoing development and new features in the game core, even if no one ever promised you that. And no one else must pay for it, you think ED have put all that money aside that they dont depend on any new module sales to pay for any of that. They dont need to to sell anything for another 10 years. Because you already paid. 10 years worth of future development sits in a piggy bank and is earmarked to give stressless free new stuff for the next decade. What fantasy world do you live in? Ive explained it a bazillion times, but its pointless to even talk about possible solutions as long as you fail to grasp or acknowledge the problem. There seems to be none in your fantasy world, so please stay there. You probably already have dynamic campaigns and vulkan and max settings 90FPS VR there too.

Maybe they "toggled" the microswitch to keep the flaps constantly moving back and forth in an inbetween position?

In what I propose, no. My suggestion is enabling subs as an alternative to buying modules. Allowing anyone to "rent" whatever modules they want. You shouldnt have to rent what you already own. But you might want to rent things you dont own yet or arent even out yet. And while ED will not likely charge subscription fees for Vulkan, any form of subscription allows ED to generate revenue that does not depend solely on creating new content, and thus develop the other things we all want and that would entice us to keep paying that subscription. Like Vulkan. Would that be enough? Who knows, but we could at least try. Others are suggesting DCSW V3 should become payware or even subscription based. If that is what happens, someone will have to decide if you should get V3 with vulkan for free or at a discount or not at all and if the same thing applies to that FC3 owner. I dont have the answer to that. And I dont think versioning is a good idea for those and many other reasons. But to come back to your question of should you pay even more to get vulkan (and the other improvements); let me answer that with a question: how long do you want to wait and would it be worth anything to you to get it sooner? If youd have a hypothetical choice between getting a frame rate doubling vulkan API in 5 years for free or getting it in 5 months for a small fixed or even recurring fee, would you not consider it? If we want ED to focus more on the non module stuff and get those improvements sooner than the 5 years people have been waiting for dynamic campaigns, that requires ED divert resources away from projects that currently generate revenue to projects that do not. If nothing offsets that loss in revenue, it simply isnt going to happen.

The pitching moment that flaps induce feels MUCH better to me. Not that I know how the real F14 flies but I always found it hard to believe its pilots would need to trim and work the stick THAT hard. Especially the manouvring flaps, before this patch if you where in a climb and not paying close attention to your speed and slowing down a bit too much and they started coming out, the plane would pitch up, lose speed dramatically and even afterburner wouldnt always save you, and you stalled in the blink of an eye. If a plane has automatic flaps I imagine they are there to help a pilot and not to try to kill him. Now the F14 feels much much more natural to me, and much less tiresome. Thanks guys!

Indeed they did not. And they CAN not. Which is why they can not focus many resources on Vulkan or VR or dynamic campaigns or any the other base layer issues or requests. They have no where to send the bill and its therefor no surprise that all these things take a backseat to any new module they can think off. Because they can send bills for those.That is the whole problem. How I wish ED could send bills for Vulkan! Then it might actually happen.

Anyone who purchased flaming cliffs 3 7 years ago will share your hopes. That doesnt make it a sustainable business model for ED. ED already got his money, and they already spent it. Same goes for your money btw. You probably dont even believe yourself they kept most of your money in the bank to pay for another 10 years of DCSW development. So who should pay for Vulkan ? Its not gonna be the guy who just ordered super carrier. He hasnt even received yet what he paid for.

Im sure someone must have asked this before, but I cant find it, so here goes; it would be nice if we could enter numbers in jester menu's when manually entering radio frequencies. Using trackir its really painful to "type" a frequency. You can use keybinds to select jester menu items, that makes it a little better but you dont want to sacrifice your numeric keypad for those binds, and even then adding the 0's at the end is a bit cumbersome as the menu doesnt offer all digits. Would it be possible to have an input option and then just type the number?

Ah! that wasnt clear to me.. I didnt know the handle really just triggered a microswitch and any position inbetween had no effect. I wonder if others understood that. Not sure what would need to be changed in the F14 module then. Seems a bit pointless to mimic a flap lever position that does nothing? Might a well do that for the gear or carrier hook levers too, Im guessing a pilot could also hold those levers in some inbetween position that really didnt do anything. Is anyone going to bind an analog control of their hotas to the gear lever then? I would much prefer if HB can spend their time on far more useful things. Like Jester using the lantirn.

You didnt pay for a Vulkan API and reworked graphics engine and performance boosts though. Or better networking code. Or new weather. Or dynamic campaigns. Or various VR APIs. Or anything in DCSW. No one did. If you dont want any of that, then fine. Im sure the current game core is fine for some players who dont use VR, dont care about multiplayer or can somehow manage to maintain good framerates and suffer no major issues; and if so, you get to keep banging your fist demanding you get what it is you actually paid for- thats entirely reasonable. But everyone else who does want those other things to happen eventually, needs a solution to make that happen. If you dont want subs and you even dont want others have the option to pay subs as an alternative to buying modules (I cant for my life understand why), then show me your plan. Who should pay for an improved game core and how? And also explain to me if you think you are entitled to get those things for free. Saying No is easy, but I havent seen anyone who so loudly yells no, show any evidence they actually understand what the problem is, let alone offer an alternative.

I think he wants one position to move the flaps further down, the other to move them further up, when the center not moving them. Which of course implies we must be able to set them in any arbitrary position like the maneuvering flaps. What difference that makes is kinda beyond me too though.

Honestly, not really. Im just trying to open people's eyes that there is a problem with the current model, and that putting fingers in your ears and shouting "NO TO SUBS" and 'NO TO PAYING FOR V3" to anyone even raising the issue, is not in your own interest. That there may be better solutions for the desperate server admins or SP campaign addicts or VR pilots who I see buying a $40 super carrier module or new map for the sole purpose of wanting to support ED; and then seeing their servers fall over even harder when they implement it and the VR pilots feeling compelled to give $1000 to Intel and nvidia to maybe get 10 extra FPS. And not realizing their SC module purchase will only add to EDs list of urgent bugs that need fixing, and increase pressure and require more resources rather than enabling them to focus more on the graphics engine or creating a dedicated server that doesnt require a supercomputer to support more than 6 clients. The theory they can do all those things at once is just cakeism. ED has finite resources they need to prioritize and chose what they are spent on, and you can not blame them for spending it on the things that pay their bills. Whatever time and resources they spend on 5 unfinished EA modules and the changes those require in the core game, can not be spent on DCSW dynamic campaigns, or network code or graphics engines or implementing Vulkan or VR APIs. Which likely makes a TON more difference than that $1000 GPU. A lot of people are basically saying they will never pay $5 per month to ED even if that would allow them to fix their performance issues, they would rather pay for modules that make their problems worse and pay $1000 every 2 years to nVidia even though that hardly fixes anything.

You are not answering any of my points. It sounds as you are trying to defend DCS as a product against someone who is critical of DCS. Thats not the discussion Im having. Im talking about the broken business model. I want to find a solution that enables ED to focus more on doing the things we want. Look at the poll ED held 5 years ago: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=151627 the overwhelming winner was dynamic campaigns. Guess what no one voted for? A larger carrier with deck crew. 5 years later we do have the super carrier, but we still dont have a dynamic campaign engine. And thats not because ED are evil, or greedy or incompetent. Its not because they do not want to deliver what customers want, it is because with the current business model ED can not focus heavily on what we want, at least if those things relate to the free underlying game engine In that same poll, 4th generation, multirole fighters also scored well. We did get those in spades. Because those dont run contrary to their business model. New content is their only business model, its what brings in revenue. And so we also got more WW2 and vietnam era planes that hardly anyone voted for, while we did not get the dedicated server that twice as many people wanted. But the planes bring in revenue, a dedicated server does not. New clouds do not, implementing Vulkan and improving VR performance does not, better netcode does not, dynamic campaigns probably do not, no matter how badly we might want them. No matter even if many of us would gladly pay more to make those happen and many of us will spend the equivalent of 10 high fidelity modules on a new nvidia card to get only a marginal performance improvement that is unlikely to fix our VR trouble. To put it extremely simplified: ED are not selling what most of us right now would like to buy, and they do not have a model to do so.

How often do i need to say this? Im not asking for a different or parallel funding model to increase (or decrease) EDs revenue. Im asking for a different funding model that allows them to focus on the things we all want (even they want I bet), rather than a funding model that forces them to focus on new content, the only thing that currently makes them any money - and probably not the thing most of us want right now. Even the poll in this thread shows at least that much. Read the forums. How many people would be willing to sell their first born to get smooth 90FPS VR performance, a new weather system, more stable netcode and servers, dynamic campaigns? Hundreds if not thousands will not even think twice to spend $1000 on a nVidia 3080Ti. Which will not solve their problem and not be nearly as effective as a rewritten graphics engine. But how can ED seriously invest in working towards that goal, and redeploy resources away from new content creation, when not only they will not get that 1000 for providing a much bigger performance boost or even achieving those other goals; when it doesnt make them a dime, and will even decrease their revenue from new content? I have no evidence to provide that isnt anecdotal. It may or may not materialise, but its not my main goal, although it is something that has a good chance of panning out as a happy side effect. DCS currently has extremely high barriers to entry. System requirements, financially (certainly to anyone interested in trying a bunch of planes and a bunch of maps) and learning curve. Thats why its a niche. Anything that can lower these barriers and increase its appeal to the millions of IL2 players should be carefully considered. The complexity and realism shouldnt be a hindrance. General aviation sims are no easier to learn and Im yet to meet an IL2 player who is asking for less realism, simpler flight models or lower fidelity cockpits. And compared to creating that realism in the first place, it has to be trivial to optionally scale down realism where needed or desired. Enable hot starts and any IL2 player can be "airquaking" in WW2 planes after 15 minutes. But tell him he needs to spend 250+ dollar to have 3 partially working planes, one and a half small maps, and then he'll get 23 FPS in VR and hardly any active online servers, that a BIG BIG ask. Eliminating very high up front costs while offering a broader set of planes and maps through a pay as you go model could be a big step in that direction. It could help resolve chicken and egg problems particularly for the ww2 modules. But again, thats not my main reason, see above.