Vertigo72

The SDK will be available to everyone AFAIK. It would certainly be available to ED. Replicating FS2020 features like entire world map in that level of detail with AI enhancement is simply out of reach of pretty much anyone else for the foreseeable future. I mean Google could do it, and maybe they even will for google earth, but they are not big on flightsims. I dont even see Lockheed Martin /P3D do it. (Though I am curious what they will do. License the FS2020 engine ? I probably would. And if I where Lockheed Martin, Id want to use it for my commercial/military sims too. And if you do that, wouldnt you make a declassified PC game version for it as well?) Creating a weather and graphics engine as good as FS may not be quite as impossible, but there is just no way a boutique flightsim shop like ED can afford that IMO. And why would they? There is a reason game developers pretty much never make their own 3d engines anymore. Even the 100M budget AAA titles. They license unity/unreal/whatever so they dont have to spend 90% of their developer time replicating all the stuff someone else already did better. Instead they focus on what they excel at. ED should try do the same. They definitely have some unique knowledge and experience, but making terrain and weather engines is not one of them.

Just stumbled up on some DCS videos that I think are a perfect demonstration of my point. All you guys saying we should just suck it up, its realism, read the manual, its what real pilots do.. then you get a real F18/F16 pilot who plays DCS and what does he do when he flies a new plane? He doesnt read the manual. He cant be bothered to. Doesnt even look at it. He just tries to figure stuff out, expects the game to help him set up / figure out the control mappings, relies on a "buddy" and twitch to tell him the things he needs to know when he needs them, he just wants to jump in and have some fun, do some training missions and learn as he goes. How dare he! I guess the game is not for him either. Too realistic for actual fighter pilots?

Those saying FS is not competition because its a civilian sim; first of all, many people fly both, and very few of us have unlimited time and funds. So yeah, it will compete for our attention and money. But more importantly, just like FSX, FS2020 will have an SDK giving devs full access to the underlying game engine. And at least one company has already committed to using that to enable combat on FS2020: https://www.vrsimulations.com/rhino.php These guys already did it for FSX and P3D; they made an F18 module and a weapon/radar/avionics/damage/mission editor/ API for their own module and that was also integrated in a dozen or so third party modules by other developers some of who's name you should recognize. The result clearly didnt have the scope of DCS, much less its popularity, but if you look in to it, it is kind of impressive what they did based on a 20 year old SDK / sim engine, and it was apparently good enough to sell to the US military. Worth noting, their team seems to consist of one and a half developers. It helps when others create maps and write the terrain / weather / graphics engines for you. Ive been crucified for suggesting it before, and Im sure I will again, but I will say it again; the most sensible approach for ED is making a "DCSW" or "MAC" thats based on FS2020. No one is going to rival MS' terrain, weather and graphics engine any time soon, so instead of competing against it, use it. A FS based "DCSW" can be a gradual approach where you start with one or two plane modules that have limited weapon functionality -for all I care only PvP air to air combat to start with - but that will already give you a product that you can sell, to what will undoubtedly be, millions of FS simmers, as well as to most DCS pilots, and could easily generate more revenue than DCS does today. And just as importantly, they would get to set an API standard for other military modules. If ED dont do it, someone else will. And they will get my money, because I desperately want to fly combat jets with the Fs2020 terrain, graphics and weather engine. DCS helicopter and VR pilots probably even more so. And yep, it may involve compromises. It may take a long time before it could replicate all the features we have in DCS. But it doesnt need that to be a viable product. It can be a 10 year parallel development until the FS versions has enough of the DCS features that it makes DCS obsolete. It may also not be possible to make WW2 maps in FS2020. Or it may be hard; from what I can tell, devs can make custom airports, if you can do that for an airport, you may be able to do it for entire regions. Probably a lot of work, but making maps is a lot of work now too. It might be something for one day down the road.

I went over there looking for the F14 and couldnt find it. Its hidden in the "third party module" section. No one finds it there, certainly no noob. The GR F14 thread has 2 responses and ~1000 views, for all I know half of which are crawling bots. This thread as twice as many views, go figure. At the same time, virtually all of GR dozens of F14 youtube video's have 30+K views. Jabbers quick and dirty F14 startup tutorial has almost 100K views on youtube. Combined these two alone have more views than heatblurs own official cold &dark startup video embedded in the manual. Does that not tell you something? Maybe not everyone is in to reading natops before they can even take off, thats what it tells me. Apparently more people seem to want to learn gradually, "the easy way" that the "proper" way. Im sure that comes as a shock to some people here. Of course. No one is asking you to. One on one teaching cant be the solution anyhow. But there are lots of relatively simple ways for ED to help noobs and prevent lots of people from giving up on DCS prematurely. Integrating a help function so you can hover over an instrument or panel and get some brief explanation, with an option to click through to see a related training video or mission on that subject. Some "office assistant" / instructor occasionally offering help. Taking too long to start up, do you need help ? Released that parking brake before INS alignment, did you know you shouldnt? You are taking off with no armament, or you didnt request take off permission from ATC, do you want to learn how to use comms menu ? First time on a carrier, or taking too long to hook up, do you need help? first time your RWR goes off, would you like to learn more? But also giving new users manageable challenges and reward them for achieving it. Have some sort of career path. Learn how to start your jet, fuel and arm it, taxi to the beginning of the runway and hold. Applause, have a star. Take off, navigate using tacan to another airfield and land there. Have 50 points. Take off, find an enemy with your radar and get a lock on him. Have a star. Shoot down an unarmed transport plane with guns or training rounds. Drop some bombs on a practice target. Land on a carrier. Etc etc. Cant do the mission? Watch this tutorial. Accumulate enough stars and you get your wings. Your name on the cockpit. Get to choose your own helmet. Whatever. It sounds silly, but it works. It lets people learn in baby steps while keeping them both entertained and engaged and not facing what appears to be a brick wall.And you dont need to maintain that for everything, enough to get them started and show them its doable. Then throw the book at them if you have to. Or just let them have fun using 10% of what the sim or module can do. Im not sure what MAC will be like. If its a completely separate product, IMO it will only decrease the inflow in to DCS, and I would worry. If its like FC3, that would be better, but still not really a solution IMO. The good thing about FC3 for a noob is the fact you get a lot of planes for cheap. And that matters to them when they cant yet know what they want and are more interested in superficial than deep experiences. But the difference in flight model is almost non existent and pretty much irrelevant. Clickable cockpits are also not harder, they are easier and more intuitive than memorizing key bindings. If you dont want to learn tacan, there is the F10 map. I genuinely dont see much that MAC could deliver to noobs that couldnt be done as well or even better using DCS with better guidance and a few options that for the most part are already there (icons, map, easy comms etc). You may want to add a few more like easier radar and easier weapon configuration/targeting, but as long as those cheats dont enable a noob to do what an experienced pilot could not do in "full real", why do we want it to be a separate product, and not just enable those simplifications in DCS and let those people join MP servers using those options for as long they need or want them?

I couldnt agree more. If it werent for his videos, Id probably have given up too. I dont care if he is not the best or most knowledgeable pilot ever, he still does an excellent job giving noobs piece meal information in a concise and logical format and giving info that is extremely hard to find otherwise, and he even does so in an entertaining way, while also providing plenty of inspiration and motivation by showcasing his campaigns and challenges and silly stuff. Simply integrating his tutorial videos in to DCS so people dont have to stumble upon them by accident, would be massive leap forward in accessibility. But the irony is that much of the community here will spit on him for doing that. Noobs shouldnt be helped like that, they shouldnt learn in small, easy, let alone enjoyable steps, they shouldnt be allowed "short cuts" they should RTFM, all of them, from cover to cover first, follow procedures as per natops, or you have an attitude problem and this game is not for you. Thats pretty much what Pikey is saying ad verbum. He gets to decide how people who spent their money supporting the game he plays, have to learn or enjoy it. Ive said it before, die hard DCS fans are EDs worst enemies.

Sheesh. Youd make an excellent instructor and trainer :thumbup: You really wouldnt be able to motivate a friend who is in to flightsims already or "sell" DCS to him any better than saying "its too hard for you, idiot, go play something else instead". But I guess that is exactly the vibe I get on this forum: making DCS more accessible to new players, making sure they can learn at their own pace and have fun while doing so, is not desirable. You would even chase your own friend away! Good thing your livelihood doesnt depend on DCS sales I guess? Thats not what Im asking for. But there are easy and short steps people can take on a long journey. A friend of mine has a 737 simulator that he rents out by the hour. Flying a 737 is not easier than a DCS plane. The manual is a little bit thicker. Some of his customers are professional pilots who want to train for a type rating, some are xplane pilots who want the real cockpit experience, but at least half of his customers are "noobs"; interested in flying, but rarely flown anything other than a cessna and usually not even that. Doesnt matter. You book an hour, you fly an hour. You learn a bit. You have some fun. If you enjoyed it, you may come back later and learn more. Many of them do and some even manage to learn to fly a 737 eventually (despite that costing a pretty penny). They may read books inbetween. But not before they got somewhere; I imagine if he where to tell his customers "flying a 737 is really hard, go read this 2700 page book first, then come back", he wouldnt be in business very long. That approach may work for professionals looking to make a career out of it, not so much if your income depends on people doing it for fun. Again, not what Im asking for. Im talking about the people who are interested enough to give DCS a try, but give up soon after. Like almost everyone I know, who enjoy other flight sims or fly RL but within 30 minutes hit some brick wall and cant be arsed to read through 500 pages to get to the next step. Ive built a simpit for my former aeroclub. Its purpose built for gliding and runs condor, but I also installed and configured x-plane, RoF and DCS. There are quite a few warbirds at our club, but guess which simulator no one ever uses? And yet I know for fact if I spent a few weekends training people to help them get started, many would get hooked. DCS community seems to be self selected by people who actually get a kick out of reading manuals, who enjoy and take pride in reading 500 pages before cranking their engine. I get it, some people do. Its not the majority of people interested in flight sims, military or otherwise. Most want their hand held. You are not a very good listener are you? I can only guess you must have read so many complaints from people saying its too hard that you get this automatic reflex reaction. My problem isnt that its too hard. Other people's problem isnt that its too realistic. If you still havent understood that by now, maybe stop posting and start reading again.

I think you are all missing the point. Game mode doesnt solve anything. Game avionics doesnt even appear to work in most modules and where it does, like the Su25, it creates a parallel set of keybinds which may be easier, but who wants to configure and learn two different modes? Newbies, or at least people like me, dont want to turn this in to an arcade game. We are fine knowing what we dont know, and thus ignoring capabilities we havent mastered yet; what we need is more gradual help learning those things. Instant action is great, but doesnt really solve the problem either. Sure, depending on the mission it may let you skip over the cold start and may help you get some feel for the game. For that, its great. But you are not likely to accomplish much if anything if you havent learned how to use the radar, your weapons and your nav equipment. And it obviously doesnt teach you anything about starting up your plane. Say you are ready to move on from instant action with hot start, and want to learn how to fly another mission where you start cold on the parking. The cold start tutorial for the tomcat takes almost half an hour and goes in to excruciating detail no ordinary human can even hope to remember by going through once. Or twice. Or frankly, three times. And every time you do it, at the end you dont even have a mission to fly. You did it all "for nothing". So more likely you follow it once ( at most, assuming you dont cancel it half way), then try the mission you actually wanted to fly, but you fail to properly start up your jet because you forgot to press the master reset button after unsweeping your wings or you forgot how to configure your tacan (and no one ever told you about windows+home). Let me try to explain it this way; imagine you are showing off dcs and your simpit to a friend who knows a bit about flying but doesnt know DCS at all. I bet you will manage to give him some impressions and probably even experience some combat in 30 minutes. You will not enable game mode. But you will also not be explaining him how to check his emergency hydraulic pressure. I bet you give him a cold start. You will talk him through the steps or even do some parts for him during startup. I bet you fast forward the INS alignment phase. Maybe not in the first flight as you could use the time to explain some instruments and the like, but you probably will skip it in the second flight. In flight you may take control over the radar to help him out, you will explain the things he doesnt know but needs to know, you will help him get to a point where he can enjoy himself. On a second and third flight perhaps you will help a little less, maybe just some reminders if he struggles to get his engines started. But here is what I bet none of you will do: give him a 500 page manual and 7 hours worth of youtube video's and then walk out of the room, saying its a study sim, suck it up. And thats more or less what DCS does. You wouldnt do that. You will also not say: there is instant action, thats how you enable game mode, you figure the rest out. You will at least try to ensure he has a good time while learning things one step at a time without completely overwhelming him with things he cant all memorize at once. Thats the sort of experience I wish DCS could better mimic without an experienced friend looking over our shoulder.

Even a free P51 with guns is a difficult "sell" compared to the competition. There is no contemporary map (included), online is pretty dead and its not like the DCS version is so superior. It might draw some players with no (combat) sim experience, but would it have convinced me to switch? No. I would rather see DCS include a bunch of cold war or even modern jets, but have those be demilitarized versions. That could attract WW2 simmers and civilian simmers alike. It would be helpful for DCS players to figure out what to buy. And once players invested enough time to learn the module and crave the weapons, the step to opening their wallets is a lot smaller than when looking at screenshots on steam and trying to find out if its any good or their thing. I find this fascinating. What are you afraid of and what makes dcs unique? Is it the realism or the fact its hard to learn? Pretty much everyone who has responded so far, here and in other threads reacts in similar terms: dont make it "easier". Despite the big bold font I used in the OP saying I dont want it to be any less realistic (*). Some clearly even dont want it be easier to learn, as if the realism comes from the fact you have to google harder to find the info. I dont get this mindset. Its like they are not protective of the realism or scope of the game, but protective of the niche status and are worried that too many people might learn their unique skills? Like a magicians circle protecting their magic tricks? (*) INS alignment aside. But people who insist newbies playing offline learning the basics should be forced to spend 8 minutes staring at their screen before every take off, I find it hard to care about that opinion, and if anything it proves my above point they must want to make it hard to learn.

Sure. I had been installing and kicking the tires of DCS for brief stints for years before I decided to get serious and get the tomcat. What stopped me earlier was the TF51 being civilian, provided no real challenge or fun and its kinda hard to see why I would want to fly that with no weapons, no opponents, no challenges vs flying a P51 in that other sim. The Su25 isnt my kind of plane; the russian cockpit and voices certainly didnt help encourage me to try to figure things out, and it seemed rather hard to master for something I didnt really have affinity with. I assumed some of the other modules might work for me, but again for ww2 planes its difficult to justify spending the money when you already own a more complete and popular ww2 sim thats actually great online. As for the jets, until the F14 there wasnt one that really pressed the right buttons for me. I was drawn to some, like the cold war stuff the mig21 and the viggen, but not sure I would like them enough to warrant to cost (in money and time). I dont know the answer to that. Free planes allow you to experience the sim, in that I think its invaluable. But I think the current selection risks being more off-putting than encouraging, for reasons mentioned above. I think DCS would be better off by replacing the TF51 with a cessna 172. I mean that. You are unlikely to lure or convince many IL2 players when you give them a single demilitarized version of a plane they have flown for a decade, might as well try to lure in xplane or potential xplane pilots instead. And complete noobs who will find the cessna a lot easier to learn in than a TF51. As for the Su25, I think something like the F5 would be the perfect replacement, but at least an english cockpit and voices would help not putting people off. Flight model isnt the problem. I dont want or need simpler flight models. A tomcat may be somewhat harder to fly than fly-by-wire jets but Id still consider it easy compared to most warbirds or a sopwith camel in RoF. Being able to fly and mastering are two different things, but as long as Im able to do the first, the other will follow. And yes, I knew it was a complex module. What drew me to it, is that I love the plane, its fast and capable but not a flying ipad. It looked stunning, carrier ops, versatility and perhaps most importantly, the dual seat capability. Not sure I get the question, but I guess I already answered it?

I started this thread precisely to discuss how we can provide new pilots with better training wheels, as I would like to see more people eventually learn to ride this bike. Its telling you consistently oppose any ideas that might help them. Just because you learned it by riding your unicycle of a mountain without a helmet doesnt mean everyone should.

Because people forgot what its like being a noob. Its one thing you do not want this if you prepare for a 2 hour mission. Its quite another to demand a noob wait just as long while preparing for what may well be a 1 minute mission. Its not teaching him anything, its just punishing him. Trust me, noobs need encouragement far more than they need even more punishment. Im aware. But I still feel noobs early in their career should be able to bypass this in missions that dont have it enabled (and as I recall, most built-in missions dont). And even when its enabled IMO it still takes unnecessarily long. All it does is ensure he will learn slower or wants to skip straight to hot start which makes it more realistic, how? Its almost like imposing a 15 minute wait to simulate putting on your flight gear and strapping in or 2 day break after ejecting to simulate your hospital visit. Feel free to do that yourself, but dont chase new players away by also imposing it on them because its more realistic.

Im putting this in a separate thread rather than continuing in the AAR thread, as its a different topic, and one I think is more important. How do you make DCS more noob friendly. Im seeing this through my own lens as a noob who got started in the F14 (and crucified for being a noob with the wrong attitude and not reading the right manual). Indeed, the F14 may not be the ideal first module, if a C101 or F5E had been available to me, I might have started there, but given the current business model, you can not expect a noob who doesnt even know he will like DCS, to buy several modules just to make his learning experience easier, especially when what he really wants to learn is fly the F14 (or whatever their favorite plane that draws them in). Comparing my own onboarding experience with my brother, who was lucky enough to have me on teamspeak, I see a ton of room for improving new user experience. The information is (mostly) out there, but "RTFM" is not a good answer to every question especially when the information is spread between various lengthy manuals, training missions, youtube video's, hidden in key binding menus or even requires other sources. When you are new to DCS, and you start with zero knowledge, this is simply overwhelming. The challenge is not reducing the amount of information required, Im not arguing to make the sim simpler. Game mode is an even worse answer than RTFM. The real challenge and opportunity is getting bite sized information to the noob, step by step, the information that he needs, when he needs it. Let me clarify one thing first; I dont believe DCS should teach us how to fly. If one day it can, fantastic, but realistically, people drawn to DCS will have other RL or sim experience and enough stick skills to cope with DCS flight models. They may botch landings and struggle to maintain formation, AAR may be a distant dream, but at least they will have the basic skills needed to learn to fly DCS planes by doing it, and without needing simplifications to the flightmodel or needing any instruction on what flaps are for, how to make coordinated turns or avoiding stalls. People who need those things, should probably start with another sim, and DCS should at least provide a more suitable training plane. Game mode is not the answer. I dont believe its the difficulty of flying that is stopping people from playing DCS, its (almost) everything else. The scope of DCS is so wide, that its not realistic to cover everything there is to cover in easy manageable chunks by a personal trainer, and at some point I think its completely fine to say, if you want to learn the details of how to operate this radar and its 27 different modes, then read this book, or watch this 2 hour tutorial. But I do think its crucial this doesnt happen before a noob accomplished anything, he needs his hand held long enough to make him feel its doable and worthwhile and for long enough to get some enjoyment and satisfaction and even sense of accomplishment. I want to bet a majority of people who tried DCS gave up long before they reached that point. I know I did several times before I finally persisted and learned the F14 and I know for fact my brother would have uninstalled DCS if it hadnt been for my help. Now you will tell me modules already have training missions that help a noob with each step. Thats usually true. However these missions have two major flaws: they do not provide some generic information that every DCS player eventually learns, but a noob does not yet know and at least for the F14 they tend to go in to far, far greater detail than is appropriate for someone who downloaded DCS 10 minutes ago. If you just bought the tomcat, are you eager to learn the steps required to get in the air, or do you really want to first memorize how to test the fire extinguisher and what the correct reading is for the emergency hydraulic pressure? Maybe the latter is appropriate IRL. But this is a game, and you need to keep players engaged even as they learn. And even IRL when I took students up in a glider, I got them in the air holding the stick ASAP long before I bored them to death with preflight check procedures, airspace regulations, cross country theory or aerodynamics. They will need to learn all that and a lot more at some point, RL doesnt have a "game mode", but you do need to get them excited first and give them a sense of accomplishment. You need to make sure they feel its worth the effort, as its hobby after all (or in this case, a game), not a job and it shouldnt feel as one. To make this more concrete, what I wish was in DCS when I got started; a virtual instructor, with voice over, that would act like a buddy talking you through it for the first time. Pretty much exactly what I did myself to my brother. What took me weeks or months to figure out, he got from me in minutes or hours. So what would I have wanted from this buddy? Cold start; yes of course you can select hot start or even airstart, but skipping the entire startup procedure is a monumental loss of immersion. Even a newbie wants to see his jet come alive and maintain the illusion of realism. He wants to get at least an idea of what some of the buttons and systems do before being catapulted in the sky. So this buddy would teach me the bare minimum steps of a cold start procedure, and skip or automatically do for me the more complicated or less crucial steps. Or better yet, ask me if I want to learn that part now, or later. In the F14 this is already somewhat mitigated by jester doing many of the hard things like INS alignment, but even for the pilot the startup procedure could be divided in a few sections, preflight checks, starting engines, turning on and configuring flight and weapon and comms systems, fuel and armament, and for each step I could chose to learn it or skip it/automatically do it, like windows+home does. Something btw, I didnt learn about until 6 months later; but I would prefer windows+home would be more like a checklist/guided startup rather than an automatic one and if its automatic, ideally this would apply to only sections of the procedure. A newbie shouldnt have to wait for INS alignment. INS should be pre-aligned or he should be able to skip it. He is going to crash often and may want to train his start procedure every flight, but also forcing him to waste several minutes looking at an indicator moving slowly to the right, even when he just crashed on take off, is a bridge too far. If you are going to say "time acceleration", fine, offline that is a solution, but then tell him (how) he can do that. AFAIK, no training mission does. Tell him while he is waiting for alignment. This "buddy" would also explain to me the comms menu and the logic behind it. That stuff is obvious to all of you, but it isnt to a newbie and I did more than once close my canopy before contacting ground crew, as no one told me not to. Also how it integrates with the onboard radios for comms with atc/tankers/awacs. Easy comms hides most of that complexity, and hiding that may be appropriate early on, Im not sure, but it still needs to be explained or like me, months later you suddenly find yourself unable to contact awacs or ATC and you are clueless why. Even today I dont understand why some items in comms menu are sometimes black and what, if anything, that means. Here is a simple suggestion, add the frequencies to the comms menu and use colors to indicate if you are broadcasting on that frequency, regardless if it is because you tuned your radio to that frequency or because its done automatically for you when select that awacs or atc.. Buddy would have told me there is a kneeboard and how to use it (and he would have added a cheat sheet startup checklist/procedure to it). You dont want to know how long it took me to discover ... Buddy would explain how to use the F10 map and ATC and how to taxi and navigate the airfield, or in the case of a carrier, how/where to line up and how to hook up. Simple stuff, but its not in any training AFAIK (not talking SC here), I dont even find it explained in the manual. Its also not obvious that connecting ground air supply can only be done via a communication menu and connecting a launch bar can only be done with a keybind. (edit: there is a carrier take off training mission. Either thats relatively new or I somehow missed it when I was doing my training, but looks like this one is solved) From there on on, at least for the F14, I think the other training missions are fine. Maybe if I go over them again I wil find stuff to critique, but by and large those where helpful and I had no problems with them and they taught me what I wanted to learn. It would be nice if they where more integrated though, so after having taken off in a training mission, my buddy would ask me, do you want to just fly around to get acquainted with the jet, or if I would you like to learn to navigate, or land, or do AA or AG.. and skip to the appropriate training, that would be great for immersion, but hardly essential. Then some other things that only come in to play later, but that I wish someone had told me earlier or that I wouldnt have learned without youtube; setting up the radio's (and tacan and datalink) in combination with the mission briefing or kneeboard or in some cases F10 map, and even the integration with SRS (really hope that gets integrated in to DCS). But also using the radio. And with that I mean, the lingo. BRA, bandit/bogey, magic, nails, (buddy)spike, mudspike , bogey dope and dozens of other terms you may not even remember not knowing what they meant, but ask any xplane pilot. Or my brother. Situational awareness. Yeah, I know, thats a tough one and no single lesson is going to teach you this, but even though I was lucky enough to have jester do the radar and talk or yell to me, I could have used a little more hand holding understanding datalink both conceptually and in practice. Same for interpreting the RWR. Many may not even know what an RWR is, let alone figure out if that "15" is a mig 15, F-15 or Sa-15? I just checked, even the manual doesnt really explain this and its kind of important. I would have liked to see some introduction in to various weapons. For my own weapons at least I could consult the manual, but some extra info in game in the armament menu would be helpful (especially for something like the Su25!) and I would also have liked some information on opposing weapons Im likely to encounter. To be explained why some planes will spike me and others may not, why for some missiles you get a missile launch warning and others you dont. I would have liked an introduction in to most common sams, their RWR representation and a basic notion of how lethal they are at what range/altitude, if they are IR or radar guided and what I can do to avoid or counter them. The encyclopedia is pretty useless for this. Unless you revert to youtube, the only realistic way to learn is getting shot down a few 100 times and finding a pattern. Anyway, thats all for now. Im sure others will have their own ideas.

Here is what Im hearing: its your fault for using built-in tutorials and not reading "the" manual. No, that this manual you idiot, that other manual of course. And dont actually read the manual, are you daft? watch the youtube vids hidden at the end of the manual. And not those other youtube vids by XYZ, only these youtube vids by ABC, how else will you learn how to test the fire extinguisher lights before trying out your new toy. And ok, that rather vital information is not in any manual, that stuff OF COURSE can be found by reading every line in the key binding menu. Just read it and ignore the 99% stuff you dont understand, you will find the 1% thing you didnt know you where looking for or existed. And if you cant find it there either, its on wikipedia! And if you cant find it on wikipedia, ask in the forums. Where no doubt, someone will kindly tell you to RTFM. How could we possibly make this any easier? I have no idea.

Expert Im not, but at least I do understand what all the buttons do by now. No thanks to the manuals. But yeah, I dont mind spending some time arguing for making this game more accessible rather than even less accessible than it already is, so maybe, just maybe, it could some day reach a wider audience which could allow devs to spend more on the core. The crowd of hardcore DCS fans who have forgotten what its like to be a noob (or worse, relish and are protective of their niche "status" and want not just the game, but even learning the game to be harder), IMO are DCS worst enemies. And its widespread in these forums.

I wasnt one bit surprised I wasnt able to start a tomcat without help, I literally wouldnt haven known where to start. But I was surprised I could barely even follow the instructions, I couldnt even figure out how to press that knob on the master test panel that I couldnt see (and which or course, is completely unnecessary for any introduction training) and I certainly couldnt distill from that training the basic information I actually needed to start up with no help. I could probably have followed that training 10x and Im still not sure i would have been able to do it alone and I couldnt tell what steps where optional and which wherent and frankly, what the heck I was doing.. And again, if it really was so hard to start up a tomcat, then so be it. But its not. oh and btw, I dont know if it was a bug or something they improved later, there was no "press space to continue" I had to speed read and memorize it all or keep wondering why that flashing square kept flashing over a button that did who knows what. What cockpit orientation? I literally followed the first "basic" tutorial. There is a video embedded in the manual, but it explains nothing that the manual doesnt, it just names the various panels. No. Really not. Let me put it this way; here is a 5 minute video (from a guy who doesnt know what he is talking about making videos we shouldnt watch apparently), but that allowed me to learn how to start a tomcat in.. well 5 minutes: Not very difficult. Teach me the hydraulics and proper checks and testing the test panel later, but I wouldnt have been able to start the tomcat after hours of reading various DCS and module manuals, watching youtube clips embedded in manuals and doing basic in game training. And even if I would, I still wouldnt know how to hook up to the catapult. I wouldnt have known how to select my armament. Again, not very complicated stuff (!) but the information is simply no where to be found in the game or its documentation, or its hidden so deep, no sane noob would ever uncover it. And really, its one thing to say, if you want to learn the ins and outs of the lantirn or operating the radar: go read this book. But if you let a newbie struggle for hours and read 100s of pages just to crank his engine, you lose that customer. Because he knows that radar is more complicated than cranking an engine.

Oh please. You left out the word "yet" in your quote, and then distorted my words completely, why exactly? because even you understand people need to learn things in steps and not everything at once? Are you trying to have an honest conversation here? clearly not.

So in order to figure out how to start your engines, you sign up to a forum and ask :music_whistling: That makes Forth noob friendly too, it has a forum where you can ask advice! i LOVE how you guys keep pointing to the manual without reading it. Nowhere does it provide a simple overview or explanation of what tacan actually is. Its just assumed you know what it is. If you read the entire manual, and you already know what a VOR is, sure, you can sorta read between the lines and figure it out, but lets step back here, I was trying to get my engines going , for the very first time; I wasnt preparing for an IFR navigation flight, I had no expectations of being able to do that, nor in an interest in learning how I should do that yet. I wanted to get airborne. Now I can describe how to start the engines that in what, 5 lines? But you think its fine that a noob instead of having easy access to those 5 lines, has to go through a 20+ minute tutorial that includes a bunch of stuff he really doesnt understand or cares about yet AND that required him to first read 400 pages of on navigation. And if you point that out, you have an attitude problem. :doh: Yeah noob! Before your first flight, you have to go through all the key bindings. Even when you cant possibly know what the vast majority of them does. Its better than reading a manual! But you should do that too of course! Keep yelling GAME MODE. and not understanding this solves no one's problem. I dont want game mode. I dont even understand who does. DCS planes arent particularly difficult to fly. Some WW1 planes in Rise of Flight are a lot harder. If you have next to no flying experience and still struggle not crashing without a simplified flight model, then are you really interested in learning all the systems? I find that hard to imagine. Most people coming to DCS can probably fly well enough to cope the flight model. If they dont, Im not sure what attracts them to DCS, and there are probably better sims that allow them to learn to fly without having to read an encyclopedia to get their engine going . What most noobs need help with is learning all the systems. That is where there is a HUGE learning curve. You are joking, right? Its so intuitive. Its the complete opposite. I WANTED to learn step by step. Not having to read 200 pages on hydraulics on ILS navigation before I knew how to crank my engine! Not having to browse through 4547 advanced keybindings before I knew how to select my fuel load out. Thats the whole problem, there is no "step by step". You solution is to read the entire frigging book first. And if you are lucky, you might come across that next step somewhere along the way. Or not. your idea of step by step seems to be: step 1: learn everything there is to learn. Yeah we all need to learn those 200 buttons and the fine details of controlling the LANTIRN pod before we can understand how to unsweep our wings! Step by step right? Now I could understand if the procedure actually was difficult. But its not. A cold start for a pilot in the tomcat is NOT hard. Its just frustratingly hard to find out how to do it, unless you rely on videos we shouldnt watch. i know one thing. I probably would teach my daughter how to hold the violin make some horrible sound come out of that violin before I asked her to study semaphores and read Brahms. Cant be arsed to read and respond to the rest. I bet its more stupid noob you dont deserve to fly dcs bs.

How about you read it before scolding my attitude. How about reading what I wrote, and understanding virtually none of the obstacles I encountered, and there are many more than ones I listed, are solved by reading through a total of >1000 pages? The problem is not my attitude, Im fine reading if thats whats it takes, but reading 1000 pages about stuff I have zero interest in yet, and still not finding the basics stuff I need to know, does not make it noob friendly. All you people do is yell "game mode" (not solving my, or frankly, anyone's problem) and RFTM (not solving my problems either). The real problem is not the attitude of noobs, even though Im sure countless potential customers are even far less willing than I am to find the info they need just to get started with the game, but that of a community that claims to be noob friendly, but when someone takes the time to actually describe what its like as a noob and point to a list of issues, rather than seeing opportunities to improve DCS, scolds the noobs for their "attitude".

So typical. Blame the noob. He didnt read the 1000 pages worth of manuals. He watched the wrong youtube videos, thats even better. Thats really how you get more people in to DCS and its a mindset that will do wonder for sales. Not ensuring they can learn and discover things at their own pace in an order that makes sense and allows them to have some fun while they do it. A few fun facts though about that manual I never read. First of all, on my system its in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DCSWorld\Doc A folder I browse all the time. But more importantly it explains absolutely nothing that I needed to know. Anything I mentioned above. I did search for tacan, and got zero results. I searched "auto start" and got zero results. But wait, there is another manual, a controller walkthrough manual. Surely its in there? Nope. Its not in the F14 manual either, auto start, zero results. And yeah, its in the list of controls, of course it is, hidden among 546879 other keybindings for a tomcat. You expect noobs to go over literally all of them, to see if there might be something in there, that they do not even know exists - even if they will not understand what 95% of the others do ? And I dont even want auto start. I want a simple start procedure. They way I bet we all start our tomcats. I bet no one here checks their emergency hydraulic pressure ! Back to the DCS manual. Does it say anything about hooking up to a carrier? No, it does not. Does it even explain the communication menu how you rearm and refuel? No it does not AFAICT. 382 pages and if you read it all you wil learn about lua scripting action triggers in the mission editor, but not how you select your weapons or fuel load. Im sure the silly noob is reading the wrong manuals again! And yes, the manual talks about game mode, I wasnt and am not interested in game mode. Whatever that is, I dont care. I dont want simplified flight models or weapons. I dont need to learn how to fly, I need to learn the systems. I want to be able to learn how to start my frigging engines and turn on my MFDs before learning the correct procedure to test my G suit pressure or the correct pressure readings of my emergency flight hydraulics and I shouldnt have to read 1000 pages to do something that ultimately can be explained in 2 minutes. Its not hard to start engines! Its frigging impossible to find out how without watching youtube video we shouldnt watch.

That DCS is noob friendly is just a joke, and not a funny one. To give you my personal perspective on that; I have been flying flight sims since i was a little kid, FS1 on a TRS-80 model 1 at my fathers work place. Ive played Chuck Yeagers air combat, Falcon 1.0 through 3.0 (even played that in multiplayer with a serial cable!), little bit of MS flight sims, Ive flown il2 sturmovik and 1946 intensely and fanatically for about a decade, was disappointed with cliffs of dover and switched to some Rise of Flight and then Condor soaring simulator ever since. I have some RL flying experience too. 300-ish hours gliding. Though unlicensed I have a fair bit of stick time in all kinds of planes, from cessna's and glassairs to a Boeing Stearman. I also have a few decades RC flying experience, anything from discus launch gliders and warbirds to FPV freestyle/racing drones. Im not a particularly gifted pilot, nor an ambitious one, Im not entirely hopeless and I think I have a broader background than most "DCS noobs". I have tried DCS several times over the past 5 or whatever years. Every time it was the same. I would load it and sit there in the cockpit thinking, now what? With pure luck and 30 minutes of trying, I got the TF-51 going, but flying a warbird alone, with no opponents and no weapons is not my idea of fun. It looked like Il2, flew not too different from IL2 just with poor framerates and no fun. So I would sit in the the Su25 with a russian cockpit. No frigging clue what to do. I would go to the control setup and be completely and utterly overwhelmed. I didnt even know what 90% of those binding meant, let alone what I would really need. I dont recognise any of these weapons, what if I just want some unguided bombs or rockets, what on earth are those things? I dont really have any affinity with the Su25 anyhow, so I wasnt going to spend a ton of time learning it, I would just uninstall DCS again and go have fun in IL-2, RoF or condor. It wasnt until the F14 was released that I thought, I do want to learn that. And boy, did that require perseverance. Not so much the flying part, but everything else. So I purchased my new toy and all I wanted to do was take off from a carrier, try and shoot my guns at some bombers or something flying in a straight line, nothing too difficult, and then most likely crash trying to land on that carrier. That was my initial ambition, all the rest I would learn little by little. So I went through the built-in training to learn how to start my engines. First thing it says: you should be familiar with the cockpit, please go read that 500 page PDF. *GULP* Until then Ive never ever even read a manual for any sim -ever. But ok, this is more realistic and the F14 is more complicated than a warbird or glider, so I was willing to do some reading. So I browsed through the manual, skipped to the cockpit layout to learn at least some of the things I was looking at. First thing it talks about is G valve test button. Okay. Then Oxygen airflow control. Fine. Do I care at this point? Volume/TACAN panel. What is Tacan? Manual just assumes I know. Do I care ? Should I care? no idea. Volumes probably not that important ALR-67 knob. What on earth is the ALR-67? TACAN control panel. Still no idea what tacan is, let alone what TACAN BIT button does, except that according to the manual, it initiates TACAN BIT. Helpful! Will it help start my engines though? ICS control panel. What is ICS? Oh, ok, its the babyphone. Dont need that do I? AFCS control panel. Just what I needed, more acronyms. Thankfully I can figure that one out, because the panel itself is more helpful than the manual and mentions stability augmentation. AN/ARC-159. Yeah looks like a radio. Im flying alone, why do I care. Then more stuff i dont care about. Pictures of the actual controls. Cool, but I dont have those. I have a joystick and my throttle is kinda different. What do I need to map? What dont I need? Picture of the throttle quadrant. I cant even figure out the damn picture! Seriously. Look at it, can you? Then load of engine instrument gauges, the manual doesnt really explain any of them, what they mean. I dont care, Im gonna assume my brand new tomcat engines work fine and are covered by warranty. Airspeed indicator. Now that is useful. Or will be if I ever get flying. Its a weird one though. I dont get it. Im sure Ill understand when I actually see it in use. More stuff I dont care about, many, many more acronyms I have idea what they mean. I think Im done reading this "manual", Ive learned *nothing*, so I go back to the training. If you have the F14 modue, I highly recommend you do the cold start training. Imagine yourself in the situation I was in, just bought the thing, wanted to take off and shoot stuff. Then follow that cold start training. Its hilarious! Goes on and on about testing lights, testing hydraulics, checking 124 numbers on dials that I dont know what they mean and there is no frigging way I can even remember 10% of that, and I have no idea which steps are really needed and which ones arent. Does anyone tell me I can just press windows+home? Nope. I only learned that a year later (true story). Does anyone tell me the few steps that really are required? Nope. Well, not the manual, not the training, thank god for youtube. So I finally started the engines and aligned the INS, now what? I dont see it in the manual, I dont see a training. How do I get to the catapult? How do I attach to it? More youtube. And ever since its been youtube, youtube, youtube. Googling of acronyms and then more youtube. If it werent for grim reapers, I would have long uninstalled DCS. Noob friendly, my ass!

My Ryzen 2600X is not THAT old :) Note that I explicitly tried to reduce the GPU as bottleneck in my tests. No doubt, if you run at high res and turn up the settings, and especially in VR, its easy to make the GPU become your main bottleneck and then obviously you can no longer expect linear scaling by adjusting other components, like CPU or ram. Id still be interested in seeing your results at 1080p low or medium with varying dram clockspeeds. Ryzen 3xxx performance is said to be less dependent on ram speed than my generation, but Id still be surprised if you wouldnt see similar, near linear scaling, especially if you can keep CAS latency constant.

I think that is a good plan. All those saying it needs to be more real, lets have a mode that whenever you crash or get shot down, you need to buy the module again. Its not as real as actually dying, but its more real than just hitting rely and may solve EDs problems.

Its not mine, Im just continuing someone else's analogy. And while both of you seem to like the analogy, and you seem to embrace its snobbish connotation, you are both oblivious to its implications. You are like a ferrarista who wants the airconditioning, electric windows and seat upholstery removed from his car. That is fine. Ferrari will happily do that for you. But some of you actually want Ferrari to not offer those things to others. Thats a problem. Because those Saudi princes and pop stars that want airco and need traction control are the ones paying for the development of your next racing car. Likewise, unless you are willing to pay professional prices for actual military simulation prices, you need to ensure the game has a wide enough appeal to support its development. Now I dont think easy AAR will do a lot for that, but its the mindset here that scares me. At the same time there seems to be an extreme resistance to changing the business model of a free game core with optional paid modules, implying an expectation the core will be updated and improved in to perpetuity for free, AND a resistance to making the game more accessible to a wider audience. I just dont see how people think that is sustainable.

Why do ferrari's have traction control, launch control, parking sensors, cruise control, electronic stability control and all kinds of "cheats" that are useless or even hurt performance on the track, but make them more driveable to non racing drivers? Maybe because it helps sell them? Maybe the market for non racing drivers who buy a ferrari to be seen in it, or have their idea of fun in it is bigger than the market of trained racing drivers who buy it to use on a circuit? Maybe the sales to non professional racing drivers allow Ferrari to keep developing racing cars ? Or do you think Ferrari would still be around if it only catered for professional circuit drivers?

Just throwing this out here, as I just posted a link to a freestyle drone flight and realized it may actually be helpful in more than one way. Its obviously not going to teach you AAR, but nothing will teach you fine throttle control like flying a racing/freestyle drone (or sim). Few other kinds of flying require similar precise control or will expose weaknesses in your motor skills or flight controllers. And if you already mastered AAR and you can catch that 3 wire with one hand tied behind your back, and want to challenge yourself, maybe give it a try, see how you get on with it, this one is free: https://www.realdronesimulator.com/ 2 week free trial: https://dronesimulation.co.uk/ This one is less realistic but more fun and almost free: https://thedroneracingleague.com/drl-sim-3/ Full disclaimer, I fly these using a taranis RC radio, a decade of muscle memory is hard to unlearn and I struggled flying those sims with my pc hotas, especially my TCWS throttle. Perhaps its not good enough, or perhaps Im not good enough at using it, but either way its good to find out and may point towards a weakness affecting me (or you) doing AAR too.