Vertigo72

LOL. Thats one way of looking it at I guess. Now if only I could also scale down my fingers, Id be golden!

In the world of radio controlled drones and planes, where we control craft that may literally be >10x as responsive and have roll rates in the many 1000s of degrees per second, and control that with a tiny little stick of a few cm, we almost universally use rates. Just a switch that controls how much control authority a given amount of stick movement gives. So we set it to high to do our crazy aerobatics, but setting it medium or low we still have sufficient precision when we come in to land or want to do formation flying or "flying scale" as we call it (make it look like the real aircraft scaled down, hard to do when a few mm stick travel results in faster roll rate than the real plane could even do). Curves are also used, but perhaps ironically, I mostly use them to get a linear response so a given amount of stick travel corresponds to a constant increase in roll or pitch rotation speed, regardless if its near the center or at the edges. On most RC planes you dont get that without curves due the geometry of the servos and control rods. Anyway, not sure if "rates" that is something we can replicate on our PC sims. But that might not be a bad option to have. Especially for those with less than perfect joysticks. BTW, and as an aside. I still find it remarkable how even cheap RC transmitters have such high precision sticks and you need to sell your first born to get something similar on PC. Ive actually hooked up my RC transmitter to my PC for some games, including racing drone simulators where it obviously makes complete sense. My MS FFB2 may not be the best stick in the world, its also not the worst and is not even close to being as smooth, responsive and accurate as my RC controller.

Im puzzled. If you are so confident that its impossible for ED to port their code so it can work with a third party graphics/terrain/atmospheric/network/ flightsim engine, or more accurately if they cant extract the code they would need and make an addon to another platform that already is a fully fledged simulator, because DCSW is all one big bowl of spaghetti code, and they would have to throw it all out and start from scratch, just how confident are you then they could ever adapt it to a new inhouse developed engine? If their code is such a mess, the sooner they start rewriting it, the better. Might as well do it in a way that also works with FS2020 so rewriting it isnt just a huge cost and something they end up having to give away to a small audience, but also something they can actually sell to an audience of millions. I also have very little doubt that others will be able to deliver what you seem to think ED can not. Even if big players like lockheed martin dont get in to the game, at the very least the tacpack guys will port their software to FS2020 to once again enable all the things that are "impossible" in a civil sim. Tacpack may not have mattered to any of us, and thus not a whole lot to third party content developers, because who in their right minds would want to use the fsx engine in 2020? Pretty much only their government and professional customers in the training market. No gamer would even look at it. Raise your hand if you did. Lets see if that holds true when its based on FS2020. Lets see how many military plane developers will want to produce content for that sim and its userbase, and then need a middleware layer for users that also want to do combat and "blow stuff up". I see Razbam already have a few tacpack modules, Im sure they wont be interested. Or any of the current DCS third parties. They would rather sell hundreds or thousands of copies to DCS users than hundreds of thousands to FS2020 users. Because reasons. Im not saying I think this will rival the scope and depth of DSCW anytime soon. The die hard DCS crowd isnt going to abandon DCS for it. But it will offer enough for (military) sim pilots including more than a few DCS pilots, to open their wallets, and then keep asking for more until it too has plenty of assets and decent AI and comms and campaigns and anything DCSW currently offers that fs+tacpack may not. Meanwhile ED with their perfect business model no one should touch, is stuck selling map modules by the Km2 to a dwindling audience, in an effort to raise money to pay for a vulkan port or finally have some actual clouds. I bet that will be easy.

I guess you are the only one who still hasnt understood why some of us want a different funding model (hint: its not why you keep saying I want it) and thus you also can not understand why switching to a third party gfx/terrain/weather/vr/network/.. engine could be a different way to solve those very same problems.

An autopilot that does the AAR? I mean, I have used ACLS on my F14, its a similar cheat, even if real pilots could also use it. And thinking about it its actually strange that AFAIK, they never made AAR autopilot, or did they? Shouldnt be too hard and could potentially save a tired pilot.

You cant seriously equate those two. You cant seriously compare the resources that microsoft, a trillion dollar company has been and will be pouring in to making FS2020 an actual state of the art simulator + SDK with... outera. A company with how many employees again? Who never produced anything other than a tech demo. Its just silly. It will be a very substantial rewrite, that much Im sure off (which btw, I suspect may be needed anyway afaik ED have admitted that much). I wouldnt expect this to be done in 6 or 12 months; if they want to have anything like the current functionality at the getgo, my guess is it would take years. But at the same time, it will be a lot easier to accomplish for ED than for almost anyone else starting from scratch andf without their background, experience, algorithms, research data and code snippets to look at. I wil also credit microsoft with at the very least one thing: making life easy for developers. Fantastic tools, documentation, APIs, debuggers.. no one does that better. Dont believe for a second ED does. Of course you couldnt use the FS2020 mission editor even if it has one. Youd need to add that, and a lot of other stuff, just like those guys did for FSX. I have no idea if FS2020 does radar, it actually might, its not like civilian planes dont have one, but almost certainly not up to ED standards. Neither did FSX, it had none. Now look at that F18, a2a, ground radar, rwr, ecm, countermeasures, its all there. If 3 guys can do that, I think ED can too. That the engine is different is kinda the point, no? But is it going to be more difficult for ED (or Heatblur) to adapt what they have to FS2020 than for other third party module makers? No. Besides, want to bet that heatblur and co will not (re)create their modules, initially as demilitarized models for FS2020 anyhow? They would be crazy not to. I will buy their F14 (again), I want to buzz my own house with it. They already did all the research, they have all the 3d models, the sounds, the textures, the systems logic. It will still be a lot of work to make it work with FS Im sure, but far less than for anyone starting from scratch, and the target market will be huge. So that will happen anyway. ED wouldnt want to focus on making planes, PLENTY of developers will do that. They should focus on the things no one else does. the "DCSW" layer. Then get plane developers onboard with that. Yeah, keep saying that. its all hype. And fake. Cherry picked screenshots. Recorded at 1/10th realtime speed and then sped up. Or you can talk to people who have actually used it.

Those are just empty words. Doesnt mean a thing. Would you not like to see the visuals performance and optimisations not too mention, ridiculously detailed entire world map of FS combined with all the things we already have in DCS? If you dont want to have that, then I dont know what to tell you. 30 FPS stutter VR and 2 cartoonsish cloud types must be something some people really love. What is DCS world to you? Is it a graphics engine? A VR engine? A terrain engine ? A weather simulation? A sound engine? A frigging chat room? It has all of those, but is that what you love about it? I dont think so. Calling a DCSW port to FS "something other than dcsworld" is about as silly as calling a future version with good performance, dynamic weather and advanced clouds, vulkan api, proper multithreading and support for nvidia VR APIs "something other than dcs world". Why does it matter to you if its microsoft that makes the underlying engine or ED? Does anyone who flies P3D care? How exactly would you be screwed? You will be screwed, along with ED, if lockheed martin or someone else comes out with a credible military sim based on FS2020 engine and ED doesnt. Then you are screwed and may not even see your EA modules finished, because good luck to ED surviving on selling only 40K Km2 maps to new users, while the other guys offer the entire world in stunning detail. Besides, you where so against subscriptions because you wanted to own the software. You do. You bought it. Be happy with it. Im sure if ED goes the MS FS route they will honor their pledge to finish the EA modules you bought. You can then keep using yours forever and DCS is already almost perfect according to you. It doesnt need new clouds or performance increases or VR or its all PERFECTLY FINE. Im the only one who wants to see big changes in the engine. So why would you be screwed? You dont want to pay maintenance fees or or subscriptions fees, you didnt buy into a 30 year forever free update program. If you dont want to move to a DCSW V4 or V5 that uses a microsoft engine, because it offers nothing you want, then dont. That was exactly what you wanted to be able to do by owning the software. Or was what you really wanted that other users keep buying 40K m2 KM maps to fund your core updates for the next few decades ? I told you that couldnt work.

to bring this back to the original topic; Ive been arguing ED needs to find ways to be able to spend a lot more resources on its underlying game and graphics and VR engine.I wanted to somehow pay ED for more base layer and graphics engine development instead of supporting the making of ever more map modules that further reduced my framerates. But replacing their engine with FS2020 and getting microsoft to maintain most of that, well, that also solves my problem; I can pay the money I wanted to send to ED to microsoft and in return get a map of the entire planet, a well as, with little doubt, the most advanced and optimized flightsim graphics engine out there. You know, that works for me. But it can also work for ED, because I will gladly pay ED to deliver their DCSW content and tools and underlying logic and physics and AI to FS2020. DCSW is free, you can argue all day if should remain so, but if they provide that same functionality as a FS addon, I dont even really care how much they would charge for that. Literally. If its $1000, Ill buy it without thinking twice. If its a lot more, Ill mortgage my house. Sell my kidneys. It would mean a performance/visual boost no amount of CPU and GPU upgrades could ever deliver in the next decade. And if you calculate the price per km2 of map, it would still be the bargain of the century.

Just point your phone at your screen if need be. Might be enough to show us what the issue is.

Just stumbled up this in thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4407778 Thought it might interest some of you who have also looked at the Thrustmaster TPR but struggled with the price tag.

I brought up fsx@war (note the name!) and tacpack to prove the things you all said could not be done with FSX have been done on FSX. I said it, I linked it, but since no one here seems to read, I also provided some videos and the best ones I found showcasing those mods, which also work on P3D, which itself is an extensive mod of FSX, happened to use P3D, because,well, who in their right would want to fly FSX today. Somehow you feel justified using that to disprove my point about FSX? Thats just beyond the pale. What are you talking about? You think a military sim based on FS2020 would share the same world with the civilian sim? Hey cessna pilot, can you please hurry your take off, i gotta bomb your airfield? As for companies not wanting to be associated with military.. LOL? You said it yourself, who owns P3D: Lockheed Martin. Yeah, no one wants them associated with the military. If you meant microsoft doesnt want it; they seem happy enough to sign contracts with the military but maybe they dont want their name on a military sim. But they wont have to. They sell FS2020, and anyone with the SDK will do with that what they want and put their own name on it if they want. I dont think P3D has many "made by microsoft" stickers on it. FSX sucked. Its ugly. Its flightmodel is crap. It was barely any good when it came out in 2006. Why would you even want to use that as basis for something modern or highly realistic ? Some guys did for some reason, but I cant understand why. Let alone why P3D used it. Congrats to them for making it work I guess? But FS2020 rewrites the books on flightsims. no one ever attempted what MS is doing with it. You can pretend its just another sim, but it isnt. Its a paradigm shift and I dont see how anyone can compete with that; they are going to steamroll the sim market whether you like it or not. And you may think ED can ignore it because it makes combat sims, and MS doesnt. Until a few days ago, I would largely have agreed. But they cant ignore it, because if 2 or 3 part time enthousiasts could use the SDK to turn FSX in to a somewhat credible military sim in their spare time, imagine what a better funded team can do with FS2020. Imagine what ED could do with that. And so not everyone will ignore that. Aerosoft will not. Razbam will not. Heatblur will not. My guess is even P3D will not. And did you know, they are owned by lockheed martin? Someone keeps reminding me of that. The same company who happen to produce the F16. And F35. And F22. And a few dozen other military jets. And simulators. One of them based on an ancient microsoft simulator... ED may ignore the threats and opportunities of FS2020 but they shouldn't and I dearly hope they wont. But you go ahead and keep ignoring everything.

FWIW, after 3 integrity checks, the problem remains for me. Its not a big deal, its only an extra click, but it may be indicative of something more important.

Indeed. Someone would need to write that. Not easy and no one is saying recreating everything DSCW supports and implements as an addon to FS would be a trivial task. Far from it. But the fsx@war developer, see below, planned AI for both ground and air units, and may have done it partially? as I have seen at least ground troops engage each other in fsx. Yes, very basic and pilot AI is quite a bit harder and even if he did make something, no one should expect a 1 man hobby project to be on the level of what ED delivered. But that doesnt mean it cant done in fsx or FS2020. Particularly by a team who have already done it so well before and already have that code, like you know, ED. There actually is. Or was. Created by a single guy, freeware. Its called fsx@war: Careful, actual site is down, hosting malware now. Is it as comprehensive as DCSW? Well, duh, of course not, its not even in the same ballpark (edit: hmmm, its actually surprisingly comprehensive. Maybe not DCSW level comprehensive but kudo's to its dev!). Again, no one is saying replicating DCSW is at all trivial. Doesnt mean it cant be done, by ED or others. If you had even glanced over the links I provided, you would have seen. Thats for FSX, which didnt really have much MP capability itself, unlike FS2020

I think you are too quick to conclude the main problem is QA. I think its more likely their main problem is an old game engine that is being held together with spit and glue, and that is constantly being urgently updated to accommodate all the new content, but no one can afford the time to fundamentally rewrite parts that need rewriting. Some else called recently called it "code debt" and this exactly that it is. Ive seen similar problems too often. I once got hired as a project manager in a company making point of sale software. In that company customers literally had a direct phone line to developers (I kid you not) who where constantly asked to add features urgently. Features that the base layer often had no provisions for and that had to be shoe horned in under extreme time pressure. The software base layer was neglected and abused for 10 years because no customer ever asks to upgrade the database engine and API layer to something that is more robust and more manageable. Even an army of testers would not provide bug free stable releases in that scenario. The only solution was to stop devs answering the phone, have sales reps stop promising customers new features that weren't already in there , and lock up a team of devs in a basement with no phone and rewrite the db and APIs. I didnt manage to convince the company owners of that, they said it would hurt sales and be far too costly. They wanted to be able to bill almost every hour that their devs worked. So I left. And a few years later the company went bankrupt. ED risks getting in to a similar situation. code debt is piling up The problem isnt just QA or project management, its the business model that only benefits from adding new content that may break the core or require urgent changes, and almost nothing from improving the underlying core. As long as business is good, proper management may allocate the required resources to maintaining that core. But the moment it starts going wrong, the business model forces them to focus on what generates short term revenue, even if that means adding substantially to their long term (code) debt. It becomes a viscous cycle thats extremely difficult to get out of.

I didint even know it existed until yesterday. The point is not how successful they are or where, or how good their implementation is, the point is there are apps and addons that allow users to turn FSX (or P3D) in to a military simulator with most of the functionality you would expect, like multiplayer, radar, weapons, sams, IFF, AAR, mission editors, destroyable target etc. have a look here: https://www.vrsimulations.com/tacpack.php or more details here: https://forums.vrsimulations.com/support/index.php/TacPack_Documentation Here is a video a DCS pilot introduces an F18 in P3D: Ive fast forwarded it, I just wanted to get a feel for it. The FSX engine is obviously not state of the art anymore, but that F18 module actually looks impressive. And given that tacpack apparently is just 1 full time dev and 2 part time after hour developers, and they created both that F18 module and all the underlying stuff to make it work in FSX, I find it deeply impressive. YMMV. Here is another one showing a phantom with a better terrain mod: Cant really judge its realism or anything but it doesnt really look horrible, given what they are working with. So again the point is not that those addons would be better than DCS. Im quite sure they are not. But it does suggest that it may perfectly possible to turn a modern civilian simulator like FS2020 in to a military one through addons and API. And I can see DCSW becoming that addon and bringing together what I am confident will be the best (looking) flight simulator and terrain/mapping engine with what already is the best military simulation to create something rather frigging awesome. And if ED do not do it, someone else will, like those tacpack guys. The result may not have the scope and depth of DCSW, but Im gonna want to play it anyway. Im going to want it real bad.

at the risk of asking the obvious, you do have view smoothing set to 50 in trackir? You may even want to experiment with enabling precision mode (F7 by default) and then in the camera settings set the precision mode smoothing to a ridiculous high number like 1000 or 10000. If that doesnt solve anything, then at least we know its not noisy head tracking data causing the problem.

Sounds like you derive a little too much self esteem from the fact you play DCS and your friends can not. If easy to add changes to DCS can lower the bar for new players or converts from other sims, then that is in all our interest and we should embrace it. No one forces you to use those options. Now I dont think having "easy AAR" will open the flood gates of IL2 or fsx pilots, but I sense a lot of misplaced elitism in this forum. Its one thing to want a sim that is as realistic as possible, its another to relish the fact its a small niche and actively discourage getting more players in to the game and have them enjoy it in whatever way they want, even if they like to fly with one button cold start, full icons, unlimited ammo and invincibility. Just like some of us may occasionally like to fly a 747 or concorde simulator with an accurate flight model just to see what its like, but not give a hoot to learn to correct cold start procedure or mind ATC directions or airspace restriction, (serious) civilian pilots may want to occasionally blow stuff up in a realistic military sim without studying 3 months before achieving anything. Their money is just as valuable as yours and helps for your realism.

Of course it doesnt guarantee an outcome. A billion dollar check wont guarantee it either. What it does guarantee is that ED can freely shift resources away from ever more new content creation and dubious game engine breaking modules, towards rewriting base layer engine and making improvements in DCSW that users have been begging for for half a decade. So at least a different model CAN make those things happen, the current model makes that almost impossible. Where to do what thing? If current users will abandon ED if they offer optional subscription models or move to a non free DCSW base layer or they introduce maintenance contracts or do anything else that I can think off to achieve the goal I mentioned above, then DCS is doomed. The only thing ED can then do is create new module after new module exploding the number of bugs and issues and they will never ever be able to truly focus on the stuff that so many are craving for but no one is paying for. They will be digging an ever bigger hole that they can not get out of.

You can repeat that lie as often as you like, it doesnt make it any more true. My sole goal is finding a way that allows ED to spend (substantially) more resources on the base layer, instead of constantly having to produce new content and modules, and be able to do so without having to shoot themselves in the foot financially, and without causing all kinds of other undesirable effects. I want to be able to spend money on DCS knowing my money will allow them to make the game run smoother and faster and more stable, instead of only being able to spend money on modules that where created at the expense of that goal and often achieve the exact opposite. If you have any better suggestion, Im all ears.

You do have v-sync enabled then? Either in the game or in nvidia driver settings, but not both.

And when you drop bombs on a wooden shed in DCS you can see individual wooden planks flying around and interacting with each other and the splinters causing damage to our planes. Or maybe Im confusing with another game now. The performance impact can not be the main reason of DCSs poor performance. It performs poorly in single player when nothing is shooting or exploding. I dont think I ever even noticed a big difference when there is. Yeah I will miss the current ability of shooting out individual windows in the Burj Khalifa and causing realistic damage to all the buildings in DCS. Sarcasm aside, with just particle and light effects alone you could make explosions and fires that look a heck of a lot better than what we currently have. Thats really not a high bar. DCS has some things it does very well graphics wise, at least as good as what Ive seen from FS2020, like atmospheric and light effects and pbr rendering of metals. But its explosions and fires/smoke and damage modelling look worse than most 15 year old games. Its pretty hard for a FS2020 port to do even worse here. As for altering the geometry and replacing building meshes with destroyed buildings; we do not have that ability now in DCS. In FS2020 selectively replacing AI generated buildings on a map with your own custom (and thus destructible or replaceable) mesh, most certainly is possible, its how developers can make custom airports and landmarks - so in theory worst case solution you could make entire cities and maps like that; it just would be a similar amount of work as placing buildings on a map for DCS now. And you could even make ww2 maps like that. Just not for the entire planet. But Id also be very surprised if microsoft could not provide 3rd party developers deeper real time access to the AI/building generator to allow replacing of generated building meshes with custom ones or piles of rubble . That sounds like a trivial feature to implement if it isnt already in there. I dont even care what MS used to produce those videos and their demo's. Even if its highest end PC hardware available on the planet, it will be about the same as what many DCS pilots already have anyway, but they dont get smooth VR performance with a terrain and weather engine that doesnt look anything like FS2020. Really, your are grasping here. Feel free to be a MS or FS hater, but there is no denying it looks *stunning* and it actually runs smooth, enough people can attest to that.

To be quite frank, based on at least some recent business decisions they made, I certainly can not accuse them of being commercial masterminds. Nor would I even want them to be, Id much rather think of them as highly skilled developers with a passion for military aviation than business gurus with only a passion for profit. Even so , I suspect ED do understand this very well, its hard to imagine its not affecting them every day, or whenever a staffing decision needs made or a road map is brought up. But with customers like the ones posting here, who refuse to even try to understand the issue and contemplate solutions, I would find it hard to come with a solutions myself. ED cant even raise the issue without risking an uprising. Its most fervent supports may well be their worst enemies. Yeah so your solution is a paid core and versioning. Thats hardly a novel thought. But it has its own rather serious problems. If you release V3 tomorrow, what happens to F16 and SC buyers? What happens to the already limited online community if only half the user base upgrades, and next year it gets split over 3 versions. Then multiply it by two if you factor in "stable" vs "OB". What happens to the third party content producers and module developers with their unfinished modules who have some customers on 2.5 some on 3 some on 3.5 ? Sure doesnt sound like "no problem" to me.

As if you'd have any other choice :) The more I think about this, the more this seems like an inevitability. Unlike outera, FS2020 is an actual state of the art flight sim with everything a regular flight sim needs and an SDK; being from microsoft, those tools will just work. It will also no doubt obtain many millions of users soon after its released. Military plane addon modules are therefore a 100% certainty. Id be even surprised if we didnt recognize the names of some of the module developers. Think about it, if you have already done all the research and already have a super detailed F14 or mig or whatever 3d model, cockpit, textures, sounds.. and you "only" need to port the flight model to give you access to maybe 100x more customers, wouldnt you? Initially it may not be for combat, but Im sure plenty of FS pilots will like to fly in a tomcat or F16 and buzz through a photorealistic landscape in VR. I would. . As for the DCSW functionality; they've even added most (all?) those things to FSX (google tacpack if you are unfamiliar). Not saying its where DCS is today, but it allows multiplayer combat with radar, weapons, tacan, AAR, IFF, carriers,.. If FSX SDK allowed these things, I cant see why FS2020 SDK will not. And so if ED doesnt do it, someone else will, like the creators of tacpack. That may not be as good as DCSW, I have no clue. But think about it; if you are ED and you have this outdated spaghetti code game engine you can hardly afford to maintain let alone rewrite, and you are facing a 1000lb gorilla who just released a mind boggling good looking flight sim, that will soon support the very same plane modules by the very same developers as your own platform, and you have someone else developing a combat system for all that? What do you do? Honestly Im beginning to think ED have no other choice than do this. FS2020 is shaping up to become this whale thats going to eat everyone else's lunch in the flight sim business. If you have the choice between developing on it, or competing against it, its not much of a choice. At least ED are in a position where they can carve out a nice niche for themselves on top of FS2020. Unlike most of the other civilian flight sim makers, Id hate to be in their shoes.

I highly doubt their current business model can even support that. Thats a ton of work with no obvious ROI like ever. They can not possibly do that and then give that new base layer for free. All the more reason to think about changing that business model. But if you are going to take such drastic steps, then I have an alternative. And Im confident you wouldnt mind digging deep in your wallet for this one. I know I wouldnt. Make DCSW a FS2020 addon. Okay, you would be limited to current day maps, which is a bit of an issue especially for ww2 modules. But Id sell both my kidneys to have DCS with FS2020 graphics/VR /terrain/weather engine. And then ED no longer has to maintain those things and can focus on what they do best; the planes, the flight models and the system modelling.

Ok. But there has to be a mechanism that allows you to pay for those upgrades, and all of them that I heard have serious drawbacks. Most base layer upgrades can not realistically be sold as optional modules. I can see it maybe for dynamic campaigns, but not for the graphics engine, or AI and even less for the network layer or server side of things. A non free base layer that periodically gets updated to a new version like many other sims do, fragments the community, especially it splits the online community and makes maintenance of modules and delivery of WIP modules a nightmare. A maintenance fee that gives users the right to keep upgrading their base layer to the latest version has similar issues given that most new modules depend on changes in the base layer so customers who bought that SC or F16 or whatever module must have access to that updated base layer. Maybe there are workarounds, like including enough free maintenance duration with every module, but its not hard to see how that will cause problems. Also for online pilots who need to be on the same version this would be almost identical to a compulsory subscription. Or at least a subscription to online flying. If you have any better ideas, Im all ears.