Rick50

Yes, lots and lots of hours of work, possibly into 10,000 hours of work for a module? I don't know, but whatever it is, it's a LOT. You are also quite correct about the pricepoint being really small for what you get (as long as there aren't bugs that cause game crashes). I think the money is about getting enough hardware, and money to live while it's in development. In the linked thread about the TU-22 Backfire project, the 3d modeller's computer broke, and was still struggling to get a machine up to restart work 2 months later. It's also mentioned that for them (and others, I strongly suspect), this was a side-job, an unpaid hobby effort that might see income for the efforts years later if sold well. Meaning, there was no monthly income for doing the work. No boss to complain to about getting a raise, as there was no paycheques! You put in some Backfire work, when you have some spare time, maybe between dinner and sleep. Maybe on holidays when you don't have to work for the paycheque to pay rent/mortgage/insurance/food/kids and so on. So yes, I do think most simulation devs are basically volunteers, until after their first commercial success, at which point they maybe start to morph into an actual functioning company... at that point it might increase to full time employment for the partners who started it, and the hiring of outside contractors to help, maybe hire a few part time employees. They didn't have ED's resources, and there was a time that ED likely didn't have much resources either, they have been working and growing for more than two decades, with HUGE experience and many module successes (and earlier sim versions like Flanker 2.5, LOMAC / LockOn, and so on). Code reuse... that I don't know. I used to think it was easy to do exactly that, but one day I remember someone, from ED I think, explaining that many things you'd think code for could be re-used, either "had to" be re-coded from scratch, or was just as much work as coding from scratch. Silver_Dragon posted this thread link, and since reading it myself, I understand why he did. The causes of project end, were a surprise to me, I hadn't even considered part of that as a possibility. Truly a must-read for anyone hoping to see complex modules for DCS, to appreciate the effort and understand:

Brian, 3DArtistExtreme, alieneye... ...thank you, and any others in your team or who helped you with information access or advice and donations, for attempting this project, and for sharing the story of what went wrong. That can't be an easy thing to share, but I appreciate the effort!

Drama. No need to forget. I didn't say it COULDN'T be done, I said "MAY" not be possible. There is a HUGE distinction between those two. You SHOULD check back in 2024... maybe by then you'll get a few screenshots of a Phantom cockpit. Maybe an EA release by 2026 or 7. The Hornet took over 3 years, from public announcement to EA release. That's with ED's larger crew, two decades of experience making combat flight sim content, and supportive community. All those other aircraft took many years and hoops to jump through to get permissions and data, the Harrier by Razbam, and all the others you listed by ED's amazing team. I'm curious about aircraft module projects that were started, not publicly announced, but failed in the dark, for this reason or that. We'll never find out, but I'm curious about past failed efforts, what the module was supposed be about, what kinds of reasons there were for the project failures, the ones we didn't hear about and likely never will. ED themselves had made talk and even a couple of screenshots of the Phantom F-4, several years ago... and then dropped it. I do not know the reasons why they dropped it. More recently, they stated they would not be pursuing the Phantom, but that they'd be ok with a 3rd party publishing a Phantom for the DCS world. Think about that... ED, with all it's capabilities, STARTED a Phantom... and then early on decided to stop. I'm not trying to kill off the dream... but overly optimistic enthusiasm for a module that doesn't appear to be chosen by a dev, or announced is mildly silly, and that's fine, it's nice to dream of a brighter future! I'm just offering a "devil's advocate" point of view so that people wandering into a thread don't get the mistaken idea that a Phantom or BUFF module is just months away from the store. People often jump to conclusions based on a few scraps of incomplete information, all the time. But if anyone is confident it's doable and will sell well enough for a workable profit, then start a "Kickstarter" and promote it in the forums here, and other flight simulation forums, I bet you could get enough funding to get a project going.

Forget multiple variants, it may be TOO difficult to bring a single Phantom into DCS that would meet ED and us virtual fliers' minimum expectations. IF you get permission from Boeing... IF you get permission from USAF USN, you still may run into issues with the remaining Phantom Phlyers in Japans' JSDF, Turkish defense ministries and so on. IF you get legal permission to obtain the manuals.... IF there are enough subject matter experts, people who flew them for real and remember how it all works... who have time and patience to share their extensive knowledge... ... the manuals that are needed to actually rrepresent the real aircraft systems, it's detailed flight envelope, it's fire controls... might not be available at any price. As for variants, I'll bet that there are many more differences that the general public is unaware of, which would vastly complicate making additional variants. How much would you pay for a DCS Phantom with EVERY variant? And how many DCS flyers would follow you to that pricepoint?

Caucasus map. start Anapa, fly west... keep flying west.

incroyable!! Wasn't that long ago we wouldn't even get proper stitching in a wall texture...

Well... getting ANY Phantom is going to be difficult at best. Getting a second variant, would be almost miracle-level. We won't get a third variant, IMO, so pack wisely. I think the first variant should be the widely sold E gunslinger, and the second variant should be a Navy carrier-capable variant of the Vietnam era, but I'm open to suggestions. Maybe a B or C instead of a J? Sure, ok makes sense. That criteria for me means we can have the most historical scenarios with those two variants, 'Nam era carrier ops, and global fights in the Middle East, Cold War scenarios. While this jet is of huge importance to us fanbois and historians, I wonder how well known young virtual pilots know of it? Might not be a factor for some simpler planes, but the complexity of the Phantom in the cockpit and systems, means that it'll need to sell VERY well just to pay for the much longer development time needed.

Well that does make sense: from Rio Gallegos Argentina, to Port Stanley is 492 miles, or 791 km, and that's probably around what your cruise speed is per hour, in many fighters. I remember hearing somewhere that one reason the Argentinian strike fighters were not as effective as expected, was because the very long distances meant that their pilots had extremely short time on station, in order to have enough return fuel. Meaning one or two passes and "Bingo!", gotta return home. Two hours in the air might not seem so bad for giant fighters with lots of internal and externals and some air tankers supporting you... but for smaller fighters in 1982 with no air tanking...

Meh, after 22+ years it's still funny to me that sim people are so impatient, so demanding, and still believe in "magic time"!!

Two weeks?

A-4? LONG LIVE THE SKYHAWK!!! Oops, wrong thread... upyr1, ok you convinced me about the AI B-52's !! The 80's era could feature dark green, with AGM-86 ALCM's.... a modern grey H with every bell and whistle, and Big Belly Sharktails for jungle carpets!

As regards Navy warfare, once you go beyond carrier air operations, all bets are off in DCS. Sure, the ASM are cool, and watching the Phalanx spit sparks is fun... but it's not a simulation of ship/submarine warfare, more like a simple RTS game. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a game for gameplay's sake, or even enjoying a sim as a game! I do think in the long term, ED may upgrade the simulation side of the Navy systems into something either good or even amazing... but for now I think for pure Navy simulation, there are other products that can do this with lots of realism on very large maps or even global ones. I think where the Mariannas maps will shine is airstrikes, SAM SEAD, ships maneuvering to land ground units and defend the airspace overhead. Similarly, WW2 recreations, should also shine brightly. But I don't expect any modern day Rommel/Patton wannabe ground commanders to love the tiny footprint, especially given that some of the hillsides may be impassable to track vehicles, further limiting your ground options for maneuver. I expect it may turn into artillery duels with smart munitions more than tanks and APC's trying to outflank anyone... not sure how you flank someone on a 6km frontline! Ok, enough of the realism... Now rethinking this, if we dial down the realism expectations, and pump up the cool action, if we eliminated or restricted air power and artillery, so that it's basically tank vs tank... that could be a fun way to have some furious fun action in a limited amount of time, say like if someone had only 1 hour or even half an hour, you could enjoy a lot of tank action on such tiny maps! Say each side gets one attack heli, maybe one jet with dumb bombs, and say maybe 15 MBT's, play "capture the flag" over say 30minutes or an hour... that might be worth buying CA just for that alone! Just because we love simulations doesn't mean we have to count the rivets ALL the time!

Eh... the story abt SAS being hit by 'Winders seems... like a "fishing story". AFAIK, the only instance I ever heard of from Desert Storm, where a an A2A missile used against a ground target, was when Canadian CF-18's were asked to try to destroy an Iraqi patrol boat trying to escape to Iranian waters. All the Hornets had was Sparrows, Sidewinders and 20mm. So they straffed the boat with Vulcan 20mm, but this did not have the desired effect and continued towards Iran. Just before breaking contact from a largely futile attack, one pilot managed to get a radar lock on the boat, and decided to see if the Sparrow would work. It fell short and did not impact the boat, so they disengaged, and the boat went to Iran. I know that A-10A's during Desert Storm did often fly night flights to find SCUD launchers, and apparently those pilots used the Maveric seeker image and cockpit screen as a makeshift "Flir night vision", as they didn't have anything like Tpods, nor FLIR, and I think they didn't even have night goggles either. Just an IFR night flight like so many airliners do, but with a Maveric image in a screen display! I don't believe that display had any other function, so not a true MFD. I wonder if the missile fired on them might have actually been a Maveric of some kind? Maybe not, as that has a rather large warhead. One might think the surviving missile fins would make it obvious, but I'd expect they had little time to investigate the incident right that night.

So regarding map size, according to a dev from Razbam who is working on the South Atlantic map (Falkland Islands and a portion of Argentina, with a LOT of water in between), that map was already at about 12 gigs worth of data in August 2020, and may well have grown since then. Remember, that's a map with mostly water, and the islands seem rather sparse. I've no idea how much more data would be involved with milions of object counts, for a much more object dense map. Maybe we ought to focus as much on the data size of the various maps, than just the area size.

So regarding map size, according to a dev from Razbam who is working on the South Atlantic map (Falkland Islands and a portion of Argentina, with a LOT of water in between), that map was already at about 12 gigs worth of data in August 2020, and may well have grown since then. Remember, that's a map with mostly water, and the islands have almost no trees, very few roads, almost barren hills really. I've no idea how much more data would be involved with milions of object counts, for a much more object dense map.

So regarding map size, according to a dev from Razbam who is working on the South Atlantic map (Falkland Islands and a portion of Argentina, with a LOT of water in between), that map was already at about 12 gigs worth of data in August 2020, and may well have grown since then. Remember, that's a map with mostly water, and the islands have almost no trees, very few roads, almost barren hills really. I've no idea how much more data would be involved with milions of object counts, for a much more object dense map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala Also:

Right, but my point is more that it's unrealistic to expect all the variants of any plane, given the difficulties that developers have to make these with. And is it the wisest move, to get devs to make all the variants? Or just one or maybe in rare cases two variants and then move on to a new different project? We have SOOO many aircraft that we want to see in DCS, but if we bog down the devs with every variant, they won't have time to get to new aircraft very often. I'd rather they made two Phantoms, then move onto the Cobra or Mirage III, or Mig-23 or English Electric Lighting, or some other wild aircraft of the past, than give us EVERY SINGLE Phantom variant from Sage Burner to the current Japanese Phantoms of today. I'd rather see them make a USN variant for the carrier ops circa Vietnam, and then the E gunslinger sold internationally to so very many nations requiring the thunder of the gods to protect their nations... and then move on to other cool aircraft.

Well, I'm not an expert by any means, I've just looked at this issue in the context of DCS when considering new map proposals as to what might be doable now/verysoon, as opposed to a few years from now, or say 5 to 10 years from now. I don't believe there is a super-hard "max limit", nor do I think it's about pure 550km by 550km. I use that KM measurement as a measurement based on the notion of a current high density DCS map that works on nearly everyone's systems today. If another map is technically much physically larger, like say Caucasus edge to edge, or Persian Gulf edge to edge, that's not exactly the same, because on both those maps there are extremely low density of terrain details... basically flat empty wasteland much like open water, not real difficult to render, but also not much call to fly far out to those areas... the action is almost always in the higher density regions. I think it's more about tuning it shortly before release, so that it will run with good framerates with a medium/lower end system that people have been using in DCS. But yes, it's my belief that the issue revolves around how much details, be it texture density, object polygon totals and what's in view, landclass elevation details (how dense is your elevation map for the mountains valleys and hills?). The larger the data in the map, the harder it is for our systems to render it well with high enough frames to get gun kills, a good 3 wire trap with windy gusts, along with many other online players and many AI opponents to challenge... at a certain point you can choke the average PC, and add a bunch more you can choke even the most amazing gaming PC you can buy at any price. Does that sound like fun, or is there a balance to be struck so that many can fly together on missions, those with bleeding edge systems AND the people who are struggling on a budget with a 4 year old system? So yea, I do think the whole Solomon Islands could be rendered with a fairly high amount of details, say on par with the Syria map, or similar to the Mariannas map, in part because they are smaller islands with lots of water. Especially by the time the map started today (not saying anyone's actually starting any map today) would likely take two years to complete and by then the average DCS player will likely have a more powerful system. I'd even bet it would run very well on "almost all" DCS fighterjock's systems, at retail sales time! New Guinea, well, the map and terrain size make that more of maybe 5 years from now kind of proposal, IMO. Or more maybe. But I definately think it would be definately doable in less than 10 years, but that's a long time to wait! I think the same applies to say a map of Vietnam and it's neighbors. Or say an EF2000 map that includes all Norway through to the north west edges of Russia from St Petersberg to Kola Peninsula... that's a LOT of data, a LOT of tree ojects, many mountains to have millions of elevation data points.

For naval assets, sure, a little room for some basic close maneuvers. And yet even for the Navy, it's kind of a smaller map where if they decide to hide without enemy satellite coverage, they might be hiding 4 DCS maps away from where the enemy is looking! Consider that even simple medium range anti-ship missiles like the Harpoon have ranges about double the size of many DCS maps... it's even a little limiting there. I think the Mariannas maps have lots of ocean not so we can replicate Navy warfare, but Naval air battles, carrier based ground strikes, not so much ship vs ship or fleet vs fleet engagements. The islands themselves are... tiny. The island of Guam is only 50km long, and just 6km wide. There's very little room for large ground armor formations to maneuver properly IMO. Will it be fun in some games? Yea probably! But... it would also be a bit limiting too. Imagine a flight of four Hornets with CBU-105's, wiping every single OPFOR ground unit in a single pass... or a single B-52 with the same ordnance. In just 5 or 10 minutes your Combined Arms game is wiped out!

For example, I have seen discussions about possible future modules, where the aircraft in question spanned many variants over several decades, the two in particular the F-4 Phantom and cooincidentally the B-52 Stratosaurus. First off are the dicusssions about whether ED or 3rd party Devs would want to take it on. Where the feasabiilty of those proposed modules gets very iffy, is the discussions about which variant we'd want. Because it matters a lot due to the era users want to see such aircraft. I noticed that in both examples, about half the people in the discussions seemed to want many, most or all of the variants, of aircraft that would be VERY difficult at best, to research and then make into a full module. I mean, I too would like to see all the variants of both aircraft, but... the challenges to make even several variants of those two aircraft would be... MASSIVE. Maybe even undoable. Look at it from the POV of a project director, and suddenly it doesn't look so "cool" anymore, more a nightmare of interlaced complexity. That will be scrutinised forever. Usually in simulations, most devs usually make one variant of an aircraft, and then if that sells very well indeed, they will consider revisiting that aircraft type and maybe consider making additional one or two additional variants. Maybe.

Why only 2 ? Effort required. "We" sit here and ask for too much, without considering what that will actually require. That takes time available by modelers who could be making other assets, other models. If ED actually implemented every forum post suggestion... they'd never be finished anything!! In business, time = money, and in simulation games, more variants and models means less time available for completely new modules. Asking is easy, making is time consuming. I want to ask for things that might be acheivable and have a good reason to receive, because the return on the investment in effort is sometimes really not worth the extra effort. Would I rather every B-52 model get made for AI, or would I rather have the modeler make one "early" and one "late" variant, then go on to making say a Phantom model? I'd rather the latter, because to my eye, for in-game visual purposes, A through D pretty much look almost the same, where for all the rest the "modern" H can easily pose for the 1980's through today, especially with a few user livery repaints. The modeler who makes a second AI B-52, say a D for 'Nam, could then spend the time for the other variants, making region-appropriate buildings and AI units, like the Brown Water Navy Riverine units, with working helipads for AI or even player landable/spawn points for picking up troops or dropping off casualties, or bamboo riverside houses that provide low poly/texture counts for framerates in fast movers, but also high enough detail for low and slow flights in Huey UH-1's and maybe a future Cobra. I'm not saying we shouldn't ask... I'm just saying we ought to think more about what we ask for, what this would mean in the big picture. "Perfection is the enemy of good enough", and achieving perfection can drive someone mad, frustrated and just burn out, quit.

I believe that Petrovich is currently in an early version, and that ED have every intention of improving him. Remember, this is still early days into "Early Access"! That said, I've no idea when we can expect improvements.

Maybe there is one, but I don't recall an actual list... I think it's more a "ongoing work in progress" that is fairly fluid still. I know they showed many screenshots of this and that, several ships of UK and other origins that were in the conflict. They've shown some buildings and such at Port Stanley. If memory serves I think they planned to add Argentinian Mirage III's for AI and... a few others. I think there was talk of a Sea Harrier that would be flyable and full fidellity? I dont' think they are currently ready to give us a solid list, as I dont' think it's going to be in the store anytime soon. Maybe in 6 months or a year we might get some press releases announcing features!