Rick50

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!

Oh I have no expertise in maps or how to make them! I just know roughly what map sizes there are, and that the larger ones are much less "object dense". I picked the 550x550km based on the Syria map specifically, because when it first came out, quite a few complained about framerates, but that complaint seems to have gone away. Also, it seems to have the most object and terrain details of all the maps... since DCS works well with Syria, then to me that is the new benchmark to consider future projects with.

Right, but I think DCS ought to have two different B-52 models for the AI, because the sillouete changed quite dramatically... for me it's not really about the tail gun operator details, to me it's about the tall tail vs short tail, graceful nose vs ugly newer sensor nose... fortunately for all of us, both major visual changes occured in a similar era, which means that we can use the current model (original or a future upgraded model) H for everything after Vietnam, and maybe have an all new AI model "D" for Vietnam and earlier SAC, with a graceful nose, huge tall tail, and absolutely massive external fuel tanks (which I think are roughly 40ft long!!!). For some reason they didn't keep the super giant tanks on later variants. To me it's not about tiny details in close-up, for AI it's about what it looks like from a mile away: does it's basic shape look "kinda period correct" or not? Add in a few liveries and you can cover the 1960's SAC nuke era, so you can intercept in your Razbam Mig-19, and some silver/black and camoflage/black for Mig-21 intercepts, or escort them in your F-5E, or F-8 Crusader, or possible F-4 Phantom module that might or might not happen. And to me that applies for any map, not just a proposed Vietnam map! For those who didn't know, here's a closeup of the rear gunner's windows, seen on A through D variants. This got deleted on newer variants of the '52, the controls for rear gun were then put up front with all the other crew members:

But how would we replicate "Moscow to Minsk" without Moskva?? (jk!) Actually I quite like your map proposal! I think there's a LOT of potential for fictional and historical scenarios... not sure how much actual historical from WW2 but there could be many "semi-fictional what-if WW2" scenarios. Then Cold War scenarios could be very numerous and varied with those locations, with some interesting gameplay, I think. The huge problem is your proposed map size, which today is about 1400km by 1400km, where most DCS maps today are roughly 550km by 550km, that's a MASSIVE jump in data for the map and game engine. But in future this should be doable, not sure how far into future, but maybe 3 to 5 years I think. Might take that long to get such a map in the store anyway.... but I do like your proposal!

I vaguely seem to remember some people saying the TM stick is made of... "zamak" or something? Never heard of it myself before or since. A metal that I think can be injection moulded or die cast without too much trouble. I think it's zinc with some other material, maybe a filler? Injection moulding for low manufacturing expense, but with the feel of a higher quality metal grip. I remember a while ago reading on the board here that real Hornet sticks are made with a high strength (obviously aerospace grade and strength) resin, but that might not have always been the case for "every" Hornet ever put into service. I did get the impression that at least a few real sticks on Hornets did get a paint layer applied, that might start wearing off after many years of use. I believe Canada's earliest Hornets are near 40 years old now! Edit: found "zamak"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamak ZAMAK (or Zamac , formerly trademarked as MAZAK[1]) is a family of alloys with a base metal of zinc and alloying elements of aluminium, magnesium, and copper. The name zamak is an acronym of the German names for the metals of which the alloys are composed: Zink (zinc), Aluminium, Magnesium and Kupfer (copper). The New Jersey Zinc Company developed zamak alloys in 1929. The most common zamak alloy is zamak 3. Besides that, zamak 2, zamak 5 and zamak 7 are also commercially used. These alloys are most commonly die cast. Zamak alloys (particularly #3 and #5) are frequently used in the spin casting industry. A large problem with early zinc die casting materials was zinc pest, owing to impurities in the alloys. Zamak avoided this by the use of 99.99% pure zinc metal, produced by New Jersey Zinc's use of a refluxer as part of the smelting process. Zamak can be electroplated, wet painted, and chromate conversion coated well. Common uses for zamak alloys include appliances, bathroom fixtures, and die cast toys. Zamak alloys are also used in the manufacture of some firearms.

Database. This is too much data, too many options and settings, for our normal brains to figure out. This requires the scientific method, and data collection into a proper database/spreadsheet, with a few experts in the subject to analyse and interpret the collected data into conclusions that can be implemented by both ED and the end users (us). Without a spreadsheet to look at, to compare and contrast... we are in the dark really. I do not know really how to implement this, but I'd start with colaborating on how to measure consistently, so that end users can enter in baseline FPS averages to compare, along with every setting they have turned on or off. It won't be simple, it won't be easy, but there's too many variables to isolate without doing something along these lines. I'd start with making some fairly basic missions, or picking existing SP missions that everyone can easily fly, in the most commonly available aircraft. From that, enter in EVERY single in-game setting for graphics, all hardware specs and drivers. Then replay the same mission, but with a specificly created set of "lower ingame settings", and report your results. Then replay the mission once again, but with a specific created "higher ingame settings" that at least a few users have had fantastic results with, and report the results. From that data, if analysed well, one ought to see that a few settings might have unusually compromised the experience, resulting in a few recommendations for settings changes. Re-run the results in a new round, call it test V2, and see if it results in better results without hardware changes. Or start anew with your new hardware change, say maybe 4x more main board RAM, or a GPU card upgrade, or CPU card upgrade. But the focus ought to be more about software settings, trying to measure stutters and hickups, game/server crashing, framerates and so on. Sorry, I've no real idea how to fully implement. But I'd expect it will involve several high knowledge users on this board and in this thread, colaborating to figure out the baseline tests. These people would figure out all the questions for users to answer, and how to express that data in a form easily entered into a database. Then the database: other (or same) people to help set up a fairly complex online spreadsheet to handle the results, and then for highly knowlegeable about game engines and all the various settings and how they impact the experience, to interpret which settings and changes provide the best improvements, and then share those conclusions in a form easy for the average user to understand and implement. Maybe a PDF with a step by step group of recommendations to optimise. This ought to be a working group primarily made up of DCS users, but open to ED employees and 3rd party dev members to help contribute if they choose to offer their time. I don't think it would be easy or quick, but this would benefit the entire community, and help improve the future of DCS, ED and it's 3rd party devs, because it would make it easier for customers to quickly acheive a positive experience with a minimum of effort on settings, resulting in keeping a new customer, than risking losing that customer after just a few months of frustrations. They say in business that it's FAR cheaper to KEEP an existing customer, than to gain new customers to replace lost customers. If the community can help keep n00bs happy and engaged, then it brightens the future for these niche complex simulations. Maybe with the changes that are ongoing, such as a new major engine upgrade (say when we get DCS V3.0 or implmentation of Vulkan, or maybe a GPU driver upgrade), if the results suggest a significant change in what is recommended, a new pdf version with new recommendations gets published by the group.... this might happen once a year, more likely as needed, after significant changes result in a change to recommended settings, which might be regular or even rarely needed changes. Without such a database, it's just random shots in the dark, an occasional lucky result. And many who don't get a lucky result, and no idea what to try. Then again, I've no clue really, it's just the thought I had when reading this thread a half hour ago.

No one mentioned maps, but just looking at Bing maps, I see the island of Papua/ New Guinea is... larger than I thought! It's too large for the DCS map sizes of today (which seem to be roughly about 550x550 km). On the New Guinea side from the border to the Eastern tip is about 1050km. The whole island, from tip to West Papua is about 2200 km in width. Not that we need the map to be that large to represent a particular battle or two, but a quick check of campaign maps shows that most Allied movments stretched the entire length of the north side of the island. On the other hand, the Solomon Islands are individually much smaller, Guadalcanal being only 130km wide. Now... it might be possible to fit the entire Solomon Islands onto a current DCS map, even if the actual area is much larger than normal, simply because even with each island, probably around 90% of such a DCS map would be water, much like the Mariannas map, but with a lot more and larger islands.