Trident

A perhaps more efficient way of dealing with such scheduling woes would be to identify development bottlenecks and remove them, either by retraining existing staff or systematically hiring new people. Manufacturing engineering certainly holds that bottlenecks in a process are never healthy in the long term. I guess it would help people's confidence in ED's ability to execute parallel development if they had demonstrated that they were able to meet their own goals in terms of release cycle and backwards compatibility. Because the C in DCS stands for Combat, perhaps ;) I have to agree with those concerns to a large extent, losing focus is rarely a way to improve - "jack of all trades, but master of none" comes to mind. I'd much prefer a DDG-51 module, actually. Look at it this way, even if ED never gets around to releasing another helicopter, Black Shark and the engine changes required to make it work will have left a lasting, useful legacy. It introduced clickable cockpit technology, infantry, sophisticated AI helo FMs, realistic AI helo behaviour, improved ground unit AI, a more detailed armour damage model and much more. All of which moved DCS forward a great deal as a simulation of modern warfare and will continue to be much appreciated no matter what the future flyables will be. However, if it turns out that ED lacks the resources to provide a proper environment for Flying Legends beyond the initial release, what benefits relevant to the DCS world will it have yielded? Virtual photo ops and air racing, as has been a popular suggestion here and elsewhere? That's a somewhat meagre result considering the effort, don't you think?

IMHO the biggest problem with the effects in ED's sims apart from performance is how they look in motion and that they're so horribly inconsistent. Technically most are pretty advanced and back when LOMAC was released it set a number of trends that have been followed widely (and often improved upon), such as the randomly coiling flare smoke-trails which BMS has perfected recently (no more daisy-chain effect at speed). OTOH, as you say there is a one-size-fits-all approach in some respects (explosions) while bizarrely other effects are needlessly duplicated - there are two effects for burning ground objects, two dust trail effects (one of which doubles as aircraft tire-smoke, of all things) and for a long time there were two kinds of water. I mean, a burning tank is a burning tank, H2O is H2O and dust is dust (NOT tire smoke!) regardless of whether it was an aircraft or a ground vehicle that kicked it up - I think you can also make a case that it is unnecessary to have separate effects for flare and missile smoke. Why two representations of the same thing? Especially when they are so dramatically different aesthetically, it's almost as though the person responsible for the effects changed jobs and left ED with a half-finished implementation that someone else (who had a very different style) had to complete. As you say, ground explosions dissipate too quickly, there is too little debris following nice parabolic trajectories and the perfectly cylindrical fire effect isn't particularly convincing either. Your example screenshot is actually one of the better effects IMHO, although it should be used for CBUs and - in a reduced version - for gun impacts (where it would be just about perfect) rather than rockets.

Sounds good in theory, but I get the impression that the code changes required for compatibility are actually inseparable from the issues which made the update so time-consuming and difficult that ED was forced to charge money for it. So it was either a paid upgrade or nothing at all, although like you I can see how it rankles from the consumer's point of view as such problems aren't their fault and communication was lacking. Suffice it to say that, going by E-B's post on ED's future plans, they are also unhappy with the current state of affairs and do not wish to repeat this model if they can help it. I hope they succeed in that endeavour.

Yes, that's what I meant - the splashes in the sea are a bit pointless as you'll rarely see them during regular play and even then they're little more than a gimmick (albeit admittedly a nice one). Rain water on the canopy however adds quite a bit of realism to flying in inclement weather, so I would have much preferred that effect.

Actually it's a bit surprising ED implemented this but not rain on the canopy. I mean, those splashes are a very nice touch to be sure, but somewhat pointless in a flight sim - rain distortion like in RoF would actually add some gameplay/realism value. Most likely the splashes were simply a lot easier to do, although the DCS engine can already handle refraction (heat blur)?

Of course. However, I think it is certainly important to consider whether ED's attempts to make DCS conform to "traditional" distribution models (one price fits all) are not causing more trouble than they're worth. Again, what I'm suggesting isn't quite the same as the models adopted by eSim or 777 Studios either.

There already seems to be a substantial disconnect in some ways between the DCS versions distributed by various channels anyway, would it really be impossible to charge different prices for the boxed and downloadable versions? Keep current practise for the retail sales and ask more money (but free compatibility/upgrades) for the downloadable version.

You're making my point. The model I proposed is not quite the same though (no "annual fee", and only one aircraft per module).

Hear, Hear! Compare DCS titles to Steel Beasts Pro PE (which you definitely can, IMHO!) and they're a complete steal at this price. At the same time, the complaints about BS2 being an "unexpected surcharge" do resonate with me in some ways - I don't agree with such a big backlash over a measly 20$, but I can see where these people are coming from in principle. No doubt ED made their earlier comments in good faith, knowing that the DCS architecture was not originally designed to be modular but believing these issues to be surmountable and only later running into unexpected trouble. Personally, I think ED's mistake is not to ask for additional money per se but how/when they are doing so. Sell the individual modules for a higher price (say anywhere between 70 to 120$), of which a big chunk goes toward supporting compatibility and upgrades to the basic engine. That way everybody always knows up front what they're paying for.

I would like to see them back, I have yet to see a glass window (*any* glass window, combat aircraft or otherwise) that didn't have at least a few of them. While the level of scratching seen in the original release of LOMAC might be excessive by real world standards, I think a more subtle implementation would greatly add to the sensation that there is a glass canopy between the player's alter ego and the outside world.

Agree, the BMS4/FreeFalcon smoke trail combined with the Strike Fighters 2 fire ball would be perfect :) http://combatace.com/uploads/1240524797/gallery_47882_295_121427.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d110/Weaponz390th/Falcon%204/BMS/FalconBMS2011-09-1002-46-50-34.jpg (Screenshots not mine!)

"Incredible" is the word that comes to mind! I can't tell whether the terrain mesh resolution has been improved, but the rest is absolutely beyond reproach - outstanding work!

According to the official site 200000 is the project budget threshold below which you qualify for a discounted "indie" license, not the price of the latter. There is no indication whatsoever how high the price might be for either normal or discounted licenses.

Actually, I thought the lightning looked particularly nice - sure DCS/FC can already do the cloud illumination effect equally well, but the bolts themselves look much better. ED's lightning bolts aren't nearly bright enough, look like wide ribbons and change direction much too often (and always in alternating directions, so they end up oscillating about what is almost a straight line when seen from a distance). That's better than the single, low-resolution photographic sprite used in REX for M$FS, but neither comes close to Simul's work: Agree. I think it's that today's flight sim clouds are simply not detailed enough up close, so where you'd get a much better sense of scale in real life from their finer structure, you will just have a featureless white fill your screen in the sim.

3D trees, or am I seeing things? Looks like another of the steps which I was waiting for ED to take has materialised, only one more (mesh resolution) to go until undisputed terrain rendering supremacy :D

Dynamic terrain shadows are a great leap forward, that was one of only two things the MSF$ terrain engine still did better than DCS after all those years (the other one, of course, is the very low mesh resolution, as the people above me are so correctly pointing out). Nevertheless, a big step in the right direction for an already excellent engine. Now improve that mesh, fix the tree shadows from 1.0.8 and give us RoF-style 3D trees and IMHO the DCS terrain engine will be the best in any flight sim, in every respect - full stop. Pretty impressive!

Another interesting approach to making dynamic weather more intuitive and easy to use would be to reverse the current process. Instead of having the mission designer prescribe a pressure distribution, allow him/her to define weather conditions (wind speed/direction, precipitation, temperature) at a few specific locations/altitudes and then make the system calculate a distribution to match these settings. I. e. the user supplies the end result (suitably parameterized and simplified) that he is looking for rather than having to vary the underlying mechanism by trial and error. Kind of like inverse airfoil design methods where you don't specify the geometry and then find the velocity/pressure distribution, as you would conventionally expect. Instead, you set certain parameters to specify the desired velocity/pressure distribution (for example, based on the performance characteristics you want or the known distribution of another airfoil which you wish to use as a starting point) from which the software then calculates the geometry required to satisfy your input. This would probably be harder to code than the current approach (a lot of effort would have to be made to find usable ways to parameterize weather patterns for intuitive user input), but *much* more efficient for the mission designer who could more quickly get the desired result with far less meteorological knowledge.

That's brilliant!

How so? It would take far more effort to bring the FSX engine up to scratch (since ED's engine is already superior in pretty much every way other than terrain mesh detail) than to improve DCS to the point where it matches or exceeds FSX in the landscape elevation model department. In its current state, Microsoft's engine is wholly inadequate for a DCS-style combat sim and would require a huge amount of work to prevent it from being a step back in most respects (sensor modelling, flight modelling, systems/damage modelling, AI, multiplayer and yes, even most aspects of the graphics engine). While I agree that ED's terrain mesh resolution is in dire need of an upgrade, using the FSX engine (or, for reasons already discussed, any of the other ones suggested here) is certainly NOT the answer. Although VRS is planning to do more than bolt a few explosion effects onto the basic sim (saying that definitely sells them short), it will probably take them years to produce anything comparable to DCS, for all the same reasons mentioned above. DCS is the product of evolutionary development over a period spanning about 15 years, by a very talented team!

If ED can take advantage of terrain tessellation with their upgrade to DirectX11, procedural terrain like in Outerra might become redundant, as far as I can see. If they wish to continue using a conventional terrain engine however, procedural mesh refinement could be used to speed up improvement of the existing mesh rather than editing the elevation model manually, as mentioned before. I. e. rather than implementing this approach in realtime, they could take the current mesh, generate an improved version with a fractal algorithm, fix any artifacts by hand and then render it with the current engine. While that throws away the benefit of dynamic LOD computation (which enables Outerra to display sub-metre mesh-resolutions), it would probably be the quickest way to match the best M$FS add-ons.

Not suitable for a variety of reasons, such as draw distance and physics (it does rigid body interaction extremely well, but that's not the same thing as aerodynamics and flight mechanics). Other aspects (AI, sensor modelling, LOD handling) will similarly be optimised for infantry-simulation as well. Outerra is, as has been pointed out already, little more than a landscape rendering environment at the moment. Nevertheless, the fundamental approach used for generating additional mesh detail is interesting and could help solve some of the problems faced by ED in improving their current terrain mesh. However, implementing the Outerra engine as a whole would be prohibitively time consuming, since it is so basic in its current state and would require a huge amount of work to bring it up to speed. Rise of Flight is a very impressive flight sim engine, but you're giving DCS too little credit. It does almost everything mentioned in that video just as well or better (systems: electrical, hydraulic, fuel), the one area where RoF is indisputably ahead is structural damage modelling - in that regard it is definitely the industry benchmark. It also has very clever 3D trees and excellent flame effects that I would love to see in DCS, but other than these things I don't see what the fuss is all about - especially considering how much effort it would take to make the engine capable of handling modern aircraft. Credit where it's due though, the best tactical FPS engines are rapidly approaching the point where the drawdistance would be entirely suitable for a helo sim. That is pretty impressive! There's not actually anything terribly special going on there. Texture resolution isn't really any better than what we have in DCS, they're just well-executed photo-textures (i.e. accurately geo-referenced, colour corrected and cleaned of artifacts - which is more than you can say about most other photo terrains). However, they still seem to contain shadowing from the relief and will therefore look slightly off if you change the time of day too far away from the hour when the source material was taken - changing lighting conditions is something DCS will handle much better. Nonetheless, the Switzerland Professional add-on is definitely among the best photo tile sets ever released, despite the fact that it's almost three years old now (almost no image artifacts such as clouds, distortion or objects that aren't represented in 3D by Autogen, stuff that ruins most other photographic texture add-ons). The primary reason why the terrain looks so amazing in that video is that the add-on also includes a new 3D model for the Swiss landscape, with a resolution that is *vastly* superior to DCS. That's basically all there is to it, apart from the photo textures being presented very flatteringly by using the correct lighting conditions. Having said that, M$FS does have one very nice feature (apart from the high resolution mesh, which DCS could probably handle too) that isn't really visible in this video: dynamic terrain selfshadowing. In pretty much every other way, the DCS engine is already light years ahead though. Considering that 95% of the eye candy in that video comes from the better terrain mesh and bearing in mind the polycounts DCS already handles thanks to its extremely detailed aircraft/vehicles and dense buildings/vegetation, I'm not actually so sure about that. Correct. To add one more reason to what you already mentioned, it's also a question of sheer manpower. The more detail you have in each square kilometre of terrain, the longer it will take to create said square kilometre with equal development resources. Now imagine how hard it would be to build a theatre which encompasses many tenthousands of square kilometres at a detail level which matches a Crysis map with perhaps 30 square kilometres (assuming for a moment that performance would not become an issue). There are ways to somewhat mitigate the impact for relatively modest improvements in the level of detail, but going for FPS-style detail is definitely out of the question for manpower reasons alone, not to mention other problems.

We know they're already working on that though, so I'm not worried ;)

Indeed, it is quite amazing how much depth and density they add to the forests! DCS is now almost perfect in terms of shadowing, just add terrain self-shadowing as seen in M$FS and use the soft filter on all of them.

Yes, I think Gamestar handled that very appropriately, they do have to consider their audience and in that context they gave it a fair and honest review. With DCS: A-10C ED has basically absorbed and reverse-engineered a significant fraction of the technology which makes up the real-life A-10C, and the Gamestar reviewer seemed to appreciate what a monumental feat this represents. He argues that the sim is pretty much outside the scope of his publication and therefore declines to rate it as that would not do it justice. I agree with him in a way, DCS: A-10C and other hardcore simulations are really closer to being interactive reference books, i. e. infotainment rather than pure entertainment products. Think Fomin's Su-27 book, as opposed to Flight of the Intruder or even a Tom Clancy novel. Not everybody will appreciate the former as a fun read ;)

Adding to Laud's very sensible requests, does the wind affect sea state (wave height, direction of swell, white caps)?