KennyG

Right, and he says clearly the core work is funded by the pre-release money. "Boyond daily bug fixing, the fundamental issues such as new graphics challenges (Vulkan, effects, mutli-threading etc), network improvements, sound improvements, new damage engine, dynamic campaign, web RTC, new game statistics engine, new weather engine, etc etc are all part of our roadmap and more than 50% of our staff work on these elements which are not directly module related. Without 'early access' few of the these could be done and yes you are right, we only have this avenue to finance ED as well as my personal investment. I wish we had 'office or IOS' to make life easier believe me." GREAT IDEA! I wonder why we get half baked planes then. Hmm... Core subscriptions man, it's the way to fix it. He's sitting on the answer but the community would basically revolt. So sad to see this die an ugly death or at least limp along in its current form. Docs are pretty bad, the better ones written by Chuck. Tutorials are basically non-existent and created by users on YouTube. Help and community is on this ancient vBulletin forum from the 90s. ECommerce site looks rickety, and the marketing is mostly done by the Grim Reapers. I guess this is the way we like it. Keep the free crap and half baked planes coming! We like complaining about that more than shelling pizza money out for real progress. End of rant.

Totally agree again. ED is probably running on fumes, hand to mouth, based on sales of the latest pre-release thing. A well managed campaign server would be a great subscription incentive as well. I don't see why they would want to spend good development resources on the dynamic campaign when they can probably get a couple gaming junkies to manage a big server like that for a pittance and potentially bring in a load of revenue.

I totally agree

Yes I would pay for core updates. My price target would be $10 a month or $99 annually. They deserve the incentive to keep people working on the core. I think people are a little confused about this proposal. There are many ways to do it, some more sensible than others. IMO they should just charge for the core updates. You get some sticky stable version for free. You get the P-51 and Frogfoot and Caucuses free, and you still pay for other modules. All those are still flyable on the latest version of the core you subscribed to. When your subscription ends, your core updates end. I don't think they could ever get away with suddenly giving all their planes and maps away for $20 a month. People paid a lot of money for their modules and they want to keep them even if the subscription runs out. Paying for planes individually makes sense. Not paying for core updates makes no sense to me. We see the results of that. Lots of bugs in the core nobody bothers to fix because there's no incentive. So yes I'd pay because I don't know how they thrive without some recurring revenue. All this talk about money grabbing is insane. Software companies need cash flow guys. Programmers aren't cheap.

If you're new to DCS then I'd definitely recommend it. It's a great trainer aircraft. "Simple" controls, pretty quick startup procedure... it feels complete to me. I enjoy flying it. Works great in VR with the interactive cockpit. If you want all the whiz bang gadgets though, it doesn't have them, and it is not really powerful compared to the Viper, for instance. If you're an experienced DCS person then you might think twice. Depends on what you're looking for. I agree with many of the other posts.

No problem. I just watched it again and indeed I went up another A-A kill. Could be something else I suppose. Enjoy! dogfightwin1.trk

So I was just noting that after I rewatched a track where I killed the F-14 in the F-5 Air-to-air Instant Mission, I was given another A-to-A kill in my logbook. Indeed, it keeps giving me extra kills every time I watch it. Whoops!

I agree. This would be another good option for recurring revenue, and would encourage them to eat their own dogfood and potentially make it better for everyone. They should be able to do a good job of it.

I thought we knew it was the Falkland Islands? No? Was that something different? I saw Stanley airport, which is clearly on the Falklands.

Can we get confirmation that HALF their workforce is actively improving the core? Seems unlikely.

It will frequently not be at the same point in space when I put it back on my head, but that’s what the “center view” button is for, mapped to my HOTAS. If you mean it just continually can’t track your head after you take it off, then no, I don’t get that. Works well for me, and I frequently take the headset off and put it aside, when I pause the game to go do something else.

I could totally get behind that, but I think all the maintenance on the core is probably not practical to distribute as new modules. Normally bug fixes are just going to be changes to existing code. But if you could, would you pay for a Cloud improvement module, but not a better Night Lighting module for instance? What if one improvement was dependent on another? It gets hairy to maintain for them and us. I’d also be fine with them charging reasonable prices for core upgrade versions. Hopefully they could figure out a schedule where you could save some money by waiting and not upgrading every single release. I don’t advocate that planes or maps etc, require subscriptions. If they screw up and underprice a plane and lose money, well, that’s too bad. New version (someday far in the future) new module and new fee. I’m just really concerned that they have no incentive to put developers on the core fixes and improvements.

I'm definitely on board with micro-products or bonus upgrades or something like that. Basically it's clear to me that they need something that gives them incentive to develop the core.

Jesus no! I think the initial post said nothing about denying access to what you bought yesterday or even last year. It's about getting ongoing updates to the core. That's free work you're getting forever.

I think they'd be foolish to shut you off if you didn't pay your subscription, and I hope that nobody endorses that, but you wouldn't be getting the any core fixes until you did.