winz

In SW development you always have to balance between bug fixing and new features, because bug fixing doesn't bring revenue. That's why you, unless the situation is really really critical (which isn't the case with DCS), don't assign all people to bugfixing. You also vastly underestimate how long it would take to fix all known bugs. And this fixing will for sure introduce new bugs. Also some new feature might be of bigger value to the player than some minor issue. edit: and you're not only dealing with ED but with 3rd party devs like belsimtek.

Cool, now could you please explain this to my AI wingman?

I totally understand that you're limited by what can be done by the trigger system in ME, so I don't consider this anything else than a minor enhancement. BTW I was curious how the speed is checked and I was impressed when I learned that the check is based on the AOA indicator, it shows that a lot of thought went into those missions. :)

I'm talking about the fourth mission - approach and landing. The whole mission is flown in VFR, without ILS. But you check if the player is on the glideslope - that is if the glideslope arrow is centered. But this is not a real glideslope, this is EGI computed altitude you should be at given distance from the point. This height is based on the point you're flying to and the previous point in flight plan. This results in very shallow approach (image attached). I agree that glideslope should be checked in instrument approach, but not for VFR. I think a check if the player isn't descending too fast/too slow would be more appropriate. But that's just my opinion :)

Yeah, I didn't know that until I watched the witcher TV series, in polish, and they went to search for a dragon (szukac smoga). I was staring at the monitor "what do you want to do with that dragon ???" :D

My favourite is "krasny zivot" in slovak/czech vs russian. Krasny in slovak means beautiful, in russian (красный) it means red. Zivot is life in slovak, belly in russian (живот). So krasny zivot means "beatifull life" in slovak, but "red belly" in Russian :) Also one foreigner had told me that he founds the slovak-czech interaction fascinating. Because we lived in a single state for a long time most slovaks understand the czech language and vice-versa (sadly, this trend is fading in younger generations). So unsually when slovak speaks with czech they both use their own language. And for foreigners these languages are not as similar as we perceive them. So, while my foreign friend was able to speak czech, he wasn't able understand almost half the conversation when czech was speaking with a slovak.

Maybe I should made it clearer that I'm talking about international airspace only. Have you taken a look at the chart in the FAA manual I linked? Basically the whole northern atlantic is divided into controller airspaces starting from FL060, so you're in controlled airspace the moment you enter atlantic. Well, me too. Only bits here and there from manuals/aips that end up in my hands in work. Anyway, I was finally able to find some relevant info on the ICAO web. http://www.icao.int/EURNAT/EUR%20and%20NAT%20Documents/NAT%20Documents/NAT%20Doc%20007/_NAT%20Doc007_Edition%202013%20with%20%20bkmrks.pdf After quick look in the document it looks like -There is a 'military' flight type in the flight plan template, so I guess militaries do fill flight plans. -Military can assume responsibility for separation, just by stating that in the flight plan. -Some regions can be restricted for military activities (exercise, formation flights etc). These restricted regions will be published via NOTAM. -There are regions permanently reserved for military operations

I've a slight issue with some of the approach/landing missions. Basically my issue is with the use of glidepath, I understand that you want to test if the player is using correct approach (not to deep/shallow), but to check that so strictly in VFR feels just wrong to me. Not to mention that teaching player to use EGI for approach glideslope guidance is just bad practice. EGI shouldn't be used for any kind final approach guidance. This is just a small issue for me, I'm enjoying the campaign a lot so far (progress is very slow because of limited time) :)

I'll try to better explain myself :) You said that military avoids operations close to international lines, but when I look at the volume of oceanic controlled airspaces, then this seems insufficient for me. Every flight over high seas has to take place in one of those controlled airspaces. So the military can be away from international routes, but, from the ATC point of view, they would still be violating the airspace.

But those FIRs are big (map at pg 10 - http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/NAT%20IGA%202004.pdf), so basicaly any flight into international airspace has to enter those. So military can violate these airspaces easily, even without getting close to any airway.

Ok, this is my stupid question about aviation. Being spammed constantly with NATO aircrafts intercepting Russian planes news articles, I have to ask. How does air traffic in international airspace actually work? I know that the majority of the internation airspaces are controlled airspaces (i.e. the Bodø Oceanic FIR in the Norwegian sea), allowing only cleared IFR traffic with a filled flight plan. So the civilian side seems trivial. This is logical, the need for assitance with separation doesn't magically end with some virtual line on the map. But how does military fall into this? Do they too fill flight plans? Do they cooperate with ATC in any way, so they aren't "violators" on the ATCs radars? Do they cooperate with the responsible authority during exercises, so the authority can issue some temeporaly prohibited airspace notam for the civilian aviation part? Or the military just doesn't care about such formalities and the ATC has to suck it up? In such cases, how is it decided if it is actual violator or just a military doing its military thing? Is every such violation an intercept? Also, please, no political nonsense, I'm only interested in the rules and procedures aspect.

Sorry it took so long. I've just completed the mission twice without any issue. Does it crash in single mission also, or does is crash in campaign only? Could also provide any kind of error message and the dcs log file?

Sadly, yes, in a way. By looking at other software you can decide whether the features/performance ratio DCS has is an annomaly or if it follows the trend present in other games. And by looking at other games you can clearly see that it is not an anomaly. Yes, FSX with lots of pricey addons can look great, in the right conditions (time, weather, alltitude), but in such cases it is a bigger resource hog than DCS. And that's without all the things that DCS has and FSX doesn't. Or let's look on Arma 3. It looks gorgeous at infantry level, but 15+km visibility will butcher most systems. Ace combat and HAWX use really cheap tricks to limit what is visible (i.e. by limiting flying height). So yeah, there are allways compromises, and there will be for some time. The resources, cpu power, gpu power, vram available, bus bandwith, ammount of draw calls the api is able to handle... are still limited. If we want a sim, with advanced aerodynamic modeling, with deep system simulations, with AI, with ballistic simulation, with 150km+ visibility..., then we must sadly accept, that it will not look as good, or detailed, as games that offer fraction of that.

I have to say it again - I LOVE the lighting in EDGE. It looks so natural, so real, no other engine looks so well. It's bright, sharp, and none of the bloomy nonsense we get in other engines.

I really doubt they would be saying that dec 2014 is possible if there were some major issues (like big FPS problem) to fix and they would not be testing release candidates. How long does it take to test a build? I would guess at least a week (considering the nature of EDGE I'm inclined to believe it takes more)... So that leaves them with what? 2 weeks of development time at best? That's tomorrow in SW development and no sane manager would plan for a release in dec 2014, if they were doing anything else than tightening last few bolts. Sure, some issue might pop-up, but that's just the nature of sw development. So, after this newsletter I'm quite optimistic. :)

This might be a silly question. But when are christmas celebrated in Russia? They are eastern orthodox, so I would guess they would have holydays somewhere in the begining of January next year. If so, this might be the reason why EDGE would be, in case of problems, delayed to January/February, because January is for Russia what December is for the Catholic world - a partially unproductive month.

All good news. The red flag campaign, and the DRM for SP Campaign are the top news for me. Good SP campaigns are really few and far between and hopefully this will allow talented content makers to make good, immersive SP content. The little of payed content for DCS so far (Vergeev Group and the Maple Flag Missions) are of great quality. Also having all the payed content under a single DCS shop will make buying this content much easier.

Wohoo, thank you! :)

Shouldn't this also make them 'visible' for the AI? If yes, then this is quite usefull in SP also.

Wake turbulences, that is turbulences created by aircraft, are not implemented. Only regular wind turbulences and only close to the ground. The air in general is very sterille in DCS when compared to real world, but that is a issue present in every sim. Edit: But these are things outside of graphical engine so I don't think EDGE will bring any change.

I agree that it is a pain. The DCS scripting is very limited in these aspect in comparison with Arma. That's why I think that export + 3rd party app is the only way this could work. The export looks to be somewhat documented (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/dev_journal/lua-export/) and there are apps that use it, so reverse engineering is possible for learning/inspiration. The problem is that you would have to code the player (or use some 3rd party app/dll) with all the required functionality (fadeing, loops..etc). So it can be done, but it will be more complex than the way you were able to achieve this in Arma. That's funny, when I read "dynamic music", I too almost immediately thought about Freespace. Imho that is a great example how dynamic music can enhance the experience. You can base the dynamic music on what the player is doing (is he locking a target? is he pulling G's) to not 'spoil' away anything.

Interesting idea :) I don't know if you would be able to pull it of via a lua script. Thinking about it briefly, I think that using the export capability of DCS with a 3rd party app might be a way to pull it off. The export should provide sufficient data for the app to 'know' what's going on (as the export is used for virtual cockpits like helios and after flight analyze tool tacview).

That's weird, because for me DCS is about the only sim where the airplanes feel heavy and not just like big RC planes. I don't have pilot license, but I had an introductory flight during which I piloted a light aircraft and in terms of 'weight' that thing felt like paper plane in comparison to any DCS module.

They have the same name. And executable name is what profiles are assigned to.

How did they managed it? Easy, they sad they wanted it, the company(ies) analyzed the request, made an estimate how much it would cost, made an offer to which the australian armed forced agreed and payed the whole development. ;) What we don't see in that short video is how good is the integration in general. The thing to keep in mind is that big customer (like militaries), who pay for the whole development, are usually focused on some aspect of the simulation and don't care much (or don't intend to fund) aspects that are of no value to them (like AI, damage modeling..etc). So while the integration might 100% work in some aspects, like syncing VBS + SB unit position, it might be totally broken and non-functional in other aspects. One immediate issue that comes to mind when you try to merge flight sim with a infantry sim is the issue of different scenery fidelity. The problem Arma has(d) with grass just becames 100x worse. You just cannot render the whole visible area of a flight sim in the fidelity that is required at the infantry sim level. So you end up with situations where the infantry player is hiding behind scenery objects that are not rendered for the pilot player, thus making him an easy target. And this is a huge usability issue that is very difficult to solve.