Qiou87

I find this argument in a lot of threads in the wishlist section, and I think it is a reduced view of ROI. I think about other games like No Man's Sky for example, being improved for years without actually trying to sell any DLC. I'm sure the devs still found it worthwhile or they would have stopped. Similarly I guess that certain improvements to DCS, while "free", provide incentive for people to buy paid modules in larger numbers. The idea that ED's devs should only invest time into what brings immediate cash is, imho, short-sighted. There are benefits to improving the core of the sim, and the "base map" that probably gets more use than all other maps combined. A lot of DCS players only see the Caucasus map, at least for a while, why shouldn't it reflect the best DCS can bring in terms of terrain?

I could live with the way some coastal areas or plains look on the map (though a texture upgrade, like some mods provide, wouldn't hurt - same for the trees), but those mountains and cities are very sad in the current map compared to Syria. It is a shame since the mountains are the highest ones we have in DCS right now, but the detail is just not there. Imagine flying a helo in detailed mountains, picking off rebel fighters in a valley or rescuing a downed pilot at 3000m... I know it is probably a lot of work, and I don't know how it could be done without breaking all existing content for this map, but it truly deserves an upgrade. This is a beautiful region IRL, and the fact it is the only free map for now doesn't show the true potential of DCS. I wish something could be done to improve it in the future, once Marianas are out.

I upgraded from 2600X (same single core performance as 2700X) to 5600X. I saw a large upgrade in DCS in some scenarios: heavy SP missions, supercarrier deck, multiplayer. Basically before I was capped by my CPU at 40-60fps depending on scenarios, now I can reach 80fps+ in all these situations. In my case it was very interesting due to VR (80Hz is the target for optimal smoothness in the Rift S). Your 2700X is not bad and can still work for a few more years, but DCS doesn't care so much about 8 cores, it cares about one. So upgrading to a newer CPU with higher clock and more efficient IPC could yield benefits, especially since your GFX card is clearly capable of much more than 1440p. Here are my measurements before/after upgrading my CPU (everything else remained the same in my system) to give you an idea, posted in another topic.

Might I suggest the work of braddunbar, "Fixed base of Operations", which allows you to select any aircraft you like, fly around, and generate any mission to your liking on this map? This saves you the time tinkering with the ME, just start the mission, F10 - select new player aircraft, and chose which one you want.

I live 100km away from Normandy, I think I know that snow is possible (even had some on Saturday). I just mean that it is not the norm, in today's world. If you have 2 days of snow over 3 months, then representing a white winter for that area is not realistic, even though yes, snow does happen. Actually in Normandy right now you can have some years without any snow actually falling in enough quantity to blanket the landscape. You do have a good point that the weather in 1944 was quite different. However this might not be a focus since in Winter 1944 the fighting was already in the east of France, not in Normandie. But yeah, in a hypothetical scenario... apparently 1944 was a very cold year and had quite a lot of precipitation as far as I could find. https://www.meteo-paris.com/chronique/annee/1944 The same goes for the Battle of Britain (for the Channel map), it was fought in the summer of 1940.

C'mon, not this patriotic BS again. Not every discussion about planes has to be about which country has the biggest (budget). I for one am happy that the US is keeping the F-15 in the air. I feel like this is similar to what we see in the car world, where companies take old cars (MG, Jaguar E-type, Porsche 911) and put electric engines in them with more modern suspension, brakes, etc. The car still looks old/classic but it is very modern underneath, and so we can keep enjoying them into the 2020's in real life instead of museums. Not sure how excited I would be for this 15EX in DCS though, probably another glass cockpit monstrosity with half its actual capabilities not represented due to secrets. I'd rather have an old-school 15C from the 80's in full fidelity to go against that "planned" 29A 9-12.

It is a bit misguided to consider that winter = snow. In Normandy and due to the gulfstream, the winter is not that cold (usually over freezing, Brittany and Normandy are usually a lot warmer in winter than the east of France, although on the same latitude). You see a lot of precipitation during autumn and winter, but rarely snow, and it certainly won't stay there for months. So having a fully white map, although beautiful, would not really fit the weather of that region. This is not Scandinavia. And I do agree that a similar variation should be there for the Channel map as well, at least different colors for the foliage and fields. Even if they don't add snow, at least more brown terrain in the winter, green in the spring and yellow for the fields in summer would make for a nice immersion, and nice red/orange/yellow trees for autumn. But if IRL there is very rarely snow in winter, I don't see why the map should be all white in winter.

Seems like your 11Gb of vram are the reason why the map is fairly smooth for you, as otherwise I run extremely similar settings to you and my rig is roughly comparable in performance - except I am limited to 8gb of VRAM. Makes you wonder what the disappointment will be for those who bought a new RTX3070 and intend to play DCS and especially this map, but I’m guessing newer maps in general. Thanks for the feedback and great to read that it’s working well for you!

We are talking about a piece of software though, not a machine. Microsoft is not asking anyone to throw away their computer ; Win10 runs on the same hardware that runs Win7 (I'm not just saying that, I've moved a few machines to W10, some with very slow hardware). You are not committing an environmental atrocity when you upgrade to Win10, whilst throwing away a working machine just because it is "not supported" is indeed bad for the environment. Those are two completely different topics. I understand "fear of something new", but why not stick with DCS 1.5 or 2.5.6 in this case? This way your OS is not updated, your game is not updated, everything stays exactly as it was yesterday. In the end support for legacy software is a huge, complicated topic. I have seen the same arguments on different games, some moving from DX9 to DX10 or DX11 for example. There are surely benefits to this move. The community is crying for optimization, Vulkan, multithreading... and somehow ED should pull this off whilst maintaining support for 12 year old software? I applaud your efforts to help transition people to Win10 though. That is a great thing you are doing.

I don't understand the logic, both products are from the same company, 7 has been discontinued for over a year so it is very vulnerable. In the end it doesn't make a lot of sense to continue to spend resources on supporting an old version of Windows that is a security risk for the user anyway. Many of the early critics of Win10 got what they wanted and can block anything they don't like. I am not sure there is a logical reason to stick with 7 and get rid of all your modules and potential fun in DCS. You do realize that, as time progresses, more and more games/sims will stop support for Win7?

You are absolutely right. When I started DCS, I thought these DLC campaigns were a bit pointless, since so many great people were doing free stuff already. Then I tried a campaign by @baltic_dragon, for the M2000C, and I understood that there was another level of quality and that this additional level, and indeed the "aftersales" service like frequent updates and compatibility checks, deserved to be paid for. I have happily bought many DLC campaigns since then. Refering to the newsletter: better single player content for WWII in DCS will never be lost ; if the game and its WWII component feels more "fleshed out", people will recommend it more, more players will get into it... And this finally brings more customers for DLC high quality campaigns, so creators get incentivized to create even more. In the end we all win.

I came here expecting a video, to show me how I have been flying this thing all wrong. I basically use its horrible speed bleeding when turning to come in fast and just line up/slow down from 800 to 400km/h in one turn before dropping the gear and landing. So to read that this thing is a wonder in dogfight, well... I respectfully have a very different experience. But i'd be happy to see the OP show us a dogfight video against F/A-18 or F-16 to show what he means.

Frankly if someone wants a shorter campaign w/o voiceover, there are usually nice ones as freeware, or even dynamic ones incl. Liberation. The great thing about your work @Reflected, and similar DLC campaign creators, is the immersion, the research, the highly detailed briefings... I am happy to hear you are keeping true to this. Many people make "average/good" campaigns, but only a few make really excellent ones. Keep it up and thank you for sharing your plans for 2021, keeping in mind that plans change. I'm also super excited that you have the F4U in your radar, I am eagerly awaiting this bird.

That could actually explain why I have to keep them on "low" for Syria with only 8GB. Though not sure about Marianas, how much VRAM does water use?

Alright, thank you. Guess I'll have to wait for mythical optimization (and some stock so I can upgrade my GPU), because I run significantly lower settings than you (which is in line with my slower graphics card, although I also have a much lower resolution in my headset than your G2). But I am happy for those that run it smoothly, it is definitely a beautiful map!

Funny enough, NVMe drives actually provide more benefit to loading games than to Windows itself (disclaimer: this applies to SOME games, in others there is no benefit at all compared to SATA). I would not go to the trouble of reinstalling Windows on the NVMe drive because you will most probably notice almost no benefit. Regarding the pagefile, it is a different topic, because you can move it to another drive without the need for a fresh install. I am not sure how much of a benefit it would bring to you though. You have to consider that most people looking at this already looked at everything else, they are running the fastest CPU at its best settings, the most powerful graphics card, etc. so the next logical step is to make sure the drive is not going to limit them (would be a shame after investing so much money). But in your case and with an average gaming PC that's already a couple of years old at least (based on your sig), I am not sure all this trouble is going to be worth it. It would be better to identify a problem and try to solve it than to randomly start to optimize this or that, which might as well make things worse if you don't know what you are trying to improve in the first place.

My argument for the 4080 is just to say that instead of buying a 1600$ card right now and plan to keep it long term, you can change more frequently, every generation, but go for the second-best for example. As you lose less cash than on higher end when reselling, this turns out quite nice. I actually prefer to do this and change video cards every 12 to 18 months on average, so I don't really consider "future proof" in my purchasing decision (because in the end it is difficult to predict what will be determining for the future). I'm not going to argue about "rich or not", again, your money your choice. But you have to recognize that it is a large amount of money for what is only a computer component, and one that will depreciate much faster than any other in your PC. So asking if it is the right choice to spend such a large amount of money is warranted, even if you decide that the answer is "YES". I know the current shortage situation makes people go a little bit crazy (OMG this card is in stock, I should get it before it's too late) but sometimes it helps to take a breath.

Just wanted to provide some nuance here, but hey, I'm not in other people's wallets. I respect everyone's right to spend their own money as they please. I do agree that 10GB might not be so future-proof on the 3080, but I assume if you have the funds for a 3090, you can afford to change GPUs more often and spring for a 4080 when it comes out it 12-18 months? And typically high-end cards depreciate at a faster rate simply because they are so expensive relative to their performance ; RTX2080Ti provides RTX 3070 levels of performance, so it should sell below 500$ used although it was over 1200$ new just a few months ago. That's one hell of a dive, and I guess 3090 will take the same route when RTX40x0 comes out. 3080Ti has been postponed indefinitely (acc. to Hardware Unboxed), probably because AMD cannot ship the RX6000s in meaningful quantities so there is no real alternative to the RTX3080.

Alright so actually signatures were off by default, had to go into Settings to activate them. So all it takes to run this map is apparently an RTX 3090, good to know...

I might be an idiot but with the new forum layout I don't see any signature (also checked his profile, same). And I am also interested in a screenshot of his ingame graphics settings, to understand if maybe one of them is OFF for him and ON for me, to explain the performance difference.

Since it hasn't been pointed out, maybe I should? The RTX3090 to buy maybe no RTX3090 at all. This card has horrible value, providing only 10% performance increase over RTX3080 despite 2x the price. Of course, if you have a huge budget and just want to best, I can understand, but I am just not sure you can feel "good" about buying such a product that nVidia launched only to grab as much cash from their customers as they could. The huge amount of VRAM is totally useless in games and targeted towards content creators, and really the performance gains in game compared to RTX3080 will probably be very difficult to notice. If a game is running well on 3090, it will run just as well on 3080, maybe with one effect turned down that you won't notice at all. I also try to highlight this because your builder only proposes the "worst" RTX3090 according to infos you found. Maybe he has much better RTX3080 cards that can actually run quiet and provide you with a much better experience ; performance is not everything if you card crashes in the summer due to overtemperature of VRMs, or if it makes more noise than a leafblower...

Would you care to share your settings and PC specs? I am interested to see how you achieve this smooth 45 fps, I would like to manage the same results.

Once all of them are further along, for sure. The Syria map is great as it is but will be expanded ; the F-16 is capable but missing a lot of systems... so a bundle for starters would only show what beta/early access DCS looks like. I know what some sarcastic people might reply, but there are more polished modules to get you started in DCS... in a year or two though!

Vulkan might probably do nothing of the sort, it is a graphics API aiming to have a lower overhead. Depending on how the game handles draw calls and such today, we might not see many benefits from it. But they also clearly stated work towards more multithreading. The game is using the CPU just fine, it is however mostly using a single core. You want the workload, especially everything related to the simulation (AIs, weapons, scripts, weather system...) to run on different threads so that no single core gets to 100%, but this is very difficult to achieve. Based on the kind of schedule we have in the newsletter, it seems this is correlated with the improved weather system (I don't mean the eye-candy, which is slated for 2.7 "somewhere in Q1", but the full-on dynamic weather system), and good too as this additional system could further hamper performance if run on the same single core as everything else.

As a stop-gap, is it not possible to make a Fox1 server where GPS and L16 are not available? I know if you make a SP mission before 1994, you can restrict some systems in the jet. If you take away AIM-120 and 9X to the US jets, as well as L16, it is probably more balanced. AFAIK the -5 was in the works at some point, although yes the MICA EM would be the only Fox3 available for it. I think the AdA was interested in it (they use the Razbam 2000C for training) but I am not sure if this is still ongoing (especially considering the amount of simultaneous projects Razbam has on their plate). An updated radar, L16 and Fox3 would make this a much more competitive jet, but also more enjoyable overall when doing CAP in PVE or SP (4x Fox3 compared to 2x Fox1 would be quite huge as well). I resent the fact that this is only for "airquake" PVP, I fly only SP and PVE and would like a jet that can fire more than 2 missiles before RTB, or has a better radar/SA...