Conjecture and expressed frustration!

[0414 Wee Neal]

Hello fellow flyers and pit builders

 

The beginning - It started with me mooching around these forums for 2 to 3 years, learning many things. Initially I started flying with a basic joystick and mouse, all on single 19inch monitor, this developed over time to an eyeinfinity 3 screen setup and saitek pedals, flight levers, and trackIR. During these embryonic flight sim years I tried FSX, X Plane, BS2, Warthog and now DCS World. I finally decided to stick predominantly with DCS World.

 

The evolution - As I developed my flying skills through many enjoyable hours and a fair few frustrations, I gradually brought additional equipment and looked at ways to enhance my enjoyment. One way was to build my own sim pit; which leads to my concerns with this great software!

 

My observations, please feel to comment/advise:

a. As I see it the software is in an almost permanent state of development, with regular and substantial changes to the file structures. This in itself can be positive and does show a commitment to the product by ED. However from the perspective of a ‘Pit builder’ it is counter productive and destructive in the sense that great work done by community individuals to allow exports, .Lua tweaks and utilities i.e. EMC and Hawgtouch becomes obsolete and erodes individuals enthusiasm. Is this a similar approach to that of Xplane a permanent development and never finished state?

b. The DCS World engine is CPU hungry, not unlike FSX, not fully utilising the power of a modern GPU(?). There are numerous rumours surrounding ‘Edge’, which will modernise the simulation, these appear to have some substance; my concern that as there is no definitive release date; is this a sign of a lack of investment or longevity by ED?

c. There are a number of development partners reported in the flightsim community e.g. Iris, but there do not appear to be any products being released, is this a cause for concern?

 

You may ask why this conjecture; simply put is that I am concerned about committing to building a DCS Warthog sim pit, a Simulation that appears to be increasingly difficult to interface hardware with and extract data from. I understand that sim pits do not have to be tied to a single software, but frankly there are very few warbird simulators on the market and options limited. If anyone has a view on the longevity and more importantly the future integration prospects for DCS World I would be greatful to hear them?

 

Neal - A novice flyer and pit builder:helpsmilie:

[SkateZilla]

Compared to Microsoft Flight Simulator, DCS 3rd party development is still in it's infancy.

In time, the Number of Developers and Projects will continue to grow, along with released/available modules.

[Boris]

I think there's nothing we can do about the fact that DCS World keeps changing. The code is constantly being improved and added to.

 

I think we can only see this as a positive thing. There is no way around this unless we want to see DCS World stagnate.

You can however stick to a single version and keep it for the sake of stability.

 

Yes, EDGE is rumoured to be able to use system resources better. Judging by the frequent screenshots I think it's only a couple of months now before release.

 

As far as longevity goes, the future of DCS World has never looked brighter. We're going to see more releases this year than we have seen in a long time.

[Flagrum]

a. Yes, the software is absolutely in a constant state of development - gladly so. But I fail to see where you suffer from constant substancial changes - as a pit builder. There was the change of the controller configuration with the release of 1.2.8, yes. That could and should have been made easier and smoother by ED for us customers, I agree. But besides that?

b. To my knowledge, the latest ETA for EDGE is now "with release 1.3.0 which comes this year". But you are right, in the past the information about releases- especially for EDGE and the new Nevada map - have been sparse. But if you followed these forums in the past, this is neither a sign of lacking commitment or investment on EDs part. It is just the way ED handles things.

c. My very personal opinion regarding IRIS ... I may not state here. But if we may generalize the question, then my answer is "no". It is unsatisfactory that 3rd Party Devs seemingly require some substancial time to get their products out into the wild, yes, but at this very moment things do actually look brighter than ever before. Just look at what is officially announced to be released during the next couple of months. And that does atm not even include Leathernecks Mig21 or VEAOs Hawk and Typhoon.

[agrasyuk]

I think this constant "evolution" as you termed is not really bad. While indeed it is frustrating to constantly adjust this and that after a release, its good thing someone working on the software , making the Sim better.

 

What I'm more concerned about is that cockpit integration tools like hawgtouch and Helios are not developed in house. Wouldn be great to have a client software for overnetwork gauge and viewport export

[chardly38]

I can understand where Bluethornton is coming from. The mission editor has been made easier to work in but CBU are now FSP killers than in the past. Wingman for the A10c 50% of the time dont do what is command unless they see the target first compared A10c standalone. And now ground vehicle cant go under a bridge or over and when will that be fixed. Even a moderator said that ED was pushing the sim to far. Yes I want a stronger engine but ED only know when that will happen and how far they will push it. The more things you add the the engine will it not make it more complicated and more bugs. If the new engine doesnt work with Helios there will be people like me that want go and futher but we know that is not ED's problem. As small as the sim community is it's probably even smaller with home built cockpits. Lets hope the sim gets better.

[Scarecrow]

I get what you're saying about the continuous development cycle and the introduction of bugs, changing ME scripting that rendered much of the initial community made content useless. Its frustrating for sure, but we all want newer and better features and its a rocky road sometimes but improvements are needed to make the sim better and to draw in new customers.

 

On the subject of communication though; here is a very interesting lecture video on the subject. I just watched it this morning, Sithspawn has it linked in his sig