3rd Party Dev Group - Dedicated to Maps Only

yellow_jacket · December 5, 2016

After observing repeated comments regarding maps for DCS theatres, I wish to ask why are there no official third party groups dedicated to Maps only. There are groups of people wishing to create the next great aircraft, but looking from the sidelines, it seems there are buckets of money (or gold if you are the guy in NY) to be made just from creating the next few theatres everyone wants...some that come to mind are Korea, Different parts of WW2 Europe, WW2 Africa, Eastern Front. The aircraft and modern units are there already, or will be there in the near future for WW2. So why is this topic something rarely touched by potential third parties? Is it that there is just more money in aircraft? I would disagree based on the little info I can glean from observations.

David OC · December 5, 2016

I believe more maps will become available from 3rd Party's once ED locks down how the tooling SDK for map building for the new EDGE engine. Testing NTTR map with Edge and now the upgraded Caucasus region for (2.5) perhaps this is a little sign their working on developing and testing the SDK for 3rd Party's?

I do hope one day there could be a 3rd Party(s) that just builds maps, like orbx do. I would like to see airports more alive with some ground crew running around etc.

Edited December 5, 2016 by David OC

Rangi · December 5, 2016

I think it is a bit like the chicken and the egg, ED won't give out the tools unless you can prove you have the skills to make it good quality, but you can't prove that until you have have access to the tools. I am sure this will all get worked out once the technology matures and procedures are invented. It is still early days for EDGE and getting things right takes time.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Rangi

boedha68 · December 5, 2016

If you have a great portofolio. That is proof enough.:D

Torso · December 5, 2016

I would like to see airports more alive with some ground crew running around etc.

This right here is something that I just don't get why we don't have it now. This is one of the major reasons why the world is so lifeless. Every time I load an instant action for instance. Lets say I just want to cold start and take off from an airport. Or just slap out a quick simple plane at an airport. When my plane spawns, why not spawn a ground crew there with me? For the odd few that do like the F-5 cold start, why not personnel too? Just a truck, no people. Why not populate the airfield with a few ground crew vehicles? Random personnel doin their 'jobs'. Just simple..movement of people. Sure once in a while another AI plane or two will make an appearance in the instant actions because the dev tossed a couple into them when they made them but none have any time spent on them really it seems. But these are just missions files I know and most would say, well just make your own. It's a sandbox. It is just too bad some of even these basics could not be done automatically. I can't see why anyone would not want a more immersive life like setting vs apocalypse airports that you are the sole inhabitant of. Even campaigns airports other than other planes present is freakin lifeless almost always. These little things do not seem like it would take a huge dev effort to include. Sorry for the ramble. It was a long weekend. :huh:

David OC · December 5, 2016

We will see what Leatherneck Simulations comes up with for the F14

Quote

"We’ve also begun in creating all the required props, crew and other assets required for a full carrier complement.

The deck crew will of course wear appropriate equipment and colours for their assigned role.

We hope to add a library of animations to our deck crew as well; to keep the flight deck lively and interesting."

It must be doable then, Perhaps just not a priority for ED at this time for the civilian market? I would rather ED focus on Weapons and ATC first anyway and let some dedicated 3rd Party get into building living airports.

I would be happy for some ground crew looking people for the editor for now, someone without an m4 rifle...

This would let me at least script a trigger at the start or once I land and have the ground crew move around.

Cunctator · December 5, 2016

The only way to produce some proof is to make high quality scenery for another sim, but if you have already invested that much time elsewhere to master a totally different terrain engine you will just stick to it.

I think ED probably hoped that some FSX developers would switch over to DCS. But there aren’t that many left that still dare to develop sceneries for large areas and they seem to be deeply entrenched and solely focused on their respective platform.

I really hope we will see an open terrain SDK at some point, so that a lot of people can start playing with the tools and see if they can master the challenge to produce whole maps.

WRAITH · May 8, 2017

After observing repeated comments regarding maps for DCS theatres, I wish to ask why are there no official third party groups dedicated to Maps only. There are groups of people wishing to create the next great aircraft, but looking from the sidelines, it seems there are buckets of money (or gold if you are the guy in NY) to be made just from creating the next few theatres everyone wants...some that come to mind are Korea, Different parts of WW2 Europe, WW2 Africa, Eastern Front. The aircraft and modern units are there already, or will be there in the near future for WW2. So why is this topic something rarely touched by potential third parties? Is it that there is just more money in aircraft? I would disagree based on the little info I can glean from observations.

+1 for this post because its a flight simulator regardless of what you are told you need a world to fly in combined with a full working ATC system it would elevate the DCS sim to where it should be and attract the sim community to DCS.

If a dedicated team worked on MAPs then a complete World MAP would be created/developed and enjoy flight from country to country flight using realistic IFR+VFR Satelite and even GPS coordinates etc the possibilities we are missing are endless here.

I read that it was stated once MAP MAKING TOOLS were released this would be the case and we are still waiting sadly being the case.

But I agree been years now people wanting every map in the world hence this link:- https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=99134

So you are right in addressing the concerns, hopefully after "THE MERGE" ..... :dunno:

NOTE to self or others:-

Damn so many threads I have read in the last hour with so much missing from the sim and heaps of great community feedback going back years now sadly really, but hope when to see more after the merge at least. A good portion of feedback that would have been implemented by then.

Things like..... Mission Builder here in this....... https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=164968 ...... and many other wish-lists e.g...... ATC, Ships, Combined Arm refinements/improvemnts for more functionality, plus what is in this thread being MAPs.

Please ED some insight to future development after merge like overview of whats to come or something would be sweet and is needed, sadly ?!?!?

Edited May 8, 2017 by WRAITH

Pikey · May 8, 2017

Has any of the third party developers who said they would make terrain ever confirmed they have map making tools from ED? I'm trying to remember what Cobra said to me, but all I can recall is "no confirmation was given" and "no 3rd party has ever released a map" and at least two have stated it is on their roadmaps (VEAO & LNS now Heatblur) including one Iwo Jima map that had a steam app ID leaked. Yet we are still here with nothing mentioned. In my experience, when nothing is said about something, there is nothing TO SAY. Sure I can say I'm developing a map because I did the satelite geo data downloads, researched ther time period, obtained information, have the height map ready, build some 3D houses ....BUT until such time as someone shows a picture of WIP, you can assume nothing is done. So you can ask why and the usual answer is vague, but it's not a huge leap of imagination to consider the simple roadblock of DCSW 2.0 which despite being released to alpha, has never been finished, has had Normandy pushed back for its release.

ED have got SoH in progress and quite developed, but they simply dont have a platform to put it on, its just dev builds, 2.0, 2.1, 2.5 all roadblocks for maps.

Would YOU develop a map on something that isn't even released? That's subject to change and that change we know is a real thing...

Abburo · May 8, 2017

Tools for map creation are not yet released to any 3rd party, as David mention above also. That is the simple reason why we don't have yet other maps. VEAO and Leatherneck already express their intention to create maps, but this is not yet possible.

ED is transforming their terrain from so called T2 (Caucasus) to T3 (Nevada) and T4 (Normandy and hopefully future Caucasus). Those Ts are coming from versioning I suppose. So that is pretty visible that they are still on transition phase... maybe until reaching DCS 2.5