my personal wishlist after a decade with dcs

[twistking]

Hello,
after over two five years nearly a decade of flying in DCS and posting on these forums, i thought i could do my very own little wishlist.

In no particular order:

Mission Editor / AI / Logic

• Civilian coalition
  • Ability for mission designer to quickly generate civillian air traffic between airports and/or map edge points
  • Ability for mission designer to exclude civilian road traffic from zones
• EWR, CAP controller logic
  • New ME unit options "Is EWR" and "relay speed" for every AI unit
    • Would allow every unit with "is EWR = 1" to guide AI CAPs to enemy position (like the AWACS and EWR currently do) but only using the units native sensor range. Relay speed would determine how fast and how often the position got updated
  • Smarter CAP logic and options
    • For example ability to limit CAP engagement range around CAP flights current position (click here for more)
• New trigger condition "Spotted by coalition"
• Mission Editor QOL and better randomization (click here for more)
  • Option to leave values in waypoint options blank to be populated with value from earlier waypoints
    • Would for example allow altitude/speed of a whole route to be changed with a few clicks
  • All editor fields that accept numbers should also accept variables / flags
  • More user-friendly randomization options
    • Multiple possible routes per group without scripting
      • For example ability to create "logic-objects" that can host waypoints/routes that "real" units could then switch to by means of switch waypoint tasking with probability option to have multiple possible paths
    • All editor fields that accept numbers should accept basic syntax for random min-max between two numbers, so that airspeed, altitude, timed conditions, etc. could easily be randomized by typing in a range instead of single value
  • Nested mission files
    • Ability to open a mission file in another mission as "smart dependency" without merging.
      • Would allows mission designers to make variations of missions based on templates that could be edited later and thereby update all missions that use said template.
      • For example a template could hold most AI and static objects, where the variation files could hold setups for different player aircraft, additional AI for balancing or simply different weather and time of day...

World, weather, graphics

• Realistic and consistent visibility range for ext lights (click here for more)
  • Much higher and long-range visibility for navigation lights, formation lights, beacons etc.
  • AI Logic and ME options for AI ext light usage
• Improved weather system
  • Clouds affecting AI visibility (click here for more)
  • Easy way to set up weather changes
  • Higher resolution effects of weather on aircraft
    • Turbulence, buffeting (including sounds)
• HDR / HDR10 support (click here for more)
• Canopy glinting (click here for more)
  • Highly visible reflection/glint on canopy or other reflective parts of assets even over great distance
  • Could be exaggerated (optionally) as a spotting aid

Assets / models / modules

• First generation MANPADS (click here for more)
  • Redeye, Strela-2 etc. 
• Addition of missing crew to AI ground assets (click here for more)
  • KS-19 100mm, S-60 57mm, ZSU-57-2 etc.
• Static GP machine-guns in anti-aircraft mounts
  • M2 .50, MG3 7.92, Kord 12.7 etc.
• Assets for realistic SAM-sites and other fortifications
  • Type specific reload and support vehicles and structures for SAM systems
  • Ramparts, Camo netting etc.
  • Placeable textures with tire-marks etc. (click here for more)
    • Would help to realistically increase visual footprint of logistics heavy sites
• Civilian air assets (AI)
  • Small selection of jet airliner and GA planes of different eras (early CW, late CW, modern)

General, gameplay, immersive features

• Better AI with realistic flight performance and realistic sensors
• Dynamic Campaign
  • Modular design to allow mission designers to also use the framework for smaller single-sortie missions, that would then still benefit from more dynamic and reactive AI
• DTC, mission planner and kneeboard tool
  • ME / serverside option to allow/disallow players to make own flight plan on map or change premade flight plan
  • Kneeboard manager
    • View and organize custom pages, select which pages (stock and custom) to take for the mission
    • Ability to auto-populate pages with mission data (frequencies, navigation info, briefing overview etc.)
  • Change loadout and aircraft parameters if allowed by mission / server
  • Multiplayer planning with synced doodling/markings while in planner, that can be copied to kneeboard
• GPS-Spoofing / Jamming (click here for more)
• Airfields control radar showing up on RWR where applicable
• Auto-generated, animated ground crew on airfields (similar in scale to what's available in a certain GA sim)
• Hugely improved ATC!
  • AI Voice recognition for natural communication
  • Precision Approach Radar (PAR) on applicable airfields

Wacky Ideas

• Aircraft customization
  • Custom logo / nose art and pilot callsign(s) on aircraft

 

Edited Saturday at 09:28 PM by twistking

[Bradader]

I cant play, but you have there are some pretty good ideas.

 

well I think so anyway.

[twistking]

added to first post:

-road traffic zones and details

-ME randomization details/examples

 

Bradader said:

I cant play, but you have there are some pretty good ideas.

 

well I think so anyway.

 

thanks

Edited Friday at 07:37 PM by twistking

[twistking]

from the latest interviews with wags and chizh i realized that many of my points are either already WIP, planned or at least acknowledged to be "nice to have", so i greyed them out, to make the other points stand out more, as these are points that are not much discussed at all, while in some cases they seem to me as being equally important.

Edited Friday at 07:37 PM by twistking

[Tiramisu]

- much higher and long-range visibility for nav-lights, beacons...

 

I would go even further and put HDR-effects on my wishlist. It would be fantastic, if DCS introduced HDR like in Xplane-11:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[twistking]

I would go even further and put HDR-effects on my wishlist. It would be fantastic, if DCS introduced HDR like in Xplane-11:

 

 

Good point. I added it to the list.

I made a whole thread for HDR/HDR10 a while back, because i wanted confirmation if HDR was at least planned for the future, to help me decide wether i should invest in HDR hardware (which at the moment is still too expensive to buy "just in case"): Would be much appreciated if a mod could ask ED, if there is anything in the pipeline, even if it is still far out...

[Haukka81]

I would go even further and put HDR-effects on my wishlist. It would be fantastic, if DCS introduced HDR like in Xplane-11:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WoW, dcs nights look like shit after your pics :noexpression:

[twistking]

As always with HDR, please remember that you can't see it on a screenshot and that you can't see it without proper hardware.

The screenshots from the other sim look good not because of HDR but because of high draw distance for lights, good tone-mapping and flashy post processing.

Having the sim render in true HDR10 to a compatible monitor would elevate that to eleven!!!

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=209521

Edited November 5, 2018 by twistking

[Worrazen]

I agree with the whole ground unit machinegun misc stuff a lot, I think the various types of little stuff hiding in the bushes is the kind of stuff that enriches DCS as a whole, I'd go for more military support and utility, infrastructure buildings and objects that do affect gameplay, where cargo transport would really matter and it could perhaps be eventually linked with airport supply system, thought optional ofcourse, then you could have fuel/ammo/repair parts being transported on roads and you'd also have to defend that while defending the forward airbase/airport it self.

 

I'm very hungry for more of these military tanker/transport ground vehicles, and also exposing the whole fuel/ammo system in the mission editor so you could see the ranges of influence if those units will get rearmed and refueled, well actually you'd need that in F10 view as well but it should be toggable because it's a cheat ofcourse, well MP servers probably disable F10 view wholly anyway already right?

Edited November 7, 2018 by Worrazen

[The Falcon]

I havent a Pc to run dcs yet but i totally agree with the World/ weather/graphics/performance list

[River]

A hard +1 for a new weather !!! The weathercas of now is way too simple, clouds look terrible and there is just not enough variety. It's actually that bad (((

[SuperCadet63]

I totally agree there are a lot of things that need to be changed in dcs im really slowly losing hope in dcs. I really like some of your ideas in your list like nav lights being seen further. I hope they change these soon becuase dcs is still looking really bad in some cases.:cry:

[twistking]

hooray: nice clouds and mp-synced clouds cleared from the wishlist. one down, some more to go...

[AvgeekJoe]

Yes, we need some insurgent vehicles badly please.

[twistking]

Revisiting this every few years to cross out items. Unfortunately only little to cross out this time...
At least ATC and DTC are confirmed to be in active development...