Vietnam Wishlist Thread

[Rick50]

 

You might want to check this thread here:

 

[Baaz]

As much as I am drooling over a Vietnam map, looking at performance on the Marianas tells me we're nowhere near where we need to be to make Vietnam considerable.

[Gebhi]

+1 Wish to fly central highlands and base at An Khe

[upyr1]

On 12/16/2021 at 12:07 PM, Baaz said:

As much as I am drooling over a Vietnam map, looking at performance on the Marianas tells me we're nowhere near where we need to be to make Vietnam considerable.

This is one reason that I would rather see some cold war gone hot maps and assets. We could get the era without killing our cpus.

[Comox]

So now that we're getting an awesome F-4E this year, what about the only map EVERYONE is waiting for ??

[Fuchs]

+1 for this map

[Rick50]

Yea, a  lot of us want this map, for the history, alt history scenarios and such.

Might be a little "hot potatoe" considering the nature of that history... but it's been done in the past games/sims. 

But then there is the technical.  This isn't a desert, with a bit of hills, a few shrubs and a bit of bland textures.  This would be TRILLIONS of palm trees over millions of square miles, WAY more building structures, tens of thousands of river-stilt hut houses. And all the other high density of objects that Vietnam would have compared to say most desert maps.

Why does this matter?

1) maps typically seem to take 3 years to make. But this won't be typical due to the volume of objects to place with any plausibility. Might take TWICE as long for a map of 'Nam.

2) triangles and textures... too many and it chokes your PC, chokes your fancy 3D card.  Doubling the triangles and textures is usually not much problem for a high end somewhat current gaming PC. But if it's 5 times as much, or 10 times as much...  I imagine that a realistic looking 'Nam map might have 50 times as many objects within visual range, compared to say the NTTR map, or the Persian map. 

So we are left with a map that will take more resources and time to make, and then maybe not be able to get 2 frames per second with lowest settings... rendering the whole exercise null.

At some point in future, it will most certainly be doable. Maybe some AI help to build the map in a reasonable time. And then some monster gaming PC hardware that makes a 3090Ti look like a calculator... then sure, it'll be awesome for certain.  What's not certain is if it can be started today and work well say in 2026 when it would be ready... maybe it could be made to work well, maybe not.

 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

5 hours ago, Rick50 said:

Yea, a  lot of us want this map, for the history, alt history scenarios and such.

Might be a little "hot potatoe" considering the nature of that history... but it's been done in the past games/sims. 

But then there is the technical.  This isn't a desert, with a bit of hills, a few shrubs and a bit of bland textures.  This would be TRILLIONS of palm trees over millions of square miles, WAY more building structures, tens of thousands of river-stilt hut houses. And all the other high density of objects that Vietnam would have compared to say most desert maps.

Why does this matter?

1) maps typically seem to take 3 years to make. But this won't be typical due to the volume of objects to place with any plausibility. Might take TWICE as long for a map of 'Nam.

2) triangles and textures... too many and it chokes your PC, chokes your fancy 3D card.  Doubling the triangles and textures is usually not much problem for a high end somewhat current gaming PC. But if it's 5 times as much, or 10 times as much...  I imagine that a realistic looking 'Nam map might have 50 times as many objects within visual range, compared to say the NTTR map, or the Persian map. 

So we are left with a map that will take more resources and time to make, and then maybe not be able to get 2 frames per second with lowest settings... rendering the whole exercise null.

At some point in future, it will most certainly be doable. Maybe some AI help to build the map in a reasonable time. And then some monster gaming PC hardware that makes a 3090Ti look like a calculator... then sure, it'll be awesome for certain.  What's not certain is if it can be started today and work well say in 2026 when it would be ready... maybe it could be made to work well, maybe not.

 

Important to read.

As our aircraft inventory is 40% accurate, that's not my biggest concern. Sure, there's a marked performance difference between the 21bis and F-13/PFM that the VPAF depended as well as the two Navy attackers we're getting are much more advanced than their 60s progenitors, performance is the biggest concern I have.

Future proofing didn't work for Crysis and that just became a joke people bandied about in gaming circles for over a decade. People want to play the game they bought *now*. Until ED can swallow its pride and develop a map with a reduced visual fidelity for the sake of the game actually being playable, then a SEATO map is going to be heartbreaking.

Telling us to 'upgrade' is not a valid retort. Especially when this would affect so many customers. I'd just outright not buy it since what should be a $60 purchase is now exponentially more.

I legitimately would want SEATO modeled. But, I'm not getting it if its a slideshow. I think the hell of it is that the people who do so desperately want a SEATO map would also be willing to take a hit on fidelity provided it ran well.

[Rick50]

There used to be a company that was well known for making the "only"  simulations of car racing... Papyrus. They covered CART / Indycar, Nascar Winston Cup, Nascar Trucks and probably a few other genres I don't recall. Their last Nascar apparently still lives on today through mods, it's physics engine and car / suspension setup is second to none even today.

But the company one day set out to make the best vintage racing simulator, or rather at that time, the ONLY vintage racing simulator, the subject being Formula 1 from 1967. They wrote all new code for the physics engine. The cars were a handful just to get rolling.  But there was a massive problem for the company: when it was released, no one had a computer powerful enough to run it.  If you turned all the graphics way down, and only rendered one or two cars in front, and only raced against say just 5 other cars, you MIGHT get an ok framerate... until another car came into view, then whoops, screen freeze and your car has now crashed. 

About 8 years after the sim was released, our average gaming hardware could do the sim justice, making a full proper race with all the cars, no stutters no frame drops, all the physics for all the cars not just your own, work properly. And it was SPECTACULAR!!  

Problem was, the company did not survive, largely, I think because their "magnum opus", their "David" just wouldn't work on the customer's machines upon launch, or even for years later. What SHOULD have been a stellar success that impressed everyone, crashed and burned in terms of sales. There was nothing wrong with the code... a decade later it worked brilliantly. It just required WAY more computing power than was available at retail for years after release. Truly a shame, as Grand Prix Legends later turned out to be the brilliant experience we suspected it might. The company did have success after GPL was released, but I believe that it hurt the company's financials signficantly, and I'm not certain that they managed to recover those losses.

I tell this story because it's a cautionary one, where just hardware specs and availability conspired to ruin what otherwise ought to have been a great success, much like  MiG21bisFishbedL mentioned about the action adventure FPS game Crysis, which suffered from the same issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Design_Group

[stormrider]

On 2/2/2022 at 1:50 AM, Rick50 said:

There used to be a company that was well known for making the "only"  simulations of car racing... Papyrus. They covered CART / Indycar, Nascar Winston Cup, Nascar Trucks and probably a few other genres I don't recall. Their last Nascar apparently still lives on today through mods, it's physics engine and car / suspension setup is second to none even today.

Papyrus exists today in iRacing through Dave Kaemmer.

https://www.iracing.com/papyrus/

[Rick50]

Right, but it's not the same organisation. Maybe with the later titles they reccovered their finacials. Maybe they needed outside investors to recover and/or start the new venture. GPL was celebrated once people could play it, but didn't make the company enough money for the investment. Just because the same people are inolved, doesn't mean that they had success the whole time (though for the most part I think they've done well).  In the context that I presented, the game wouldn't run properly on the hardware of users at launch, and it hurt sales significantly. Similarly, Falcon 4.0 had a similar issue for many. You could see the poentetial, but....

[Gambit21]

On 2/1/2022 at 4:50 PM, Rick50 said:

There used to be a company that was well known for making the "only"  simulations of car racing... Papyrus. They covered CART / Indycar, Nascar Winston Cup, Nascar Trucks and probably a few other genres I don't recall. Their last Nascar apparently still lives on today through mods, it's physics engine and car / suspension setup is second to none even today.

But the company one day set out to make the best vintage racing simulator, or rather at that time, the ONLY vintage racing simulator, the subject being Formula 1 from 1967. They wrote all new code for the physics engine. The cars were a handful just to get rolling.  But there was a massive problem for the company: when it was released, no one had a computer powerful enough to run it.  If you turned all the graphics way down, and only rendered one or two cars in front, and only raced against say just 5 other cars, you MIGHT get an ok framerate... until another car came into view, then whoops, screen freeze and your car has now crashed. 

About 8 years after the sim was released, our average gaming hardware could do the sim justice, making a full proper race with all the cars, no stutters no frame drops, all the physics for all the cars not just your own, work properly. And it was SPECTACULAR!!  

Problem was, the company did not survive, largely, I think because their "magnum opus", their "David" just wouldn't work on the customer's machines upon launch, or even for years later. What SHOULD have been a stellar success that impressed everyone, crashed and burned in terms of sales. There was nothing wrong with the code... a decade later it worked brilliantly. It just required WAY more computing power than was available at retail for years after release. Truly a shame, as Grand Prix Legends later turned out to be the brilliant experience we suspected it might. The company did have success after GPL was released, but I believe that it hurt the company's financials signficantly, and I'm not certain that they managed to recover those losses.

I tell this story because it's a cautionary one, where just hardware specs and availability conspired to ruin what otherwise ought to have been a great success, much like  MiG21bisFishbedL mentioned about the action adventure FPS game Crysis, which suffered from the same issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Design_Group

I had a Pentium IV with a Voodoo and ran it fine with a full field..  Of course it ran even better with later rigs with all the car updates etc. That was a fast rig for the time though.

[sangfhas]

+1

[Rick50]

On 2/25/2022 at 10:50 AM, Gambit21 said:

I had a Pentium IV with a Voodoo and ran it fine with a full field..  Of course it ran even better with later rigs with all the car updates etc. That was a fast rig for the time though.

 

How much did that unit cost ya? !!!! 

[Gambit21]

On 2/26/2022 at 10:12 PM, Rick50 said:

 

How much did that unit cost ya? !!!! 

Way too much, put it on a credit card like a dolt.

[upyr1]

I know a lot of DCS players want a Vietnam map, when we finally get one I would like to have at least 3 eras.

1. WWII / 1950s 
2. 1960-1980. The obvious setting for most scenarios. 
3. Modern- what if. We have the Chinese asset pack so might as well have a China vs Vietnam battle of the flankers 

[Andrew8604]

On 5/12/2022 at 8:15 AM, upyr1 said:

I know a lot of DCS players want a Vietnam map, when we finally get one I would like to have at least 3 eras.

1. WWII / 1950s 
2. 1960-1980. The obvious setting for most scenarios. 
3. Modern- what if. We have the Chinese asset pack so might as well have a China vs Vietnam battle of the flankers 

I think concentrate mainly on a Vietnam map of around 1968 or 1972.  I am not at all against your idea, though.

[upyr1]

4 hours ago, Andrew8604 said:

I think concentrate mainly on a Vietnam map of around 1968 or 1972.  I am not at all against your idea, though.

the 1960-1980 map would have to be first, I'm not sure how much Vietnam would have actually changed in that 20 years. We would need more Vietnam era aicraft though

The 1940s-1950s map would be great for the Corsair as the French used them in their Vietnam war. Moern would be a flanker v flanker fight

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by upyr1

[Bremspropeller]

I think building a 1960-1980 map isn't possible with a high amount of fidelity. One could probably get away with a mid 50s to mid 60s map and another mid 60s to mid 70s map. The country would have gone through too many changes (e.g. air-defence networks, telltale SAM-sites with their respective shapes) to have a "one size fits all" solution. Which is too bad, because from a historical view, the area has seen almost constant conflict for 45 years. Talk about a relevant theatre to be covered by a map or two...

Limiting the timeframe to a few specific years would make sense in one way, but it would also unnecessarily constrain the map, when a lot of action has happened there before and after. It's probably easier to look over that and just take the non-contemorary map for some thing better than no map at all.

Then there's the still unresolved question of which area to cover. I'm still for a North/ South split, but even those maps would be hardware hogs, given the amount of trees. Maybe some other technology rather than individual trees needs to used there.

[upyr1]

4 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

I think building a 1960-1980 map isn't possible with a high amount of fidelity.

I am not sure how much would have changed for the period other than political borders. So I am thinking at least one map in that era 

4 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

One could probably get away with a mid 50s to mid 60s map and another mid 60s to mid 70s map. The country would have gone through too many changes (e.g. air-defence networks, telltale SAM-sites with their respective shapes) to have a "one size fits all" solution.

Going with a mid 50s to mid 60s map would rob the Corvair of an extra map..as for changes Mission builders will place their own sams 

4 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

Which is too bad, because from a historical view, the area has seen almost constant conflict for 45 years. Talk about a relevant theatre to be covered by a map or two...

 

4 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

Limiting the timeframe to a few specific years would make sense in one way, but it would also unnecessarily constrain the map, when a lot of action has happened there before and after. It's probably easier to look over that and just take the non-contemorary map for some thing better than no map at all.

Then there's the still unresolved question of which area to cover. I'm still for a North/ South split, but even those maps would be hardware hogs, given the amount of trees. Maybe some other technology rather than individual trees needs to used there.

It will kill cpus

[Andrew8604]

It looks like the Nevada map covers an area of about 350nm x 350nm (650km x 650km), but not all of that is full detail and trees are sparse.  However, there's a lot of detail in Las Vegas.

A Vietnam map (I think) would need to cover about 660nm x 530nm, (1222km x 981km) and that excludes most of South Vietnam and Cambodia.  But like Nevada, not all of that should be full detail.  Only Hanoi would be the large, high detail city, but as it was in about 1972, not 2022.  This would include most of Hainan Island, but not being a subject of the map, would only be satellite imagery over moderately detailed terrain...just so it would be seen from carriers at Yankee Station.

High detail of a 200nm x 150nm area around Hanoi.  (370km x 278km)

About two high detailed 150nm x 150nm areas along the coast to the southeast, which should cover Da Nang and Chu Lai airbases.  (278km x 278km)

Much of the trees are solid tree canopy, 75-150 feet above the ground, I think.  Maybe there's a way to model that without drawing thousands of individual trees and their trunks.  In low-detail areas, it could be just flat satellite imagery over medium detail terrain, I guess.  Vast areas you would normally fly over at high altitude.  You would only be expected to fly low-level, jet, prop or helicopter over the high-detail areas.

50nm (93km) radius detailed area around Dien Bien Phu in the northwest...maybe?  Not sure it's worth it, though.

30nm (55km) radius detail areas around each of the Thai airbases of: Udorn, Nakhon Phanom, Ubon, Korat and Takhli.  The flight from Takhli AB to Thud Ridge (Hanoi) is about 500nm (925km) each way!  ...and about 470nm from Korat AB.  Those were the F-105 bases (and later F-4E bases, I believe).  That should give plenty of room to tank-up with KC-135A's along the way.  Could you fly F-16C's on such missions?  Of course! ...and F-18C's and anything else that can make it...I wouldn't try it with the I-16, though.  But carrier-based aircraft from Yankee Station only had to go about 260nm.

I'd say only satellite photo details of Bangkok, if it's on the map at all.

I think this might just work, without being bigger than Syria or South Atlantic on the hard drive.

 

This image would be the approximate size of the map, however, only areas outlined by blue boxes and circles would be the high-detail areas.  And this is just my quick estimate of it.  Maybe some of the high-detail areas could be even smaller.

 

[SOLIDKREATE]

Good afternoon fellow aviators. I'd like to throw in the Vietnam War Map. We really, really need this in our lives. This would give way for third party developers to make the AT-28, F8U-2NE (J) - in work, A-37B, A-6E, F-4E (B) - released , B-57B - Data collection underway, MiG-17 (J5) - in work, MiG-19P (J6) - released, UH-1H - released, OV-10A - released, O-1E, O-2A , AH-1G - in work, Mi-8MTV2 - released, MiG-21 - released, A-4E -released, A-7E - in work, F-5E - released, F-100D - in work, B-52H - in work , F-105D or F - NOT HAPPENING ANYMORE, AH1 - inwork and countless other air and ground assets ect. 

UNDERLINED TEXT IS A LINK TO THE PROJECT THREAD OR WEBSITE

 

SEE BLACK OPERATING AREA *UPDATED 25MAR2024

Edited August 6, 2024 by SOLIDKREATE
ADDED AT-28

[Skyspin]

Too small of an area. Needs to be expanded to cover all of South Vietnam to most of the Mekong Delta, a large part of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos and even more of North Vietnam extending out to the South China Sea. If done this size it would cover the "same area as the new KOLA map being developed now". 

For such an important historical map there's no need to skimp on area. So much was conducted to the south that it all must be included..

Skyspin (342 days "in country")

[SOLIDKREATE]

True. but most maps from what I read are 300 x 300. There would have to be at least 4 maps that cover the war. 

[felixx75]

Most maps are considerably larger than 300km x 300km. Only the two ww2 maps (Channel and Normandy) are about the same size or smaller (Normandy 460km x 185km; Channel 240km x 100km). But there one is usually on the way with propeller planes...

A Vietnam map with a size of 300km x 300km would be clearly too small.

 

EDIT ---> 

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by felixx75