Maps are overpriced!

[shagrat]

16 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

Sorry to burst the bubble, but DCS is no different ... if ever Eagle Dynamics goes out of business, our DCS installs will cease to function pretty quickly, just disconnect from the Internet to have a quick glimpse of how DCS is dependent on ED's Servers.

 

Effectively, you will have the same, as we have already with "Offline mode" if you set DCS to Offline, just no more bug fixes and updates. The 3 day limit applies if you did not set offline mode and lose internet connection. At least that's what I understood offline mode provides...

[Rudel_chw]

18 minutes ago, shagrat said:

...  if you set DCS to Offline ... 

 

That's a big IF .. let's hope that ED would give a warning on such an event, but realistically a lot of companies don't have time to do this type of thing, like VEAO that kept selling the Hawk right up until the day it folded.

[Mizzy]

4 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

That's a big IF .. let's hope that ED would give a warning on such an event, but realistically a lot of companies don't have time to do this type of thing, like VEAO that kept selling the Hawk right up until the day it folded.

I recall ED making it clear what would happen if they went out of business and it was basically releasing the game to the customers that have bought their products in the most stable version. There are many servers out there that would take up the mantle I am sure but rest assured it would not be anything like what VEAO did to it's customers with their piece of shit they sold and then ran off when the kitchen got too hot for them !!

[Brainfreeze]

Frankly, given the time I spend on DCS I think the maps are cheap. The aircrafts are quite reasonably priced when you think about the amount a dev there is for them and the limited amount they will sell. I'll dutifully buy their maps because it is necessary income for them and the amount of work that goes in a nice map is enormous.  

 

Can't wait for the Falklands map from razbam to arrive...will be nearly 3yrs of work for 1 guy and it looks beautiful...They do it for the love of it more than for pure commercial reasons it seems to me. 

 

 

[Rudel_chw]

24 minutes ago, Brainfreeze said:

... The aircrafts are quite reasonably priced when you think about the amount a dev there is for them and the limited amount they will sell. I'll dutifully buy their maps because it is necessary income for them and the amount of work that goes in a nice map is enormous.  

+1
 

that’s why I have purchased every single dcs map .. in fact, given the choice between a new map and a new aircraft, I prefer to buy the map ... because it benefits every one of the aircrafts I already have.

[Lurker]

No idea why people bad mouth MS Flight simulator so much. They must have not played it at all, or seen the youtube videos. (Or have potato PCs) Seriously, I WISH DCS looked that good. I fly Caucassus mostly, and it's night and day compared to MSFS. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but as far as graphics are concerned we have a ways to go. (Yeah Syria looks good, and the weather upgrade is coming, I know) 

[Rudel_chw]

14 minutes ago, Lurker said:

No idea why people bad mouth MS Flight simulator so much. They must have not played it at all ...

 

You make too much suppositions .. I tried MSFS for a month, using a trial xBox account .. I wasn't that impressed .. "pretty but shallow" was my most frequent reaction. 

 

In the end, it depends on what is important to you on a simulator .. I want most of the aircraft systems simulated and working on a realistic manner, I want a proper User Manual describing each aircraft in detail, I want a damage model, so that I can crash the aircraft when I make a mistake, I want support for my VR helmet.

 

Sure, the clouds are pretty and so is the lighting ... but those type of things are very superficial ... At the end of the month I chose not to subscribe and deleted the MSFS from my drive .. it is not expensive, but it seemed like a waste of time to me.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Rudel_chw

[shagrat]

3 hours ago, Lurker said:

No idea why people bad mouth MS Flight simulator so much. They must have not played it at all, or seen the youtube videos. (Or have potato PCs) Seriously, I WISH DCS looked that good. I fly Caucassus mostly, and it's night and day compared to MSFS. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but as far as graphics are concerned we have a ways to go. (Yeah Syria looks good, and the weather upgrade is coming, I know) 

That's why I think we need to distinguish between the purpose of MSFS and DCS. MSFS intention is to provide a visual stunning playground to do VFR/IFR flights at 5,000 feet or higher. That's what it does pretty good. The "astonishing" visuals quickly get astonishing when you see the chinese Great Wall represented as a long line of apartment buildings in the middle of a forrest or a coastal cliff like Algarve/Portugal is more shallow and hills. That's where the MSFS engine currently has its limits. Does it make the engine "bad"? Definitely not. For the purpose of flying cross-country VFR or fun flights in the outback, alaskan wild or bush trips it is great. Will it be "visually stunning" for nap of the earth flying and city tours in Helicopters? Take the drone camera and fly down 5th av. in New York or any photogrammetry City and decide for yourself. Is it "bad"? No, actually it is fascinating how this technology works and the results are fantastic, yet not perfect.

Now, DCS provides a battlefield mostly for air combat and air to ground for planes AND helicopters. As a typical ground attack in modern aircraft uses FLIR, Targeting Pods, Camera Guided weapons, the requirements for the actual ground objects is totally different. A photogrammetry Las Vegas with a 95% accurate positioned buildings, street grid, and elevation may look nice, but if you look at it through a TGP at basically arms length, generic buildings with handcrafted details do a better job. The limitation for DCS' engine is the limits our hardware impose to the objects in the memory and actually the time and effort necessary to handcraft these models.

If we ignore the work necessary to model all individual buildings in a city the size of Vegas and just look at the amount of individual buildings and their detail plus the textures that would need to be juggled in your PCs memory, you understand, why MSFS as well as DCS use generic buildings and objects to represent cities and only specific areas are detailed to real life with handcrafted objects. The magic of photogrammetry can't create those details, the 3D-shape is simplified and a "representation" of the building/real objects shape, but when you get closer the compromise gets obvious. For a TGP view or a helicopter hovering beside a skyscraper what looks astonishing real and convincing from 10,000 ft altitude is not as great looking up close.

Bottom Line, you can't compare the graphic engines in DCS and MSFS in a way as "why doesn't X do the same as Y" because the purpose of X is totally different, from the purpose of Y.

Thus in my humbled opinion I need to accept each is doing a great job according to the purpose it was created for and has certain limitations imposed by the current available technology and hardware.