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Brief review of Paradise Lost


Tobse

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Luckily, I had some spare time before new years eve to play through the campaign over the span of about a week, and here are my impressions:

-  Immersion is very nice, with lots of voiceovers (including, e.g., the voice of Casmo from the low level hell podcast), as well as period-correct music over the radio, popup images etc., and lots of pop culture references that had me smiling

- While the Marianas map is probably the best choice in absence of a true Vietnam map, the island is quite small and features such as golf courses and modern buildings detract from that Vietnam feel

- The Marianas map is also resource-hungry, and playing in VR, I had to tune down features a bit to get halfway decent fps - especially over the nicely populated airbase with lots of B52s, C130s etc, the frame rate tanks, otherwise. Again, not a criticism against the campaign design, but something to keep in mind

- There is decent variety in the mission types, with a switch from slicks to gunships mid-campaign

- Overall difficulty is, in my view, easier than either the Argo or Worlds apart campaigns - while I regularly ended up with a few holes in the fuselage and some instrument failures, most missions were doable in the first go, with manageable airmanship challenges (LZ size etc.)

In summary, I'm very happy with the campaign and highly recommend it - I'll definitely revisit several of the missions, especially the last one, whenever there are some improvements to DCS VR performance. 

Take care,

Tobse!

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I've played three missions so far, and I think it's excellent.  There's a great sense of atmosphere, good voice-acting and believable mission scopes.  It has genuinely got my heart going coming under fire in the fragile huey as well!

Win10 x64, 16 GB RAM, Ryzen 5 1600X @3.60 GHz, 500 GB SSD, GeForce 1080 Ti

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Related to VR performance: Marianas has seen a recent upgrade in FPS with 2.7.9. I don't know what version you played on @Tobse? For me the map is playable as is, and the first mission ran fine.

Your comment about difficulty made me realize how much of a mediocre Huey pilot I actually am. I do not find landing in a tiny LZ in the woods under fire "easy".

 

So far I am enjoying the campaign and I recommended it to a few buddies who fly helos. It is great to see some use for this map as well!

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56 minutes ago, Qiou87 said:

Related to VR performance: Marianas has seen a recent upgrade in FPS with 2.7.9. I don't know what version you played on @Tobse? For me the map is playable as is, and the first mission ran fine.

Your comment about difficulty made me realize how much of a mediocre Huey pilot I actually am. I do not find landing in a tiny LZ in the woods under fire "easy".

 

So far I am enjoying the campaign and I recommended it to a few buddies who fly helos. It is great to see some use for this map as well!

I played everything in the latest open Beta - however, I am new to VR (System specs Reverb G2, 3070, AMD Ryzen) and may not have the optimum settings just yet. However, without changing any settings, going from flying F14s over the water to taking off on a crowded base in the Huey, fps went from over 60 to, occasionally, less than 15, so I had to down-tune parameters.

Regarding the difficulty, the huey feels very tame to me after having gotten started on the Mi-8 and VRS-ing constantly...

Take care,

Tobse!

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50 minutes ago, Tobse said:

I played everything in the latest open Beta - however, I am new to VR (System specs Reverb G2, 3070, AMD Ryzen) and may not have the optimum settings just yet. However, without changing any settings, going from flying F14s over the water to taking off on a crowded base in the Huey, fps went from over 60 to, occasionally, less than 15, so I had to down-tune parameters.

Regarding the difficulty, the huey feels very tame to me after having gotten started on the Mi-8 and VRS-ing constantly...

Take care,

Tobse!

No problem, we all come from different backgrounds with different experiences 😉 I am flying the Hind a lot for the past 6 months, so the Huey is a bit of an adjustment. I like it nonetheless!

Regarding performance, I have a similar configuration to yours, albeit with a slightly more powerful GPU. Could be it, or a small tuning necessary. Hope you manage to find a compromise you are happy with.

Btw, I forgot to say thank you for the short review. I did not wait for anyone's opinion as I know Reflected from his WW2 campaigns, but it is great nonetheless to have people share their honest opinions after playing through the campaign. I know how long it takes to make such a campaign...


Edited by Qiou87

AMD R7 5800X3D | 64GB DDR4 3200MHz | RTX 4080S 16GB | Varjo Aero | VKB Gunfighter Pro Mk3 + STECS + pedals

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Keep in mind that the Marianas map is still quite new and WIP. New maps always have much worse performance. Once it's finalized, ED usually optimizes the performance - the story was the same with the Channel map. So fingers crossed. 

The campaign is not particularly unit-heavy. Except a dozen B-52s and C-130s, but those are very old, low poly models.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/4/2022 at 12:49 AM, Tobse said:

I played everything in the latest open Beta - however, I am new to VR (System specs Reverb G2, 3070, AMD Ryzen) and may not have the optimum settings just yet. However, without changing any settings, going from flying F14s over the water to taking off on a crowded base in the Huey, fps went from over 60 to, occasionally, less than 15, so I had to down-tune parameters.

Regarding the difficulty, the huey feels very tame to me after having gotten started on the Mi-8 and VRS-ing constantly...

Take care,

Tobse!

I'm getting smooth VR FPS 90% of the time with my Reverb G2 flying these missions over the Marianas with also 'only' an RTX3070 card by having motion reprojection enabled, and replacing the default "openvr_api.dll" with the AMD FSR openvr_api.dll mod file off Github. Using a 0.7 renderscale, smooth VR is possible with no obvious artifacts added. The AMD FSR mod makes the sim render at a lower resolution to boost FPS, and then upscales it to your 'normal' resolution.

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1 hour ago, scubaboy said:

I'm getting smooth VR FPS 90% of the time with my Reverb G2 flying these missions over the Marianas with also 'only' an RTX3070 card by having motion reprojection enabled, and replacing the default "openvr_api.dll" with the AMD FSR openvr_api.dll mod file off Github. Using a 0.7 renderscale, smooth VR is possible with no obvious artifacts added. The AMD FSR mod makes the sim render at a lower resolution to boost FPS, and then upscales it to your 'normal' resolution.

Thanks for that tip, I was not aware of that mod!

Take care,

Tobse!

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  • 2 months later...

Good topic, interesting information. I like to read all sorts of such topics, because in them you can always get more help than in YouTube and in ordinary reviews. I recently read some cool essays about The Great Gatsby. I didn't watch this movie, it just so happened, but after reading this essay, I really wanted to see this movie. Have you seen him, what do you think? Also, after reading your opinion, I also wanted to go through this company. I have never played this game, I think I will like it, now I don’t have time to play games, but I will definitely write it down in my desired games and one day I will still go through this game.


Edited by Zizelinn
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  • 10 months later...

Just finished. I had a grin on my face all the way through the final mission. Epic. 🙂

A few general comments if they are helpful:

Are you suppose to contact Andersen AFB when recovering to base? All my RTBs were silent.

Some FM radios were not always giving any homing, e.g. Company HQ.  More evident on the later part of some missions. This seemed a bit odd. If the map area was bigger this would make navigating home a little tricky.

Would be nice to include guidance or tactics of proper OP for hot LZs for both Slick and Gunship. Be good to know how it should be done and a great learning oportunity.

Overall 9/10 from me. 10/10 would need a fortunate son. lol

Keep up the great work.


Edited by paulw10
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  • 1 year later...

I've tried to play this campaign twice now, I only got to Mission 3 the first time and gave up halfway through Mission 1 the second time. Preface: I fly in VR without the magic autopilot. The dogged requirement for the player to manage radios and navigate on the F-10 map in the (otherwise very nice and rewardingly challenging) bad weather is a deal breaker. I partially got over the radio issue since getting a Winwing Orion, finally having enough inputs to bind the radios to physical controls. But trying to nav on F-10, clicking each orange circle to find the new one, taking bearings and copying them to my IRL kneeboard always finds me in a 90* bank 40* nose low 300ft above the trees no matter how well I trim it out. The copilot is RIGHT THERE! I know Casmo is a busy guy, but I'd rather a bit less quippy lines ripped from "Guts and Gunships" (fantastic book btw, highly recommend) and more actually helping me fly the ship. All he had to say was "Bravo 6 is approx. 1.8 miles south of Berlin" and I'd happily fly every mission here.

I WANT to enjoy this campaign, but I can't in its current state. And given the huge ask for the amazing voice cast to come back years later to add purely functional lines and Reflected's previous statements that I took as "suck it up", I don't see anything changing ever. There was so much potential for this "Guts and Gunships" adaptation, but the quality of life issues drag it down into the mud for me. Once the AH-64 model matures, I hope someone makes an adaptation campaign based on Ed Macy's "Hellfire", just not Reflected Simulations.

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I've tried to play this campaign twice now, I only got to Mission 3 the first time and gave up halfway through Mission 1 the second time. Preface: I fly in VR without the magic autopilot. The dogged requirement for the player to manage radios and navigate on the F-10 map in the (otherwise very nice and rewardingly challenging) bad weather is a deal breaker. I partially got over the radio issue since getting a Winwing Orion, finally having enough inputs to bind the radios to physical controls. But trying to nav on F-10, clicking each orange circle to find the new one, taking bearings and copying them to my IRL kneeboard always finds me in a 90* bank 40* nose low 300ft above the trees no matter how well I trim it out. The copilot is RIGHT THERE! I know Casmo is a busy guy, but I'd rather a bit less quippy lines ripped from "Guts and Gunships" (fantastic book btw, highly recommend) and more actually helping me fly the ship. All he had to say was "Bravo 6 is approx. 1.8 miles south of Berlin" and I'd happily fly every mission here.
I WANT to enjoy this campaign, but I can't in its current state. And given the huge ask for the amazing voice cast to come back years later to add purely functional lines and Reflected's previous statements that I took as "suck it up", I don't see anything changing ever. There was so much potential for this "Guts and Gunships" adaptation, but the quality of life issues drag it down into the mud for me. Once the AH-64 model matures, I hope someone makes an adaptation campaign based on Ed Macy's "Hellfire", just not Reflected Simulations.
Like @Reflected says. Why don't you bind the copilot to a button on your stick? Personally I have made a VoiceAttack command, [you, I] have control. Pretty cool, no?

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

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On 3/6/2024 at 2:30 AM, Scatlet-565 said:

I've tried to play this campaign twice now, I only got to Mission 3 the first time and gave up halfway through Mission 1 the second time. Preface: I fly in VR without the magic autopilot. The dogged requirement for the player to manage radios and navigate on the F-10 map in the (otherwise very nice and rewardingly challenging) bad weather is a deal breaker. I partially got over the radio issue since getting a Winwing Orion, finally having enough inputs to bind the radios to physical controls. But trying to nav on F-10, clicking each orange circle to find the new one, taking bearings and copying them to my IRL kneeboard always finds me in a 90* bank 40* nose low 300ft above the trees no matter how well I trim it out. The copilot is RIGHT THERE! I know Casmo is a busy guy, but I'd rather a bit less quippy lines ripped from "Guts and Gunships" (fantastic book btw, highly recommend) and more actually helping me fly the ship. All he had to say was "Bravo 6 is approx. 1.8 miles south of Berlin" and I'd happily fly every mission here.

I WANT to enjoy this campaign, but I can't in its current state. And given the huge ask for the amazing voice cast to come back years later to add purely functional lines and Reflected's previous statements that I took as "suck it up", I don't see anything changing ever. There was so much potential for this "Guts and Gunships" adaptation, but the quality of life issues drag it down into the mud for me. Once the AH-64 model matures, I hope someone makes an adaptation campaign based on Ed Macy's "Hellfire", just not Reflected Simulations.

as others have said, what in the world are you talking about "magic autopilot"? i've noticed this issue of a mindset with many DCS pilots that seem to forget a copilot is a thing. the Huey is actually more realistic in that regard than, say, the Mi-8 which doesn't have this functionality.

The copilot is there to help you, USE him. i just found out recently he can hold a pretty mean orbit pattern as well as straight and level

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