South Atlantic Map early access release note

[Beirut]

Snuck home between jobs and bought it on Steam. By the time I got home it was installed and everything is fine.

 

Barley looked at the price. Don't care. Just give me some delicious map eye candy and everything is fine. And I'm more than happy to wait for updates to it. 

[Lenux]

What's your first impression, guys? 

[Rudel_chw]

42 minutes ago, Lenux said:

What's your first impression, guys? 

I like it, the performance on my pc is similar to Syria … for my missions, the only aspect that I would like to be improved, is to have more airbases, even if not totally true-to-life, to allow for larger forces land-based.

[ddc196]

Another unidentified airfield. Grid QD04.

[Lenux]

12 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

I like it, the performance on my pc is similar to Syria … for my missions, the only aspect that I would like to be improved, is to have more airbases, even if not totally true-to-life, to allow for larger forces land-based.

Is it for stable version, only? 

I have just the Beta... 

Thank you 

[Rudel_chw]

1 minute ago, Lenux said:

Is it for stable version, only? 

I have just the Beta... 

No, actually at the moment it’s available only for openbeta .. probably next month it would be released for Stable.

[Beirut]

1 hour ago, Lenux said:

What's your first impression, guys? 

 

It's BIG. 

 

Textures range from kinda good to very good. A few nice touches here and there. The islands are pretty flat and barren, but then in real life the islands are pretty flat and barren. I just got to the very south of the mainland so I haven\t gotten into the mountain yet. Crossed the Falklands from the north east in the Ka-50, switched to the MI-8, and then the Harrier, jumped the pond in the F-16 to the south end Argentine islands, a quick trip north a few miles in the Hornet and that might be it. Have an early start tomorrow so I'll pick it up in a chopper sometime tomorrow.

 

Once I'm in the rivers and valleys I'll play with the weather and lighting and find that sweet sweet eye candy. I know its there.

[Rudel_chw]

It is full of glaciers, just like it is in reality …  I truly love the change of scenery, after so many years of desert

 

[Winterz]

On 6/9/2022 at 2:18 AM, Lenux said:

What's your first impression, guys? 

Great potential with this map yet released wayyy too early..

Looks empty and bad at low altitude and the few places which got details are laggy.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Winterz
wn

[Oban]

20 minutes ago, Winterz said:

I want my money back..

Looks empty and bad at low altitude and the few places which got details are laggy.

Early access, and you want the prefect map? sell it to me as a used product then??

[II.JG1_Vonrd]

5 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

It is full of glaciers, just like it is in reality …  I truly love the change of scenery, after so many years of desert

 

Yeah, the glaciers are a nice touch but the rendering of the mountain peaks, close up, are very blocky and reminiscent of older games. I think the Caucus mountains are rendered better. Still, it's early access. Hoping for more fidelity at close ups.

[sun4eg]

It's EA, I know.. There's tons of work to make textures decent, so far it looks terrible at 5k, somewhat okay at 20k. Can't imagine flying in helo in this low-poly minecraftish low-alt world.
Not complaining though, just sharing concerns. I like this map, it has very new and unique to DCS terrain and has great potential for engaging scenarios. Hopefully it will not take 5 more years to finalize it..

[Ala12Rv-Tundra]

1 hour ago, II.JG1_Vonrd said:

Yeah, the glaciers are a nice touch but the rendering of the mountain peaks, close up, are very blocky and reminiscent of older games. I think the Caucus mountains are rendered better. Still, it's early access. Hoping for more fidelity at close ups.

I got a similar impression

[pegasus1]

Great idea, ive a 2TB NVMe Gen 4 drive just for DCS, another for Steam games, id prefer the 250gb version.

[Beirut]

Some of the textures are very plain, that's for sure, but even in Early Access I think the map is a great start. It's big, it's available, and it is definitely an adventurous step forward. 

 

I can see several quality updates being in the works, and if it takes a year to see a few of them, that's okay. I'm happy the map is here.

[pegasus1]

13 hours ago, Winterz said:

I want my money back..

Looks empty and bad at low altitude and the few places which got details are laggy.

What part of 'Early Access' were you mislead by?

[One Eyed Ross]

So, paid my Soldier's Shilling, got my order number, but no download yet....  (Insert sad face here).

"I want my Falklands Map" (Sung to "I Want My MTV).

[Beirut]

12 hours ago, Winterz said:

I want my money back..

Looks empty and bad at low altitude and the few places which got details are laggy.

 

Dude, create the moment.

 

Find a nice spot, set the weather and lighting, and have yourself a little scrap. I had a P-51 in a fjord, going after a Shnell boat and a Ju-88, and it was scenic! It's worth spending some time to make the scene, as it were, but then you'll see there is some good fun to be had with this map.

[Gun Jam]

I think the map is worth the money but I also think its the worst looking map in DCS  (I fly VR but I also see the same issues in video) and I also don't believe the issues can be fixed with a reasonable amount of time and most issues will persist beyond EA as they are side effects of its design path.

The map is large and in many cases looks great at high altitude but it suffers below 10k my primary issues are as follows

1) The textures are low quality and look like they have been painted on a cloth and pulled over a low poly mesh this actually works well higher up and for most places that aren't mountains. The mountains look bad close up very flat

2) Repeating textures cause straight lines or patterns to form boxes that then create rows. This is really ugly in VR it occurs in snow and terrain at lower altitudes. You get banding that is very distracting and unpleasant

3) Fake stuff like: fake roads, lakes, Rivers, river valleys and general terrain features. You'll fly along and go I can fly up that river channel and hide. You get down low and there is no river channel. You see a cliff face with a shadow that's baked in and does not match time of day.

4) Lots of straight lines where apparently the is an image seam that features a time of year shift. It looks like a fence that has grazing animals next to a plot of land that does not except its many many miles long and in lots of places

 

The above are my main issues and I believe most of this is a side effect of using satellite imagery. Would I recommend this map? yes but its also the worst looking map in DCS but that doesn't mean its bad. I would rate 6.5/10 its going to have plenty of fans who will love it and for good reason but I suspect its also going to be the source of a lot of criticism for good reason as well. As for EA. I thought about that as I was flying over looking at the massive size and most of the above issues to me feel overwhelming to solve maybe in 3 to 4 years. SA is a barren landscape in real life and that is fine (take a look at PG) but when a lot of the interesting features have been faked and don't even exist that doesn't help. I suspect the heli community will pretty much reject SA in its entirety the thought of a heli mission on that map seems quite unappealing to me. ( although Im sure some sections would be quite entertaining)

[Mik75]

I like the atmosphere and the immersion the map is giving me so far. I like the Falkland islands, and the regions around the airfields in Argentina and Chile. The mountain regions are pretty nice, although the underlying mesh is really not high resolution at all. As aren't the ground textures. Anything lower than 20k ft looks quite bad. I really hope, that future updates will improve these things. Performance wise, I get everything from 60-120 fps in the Harrier, with my usual (quite high) settings, in a free flight scenario. I tried one quick mission, and the performance was pretty laggy, with heavy stuttering around the airfield. 

In its current state, I undoubtedly prefer Syria and the Persian Gulf though. 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Mik75

[cordite]

15 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

I like it, the performance on my pc is similar to Syria … for my missions, the only aspect that I would like to be improved, is to have more airbases, even if not totally true-to-life, to allow for larger forces land-based.

I'd like the option for less (which they say is the plan, somehow), even if period correct aircraft will have to be subbed somewhat. Even for modern missions, they'd still have to be subbed.

I agree with those who are hoping for some improvement on the low level textures.

Edited June 9, 2022 by cordite

[Northstar98]

15 hours ago, ddc196 said:

Another unidentified airfield. Grid QD04.

Looks like Fox Bay.

I'm not sure if these very small airstrips are going to be made into full airports, seeing as they're super tiny and look like they have no services whatsoever (what you can do however, is use the invisible FARP).

Only thing I will say is that these strips have regular grass, whereas other grass strips in DCS are smoothed down. Perhaps it would be more useful to mark these on the map.

[Ice__]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb Baco:

yes you can buy in Steam and then transfer the license in the ED account page, and run it on the ED Open beta version.

Thank you "Baco" for taking the time to answer my question - worked perfectly fine!

Edited June 9, 2022 by Ice__

[Breakaway]

Is it just me or does the promo vid look alot nicer than the map really is. I'm on high settings and it looks no where near as good as the promo vid.

[Gunfreak]

20 minutes ago, Breakaway said:

Is it just me or does the promo vid look alot nicer than the map really is. I'm on high settings and it looks no where near as good as the promo vid.

Promo video does appear to use the dynamic weather, so might used other tricks to.