[SOUTH EAST ASIA] VIETNAM MAP 1200km x 600km, It's time to get this started.

[Northstar98]

On 8/18/2022 at 2:26 PM, felixx75 said:

At the end of 1968 the first A-7E conducted it's first flight. So it's not clearly a 1980s (or even 1990s) bird. 

The one being developed for DCS though, is - it's more closer to the mid 90s with the features being developed for it. There's more to an aircraft's era than just the year of its first flight (or even introduction).

For example, our F-16C isn't a 80s F-16C just because the F-16C had its first flight in 1984.

Same with the A-6E, it's at least a TRAM which is v. late 70s at the earliest. If it's a WCSI or a SWIP that'll put it firmly in the 80s/early 90s.

[bies]

On 8/18/2022 at 3:26 PM, felixx75 said:

At the end of 1968 the first A-7E conducted it's first flight. So it's not clearly a 1980s (or even 1990s) bird. 

Yes, i didn't say it's "clearly" 1980s. I just pointed out in 1991 it was already decomissioned so it would be at most 1980s. There was no mid 1990s A-7E in US Navy because in mid 1990s this bird was long gone. Desert Storm 1991 was his last mission. I would like earlier Vietram era variant as well later on.

Edited August 20, 2022 by bies

[Silver_Dragon]

21 hours ago, QuiGon said:

You can add the F-100D Super Sabre to that list as in work

 

Mig-17 has not a aproved DCS module and Red Star Simulatos has none a aproval 3rd party (by ED team). Only a Modder team yet.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Silver_Dragon

[QuiGon]

43 minutes ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Mig-17 has not a aproved DCS module and Red Star Simulatos has none a aproval 3rd party (by ED team). Only a Modder team yet.

I guess this was supposed to be directed at @SOLIDKREATE ?

[Rick50]

WinterH pointed out some of the issues that I  too concluded a few years ago.  Sure, maps are getting larger indeed. This is made possible by DCS players buying ever more powerful computers to run it. Can't make a giant super-map sell well if it gives you 3fps before introducing other aircraft enter the picture!

For my perspective, the issue isn't really about map area anymore really... it's object count. Trucks, buildings, fences, we expect all of that on any map. But both the nation and the conflict are extremely famous for the super-dense foliage, the trees, the multilayered canopies, the bushes, the tall grass. 

Personally I  don't  wanna fly "Vietnam: Desert Edition". I would want to fly the area as it appeared in the 1960's, and that means litterally TRILLIONS of bushes. TRILLIONS of tall grass blades. Last but not least, TRILLIONS upon TRILLIONS of trees. This is an absolute requirement, or it won't look like it should.

At this moment, any scene with that dense of object count, would likely cause our GPU's to catch fire and burn down your room, maybe even your residence! Then you gotta price out a new GPU, new computer, maybe a new VR set, convince the insurance investigator it wasn't yer fault, find a new place to live... it all gets a little bit annoying. 

At this moment.

Remember, there are still people struggling with making Syria work well, and the Mariannas map sees people struggling with that one, despite the islands being tiny postage stamps... both observations support my theory about object count being the real obstacle.

In the next few years however, new methods of handling object counts, and rendering shortcuts and API functions and procedures, may allow for such insane object counts without breaking a sweat, and do so with many AI and human multiplayers in the same scene. Thus, I predict that the impossible may soon become the "ok let's do this!".

Were a Vietnam map to come about... then that opens the doors for the WW2 islands campaigns, and Germany in the Black Forrest too.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Rick50

[SOLIDKREATE]

2 hours ago, Rick50 said:

Remember, there are still people struggling with making Syria work well, and the Marianna's map sees people struggling with that one, despite the islands being tiny postage stamps... both observations support my theory about object count being the real obstacle.

In the next few years however, new methods of handling object counts, and rendering shortcuts and API functions and procedures, may allow for such insane object counts without breaking a sweat, and do so with many AI and human multiplayers in the same scene. Thus, I predict that the impossible may soon become the "ok let's do this!".

Were a Vietnam map to come about... then that opens the doors for the WW2 islands campaigns, and Germany in the Black Forrest too.

 

Having an inferior PC should not slow down the development of a game IMO. Instead buying module after module, they should invest in a new PC that can run it. I use a CAD Workstation with a Xeon 6-Core 3.6GHz CPU, 48GB of ECC verified RAM, and a PNY Quadro M5000 8GB GPU and I fly just fine. My PC in ancient by computing standards.

*I use this because I am an aerospace tooling engineer.

On 8/19/2022 at 8:09 AM, QuiGon said:

You can add the F-100D Super Sabre to that list as in work

 

Done. 

[SOLIDKREATE]

So, far looks like there are 13 A/C in active development or in a released state. There are 9 others that would still need to be made to have a nice 'core' group.

There are quite a number of other A/C like the F-111, P-3B, HH-2, Be-12, Mi-4, Mi-6 ect.... What is being done now is more than enough of a reason to build this map. The remaining A/C could be AI assets for mission building. I myself personally would like the OV-10 Bronco because I love the idea of light attack. Which is why the Super Tucano is high on my list of what to buy.

Edited August 21, 2022 by SOLIDKREATE

[Rick50]

19 hours ago, SOLIDKREATE said:

Having an inferior PC should not slow down the development of a game IMO. Instead buying module after module, they should invest in a new PC that can run it. I use a CAD Workstation with a Xeon 6-Core 3.6GHz CPU, 48GB of ECC verified RAM, and a PNY Quadro M5000 8GB GPU and I fly just fine. My PC in ancient by computing standards.

*I use this because I am an aerospace tooling engineer.

 

Then you CLEARLY have not considered any of the points I'm talking about. And being an engineer, really ought to know better.

If SOME are struggling to run key maps, that means a significant portion OF THE CUSTOMER BASE SIMPLY CAN'T AFFORD to upgrade anywhere near as often as you. You clearly, as an aerospace engineer, can afford to. But a great number of us a WAY below your income level. Way WAY below. You are making an assumption, that less wealthy DCS players have lots of modules, I would suggest that they do not, and are selective in what they buy. CAD workstations?! Well good for you, but that indicates to me you don't care about growing the community, whom many simply see DCS on Steam and think "hmm, I like jets, gonna try this!"... and later discover that they can't run bugger all. But a Vietnam map, on your machine, would likely not work. The object count just too high. 

Devs have to consider a great many  things. One of them being game engine limitations. And game engine updates. Start too late, and you miss the boat with customers. Start too early, and you'll sit for YEARS on a product you can't  release... can't collect a dollar of revenue. FOR YEARS. Would you tolerate that? Do an entire engineering project from start to finish, and not get any pay for it? Boss "uh, yea, might get some paycheques for you in five years!" Then, when hardware catches up, you'll have to port over all that work to the latest game engine, the latest graphics API's. Then update the artwork because things have evolved and now it looks dated.  And it might not work, the porting might not work, might create inexplicable stutters, might crash the game every 5 minutes. 

Being able to do a Vietnam map worth of objects in DCS might come as early as 12 months. Or maybe more than ten years from now. It's not simply a matter of shaming the poors into getting better CPU GPU's.  Look, just because we customers WANT something, doesn't mean it's a wise choice for a dev team about to invest tens of thousands of hours of effort for something that might not pay off if their judgement is off slightly. Have some patience... maybe it'll happen.

 

[Silver_Dragon]

Remember DCS Worlking on Vulkan engine and Multitreating.... that can help, but has not a "silver bullet" to a perfect perfomance. On fact... none company can build a map engine with that detail level and add all calculus necesary to insert weapons, systems, IAs, explosions, etc on a modern environment. The previous games cut someone to intent simulate a full environment (poor graphics, limited 3d maps, put vision bubbles, low poligon 3d models, no AI, very poor weapon calculus, very simplified systems) and a long etc.

[Gunfreak]

 

On 8/14/2022 at 2:07 PM, WinterH said:

Latest announced Sinai map is to have a 700x700 km DETAILED area, and about twice that undetailed, and that is mostly just desert. Razbam's recent South Atlantic is the largest map currently, and great majority of it is ocean, with relatively little detailed regions afaik, but I may be wrong. Only heavily urbanized AND jungle map right now is Marianas, and it is similar to what Vietnam would be in that respect, except, unlike Vietnam, it is TINY and it performs absolutely horribly despite that. The only way we'll get a Vietnam map with current tech is if it's limited in size to only a certain region, people need to already forget about an expanded map of whole theater, and possibly also also a lot of the detail abstracted/omitted. Latter scenario doesn't seem like something great majority of the community care for.

From what I can see, DCS: Vietnam is not fesaible as a map right now, nor do we have many relevant aircraft, majority of the touted aircraft are wrong versions that are significantly more capable then variants served in war, and in ways you can't disable with mission editing, altering the experience.

Right now, I personally much, much prefer us keep getting later 70s-80s versions of aircraft, as that fits beautifully into an existing niche in DCS, as well as being frankly the more interesting versions imo. Once those are done, and map/rendering/performance tech is way ahead of where it is now, then, and only then I wouldn't be hostile to the DCS: Vietnam idea. Right now, while I do VERY MUCH understand the desire for it, it is neither really feasible, nor desirable imo.

The upcoming A-6 and A-7 are almost certainly going to be 80s, perhaps even early 90s birds. Two versions of F-4E will be one just past Vietnam, but can be reasonably roleplayed as a late war bird, and another that is from 80s with vastly different systems. F-5 and MiG-21 both are wrong versions that are considerably better than those served in the conflict. I can count more, but I see no point. If you are happy with making do with these, then I suppose more power to you. It wouldn't really be anything like the realities and unique challenges of that war, but if that isn't what you are looking for, then I suppose, yes, there is enough in sim to do a pretend 'Nam theater.

Marianas used a particular technology to push the boundaries. 

Caucasus has a crap tone of forest and runs fine. There's no inherent logic in plams take lots of resources.  But pine trees don't. It was the way ED choose to make those palm trees. ED can choose to make palms differently on a Vietnam map(or whomever decides to make a Vietnam map)

We'll also see how Marianas ww2 runs. As that is much better analogue for å Vietnam map.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Gunfreak

[Silver_Dragon]

9 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

 

Marianas used a particular technology to push the boundaries. 

Caucasus has a crap tone of forest and runs fine. There's no inherent logic in plams take lots of resources.  But pine trees don't. It was the way ED choose to make those palm trees. ED can choose to make palms differently on a Vietnam map(or whomever decides to make a Vietnam map)

We'll also see how Marianas ww2 runs. As that is much better analogue for å Vietnam map.

 

Vegetation trees has no builded by ED, has a plugin to make them on 3DS called SpeedTree.

[SOLIDKREATE]

4 hours ago, Rick50 said:

Devs have to consider a great many  things. One of them being game engine limitations. And game engine updates. Start too late, and you miss the boat with customers. Start too early, and you'll sit for YEARS on a product you can't  release... can't collect a dollar of revenue. FOR YEARS. Would you tolerate that? Do an entire engineering project from start to finish, and not get any pay for it?

They can still design to the maximum of their game engine. If people have a potato for a PC, that is not their or our problem. I've done numerous projects that got cancelled or I never received anything from. Happens more than you think. I also worked on something for a very long time only to have it change mid-development. The comment you've made tells me you are not in the industry. This thread is about the need or want for a Vietnam map, it's request, idea, dream ect. 

And breath man, just breath. Caps lock isn't going to get your point across. You're taking this way to seriously and way out of context with massive assumptions on your part.

[Rick50]

Sometimes the job of the leader is to decide to not take on a particular job/project/tasking, due to reasons. This happens all the time. That I'm not in your industry or the flight simulation industry doesn't diminish my points. Those project you mention that didn't reach the intended goal, someone paid for that in one way or many ways. Sunk costs, little or no profit, loss of professional reputation, loss of repeat business maybe, loss of employment possibly. This is true not only for projects requiring CAD skills but any entrepreneurial venture, DCS map making included. 

Ultimately I too want to see a great map featuring Vietnam complete, along with at least some of it's neighbours, to replicate the cross-border operations and bases in the region. And if it appears this year, I will rejoice!  I'm just offering up my opinions about why I think it's gonna take some time yet to get one. 

[Bremspropeller]

I think something like this should be doable. Starts close to Da Nang in the South, should have some major thai airfields for USAF action and covers the North entirely.

New tech may be neccessary to make the jungle happen.

EDIT: Maybe the map can be cut off in the west and instead extend slightly farther south to Chu Lai. We'd need SATS and MOREST for Chu Lai, which makes it interesting.

Edited August 23, 2022 by Bremspropeller

[Dauntless]

UDON THANI - Udorn AFB 

 

[SkateZilla]

As long as Lt. Dan gets his Ice Cream.

[SOLIDKREATE]

Last I heard he got new legs. 

[Rick50]

On 8/21/2022 at 1:11 PM, Gunfreak said:

Caucasus has a crap tone of forest and runs fine

 

Caucasus map is a desert compared to the object count of a proper Vietnam map. I'd suggest Caucasus would have less than 1% of the foliage count of a good VN map that actually looks like that country.  I'm sure some might disagree with me, but just my opinion! 

 

There may be a few savy 3d modellers who might be able to create some shortcuts, special techniques to "fudge" a real nice looking effect to make a VN map playable... but this would require a fair bit of trial an error. It'd be worth  it, I think

[dawgie79]

Good luck building it. 

[bies]

Which map would have more trees: Kola Paninsula with Finland and Sweden being one of the most densly forrested areas in the world or moderately forrested Vietnam? 

Finland has 73% af area covered in forrests, Sweden 69% when Vietnam only 47%.

 

Isn't this "Vietnam map = too many trees" some urban legend?

 

Below there is Finland, how they are going to make a map with such ungodly amount of trees, look how dense this forrests are, one tree near the other, you can't even see the ground in between. This forrests have thousands of square kilometers. And 3rd party already officially announced they are making Kola Peninsula map.

Edited August 27, 2022 by bies

[MAXsenna]

@bies While I agree, I hope we'll see smaller more realisticly dimensioned trees, instead of the unnatural tall ones we have now, to give the illusion that the forest is more dense than it is.

[Rick50]

8 hours ago, bies said:

Which map would have more trees: Kola Paninsula with Finland and Sweden being one of the most densly forrested areas in the world or moderately forrested Vietnam? 

Finland has 73% af area covered in forrests, Sweden 69% when Vietnam only 47%.

Isn't this "Vietnam map = too many trees" some urban legend?

Below there is Finland, how they are going to make a map with such ungodly amount of trees, look how dense this forrests are, one tree near the other, you can't even see the ground in between. This forrests have thousands of square kilometers. And 3rd party already officially announced they are making Kola Peninsula map.

 

Yes, well aware of that.

First off, I have never said that it's "impossible", only that I have high doubts about running such a map with extreme object count, at acceptable framerates, on current and near future DCS aviator's rigs. I've  also said that the future where it's possible may possibly come real soon, but possibly  not.

Second, while  the jungles of Vietnam would indeed have huge forests worth of trees, much like the Kola map, Vietnam would also have lots of high objects in rice paddies, riverside villages, tons of villages with high object counts, AND just as many bushes in non-jungle terrains as palm trees in that jungle. Again, not impossible... but I do think it's a challenge to overcome.

Third, it's not really an urban legend. It's simply my observation from  seeing users complaints about this map or that, despite the map sizes being radically  different,  that raw map size doesn't seem to be the limiting factor, but the limiting factor being specific to the amount of data itself, that needs to be loaded into memory, and rendered in real time along with the  AI, the flight dynamics and weaponsystesms and such.

Fourth, Kola map is not in users hands at this time. It's in development. We don't know how much computer power will be needed to run it smoothly. While I  have faith in ORBX, nothing is guaranteed. Maybe they have figured out a special way to have those giant forests in DCS using some programming and 3d tricks to reduce that CPU GPU overhead... doesn't guarantee that they would have to share a possibly proprietary method. On the other hand, maybe ORBX is the right company to take on a Vietnam map after the Kola map!!

 

Edit:  A quick search for pictures of Vietnam reveals what I'm saying: object count and terrain complexity is indeed high. Not impossible, but high. Object distribution is often irregular compared to the trees in the Kola forests... 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Rick50

[Rick50]

When I  speak of new 3d tech and programming tricks, I'm reminded of when a East Front ww2 flying simulator came out, and how they somehow managed to do forgotten battles with large forrests, run on home pc's a long time ago. I believe they might have essentially used just two or three tree models with very careful use of textures and polys, repeated endlessly. Maybe those trees were even simpler than I thought, with textures lower in size than their appearance might suggest.  Maybe sprites and or voxels might somehow help... I doubt that, but who knows with some true ingenuity. Speedtrees was also brought up.

I think such techniques would work wonders for the Kola forests, but the jungles of Vietnam seem to be much  more varied, much more varied in shape and size,  so repeating tiles probably won't "look right". But again, a 3d artist with programming knowledge may be able to create a new method that works very well indeed!

[MAXsenna]

As long as I can chop down bamboos in my Huey I'm fine. Bamboo is not a tree but a type of grass.

Nam is coming guys. Don't you worry. Why do you think they needed to test "new tech" in the Marianas. Boulders? 

My bet is they'll wait until more "New tech", and when we go spherical. 

[felixx75]

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