Things I think are missing

[TheTrooper]

As of nearly June 2023 I was wondering are we expecting a massive update of DCS? We've just had MT which is good, clouds before that which is incredible by the way.  I feel like other than this there isn't really a lot going on and no real change to a road map. I'm wondering are we expecting a massive update soon? I'm hoping on Dynamic Campaign, better Replay or even a Briefing room for Super Carrier or in general. It would be good top have the abolity of more interaction outside of your chosen aircraft, talking with other players in MultiPlayerand and walking around. Genstures for animation etc. Maybe a local chat so if someone is in a set distance can hear you (no radio)

[SharpeXB]

MT is still in testing (ie optional). Let’s get that fixed first. I assume MT is a prerequisite for the Dynamic Campaign to be playable but it seems to still be a WIP. 

Edited May 31, 2023 by SharpeXB

[cfrag]

15 hours ago, TheTrooper said:

I'm wondering are we expecting a massive update soon?

This is unofficial, so don't quote me on that, but I read somewhere that we are about to get the biggest update to DCS in almost two decades, with implications that will have us all reeling: multi-object select in mission editor!!! Just imagining the things that would be possible...

Stepping off the sarcasm box: There's talk about the next-gen graphics engine and possibly its port to a new standard called 'Vulcan' (not the jet, not Mr. Spock either), which may bring better performance. The Dynamic Campaign, sure, but that has been talked about for ages, maybe as longer as the ever-tantalizing MAC (which was officially announced with a video trailer for "Fall 2018"). ED did announce in one of their newsletters in November 2019 that they had put together the basics of such a system and were testing it. So I wouldn't hold my breath - it'll come eventually. Like the heat death of the universe. Hopefully in that order, both with essentially the same likelihood  

MT appears to be progressing nicely (still a no-show for many VR users, where it is awaited most eagerly), the dynamic weather is also progressing nicely (with an urgently required overhaul of the UX). Damage modelling and ground unit physics are also slated with an overhaul, with a (hoped for) overhaul of naval physics (you now, the carrier that will no longer turn nor stop on a dime).

Then there's the 'spherical earth' talk - basically the entire earth as your map. I don't think DCS is anywhere near a product here, nor am I convinced that this would even be desirable: having access to a large empty map holds no gaming value for me; I prefer curated smaller chunks that are filled with content. If I want to feel lonely, big stretches of the SA map (beautiful as it may be) fills the bill every time.

Obviously, I'm hoping for improvements to a - to me - essential element: mission editor. Since I don't have anything positive to report here, I'll just nod meaningful in its general direction and shed a single tear. Each passing year.

16 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I assume MT is a prerequisite for the Dynamic Campaign to be playable

That's an interesting tidbit I did not know about, thanks! Do you have any sources so I can read up on that? I thought that the dynamic campaign mostly worked by taking the result of one mission and then creating a new mission from that, based on some control values; so in my (uneducated) mind, it was a mostly off-line feature.
 

 

[draconus]

18 minutes ago, cfrag said:

There's talk about the next-gen graphics engine and possibly its port to a new standard called 'Vulcan'

It's Vulkan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan

It's all here:

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by draconus

[79Au]

Lack of AI assets is a huge problem, so many are outdated and production is way too slow. Overall there's not much output and I'm worried it has something to do with the ongoing conflict. What happened to the CRAM Wags showed us in game almost two years ago? When are they finished with those 3 AI planes (S-3, B-52, B-1) so they can move on and replace more outdates models like that ugly C-17A? How come there's no KC-10 (or plans to add it)? How come a handful of modders put out more content than the game developers themselves? 

Feels like ED stopped caring about the core game /SP content entirely which also explains the heavy marketing of MP servers. Buy modules and join an airquake server, then buy the next module.

[BIGNEWY]

Please dont confuse silence with not caring or no progress. Teams are working hard on the core of DCS always, we will share progress when we are ready to. 

thanks

17 hours ago, TheTrooper said:

As of nearly June 2023 I was wondering are we expecting a massive update of DCS? We've just had MT which is good, clouds before that which is incredible by the way.  I feel like other than this there isn't really a lot going on and no real change to a road map. I'm wondering are we expecting a massive update soon? I'm hoping on Dynamic Campaign, better Replay or even a Briefing room for Super Carrier or in general. It would be good top have the abolity of more interaction outside of your chosen aircraft, talking with other players in MultiPlayerand and walking around. Genstures for animation etc. Maybe a local chat so if someone is in a set distance can hear you (no radio)

at the beginning of the year we had a newsletter showing what we are working on in 2023, this does not mean delivered in 2023, we will share progress but only when we are ready to. 

thank you for your patience. 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

That's an interesting tidbit I did not know about, thanks! Do you have any sources so I can read up on that? I thought that the dynamic campaign mostly worked by taking the result of one mission and then creating a new mission from that, based on some control values; so in my (uneducated) mind, it was a mostly off-line feature.

Just an assumption since MT helps most with large mission scenarios, something a DC certainly involves. 

[cfrag]

32 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

Please dont confuse silence with not caring or no progress.

I wholeheartedly agree, yet occasionally find it difficult to tell them apart. The problem is that, in the absence of proper guidance, people tend to fill the void with their apprehensions. I believe that it's entirely in ED's abilities (and interest) to tell everyone about the good deeds that you are doubtlessly doing. Mayhaps, a bit more pro-active communication of these things would go a long way to allay the fears of people who desperately want ED to succeed -- and how do I know that? Because I am one of them. The prevalence of threads like these indicates to me that there are opportunities for ED to improve their engagement.

[BIGNEWY]

9 minutes ago, cfrag said:

I wholeheartedly agree, yet occasionally find it difficult to tell them apart. The problem is that, in the absence of proper guidance, people tend to fill the void with their apprehensions. I believe that it's entirely in ED's abilities (and interest) to tell everyone about the good deeds that you are doubtlessly doing. Mayhaps, a bit more pro-active communication of these things would go a long way to allay the fears of people who desperately want ED to succeed -- and how do I know that? Because I am one of them. The prevalence of threads like these indicates to me that there are opportunities for ED to improve their engagement.

I can guarantee no matter how much information we pass people will always want more and more regular. 
We have a weekly newsletter with topics we are ready to share, social media interaction, forum and live chats in our discord answering questions, communication is not a problem. 
The problem is people want more information and we can only give it when we are ready to and projects can take sometime. 

[IanC58]

I think to add to this its not much to ask for some release dates, such as the F15-E, the Kola and Synai maps, two of these have been with youtube creators for quite a long time now and although wip they must be ready for early access release?

We were thanked for our patience in mid February for the F15 !

Edited June 1, 2023 by IanC58

[BIGNEWY]

33 minutes ago, IanC58 said:

I think to add to this its not much to ask for some release dates, such as the F15-E, the Kola and Synai maps, two of these have been with youtube creators for quite a long time now and although wip they must be ready for early access release?

We were thanked for our patience in mid February for the F15 !

 

We will give release dates once we are 100% sure of them and not before. Development can be dynamic and we need to be flexible, some people do not take date changes well, so waiting until we are sure is the best way. 

thank you

[Beirut]

18 hours ago, TheTrooper said:

 

We've just had MT which is good, clouds before that which is incredible by the way.

 

 

For me those were the two things that brought DCS to the "Best Flightsim Ever" podium. Amazing eye candy and sense of flight, and good performance. So not only the best clouds in the business by far, but solid FPS... and in a high fidelity F-16 going straight up. Oh hell yeah! 

 

There are several things I'm willing to whine about, none of them to be mentioned here, but I think the core of the game has seen some quality love and I'm sure it will see more.

[Hiob]

Though I'd absolutely love every improvement mentioned above when it arrives, I wholeheartly wished, ED would improve some little quality of life stuff in the core game that is currently filled by the wonderful community creators. One perfectly example would by the empty slot ("StoGaps") mod by @cfrag / @Hardcard

 

Edit: I sometimes really wonder, why ED isn't simply taking some of the most beloved community content and build it right into the core game. I doubt the creators would mind - probably quite the opposite.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Hiob

[IanC58]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

We will give release dates once we are 100% sure of them and not before. Development can be dynamic and we need to be flexible, some people do not take date changes well, so waiting until we are sure is the best way. 

thank you

You release updates/patches that break or change other things, why would you do that if you are not 100% sure of them?

What or why is the reason to give early access to youtube creators if the product is not 100%

Edited June 1, 2023 by IanC58

[BIGNEWY]

13 minutes ago, IanC58 said:

You release updates/patches that break or change other things, why would you do that if you are not 100% sure of them?

What or why is the reason to give early access to youtube creators if the product is not 100%

 

Appreciate you might be frustrated but you are going off topic a little. DCS is complex, there will always be bugs to fix and the possibility of an issue during a patch, that is why we have open beta a public test version. 

Select youtubers have preview access to the F-15E, they can create videos with the preview version, this gives users who are still unsure of making a purchase the chance to see it in action and make informed choices. 

thank you

[freehand]

58 minutes ago, Hiob said:

Edit: I sometimes really wonder, why ED isn't simply taking some of the most beloved community content and build it right into the core game. I doubt the creators would mind - probably quite the opposite.

 

Because that would open a whole new can of worms.

[Hiob]

28 minutes ago, IanC58 said:

What or why is the reason to give early access to youtube creators if the product is not 100%

M a r k e t i n g. Youtube contend creators are simply a marketing channel. It is advertising. Same like e.g. Car shows on television. It's pointless to get upset about a handful of people who get earlier early access. I get the frustration of waiting and waiting, but would you rather see less DCS content on youtube?

Just now, freehand said:

Because that would open a whole new can of worms.

Why though? It would still be EDs choice to select which content/features to implement. 90% of the creative work is already done and new features need to be thoroughly tested anyway. But other than the community creators, ED has the power and insights to really make them work. At least this is my reasoning. It's still just an idea, I'm not asking them to do anything.

It would just be nice to understand the exact nature of said "can of worms".  

[IanC58]

How many marketing campaigns like cars for Instance [as you mentioned that] don't give a calculated release date/month ?

And "earlier early access" made me giggle

Edited June 1, 2023 by IanC58

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

4 hours ago, cfrag said:

This is unofficial, so don't quote me on that, but I read somewhere that we are about to get the biggest update to DCS in almost two decades, with implications that will have us all reeling: multi-object select in mission editor!!! Just imagining the things that would be possible...

And sometime in the decade after that, perhaps an UnDo key!?!?!? 

 

Just kidding.  MT was a huge win.  Anyone who has done any MT programming would know how prickly that can get.  Triple difficulty when retro-fitting code that wasn't designed to work that was to begin with.  So hat tip.

But yeah, I am new to DCS and spent two days Googling to find how to do a drag rect select in the editor.  And undo.  I kept searching because I thought, "it's got to be in there somewhere.  any visual editor since 1985 is going to have that basic functionality!"  Nnnnnnnnnnnnnope.  

I get that the editor is not a direct income producer, but it is a huge force multiplier for ED.  They get an army of unpaid enthusiasts spending countless hours creating free content for THEM!  Making sure they have decent tools to do so would be in their interest.  It was disconcerting seeing posts from over a decade ago asking for things as simple as drag rect select and undo.  However the DCS Web Editor geniuses are grinding away and they have already made huge progress.  So that front is covered now I feel.

 

The big need now in my opinion is better ground game.  Splash damage, better infantry, better, more believable, smarter ground AI but with more realistic vis and reaction time.  Is MT for server in the works?  That might help a lot.   Things online can sometimes seem empty and sterile and static.  Ground units scattered around not moving like a firing range because to kills the server for AI to move.  Is it mostly A* cost?  Maybe look into baking in precalculated obstruction free navgraphs for the terrains.  (e.g. https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/artificial-intelligence/navigation-graph-generation-r2805/)  Basically pre-baking in A* so it doesn't do those calcs runtime.

I wanna see masses of ground units moving around doing stuff and fighting on MP servers.  I wanna feel I'm flying over a war.  I keep hearing, "Yeah, you can't have moving ground AI, it kills the server."  

The ground game was secondary when DCS was mostly space planes fighting BVR in near Earth orbit.  But with all the helo's we have now  (and more coming) spending their time at tree top level, ground stuff needs to up it's game.  Stuff you don't notice in the stratosphere, is quite noticeable NOE.

$0.02.

 

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[MadKreator]

Despite the list of would haves, should haves, could haves, and everyone’s personal laundry list of wishes, DCS is still the most in depth, realistic air combat simulator ever made. The stuff I ( and I’m sure many others) always dreamed about growing up! As far as combat flight sims go anyway.  I seriously doubt that anyone on the ED team is sitting around sipping coffee/tea/vodka/beer or whatever, and laughing at the forums thinking “ look at all these suckers, lets have a good laugh and break the game next go round”.  Most people have absolutely no clue how much work it takes to make all the aspects of DCS function. Hell, I couldn’t even figure out how to make any thing work in my 1st graders computer programming class.. He literally showed me how to write lines of code to make a dude move through a short maze and move obstacles out of the way. I can’t  even fathom the amount of work it would be to code even the basic aerodynamics of an aircraft! No one really knows ED’s timeline, short and long term goals, how or when things should be implemented. I’m sure there’s a method to the madness, so to speak.  We would all like everything right now, but I find it best not to dwell on tiny details and enjoy the surprises each update brings, whether its something I really want or not. ED brings more updates and content every few months than some other AAA games do in a lifetime. I personally think that what they do accomplish  deserves  appreciation, instead of constant complaints about why didn’t this get done, I requested this last week and its not here, f-15..when, and so on… Morning thoughts

Edited June 1, 2023 by MadKreator

[NineLine]

36 minutes ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

And sometime in the decade after that, perhaps an UnDo key!?!?!? 

Sadly an undo command would require a major re-write of the Mission Editor, and while its something we want to do, its no easy task.

21 hours ago, TheTrooper said:

I'm wondering are we expecting a massive update soon?

We need to finish Multithreading first, and in that come new anti-aliasing options and things like Vulcan. While MT will afford us more overhead to add more things to DCS, it all takes time and we need to finish up one thing before throwing another thing into the mix. 

[Hiob]

4 minutes ago, MadKreator said:

Despite the list of would haves, should haves, could haves, and everyone’s personal laundry list of wishes, DCS is still the most in depth, realistic air combat simulator ever made. The stuff I ( and I’m sure many others) always dreamed about growing up! As far as combat flight sims go anyway.  I seriously doubt that anyone on the ED team is sitting around sipping coffee/tea/vodka/beer or whatever, and laughing at the forums thinking “ look at all these suckers, lets have a good laugh and break the game next go round”.  

I don't think, anybody in their right mind honestly thinks that.

But I think the wishes (and to a degree the complaints) articulated in the forum are some kind of indicator for ED on what to develope and priorise. Wishes that are never articulated can be missed. As long as it is done in a friendly demeanour.....

[MadKreator]

31 minutes ago, Hiob said:

I don't think, anybody in their right mind honestly thinks that.

But I think the wishes (and to a degree the complaints) articulated in the forum are some kind of indicator for ED on what to develope and priorise. Wishes that are never articulated can be missed. As long as it is done in a friendly demeanour.....

I hope no one honestly does either , but I’ve seen some people throw big enough fits and act like they (ED) just sit around and do nothing all day Rest assured, nothing I said was directed to anyone in this particular thread, or any one person per se, just thoughts 

[Demiurgo]

I know moderators are not going to like this but:

1) Lately it seems the "GO TO" blanket answer is: we are slow because all that we do is hard.

2) There are continuous APPARENT and REAL priority shifts which put into question how they plan and allocate resources. Community questions them but since they don´t inform the people the motivation behind those changes,  bad mood and pessimism gets into the people

3) Even if the policy seems to be "we will communicate when we are ready" there were several bad miscommunications and many people when crazy. If ED is ok with that then why not communicate MUCH MUCH  MORE? They always say people gets mad anyway..... The fact they are not doing it makes many people think they are allocating resources to some other not gaming projects maybe?

4) The track record of the last 3 years shows that situation is CLEARLY worsening on delivery times and communication. So bad that many CC complained and some others left entirely.

So bottom line: communicate what are you doing or communicate why you aren´t delivering. You simply can't continue delivering only "good news" that end in nothing.

 

 

[IanC58]

I appreciate our sim and what the staff do, its a long way forward from my first sim, Demiurgo isn't wrong though.

Edited June 1, 2023 by IanC58