Review: Black Shark gets 72% by GameStar

[lion737]

GameStar is a ridiculous paper for 14 years old boys. Not worth to talk about that ´rating´ ;)

[Jigsaw]

GameStar is a ridiculous paper for 14 years old boys.

 

Thanks a lot.

[joey45]

there are some mags that didn't put it down.

[Acedy]

How times change... I was just looking over my games collection when I noticed this:

 

 

:doh:

 

Ironic, isn't it?!?

[JimMack]

I always find metacritic a useful site to look at as it aggregates scores from major sites:

Lock On 76%

Falcon 4.0 85%

Black Shark 83%

 

As more reviews are collected for Black Shark I think the Black Shark score will go higher.

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

GameStar is a ridiculous paper for 14 years old boys. Not worth to talk about that ´rating´ ;)

I agree. rep inbound!

[Jigsaw]

:doh:

 

Ironic, isn't it?!?

 

Back then they had guys who were at home in the simulation genre. Today they don't, due to lack of demand. And frankly 92% is too high a rating for Falcon 4.0. It had too many problems to deserve that much.

 

 

I agree. rep inbound!

 

So, you get reputation here for indirectly insulting other users? Good to know... I'll try to remember that.

[Focha]

First I don't know the reasons of this mag. reviews topics. Second who cares about one non specialist review? Thats why I stop buying game mags. In respect to simulation they always mess up unless the person who makes the review is within and a knowledge one in the sim world. Other way buying those is a perfect loss of money regarding simulations reviews. The only magazine that worth buying is PC Pilot at the moment. Other than that, that I am aware of, are just regular games mag than are sim wannabe reviewers. They just compare a game with a sim and that is just incorrect. So stop posting this review topics like they were really important.

 

Best regards.

[Jigsaw]

So stop posting this review topics like they were really important.

 

Who says they are important? But they exist and I think ED might wanna now what these mags publish about their work. Plus: it's more informative than some guy posting that he finally got Black Shark, for example. ;)

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

So, you get reputation here for indirectly insulting other users? Good to know... I'll try to remember that.

I meant positive reputation. "Rep inbound" means positive reputation right?

[JimMack]

TFC/ED want to track all reviews, the good, the bad and the ugly. Many have valid criticisms (as do forum members - of course!). It is the best way for us to decide on how we can improve the product features, both for patches and future products in the DCS series.

[Jigsaw]

I meant positive reputation. "Rep inbound" means positive reputation right?

 

Yeah, I know. You give him reputation for saying that the mag is only for 14 year old boys while I'm clearly a reader of that mag, otherwise I couldn't have translated the review for you guys. ;)

[Warsteiner]

TFC/ED want to track all reviews, the good, the bad and the ugly. Many have valid criticisms (as do forum members - of course!). It is the best way for us to decide on how we can improve the product features, both for patches and future products in the DCS series.

 

I appreciate that you track all reviews and take them seriously, Jim. No doubt that the Gamestar review is bit a one sided and therefore not that qualified, but in my opinion there is always a bit truth and I'm sure you are already aware of this. Honestly; they did not note the missing dedicated server and multicore support....IMHO good for -10% ;)

[RedTiger]

I'm sorry if this has already been said (in a hurry, didn't bother to read the whole thread :doh: ), but when a gaming magazine reviews a sim, you have to approach in differently. One one hand, you have reviewers who probably view something like Crysis as the standard for graphics. They may feel that such an endeavor as learning the Ka-50 requires a lot more hand-holding than what we'd expect -- "RTFM!". Remember how many newbies you've seen who don't understand the idea of "processor-intensive". I know since I was one of them. Sims are totally opposite than other PC games in terms of CPU vs. GPU.

 

OTOH, you have a good glimpse of how an average PC gamer might approach Black Shark and what they might think of it. This is useful in many ways, like figuring out how to make the sim more user-friendly. One thing I agree with is that the tutorials need some work. They are far from useless, but eventually there really does need to be a bit more hand-holding. I have hopes that a new system will eventually be developed where the tutorials are truly tutorials -- you perform all the actions while you are guided on what to do, step by step. The entire sim doesn't move on to the next step until you've successfully accomplished the current step. Don't "spawn" that SA-10 SAM until I've actually figured out how to ready my HARMs and know how to target it!

 

You both have to take such reviews with a grain of salt and also view them as an opportunity to see what the average Joe thinks.

[Jigsaw]

I have hopes that a new system will eventually be developed where the tutorials are truly tutorials -- you perform all the actions while you are guided on what to do, step by step. The entire sim doesn't move on to the next step until you've successfully accomplished the current step..

 

I think Longbow did that, if I remember correctly.

[JaNk0]

eeh spam?

[Legolasindar]

Controls (7/10):

+ joystick freely configurable

+ instruments usable in the cockpit via mouse

- lots of keyboard shortcuts

- manual only a PDF file

Normal, is a simulator, not console game. This review is not seriusly.

 

Content (8/10):

+ Black Shark with all details

+ many missions, downloads also

+ mission editor

- only one helicopter

Product name is DCS: BlackShark, ¿you hope found M1 Abrams or F-15?

 

This reviews is not redacted by virtual pilot.

[th3flyboy]

Normal, is a simulator, not console game. This review is not seriusly.

 

Product name is DCS: BlackShark, ¿you hope found M1 Abrams or F-15?

 

This reviews is not redacted by virtual pilot.

 

This is one of those cases where I have to say, the only mags I would trust for sim ratings would be PC Pilot or Computer Pilot. Other than that, I would only trust websites like AVSIM for reviews on this kind of stuff...

[Topgun505]

Graphics: The level of detail on the vehicles and aircraft is astounding. The cockpit views are quirky but considering most people who play it will have Track IR that's not a huge issue. Personally I don't have any issues with the terrain. I remember the days of Longbow where there were hardly any hills at all and pretty much no buildings, and ZERO trees. Besides, your eyes need to be looking for contrails from death darts and not how many nuts you can see on the tree in front of you. :) Mediocre explosions ... if you know what's good for you, you won't be close enough to see much detail in an explosion anyway!

 

 

Sound: This is one of my few beefs. Switch to F2 and then F1 to get back in the cockpit and suddenly your engine sound is muffled. Hit Esc twice and you get it back. Hopefully this gets fixed with the patch though.

 

Balance: The tutorials do move pretty fast. You pretty much have to go through some of them multiple times to catch everything. There could also stand to be some more sessions covering more systems of the aircraft. Steep learning curve? It is a maximum-fidelity simulator. That comes with the territory. Don't wanna spend some time learning it? Then stick to an arcade game ... don't come here. ;)

 

Atmosphere: I can't really agree with either of the negatives here.

 

 

Controls: Lots of keyboard controls? Again .. it is a maximum-fidelity sim. What do you expect?? Manual only a pdf file? Uh ... yeah. You expect them to print a 400 page manual and a 100-200 page gui manual with each copy?? I don't want to pay $100 for the software package to make up for the cost of printing the manuals. This is fine as is, thank you!

 

Content: Other aircraft are coming as future releases. Nuff said.

 

Realism: I'm not sure where he was flying, there are plenty of hills that I have seen. But. The one realism aspect I do have to ding BS for is the trees not blocking LOS of enemy units and not being collidable. Rotor blade vs 5' thick Pine tree = bad result ... or rather ... it should.

 

AI: It would be nice to be able to specify to your wingmen what specific ground movers they need to hunt. AI on both sides can be a lil quirky but hopefully that will improve over time with patches. Sometimes the AI combat ability of enemy AI is TOO good. When you poke your head just barely up over a hill for just 4 or 5 seconds and get blasted from a M1A1 at 3+ km ... that's frustrating.

 

Tuning: Spot on

 

Territories: I don't really see his issues there. I would like to see a port though. :)

 

Personally I give BS a 9. After the patches come out ... if they solve enough issues would bump it to 9.5

Edited May 27, 2009 by Topgun505

[wickedpenguin]

I think they're being overly harsh on the graphics.

 

They're not perfect, but they're fine. I'd rather get good framerates than see every shadow of every blade of grass.

 

My imagination can fill in the gaps of lower-resolution models and textures. Poor framerate is just plain annoying.

 

[rrohde]

That's also my only beef I have with BS - that the trees don't block enemy LOS.

[wickedpenguin]

That's also my only beef I have with BS - that the trees don't block enemy LOS.

 

I do wish they'd have actual collision as well. Not necessarily on a per-tree basis, but at least make forests impassable. The way it is now is almost like an exploit.

 

When I mapped for Red Orchestra: Ostfront and needed to create a forest, I'd turn off all collision models for the individial trees, and then create a single blocking volume that sat on top of the forest. In RO's editor, you can create polygonal volumes, so I'd design it so it would match the curvature of the trees closely. It prevented players from entering that forest while still being very efficient on the engine.

 

How are BS' trees are placed on the map? Are they placed by hand in groups or singly, or are they "painted" in place using a technique similar to Unreal Engine's Deco Layers? In UE, terrain environmental meshes such as grass and rocks are synched with a terrain texture. Wherever you paint that texture on the terrain, that's where those environmental meshes appear. The downside is that, like with BS' trees, they have no collision model.

[Acedy]

That's also my only beef I have with BS - that the trees don't block enemy LOS.

 

In RL you can fire small arms and AAA through the foliage, at least to some degree, and aim at the sound of an aircraft. Not as precise as visual aiming of course, but it is possible. So firing without LOS through trees is not all that unrealistic. ;)

[DMarkwick]

I do wish they'd have actual collision as well. Not necessarily on a per-tree basis, but at least make forests impassable. The way it is now is almost like an exploit.

 

When I mapped for Red Orchestra: Ostfront and needed to create a forest, I'd turn off all collision models for the individial trees, and then create a single blocking volume that sat on top of the forest. In RO's editor, you can create polygonal volumes, so I'd design it so it would match the curvature of the trees closely. It prevented players from entering that forest while still being very efficient on the engine.

 

How are BS' trees are placed on the map? Are they placed by hand in groups or singly, or are they "painted" in place using a technique similar to Unreal Engine's Deco Layers? In UE, terrain environmental meshes such as grass and rocks are synched with a terrain texture. Wherever you paint that texture on the terrain, that's where those environmental meshes appear. The downside is that, like with BS' trees, they have no collision model.

 

To be honest, and with no amount of bashing intended whatsoever, not being able to enter forests was one of the things that turned me off RO. Using a forest is a valid tactic IMO, however there are ways to get the best of both worlds.

 

I agree that collision detection is not needed for DCS AI units, I say let them go where they want, but to maybe give them a severe speed penalty to "simulate" intense pathfinding. I think that's a good workaround. I used to work as a support engineer for Rapier and we always used forests to set up a support base.

 

For actual collision detection, I guess it's only important for players in helos. Given that, it would be acceptable to only have a collision LoD say 100 meters around the helo, that would drastically decrease the collision logic.

 

As for line-of-sight, one thing I was surprised by was when, in the Armed Assault mod for improved viewblock geometry for vegetation, although the increase in geometry was something like x10, it was unrendered geometry and had virtually no impact on framerates. As the trees in DCS are about as simple as I've ever seen them, I reckon the engine could in fact use viewblock geometry that matched this (just 3x polygons al right angles to each other) and scaled down slightly to allow for the difference between the visible clipmapped tree and the actual colision volume.

 

For DCS, I believe the most important thing viewblock brings is the notion of radar clutter. A simple viewblock geometry LoD will not only prevent AI and players from visually tracking objects, it can be used to prevent radar lock too, perhaps on a statistical basis.

[wickedpenguin]

To be honest, and with no amount of bashing intended whatsoever, not being able to enter forests was one of the things that turned me off RO. Using a forest is a valid tactic IMO, however there are ways to get the best of both worlds.

 

What I'm talking most about, in terms of RO mapping, was forests that bordered the edges of maps or maps that were exclusively tanks. I agree that impassable forests on an infantry or combined-arms maps - such as RO-Arad and others - were pretty frustrating. Hopefully their new Heroes of Stalingrad game corrects that.

 

But in BS, I think it would be fine to block off an entire forest area with a collision volume. Helos use trees for cover and tactical advantage, but they're not going to weaving through a dense forest like an infantryman would.

 

As for line-of-sight, one thing I was surprised by was when, in the Armed Assault mod for improved viewblock geometry for vegetation, although the increase in geometry was something like x10, it was unrendered geometry and had virtually no impact on framerates. As the trees in DCS are about as simple as I've ever seen them, I reckon the engine could in fact use viewblock geometry that matched this (just 3x polygons al right angles to each other) and scaled down slightly to allow for the difference between the visible clipmapped tree and the actual colision volume.

 

I'm speaking from Unreal Engine experience, as that's the only one with which I have working knowledge. In UE, you drop create a complex static mesh (such as a tree) and then associate it with a much simpler collision mesh. In the case of a tree, the display model was a full-figured tree with branches, leaf clusters, and such, but the collision model could be as simple as 3x polygons as you described, with maybe a simple cylinder or 4-sided polygon for the trunk.

 

I'd love to see what you're suggesting, as far as using that simple geometry to block LOS and infrared/radar sensors.