DCS: Iraq - Coming 2024

[Rodeo]

As long as we have Tal Afar and conduct the introduction to high-energy tactics in the AH-64 is good by me. 
 

https://coffeeordie.com/apache-pilot-kryptek

*full disclosure both Butch and Josh are dear friends and the full story is amazing. Yes I am name dropping

[Tree_Beard]

If ED releases an Iraq map and you can't do proper Gulf War 1 & 2 ops with the F15, F16 and F18, that will be such a huge swing and miss. 

[giullep]

and after the announce of the Afghanistan map...any news about the Iraq map?

[Bremspropeller]

On 2/23/2024 at 2:23 AM, Pikey said:

The problem seems to be that everyone wants to simulate GW1, carrier ops and 900-1000 mile round trips.

I don't, tbh. Iran-Iraq is the more interesting conflict IMHO.

I'd want to do tanker-plinking in an EQ5/6 or even a SuE. That, however, would require a good deal of the Gulf being modelled, too.

 

 

 

[NineLine]

13 hours ago, giullep said:

and after the announce of the Afghanistan map...any news about the Iraq map?

We should have some news upcoming but watch the newsletters for it. Thanks!

[Dirty Mittens]

On 3/23/2024 at 4:10 PM, NineLine said:

We should have some news upcoming but watch the newsletters for it. Thanks!

Naval aviators can't participate in the virtual war on terrorism(Afghanistan), will this map be able to recreate realistic US Navy operations with the DCS super carrier and DCS F18C?

Edited March 30 by Dirty Mittens

[Arennord]

1 hour ago, Dirty Mittens said:

Naval aviators can't participate in the virtual war on terrorism(Afghanistan), will this map be able to recreate realistic US Navy operations with the DCS super carrier and DCS F18C?

 

While I would like to have some sea on Afghanistan map, I understand ED's decision to not make it possible because of performance reasons, usually, the players, in which I am included too, tend to see things from outside of the development perspective, and we might be overlooking things that are out of our scope, which is understandable too, but the criticism on this topic about Afghanistan map is getting a bit out of control, in my opinion. I'm not saying this because of your comment, but referring to the general situation around the topic. And believe me, I'm a huge fan of carrier ops too, and wouldn't mind taking a long flight with some aerial refueling to the carrier, but things are not always what we want.

Iraq, on the other hand is very close to the sea in the Persian Gulf and has in fact a little bit of coastal line, so it wouldn't be a wild assumption to say that carrier ops will be a thing on Iraq map. Image for reference:

Edited March 30 by Arennord

[draconus]

14 hours ago, Arennord said:

I understand ED's decision to not make it possible because of performance reasons

Anybody with basic computer graphics knowledge knows it's BS. Sat texture on flat terrain costs less than your wingman performance wise. They just don't want to leave it like that - no mountains, no objects, no lights at night etc. and that I can understand but still want it that way - basic land extension rather than cut off. For both Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Arennord]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Anybody with basic computer graphics knowledge knows it's BS. Sat texture on flat terrain costs less than your wingman performance wise. They just don't want to leave it like that - no mountains, no objects, no lights at night etc. and that I can understand but still want it that way - basic land extension rather than cut off. For both Afghanistan and Iraq.

As I said after that quote, they may have more reasons behind it, and I don't pretend to understand them because I'm not a part of the dev team, there could be more besides performance. I won't join a discussion on whether they are just talking BS or any other excuse for not including some sea. I just stated that neither you, me or anyone in the community have the full picture around the development. This is not intended to defend ED or anything like that, just giving an objective point of view of the situation.

It could be related to a thousand reasons, which they are not forced to explain. The thing here is that the map is called Afghanistan, and said country does NOT have sea. Would I like to get it? hell yeah, but I won't make a huge drama about it. Plus I only spoke about that to put the thing in context, this is not the right thread to discuss about something that has nothing to do with Iraq and that has already been made clear on the appropriate one.

[Dragon1-1]

On 3/31/2024 at 1:11 PM, draconus said:

Anybody with basic computer graphics knowledge knows it's BS. 

Anybody with basic knowledge of game engines knows that it's not. The technology to render something like a terrain is typically based on some assumptions about size and shape of detailed area, which can mean that you can't have a flat, untextured area on the map, or that it provides little in terms of performance benefit. Remember, an 8K texture with half of it filled with white is still an 8K texture, even if a large part of it is filled in with one color. While this example applies mostly to the old terrain system, it doesn't mean the new one is free of such limitations, though it does seem to be more modular, at least.

[draconus]

6 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

The technology to render something like a terrain is typically based on some assumptions about size and shape of detailed area, which can mean that you can't have a flat, untextured area on the map, or that it provides little in terms of performance benefit.

You mean the limits they made themselves they can't change?

"The DCS: Afghanistan full area: 1 449 216 km²" and somehow DCS: South Atlantic Map [2022, mind you] "Covering an area of 3.1 million square kilometers". BS

[Dragon1-1]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

You mean the limits they made themselves they can't change?

Yes, exactly. Obviously you never programmed anything more complex than an Arduino. In a larger program, you can't just arbitrarily change your entire design philosophy because some tradeoff you made early on (and which seemed like a good idea for whatever reason) came back to bite you once the program is up and running. Programming simply doesn't work like that, especially not when you're writing to optimize for performance, as opposed to ease of maintenance. The limits I'm talking about is not some variable they set in the code, it's a consequence of how the code does what it does. If, as in case of HB's Phantom, you hit an issue that turns out to be a showstopper, you scrap the whole system and start again. I doubt, however, that it's worth it for ED in this case. You especially don't change the fundamental philosophy of the terrain engine once the artists have already started work.

South Atlantic was made with the intention of being much larger from the start. Hence, things like texel density of various textures that define it would have been picked to account for that. I don't have that particular map, but from what I saw of the comments about it, it offers poor performance and the detail level is more Caucasus than Syria, despite being a fairly empty map. ED is making Afghanistan for small scale helo and vehicle ops, so they understandably decided that's not what they want.

[Silver_Dragon]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

You mean the limits they made themselves they can't change?

"The DCS: Afghanistan full area: 1 449 216 km²" and somehow DCS: South Atlantic Map [2022, mind you] "Covering an area of 3.1 million square kilometers". BS

Someone missing the South Atlantic map has a vast rendered sea floor and some perfomance issues...

Edited April 17 by Silver_Dragon

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

The limits I'm talking about is not some variable they set in the code, it's a consequence of how the code does what it does.

The map is basically a database of terrain mesh, textures, objects and its placement, isn't it? So what kind of code you're talking about, what is it supposed to do? Afaik it's the DCS engine's job to do something with it.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

South Atlantic was made with the intention of being much larger from the start.

Funny, but they actually made it bigger in the middle of work, far into development.

So, again, I'm not saying programming is easy, I moved on with their decission, I just don't buy into the performance argument.

[Dragon1-1]

28 minutes ago, draconus said:

Funny, but they actually made it bigger in the middle of work, far into development.

...which is why it performs the way it does (badly). When it started out, the terrain wasn't particularly detailed, because Falklands are pretty flat. Worth noting, terrain elevation in DCS (and in most other non-voxel games, in fact) is not stored as a mesh, like for example a building - it is stored as a texture. A single pixel on the texture corresponds to an area on the ground with uniform characteristics, and its value (a classic elevation map uses a grayscale texture) corresponds to elevation of that area. How big that area will be is one of the major decisions that you must make when first setting out to design a map. So, how do you expand the map after its elevation mesh resolution has been decided on? You make the texture bigger. Which means that the GPU now has a gigantic elevation map sitting in VRAM, with all the problems that this implies. Yes, this can be done, especially if the original map is on the conservative side. That doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

Now, the above corresponds to how a map like Caucasus works, using the old map tech. The new map tech is smarter, which is why something like SA map is possible at all. However, that doesn't mean it's without limitations whatsoever. In case of SA, it sacrifices detail to produce performance that is just barely on this side of usable.

29 minutes ago, draconus said:

I just don't buy into the performance argument.

Try flying on the South Atlantic map, then, and then imagine it all had a level of detail suitable for helo ops. This is simply a function of how DCS engine does textures. This is also why (what most people don't seem to understand) water and low detail terrain are not free. They're easy for the developers to make, sure, but they do cost performance, which is why aside from one map noted for its bad performance, we don't have many terrains with countless miles of open ocean around them.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

9 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

imagine it all had a level of detail suitable for helo ops

The sad part is that the SA map being heaven for helo ops was actually a big part of the sales pitch, and one of the reasons I decided to buy it...
Oh well, lesson learned I suppose.

[Hiob]

31 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

The sad part is that the SA map being heaven for helo ops was actually a big part of the sales pitch, and one of the reasons I decided to buy it...
Oh well, lesson learned I suppose.

True unfortunately. Actually I kind of like the map for quite the opposite. Making recreational long leg flights in fixed wings and enjoying the mountains.

So far, Syria is the single best map for choppers. Maybe followed or joined by Sinai when it gets further updates.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

This is also why (what most people don't seem to understand) water and low detail terrain are not free.

There're many assumptions you've made. You don't know the exact inner-workings of the engine and the map. You don't know if the mesh texture is needed to be loaded as a whole - can be tiled or just loaded partially - or even not needed at all for the non-detailed area. And there's a lot more in the map (both SA or any other) than a mesh texture size that can make it perform worse. If it was only map mesh size the performance wouldn't depend so much on the ground and objects proximity, right?

Edited April 17 by draconus

[Dragon1-1]

14 minutes ago, draconus said:

You don't know the exact inner-workings of the engine and the map. 

I don't need to. It's you who are grasping at straws to claim that non-detailed areas are cheaper than they actually are. All evidence we have points to that not being the case, from statements by ED to how the maps we do have are designed and how they perform relative to one another. As I said, the solution we have is more clever than my simplified outline (however, the old terrain engine did work very much like I said). It's also quite clear that this cleverness has limits. SA map has inferior performance even if you're flying over water, and while sheer size is no doubt not the only way to bog down a map, you really don't want a global performance penalty on something like Afghanistan.

The only assumptions I've made was that the ED's solution works in a way that makes sense, that it does not do anything revolutionary that was never attempted in any other engine, and that both ED and 3rd party development updates (which give us glimpses of how it works) are reliable. If you're going to dispute those, you're going to need to show some evidence.