opinion Afghanistan user feedback

[TFS]

 

[Gruman]

Thanks for the video... but the transitions between cities and rest of the terrain looks absolutly terrible. Wouldnt call this gorgeous. Maybe the different impression is because VR vs 4k Ultra Pancake?

Almost funny, when there are a lot of small settlements in the same area. Or the random collection of trees all over the map.

[Goetsch]

Shooting video at certain angles and lighting is pointless....

If you can tell me where another great ground finish is, I'll check it out

 

Edited July 12, 2024 by Goetsch

[Gunfreak]

Can't say I'm particularly impressed.

In fact. I feel it looks like something is broken

[Slippa]

I skipped this one for a change. Doesn’t look like I’m missing much, I feel like I’ve saved myself a few quid. 

Still have plenty of maps, some I’ve barely seen yet so I’ll wait for it to develop a bit.

[inexus]

4 hours ago, TFS said:

 

I only looks normal from like 10000 feet. When you get closer you can see how much of it is low res and unfinished. 

[TFS]

I'm fairly new to DCS but from my understanding this is early access of what, 25% of the overall map? All I see is potential for great battlefields. Guess I am wrong and everyone is correct and it all looks broken and like dog <profanity>.

I was flying with some people earlier and we all thought it felt amazing and looked great. Such nice features and terrain, being early access feels that much more impressive. 

Maybe it's VR but DCS as a whole is impressive as hell to me. Plus uploaded videos are like 40% quality of in game visuals. 

Welp if many don't like it, good thing it's not a forced purchase. I will for sure get my monies worth, specially in time with updates for years to come. Beauty of it is, to each their own. Sorry some of you are so disappointed. Hope updates fulfill expectations.

[kennyuk77]

Does it have a lot of single player stuff? Like quick missions for the various aircraft? Thanks

[Gruman]

Quote

DCS: Southwest Afghanistan will receive some updates post-release but will for all intents and purposes be feature-complete. This region includes 12 highly detailed airfields: Kandahar, Herat, Bost, Camp Bastion, Chaghcharan, Dwyer, Farah, Maymana Zahiraddin Faryabi, Qala i Naw, Shindand, Tirinkot, and Zaranj.

This is from the FAQ. If this Terrible quality, is called feature complete, it was a waste of money.

[TFS]

3 minutes ago, kennyuk77 said:

Does it have a lot of single player stuff? Like quick missions for the various aircraft? Thanks

Nope, only module that had anything for me was free flight for the Mi8... 

I only have 4 paid modules. 

 

I just used the mission editor to visit the major areas and fly around and explore, didn't touch anything else. Gotta add units and toy around. Looking forward to user missions to test everything in time. 

Edited July 12, 2024 by TFS

[Nightstalker]

I have been flying on it off and on spending more time trying to fix the performance.  If I log onto any other map such as the Sinai or even S/A I get a nice smooth as silk flight at up to 160 fps with my settings maxed out in 2k.  If I hop onto the Afghanistan map and fly out of Kandahar flying N/B I will go smooth as silk until I start hitting different areas along the highway dropping from 30 - 60 fps causing major stutter.  I have tried all of the usual methods to fix this by cleaning out the shader files etc.  Now I'm actually running a repair to see if the map was borked during install.  As I said, I can go to another map and fly smooth but when I return to the Afghan map the stutter starts and I mean stutter!

I find the towns and the airports look nicely detailed but when you move out of them into the other areas, still within the "high detail" area the ground textures are underwhelming and the mountains are really disappointing.  Some areas you will see vehicles parked on slopes half floating in the air.  Lots of work needed on this map even on the high detail area from my testing so far.

Update:  A full re-install of the Afghanistan map seems to have slowed down the stutter but I'm still finding the city of Kandahar itself to have some performance problems.  It's been 5 tries now flying north up the highway from Kandahar airport to the city of Kandahar and when you get part way through the stutter fest starts.

 

Windows 11, RTX 480, I9 13900k, 32g DDR5, 2T SSD

 

Edited July 12, 2024 by Nightstalker

[Majinbot]

Flying over Afghanistan is impossible, the game freezes for few seconds every now and then...

[LuseKofte]

3 hours ago, Slippa said:

I skipped this one for a change. Doesn’t look like I’m missing much, I feel like I’ve saved myself a few quid. 

Still have plenty of maps, some I’ve barely seen yet so I’ll wait for it to develop a bit.

You know better than listen to this hysteria every single time something is released. But I respect a choice which was originally mine too. If I was to listen to those constantly looking for negativity I missed out the Kiowa which was deemed a fiasco first 24 hours and then was a streak of genius.  It took me two minutes of searching to fly over gorgeous terrain. 
I was set on not buying this map until I got a reason for it. That reason came up earlier than expected. Yes there is unfinished places that we all knew about.  but I rate this higher than Sinai , and think it is going to be good. 

26 minutes ago, Majinbot said:

Flying over Afghanistan is impossible, the game freezes for few seconds every now and then...

I don’t have that problem so far. 

Edited July 12, 2024 by LuseKofte

[Slippa]

I’ve looked around, taken in different points of view, formed an opinion. Everyone’s different thankfully, it’s all good.

I’ll probably grab it at some point, I think it’s the only map I don’t have so it’d be rude not to eh? 

I hope it gets an update but as it’s pointed out, this is meant to be finished isn’t it?

Welcome to DCS TFS, plenty of whingers here, no harm mostly and spoilt rotten with the standards really .

-Oh and I love the Kiowa 

Edited July 12, 2024 by Slippa
Kiowa

[Nightstalker]

You've never run a company if you think you can call your paying customers spoiled rotten whingers as you say.  

[sirrah]

32 minutes ago, LuseKofte said:

...but I rate this higher than Sinai...

 

Wow! That's quite a promising statement , as Sinai is one of the most detailed maps imho (at least scenery wise)

Please do share screenshots.

 

I haven't bought Afghanistan yet, mainly due to lack of time (and I need to restrain myself in buying everything ), so I came here to check out the first reviews. This thread appears to have big opinion/verdict contradictions.

I'm not convinced just yet by what I've seen and read, as this thread mostly contains negative reviews. But perhaps all the folks that are positive about this map just didn't bother posting their opinions here just yet  

[Slippa]

21 minutes ago, Nightstalker said:

You've never run a company if you think you can call your paying customers spoiled rotten whingers as you say.  

That isn’t what I said.

There are plenty of whingers, I’m one myself at times. We, as customers, in my opinion, have a pretty good standard in DCS that we hold everything up to. When one of us thinks something new doesn’t come up to that standard, we whinge a bit about it. We’re spoilt with some of it.

I won’t speak about the companies I’ve run or may be currently running. If I did, I’d have to kill you. And I’d tickle you to death, it can take hours. 

[MAXsenna]

Does it have a lot of single player stuff? Like quick missions for the various aircraft? Thanks

A-10C II, AH-64, F/A-18C, Mi-24P, MI-8TV2, Su-25A, Su-25T and TF-51D has some rudimentary missions. The F-16C has 7 missions, some combat.
For other 3rd parties you to ask in the relevant forums. I'm positive Heatblur will deliver.
Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[LuseKofte]

2 hours ago, sirrah said:

Wow! That's quite a promising statement , as

I have not been everywhere. Now I read someone said this is a finished product. I can’t accept that as truth. There are areas where critique is due. But people do not mention the pretty areas. And there are many. Main base area is a little dull and pale in texture I have tuned down my settings and fly with G2. So I believe it can be better for those with better rig

[badger7966]

Im super happy with it...probably going to be my favourite map.

[LuseKofte]

Well I have not flown all the mountains.

But funny enough landing the chopper textures looks great.

Take off and lift 10 meters and ground and mountains looks like styrofoam.

. further away it looks gorgeous again.

But so far Kola and Caucasus get better mountains.  I will investigate more. But I think this will be a good chopper map

[MAXsenna]

@LuseKofte I have the exact same opinion. Hopefully this "transition zone" will be tuned later. I also hope for better ground clutter the pop-in we have now is terrible, and actually changes the ground color somewhat down low.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Raisuli]

20 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

@LuseKofte I have the exact same opinion. Hopefully this "transition zone" will be tuned later. I also hope for better ground clutter the pop-in we have now is terrible, and actually changes the ground color somewhat down low.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

From the comments, screenshots, and videos it looks like this is an EA map with the potential to be the most awsomerist (Awesom-er-est - Adj. - Inspiring the most-er awe) map in DCS.  Maybe a little underdone, but the potential is certainly there and no reason not to think they'll get it dialed in!

Got a trip this weekend; hopefully when I get back ED will have some of the more egregious issues ironed out and I'll get to see this for myself!

[Blackhawk163]

Up at 20k+ sure, looks great, Fly down low and well...  I dunno, I'm just happy to have a sim like this but I'd be lying if I didn't say that my initial reaction was "meh." It's early access and I'm just champing at the bit to get to some really great user generated missions. 

 

Until then I'm as happy as I can be doing some of the Caucus missions living out my fantasy life of having been on the other side of Ft Cavasos (2/4 Aviation Here) and flying with the Cav guys/gals  

[markturner1960]

So, in tandem to the other thread, I cant say enough how dissapointed I am to have shelled out more money for the supposed "cutting edge" tech and latest improvements in DCS terrain rendering....to get what is simply put yet another example of blurry textures laid over terrain mesh with -really, definition points measured in the hundreds of metres rather than the centimetres that I was getting in FSX 15 years ago......mountain ranges with dead straight ridgelines hundreds of metres apart....mountain sides comprising flat planes with low res testures pasted over. Repetitive low res textures with detailed areas plonked over the top with no blending. Its really, really dissappointing after the same crap in Kola and SA. Check out these screen shots. Honestly, there are areas of the Caucusus and NTTR that look better than this. Is this really 15 years progress in scenery development in DCS? 

Why oh why oh why are the devs fixated in pumping out low res massive scale maps that are really terrible when they could make the map a quarter of the physical size with the same number of GB and have nice high res textures, more detailed terrain mesh and a lot more happy punters.......

Edited July 12, 2024 by markturner1960