When will the map of DCS northern and eastern Afghanistan be completed?

[huchanronaa]

While DCS is busy launching the DCS Iraq map for pre-order, I really want to say when will your DCS Afghanistan map northern and east areas be completed? Is there a schedule?

Edited November 21, 2024 by huchanronaa

[huchanronaa]

After all, it has been almost four months since the Afghanistan map was released in July, but there still seems to be no timetable for completion of this important part of the map of eastern Afghanistan

[MAXsenna]

While DCS is busy launching the DCS Iraq map for pre-order, I really want to say when will your DCS Afghanistan map northern and east areas be completed? Is there a schedule?

Was supposed be to be released every three months, hence completed this year.

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[Viper33]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Was supposed be to be released every three months, hence completed this year.

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Well that was a lie lol.

[MAXsenna]

Well that was a lie lol.

Lie? Bad estimates? It's still possible to catch up, right?

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[YoYo]

On 10/21/2024 at 12:26 PM, huchanronaa said:

After all, it has been almost four months since the Afghanistan map was released in July, but there still seems to be no timetable for completion of this important part of the map of eastern Afghanistan

The sentence is „about” 3 months, so it could be two or four months. Two is already out so there is a chance that the east part will appear in October or November at the latest.

[Gierasimov]

Apparently - from the communication via YT comments and Discord, as well as in this forum; 

• it takes longer to bring updates to Afghanistan map due to the received feedback which is being incorporated;
• large update is brewing and will soon be released;
• the team that is busy with Iraq is not the same team that is busy with Afghanistan; 
• Afghanistan development is progressing rapidly. 

I think we will till get chunky update this year. I dare to think it is going to be the very next DCS feature update. 

[BIGNEWY]

We will share more news soon, but yes after getting lots of feedback from you all on what you want to see in the terrain time lines are extended a little, but work is going well. 

thank you 

[huchanronaa]

 

2024/10/24 PM7点57分，BIGNEWY说：

We will share more news soon, but yes after getting lots of feedback from you all on what you want to see in the terrain time lines are extended a little, but work is going well. 

thank you 

It's almost December, and the DCS eastern Afghanistan map has still not been released. I hope to speed up the pace, otherwise it will definitely affect the sales of the Iraq map.

Edited November 21, 2024 by huchanronaa

[BIGNEWY]

3 minutes ago, huchanronaa said:

It's almost December, and the DCS eastern Afghanistan map has still not been released. I hope to speed up the pace, otherwise it will definitely affect the sales of the Iraq map.

It's almost December, and the DCS eastern Afghanistan map has still not been released. I hope to speed up the pace, otherwise it will definitely affect the sales of the Iraq map.

Hi,

As mentioned in previous posts as soon as we are ready to share progress we will, hopefully in the next few patches will contain updates but please wait for a future change log for confirmation. 

thank you 

[MAXsenna]

Hi,

As mentioned in previous posts as soon as we are ready to share progress we will, hopefully in the next few patches will contain updates but please wait for a future change log for confirmation. 
thank you 

Will we see two patches before new year?
(Apologies, couldn't resist!)

Next patch will be awesome!

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[BIGNEWY]

20 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Will we see two patches before new year?
(Apologies, couldn't resist!)

Next patch will be awesome!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

I hope so  but got to wait for patch notes. 

[admiki]

2024 and beyond comes to mind......

[YoYo]

There is still no November patch but I hope it will appear and we will have something for Afghanistan. 5 months after the release there was nothing, no new part and patch even so I'm looking forward to it  !

[BIGNEWY]

18 minutes ago, YoYo said:

There is still no November patch but I hope it will appear and we will have something for Afghanistan. 5 months after the release there was nothing, no new part and patch even so I'm looking forward to it  !

Updates are coming for Afghanistan, but as usual our plans may get stretched, it will be worth it. 

thank you 

[huchanronaa]

1小时前，BIGNEWY说：

Updates are coming for Afghanistan, but as usual our plans may get stretched, it will be worth it. 

thank you 

It seems almost unlikely that the Iraq map will be launched in 2024

[BIGNEWY]

Just now, huchanronaa said:

It seems almost unlikely that the Iraq map will be launched in 2024

lets wait and see, still time left and the team is working very hard. 

thanks

[huchanronaa]

It’s December and it’s almost Christmas, and the map of eastern Afghanistan still hasn’t been released, let alone the map of Iraq.
If e.d wants to increase sales of the Iraq map: complete the Afghanistan map first

[BIGNEWY]

5 minutes ago, huchanronaa said:

It’s December and it’s almost Christmas, and the map of eastern Afghanistan still hasn’t been released, let alone the map of Iraq.
If e.d wants to increase sales of the Iraq map: complete the Afghanistan map first

As mentioned in a previous newsletter teams are different and both working hard to complete development goals. Of course work is taking longer than initially expected so we will update you all on that soon.

thank you 

[Weta43]

For E.D., not Bignewy:

First: There might be 2 teams, but that is a resource allocation decision in itself, not an immutable fact of life. 
Secondments - particularly in the age of tele-working - make temporary reallocation of resources possible. 

Second: Repeatedly saying “we will update you soon” is not actually providing updates. 
Neither is saying “the work is taking longer than expected”. That’s obvious from the fact that the work hasn’t been released. 

What’s actually being done that is taking longer than expected:
Retexturing?
Reverting to previous map techniques? Improving the new technique? 
Redoing the terrain mesh?

Are you still in the “working out what the problem is” phase, or “half way through the worst of it” or is it that “we think we have a solution and we’re trying it out on the Iraq map so we don’t have to double up work, and if that’s received better we’ll apply it to Afghanistan, or what?

What is it that’s being done that’s taking longer than expected?

I think the negative reception of the Afghanistan map was overdone. 
It wasn’t the visual feast we were hoping for, but it also wasn’t the unplayable mess some people made out. 

The lack of delivered work is - with a proper explanation - might be understandable.

The lack of meaningful, informative progress updates since saying there would be delays is pretty appalling. 
 

As far as I could see, this is 6 months of references to Afghanistan from the updates logs:

”introduced a new terrain module: DCS: Afghanistan Map by Eagle Dynamics
Introduced a new terrain module: DCS: Southwest Afghanistan Map by Eagle Dynamics”

 

[BIGNEWY]

11 minutes ago, Weta43 said:

For E.D., not Bignewy:

First: There might be 2 teams, but that is a resource allocation decision in itself, not an immutable fact of life. 
Secondments - particularly in the age of tele-working - make temporary reallocation of resources possible. 

Second: Repeatedly saying “we will update you soon” is not actually providing updates. 
Neither is saying “the work is taking longer than expected”. That’s obvious from the fact that the work hasn’t been released. 

What’s actually being done that is taking longer than expected:
Retexturing?
Reverting to previous map techniques? Improving the new technique? 
Redoing the terrain mesh?

Are you still in the “working out what the problem is” phase, or “half way through the worst of it” or is it that “we think we have a solution and we’re trying it out on the Iraq map so we don’t have to double up work, and if that’s received better we’ll apply it to Afghanistan, or what?

What is it that’s being done that’s taking longer than expected?

I think the negative reception of the Afghanistan map was overdone. 
It wasn’t the visual feast we were hoping for, but it also wasn’t the unplayable mess some people made out. 

The lack of delivered work is - with a proper explanation - might be understandable.

The lack of meaningful, informative progress updates since saying there would be delays is pretty appalling. 
 

As far as I could see, this is 6 months of references to Afghanistan from the updates logs:

”introduced a new terrain module: DCS: Afghanistan Map by Eagle Dynamics
Introduced a new terrain module: DCS: Southwest Afghanistan Map by Eagle Dynamics”

 

Hi Weta43, we know people are waiting for more information and we will be sharing some, we have a internal review, and based on that we will know what we can share with you all. It is planned to have a newsletter update on the topic. 

 

[huchanronaa]

The current business model suggests that some changes must be made. For example, e.d can first complete the map of eastern Afghanistan and then launch the pre-order of the map of Iraq, instead of repeatedly making excuses to postpone the release of the map of eastern Afghanistan as it is now. The original announcement was about three months after the release, but it has been delayed for almost half a year and it still hasn’t been launched yet

[YoYo]

On 12/4/2024 at 8:43 PM, Weta43 said:

For E.D., not Bignewy:

First: There might be 2 teams, but that is a resource allocation decision in itself, not an immutable fact of life. 
Secondments - particularly in the age of tele-working - make temporary reallocation of resources possible. 

Second: Repeatedly saying “we will update you soon” is not actually providing updates. 
Neither is saying “the work is taking longer than expected”. That’s obvious from the fact that the work hasn’t been released. 

What’s actually being done that is taking longer than expected:
Retexturing?
Reverting to previous map techniques? Improving the new technique? 
Redoing the terrain mesh?

Are you still in the “working out what the problem is” phase, or “half way through the worst of it” or is it that “we think we have a solution and we’re trying it out on the Iraq map so we don’t have to double up work, and if that’s received better we’ll apply it to Afghanistan, or what?

What is it that’s being done that’s taking longer than expected?

I think the negative reception of the Afghanistan map was overdone. 
It wasn’t the visual feast we were hoping for, but it also wasn’t the unplayable mess some people made out. 

The lack of delivered work is - with a proper explanation - might be understandable.

The lack of meaningful, informative progress updates since saying there would be delays is pretty appalling. 
 

As far as I could see, this is 6 months of references to Afghanistan from the updates logs:

”introduced a new terrain module: DCS: Afghanistan Map by Eagle Dynamics
Introduced a new terrain module: DCS: Southwest Afghanistan Map by Eagle Dynamics”

 

Unfortunately, that's a problem, right. After all, we're half a year after the release, and not only was there no update to Afghanistan, not to mention the next part, which was supposed to come out in 3-month episodes. Theoretically, we should get the last 3 parts in January/February. If this is a completely separate Team that doesn't work on anything else, then the question begins to arise: what will they do from June 2024? Since they supposedly "listened to the players' opinions", the question arises in what way? Better communication would certainly be advisable because here there has been a change of plans and a change of promise to users, so we as a customer may feel disoriented.

[YoYo]

On 12/4/2024 at 8:43 PM, Weta43 said:

I think the negative reception of the Afghanistan map was overdone. 
It wasn’t the visual feast we were hoping for, but it also wasn’t the unplayable mess some people made out. 

That's right. A few things could be improved and added, but there was no any tragedy, Im sure, the map is cool and interesting. Interestingly - the biggest problem, which I reported myself, i.e. "stickers" of hand-made textures on the photo textures, are not really such a big problem looking at historical maps for DCS. Some time ago I noticed that Persian Gulf is made identically (so I assume it's the same team). These sharp transitions near Afghanistan are simply more visible, because they often concern green fields and a different color than the surroundings. For this reason, they are more visible, but the same technique is on the PG map and somehow few people were bothered by it. True, there the base is more desert so it is less visible, but the transitions are just as sharp and angular. 

I'm all the more curious about what the new patch for Afhanistan is supposed to bring for the current part of Afghanistan. I can expect:

- better texture resolution in some current part (because that was sometimes a problem),
- adding bridges (which weren't there),
- an update for roads,
- some bugs reported by users (but these are small fixes),
- optimalization in urban area (I noticed drop of fps with with a high saturation of small buildings, it's a bit strange because it's less complicated than e.g. airports and despite that there is a lot of performance stutter)

But what else? After all, the airports are done 100%, as are the cities etc. (well, maybe there are no monuments and relics, but that's not super important to me). So will they give up on those sharp transitions between the "handmade" texture and the photo? In general, the work I mentioned above would probably take a team of several people 1-2 months at most I suppose. So what are they changing there, after all, you're not making the map from scratch?

Edited December 7, 2024 by YoYo

[Weta43]

On 12/7/2024 at 11:49 PM, YoYo said:

That's right. A few things could be improved and added, but there was no any tragedy, Im sure, the map is cool and interesting. Interestingly - the biggest problem, which I reported myself, i.e. "stickers" of hand-made textures on the photo textures, are not really such a big problem looking at historical maps for DCS. Some time ago I noticed that Persian Gulf is made identically (so I assume it's the same team). These sharp transitions near Afghanistan are simply more visible, because they often concern green fields and a different color than the surroundings. For this reason, they are more visible, but the same technique is on the PG map and somehow few people were bothered by it. True, there the base is more desert so it is less visible, but the transitions are just as sharp and angular. 

I'm all the more curious about what the new patch for Afhanistan is supposed to bring for the current part of Afghanistan. I can expect:

- better texture resolution in some current part (because that was sometimes a problem),
- adding bridges (which weren't there),
- an update for roads,
- some bugs reported by users (but these are small fixes),
- optimalization in urban area (I noticed drop of fps with with a high saturation of small buildings, it's a bit strange because it's less complicated than e.g. airports and despite that there is a lot of performance stutter)

But what else? After all, the airports are done 100%, as are the cities etc. (well, maybe there are no monuments and relics, but that's not super important to me). So will they give up on those sharp transitions between the "handmade" texture and the photo? In general, the work I mentioned above would probably take a team of several people 1-2 months at most I suppose. So what are they changing there, after all, you're not making the map from scratch?

Yes, I guess though that part of the problem for ED is that significant parts of the country is irrigated fields in arid landscapes, and to some extent really looks like someone put green stickers on a sand coloured background

Even if you got it right it would still look foreign and fake to the eyes of many people:

Afghanistan - Google Maps

(That said, they could probably solve part of the problem by giving the stickers irregular rectangular edges rather than triangular faceted polygons)