Review / opinions/ pictures / discussion

[rcjonessnp175]

10 minutes ago, RichCotte said:

What is going on with the crazy volume of construction cranes and industrial buildings in the region near the old Camp Ashraf/FOB Grizzly?

 

This area should be primarily open desert with a small pockets of buildings, surrounded by farmlands and a large weapons storage bunker complex to the north.

 

 

Good question, curious what is  the era aka year or year range the map is supposed to represent?  It would be a buttload amount of work for map team but if you had multiple year templates with different layouts representative of different conflicts…..  that would be cool, 

[RichCotte]

15 minutes ago, rcjonessnp175 said:

Good question, curious what is  the era aka year or year range the map is supposed to represent?  It would be a buttload amount of work for map team but if you had multiple year templates with different layouts representative of different conflicts…..  that would be cool, 

I asked the year question above. You're correct, the amount of work to produce generational maps would be intense and way more than what we should expect.

Many people complain about the vast, flat openness, and lack of details on maps like this, but the fact of the matter is that this part of the world has a LOT of vast, flat, open, empty desert, with tiny pockets of civilization.  It would be have that represented accurately verse having cities/industrial areas placed artificially where they don't belong.

[NineLine]

 

2 hours ago, RichCotte said:

What is going on with the crazy volume of construction cranes and industrial buildings in the region near the old Camp Ashraf/FOB Grizzly?

 

This area should be primarily open desert with a small pockets of buildings, surrounded by farmlands and a large weapons storage bunker complex to the north.

 

 

The map is in early access as we have stated POIs are still being fleshed out, that said if you have found an issue then post a bug thread about it, posting here is just going to get lost if you are hoping for us to see it. Thanks.

[RichCotte]

7 minutes ago, NineLine said:

 

The map is in early access as we have stated POIs are still being fleshed out, that said if you have found an issue then post a bug thread about it, posting here is just going to get lost if you are hoping for us to see it. Thanks.

Will do!  Thanks

 

[NineLine]

2 minutes ago, RichCotte said:

Will do!  Thanks

 

Also, keep in mind it's not our intention to do a 1:1 representation of Iraq. It's important to have some decent POIs, have the towns and cities have the look and feel with some key buildings and more so airfields to be more accurate. But to achieve a 1:1 representation would be an much to long to do, and little reward for towns and cities people may never interact with. 

To add to this, the map will be mixed era to allow the most mission possibilities and fun for customers. 

So keep this all in mind for expectations and bug reporting, major POIs we will very much consider. Where there is over usage of a certain model is also fair to report, but as I said, keep in mind its WIP, and these things may change or have already changed internally. 

Thanks!

[RichCotte]

5 minutes ago, NineLine said:

Also, keep in mind it's not our intention to do a 1:1 representation of Iraq. It's important to have some decent POIs, have the towns and cities have the look and feel with some key buildings and more so airfields to be more accurate. But to achieve a 1:1 representation would be an much to long to do, and little reward for towns and cities people may never interact with. 

To add to this, the map will be mixed era to allow the most mission possibilities and fun for customers. 

So keep this all in mind for expectations and bug reporting, major POIs we will very much consider. Where there is over usage of a certain model is also fair to report, but as I said, keep in mind its WIP, and these things may change or have already changed internally. 

Thanks!

That makes perfect sense an dis 100% understandable. My only question there is why do you waste time, effort, and processing power to overpopulate areas that are in reality VERY sparsely populated.

 

I'll move my concerns over to the Bug thread.

[DD_fruitbat]

I cannot understate how much I am enjoying flying over the mountains in northern Iraq, simply breath taking, fantastic job by the map team.

 

[toubey]

[heloguy]

On 12/13/2024 at 1:52 PM, Bremspropeller said:

I'm not so convinced about this streetlight off the end of RWY 15 at Erbil, though:

  Hide contents

 

Maybe because 15/33 isn't a real runway anymore?  Either way, doubt it's there, as you allude.

Edited December 15, 2024 by heloguy

[Bremspropeller]

That's a good point!

Maps doesn't show any lightpoles at this spot, though:

null

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

 

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

 

[theropod]

10 hours ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

 

I haven't puschased the Iraq map yet, just watching some review videos, I wonder how is the performance over heavly populated tree and building areas?
Fps is getting lower after 2:20 on this video, I also noticed the same issue on other review videos. 
Should I wait for the future updates for performance fixes or buy it now?

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

1 hour ago, theropod said:

Fps is getting lower after 2:20 on this video

This is my fault during editing...skipping the details, it was me stupid closing the original timeline and without taking the effort of redoing, I just reuse most of the original timeline, and did not notice the stuttering.

If you want to know how it performs in built-up area, please have a go with the video of Baghdad. It is taken by flying on a fixed wing so it should give you a good idea how it fares.

BTW, I am going to post the original files (both are longish) for your further examinations.

Edited December 16, 2024 by VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants

[Convoy]

I hope Iran will get plenty of representation with bases, because with the F-4E, upgraded F-5, Early Tomcat (when it comes) this map is begging for the Iran-Iraq war to be made. 

[Czar66]

This was my second flight through the map, although the plan was to make a video of the first one in order to get the most genuine curiosity driven reactions/movements, while not skipping interesting details with 'because I've seen it before I'll just ignore' kind of deal. Reason being: OBS has reset the video inputs after unplugging monitors for room cleaning meaning the first flight recording was a flat black screen.

....still, on the second flight, the awe was just as powerful as the first one.

It is rough on the edges, but imo, ED has crafted a very important gem for flight simulation here. Just by comparing PG's Iran with Iran on this map, you can see a severe difference in the portrait of vegetation in mountains and mountains themselves, and Iran is not inside the high detailed area as you can see several town villages missing all of its buildings in the area.

One big concern I have with the map is the performance over areas with buildings. It pulls too much on GPUs compared to other maps and no LOD setting changes things. Even on small villages compared to massive cities in maps such as Syria. I hope for performance/optimizations patches for it. At the moment, I cannot imagine dense fights over and inside Baghdad let alone inside a F-4E.
 

 

Images bellow from Baghdad and mostly Iraq-Iran border. Note: Vis Range is set to 'Ultra' in my settings. 1 notch bellow Extreme.

[cfrag]

As (currently) a Rotörhead (as my godson loves to call it after he discovered some of Lemmy's ditties in my audio archive), I took to some low-level flying over Iraq. VR performance in the Huey and Hip was OK (although my rig is getting old, I'm now waiting for the 5-beast from Nvidia to release), the Kiowas acceptable, in the Hook it was problematic (although I attribute that to the Hook).

The (probably) sat-imagery derived ground textures take a bit of getting used to; to my eyes, many objects like hangars, buildings etc. stick out like sore thumbs against the ground textures (an effect I first noticed with the SA map). In all, though, I think that the map has potential, and I have to take a closer look at the locations to find some engaging parts where I can set up some fun missions. Sadly, Mosul currently does not have an airfield, not even a heliport. Worse, not a single "H" was evident on the entire map, not even, sadly, for hospitals), so lacking the infrastructure, Iraq seems a bit to be a rotorhead wasteland to me (contrast that with Syria, which added 120 heloports just in the last update). 

Compared to Afghanistan, I think that Iraq feels a bit more balanced, and the color palette doesn't appear as washed-out ("bleached"), the mountain range textures in Iraq when travelling close to the ground don't appear quite as pixellated, although some of the deep shadows from the sat imagery still translate to dark blotches that simply look bad and unconvincing.  

In short, I hope that that this map improves - it has potential, and it is good to have it as it hosted some of the most intense conflicts in recent history. Currently, it's not yet a 'chopper map', Syria and Sinai are much better suited right now for that. In a Hog, some ground texture issues also become evident, but not as pronounced as in a rotorwing. Jet jocks don't get themselves dirty, and I'm sure their view is nicer up there where the air is rare. Us low level Angels need a bit more sugar, though. 

It'll be interesting to see how the Iraq map improves over the next months.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

Full videos of both previous "first-look" are out.

It is better than AF in terms of both colour and features. In my book. if a map cannot give 60fps when flying at 40kph,  the map really has a problem, best example is the early version of Normandy 2.0.

I prefer the building in Sinai better but the rooftops in Iraq have some what more varieties, making me think I could stop by one, sit down and have a drink with little umbrella on it. And, without expectation, the Iraq is more greener looking than other "desert maps".

[KY_Redleg]

Is there a plan to make Baghdad more detailed and accurate?  I spent a year there and did a little looking around via Combined Arms the other day.  The roads are definitely accurate and some of the major landmarks are there but not well detailed.  Some buildings like the Presidential Palace (old US Embassy) are not accurate.

Also, what year/era is the map supposed to be based on?

[YoYo]

Interesting fact: maybe not everyone knows but textures are made on the whole Iraq map, also where it is not covered by the current EA area. Here is an example of ... Kuwait. The resolution is quite ok. Of course there are no objects here, but the whole area is perfectly suitable for patrol flights - plus - FPS are great in this part .

[draconus]

On 12/12/2024 at 11:35 PM, Tango3B said:

You have depressions...

Can anyone confirm? That'd be new in DCS.

[Sandman1330]

18 hours ago, KY_Redleg said:

Is there a plan to make Baghdad more detailed and accurate?  I spent a year there and did a little looking around via Combined Arms the other day.  The roads are definitely accurate and some of the major landmarks are there but not well detailed.  Some buildings like the Presidential Palace (old US Embassy) are not accurate.

Also, what year/era is the map supposed to be based on?

Yeah, concur. I spent several months flying over both Erbil and Baghdad, and while Erbil is fairly nicely modelled, Baghdad seems very basic. They’ve placed a couple of POIs here and there but down real low they all seem kind of out of place, and there are several other key ones missing (for example the Al Rahman mosque was very evident from the air, but is missing in the map, and the old embassy had a major heli airfield that would be nice to see modelled.) The power station was another major landmark that’s not present, incidentally it would play nicely into the new fog / smog implementation as it belched so much pollution it would often leave downtown under a blanket of smog! Camp Taji also seems very basic, it’s all autogen that looks nothing like the real deal.

Anyway I understand they aren’t finished yet, I hope the Baghdad area gets some more love!

[markturner1960]

Have to say I am very pleased with my purchase......definitely recommend to buy. I uninstalled Sinai, Kola and Marianas to fit this on.......

[Beirut]

9 hours ago, markturner1960 said:

Have to say I am very pleased with my purchase......definitely recommend to buy. I uninstalled Sinai, Kola and Marianas to fit this on.......

Uninstalled Kola?

 

Scandalous! 

[YoYo]

It's better to buy a bigger disk than to get rid of cool maps ;P.

Edited December 18, 2024 by YoYo