F-35A Announcement discussion mega thread.

[NytHawk]

11 hours ago, Thump said:

The sheer amount of BS magic dust they are going to have to douse this module in will be meme worthy.

The JF17 was built with much less information on it, and it turned out to be a great module. The development of the JSF is by far the most public of any fighter aircraft in history, and LM really loves showing off its capabilities, and their own simulators on it.
Sure, ED will need to take liberties in many aspects of the development, but frankly I don't see an issue with that as long as performance is believable. The F35 compared to everything else in the game is going to be an absolute spaceship in terms of capability, so i don't see how being slightly off in performance is going to make a major issue.

Edited 22 hours ago by NytHawk

[Cyborg71]

11 hours ago, Thump said:

The sheer amount of BS magic dust they are going to have to douse this module in will be meme worthy.

Yes, you have a point. I'd always thought flaming cliffs would be the place for advanced (blue or red) jets like this. Simpler modelling on account of limited intel.

But at 53, I'm happy to be sprinkled in some magic dust to help me believe I'm something that I definitely am not. 

Having experienced the F35 in other sims in the last decade, where a "fair" level of accomplishment was achieved, (they felt kind of empty and the flight models sucked) I'm confident ED will achieve a module that will have as few sprinkles as is possible.

Day one purchase.

[ebabil]

If F-35 can be done, any aircraft can be done with the same "open source" method. 

Sometimes we ask for simple weapon or sensor to be added and we get the "we are doing circa 19xx, 2xx" or "lack of document" answers. Maybe DCS will get more juice in that way. I am not against this. 

[okopanja]

6 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

MP servers have always decided what aircraft they will include in their missions, it will be up to the server admin to decide, if they want to create a mission with balance they will always do it, the community is very talented. 

Eventually I am sure we will see other same generation aircraft coming to DCS, its just a matter of time and resources. 

Yes, I am not surprised since I carefully tracked interviews of ED employees over the years, in particular sales director. The ditching of the arcade version of DCS I correctly understood as bringing DCS more to that mainstream market.

My concern here is that the market for the arcade level of simulation is already saturated. Companies courting that kind of the audience are already established and quiet frankly they execute way better than ED.  They also do not have the complexities of 3rd party integration and corresponding frictions on technical and business level. Even if they use the sub-contractors they do control that very strictly so the end effect always is toward their advantage.

I am pretty sure I am not the only person stating the obvious.

 

 

[supersylph]

To be honest, I am pessimistic about this.The fourth-generation aircraft is characterized by high informationization.Moreover, the use of fourth-generation aircraft highly relies on systematic operations.Look at the incomplete link16 we have now. And look at the games that didn't even have Cold War era GCI.The current game mechanism does not support the simulation of the fourth-generation aircraft at all.ED's desire to release it in '26 seems completely impossible.Or release an EA version in a very bad state.I believe that given enough time, these won't be a problem.But looking at 16 18, it seems like it's going to be a very long time.

[paco2002]

1 hour ago, LordOrion said:

Have you ever met a JF-17?

The JF-17 is a fantasy plane?

[rozjkeee]

Finally ED introduced someting that will be based on open source info.

Can we get clickable su-30 /su-35 / now? Please? Hello?

[Czar66]

27 minutes ago, rozjkeee said:

Finally ED introduced someting that will be based on open source info.

Can we get clickable su-30 /su-35 / now? Please? Hello?

It has been stated on few pages back on the beginning-ish of the thread. The team that would be working on a FF Su-27/30/35 is busy with the MiG-29.

Likely in the future.

 

Edited 21 hours ago by Czar66

[ebabil]

I can even settle with su27

[upyr1]

9 hours ago, TotenDead said:

What if I don't want to fight against a fantasy plane on my favorite server? I stop playing?

You don't go on that server, you can play off line or on different servers. I'm sure that you aren't the only person who thinks the only lightnings that have a place in DCS are weather phenomena, the P-38, and English Electric Lighting 

[upyr1]

9 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

 Better quickly finish it then.  

The Sooner the Mig-29 is out the sooner they can shut up an take my money 

Edited 21 hours ago by upyr1

[MAXsenna]

The Sooner the Mig-29 is out the sooner they can shut up an take my money 

That's the attitude!

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[ustio]

So my take away from this thread is, the quality of ED upcoming module will decline in term of realism whether ED like to admit it or not. 

And yeah, nothing is gonna convice me then. 

Edited 20 hours ago by ustio

[Николай Ушаков]

3 минуты назад, ustio сказал:

So my take away from this thread is, the quality of ED upcoming module will decline in term of realism whether ED like to admit it or not. 

And yeah, nothing is gonna convice me then. 

You are right - it is just impossible to make it without any proper data

[speed-of-heat]

So i am looking forward to see how this pans out, I'm less worried about the "well we think it does this based on open source material" over "page x of the NATOPS says 'Y' so we do 'Y'" argument in honesty. Why because I played "sims" way before people made this claim to begin with and they were fun... I had tremendous fun with EF-2000 and F-19 Stealth Fighter back in the day so I imagine i will be able to enjoy this module as well in a similar vein... now of course i was not in a world where PVP was a thing (well we did Falcon 3)...  but that may well be a concern for that particular aspect of the game.

What does puzzle me though is if this opens up avenues for other aspects of "informed opinion" being used to generate aspects of game play, rather than requiring a hard documented and unclassified evidence for other modules, so does it allow "EW" or "consumable" or missile performance characteristics or even other complete aircraft, to be derived from that opinion and if so what is the gate ... is it "i saw it at a trade show" or is it "i saw it at a trade show and we have this other corroborating source(s)" ... or is it "Frank says so" ...

 

[metzger]

So my take away from this thread is, the quality of ED upcoming module will decline in term of realism whether ED like to admit it or not. 
And yeah, nothing is gonna convice me then. 

Tbf, the quality of released modules has been decreasing for the past few years. In terms of polish, content, and depth of simulation. Seems like the trend will continue. But this is probably driven by the user base and the users they are targeting.
Seems like enough people don't care if it is finished, polished, accurate enough, and there is good playground for it. They just want more modules to hop in the mp airquake. If this is the aimed audinace which ED calculated will bring the most revenue - it's their company.

Luckily, for Viper fans, we have the other sim, and for some fans of older stuff, we have the other other sim, which will release Korea 51 soon.

I had some hopes to do RW in dcs, but given the current state of the sim outside the cockpit, and the lack of any initiative from ED to focus on improving it, I am not very optimistic.

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[IanC58]

Just wish they would finish what they have ongoing, just seems like a distraction to appease us all in the meantime, latest patch added nothing to Afghanistan or Iraq maps.

 

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

11 minutes ago, speed-of-heat said:

I had tremendous fun with EF-2000 and F-19 Stealth Fighter back in the day so I imagine i will be able to enjoy this module as well in a similar vein

There is 1 major difference here: those "sims" were built around that 1 aircraft and thus had to exist in an environment that made sense. At the moment at least, that is not the case for DCS. One can make an argument for this not even being the case for 4th gen, let alone 5th.
Then again, NL alluded to the introduction of Fat Amy into DCS making a lot of other things possible, so I'll reserve full judgement until I see that realised. But we as customers have every right to be - extremely - sceptical and to not believe certain claims that are now made by ED.

Yes I did have a lot of fun with say "F-22 Air Dominance Fighter" by DID and its successor "Total Air War" because they somehow managed to make a believable representation of low-observability (which for example EIDOS' "Joint Strike Fighter" failed miserably at) and they represented the cockpit and human-machine-interface reasonably well. But you can't exactly call taking out 12 Ethiopian Su-35s every single sortie even remotely realistic.
DCS has set very different standards over the years, even though certain aspects of those '90s sims were well ahead of where DCS is even now.

7 minutes ago, IanC58 said:

Just wish they would finish what they have ongoing, just seems like a distraction to appease us all in the meantime, latest patch added nothing to Afghanistan or Iraq maps.

 

ED repeats ad nauseum that aircraft teams can't and won't work on maps, and while that is very understandable, those very aircraft teams can also be put to work on the Yak-52 I'd think and finally finish it...

[MiGCap1]

Sorry, @NineLine, but the statement that You have enough material to build a full-fidelity F-35 and assume that it halfway comes close to the real aircraft is the most ridiculous sentence I've read for long.

Not even the pilots of the plain vanilla neighbour F-16 squadron in the USAF have the full inside knowledge of what the guys in the adjacent F-35 unit can actually do with their birds. It is the most classified aircraft in history, I suppose.

What You see officially reveals a maximum of 30 per cent of the capability of the aircraft. Not even enough to basically understand its full mission fundamentals in air warfare. Ever wondered why nations like Switzerland chose the F-35 although it looks that it is not suitable for the mountain environment and the missions of the aircraft it replaces? It is because that all what You can find in official sources is only a fragment of the actual performance.

Then a non-F-35 nation's unit, the German Weapons School for its 2021 course got a special clearance from the US and a limited briefing about the capabilities of the bird so that we could work together in a tactical situation with the Dutch F-35s in the final exercise (usually a F-35 pilot has to shut down all his sensors when other aircraft are near). That clearance was renewed for the 2023 weapons instructor course (then we were at least a soon-to-be F-35 nation). From this limited briefing I got an even more limited briefing and I can tell You that what You find officially or in generic videos allows You to recreate only a module which in no way can reach any standard You have set for DCS before.

A cripple module.

To choose the F-35 will of course bring You money (not from me) and that's okay. But as I assume that You are not fed with highly restricted informations which will give You a jail time if used it would be more honest not to put sand in the eyes of Your customers: Your F-35 will in any case only be a shadow of the real aircraft.

[metzger]

ED repeats ad nauseum that aircraft teams can't and won't work on maps, and while that is very understandable, those very aircraft teams can also be put to work on the Yak-52 I'd think and finally finish it...

Well even if a dev that work on maps can't work on modules or AI, they can always hire less map devs and use the extra budget for AI or module or whatever devs. This excuse is so lame I can't believe people keep buying it...

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[Hiob]

20 minutes ago, metzger said:

Tbf, the quality of released modules has been decreasing for the past few years. 
 

Really? Care to name some examples? I assume you are strictly talking about ED (otherwise the F-4 Phantom would be a prime example of that staement being wrong)

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

4 minutes ago, MiGCap1 said:

Ever wondered why nations like Switzerland chose the F-35 although it looks that it is not suitable for the mountain environment and the missions of the aircraft it replaces?

We all know politics vastly outweigh operational requirements (and frankly common sense too) when it comes to military procurements.

2 minutes ago, metzger said:

Well even if a dev that work on maps can't work on modules or AI, they can always hire less map devs and use the extra budget for AI or module or whatever devs. This excuse is so lame I can't believe people keep buying it...

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Yes they can hire fewer map developers but they are also a company that needs to make money to survive. It's a very sad affair and it hurts ED in at least some capacity as well - including reputation.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

7 minutes ago, Hiob said:

Really? Care to name some examples?

I'm sure people are referring to the amount of depth the modules have. Few will refute the F-18 and F-16 being far less developed than the A-10C for example.

Edited 19 hours ago by Raven (Elysian Angel)
typo

[speed-of-heat]

14 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

There is 1 major difference here: those "sims" were built around that 1 aircraft and thus had to exist in an environment that made sense. At the moment at least, that is not the case for DCS. One can make an argument for this not even being the case for 4th gen, let alone 5th.

I think that is true only in a multiplayer environment... I don't play multiplayer for the majority of my game play.

[metzger]

Really? Care to name some examples? I assume you are strictly talking about ED (otherwise the F-4 Phantom would be a prime example of that staement being wrong)

Yes, ED strictly.

A-10C was released in very much completed state, with gameplay mechanics only available(to this day) for the a-10 wingman and AI jtac. And is to this date probably the most complete and depth module DCS has.

No 7 years EA BS.
+ nttr map bit later developed for the a-10.

Similar with ka-50 black shark2.

Both came with specific mechanics for the AI + content - deployment campaign was really good for the time.

Later modules started to appear more rough, without any specific additions for their specific use cases. They stopped making free campaigns with the modules too.
But still in ok state.

I think around Viper release, things started to smell. It was in a bare bones at release barely usable, or accurate. They slowly dropped the accuracy, e.g. BS3 now F35... no way they can make f35 with A10C depth and accuracy.

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