Let's make DCS more beginner-friendly.

[cfrag]

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I’ve never seen a CFS game with more than a few dozen people on the entire planet playing it a one time.

I think you can broaden your mind if you allow for things to maybe be true even if you haven't seen something or deem it inconceivable. As I write this, more than 50'000 people are online in a combat flight sim (it's currently ranked at 15 in today's (Jun 10 2025) Steam daily online stats. There is lots of potential. It may not be your cup of tea, and please try to accept that this market does exist, even if you don't like it. Just imagine how great DCS could become if just 1 in every ten if those people would come online for DCS. They would need different content for sure. Better online support, the works. I just checked. there were <500 people online in DCS now. I think interest is there. DCS is potentially a great product. I'd be happy to create missions for the non-hardcore CFS crowd that currently flock to the Big One and crave for something more. Only 1 in 10. Sounds doable to me. But I need the tools, and something to work with.

[upyr1]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I wouldn’t use server popularity as an indicator of map quality or appeal. Server missions simply run the lowest common denominator for maps by necessity to get the most players. By that logic Caucuses is the “best” DCS map 90% of DCS players have never played online. The WWII maps aren’t used much online because WWII itself is a minority niche within DCS. Honestly both those WWII maps are gorgeous and well done.

On 6/8/2025 at 5:03 PM, ALFA-62 said:

It must be 12:00 where you are, as this is a completely valid point. I don't know what the actual stats are but the point remains the same just becuse we don't see massive WWII battles on line doesn't mean people aren't flying the war birds. 

 

 

On 6/8/2025 at 5:03 PM, ALFA-62 said:

• Creating a lower-quality version of the Normandy map, either for free or at half price, so that new pilots who are just getting into DCS and are interested in WWII have a lower entry barrier.

•  

This is one of the reasons I would like a WWII version of the Caucasus map, and like the WWII version of the Marianas map. 

[TheBiggerBass]

If the goal is to get more rookie players online why not start a training competition online with ranking awards after completing certain levels. There could be free prep training lessons before too.

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Just go and hire BD and Reflected to make training material for the free modules (modern and historical, respectively).  Those two know how to make training fun. Couple that with a free or at least cheap FF jet trainer (for WWII, TF-51 would do) and the initial hurdles become much lower.

The Hawk would be a great candidate 

[SharpeXB]

29 minutes ago, cfrag said:

I think you can broaden your mind if you allow for things to maybe be true even if you haven't seen something or deem it inconceivable. As I write this, more than 50'000 people are online in a combat flight sim (it's currently ranked at 15 in today's (Jun 10 2025) Steam daily online stats.

I don’t want to get into comparing games but as far as I know there are currently just two mid or high-fidelity combat flight sims that are actively dev supported out there. I’m not counting sim-cade flying games although technically anything with a cockpit view and no health bar for your plane counts as “sim”. The very popular air combat games are essentially sky shooters or are mostly played in that style. 

24 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

It must be 12:00 where you are, as this is a completely valid point. I don't know what the actual stats are but the point remains the same just becuse we don't see massive WWII battles on line doesn't mean people aren't flying the war birds. 

Sure there are people who play DCS WWII online, it’s just a smaller percentage. And again this goes to why most people are SP. Playing online with just 12 other players on one of these big maps isn’t really a great experience. 

Edited June 10 by SharpeXB

[draconus]

18 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Playing online with just 12 other players on one of these big maps isn’t really a great experience.

What are you talking about? Most missions I played in SP don't involve that much aircraft in total.

"Just" 12 human players online in one mission can be really engaging providing they play their roles instead of goofing around.

@ALFA-62 Making everything free and dumb down can bring more players in but will also kill DCS financially, lower its simulation quality and make it different game out of it which none of us want to happen. If you want more relaxed gameplay there are already other titles for that.

[SharpeXB]

31 minutes ago, draconus said:

What are you talking about? Most missions I played in SP don't involve that much aircraft in total.

I was thinking more about WWII. In modern scenarios having less players isn’t so detrimental since you’ve got AWACS and sensors and such. Finding the action isn’t so hard. PvE doesn’t really depend on numbers either. 

[upyr1]

20 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Sure there are people who play DCS WWII online, it’s just a smaller percentage. And again this goes to why most people are SP. Playing online with just 12 other players on one of these big maps isn’t really a great experience. 

This is why I hope the dynamic campaign has a multiplayer mode right from the start. That's the only way I expect to see really massive battles. 

 

1 hour ago, draconus said:

@ALFA-62 Making everything free and dumb down can bring more players in but will also kill DCS financially, lower its simulation quality and make it different game out of it which none of us want to happen. If you want more relaxed gameplay there are already other titles for that.

I agree 100% on this. This is why I liked the concept of MAC. As it would have enabled ED to sell a simplified product without sacrificing the ED brand. Since MAC is dead, and I could also see the arguments for enabling difficulty modes, where the Easy mode basically is flaming cliffs. Either way it would be important to give server admins the option of blocking people who are flying on Easy mode. 

Edited June 11 by upyr1

[Ironhand]

21 hours ago, TheBiggerBass said:

If the goal is to get more rookie players online why not start a training competition online with ranking awards after completing certain levels. There could be free prep training lessons before too.

Excellent idea. This would be a great way to introduce people to the online experience without them feeling overwhelmed or intimidated. 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

10 hours ago, Ironhand said:

Excellent idea. This would be a great way to introduce people to the online experience without them feeling overwhelmed or intimidated. 

To be the stick in the mud, but how would we execute that? DCS' lacks ranking, things to award, etc. This almost seems like it'd be something the community or communities within DCS would have to push.

Which, frankly, I think would work.

If done right, of course. The typical youtube click farming how-to crafters would not be a good fit for that.

Edited June 11 by MiG21bisFishbedL

[Dangerzone]

22 hours ago, upyr1 said:

This is why I hope the dynamic campaign has a multiplayer mode right from the start. That's the only way I expect to see really massive battles. 

I’m fairly sure I heard ED announce that DCE will be released as SP only to start with. MP will come later… how much later who knows. 

I think DCS does well without modules and maps for beginners. Free modules and maps, and a 2 week trial on most others is fairly generous.

One of the biggest helps I’ve seen for beginners is co-op MP PVE environments where others are willing to help them out. When I was first starting out (and even occasionally now after having a break from a particular airframe), to comment in discord saying “why can’t I get this to work” and someone chime in and say “did you remember to set the MFD active”, etc has been invaluable. 

DCS is primarily SP, and I think with that often gets overlooked how much more valuable the right types of MP servers/communities/environments can be for beginners. How many RL pilots are left to their own to learn? Not many. . For this type of stuff the less popular PVE or PVPVE servers with a tight group of enthusiasts probably fair far better than the big player base more known servers. 

One of the larger hurdle for newcomers IMO, as well as retention is stability and smooth onboarding. Not everyone has the stamina to push through all the setting up/binding then diagnosing issues to get going and then have an update create more issues that need diagnosing. Even basic things like no default bindings - so people don’t have to know to search for another peripheral that might have auto-bound an axis would be good. Yes, basic stuff for us DCS veterans, but not newbys, some who may have fought with controls not behaving and giving up before even getting a chance to fly. 

It would be good to see some of these things change just to help users have a smoother onboarding experience. 

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, Dangerzone said:

It would be good to see some of these things change just to help users have a smoother onboarding experience. 

Indeed. I feel that there are currently two main avenues that ED should pursue to help people like and retain DCS: 

• first, getting people into DCS and not scare them off. Currently, to me so many things in DCS scream "go away" instead of being welcoming. Setup, understanding what fits together how, getting into the cockpit for the first time, actually doing something fun. So many things seem like a chore, and people are left to their own devices to find out what to do, in one of the worst possible UX. So step one would be significantly improving DCS's accessibility.
• Second, keep them in DCS, keep them interested and occupied. There simply isn't much to do except learn a plane. Using really, really bad tutorial missions. The Quick Action Generator may one day fill part of that need, currently it's not there - IMHO by a long shot. Mission Editor isn't for the casual user, and can't really be used by a neophyte to quickly create a fun and engaging mission. Discovering User Created content at ED User Files is a trip to the bad old days of 1995's way of doing web stuff. Really bad. Getting good content into DCS that way, and keeping it current is not a good experience, even though there is a ton of great content available. This should be integrated into the main game (and publishing/updating content should be integrated into Mission Editor). So, step two is creating, discovering, sharing and keeping current content much easier

 

Edited June 12 by cfrag

[Ironhand]

14 hours ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

To be the stick in the mud, but how would we execute that? DCS' lacks ranking, things to award, etc. This almost seems like it'd be something the community or communities within DCS would have to push.

Which, frankly, I think would work…

My focus was simply on the “training” without the “lone wolf combat” aspect. It would make learning any aircraft more enjoyable just to be doing it as part of a group instead of alone.

As far as rankings are concerned, rankings (of a sort) already exist as part of the logbook based on combat sorties, etc. as do awards (medals). ED would need to create something for the training side of the sim. But, even without them, @TheBiggerBass’s idea has merit.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

On 6/12/2025 at 8:50 AM, Ironhand said:

My focus was simply on the “training” without the “lone wolf combat” aspect. It would make learning any aircraft more enjoyable just to be doing it as part of a group instead of alone.

As far as rankings are concerned, rankings (of a sort) already exist as part of the logbook based on combat sorties, etc. as do awards (medals). ED would need to create something for the training side of the sim. But, even without them, @TheBiggerBass’s idea has merit.

I'm skeptical, to say the least, but anything to make DCS more accessible while not compromising on fidelity and depth is definitely worth discussion at the very least.

[Tom P]

I did a poll on my youtube awhile back for this same topic. The biggest things the users voted for is the upfront cost and how complicated DCS is. 

To make DCS more BEGINNER friendly it would mainly have to do with the upfront cost of getting into DCS. You got the big name DCS youtubers saying you need a $4k PC to have a good starting point which is already a turn off. About $500 up front for a module/map(don't forget steam users don't have the trial program), Campaigns, hotas, pedals, headtracking. A DEDICATED HARDDRIVE.... to have a good starting point for the full experience. Yeah an Xbox controller gets the job done after you figure out how to map it and use the modifiers. But yeah the cost especially with right now in the current economy makes it even more niche. 

Speaking of Maps.. Caucasus needs a remake, its the most important map in DCS especially when it comes to beginners. It's their first map/world they go into and it's showing its age. I don't think it takes long even for a beginner to realize a 20 year old game is still using 20 year old assets. It's 2025, buyers expect better looking models especially for the price of getting into DCS.

DCS has a very limited single player experience and a pretty toxic multiplayer community. A beginner requires a lot of learning, which is fine but there is no way to fast forward through that. Single player doesn't hold most peoples hands enough and the organizations in multiplayer (discord communities, virtual squadrons) are often outright hostile towards new players. Which I get, it gets annoying answering "How do I start my F-15C" for the 10th time in a day. Some communities are better than others but most beginners wont want to take that chance or even know that it's out there.

Like BN said there's a giant learning curve. It takes a few days to get good at DCS, not 4 hours over a few day period. A legit 48-74 hours to get proficient at DCS. With that said maybe add more starting aircraft so user aren't dropping a ton of cash up front. I don't know how many people touch the T-51, I never touched it, its not appealing. You want a beginner to learn in a tail dragger... yeah ok. Not sure how often the L-39, C-101, or Yak-52 are being bought but those would be a pretty good starting list of aircraft to pair with the Su-25 or even a flaming cliffs F-15C. So they can get a decent BVR experience that goes past 15 miles.

Most of the training for the modules are pretty dated, boring, and not engaging. "ok now look at this yellow box, it's highlighting a switch, flip it" and I know a lot of beginners are looking to get into the air right away and don't bother touching the chucks guides/manuals or watch youtube guides. They want people to hold their hand and coach them through the motions. And for those on single player, how many of them know about the user file section? They're most likely buying campaigns and learning off of those, which is already spending more money.

Hurry up and wait! Hurry up and buy your new favorite shiny toy. Now wait for the next 5 years while it sits in Early Access. Oh hey this current patch just broke your favorite aircraft? Well that sucks, wait till the next patch.  How many beginners buy a EA module but leave DCS before seeing the module complete because their sick of the wait? There's no roadmaps to somewhat gauge a timeline on completion or when some new feature is coming out. 

Bonus sidebar. I also think DCS needs a better job at promoting their product to reach to a larger population. I barely see any advertisement or sponsors for it. It's pretty funny when a DCS youtuber makes a DCS video and is sponsored by another competitor. I personally got into DCS after watching Ralfidude videos for years on youtube. Not once have I seen a DCS sponsored video to this day.

[draconus]

3 hours ago, Tom P said:

I did a poll on my youtube awhile back for this same topic. The biggest things the users voted for is the upfront cost and how complicated DCS is. 

To make DCS more BEGINNER friendly it would mainly have to do with the upfront cost of getting into DCS. You got the big name DCS youtubers saying you need a $4k PC to have a good starting point which is already a turn off. About $500 up front for a module/map(don't forget steam users don't have the trial program), Campaigns, hotas, pedals, headtracking. A DEDICATED HARDDRIVE.... to have a good starting point for the full experience. Yeah an Xbox controller gets the job done after you figure out how to map it and use the modifiers. But yeah the cost especially with right now in the current economy makes it even more niche. 

Speaking of Maps.. Caucasus needs a remake, its the most important map in DCS especially when it comes to beginners. It's their first map/world they go into and it's showing its age. I don't think it takes long even for a beginner to realize a 20 year old game is still using 20 year old assets. It's 2025, buyers expect better looking models especially for the price of getting into DCS.

DCS has a very limited single player experience and a pretty toxic multiplayer community. A beginner requires a lot of learning, which is fine but there is no way to fast forward through that. Single player doesn't hold most peoples hands enough and the organizations in multiplayer (discord communities, virtual squadrons) are often outright hostile towards new players. Which I get, it gets annoying answering "How do I start my F-15C" for the 10th time in a day. Some communities are better than others but most beginners wont want to take that chance or even know that it's out there.

Like BN said there's a giant learning curve. It takes a few days to get good at DCS, not 4 hours over a few day period. A legit 48-74 hours to get proficient at DCS. With that said maybe add more starting aircraft so user aren't dropping a ton of cash up front. I don't know how many people touch the T-51, I never touched it, its not appealing. You want a beginner to learn in a tail dragger... yeah ok. Not sure how often the L-39, C-101, or Yak-52 are being bought but those would be a pretty good starting list of aircraft to pair with the Su-25 or even a flaming cliffs F-15C. So they can get a decent BVR experience that goes past 15 miles.

Most of the training for the modules are pretty dated, boring, and not engaging. "ok now look at this yellow box, it's highlighting a switch, flip it" and I know a lot of beginners are looking to get into the air right away and don't bother touching the chucks guides/manuals or watch youtube guides. They want people to hold their hand and coach them through the motions. And for those on single player, how many of them know about the user file section? They're most likely buying campaigns and learning off of those, which is already spending more money.

Hurry up and wait! Hurry up and buy your new favorite shiny toy. Now wait for the next 5 years while it sits in Early Access. Oh hey this current patch just broke your favorite aircraft? Well that sucks, wait till the next patch.  How many beginners buy a EA module but leave DCS before seeing the module complete because their sick of the wait? There's no roadmaps to somewhat gauge a timeline on completion or when some new feature is coming out. 

Bonus sidebar. I also think DCS needs a better job at promoting their product to reach to a larger population. I barely see any advertisement or sponsors for it. It's pretty funny when a DCS youtuber makes a DCS video and is sponsored by another competitor. I personally got into DCS after watching Ralfidude videos for years on youtube. Not once have I seen a DCS sponsored video to this day.

There's a lot of misconceptions and pure lies here.

You don't need $4k PC with every possible sim hardware to run DCS. You don't need to buy any module to start learning and flying. You don't need paid campaigns or MP to enjoy the game. Being Steam user doesn't lock you from downloading DCS from ED site and taking advantage of free trials. Caucasus is pretty decent for a free starting point. MP community isn't toxic or rather it depends on where do you enter and how you start - you can find toxic people in any community. SP is limited? By what? Creator imagination? OK. Training and learning takes time and dedication? Yeah it does. You're getting into full fidelity aircraft simulation. What did you expect? There are a lot of ways to learn - everyone can find their own which fits them best. Mustang isn't appealing? It's legendary but I'm not into props either. Take Su-25 for a spin then. The choice is yours. It's there to introduce you and let you try but if it's your kind of aircraft you can end up flying it as your main ride.

Let's not get into another discussion of EA, new free module or marketing. I was beginner once too. I started with low end PC, $50 HOTAS (already had one bought for LOMAC) and $5 FC module on sale. Took me over 200 flight hours to get confident and combat ready. I spent a lot of time on the forum, reading DCS and RL manuals. I play almost exclusively SP and enjoyed it very much for over 7 years. I find DCS community very helpful and some dedicate a lot of their time and talents to create content and share with other players... for free! I stayed with DCS - you seem frustrated a lot but you're still with us

[cfrag]

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

To make DCS more BEGINNER friendly it would mainly have to do with the upfront cost of getting into DCS.

That's not a beginner's item, that simply the price of admission, and it applies to everyone. To me, it's like saying that for a beginner Paraglider the upfront cost are too high. Lowering the cost of admission is not making DCS more beginner friendly if for the full admission you still have to spend. It's a data point, surely, and maybe there is something that ED can do to lower the cost across the board - but I doubt that there is much that they can do. After all, complaining that playing Half-Life Alyx has high upfront cost (you need a good VR set) is similarly missing the point entirely. The game costs a small fraction of the hardware required to play it, and with DCS it's similar. IMHO DCS's challenges lie elsewhere.

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

DCS has a very limited single player experience

Now, that is indeed a big challenge, and it is painful to me to see how much the kind folk at ED fumble this one over and over again. Terrible UI/UX, terrible tutorials, nothing to do, and content creation tools that harken from a millennia past. Look at the current implementation of DCS's control configuration. It's unintuitive, badly made, and squanders one chance after the other to make getting into DCS a quick, fun experience: Have a fun, interactive experience for a newcomer to set up a simple aircraft, the core controls - after all you only need a few inputs to control any aircraft: pitch, bank, thrust. Gear and Flaps. Optionally Yaw and perhaps wheel brakes. That's it. Enough to fly most planes. If you are smart, you also allow the player to copy your current settings for 'core' controls to all your planes. Because I wager that they are the same for all planes. They are for mine, and I own them all. DCS squanders this chance by displaying a user-hostile interface with myriads of unintelligible (for the beginner) choices, burying the few important settings in an avalanche of unimportant ones. Some hard-core people confuse complexity with sophistication here. It's not sophisticated. It's just crappy UI/UX design. Making this simple step of getting into the cockpit more fun and simple could go a long way. DCS has been obnoxiously bad in this regard for decades.

Similarly bad are the experiences to be had for content generation. Be they Instant Action, the new Quick Action Generator or Mission Editor, they simply are user hostile, badly designed, and could be so much better. Worse, there is phenomenal community-created content available (which is great), even hosted by ED (a phenomenal chance). Getting it into DCS is an exercise in futility and bad UX. WTF does a player need to go to ED's web site, use a decades old, really bad web design and navigate to some content, then download and manually install the files? We live in past 2005! Discovering, contributing and managing content should all be integrated into DCS. After all, Unreal Tournament showed us in 1999 how it can be done, and 25 years later there is very little excuse why it's not done here.

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

and a pretty toxic multiplayer community

I hear that a lot, and unfortunately sometimes have to concur. The blame for this IMHO can't be squarely placed at ED, and I hope that if they improved their engagement with the community, that this can change. Community integration still seems underdeveloped as a discipline for ED - tbh, if you read "We do not have time to read through a 30 post thread of two people arguing why something is bad" as your welcome message, you know that there's room for improvement.

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

Like BN said there's a giant learning curve.

There is. Which makes it so bewildering that so little effort is done to flatten the curve, or built in steps that make the curve more accessible. This does go against the grain of the more toxic "git gud" people of the community, and I still think it could help DCS become more popular.

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

it gets annoying answering "How do I start my F-15C" for the 10th time in a day.

Again, a missed opportunity. If this is a common question (and I do NOT doubt that it is), there are a lot of things that can be done in DCS to alleviate such basic beginners pains. Just how difficult would it be to tell someone who tries to autostart the A-10A that, when it's not zero, the throttle MUST be set to zero, else the sequence would fail? And how difficult would it be to simply go the logical next step and make the experience better by simply starting the effing plane? When the user presses 'start engine' on the keyboard, their intent and desire is clear. Adding complexity (throttle must be zero) without reason is the realm of really bad design [and IMHO having to manually turn on bat power and EO is just adding insult to injury]. It just results in frustration from the players. 

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

Most of the training for the modules are pretty dated, boring, and not engaging.

I think that this is one of the biggest barriers to enter DCS, and many people fall into the 'it is sophisticated because it is complex' trap. The tutorials are bad. They are often written for the wrong audience, and, on top of that, badly executed. Some people think that because they are difficult they must be good. They aren't, they are just bad. If you, as an instructor, fail to get your point across, you fail as an instructor. Flying isn't difficult. DCS, unfortunately, often makes it unnecessarily difficult, and I hope - since I do love DCS and want to see it flourish - that this can be overcome soon.

 

Edited June 17 by cfrag

[Mr_sukebe]

A few thoughts:

• Simplifying DCS doesn't feel like a prudent approach.  I'm assuming that most of us are here because it feels like the closest we'll get to being in a real aircraft
• FC3 approach?  Maybe, but then it's a sideways approach, and with WW2, is simply replicating what's already out there in that good, WW2 sim, or for that matter, the arcade versions.  If ED wanted to do that, I still think that the easiest approach would be to just buy the developer of the good WW2 sim and incorporate their aircraft into DCS
• I do wonder if we're too focused on the technology and should maybe consider more of "the dream".  What I mean by that is for example:
  • Car manufacturers love to show us these ads of families taking their Suv into the wild outdoors.  The fact that it'll probably spend most of it's life shuttling the kids to school is irrelevant
  • Racing sims, the dream there is to get yourself into the GT academy or a place in a real racing team
  • Want to play in Tier10 tanks?  Yeah, this way....

The examples are part of the way that people are sucked in and motivated to "git gud", and none of them talk about the fact that every one of them requires time, effort and similar.

For myself, my personal dream that onboarded me into DCS was wanting to learn to fly a helicopter in the most realistic environment possible.  I did my research, looked at loads of videos (this is back in 2015), considered the civ options, and ended up buying a Huey.  Crashed it a lot (of course), but the dream was what motivated me to keep practising until competent.

So maybe more streaming of missions would be a good thing, to raise awareness and possibly display "the dream" that someone might have, whether that is to learn to fly a chopper, get into Warbird fights, or conduct a night strike in an F18.

Maybe a simple walkthrough guide on how to become a competent pilot would help?  In my case, I'd just read Chickenhawk, and tried to practice in roughly the same order that the author said he'd been taught.  At the end of the day, half the battle on learning to fly is basically the same for all aircraft, i.e. awareness of how to navigate, deal with the weather, basics of aerodynamics etc, so why not have a simple step through guide that covers the basics, regardless.  Sure, post that, you need to spend the other half learning all about the airframe you're going to fly, and how to actually use it well. 

[buceador]

6 hours ago, Tom P said:

I don't know how many people touch the T-51, I never touched it, its not appealing. You want a beginner to learn in a tail dragger

This!  Tail draggers are notoriously difficult to take off and land and TOTALLY unsuitable as a first-time trainer platform.
(The P-51 was the legend BTW) @draconus

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Take Su-25 for a spin then

Can be a beast to land with tyres made of paper-mache!

 

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Took me over 200 flight hours to get confident and combat ready

I think this is one of the points being made re. not beginner friendly...

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

WTF does a player need to go to ED's web site, use a decades old, really bad web design and navigate to some content, then download and manually install the files?

I have never understood why the ED website is, initially, so user unfriendly, yes, when you know where everything is and what the links mean / refer to (Texture templates?) all is fine and dandy but as a first time user?

Edited June 17 by buceador
Clarity

[TheBiggerBass]

I'm sure significantly reducing the price for the FC3 modul has lowered the bar for beginners. I guess it's the best modul to start with. It helps getting familiar with DCS environment and many user flyable mods use FC3 for avionics.

Another hurdle for beginners are the HOTAS bindings. You don't want to spend hours and hours on technical HOTAS issues before you get to fly. I also spend a lot (to much) of time getting them to work with my equipment. I guess there should be more basic level binding setups for all or at least most available HOTAS setups.

As a beginner you want to fly asap without the need for endless setup sessions required before. Make the required preparation as short as possible or better make it an auto setup.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, buceador said:

Tail draggers are notoriously difficult to take off and land and TOTALLY unsuitable as a first-time trainer platform.

This is just one of the 2 free aircraft. It can but doesn't have to be your starting aircraft and neither is advised as a trainer. If it's your first time ever - there is always istant action where you're already up in the air flying.

1 hour ago, buceador said:

Can be a beast to land with tyres made of paper-mache!

It's not so delicate when you keep within the speed limits and don't treat it like a drifting car.

1 hour ago, buceador said:

I think this is one of the points being made re. not beginner friendly...

Becoming proficient military aircraft pilot is not beginner friendly? Yeah, someone has to tell the truth. You're not going to be an ace over the weekend.

[buceador]

32 minutes ago, draconus said:

It can but doesn't have to be your starting aircraft and neither is advised as a trainer.

True but the OP's message here is focussing on making DCS more user friendly for the newbie / beginner, neither of the 2 free aircraft supplied are user friendly.  The SU-27 (for example) is much easier to take off, fly and land.

36 minutes ago, draconus said:

You're not going to be an ace over the weekend.

I think that is a given but wasn't it you that said "Took me over 200 flight hours to get confident and combat ready" ? That kind of time frame is unlikely to encourage new blood.

[draconus]

13 minutes ago, buceador said:

That kind of time frame is unlikely to encourage new blood.

That's probably why ED is not going to say that but we can on the forum

Here's a thread already made by ED where anyone can share their contribution to make DCS more beginner friendly:

[pjbunnyru]

short:
training is outdated or not interesting, bad for understanding. ill ad - u cant skip part of mesag, its wildli annoying. "space" doesmt work
device setings, wandering throug menu and understanding what function in new modul can be caled.
visual part - sorry, caucas and free modules need to be updated. yes, its labor -intensive, but its necessary.
toxicity - it doesnt depend on mp or sp. repeated questions - it means ed couldnt do it so that most basic points would be explained to newbie and place for this information is hidden somewhere far away on forum/website/in dcs itself.
entry price isnt cheep entertainment, i think its clear from start. cost of maps, modules isnt that high. but all  devices can be very expensive.

Edited June 17 by pjbunnyru

[Dangerzone]

I wonder how difficult it would be to introduce ai voice recognition into DCS. When I started, one of the biggest hello was being able to ask over discord during a flight “why isn’t my missiles firing”, and have someone come back with “have you checked x,y, z?”  
 

Given the majority are SP and don’t have MP servers to assist, could some sort of AI built into training where a user can just talk and the AI knows the situation they’re in (plane, etc) and can draw from the extensive Q&A on this forum, chucks guides and elsewhere and give help be an asset. Thinks like checklists, or “where is the x switch”, etc. Think an interactive tutor. How close do you think AI is to told and how difficult do you think it would be to implement. 
 

And would maybe a poor man’s solution of this already be available, in ChatGPT’s voice mode? 
 

Edit: just thinking of AI voice mode DCS, and it would open up so many more opportunities too. Imagine being able to do ATC using your own voice. We have had some brilliant third-party implementations with overlord bot and VAICOM, but a full AI system of this would be pretty epic too. 

Edited June 17 by Dangerzone