FC2.0 First impressions

[coolts]

After 3 days with this sim I have barely scratched the surface of all it has to offer but feel that I have had sufficient flight time for some impression to begin taking shape which will hopefully stand up to scrutiny by my peers;

 

Value for money & first impressions

·

We were promised an expansion to FC at a cut down price. This price increased as the time taken & features included by the devs were higher than they initially estimated. This caused some feather ruffling amongst the more impatient within the community, but as many of us pointed out at the time, quality costs money, time costs money, and experience costs money, and we would rather have devs working to higher goals to give us a richer, more immersive experience. If that costs an extra $15, then here is mine!

 

·

What we actually got was, IMO, way more than expected. I have spent the weekend just getting used to the A-10 and it will take me months to get the full measure of the reworked plane roster.

 

·

The separate control schemes are a masterstroke. Yes they will take time, but once set-up will offer a much tighter control than a one-size-fits-all-profile which we have been using. With all the plane specific controls, profiles were creaking at the seams.

 

·

The whole new interface brings the sim much more into line with DCS which is a good thing going forward. The mission planner & load out screens are much faster to navigate than before and the DCS control mapping is much more intuitive.

 

·

The game engine upgrades are a revelation! Improved in every way, this game is now back to where it belongs, at the cutting edge of sim technology. It’s a real eye opener and all the mods I used to use to bring FC1.12b up to scratch are now not needed. It’s beautiful out of the box and is a real technical achievement. When you think that what the devs have basically done, this would be the equivalent of MS bringing out a patch that turned XP into windows 7! This is evidence of the consistent coding practices at ED, (as the software dev who sits next to me at work explained).

Depth

·

I have begun the A-10 campaign and flown a couple of standalone missions and now feel much more connected to the virtual battlefields than before. More comms, more scripted speech, the vastly more complex threat environment, the improved cockpits, all combine to generate a much firmer feeling of immersion then before. We still don’t have the oft asked for F4 style dynamic campaign but I would suggest that the mod makers get on the case there. After all, the F4 DC was smoke and mirrors to a large extent and a further development of the excellent RamGen mod could work wonders here.

 

·

Working through the new campaigns & missions, re-learning the aircraft systems and their tactical employment in the new environment, creating specific control sets, multiplayer refuelling (yay! *EDIT:

apparantly

*), all this is going to take a while and promises to be a very rewarding and enjoyable experience.

Difficulties

 

So far, I’ve only had a couple and they are mostly either third party specific of a case of RTFM.

·

The key command changes

have thrown my Cougar profile a few curveballs. I couldn’t get the trim to work (is ‘Rctrl+;’ the same as ‘;+Rctrl’ ?), so I ended up changing the key bindings. Sorted. I have a new rule. If I can’t get the default key mapping working on the Cougar in 5 mins because of Korgy, etc, then I change the damn key.

 

·

The DCS “shimmer effect” on mountains / distant terrain

. I seem to recall that this was driver related on Black Shark and I am sure will be easy to sort out. Not a game breaker.

 

·

Sound level issues

. The plane sound effects are muted, (flare dispensing, etc). Posts suggest this can be resolved by tweaking the in game sound sliders. I am experimenting with this as I like to hear my gears/ flaps retracting.

 

·

trackIR Z-axis / zoom

. This is a pain and I will do some more forum trawling later. Basically, I can’t get the trackIR Z axis to control the in game zoom properly. I desperately need this for strafing. I have set it to “zoom” in the control screen but is still doesn’t work properly and instead it does a weird “matrix” camera pull-shot thing, whereas pressing “zoom” on the numerical keypad actually zooms. (I am admin, trackIR is admin, FC is admin, everybody is admin). ;)

This may be a .lua limit put in place to prevent exessive zooming breaking the reworked 6dof cockpit module.

 

·

The thorny subject of the missing training content

. I can see where Ed acre coming from here. To badly paraphrase Wags, the track file playback in LOMAC was badly flawed and broke all the time. Rather than being flamed by countless posters, they have chosen to link to video content instead. Fair enough. I would suggest adding an explanation to that effect on the training screen because, as it stands, its looks broken. The training videos are great however, and releasing them early on YouTube was a very good move.

So far….

 

Overall, I couldn’t be happier with this release. There are always going to be a few teething problems at first, but nothing major to report. The upgrade has breathed new life into FC and this will re-invigorate the community and keep us engrossed, allowing ED to shift resources onto DCS:A10.

 

With this release, ED have given a massive shot in the arm to our hobby and the genre, which was sorely needed. They have shown the way for independent self publishing studios to move forward without the monolithic restrictions and pressures dictated by out of touch and paranoid publishers, (yes UBI, I am looking at you), obsessed more with crippling DRM and treating their customers as criminals, than they are with quality and commitment to their craft.

 

Well done ED! See you in the skies. :pilotfly:

 

p.s To celebrate the release of FC2.0 I am now turning labels off! (he said sheepishly):music_whistling:

Edited March 29, 2010 by coolts

[Panzertard]

Now if I was oblivious to where you posted this, I would have though it was a game magazine preview.

Kudos! :)

 

EDIT: Yes, I gave this thread a 5 star bling. Me biased!? Certainly!

Edited March 29, 2010 by Panzertard

[Boulund]

Great post!

Regarding your issue with Z-axis and zoom, I might suggest you to search the forums since this topic has been mentioned several times in multiple threads since release. I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.

 

See you in the skies then! :)

[garengarch]

@ op

bravo! and ditto

[Sawamura]

..., multiplayer refuelling (yay!), ...

 

 

It works?! :)

 

I didnt know that. :thumbup:

 

 

Great post!

[104th_Crunch]

Great review. I'll just add that Mutliplayer has also been improved by the same leaps and bounds as you describe for SP. There are probably a few more bugs in MP, but no show stoppers and I am hope they are simple fixes for ED.

 

"· The DCS “shimmer effect” on mountains / distant terrain. I seem to recall that this was driver related on Black Shark and I am sure will be easy to sort out. Not a game breaker."

 

This has been a part of LO1, DCS and 2. It is a limitation of the current engine displaying the cloud shadows on the ground, they flicker. I guess the reasoning to still include cloud shadows is that once you're higher off the ground they look great. If you prefer you can manually remove them using Modman's CDDS explorer. See this post.

[Konovalov]

Well done Coolts on an excellent first impressions review. I enjoyed the read thoroughly. :thumbup:

[coolts]

Great review. I'll just add that Mutliplayer has also been improved by the same leaps and bounds as you describe for SP. There are probably a few more bugs in MP, but no show stoppers and I am hope they are simple fixes for ED.

 

"· The DCS “shimmer effect” on mountains / distant terrain. I seem to recall that this was driver related on Black Shark and I am sure will be easy to sort out. Not a game breaker."

 

 

This has been a part of LO1, DCS and 2. It is a limitation of the current engine displaying the cloud shadows on the ground, they flicker. I guess the reasoning to still include cloud shadows is that once you're higher off the ground they look great. If you prefer you can manually remove them using Modman's CDDS explorer. See this post.

 

Cheers Crunch. To be honest, I haven’t taken FC online in any way shape or form yet, (DCS:BS either for that matter), apart from home LAN.

I plan to, once I have mastered SP, as the standard of the guys who fly online squadrons, etc. seems very high to me, and I don’t want to be the elephant in the room ;)

 

The shimmer thing isn’t cloud shadows as they are fine. It’s more like flickering vertical rainbow effects over distant mountains (sounds more exciting than it looks)

 

-------

 

pps. Thanks Konovalov!

Edited March 29, 2010 by coolts

[Stangpilot]

Great review. I'll just add that Mutliplayer has also been improved by the same leaps and bounds as you describe for SP. There are probably a few more bugs in MP, but no show stoppers and I am hope they are simple fixes for ED.

 

"· The DCS “shimmer effect” on mountains / distant terrain. I seem to recall that this was driver related on Black Shark and I am sure will be easy to sort out. Not a game breaker."

 

This has been a part of LO1, DCS and 2. It is a limitation of the current engine displaying the cloud shadows on the ground, they flicker. I guess the reasoning to still include cloud shadows is that once you're higher off the ground they look great. If you prefer you can manually remove them using Modman's CDDS explorer. See this post.

 

I've have noticed the flickering issue, but in other posts it seems all the people I have found with this issue have ATI cards. Is this an issue isolated to ATI cards or does it happen with NVIDIA too?

[*Rage*]

Cheers Crunch. To be honest, I haven’t taken FC online in any way shape or form yet, (DCS:BS either for that matter), apart from home LAN.

I plan to, once I have mastered SP, as the standard of the guys who fly online squadrons, etc. seems very high to me, and I don’t want to be the elephant in the room ;)

 

The shimmer thing isn’t cloud shadows as they are fine. It’s more like flickering vertical rainbow effects over distant mountains (sounds more exciting than it looks)

 

-------

 

pps. Thanks Konovalov!

 

I've have noticed the flickering issue, but in other posts it seems all the people I have found with this issue have ATI cards. Is this an issue isolated to ATI cards or does it happen with NVIDIA too?

 

I had this flickering issue but it was more like thin vertical black lines over distant mountains. Had the same problem with Lockon/FC/DCS.

 

Went away after I turrned haze off.

[Wags]

Fair review, thanks for writing it up.

[Napa]

I've have noticed the flickering issue, but in other posts it seems all the people I have found with this issue have ATI cards. Is this an issue isolated to ATI cards or does it happen with NVIDIA too?

 

It happens with NVIDIA too. I have the same issue in DCS too.