Indecisive noob needs help...

[Crunge92]

Hey guys, I've been considering buying this game, and I just saw it's available on Steam (which is awesome) so now the question is (and I know you probably get asked this a lot): Should I?

 

I've seen the minimum requirements, and I know my laptop meets them, but I just want to know if it will run well (I'm a bit of a stickler for graphics). I figured you guys would know better than me, considering I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to PC gaming, and this seems to be a very memory-intensive game. I've got:

 

Intel i7-2630QM @ 2.00Ghz

6GB RAM

Windows 7 64-bit

Nvidia GeForce GT540M 2GB

(Am I forgetting anything?)

 

 

And a follow-up question: Will I be able to play this game with a gamepad, like, for instance, a PS3 controller that I McGyvered to work on my laptop? I've got a proper joystick, but I'm in a college dorm and the joystick is two hours away at home. Is the misery of using a controller more or less than the misery involved in driving that far?

 

Many thanks for your help.

[ralfidude]

You will not survive without a joystick in this simulator.

 

 

First off, it's not a game, it's a sim :) :p

 

Second off, graphics are not everything, and your stock CPU will probably lead to some bad FPS at a lot of times.

 

 

I say get it, but only if you enjoy the huge learning curve. If you thought that FC2 was hard, wait till this stirs the insides of your brain you never thought you had. But once you get it all down, it's a lot of fun.

 

 

So the question to everybody who has this "should I get it" is rather silly, of course they will all say yes because we friggin love this sim.

 

The real question is, is this the type of simulator you WANT and would ENJOY? Watch some youtube videos, get to know it, and if it's something you want to try, hop on board!

 

Then you can have fun like the rest of us are, certainly my friends and I love it:

[cichlidfan]

Yes, go get the stick if you are going to give it a go. If you don't you will waste more than two hours figuring out that you should have gone and gotten the stick...or made a shorter trip to buy a new one.

 

Your laptop should do reasonably well. I have run the sim on an ASUS ROG laptop will lesser specs that yours and it is acceptable. You might not max everything out but it should be quite playable.

 

The learning curve is significant but if the idea appeals to you and you have the time to put into it then I suspect you will find it well worth it.

 

Good luck.

[Speed]

You'll probably want a joystick. Certainly, if you decide to actually play this game, you'll need a joystick. What I mean by those two, seemingly-contradictory statements is that you could always buy and fire up the game, and check it out for a short period of time using the controller, before you invested money in a joystick. But to really play this game, you'll need a joystick.

 

It is true, this game has a fairly steep learning curve. But there is a manual, and several interactive training missions. Don't let the 600? pages of the manual scare you, flying and fighting in the jet is not hard once you get the hang of it.

 

If you get the game, it runs alright, and you think you really will want to dive into it, then go out and get a joystick. If you can afford it, the X52 is the best value for your money- I think you can still buy an X-52, non-pro. If so, they're like $100. If you can't find one, then go with an X-52 pro, which is like $150.

 

There are folks on these forums that make do with a $50 joystick. In fact, you'll hear some people who say it's more important to get a track IR than a good, programmable joystick.

 

But anyway... there are those out there that get by with a $50 joystick and NO track IR, but it's not recommended. You get a tremendously better experience out of this game with a Track IR and, at minimum, an X-52.

 

Also, it would be better if you bought the game off of this website: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ . The developers get a higher share of the revenue, or so I've heard. Also, Steam can be slow to get patches up for the game, as in, months slow.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Speed

[Turk10mm]

As said above. The learning curve is high, and mastery of the jets avionics and systems will take a lot of time and effort, but is quite rewarding.

 

When AFAC or JTAC calls out a target's location, and you go heads down in the sim, punch in all the right numbers in all the right places, set your entrance and exit points, spot the targets, slave the appropriate sensors, select the requested munition, and go in hot and smoke the target in quick succession without thinking about it, you feel like you've conquered the sim. But you haven't yet.. :)

 

Get it if you like just flying around, that's easy.

Get it if you like blowing some stuff up that doesn't shoot back at you that bad

Get it if you like highly technical avionics and a true simulation of what our Hawg pilots do every day in real life.

 

I say get it. Your framerates may not be the greatest on the laptop, but it might just hook you in and make you build a new computer :P

 

Joystick such as an X52 (at minimum) and TrackIR are a must IMHO. Some do with less, some do with a hell of a lot more. It depends on your desire for immersion and your wallet.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Turk10mm

[lanmancz]

I can also recommend to buy this sim (and BS2 as well!). It's well worth the price. But for start you don't really need all this expensive hardware mentioned above. I've been playing for about a year and I'm still flying with cheap logitech extreme 3d pro and after some axis tweaking it works ok. As for the track ir - I recommend you to check out freetrack. I build my own freetrack kit for about 10$ and it works like magic.

[Britt007]

Buy it, STEEP learning curve but great fun, and so rewarding when you get thing right.

[Crunge92]

Well, I've made my decision. I've seen what you guys have to say, and I've seen the videos, and unfortunately I don't think I'll be buying it this time. It just seems that if I want to play it at an enjoyable level, I'm going to need a lot more time, money and equipment than what I have.

 

The ironic thing is that I've been looking far and wide for a realistic combat flight simulator--and unfortunately this sim is exactly what I wished for. My dad was an A-10 pilot, so naturally I wanted this sim even more. And I played Lock-On on this laptop pretty well, so when I saw that this was made by the same people I thought "How hard could it be?"

 

I guess I'll be condemned to jet-camping in Battlefield 3 on my PSTriple until I can afford a better PC. Until then, adios!

[Greygoose]

Well .... tell Dad you want to be just like him....

 

Maybe he'll help you out

 

 

Or more likely he'll tell you to get on with your studies....................

[CAT_101st]

If you don't want the big learning curve and want to use a game pad. You can always set to game settings insted of simulation mode. But you will be missing out on 70% of the sim.

 

As for your PC it will run it but at lower settings. The game only runs on 2 cores ans one is sound. The GPU dosen't need to be big to run that game a full but you do need a big CPU.