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How to gain more attention to DCS


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Heyo dear DCS Community,

 

a few days ago I received a link from a friend that referred to Twitch.tv, which is a realtime streaming page where people/Player can stream the Game that is currently been played on their PC´s...in real time. First I though that this was a simple Video but as I joined him in Teamspeak and he lead me to the twitch website I thought this would be a good opportunity for the DCS Community to gain even more attention to potential DCS Pilots out there.

 

I mean many of you guys have a huge bandwidth (which is needed obviously in order to stream without stuttering), so what would be if we would have a growing amount of Pilots who are streaming their flights. Not that this would be very cool, it could also be an option to perform real time teaching and studding and who knows...may be it even would make people buy this sim and further support ED.

 

I have just been searching all available streams on the twitch directory and haven't found any single DCS streamer, so I consider this quite unknown...well....yet (hopefully :) )

 

What do you think about this Idea?

 

Afterburner:

By October 2013 my bandwidth will raise from 1,5 Mbit to 50 Mbit...guess what I am doing then...;)

DCS-Tutorial-Collection       

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Good Call

 

I will point the Militarygamers.com pr manager on it and see if he cant at least discuss it, I may also do it on my end. Another thing that comes to mind is that for those of you that are members of larger communities, touting the awesomeness of the titles over your voice comms is also a good way. Dont forget to use your social media's (twitter, FB) to throw some pub out there.

 

I refuse to accept that a game that doesnt hand its players an easy game is now a niche game. Me and my buddies are constantly touting how this title is really the anti-game to everything on the market right now. It is difficult to learn, takes a lot of time to master, but the reward of knowing that you accomplished something in game are MUCH higher than in any other title, let alone any other flight game out there.

 

Cheers!

 

Cacti4-6


Edited by cacti4-6

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A community for current and former US Service Members. :thumbup:

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The Sim has a current state that is so awesome...it can barely been described just by words.

 

I had a nice easy flight today right before I went of for Nightshift. It wasnt a Combat Flight. I furthermore have created a fast Mission in the Editor. Time set nearly to Dawn, clear sky, just the Warthog and me and...

in a loop.

Just perfroming my Rampstart Procedure, taking off and climbing up to nearly 20.000 ft.

Enjoying the beautiness of this Sim, returned to base and landed....so awesome.

 

I own this Sim (speaking of A-10C in the Moment) since initial Beta release and I can´t stop freaking out about this Sim. The whole grafics, the effect while moving around with my track IR while flying up in 20.000 feet is indescribable.

 

I wish I could have shared this experience with some friends of mine, who dont own this Sim, because I know they would be interested in this...

DCS-Tutorial-Collection       

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I refuse to accept that a game that doesnt hand its players an easy game is now a niche game. Me and my buddies are constantly touting how this title is really the anti-game to everything on the market right now. It is difficult to learn, takes a lot of time to master, but the reward of knowing that you accomplished something in game are MUCH higher than in any other title, let alone any other flight game out there.

 

Cheers!

 

Cacti4-6

 

Wow wow wow. I would rather say the same for a game like Quake or perhaps Street Fighter which are considered sports due to their extremely steep learning curves (talking about multiple years of training for most players)

 

However, DCS and Quake or any other E-Sport are completly different subject but there is something similar to both of them. They all struggles getting new members since something like 95% of the population is not looking something to "work on" but something to have fun hence why the mindless games such as Call of Duty, Angry Birds are so popular.

 

The only thing we can do is make sure it is easy to reach (via websites, communities or stream like mentionned by the OP) and cross your fingers that some will change their mind and decide to try a new thing to learn.

 

Sometimes I wish a greater portion of the population were into hard games.... by sometimes I mean everyday.

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One way to gain attention to DCS would be for Eagle and/or a 3rd party to create a RAW style online game.

 

When I first really got into "flight sims" I stated by playing Novalogic Raptor Air War (RAW) online. The server could host 128 pilots online battling each other. The key was simplicity in the UI and simplified avionics, etc.,

 

If small maps were created to optimize performance and the net code expanded, this could really increase interest in ED sims.

 

"Oh these guys make a more hardcore version? Cool!"

Dave "Hawg11" St. Jean

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Froogle with the WarHawks fairly regularly livestreams many sims, including the Ka-50. twitch.tv/frooglepete

edit: Forgot to mention that he announces streams on his Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/Frooglesim?fref=ts

I only respond to that little mechanical voice that says "Terrain! Terrain! Pull Up! Pull Up!"

 

Who can say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.

-Robert Goddard

 

"A hybrid. A car for enthusiasts of armpit hair and brown rice." -Jeremy Clarkson

 

"I swear by my pretty floral bonet, I will end you." -Mal from Firefly

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I had a nice easy flight today right before I went of for Nightshift. It wasnt a Combat Flight. I furthermore have created a fast Mission in the Editor. Time set nearly to Dawn, clear sky, just the Warthog and me and... Just perfroming my Rampstart Procedure, taking off and climbing up to nearly 20.000 ft.

Enjoying the beautiness of this Sim, returned to base and landed....so awesome.

 

I had one of those moments in a mission awhile ago. The mission had pretty much played through- but we had some unfinished business at one of the target areas. I was just recently off nightshift myself so my sleep pattern was all messed up. I woke up at about 4am and couldn't get back to sleep. I got up, checked on the server and sure enough the mission time had ticked through to almost exactly the same time in the morning in mission.

 

Why not?

 

It even FELT cold sitting in that pit getting the aircraft started. One of those brisk mornings- juuuuuuuuuust as the sunlight is starting to reach into the sky in the distance. I still like to taxi to the runway with the canopy up... and sort of imagine myself with my arms resting on the sides of the cockpit where the canopy rails would be... Take in some of the sounds...

 

I find myself on occasion wishing there was a little more activity at the base- but that's a subject addressed in many other threads!

 

It was about a 30 minute flight to the target area, and the sun seemed to be moving upon the horizon a lot faster than I was!

 

Anyway, I said EXACTLY the same thing- the sim really can be beautiful in so many different ways... I was pretty stoked at how complete my sense of immersion was at that early hour.

"ENO"

Type in anger and you will make the greatest post you will ever regret.

 

"Sweetest's" Military Aviation Art

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i really like those kind of threads!

maybe its only a brainfart, but what about some kind of "open" DCS community youtube channel, where everybody can post his vids, and tell their friends, link to their facebook account and the like....

 

just a youtube channel, where the password and username is known here in the community...

and i dont know,i havent really seen such extraordinary good vids for DCS, like this guy made for CLOD:

 

...though maybe i was just too ignorant and there are already some...

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What sort of upload speed do you need to do something like this? I have 3MB, but I think it might be doubling soon. If I'm playing SP, would that be at all useful, or is it pointless?

 

3MB should be more than enough...I recommend just to register there and share the link you can generate in order to spread your stream. Share it with friends and ask them about the quality. As far as I know it is possible to adjust the resolution, so the wider the resolution is the more upload speed is needed...I gladly would join a test and report back to you whether it is enough.

 

According to your question of SP or MP.

This is a stream about what you are doing right now. So it doesn't matter if it is SP or MP, it must be impressive to those who do not know the Sim, it must be teaching to those who want to learn somethings special...at the end it´s your show...just make it


Edited by MemphisBelle

DCS-Tutorial-Collection       

BlackSharkDen - Helicopter only

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Hardware: Oculus Rift S; HOTAS Warthog; Saitek Rudder Pedals, K-51 Collective

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, it must be teaching to those who want to learn somethings special...at the end it´s your show...just make it

 

MAybe I'm not the best guy for this. I only dabble in these sims, but I love them. I just get distracted by other games too. I'll look into it anyway.

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MAybe I'm not the best guy for this. I only dabble in these sims, but I love them. I just get distracted by other games too. I'll look into it anyway.

 

It has been an example (teaching)

and you also can stream what ever you want ;)

DCS-Tutorial-Collection       

BlackSharkDen - Helicopter only

Specs:: ASrock Z790 Pro RS; Intel i5-13600K @5,1Ghz; 64GB DDR5 RAM; RTX 3080 @10GB; Corsair RMX Serie 750; 2x SSD 850 EVO 1x860 EVO 500GB 1x nvme M.2 970 EVO 1TB; 1x nvme M.2 980 Pro 2TB+ 3 TB HDD

Hardware: Oculus Rift S; HOTAS Warthog; Saitek Rudder Pedals, K-51 Collective

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Not long ago there was a video of the Paradox interactive boss doing a talk about dealing with a niche product.

 

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-08-paradox-using-an-axe-to-carve-a-niche

 

In this talk he mentioned a lot of very interesting concepts that perhaps ED (and any other simulation developer/publisher) should look into.

 

Here were some of the major ideas that I think apply.

 

1.) He talks about "anti-marketing" where you play up the challenge and tell players "they might not be able to handle this" (in a playful way) and they will take that challenge in many cases.

 

2.) Don't betray your core audience for a "mass market", if you make realistic flight sims, market that and don't try to dumb it all down in order get customers you never really wanted in the first place.

 

3.) Be VERY aggressive with targeted marketing, he mentions putting ads in military history magazines for his games but you could easily do the same with aviation, history, military and technology related magazines. in that same vain, go ahead and use Facebook ads that will target those with military interests.

 

Flight sims will always (and should always) be for a specific market, the problem is that many assume that once can only target gamers (and usually the general gamer) while ED should be going after all those gamers that are already interested but just don't know about it.

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Afterburner:

By October 2013 my bandwidth will raise from 1,5 Mbit to 50 Mbit...guess what I am doing then...;)

Maybe this has been addressed already, but in this case (streaming from your computer to a website/server), you should pay attention to the theoretical upload value, not the download one. Indeed I assume that you posted the download one (which, itself, is rarely 100% used).

 

Sorry to sound a little bit pessimistic, but it is what it is ,)

 

Anyway, your idea sounds interesting to me. I cannot wait to get back in business :)

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I see YouTube as a good area with a'lot of DCS videos, I myself am mostly using this service to push out videos on Sim's using some DCS Modules. Hopefully YouTube has not been saturated and can still help bring new users to the DCS product range.

 

The release of the DCS Huey module has really helped also with all the reviews on the main Sim sites plus if you look at there forum section a few new users have come in.

 

So 3rd party's with existing user bases hopefully will bring with them migrating customers when they see the quality of the product in DCS vs the product use in another Sim software.


Edited by TimeKilla
Spelling.

:joystick: YouTube :pilotfly:

TimeKilla on Flight Sims over at YouTube.

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Heyo dear DCS Community,

 

a few days ago I received a link from a friend that referred to Twitch.tv, which is a realtime streaming page where people/Player can stream the Game that is currently been played on their PC´s...in real time. First I though that this was a simple Video but as I joined him in Teamspeak and he lead me to the twitch website I thought this would be a good opportunity for the DCS Community to gain even more attention to potential DCS Pilots out there.

 

I mean many of you guys have a huge bandwidth (which is needed obviously in order to stream without stuttering), so what would be if we would have a growing amount of Pilots who are streaming their flights. Not that this would be very cool, it could also be an option to perform real time teaching and studding and who knows...may be it even would make people buy this sim and further support ED.

 

I have just been searching all available streams on the twitch directory and haven't found any single DCS streamer, so I consider this quite unknown...well....yet (hopefully :) )

 

What do you think about this Idea?

 

Afterburner:

By October 2013 my bandwidth will raise from 1,5 Mbit to 50 Mbit...guess what I am doing then...;)

 

This thread's title is: "How to gain more attention to DCS"

 

Run a 30 second TV video ad like what "Aces High" does on "The Military Channel" via cable TV should get DCS noticed, USA market. That is how I found out about AH in 2007.

 

2 weeks ago I replaced my Alienware Aurora R-3's video card with a GTX680 with 4GB memory, I purchased from NewEgg. I upgraded for playing DCS World.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-121-705&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Keywords=R3#scrollFullInfo

 

NewEgg gave me for free the video game "Metro: Last Light" as a benchmark to test the card. Golly---talk about eye candy! DCS does not even come close to the visual effects this 1st person game has.

 

I got interested in the DCS: Black Shark 3 years ago from a buddy that frequents a F4U squad in AH, is how I got the DCS bug. I rarely play AH anymore.


Edited by DieHard

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Another way to get more attention is to attend live events like we did last weekend.

Most people only know FSX, and are quite surprised when you tell them there are other flightsims around, with better physics and graphics.

Several visitors wanted to know where they could get DCS, and what it would cost.

It's too bad ED doesn't go to these events, as they could really use the exposure.

 

So ED, if you're reading this, the next big event will be the International Flightsim Weekend in the Aviodrome museum at Lelystad Airport.

With over 300 participants and 2500 visitors, this is an event not to be missed!

Dutch Flanker Display Team | LLTM 2010 Tiger Spirit Award
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If you want good software for streaming, i highly recommended Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). You can get it here. It's free too :thumbup:

 

Once you've downloaded it and you've made an account of twitch.tv you should get an stream key, copy and paste that stream key into the stream key text field in the broadcast settings option in OBS. You should be setup now to stream. I'm not sure what the best encoding options/settings are so i would research online to see which ones are the best ones for your pc and your connection speed. Anyway, hope that helps some people with issues on streaming. It might cause slight performance degrade as a word of warning.

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What about posting video links to reddit or some other high-traffic website? I posted a video off my Falcon BMS channel and didn't get much response, but my videos suck anyways. It's worth a shot though.

 

I think one of the hardest things about marketing high fidelity sims is that the appeal is largely lost on others because they simply don't have the knowledge to pick up on what's actually going on and/or they think BF3 is the most realistic game ever...

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i used to stream DCS, CLiffs of DOver and WWIIOL using LIVESTREAM/PROCASTER. These are also both free and quite good and they also have some nice website widgets to allow the playback loop get embedded in a homepage.

 

Procaster allowed your website to stream live whenever you wanted and then defaulted to a playlist when you were not live casting. very elegant solution.

 

Although one has to be careful with these broadcasters - i had a squadmate broadcast himself shirtless for a while without even knowing it. :D

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"This was not in the Manual I did not read", cried the Noob" - BMBM, WWIIOL

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Now all we have to do is get Twitch to consolidate all the "Digital Combat Simulator" Aircraft into one category.

 

I mean, DCS: World is a unified interface now after all. The game should now be "DCS: World."

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