DCS WWII: Europe 1944

[horseback]

So how many WW2 planes are documented well enough to model them in a similar fashion to the P51?

 

This seems to be the elephant in the room.

Besides the Mustang and the FW 190D-9 already available or deep in the pipeline? There are a fair number of Merlin Spits of various marques, Corsairs (F4U-1 through F4U-7), Allison powered P-40s of various types, late model (FM-2) Wildcats, TBF/TBM Avengers and a jillion or so T-6/SNJ Texans/Harvards being flown into every little airshow in the USA you can imagine. There are rather fewer P-47s and P-38s flying today; they are probably a lot more maintenance intensive with those turbosuperchargers, and you don't see many Hellcats or Airacobras either (not as sexy as the F4U, I think). I've seen as many as six P-47s in the air at the same time and around four P-38s at the Chino Air Show in the last five years or so, so they are out there, in various states of modification.

 

Regardless, there are more flying examples of each of the above aircraft than there are of the FW 190D-9, the Spitfire MkXIV and the Bf-109K that have been mentioned in the official releases or by Ilya on these boards. There may be two or three examples each of authentic restorations of the A6M or Ki-43 still flying with the original engines as well, which may not bode well for fans of the Pacific war. AFAIK, there are no 'authentic' flying examples of the J2M (Jack), N1K (George), Ki-61 (Tony) or Ki-84 (Frank).

 

I think that the main issue will be access and reliable documentation. There's a fair amount of potential candidates for the present time. If they follow the DCS World model and provide a free flyable aircraft with the module, I suspect that you'll get the Texan trainer--it's well known and documented, and it was widely used to acclimate pilots moving up from the more forgiving primary trainers of the WWII era. We'll need trainer time if we're going to fly 'full real' flight models of the models already mentioned; the Mustang is well known to be pretty forgiving for a WWII fighter--wait 'til you try to take off in that 109 or God help you, a P-40. Those will be hard.

 

cheers

 

horseback

[NineLine]

I suspect that you'll get the Texan trainer

 

 

Hmmm that would be cool, how about it Luthier, some form of trainer inclded with the DCS WWII base... that would be cool... much like the trainer in CloD.

[Korn]

Good post, horseback.

 

Indeed as we move back in time the problem of reliable sources with planes not flown (or very little flown) nowadays it's becoming significant.

 

Still, using perhaps later models still flying and proper documentation we can hope to get more than decent simulation of most WW2 birds. If actual performance is well documented i'm sure we can get over minor imprecisions... also the community is sometimes suprisingly hepfull with this little matters.

[9.JG27 DavidRed]

...wait 'til you try to take off in that 109 or God help you, a P-40. Those will be hard.

 

cheers

 

horseback

 

i cant wait to actually try this,now that you mention the take off in a 109...

so many pilot accounts say that it was really dangerous, and that even experienced pilots, when not focused, failed in the attempt.

[horseback]

i cant wait to actually try this,now that you mention the take off in a 109...

so many pilot accounts say that it was really dangerous, and that even experienced pilots, when not focused, failed in the attempt.

Yeah, apparently it was partly due to the toe-in (or was it toe-out?) of the main wheels. Supposedly, if you got just a tiny bit sideways Bad Things Would Happen. I've also read that it was better behaved on a grass field than it was on concrete or tarmac (the Spitfire is supposed to be 'nicer' on grass as well). All versions of the P-40 were reportedly similar in difficulty landing & taking off, but there's a LOT more current knowledge about the Warhawk (there are a bunch of them still flying around--often with the most garish and unauthentic paintjobs you could imagine).

 

cheers

 

horseback

[Echo38]

There are rather fewer P-47s and P-38s flying today; they are probably a lot more maintenance intensive with those turbosuperchargers, and you don't see many Hellcats or Airacobras either (not as sexy as the F4U, I think). I've seen as many as six P-47s in the air at the same time and around four P-38s at the Chino Air Show in the last five years or so, so they are out there, in various states of modification.

 

A year or two ago I saw a new video of five P-38s flying in formation. There was to be a sixth but she was grounded for maintenance. I believe there are seven flyable at present, which is heartening, as about a decade ago, there were only two.

 

Since the Fighter Collection owns & operates a P-47, I think the chances of a good simulation thereof are very high. As for the P-38, it's very well-documented, although most of the "mainstream" sources have loads of incorrect data; the USAAF manual itself has loads of glaring errors, and most of the survey resources on WWII fighters (and even a lot of the ones which focus on the P-38) have simply copied these errors from the manual and other bad sources, so some sifting would be in order.

[jspec3]

Hi Luthier,

 

Wondering if you or your team have given some thought yet on how to get a good number of bombers in the air without killing people's PC's? Escorting or intercepting large numbers of bombers was such a big part of the European theater in 1944; It'd be too bad if you guys only were able to put a few in the sky.

 

I'm hoping that thinking about it early on you might be able to come up with some ideas to get the best of both worlds (a good number of planes with ok pc performance). Kind of like European Air War, when it came out it might not of had the most cutting edge graphics for the time, but it still looked pretty good and you could have decent size raids.

 

Anyhow, thanks for all the posting and good luck to you and your group with the project!

[Vampyre]

Besides the Mustang and the FW 190D-9 already available or deep in the pipeline? There are a fair number of Merlin Spits of various marques, Corsairs (F4U-1 through F4U-7), Allison powered P-40s of various types, late model (FM-2) Wildcats, TBF/TBM Avengers and a jillion or so T-6/SNJ Texans/Harvards being flown into every little airshow in the USA you can imagine. There are rather fewer P-47s and P-38s flying today; they are probably a lot more maintenance intensive with those turbosuperchargers, and you don't see many Hellcats or Airacobras either (not as sexy as the F4U, I think). I've seen as many as six P-47s in the air at the same time and around four P-38s at the Chino Air Show in the last five years or so, so they are out there, in various states of modification.

 

Regardless, there are more flying examples of each of the above aircraft than there are of the FW 190D-9, the Spitfire MkXIV and the Bf-109K that have been mentioned in the official releases or by Ilya on these boards. There may be two or three examples each of authentic restorations of the A6M or Ki-43 still flying with the original engines as well, which may not bode well for fans of the Pacific war. AFAIK, there are no 'authentic' flying examples of the J2M (Jack), N1K (George), Ki-61 (Tony) or Ki-84 (Frank).

 

I think that the main issue will be access and reliable documentation. There's a fair amount of potential candidates for the present time. If they follow the DCS World model and provide a free flyable aircraft with the module, I suspect that you'll get the Texan trainer--it's well known and documented, and it was widely used to acclimate pilots moving up from the more forgiving primary trainers of the WWII era. We'll need trainer time if we're going to fly 'full real' flight models of the models already mentioned; the Mustang is well known to be pretty forgiving for a WWII fighter--wait 'til you try to take off in that 109 or God help you, a P-40. Those will be hard.

 

cheers

 

horseback

 

I actually have little use for a dedicated trainer and so would most new customers wanting to get into the WWII side of the Sim. A trainer would be great for taking off, landing and flitting around the virtual sky but the real draw is the combat. DCS world came with the Su-25T which was a great way to drawn in more customers. I think that a dedicated ground attack type like the Hs-129B-2 or Ju-87D-5 or a fighter-bomber like the Bf-110G-2 or Me-410B would be a better choice for a free starter plane if they do decide to go that direction. Or we could get a DCS C-47B... Paratroopers anyone?

 

**edit** or an Ar-240A-0... I think that would be the true WWII parallel to the Su-25T IRL.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Vampyre

[Ganesh]

Hi Luthier,

i wish you and your team all the best for this courageous step!

Keep your heads up high and make your own Game as you imagine it and it will be GOOD!!! :thumbup:

my only wish: as realistic as possible! I love the DCS standard

Edited September 4, 2013 by Ganesh

[leafer]

A lot of new people here. :)

 

May I direct your attention to The Fighter Collection who has a staple of airworthy WWII aircraft.

 

http://fighter-collection.com/cft/564-2/

 

TFC also owns DCS series. :)

Edited September 5, 2013 by leafer

[Teapot]

Hehe .. I knew this would happen eventually! This is terrific news. DCS will be just perfect as an engine for ALL sorts of periods ... even (dare I say) GA and support aircraft ...

[luthier1]

Some questions and remarks to Luthier:

1. You mentioned that you will not touch the P51 and the Dora. My experience with the Mustang however is that there is a lot of room for improvement in the DM and the gun/damage effects. Are you planning to work on these (or other smaller improvements such as a sound of the vibrating airframe just before stall)?

 

We're not planning to touch the FM and the systems.

 

I really think this is more of a discussion for Yo-Yo, not for myself, as the Mustang and the Dora are his babies.

 

2. This has been asked before, but i didn't see an answer, sorry if i missed it but here goes : are you planning to have a dedicated server? This would give the online community a huge boost. A significant percentage of flight simmers find playing online much more rewarding, and a dedicated server offers a lot more opportunities and attracts bigger numbers of participants.

 

We are thinking of lots and lots of stuff for multiplayer. It's a huge part of a project's success. However we are so early in our planning that we're keeping it out of our Kickstarter completely. We're still at the point where we might end up being unable to keep any promise we make in this respect.

 

However we are well aware that dedicated servers are very important!

 

3. I would prefer for the core game to include at least one bomber from each side : B17 and Ju-88/He-111. Including flyable bombers would make the game more versatile (from a pilot/mission type POV) and attract more players. The idea of flying a 4-engine bomber at 30000ft at DCS detail level has already excited many people in the community, and would truly be a novelty in the domain (even more so than the P51 module was in my opinion).

 

That's what we'll have in the final stretch goal.

 

4. Are you planning on including a thread with suggestions/ideas from the community later on? (I guess you are somewhat doing this already :)). Or maybe an open poll about aircraft people would like to see?

 

Yes. Need to start it ASAP.

 

While thos topic is not as emotional to me as it seems to be for many, but isn't the kickstarter coming on Sept 5th so you can change things as needed before you publish it? So you could be vague / undecided on that part and leave your options open. And for the record all in one is my preference too :)

 

The kickstarter is now live, sorry if the description is not perfect.

 

2nd Q: someone asked about the map size but I couldn't find a response. Can you shed some light on it?

 

Normandy is about 100x160km.

 

luthier1, I am very glad you and your team has taken up the task of building a WWII era simulator within the DCS framework. I am a long time Il-2 flyer and that software has been the best WWII flight sim around for a very long time but it definatly shows its age now. I am wondering if the updated engine will allow for the sheer numbers of online flyers that Il-2 has allowed. 90 or more flyers in game at the same time is a lot of fun. Do you see these kinds of numbers of online pilots being feasable withing the DCS engine?

 

The updated engine is for landscape. Multiplayer numbers have to do with something else entirely. To have 100+ aircraft you need to have very smart net code, where you manage to send it all the pertinent information to all participants about all the relevant FM data.

 

We definitely want this! However please read above for more details on our approach to multiplayer improvements.

 

Also, do you think we will have truely large maps to use within the DCS:WWII framework?

 

Theoretically, yes.

 

Practically, we're in very complex time-consuming territory. Even a Normandy-sized map is almost a year of work. An entire Europe - theoretically possible to make, but how many Normandies fit into a Europe? That's how many man-years it would take to make to the same quality standard.

 

Anyone know if the Multiplayer will, in fact, be as dynamic as the multiplayer functionality we have now? Also, how many players could we feasibly get into a game?

 

Will the current DCS mission editor be available for full use?

 

See above :)

 

what im also really interested is....what happens when the kickstarter campaign fails??

luthier mentioned, that they'll probably still be able to finish the core game...but what then?will it then still be for free?how do they then earn money?is there still a possibility that they can continue to work on the project, and push out all the modules we are hoping for?

or is there even the possibility that nothing at all will be developed?

Luthier?

 

Well, when we're a week away from the end and we're coming up short of the needed funds, then we'll mount a last-resort final push. And if that fails, then we'll talk about what happens to the project if we can't get Kickstarter funding.

 

Basically, the project will still happen, but we'll have a less detailed less historical landscape,

and, frankly, more bugs due to less money for a testing budget.

 

Wondering if you or your team have given some thought yet on how to get a good number of bombers in the air without killing people's PC's? Escorting or intercepting large numbers of bombers was such a big part of the European theater in 1944; It'd be too bad if you guys only were able to put a few in the sky.

 

HUGE priority for us. Like i said earlier, we're very early in the project, so we only have plans at this point.

 

We know that for this to truly succeed on release, we need to have giant waves. We'll see what needs to be done. Obviously, the current limitation is fidelity. Running 100 high-fidelity flight models and 400 engine models kills the PC. We need to have different LODs for aircraft models, so you don't really need to honestly calculate every aspect of an airframe or en engine when a perfectly intact B-17 just cruises in formation.

[recoilfx]

Luthier, why is it that 109K is listed on the kickstarter but the description is for a 109G?

[Echo38]

Oleg will act as the team’s advisor, distilling the wishes of the fans into design decisions, and making sure they properly translate into something that satisfies the fans today as well as in the long run. As the team’s foremost expert on aircraft performance and WWII history, Oleg will act as the ultimate quality control on the game

 

Oh ...

 

Anyone know if Eagle Dynamics themselves will make any more WWII fighters after the FW 190D? Or is that going to be the last one by E.D., and the rest are under Mr. Maddox's care?

[Nate--IRL--]

Oh ...

 

Anyone know if Eagle Dynamics themselves will make any more WWII fighters after the FW 190D? Or is that going to be the last one by E.D., and the rest are under Mr. Maddox's care?

 

Only ED knows that, and they aren't going to tell anybody.

 

Nate

[NineLine]

Oh ...

 

Anyone know if Eagle Dynamics themselves will make any more WWII fighters after the FW 190D? Or is that going to be the last one by E.D., and the rest are under Mr. Maddox's care?

 

 

Nothing has been announced either way, and its probably way to early for them to announce another Flying Legends plane at this point, but if I had to guess I would say ED does what ED does and RRG does what RRG does.

[Linx]

Ok, the biggest Il-2 modding site is covered, they got the news.

 

I also have one question;

If I pledge 40$ and the kickstarter only reaches 100,000$ that means that there will be no more flyable planes after basic release that we would get otherwise, and therefore I don't get any extra planes at all?

[Blaze]

Just saw the Kickstarter video and read the information. Put in my pledge immediately afterward. Can't wait for this project!!!

 

 

 

P.S. Thanks for using 5 of my P-51 screenshots in the Kickstarter, I feel honored! :D

Edited September 5, 2013 by Blaze

[SkateZilla]

We are thinking of lots and lots of stuff for multiplayer. It's a huge part of a project's success. However we are so early in our planning that we're keeping it out of our Kickstarter completely. We're still at the point where we might end up being unable to keep any promise we make in this respect.

 

However we are well aware that dedicated servers are very important!

 

if ED is developing a Ded. Server App After EDGE and everything is done,

it should/could be easily adjusted to work for both DCS Builds.

[jspec3]

 

HUGE priority for us. Like i said earlier, we're very early in the project, so we only have plans at this point.

 

We know that for this to truly succeed on release, we need to have giant waves. We'll see what needs to be done. Obviously, the current limitation is fidelity. Running 100 high-fidelity flight models and 400 engine models kills the PC. We need to have different LODs for aircraft models, so you don't really need to honestly calculate every aspect of an airframe or en engine when a perfectly intact B-17 just cruises in formation.

 

Cool, glad to hear it's something you guys are looking at. Thanks for the reply, and good luck with everything!

[Bluedrake42]

DCS: WWII 1944 Discussion

 

So this looks amazing, but I have a few questions

Will all the flyable aircraft in this module be at DCS P51 quality?

I absolutely hope so.

 

And of course please use this thread for other discussions,

since I can't find any other thread where we can discuss this new module

[dooom]

Were the kickstarter terrain shots actually development screens out of EDGE?

[NineLine]

Were the kickstarter terrain shots actually development screens out of EDGE?

 

yes

[luthier1]

Luthier, why is it that 109K is listed on the kickstarter but the description is for a 109G?

 

I'm trying to edit it out and I can't. Very sorry about that, should have caught that before going live.

 

We were thinking of doing a G-something but eventually settled on the K-4. The texts were written earlier and I guess I should fire myself for the oversight.

 

We are doing the K-4. We are NOT doing a Gustav at this time.

 

Oh ...

 

Anyone know if Eagle Dynamics themselves will make any more WWII fighters after the FW 190D? Or is that going to be the last one by E.D., and the rest are under Mr. Maddox's care?

 

We (RRG) definitely did not get a monopoly on all things WWII! If other 3rd party developers wish to develop something WWII-y, they most likely can. If ED themselves want to do something WWII-y, they own DCS and they own the engine and they absolutely most certainly can build whatever and whenever they want.

 

I also have one question;

If I pledge 40$ and the kickstarter only reaches 100,000$ that means that there will be no more flyable planes after basic release that we would get otherwise, and therefore I don't get any extra planes at all?

 

No, the free basic version of DCS WWII does not come with all aircraft flyable. If you pledge 40 bucks, you will get the licenses for the non-free aircraft as well.

 

The kickstarter is doing extremely well today, so hopefully we'll be able to reach a stretch goal by October 5th.

 

We're pretty flexible by the way. If we come over the base but under the stretch goal, we're definitely putting all that extra money into the project. So, if not a full stretch goal, we'll do a partial stretch goal, aircraft first, maps second, etc.

 

In other words, $40 gets you something extra either way.

 

So this looks amazing, but I have a few questions

Will all the flyable aircraft in this module be at DCS P51 quality?

I absolutely hope so.

 

We will do as much as we can given the source data we have. If we have as much data for an aircraft as we had for the P-51, the aircraft will be the same quality. If we have less data, we'll be forced to rely on guesswork more, but the general approach and anal retentiveness will remain the same.

 

Were the kickstarter terrain shots actually development screens out of EDGE?

 

Yes, it's EDGE.

 

We are VERY early in our landscape modeling. Normandy is basically a mock-up. We're doing something with EDGE that was not done before, such as cliffs, bunkers, trenches, and bomb craters. It's handling everything very well, but we're using lower resolution textures at this time and some things do not look presentable up close.

[NineLine]

Can you clarify the free flyables from the licensed ones, is there going to be free ones (or one like DCS World), it seems a little confusing right now...