Based on what DCS is all about these days – releasing half-finished DLC aircraft – I’m pretty sure all that’s left of Eagle Dynamics are a few content creators and Lua scripters. The hardcore programmers had to have left for greener pastures long ago.
Anyone signing up for “exclusive behind-the-scenes updates from developers and partners, gain access to preview builds, and advanced content updates before the general public”?
I of course signed up for that on day 1! :-)
In the meantime, Aerosoft has released Lukla for Aerofly FS2, which should add some fun and challenging flights to the sim. If you’ve never watched video of flights into Lukla, it’s an insane airport. Lots of other challenging airports in the package, too. I think I’m going to pick it up to add a bit more to do in AF2, since it’s such a beautiful sim in VR.
It’s a bit cheaper at SimMarket, around $28 US at current exchange rates.
What’s your axe to grind with DCS? And I don’t mean to be provocative but you do seem… well… just a wee bit grumpy whenever they come up. :)
Reasonable question. I really didn’t have that big of a hard-on for DCS until recently, when ALL BECAME REVEALED TO MY EYES, or something.
Eagle Dynamics development model seems focused now on maintaining a high state of hype (and cash flow) from its limited user base by spamming half-finished aircraft. These aircraft then take forever to “complete”, because the devs are focused on the next half-finished aircraft.
Meanwhile, ED continues to add chrome to the ancient LOMAC engine, but habitually neglects key (to some) features like: an actual AI that pretends to play the same game humans do; a true multi-threaded engine, etc. etc. etc.
In effect, DCS is a air combat ArmA 3, and like ArmA 3, suffers from myriad jank and WTF issues that the devs are either uninterested or incapable of fixing.
But some folks enjoy it and what the hell, follow your bliss.
Yes I get where you are coming from. I also miss the good ol’ days of flight sims that were somehow game + sim rather than just sim. That said, the economics of the niche market might dictate their approach.
For mine I am prepared to put up with the jank and sit in a real cockpit and bomb stuff. That’s enough game for me. So I suppose I am in the same camp as @schurem in that regard.
But I get your point. Grump away old man! Meanwhile am going to fly that half finished hornet into a glossy unoptimised sunset and somehow manage to enjoy it all. And - oh - yeah - will play some woff for the 90’s simmer in me as well.
I also get where @scharmers is coming from, but I don’t agree with it.
Sim fans have been their own worst enemy for a long time, actively hating on titles that don’t satisfy their own narrow criteria of worthiness, serving only to fragment an already niche genre. Been around for years, contributing to companies like ED embracing the early access business model in order to stay in business.
They are all doing that now. The WoFF folks have a “janky” early access product as well for WW2.
There is plenty of polished content for DCS, and some excellent campaigns providing more than enough hours of smooth game-play to jusitfy “complete” status. I might recommend he pick up the A-10C and the Enemy Within 3 campaign during the summer sale happening now to see what I mean. Frames are good too with a 970 or above, so not sure what multi-threaded has to do with anything.
I get that learning super detailed cockpits, modern flight procedures / flight models, and weapons in VR isn’t everyone’s bag. No doubt DCS has reached classic status in that regard, although time will tell.
Consistently bashing a sim for what it doesn’t do as good as some other sim is tiring though. It would be like chiming in with “but you can’t shoot shit so screw this game” every time somebody mentioned a Civ sim.
Running out of time for Deadstick to meet the 2Q19 EA release date. Given the radio silence since they announced that, I presume it’s getting pushed back.
Its a small outfit. (one man show even?) So he gets plenty leeway from me. Im just happy where hes going.
I’m certainly willing to give them/him time, I just wish they’d communicate even a little bit. If nothing else, it’s really terrible PR for the game, as the press have nothing to give coverage about.
On Friday they said “very, very soon”, whatever that might mean. And this was on their Discord server, rather than an announcement or anything.
Also I’m pretty sure that’s just regarding the closed beta. So yeah, I wouldn’t expect a general early access release any time soon.
So if you have a life sized cockpit in the room, are you really gonna waste time sleeping? The beds seem superfluous.
So FlyInside flight simulator (link at the bottom of the page, it’s a civilian flight sim early in development that features great VR FPS for those who haven’t heard of it) had a new update out recently.
Previously, the game offered US scenery and it looked pretty terrible. Now they are doing worldwide scenery which is streamed from bing as you fly. Given what Microsoft has shown us with their new flight sim it seems like this is the future (at least partially). You can watch a video of it below, I am very interested to try it which I will do in a couple of weeks.
Wow. I bought that at the first alpha to support them, and that streaming scenery makes a HUGE difference. The buildings still look pretty FS2002, but the landscape’s beautiful.
If you’re a civilian sim fan, FlyInside is worth it just for the awesome collection of (mostly Milviz) planes it includes. The sim is cheaper than the FSX version of the 717 it includes.
(Disclaimer: I buy All The Sims. But I do think there’s enough in FlyInside already to make it worth the time of a fan, especially with the streaming tech on the horizon.)
The beta of FlyInside FS with the streaming scenery is available now; info on how to download is in the forum. Played with it a little bit last night. The textures are pretty low-res, and there was a major palette shift as I flew south from Monroe, WA to Duvall (satellite images from different times and apparently no processing to try to blend the color palettes in the sim), but the areas I flew (WA and VT) did both look pretty great once you got some altitude. It’s certainly 1,000% better than the previous ground texturing.
There’s already free ways to do the streaming thing with FSX. I tried it a couple of years ago and I saw the same results: neat up high, but the fact it was just a raw, unprocessed dump from Google made it meh.
I missed a non-update update about Deadstick last week:
Windows Mixed Reality have released a couple of new updates lately, and there’s a new feature I wanted to share as it may be of interest to people here (it may already exist in other headsets not sure).
It’s now really easy to add a screen that serves as ‘picture-in-picture’ while playing any VR game/app. Better yet, on this PIP screen can be any PC program.
You don’t need to mess with anything either, when in a VR you just press a button on a touch controller and it will bring up a menu and you select the program you want running in a small window in your play area, and then you can edit how large it is, where it goes, and of course operate the program.
I was thinking this could have alot of useful applications. Here’s me watching netflix while flying over Key West in Aerofly FS 2 (screenshot isn’t great but you get the idea):
Paying attention to netflix/youtube/VLC while flying a particularly barren part of a route sounds great to me. I have read of people using it in other chill VR games like Euro Truck Simulator and Poker Stars. You could also load one of those hardcore flightsim side programs, or a bunch of notes for startup or what have you.
Performance hit seems minor to me so far.
Nice, Oculus has had that feature for a while and it’s good to see others implementing it.
Yeah, I use it all the time in Oculus, would be nice to be able to use in other games.