Recent air combat sim recommendations?

I’m coming back to this after a very long hiatus and I don’t even know where to begin with regards as to what I need to download to play 2.5. The front page has a link for 1.5 - will that update to 2.5?

Well according to this thread the stand alone installer for 2.5 open beta will be out on Thursday.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=200742

Reading these forums about the installs is like reading about the old Falcon dance.

“Well, you know, you can install the 2.2 OBGYN Open Beta install today, or wait 2-3 weeks to install the final we-mean-it-this-time Open Beta 2.5 preview build, or…”

So fucking coy. ED, just go HERE IS THE INSTALLER FOR 2.5. INSTALL THIS WHEN IT COMES OUT. THERE IS NO OPEN BETA, PREVIEW, OR WHATEVER INSTALLER.

I forget sometimes that there even is an actual release branch. My sole DCS install has been Open Beta for so long now.

In a stream I just glimpsed at, someone said to run the DCS updater and select the 2.5 open beta, but since I’m starting from scratch it appears my updater is downloading vanilla DCS World 1.x

Haven’t updated in a little while, and my install is the open alpha. It doesn’t look like this will update to 2.5?

image

Or is this an annoying multi-stage process?

it is an annoying and complicated process. what the hell else did you expect? try googling skatezilla updater tool. itll fix it

A lot of it is because ED is too fucking cheap to run their own CDN. Hint, guys: CDN services on Azure are really fucking cheap*

777 Studios are the same way.

*I know because I work for them

I’m expecting that after it’s finally installed properly I’ll have to manually re-enter a hundred license keys, then contact them to get additional Starforce activation attempts… ;)

If you’re like me and starting from scratch with 1.5, do this:

Open dcs updater via cmd (shift+right click on "bin" folder in your install directory -> select open powershell here -> type: CMD) and then type in: DCS_updater.exe update @openbeta

Now enjoying an 8 hour cup of coffee because Eagle Dynamics are a bunch of cheap asses.

The upside though is that 2.5 is absolutely amazing from the streams I’ve seen. A huge game changer for helicopters with solid trees for cover and for crashing into.

So pretty. So smooth. If only I could get some hours of quiet from wife & kids.

I have been threading water when it comes to DCS. Now that 2.5 is out I am intent on doing all of the training for all of my aircraft. And redoing them until I am comfortable enough with them to get bored blowing up drones and static targets.

And then I’ll join the blue flag server and play something pretty darn close to a dynamic campaign till the cows come home.

Of course there will be new aircraft released far before I am done training. So i dont think my plan will ever complete

Hire a sitter or get them hooked on flightsims.

Dad I’m going to spawn a Shilka. Try and take me out with dumb bombs at tree top level.

Got the updater GUI tool going, used the advanced options to ‘update to latest open beta version’, and:

image

Sigh!

Interesting. Is that like an advanced version of this?

I updated DCS (… Open Beta) to 2.5, and have two things to report:

  1. It’s pretty.
  2. I’m going to need a new graphics card before I can get back into the Harrier. 15-20fps in the Caucasus is insufficient.

In the interim, maybe I’ll jump into Rise of Flight a little.

Weird, because in the alpha version the performance was generally better than the old 1.5 version!

Fish, you done the clean shaders and no msaa thing? anything that ran 1.5.8 remotely well should shine with 2.5

I’ll give it another try when I get home later, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m finally up against a performance wall.

The trouble is twofold: first, I only have a pair of 2gb Radeon HD6970s, which is probably going to cause me a lot more texture size trouble than it used to; second, I now only have one of them, because one of them croaked last week.

ouch. ok. ummm. well…? bitcoins’ about to crash gonna be a lot of slightly used 1080s on the market 😁

Believe me, I’m waiting with bated breath.

Thanks to the MSAA-off trick, I get comfortable-for-me framerates in the 20s and 30s, which will do for now.