Reinstalled Flaming Cliffs 3 for like the third time. Maybe Iāll get the hang of the jets this time. I generally prefer the WW1 planes because they have, like, two gauges, if theyāre complicated, but āflyingā the Huey has always been great fun. I got the hang of taking off and tootling around pretty quick. Never did really get landings figured out, at least not reliably. My hat is absolutely off to those air cav pilots for being able to handle those beasts.
Agreed. Red Baron 3D was the first āwowā campaign for me, the first one where you had named squadron mates, where you could deviate from the planned mission and not leave the action ābubbleā and end up in a barren sky; I loved, on the way home, wandering and finding other battles to join, perhaps pulling someone out of trouble, etc. I recall once finding a smoking plane from my side, all alone, being attacked by a bad guy. It was so great to be able to fly over and take out his attacker. It was a great role playing game,
Falcon 4 had that great campaign, etc. but you had to really invest a lot of time and effort to learn how to fly well enough to enjoy it. I still have my Falcon 4 hardcover binder with all the docs and disks in it.
But yeah, Microprose was the master of blending accessibility, role playing, and enough realism to not feel like an arcade game.
Might I suggest you try the A-10A then? itās not massively complicated, but can do all kinds of cool things. The MiG-29 is a fun ride too, but you do need to be very gentle landing it.
Compared to the other offerings in DCS world these are among the least complicated machines. You do not need to learn a lot of radar avionics to do in the MiG, just be sure to bind the HMD designator mode to your HOTAS. Itās point and shoot really ;-)
While some sit mired in the past dreaming of dynamic glories and superb gamifications, what we have now is some sweet VR and a toybox of endless possibilities. I dare the ones who think DCS is boring to fly the mission linked below to a successful landing:
Iāll fly whatever has a campaign built in, but Iām gonna steer clear of the MiG-29 until they give it the PFM treatment. That just leavesā¦every other plane in the thing, I guess!
The MiG-29 got the PFM treatment in the most recent patch, currently on the Open Beta branch.
Nice. I fired up the A-10A campaign, and I think I need to look at my key configs.
Rockinā. Iām traveling for work, but Iāll check this out when I get back.
@schurem linked a podcast above, but his description didnāt do it justice. I listened to it last night.
So Matt Wagner of Eagle Dynamics invited a former Hornet pilot into his house and showed him DCS and VR. Here is the podcast of the event again.
https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/podcast/028-air-combat-simulation-gaming/
So it turns out, the Hornet is amazingly realistic. The pilot was able to start the plane cold and land on a carrier immediately, without looking at a cheat sheet. All based on his experience with the real jet. That is a many step process, so itās not like he was just a pro gamerā¦ He came off objective, didnāt hold back with criticism and was impressed.
I thought it interesting that he mentioned the military sims have āas goodā graphics as DCS. That actually surprises meā¦ what engine are they using?
Was a really good interview. The pilot asked a bunch of hard questions, including what they are doing with classified information. They also talked about DCS history and future.
DCS has absolutely leapfrogged the āadrenalineā aspect of fun. First person shooters took that crown from sims a long time ago, but VR changes that. Sims regain the crown. VR for FPSās is problematicā¦ not so with cockpit games.
To think that the @BrianRubin 's and the @scharmers 's of the world recommended against this. What are they thinking?
I think a flight simulator is more than just some god damned buttons and switches.
Oh, come on. Thatās a lazy answer. People look to you for advice and recommendations.
Theyāre memorable for a reason, is all Iām saying! If dynamic campaigns werenāt awesome, people wouldnāt keep on writing tools to try to mimic them for the games which ship without.
I think thatās a little unfair. Even going as far back as Falcon 4, which has more in the way of context and immersion than anything done since, modern flight sims are as much machinery simulators as they are flying games, and itās perfectly fine if thatās not someoneās cup of tea. I enjoy the switchology, and think an evening spent with a glass of bourbon, a seven hundred page flight manual, and a notepad for checklists is fun. I wouldnāt exactly call that a normal perspective, though.
Iām out at dinner with my in-laws, and you tagged me. Sir.
I think what Denny said earlier is correct. Sims nowadays are so much about switchology and so little about character. Character of the world, character of your pilot, character of the conflict etc etc. I need more than switched and buttons to want to fly a thing. I need a reason to fly. Single missions are all well and good, but itās like flying in a fish bowl. I want what I do in a sim to matter to the world around me.
VR wonāt fix any of that.
VR is great for FPS games and as much of a game changer for them as it is for flight sims, arguably more so.
And while VR has certainly renewed my interest in the genre (and I wouldnāt want to go back to flying on a monitor), I do still long for a good dynamic campaign.
Fair enough. So given that there are plenty of planes available that are easy to fly, if there was a campaign available that offered what you were looking for, would you be interested in reviewing?
This isnāt urgentā¦
Iām probably guilty of what I am trying to call out. FPS movement seems to be a major problem. what am I missing?
Yeah, but DCS has plenty of planes that donāt require āswitchologyā. Putting the whole product into that bucket is wrong.
And besides, how hard is it to fire off a laser guided bomb in and A-10C? Like four button clicks? There is so much fun to be had just there.
Think of it like different spells. It takes a while to get good at each one, yes?
Are you talking about motion sickness? While itās certainly a problem for some, it does seem that most overcome it with a bit of time getting used to VR. Lots of first person VR games now use smooth locomotion as standard. Just look at the recent popularity of Firewall Zero Hour on PSVR for example.
Well dang. There goes my thesis regarding the cyclical nature of āadrenalineā based gaming. I was really hoping that cockpit games would have the edge a while longer. Iāll have to try the titles you mentionedā¦
The ones that donāt are arguably worse. To use the Su-25T effectively takes either more work at joystick binding or more memorization of key sequences than the Harrier or Hornet. In the full-fidelity cockpits, at least you can click on the obvious buttons without having to consult a reference sheet.
See, thatās where we people who enjoy machinery simulators differ from others. Dropping an LGB off of an A-10 or firing an AMRAAM off of a Hornet arenāt hard tasks in themselves, but doing so quickly and correctly under pressure makes them a lot harder. Iām 10 or 15 hours into the Hornet now, and Iām only just willing to call myself competent in the basics, and thatās only because the systems rely on a lot of the same concepts I have swapped in from the Harrier.
I think itās entirely reasonable to say that the fun in DCS, being able to hop into a mission or a PvE multiplayer server with some confidence in your own competence, is no less 20 to 30 hours away from the starting line, even with one of the FC3-level planes. Thatās a big ask if you donāt find the basic conceit of super-high-fidelity systems modeling enjoyable in its own right.