So what's your critical opinion on the new map

[twistking]

Hello,

for some reason there are no extensive reviews on the new map. All i can find are what i would call a "first look" or early impression.

I understand that the map is generally well received for it's detail, seize and potential for historic scenarios.

 

However there are also some problems. From what i could gather that would be the general look from high altitude (see thread about forest areas being of very light colour), performance problems, night lighting and other, smaller issues/bugs.

 

The positive aspects can be easily seen on every generic youtube video that features the map, the negative aspects not so much.

 

So after getting past the novelty aspect of it: What's your opinion on it at the state it is in right now? If you leave historic significance and terrain diversity aside, how does it compare to persian gulf for example (performance over built up areas, graphics, especially graphical coherence)?

I absolutely understand what people like about it, but for some reason it never really clicked for me judging solely from the screenshots and videos. So your critical opinion is much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[sirrah]

It's Early Access, so any "full reviews" are a waste of time at the moment and won't do right to all the hard work Ugra will still invest to optimize this map.

 

Only thing people can do, and are doing now, is share their initial impressions. FWIW, I'm very impressed. Once a few issues are ironed out (like the object visibility range) it will be one of the, if not, THE best map so far imo

[shu77]

The thing that has struck me is the terrain modelling is awesome, a large majority of the airfields have either a slope or a curve in them, and no matter where you fly its never truly flat. If you get down low you see the sort of small contours that you get most places in real life that I've never seen in a Sim before. You also have a wide variety of Biomes to play with, lots of water and some excellent canyons and cities, to be honest I think this map really surpasses PG as the new 'default' for the sim.

[Glide]

There are a couple of nice spots on the map, but for the most part it is too big and boring for ground war mission building. It might be okay for large scale air war. I flew two recon missions this afternoon, trying to find a place to map out a battle. One nice feature of PG is that the roads are lit at night which makes low light missions fun. Some of the coastal roads are nice, but most are not connected up. There's a whole lotta nothin' there.

[sirrah]

There are a couple of nice spots on the map, but for the most part it is too big and boring for ground war mission building.

Are you talking about Syria or PG here?

 

(Honest question, no sarcasm intended

[Glide]

Syria. I know it's not finished. Some seaside towns look nice, but how would you get an army there? Over the mountains? Nope? Up the coast is the only way (historically too) to move an army. There are only couple of semi-interesting spots on the coast to push an army through. The rest is wasted desert in my humble opinion. Air war yes, ground war no.

[Flagrum]

There are a couple of nice spots on the map, but for the most part it is too big and boring for ground war mission building. It might be okay for large scale air war. I flew two recon missions this afternoon, trying to find a place to map out a battle. One nice feature of PG is that the roads are lit at night which makes low light missions fun. Some of the coastal roads are nice, but most are not connected up. There's a whole lotta nothin' there.

But you know that DCS is a flight sim, right? (yes, I know that there is Combined Arms ... )

 

 

Anyhow, map is too big, that's probably the first time that this was said on these forums...

[Glide]

If you just want to put a bunch of units in the desert you can do that with PG or Nevada. The coastline is the biggest asset the Syria map has. Don't waste it.

[Andartu]

Yes to the thing with cities. When you want to set up some realistic missions. So they are just eye candy for me but not part of missions.

 

There is no way you run strikes on Haifa, Damascus, Beirut or all the other well done cities in a realistic environment.

 

Of course this counts only for my style of doing things. And for this style in my critical opinion the map is great :)

 

I set my missions mostly half realistic within 2015 (half realistic cause Navy F/A-18C in 2015.. love the legacy Hornet but gimme the Rhino! Maybe in 20 years.. :D) in a Operation Inherent Resolve like theater. Around 2015 ISIS was very present in Syria (Especially around Raqqa, Manbij, Palmyra and several areas in the desert) That means doing strikes and CAS missions in the dessert.

 

This maybe sounds boring :D But not for me. And yes it is mostly JDAM, Paveway and Laser Mav deployment like IRL :D

 

It still results in around 3 -4 hour sorties.

 

So no wasted desert.. in my humble opinion.

 

And Air war? There is no actual Air to Air war in Syria. A bit teasing around, but nobody actually fires a missile.

 

As said, only my way, cause I like it historical realistic as possible. Also means a lot work in the editor with many units and triggers.

[Glide]

Yes, Andartu, eye candy is important. I use it a lot in my missions because I like to get down low and hover around a hot ground war. I totally get your point. I can see a lot of fun trying to penetrate a realistic air defense zone and get in some high altitude work.

 

 

 

I am also fond of low light missions, so light is important. I was checking out the crusader fort yesterday, and perfect site for some ground action, but the coast not that interesting and the road lighting is not quite finished there, I think. I went a little higher up the coast to Turkey, but not a lot of eye candy there either. If you want to have the bad guys come rolling out of the hills you have to have something dramatic to protect, IMHO. I think that's what makes PG so successful.

[Mr_sukebe]

So far, I really like it. Out east, appears to be rather flat and empty. Not sure how accurate that is. Clearly we’re going to have Crete added.

I had some initial performance issues, but they’ve been solved with terrain textures set to low and preload @ 45%.

 

I’ve worked up a couple of settings:

2016: against ISIS

1982: the fight to the Bekaa valley

 

I’ll probably do a couple more:

1948, first Arab Israeli war, all sides using ww2 kit. The Syrians had spitfires and the the Israelis mainly used a Czech fighter that was based on the 109.

67/73. Both conflicts used pretty much the same kit

[Ala13_ManOWar]

Hope it's not Crete but Cyprus :D . Orrr, well Crete would be fine if they do all the way to there :lol: .

 

S!

[Tinkickef]

Critical first impressions..... ok. Firstly it's a great map, Ugra have come up trumps with this one.

 

Secondly, it's early access, it's not finished, there are areas of road groupings without buildings, clearly the road networks for future built up areas.

..Third. it's early access, so performance is an issue at ground level, due to poor optimisation, particularly in VR and my rig is no slouch. Placing additional static objects hits performance massively and I do like to populate my airbases....

 

Lighting is good in general, although I always tend towards long moonlit night to dawn missions, or early dusk to moonlit night missions and at present my pet gripe is the street lighting. It looks like the street light globes must be five feet in diameter.

 

Parts of the terrain mesh need upgrading, you get quite a few areas of conical mountains and hills, particularly noticeable to me in the Golan Heights area.

 

All these will be fixed in time.

 

 

To early to be critical yet. I'm generally very impressed.

[Glide]

Nice spot

 

This is what I am talking about. More of this.

Edited September 11, 2020 by glide

[Glide]

Recon Mission

 

I got my butt blown off getting a snap of this installation. Mission attached. :pilotfly:

[Blinde]

My honest review: It's pretty dull. Even the PG map is more exhilarating

than this. I had my hopes up but now I'm kind of disappointed.

[Motomouse]

I like it a lot, especially with high Visib Range. But I have to drop my resolution to get good frames when I go for high Visib Range.

[stormrider]

For DCS standards, it's beautiful if it was back in 2014. Compared to new technologies from competitors, for what it looks, it's very heavy on performance and looks very cartoonish for a 2020 simulator.

[twistking]

thanks to all for your replies. much appreciated!

it's interesting to see that opinions differ quite much on this one.

 

For DCS standards, it's beautiful if it was back in 2014. Compared to new technologies from competitors, for what it looks, it's very heavy on performance and looks very cartoonish for a 2020 simulator.

that's somewhat describes what i thought only from looking at screenshots and videos. it's hard to put it into words, but i am a bit put off by the art direction. i think cartoonish is a bit strong, but i understand what you mean. persian gulf looks more realistic, even if it has significantly less micro detail.

 

i also wonder if it is even possible to optmize syria that much for performance when there is simply much, much more geometry to render.

[stormrider]

i also wonder if it is even possible to optmize syria that much for performance when there is simply much, much more geometry to render.

 

 

You reminded me of one thing I dislike about this map in that the buildings seem to render or disappear far too close. It makes for bombing a particular building very difficult when you can't see from far enough.

[Havremonster]

It looks fine. But the texture remind me a little bit of Arma 3. And yes, the texture reminds more of year "2014" like "stormridersp" said. It have also some laggs that I dont see in other maps after upgrading from 16 to 32gb ram. I dont like laggs, so I dont play it so much.

[Baco]

You guys are sooo picky... its the best map for DCS period.

 

It has variety, hitorical sites, nice areas for what iff, nice for just flying, and I disagree on that there are no palce for ground battles,

 

Well there have been no more ground battles since 1991, If you can call that a battle more like a masacre...

 

From 2000 till now there is only dissimilar war: recon identify, bomb, repeat...

 

 

Real battles took place on the 60s 70s and DCS has no assets and no plane sets for that-

 

 

Now compared to Caucasus, and PG, I say is a very well done change of scenery, fun to fly, nice to look at... I say its a must buy.

 

 

By the way Caucasus is also only good on the coast, there are huge mountains in between so I dont see the big criticism..

 

PG: Inland Iran.. nothingness.. United Arab Emirats- just not there...

 

I really cant understand the criticism to Syria...

[pepin1234]

Multiplayer unplayable

[stormrider]

You guys are sooo picky... its the best map for DCS period.

 

It has variety, hitorical sites, nice areas for what iff, nice for just flying, and I disagree on that there are no palce for ground battles,

 

Well there have been no more ground battles since 1991, If you can call that a battle more like a masacre...

 

From 2000 till now there is only dissimilar war: recon identify, bomb, repeat...

 

 

Real battles took place on the 60s 70s and DCS has no assets and no plane sets for that-

 

 

Now compared to Caucasus, and PG, I say is a very well done change of scenery, fun to fly, nice to look at... I say its a must buy.

 

 

By the way Caucasus is also only good on the coast, there are huge mountains in between so I dont see the big criticism..

 

PG: Inland Iran.. nothingness.. United Arab Emirats- just not there...

 

I really cant understand the criticism to Syria...

 

 

Me, I'm not saying it isn't the best map in DCS. It definitely is, but it's not finished yet. It needs a lot of polishing and optimizing but also a new render engine. The thing is that regardless of how it compares in relation to the other DCS maps, it's irrelevant; for a 2020 release, it looks old and cartoonish despite being so heavy and as other have pointed out, not very multiplayer or VR friendly, unless you have a 2080ti at your disposal of course. I don't.

[Blinde]

Talking about cartoonish and 2014, UGRAs Normandy map looks even more outdated. Tried it at summer free trials and I was astonished how poor it looked. Colors were so over saturated and cartoonish that it looked quite far from WW2 era.

Although I know that especially at summer those French fields etc have vivid colors but it's bit too much.

 

I wasn't aware that the same company did this Syria map too which would definitely have stopped me from buying this at least for now. There is a lot of potential and it will likely get better.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Blinde