2021 (and earlier) DCS Newsletter Discussion Thread

Also nice to see that the Pantsir-S1 is coming - it will be the first ground based air-defence system that's newer than the early 90s.

Though I will say, while I strongly appreciate new units, I wish outdated units would be prioritised first, then new units that actually fit on our maps, then completely new units; I'm just looking at the M60A3, as well as a lot of the Soviet/Russian vehicles that seem to be getting left behind.

On 1/9/2021 at 3:06 AM, Mr_Burns said:

Never fly multi player, not since I owned Lock On, what, 20 years ago??

 

Not my thing, same as a gazillion other players.

So you tried it in Lock On, well, a lot has improved in the last 20 years, recommend you to give it a try.

On 1/9/2021 at 3:40 AM, Pizzicato said:

but I've got zero interest in MP.

Why, did you not consider yet that real opponents and real wingmen that you can talk to (via SRS) would be a more realistic and fun experience?

On 1/9/2021 at 4:26 AM, zhukov032186 said:

Don't like it, don't play there.

Well that's the problem, the alternatives are less populated the most of the time... (and don't get me started on that server that populated PvP server that has F5-view enabled... lamest thing DCS PvP has ever seen) and the more opponents on a server, the more kills one could get...

On 1/9/2021 at 10:35 AM, Gierasimov said:

focus on [...] stable SP experience first.

how is SP currently "unstable"?

On 1/9/2021 at 11:59 AM, padonis said:

All I can say is that if someone has never flown in MP, they have lost a lot. Nothing can replace fighting and working with a real person than with "AI". People are more unpredictable than "AI". But others prefer to lock themselves in their rooms and pretend that "AI" thinks like a real human [...].

To sum up - I recommend the "MP" mode, there is nothing to be afraid of.
As soon as there are new clouds and everything related to them, it will be a real revolution in "MP".

yes, they are missing out on the fun with SRS imo, yes, the "lock themselves in their rooms" thing is sad for us MP players. Yes I really hope for a real revolution in MP too!

On 1/9/2021 at 12:25 PM, Rudel_chw said:

I played MP for a year and a half, but got tired of the obnoxious, immature and rude people that one encounters on the MP scene ...

From my experience the majority however are mature, maybe it was due to the server that you were on, or have you tried several? How long ago was your 1.5 year MP time?

4 hours ago, DanielNL said:

Why, did you not consider yet that real opponents and real wingmen that you can talk to (via SRS) would be a more realistic and fun experience?

I get that you love MP and want to sell people on the idea that it's the only/right way to play DCS, but you need to realise that different people want different things out of games. I've spent over a hundred hours in MP over the years, and it's not for me. I'm a deeply introverted person who works in a role that requires me to be very social and communicative. The absolute last thing I want in my spare time is more engagement with people. Gaming and DCS is an escape from all that for me - it's precious 'alone time' that allows me to decompess, de-stress, and recharge. The fact that introverts make up ~50% of the population and that 60% of DCS players are SP players (according to ED) suggests that I'm not alone in preferring the solo experience.

Ultimately, it's not a question of right/wrong or better/worse - it's just about personal preference.

ok. And it seems sb. at ED (or whereever) doesn't want our DCS SA-5 Gammon/S-200 to become a thing in 2021? Or they just forgot it?

49 minutes ago, DanielNL said:

ok. And it seems sb. at ED (or whereever) doesn't want our DCS SA-5 Gammon/S-200 to become a thing in 2021? Or they just forgot it?

 

Or you just didn't read your own quote :

1 hour ago, Pizzicato said:

I get that you love MP and want to sell people on the idea that it's the only/right way to play DCS, but you need to realise that different people want different things out of games. I've spent over a hundred hours in MP over the years, and it's not for me. I'm a deeply introverted person who works in a role that requires me to be very social and communicative. The absolute last thing I want in my spare time is more engagement with people. Gaming and DCS is an escape from all that for me - it's precious 'alone time' that allows me to decompess, de-stress, and recharge. The fact that introverts make up ~50% of the population and that 60% of DCS players are SP players (according to ED) suggests that I'm not alone in preferring the solo experience.

 

Ultimately, it's not a question of right/wrong or better/worse - it's just about personal preference.

This.

I have nothing against MP. I've tried several times to play online, but it just never works out for long. Since I'm looking for maximum realism, most (if not all) PvP servers are a no-go for me. Too much lone-wolfing, unrealistic tactics used, etc. It may be entertaining, and I do love watching Hellreign82 on Youtube. That guy's hilarious and entertaining. Still, that's not the MP experience I'm looking for.

The only place I can find an online experience that matches what I'm looking for is organized squadrons. I tried a squadron in the "other" sim twice, and a squadron here is DCS once. But all three times, I greatly overestimated my free time and availability to commit to the squadrons, not to mention the logistical issues I'm having with my internet, forcing me to be on wifi and therefore severely limiting my bandwidth to be able to play online.

I get it. MP is great. I've tried it, and experienced the bad and the great. But SP is what I'm limited to due to the reasons above. And you can be sure that a large number of people who play SP only are facing similar issues.

SP may not have the advantages of flying with an actual human, but at least I'm not getting booted out mid-mission because I lost connection, or had to deal with lag because of a weak connection. I'm also not having to worry about schedules conflicting or my availability. I can just jump in and go.

Believe me, it's really not as simple as, "I like SP more because it's better." MP has some unique requirements that not everyone, myself included, can meet.

 
I get that you love MP and want to sell people on the idea that it's the only/right way to play DCS, but you need to realise that different people want different things out of games. I've spent over a hundred hours in MP over the years, and it's not for me. I'm a deeply introverted person who works in a role that requires me to be very social and communicative. The absolute last thing I want in my spare time is more engagement with people. Gaming and DCS is an escape from all that for me - it's precious 'alone time' that allows me to decompess, de-stress, and recharge. The fact that introverts make up ~50% of the population and that 60% of DCS players are SP players (according to ED) suggests that I'm not alone in preferring the solo experience.
 
Ultimately, it's not a question of right/wrong or better/worse - it's just about personal preference.

Hello,

It's possible to have this screen in high resolution please ?

Thanks

On 1/9/2021 at 11:14 PM, diveplane said:

maybe a little  video on the clouds would be nice.

Missed this one?

https://youtu.be/OA49DDZ13LA?t=247

WRT MP I can name a few other reasons for staying SP: language barrier (one can not be able to understand spoken english), Discord-like software allergy, PC is in the room occupied by sleeping people (so no comms possible), time scheduling and time zones.

And about the newsletter: I'm superexcited to read such stuff and it's like reading most wanted wishlist dreams coming true - thx ED - but I hate to remember that half of that is teased year after year - so it's redundant to read again on weather, AI, Vulkan, DC and others with new dates attached this time. I'd love for it to make it this year though.

About the last update and DCS 2.7

Will this version add smart scaling or something similar, so people we have monitor 27" 4K and 2k will be able to see bandits in dogfight? or our wingmen when we are formation in line abreast 2 miles?

This is a must in a combat sim.

19 hours ago, unknown said:

Or you just didn't read your own quote :

Or I did, and assumed SA-5 to be important enough to be mentioned there.

Are the in game voice communications still being worked on, or has that been put on the backburner.  I know SRS does well with it, just curious.

5 minutes ago, jwflowersii said:

Are the in game voice communications still being worked on, or has that been put on the backburner.  I know SRS does well with it, just curious.

Supposedly yes going by the newsletter. I hope it ends up being something like that other sim.

2 hours ago, DanielNL said:

Or I did, and assumed SA-5 to be important enough to be mentioned there.

So you did read it and didn't put 1 and 1 together? ED's priorities are not the same as yours! (or mine) So what? 

2 hours ago, unknown said:

So you did read it and didn't put 1 and 1 together? ED's priorities are not the same as yours! (or mine) So what? 

I think it's more that the SA-5 has been planned for ages, and gets teased over and over again but we never seem to hear anything about it - I understand Daniel's frustrations. 

Not to mention we still haven't seen an appropriate search RADAR for it, same with the SA-2 in fact, as well as a whole number of battery components.

Im really looking forward to the clouds, and the performance upgrades. I bought the 3090RTX specifically for DCS and VR and so far it has been well, rather underwhelming. I didn't expect miracles though, but I hope I can make good use of the card at some point in the future of DCS World. 

19 hours ago, DanielNL said:

Or I did, and assumed SA-5 to be important enough to be mentioned there.

Sa-5 has in progress, with others AI units. That was show on 2021 and beyond video. In fact, the Sa-5 EDM 3D models has into DCS directories and only missing implementation and funtionality. Has the same situations with other AI units and objects.

vor 4 Minuten schrieb Lurker:

I hope that we can get some more detail on the core engine upgrades coming to DCS World, maybe some quotes or interviews with the programmers, because so far they've been really vague about what we can expect and I don't want to get my hopes up needlessly. 

The interviews are a very good idea. I hope the programmers have the heart to do this. 

37 minutes ago, buur said:

 

The interviews are a very good idea. I hope the programmers have the heart to do 

Coders are good at coding. Not great at talking.

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Gierasimov:

Coders are good at coding. Not great at talking.

But I'm so curious of the mechanisms behind. For example the weather, how do they solve this? With witch factors are they calculating?

Maybe the one or the other programmer can give himself a jerk and tell us some insights.
I think a lot of people are interested in the work behind the scene. 

3 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

 

Eh, DCS is still pretty poor at utilising CPUs effectively AFAIK, but hopefully Vulkan might sort that at.

Vulkan might probably do nothing of the sort, it is a graphics API aiming to have a lower overhead. Depending on how the game handles draw calls and such today, we might not see many benefits from it. But they also clearly stated work towards more multithreading. The game is using the CPU just fine, it is however mostly using a single core. You want the workload, especially everything related to the simulation (AIs, weapons, scripts, weather system...) to run on different threads so that no single core gets to 100%, but this is very difficult to achieve.

Based on the kind of schedule we have in the newsletter, it seems this is correlated with the improved weather system (I don't mean the eye-candy, which is slated for 2.7 "somewhere in Q1", but the full-on dynamic weather system), and good too as this additional system could further hamper performance if run on the same single core as everything else.

53 minutes ago, Qiou87 said:

Vulkan might probably do nothing of the sort, it is a graphics API aiming to have a lower overhead. Depending on how the game handles draw calls and such today, we might not see many benefits from it. But they also clearly stated work towards more multithreading. The game is using the CPU just fine, it is however mostly using a single core. You want the workload, especially everything related to the simulation (AIs, weapons, scripts, weather system...) to run on different threads so that no single core gets to 100%, but this is very difficult to achieve.

 

Based on the kind of schedule we have in the newsletter, it seems this is correlated with the improved weather system (I don't mean the eye-candy, which is slated for 2.7 "somewhere in Q1", but the full-on dynamic weather system), and good too as this additional system could further hamper performance if run on the same single core as everything else.

Except it's never that simple. Splitting different tasks on to different cores is not really that hard, what is hard is synchronizing the communication between those cores. So that you don't have scenarios where one core is waiting for a result that is calculated by another one and vice versa.

 Well, that newsletter is very massive. So much to look forward to! But TBH I'll take all those date estimations with a good grain of salt. But it's great to see what we can expect in the next 2 years, which is a lot of things that we've always asked for

On 1/1/2021 at 4:35 PM, unknown said:

I just got the new DCS Newsletter E-Mail for today.

It had the word "subject" in the subject field and the word "message" in the text field.

 

Oh ED, go back to your xmas holidays, you're drunk! 

Reminds me of something...

On 1/8/2021 at 4:08 PM, padonis said:

In connection with the information:
     “Note: Due to the new Russian Federation's information gathering regulations on Russian military equipment, we had to reconsider our plans to add new systems to the Ka-50. We are continuing with the cockpit update as well as the highly detailed updated exterior model. ", Included in Official News 2021

I just hope that doesn't include a ban on having Tetris hidden on the ABRIS system screen. That's what I'm waiting for the most

On 1/8/2021 at 5:29 PM, Northstar98 said:

 

The more feasible solution is to do earlier BLUFOR aircraft that are comparable to REDFOR modules we can actually do.

Well, like the F-4E that was on BST's plate that's now "free for 3rd party" as per latest information?

On 1/9/2021 at 1:46 PM, Rudel_chw said:

 

I belonged to a spanish squadron for almost a year, and found that, while better than an open server, they were a bit paranoid that I could "steal" their missions and secret documents .. it seems that within the squadron was a core of friends that knew themselves well, but treated the rest of us with distrust.

Welcome to mankind.

I for one always enjoyed flying in MP when I had a rig that would be able to cater that. That's not the case at the moment though...

BTW as for the dynamic campaign: As I understand, it also works in MP.

13 hours ago, conura said:

Actually, the best devs are incredibly good communicators. It's essential for working in a team - it's a common misconception that good programmers can't talk well. 

I run a team of software engineers, communication skills during the interview are essential.

I totally suck at talking and getting hired as a dev is something that seems to be impossible to achieve to me after having learned that for 3 years way in the past, well with some health problems added meanwhile. I always thought I could do that without having to be able to talk like a pro. Guess I was very much wrong, so yeah

4 hours ago, Eldur said:

Well, like the F-4E that was on BST's plate that's now "free for 3rd party" as per latest information?

 

Absolutely, though it's a shame it was dropped.

However, ED could even do stuff which would have very small workloads; such as the F-16CG Block 40 (pre CCIP)  - you could basically copy and paste nearly everything from our current module to it, with the main workload being LANTIRN, the wide-angle HUD (with identical symbology AFAIK), maybe a few other changes to the cockpit (no JHMCS controls or sensor, maybe some switches moved around, no D/L or MIDS controls).

But there are absolutely tonnes of modules that often get requested that would fit in.

On 1/13/2021 at 4:48 AM, Eldur said:

 Well, that newsletter is very massive. So much to look forward to! But TBH I'll take all those date estimations with a good grain of salt. But it's great to see what we can expect in the next 2 years, which is a lot of things that we've always asked for

 

 

Reminds me of something...

 

 

 

 

I just hope that doesn't include a ban on having Tetris hidden on the ABRIS system screen. That's what I'm waiting for the most

 

 

Well, like the F-4E that was on BST's plate that's now "free for 3rd party" as per latest information?

 

 

Welcome to mankind.

 

I for one always enjoyed flying in MP when I had a rig that would be able to cater that. That's not the case at the moment though...

 

BTW as for the dynamic campaign: As I understand, it also works in MP.

 

 

I totally suck at talking and getting hired as a dev is something that seems to be impossible to achieve to me after having learned that for 3 years way in the past, well with some health problems added meanwhile. I always thought I could do that without having to be able to talk like a pro. Guess I was very much wrong, so yeah

It's certainly not necessary, but it helps a lot in later career advancement when you start speaking with stakeholders! Have you been trying to get a job and can't then? Happy to offer advice if you'd like, like I said, I'm very involved in hiring engineers