Whole World API

[SkateZilla]

Naval forces would have a bigger role in a whole world map.

[Rick50]

 

I think with a global map, the main thing holding back advanced Navy modules, would be projected sales of deeply advanced Navy simulations. Maybe stick with a medium level complexity for the general public, and a super-high fidellity Navy simulations for actual Navies to purchase for actual officer training and tactical / strategic development.

[Nomatic]

4 hours ago, Rick50 said:

 

I think with a global map, the main thing holding back advanced Navy modules, would be projected sales of deeply advanced Navy simulations. Maybe stick with a medium level complexity for the general public, and a super-high fidellity Navy simulations for actual Navies to purchase for actual officer training and tactical / strategic development.

I’m not sure I would agree here. This is called Digital *Combat* Simulator. Granted, it has been heavily leaning towards flight sim, but I would love a good naval simulation and honestly, a ground game far more developed than what we have now.  I love AIII and would love to play that style of gameplay in a future version of DCS. But, i would expect that to be years and years away. 

[Rick50]

 

Yes, I'm sure you would. And I'd be interested in some Navy action too. I just know that for every naval oriented simulation gaming title, there are 20 or so combat flight sims and ground combat sims... and of those that did come out, I'm not sure what their sales numbers were really like. I think the Silent Hunter series may have been the bestseller for the genre, and it certainly looked great, and was somewhat aproachable. 

What I'm not certain of, is just how much complexity would be actually workable for a retail title... so for instance, DCS and it's customers seem to really embrace the full fidellity direction. That's great for single seat aircraft. And it seems to work well for a few seats in the Hind Tomcat and Huey.  But the Ticonderoga class of guided-missile cruisers have 30 officers onboard, along with 300 enlisted sailors... some in the engine room, some in the galley... but a lot of those 330 service people would have complex workstations to carry out specific functions, complex functions... I think it's unrealistic to expect a full fidellity realism cruiser, or boomer boat, with all the workstations, in anything less than 8 years of development before it appears as Early Access, at a price wildly above any current DCS module. A full real USN nuke sub module might cost as much as all the current modules and terrains and addons combined, in a couple thousand dollars. And you'd maybe need to crew it with maybe 40-80 other humans in multiplayer just to make it operate as a boat or ship would in real.

The flipside would be something more akin to tabletop board wargaming, albeit with computers, or maybe a bit like an "RTS" but with lots more realism and details. Maybe 10 players could cooperate to command a carrier battlegroup, one human playing "ship captain/commander", with access to all the major systems in a somewhat realistic but sort of streamlined functionality so that one person could "do the job of 100 sailors"... a little like a super-complex version of "combined arms"?

I dunno, I don't have all the answers! I'm just adding some perspective as to what a Navy expansion might look like! 

 

[WRAITH]

I'm thinking ..........

 

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by WRAITH

[Rick50]

 

The "whole world" also makes it much nicer for people wanting regions that are not represented in combat simulations right now, such as:

 

• Small bush wars in Africa and South America,
• Cold War conflicts historic and imaginary and plausible scenarios
• WW2 battlefields anywhere they occured, entire campaigns stretching for thousands of miles. Black Cats in the Pacific, Dam Busters at night., sub hunting in the Atlantic.. the possibilities start to look endless!
• obscure battles in WW1
• Middle East in 1960's and 70's

 

Army ground operations, particularly in the context of an ongoing extended 24/7 dynamic campaign, could take on a much greater form, with entire brigades represented along with their logistical tails, originating perhaps right at ports of entry all the way to the frontlines and even behind the lines for SF and airborne shock troops like Soviet Para's and 101st Airborne Division.  An airlift command could be set up to help support such campaign moves, unhindered by todays modest size maps. Combined Arms 2.0 might be wildly higher fidellity. 

[SkateZilla]

DCS Pilots will be like:

 

[MAXsenna]

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Rick50]

 

• Cuban Missile Crisis... I'm imagining the F-8 Crusader doing recon runs from carriers, only to fictionally get intercepted, touching off a shooting war (that everyone prays hard won't go nuclear!)

 

• U-2 and Blackbird recon missions from Turkey, England, Japan. Sure, there's no U-2 mod or module yet, but there's a decent Blackbird mod already, and who knows what the future holds for mods and full paid modules

 

• intercept inbound Tupolev Bears over Canada's north, using Starfighters, Phantoms, Eagles, Hornets and Vipers, and other future modules

 

• Red Storm Rising

 

• Korea Vs Korea 1950 edition, 1970 fictional edition, 1990 fictional edition, and present day edition

 

• Colombia Vs Venezeuela, Chile Vs Argentina. I'm not super familiar with the history of conflicts in those regions, but I do know that recently some Super Tucanos (free mod avail, and future Razbam full module, though ETA is unknown) were sent on a night commando style strike mission into Venezuela to destroy druggie insurgents that would themselves do crossboarder raids. Maybe some of the trainer mods could do battle against the Mirage F1 ?

 

• India Vs Pakistan, Sabres vs Migs, Migs Vs Vipers in the later era

 

• Taiwan... I think we can use our imaginations!

 

• WW2 Solomon Islands, WW2 Papua campaign, actually the entire Pacific war, the entire African campaign, the entire Russian Front, Battle of Britain, the battle for Europe of course... Atlantic and Pacific sub and convoy hunting... I'm realizing now how absolutely vital a global map is, to maximising WW2 modules and assets, for campaigns and such. Of course it could be done on a few limited maps, but somehow the ability to place things on a full scale globe, where they actually occured, theoretically enabling ALL possible events and campaigns seems to provide so very much more!   

 

• Guam based missions in BUFF's to Hanoi, cross border flareups along the Ho Chi Min trail and possible future AC-130 gunships of the era (they got their start in VN after all, and were seriously capable even from day 1 ). No, sorry I've not heard of any projects for the BUFF or AC-130, but I think both MIGHT be possible either as mods or modules. They'd be longshots, but still POSSIBLE, I think.

 

• EF2000 and Vipers defend Norway from a resurgent Russian invasion! We already have the Vipers and Flankers, and Heatblur with TrueGrit doing the Euro... with the new global map providing an awesome mountainous terrain!

 

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Rick50

[Mad_Shell]

The different announcements like whole-world map, large number of units, better AI, etc... have my hopes up that we may have something at least approaching what VBS4 is achieving (except for air combat, DCS is miles ahead for that). DCS + VBS4 would be the literal dream... These video show that the technology for a whole-world map detailed up to small scales is already there:

 

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Mad_Shell

[Rick50]

 

Last night I watched cockpit footage of a recent flight in a B-29 (!!! had no idea there was still one flying today!), and got to thinking about a global map along with DCS multiplayer with dynamic campaigns...

 

... and it suddenly dawned on me that... in theory at least... it might be possible to create a full WW2 historic recreation. Which campaign specifically? Well, ALL of them. In chronological order. Maybe a few missions per campaign, and from the first of the month being the war's start, to the end of the month being the end of the Pacific war.

 

Or maybe a full year might be better, starting with the invasion of Manchuria, then war in Europe, Battle of Britain, the Afrika dustup, Pearl and Doolittle, ending with B-29 raids, and everything in between.

 

Or how about one server that spans the conflict in real time.... 6 years of missions, digging up historical missions actually flown and assigning them to virtual pilots to carry out.

 

Maybe it's a little loopy, but some might enjoy that if it's technically possible!  That might be entirely WAY too much work to create missions for, too much units for a server to track for months or years on end, server stability would likely need fancy coding... but... 

[Angelthunder]

I guess if ED makes the whole earth map.I imagine it will be a modern present one like FS2020 with WWII and Cold War historic maps and scenery probably made by third parties like the Normandy and Channel Map is.Maybe will finally have a currant updated scenery and new airfields for the Caucasus along with the addition of Crimea,Syria with Iraq and Jordan,Persian Gulf with Qatar and Bahrain.I don't know how they'll make an historic transition from WWII to Modern era of the world.But i'm sure ED will think of something.

[Northstar98]

On 11/19/2021 at 10:50 PM, Angelthunder said:

I guess if ED makes the whole earth map.I imagine it will be a modern present one like FS2020 with WWII and Cold War historic maps and scenery probably made by third parties like the Normandy and Channel Map is.Maybe will finally have a currant updated scenery and new airfields for the Caucasus along with the addition of Crimea,Syria with Iraq and Jordan,Persian Gulf with Qatar and Bahrain.I don't know how they'll make an historic transition from WWII to Modern era of the world.But i'm sure ED will think of something.

Personally, I think it's more likely that we'll have a lower detail Earth, probably with just generic structures and airbases (though probably with the correct layout) mostly relying on landclass + autogen, then our current theatres (modified to fit on the surface of a sphere as right now they're flat) will overwrite the areas they cover - exactly like certain other civilian simulators.

As for WWII, didn't ED want to try having the map tied to the date in the editor? So maps will change to say, a WWII version if available (so far only the Marianas).

Edited November 23, 2021 by Northstar98

[Angelthunder]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Personally, I think it's more likely that we'll have a lower detail Earth, probably with just generic structures and airbases (though probably with the correct layout) mostly relying on landclass + autogen, then our current theatres (modified to fit on the surface of a sphere as right now they're flat) will overwrite the areas they cover.

As for WWII, didn't ED want to try having the map tied to the date in the editor? So maps will change to say, a WWII version if available (so far only the Marianas).

i wonder if that will include civilian airports like Passenger and GA and other small strips too and will that entice third parties to develop civilian aircraft alongside military vehicles too.I even see military trainers being utilized at the many training bases if ED makes the the whole US continent as well as bombing ranges and test sites.

Edited November 20, 2021 by Angelthunder

[Northstar98]

7 hours ago, Angelthunder said:

i wonder if that will include civilian airports like Passenger and GA and other small strips too and will that entice third parties to develop civilian aircraft alongside military vehicles too.I even see military trainers being utilized at the many training bases if ED makes the the whole US continent as well as bombing ranges and test sites.

I imagine so, we have wholly civilian airports and airfields (including grass strips) as they are, not to mention the fact that some airbases are joint military and civilian.

[Rick50]

 

And even some switch between civil and military and back... an example is Russia's Khemim Airbase on the coast of Syria, which used to be civilian, and may well revert to civilian use when Russia decides to leave, if/when that happens.

 

 

[Northstar98]

On 11/20/2021 at 9:35 PM, Rick50 said:

And even some switch between civil and military and back... an example is Russia's Khemim Airbase on the coast of Syria, which used to be civilian, and may well revert to civilian use when Russia decides to leave, if/when that happens.

Personally, I'm okay with having areas be representative of one particular timeframe, we're lucky enough to get one map accurate from one place in time, let alone a WWII version, I doubt we'll see maps where the configuration of airbases changes beyond changing from WWII to modern day.

[Lurker]

Considering the speed at which Eagle Dynamics implements even relatively simple core changes into DCS World, suffice to say that I have little faith in them ever achieving anything close to this, anytime soon. 

[Rick50]

Sure, that's fair.

It's worth considering they've been at it for 1.5 years so far, although that might be limited to tiny tests.  That said, I think Wags was saying this was years away, if at all.  So no "comming soon" previews, just an indication of what they'd like to acheive sometime in future.

 

[Marko.H]

On 10/17/2021 at 10:23 PM, Ala13_ManOWar said:

Nobody knows yet out of ED how it'll work, but the reasonable thing, and if I remember something of what was talked in the past, would be low quality everywhere off the maps we have, similar to low quality textures we already find off the detailed areas, but farther away to the "infinite", plus coast lines, so no need for 2 petabyte of World textures and meshes though a World mesh would be nice to have in order to make those areas usable even in low quality.

But it's just conjecture until we know more.

S!

or they can forget the solid vegetation and etc and have them only in cities and important areas... an overall map with low detail containing only the elevations... plus an RNG machine placing trees and houses and shacks and whatever randomly in "not important" areas of the map. in multiplayer these can be received from the server... just plain data on type and position of objects... so no need to download gigs as you fly.... just a few kilobytes of data.
I am no IT scientist or computer geek but I have read a similar suggestion before.

[dali]

are we talking about this?

 

https://meta.aero/mis/

 

 

[Etirion]

9 hours ago, dali said:

are we talking about this?

 

https://meta.aero/mis/

 

 

No that doesnt have anything to do with DCS

[Northstar98]

On 11/24/2021 at 10:21 PM, Marko.H said:

or they can forget the solid vegetation and etc and have them only in cities and important areas... an overall map with low detail containing only the elevations... plus an RNG machine placing trees and houses and shacks and whatever randomly in "not important" areas of the map. in multiplayer these can be received from the server... just plain data on type and position of objects... so no need to download gigs as you fly.... just a few kilobytes of data.
I am no IT scientist or computer geek but I have read a similar suggestion before.

I imagine the world terrain will be something more generic, with aerodromes that are the right layout, but maybe having generic structures. The rest (cities, forests etc) being handled by landclass + autogen, with a lower detailed terrain mesh and satellite textures.

Our current theatres would then override the areas they cover, for owners of them.

This is basically the exact way many civilian flight simulators work.

[Glide]

I can see how they might make it possible to fly anywhere in the world, but launch into "AO maps" for combat.  Or ED could just port their mods to MSFS like IndiaFoxTecho and make tons of cash.

[Silver_Dragon]

24 minutes ago, Glide said:

I can see how they might make it possible to fly anywhere in the world, but launch into "AO maps" for combat.  Or ED could just port their mods to MSFS like IndiaFoxTecho and make tons of cash.

Diferent engines, diferent target audence.