Personal Opinions : Vision of DCS World
Currently in 2010s, there are few combat sims in active development. DCS World is, easily the most popular one of those, and I enjoy it myself.
First off, I would like to clear one thing, I am not a "ED apologist" or "cool-aid addict", and have many criticisms for DCS as well, which I will touch on other articles on this site. But everything have ups and downs, and I am generally quite happy with DCS and it's direction for what it is. I dislike type of religious follower who shoots down any valid criticism with fervor. That behaviour is one of the things I detest most in humanity. With that out of the way, let me phrase my observations on what I perceive more as vents of frustration on DCS modules, rather than valid criticism.
DCS World has a special place among combat flights simulators; it is an actualy sandbox sim, and this, is the vision DCS embraces and this is stated in official description of what DCS is, in words of Wags himself :
"DCS stands for “Digital Combat Simulator”. DCS is a world simulation engine permitting the user to operate or direct a growing number of combat and civilian aircraft, ground vehicles and ships, from different historical eras, in different geographical locations and at different levels of fidelity. It is a true "sand box" simulation."
Sandbox games are a boon for users who want to be able to create and practice any and every scenario that they can imagine. Operation Flashpoint/ARMA series owns a good deal of it's success to it's strong embrace of very customizable sandbox design. Few people every play single missions or campaigns of said titles ever, even though they spend hundres of hours in game. In a sandbox, every kind of scenario is hands, imagination and talent of mission designer. A mission editor allowing you to do just about everythin, be it very realistic or totally hypotethical, have always been much more valuable to me than clear cut campaigns and themes of '90s sims.
I have always dreamed of a unified, sandbox combat simulation environment, where many different and greatly simulated assets, controlled by players, can meet and fight with/against each other. Being fixed on a era is, just the opposite of that sandbox too.
Indeed, DCS thanfully embraced this, and currently has aircraft from many seperate eras, and a decent selection of ground units that can be pitted against those. Selection of ground units will improve with inlcusion of Normandy and WW II units early next year. That said, I have no trouble flying P-51D or F-86F against some of the ground units we already have in sim. I am worse with Fw-190D9 in ground attack, but even in that case it works fine in face of some BTRs and Shilkas ;). It may not be the most realistic in a too purist kind of view, but this is besides the point, the point for me, is that in it's current state, sim allow us to design and practice potential scenarios for these aircraft, using available assets in sim. And, in future, more variety of ground units will be added anyway...
Notice that other currently in development big title is Falcon BMS 4.32 and, it also has sandbox elements quite heavily. This is the future path for combat sims... Though, I will say that I believe mission and campaign system of Falcon and it's handling of ground war is quite superior to DCS in my opinion. But that's ok, everything can have it's own strong points ;).
Yet, with every announcement or release of any new module, people vent frustration and disagreement on choice of development.
Lately, people state they think DCS lack a vision and concept. Clearly, DCS' vision and concept itself is what they conceieve as lack thereof. DCS, is the ultimate air combat simulation sandbox, spanning across eras, and soon hopefuly maps. This, is what makes DCS special for me, and almost all simulations before it lacked. It is still possible to design very immersive missions and / or campaigns for most of the eras in sim, already in it's current state of assets, which only will improve with time.
Granted, yes, those eras need to get well fleshed out with many flyable aircraft to support / oppose each other. This is where preference of old aircraft make more sense than modern ones to be developed earlier. WW II or early jet warbirds, are exponentially quicker and more straight forward than ejt fighters from 3rd generation on. Therefore, in a relatively quick amount of time, those eras will be full of choices to make very interesting era specific missions, or more juicy across the time what-if missions. This, unlike what many people think, does not stop development of more modern assets for the sim, they continue on with their development.
For modern scenarios, yes, lack of a true multirole fighter is a glaring omission in DCS stable. But, unlike what people perceive, release and development of older equipment have nothing to do with apparently slow process on those modern aircraft. Simple fact is, those modern craft are requiring many new features in DCS, much more complex software design and development, and testing, and likely finding half a bazillion bugs every test, going back and forth. People needs to note that, there is no air to ground radar in DCS so far, so that's uncharted territory number one right here. A-10C is the aircraft with most modern and current avionic equipment in sim. It lacks any kind of radar, it is subsonic (infact slower than many late prop fighters) so flight model has less issues to deal with, and vast amounts of first hand data was accessible since ED was doing it for Air Force. Yet, it took about 5 years to complete... Now dear people, please go figure how much would ongoing efforts on F/A-18C and F/A-18E, Mirage 2000C, Eurofigter Typhoon and Tornado would take. Each have many complex sensor suits, radars, and all but Mirage has air to ground modes in radar, are all supersonic, will require inclusion of many new bombs and missiles each requiring flight and sensor characteristics modeled. Frankly, as much as I don't want to see that, I wouldn't be too surprised if I see some of the modern aircraft modules for DCS fall by the wayside due to amount of work reauired, complexity, and simple fact of how difficult it is to find reliable and non classified information for more modern ones among them. Yes those aircraft were all "simulated" before, on various sims, including non combat ones. But simple fact remains that, to the standart defined by DCS and expected by prospective buyers of DCS community, it is a whole another level of work to complete modules. Do note that even warbirds and early jets takes a year two of hardwork to complete, or rather beta complete, to DCS standarts. Taking all the people who are developing other stuff and throwing them all on development of modern modules will not make anything better, software development doesn't work quite that way, not with development of a complex flight sim anyway. Notion of having WW II aircraft in work delaying F/A-18 and any new maps, comes off purely sentimental due to the nature of sim development and the fact that Wags himself stating many times that teams work on them are seperate, and any impact it would have, if at all, would be very minimal. Same goes for VEAO, Pman and Ells stated many times that each of their actively developed projects have seperate teams working on them, only some developers switch between some of warbird projects as they progress.
In light of these facts, lets look what potential outcomes may "everyone should do modern aircraft" line of thought has :
- Years pass, almost nothing gets released, a good deal of community lose interest in DCS. Same old stuff lose interest rather quick...
- Potential new DCS flyers, who are interested in old aircraft to be developed, and would likely be a customer for modern aircraft in future, would never be reached
- Development studios spend years spending resources in development of modern titles, yet with no return of investment from selling anything. Studio faces economic hardships, and developers start to lose motivation. Trust me, I am a software developer and have a good idea how those stuff work with "big project only" companies :). Studioes may even have to fold that way...
- DCS would become an era specific sim, contrary to it's original premise, and so much potential would be lost forever.
Besides these, it is simply rude to overlook what other people love and want, just because you want something else. Pointing that there are other sims isn't helping either, there is nothing to DCS standarts of flight and systems modeling anywhere else, and hey, we want to fly them in our unified sandbox, why yes, even in face of older or newer platforms. Also, while there are some potential alternatives for WW II aircraft, can anyone show me a simulator that is currently alive and actively developed, and is centered on early jets or Korea conflict? Last that I know of was Mig Alley and that is ancient by now, and as far as I know is not in development anymore. I mean, I have absolutely zero interest in a Cessna 172 or a Piper Cherokee for DCS, but I know there are people who want that, I would hope for them that it will be available at some point... Though, I may get an aerobatics aircraft like Extra 300 or Su-26 ;) Everyone has an interest on something else, and that wasn't catered to until DCS. I for one, have always had an interest in light attack or combat capable trainers, older interesting looking aircraft like A-4, MiG-21 etc. In face of a multitude of WW II AND Modern sims from past, these platforms have almost never been developed for a combat simulator, and even if they did, certainly not to the DCS level. Many people have differing interests, respect other's interests being catered to as well as yours, especially if their have never been catered to since the dawn of flight simming :).
Another sentiment I see on Eagle Dynamics forums is that belief of "modern air combat sims are dying". Hardly true, as stated before, there are many modern platforms being modeled for DCS, and ground units themselves are predominantly modern. In about a year or so, we will be able to design and fly many modern era missions, 80s, 90s, 21st century, whatever mission designer likes! But better yet, it is not confined to DCS only! If we look at modern air combat titles in development :
- Falcon BMS 4 is very much alive and kicking, it is still in active development and 4.33 will see release at some point. Saying it is a dinosaur from 1998 would be rather uninformed. Team has improved it both in fidelity and graphics so much that it still very much relevant. Also, keeping value of eye candy high on priority list for an air combat sim does not look too right to my eyes. Just like DCS, this also is a high fidelity modeling of F-16C Block 50/52, and it has all the assets for a very much alive and kicking Korea conflict from 80s all the way to 2010s. 3rd part theaters all over the world are also available. All of the other aircraft in simulation can also be flown to a roughly FC3 like fidelity.
- SevenG F-18 : This is a simulation of F/A-18C to DCS level of fidelity. According to developer, it is already about 95 percent done, and may see release sometime around next year.
- Helo Sim : Much more in the vein of old 90s sims, this sim of AH-64 Apache is more focused on an immersive, scenario driven, active campaign.
Nop, especially when we think just how much smaller flight sim market is compared to 90s, modern air combat simulators are, still pretty much alive an kicking. Just a bit more patience, since fidelity level associated with modern sims, especially those tackle with modern aircraft, requires simply much, much longer development times, when they are ready, wait shall pay off well.
F-18 has been one of my favorite airplanes since I was a kid, like 8 years old or something really... It was also one of my first more serious sims in F/A-18 Korea from Graphsim in '90s. I want to have a modern simulation of especially the Charlie Hornet a lot, and am eagerly awaiting for it as much as anyone. We know it is in development, we know they take a long time, we know ED has many stuff to do, so, what's the fuss all about really? :)
Being able to fly helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in the same environment is seriously awesome! And if one consider modern fixed wing aircraft simulations dying, helicopter simulations would than be in a state of rigor mortis for long already. But ED forums have even seen threads saying "what is this a helicopter sim now?!?", while we only have 3 helicopter modules in DCS.
Wish everyone an enjoyable flight on their preffered sim / preferred ride ;) Cheers!
(PS. Why not try to get in to old jets and prop fighters while waiting for modern developments finish, there should be something nice there if there are so many people loving them right? ;))
Just before I go, let us have a look at what flyable platforms are currently available on DCS World :
Modern :
- Ka-50
- F-15C
- MiG-29 (3 variants but since they differ so little, I'll count that one)
- Su-27S
- Su-33
- A-10C
- A-10A
- Su-25
- Su-25T
Modern-ish
- UH-1H
- Mi-8MTV2
Early Jet
- F-86F
WW II
- P-51D
- Fw-190D9
First off, I would like to clear one thing, I am not a "ED apologist" or "cool-aid addict", and have many criticisms for DCS as well, which I will touch on other articles on this site. But everything have ups and downs, and I am generally quite happy with DCS and it's direction for what it is. I dislike type of religious follower who shoots down any valid criticism with fervor. That behaviour is one of the things I detest most in humanity. With that out of the way, let me phrase my observations on what I perceive more as vents of frustration on DCS modules, rather than valid criticism.
DCS World has a special place among combat flights simulators; it is an actualy sandbox sim, and this, is the vision DCS embraces and this is stated in official description of what DCS is, in words of Wags himself :
"DCS stands for “Digital Combat Simulator”. DCS is a world simulation engine permitting the user to operate or direct a growing number of combat and civilian aircraft, ground vehicles and ships, from different historical eras, in different geographical locations and at different levels of fidelity. It is a true "sand box" simulation."
Sandbox games are a boon for users who want to be able to create and practice any and every scenario that they can imagine. Operation Flashpoint/ARMA series owns a good deal of it's success to it's strong embrace of very customizable sandbox design. Few people every play single missions or campaigns of said titles ever, even though they spend hundres of hours in game. In a sandbox, every kind of scenario is hands, imagination and talent of mission designer. A mission editor allowing you to do just about everythin, be it very realistic or totally hypotethical, have always been much more valuable to me than clear cut campaigns and themes of '90s sims.
I have always dreamed of a unified, sandbox combat simulation environment, where many different and greatly simulated assets, controlled by players, can meet and fight with/against each other. Being fixed on a era is, just the opposite of that sandbox too.
Indeed, DCS thanfully embraced this, and currently has aircraft from many seperate eras, and a decent selection of ground units that can be pitted against those. Selection of ground units will improve with inlcusion of Normandy and WW II units early next year. That said, I have no trouble flying P-51D or F-86F against some of the ground units we already have in sim. I am worse with Fw-190D9 in ground attack, but even in that case it works fine in face of some BTRs and Shilkas ;). It may not be the most realistic in a too purist kind of view, but this is besides the point, the point for me, is that in it's current state, sim allow us to design and practice potential scenarios for these aircraft, using available assets in sim. And, in future, more variety of ground units will be added anyway...
Notice that other currently in development big title is Falcon BMS 4.32 and, it also has sandbox elements quite heavily. This is the future path for combat sims... Though, I will say that I believe mission and campaign system of Falcon and it's handling of ground war is quite superior to DCS in my opinion. But that's ok, everything can have it's own strong points ;).
Yet, with every announcement or release of any new module, people vent frustration and disagreement on choice of development.
Lately, people state they think DCS lack a vision and concept. Clearly, DCS' vision and concept itself is what they conceieve as lack thereof. DCS, is the ultimate air combat simulation sandbox, spanning across eras, and soon hopefuly maps. This, is what makes DCS special for me, and almost all simulations before it lacked. It is still possible to design very immersive missions and / or campaigns for most of the eras in sim, already in it's current state of assets, which only will improve with time.
Granted, yes, those eras need to get well fleshed out with many flyable aircraft to support / oppose each other. This is where preference of old aircraft make more sense than modern ones to be developed earlier. WW II or early jet warbirds, are exponentially quicker and more straight forward than ejt fighters from 3rd generation on. Therefore, in a relatively quick amount of time, those eras will be full of choices to make very interesting era specific missions, or more juicy across the time what-if missions. This, unlike what many people think, does not stop development of more modern assets for the sim, they continue on with their development.
For modern scenarios, yes, lack of a true multirole fighter is a glaring omission in DCS stable. But, unlike what people perceive, release and development of older equipment have nothing to do with apparently slow process on those modern aircraft. Simple fact is, those modern craft are requiring many new features in DCS, much more complex software design and development, and testing, and likely finding half a bazillion bugs every test, going back and forth. People needs to note that, there is no air to ground radar in DCS so far, so that's uncharted territory number one right here. A-10C is the aircraft with most modern and current avionic equipment in sim. It lacks any kind of radar, it is subsonic (infact slower than many late prop fighters) so flight model has less issues to deal with, and vast amounts of first hand data was accessible since ED was doing it for Air Force. Yet, it took about 5 years to complete... Now dear people, please go figure how much would ongoing efforts on F/A-18C and F/A-18E, Mirage 2000C, Eurofigter Typhoon and Tornado would take. Each have many complex sensor suits, radars, and all but Mirage has air to ground modes in radar, are all supersonic, will require inclusion of many new bombs and missiles each requiring flight and sensor characteristics modeled. Frankly, as much as I don't want to see that, I wouldn't be too surprised if I see some of the modern aircraft modules for DCS fall by the wayside due to amount of work reauired, complexity, and simple fact of how difficult it is to find reliable and non classified information for more modern ones among them. Yes those aircraft were all "simulated" before, on various sims, including non combat ones. But simple fact remains that, to the standart defined by DCS and expected by prospective buyers of DCS community, it is a whole another level of work to complete modules. Do note that even warbirds and early jets takes a year two of hardwork to complete, or rather beta complete, to DCS standarts. Taking all the people who are developing other stuff and throwing them all on development of modern modules will not make anything better, software development doesn't work quite that way, not with development of a complex flight sim anyway. Notion of having WW II aircraft in work delaying F/A-18 and any new maps, comes off purely sentimental due to the nature of sim development and the fact that Wags himself stating many times that teams work on them are seperate, and any impact it would have, if at all, would be very minimal. Same goes for VEAO, Pman and Ells stated many times that each of their actively developed projects have seperate teams working on them, only some developers switch between some of warbird projects as they progress.
In light of these facts, lets look what potential outcomes may "everyone should do modern aircraft" line of thought has :
- Years pass, almost nothing gets released, a good deal of community lose interest in DCS. Same old stuff lose interest rather quick...
- Potential new DCS flyers, who are interested in old aircraft to be developed, and would likely be a customer for modern aircraft in future, would never be reached
- Development studios spend years spending resources in development of modern titles, yet with no return of investment from selling anything. Studio faces economic hardships, and developers start to lose motivation. Trust me, I am a software developer and have a good idea how those stuff work with "big project only" companies :). Studioes may even have to fold that way...
- DCS would become an era specific sim, contrary to it's original premise, and so much potential would be lost forever.
Besides these, it is simply rude to overlook what other people love and want, just because you want something else. Pointing that there are other sims isn't helping either, there is nothing to DCS standarts of flight and systems modeling anywhere else, and hey, we want to fly them in our unified sandbox, why yes, even in face of older or newer platforms. Also, while there are some potential alternatives for WW II aircraft, can anyone show me a simulator that is currently alive and actively developed, and is centered on early jets or Korea conflict? Last that I know of was Mig Alley and that is ancient by now, and as far as I know is not in development anymore. I mean, I have absolutely zero interest in a Cessna 172 or a Piper Cherokee for DCS, but I know there are people who want that, I would hope for them that it will be available at some point... Though, I may get an aerobatics aircraft like Extra 300 or Su-26 ;) Everyone has an interest on something else, and that wasn't catered to until DCS. I for one, have always had an interest in light attack or combat capable trainers, older interesting looking aircraft like A-4, MiG-21 etc. In face of a multitude of WW II AND Modern sims from past, these platforms have almost never been developed for a combat simulator, and even if they did, certainly not to the DCS level. Many people have differing interests, respect other's interests being catered to as well as yours, especially if their have never been catered to since the dawn of flight simming :).
Another sentiment I see on Eagle Dynamics forums is that belief of "modern air combat sims are dying". Hardly true, as stated before, there are many modern platforms being modeled for DCS, and ground units themselves are predominantly modern. In about a year or so, we will be able to design and fly many modern era missions, 80s, 90s, 21st century, whatever mission designer likes! But better yet, it is not confined to DCS only! If we look at modern air combat titles in development :
- Falcon BMS 4 is very much alive and kicking, it is still in active development and 4.33 will see release at some point. Saying it is a dinosaur from 1998 would be rather uninformed. Team has improved it both in fidelity and graphics so much that it still very much relevant. Also, keeping value of eye candy high on priority list for an air combat sim does not look too right to my eyes. Just like DCS, this also is a high fidelity modeling of F-16C Block 50/52, and it has all the assets for a very much alive and kicking Korea conflict from 80s all the way to 2010s. 3rd part theaters all over the world are also available. All of the other aircraft in simulation can also be flown to a roughly FC3 like fidelity.
- SevenG F-18 : This is a simulation of F/A-18C to DCS level of fidelity. According to developer, it is already about 95 percent done, and may see release sometime around next year.
- Helo Sim : Much more in the vein of old 90s sims, this sim of AH-64 Apache is more focused on an immersive, scenario driven, active campaign.
Nop, especially when we think just how much smaller flight sim market is compared to 90s, modern air combat simulators are, still pretty much alive an kicking. Just a bit more patience, since fidelity level associated with modern sims, especially those tackle with modern aircraft, requires simply much, much longer development times, when they are ready, wait shall pay off well.
F-18 has been one of my favorite airplanes since I was a kid, like 8 years old or something really... It was also one of my first more serious sims in F/A-18 Korea from Graphsim in '90s. I want to have a modern simulation of especially the Charlie Hornet a lot, and am eagerly awaiting for it as much as anyone. We know it is in development, we know they take a long time, we know ED has many stuff to do, so, what's the fuss all about really? :)
Being able to fly helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in the same environment is seriously awesome! And if one consider modern fixed wing aircraft simulations dying, helicopter simulations would than be in a state of rigor mortis for long already. But ED forums have even seen threads saying "what is this a helicopter sim now?!?", while we only have 3 helicopter modules in DCS.
Wish everyone an enjoyable flight on their preffered sim / preferred ride ;) Cheers!
(PS. Why not try to get in to old jets and prop fighters while waiting for modern developments finish, there should be something nice there if there are so many people loving them right? ;))
Just before I go, let us have a look at what flyable platforms are currently available on DCS World :
Modern :
- Ka-50
- F-15C
- MiG-29 (3 variants but since they differ so little, I'll count that one)
- Su-27S
- Su-33
- A-10C
- A-10A
- Su-25
- Su-25T
Modern-ish
- UH-1H
- Mi-8MTV2
Early Jet
- F-86F
WW II
- P-51D
- Fw-190D9
A well-written and thoughtful article. As you pointed out, we certainly have a clear vision for DCS World; however, some folks do not share the desire for our vision and incorrectly interpret it as lack of vision and planning. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a long-term strategic plan that we are working towards each day.
ReplyDeleteMatt "Wags" Wagner
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