Modern air combat flight sims?

[Burning Bridges]

Sounds like an absolute nightmare to live there ..

We had overflights too, though they were mostly Mig-23. The Mig-15 and 17 was hopelessly outdated by that time and used as training aircraft.

In fact one of my earliest childhood memories was being inside a Mig-15. It must have been somewhere in Czechoslovakia where they had put one for children to play inside. And with 4 years old it was like being put in a space ship.

 

[Burning Bridges]

ED has announced the plane everyone has bee waiting for: The Yak-52

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=196356

 

[Burning Bridges]

Matt Wagner has written in a forum post that DCS 2.5 will be released end of January 2018, and used the famous words "that's not an estimate but a promise"

 

[Burning Bridges]

DCS 2.5 Beta has been released. I have ordered a new SSD because I run out of space left right and will update in a few days.

Must say that apart from the fact that I see lots of ugly shimmering even in the videos, it looks like a groundbreaking progress and I'm looking forward to it.

Antialising seems not to be the forte of DCS 2,5, as it seems to be working left but not right

 

[Burning Bridges]

If the water is anything like that I will fly over the sea just for that and do carrier landings.

Btw Caucasus always was my favorite map. Nevada is boring and empty (although the cities and airports are more than satisfying). Normandy is just weird and much too small. This however is vast, has varied countryside with populated spaces, mountains, backward regions with minarets and also vast sea areas, and it spans several different countries.

Looking forward to head back into Soviet Russia with a Mig 15, 21 and hopefully soon, a Mig 19.

 

[Burning Bridges]

They are also showing new images of the Yak-52 here and there. So, I am cautious and think this takes another 6-12 months or so until release.

But with a little luck it will look and sound like the real thing and what we can experience will be like the real thing



It's of course a bit weird that I started dicking around with Mig 21s, then went to train on the L-39 Albatros and eventually getting the Yak-52 last. But I plan to begin training from the ground up once everything is available in the right order.

 

[Mustawd]

what joystick/flight wheel setup do you use?

 

[Burning Bridges]

Saitek X45, plus 15 year old CH rudder pedals that still work somewhat.

 

[Burning Bridges]

It's nothing special, I just bought it 15 years ago.

But if you want something cool: http://www.thrustmaster.com/en_UK/products/hotas-warthog

 

[Burning Bridges]

I installed 2.5 and everything, cockpits, terrain is blurry as fuck.

I don't know if it's just my drivers, but don't use the option to move files from your previous installation. I used that to save download time and now think I am an idiot, because I had spent a lot of time until the old version looked perfect.

It did not even copy my graphics settings, so the feature is kind of retarded.

 

[J_C]

It's nothing special, I just bought it 15 years ago.

But if you want something cool: http://www.thrustmaster.com/en_UK/products/hotas-warthog

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah. Unfortunately it looks like they borked this again.

The image above shows the difference on my computer. On the right you see the old 2.1, crisp as fuck. Though it appears a bit dark, but that's ok for the time of day.

On the left the new NextGen graphics, blurry and overfiltered like it runs on some XBox console.

A request at the official forum only yielded retarded answers. It seems with ED beta really means beta, and they only shoved this out because they had already taken 2 years longer than planned.

So for me it's downgrade time and redownload the old 2.1 for ca 2 days, and then check back in a few months. Another 2-3 nights wasted for incomplete software.

But as 2.1 is now upgraded to 2.2, I would not even be surprosed id the downgrade results in the same crap. I cannot imagine they developed three different graphics engines, and probably "unified" them already, and I never should have upgraded

 

[Burning Bridges]

Spent severall hours on graphics settings to get rid of the shimmering and artifact problems. Things are getting better.

Tried various combinations of DSR but ultimately this was a waste of time. Menus and fonts with DSR looked horrible, and enabling AA plus DSR butchers framerates.

Now as I did in the past, I went back to my native resolution (or a tiny bit of DSR). Though there remains a little bit of shimmering and the cockpit still looks super weird, I now also see that many things work better in 2.5, framerates are stable and the terrain is smoothed very nicely by AA.

These are the settings which I currently settled on. The crucial thing is to enable 4x AA, or at least 2x. All other settings can be set accoring to fps on your system, and your preferences. I get stable 60fps.

VSync to me is also crucial because without it the image starts tearing, even at 100+ fps.

All in all I think I adjusted to the looks of the new version. Being able to fly over the Caucasus again with all the graphic improvments and the higher resolution model is great, even if it still looks a bit washed out and is far from perfect.

The sound engine appears to be greatly improved, though I have not checked the forums for that. I'd better not install 2.2 again because then I problably see the things that were better in the past and get completely insane. This forking of multiple versions is pure torture for the dedicated users, and must stop

jcd if you like the game so much, why dont you get yourself a decent computer and play it?

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Wow, modern combat flight simulators have really come a looooong way. I remember playing F-14 Tomcat and Project Stealth Fighter on my old C64 back in 1990 or so and having a blast with those wire-frame graphics. F-14 was pure tasty cheese since it was pretty much Fire & Forget where you could adopt the retard tactic of just ascending straight up to 40,000 ft with incredible power which your underpowered pursuers tried vainly to match then turning and blasting them with missile-fire from 5 miles away. I got the Congressional Medal of Honor in-game playing this way and felt like a happy retard. Stealth Fighter required skills of flak & decoy jettisoning while dodging all sorts of enemy fire from ground and air but still just dumbed down fun. The most fun I ever had with a combat/strategic sim was Red Storm Rising also on the C64. Now that shit was good, retarded but good.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yes, I have played my first flight sims on the C64 too and graphics and physics has improved a little bit.

What's funny is that they were considered hardcore even back then, when you were basically just looking at a green rectangle for the ground and a blue one for the sky.

 

[Burning Bridges]

There have been new images of the Mig-19 cockpit.

It may not be the most powerful plane ever made, and many pilots hated it. But from the viewpoint of the pilot seat I really really like it, much more than the Mig 21 or the modern popamole planes like the Harrier/Mirage/Hornet

Looks so much like a WW2 fighter but with more advanced technology ..

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ok the good news is that get completely used to the new shaders or whatever it is that made the image blurry.

With 4x AA what I get is an image that os strangely bright, at times discolored, but that is uniform and relatively free of artifacts
(though trees and shadows still flicker like motherfuckers at times, I am not paying any more attention to it now)

The water is as great as it looked in the trailers and simply fun to see. I almost wish they would made a ship sim with that engine now (not for real because it would take 15 years to finish the first fully playable content)

Well, not all things work. Many mods for the old version are of course broken, like my black/grey cockpit.

Now, except that the stock cockpit sucks I cannot hold that against the makers but there are other reasons the Mig 21 might be the first module that I uninstall. It's simply not on the level I expect from a 50$ modules, and feels more and more like an abandoned mod. Hopefully the Mig 19 will be better!

 

[Burning Bridges]

Life is good. After some inexplicable problems adjusting to 2.5, I am more and more happy with what I have

I can get used to those graphics now

This is an impression of the varying seasons. Though the snow tbh looks very boring, deferred shading now really evokes the athmosphere of a winter day. Add to that the astounding lightness of the controls at increasing height, and I reaally have the feeling to be many kilometers high.

Ahhh what a sexy sim. Now if there only were many things to do in this game except flying around.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Hey, I actually wanted to post that Matt Wagner in his outlook for 2018 mentioned a dynamic campaign structure, being "one of the top priorities after 2.5". I assume I already know what people will now be looking forward to, waiting and demanding release dates for, for the next 5 years

But anyway. 2.5 is released! OMG!! It is still beta but sometimes already feels a little bit like being sucked by young virgins. Technically they give us the largest and best map for free - i.e. you can play this sim with the latest version of Caucasus for free, and two planes (of which one is ok and one is a bit crap).

If you think about flying the sim, I recommend getting the 2.5 free version, and skip Nevada and especially Normandy for now (as well as the upcoming "straight of popamole" Dubai map ). The only module you really really need for your start would be the L-39 Albatros which sometimes is on sale for 30$. It's a fantastic plane to fly and goes as straight as an arrow, which cannot be said about the WW2 birds which are - though they look and sound fantastic - a royal pain in the ass to fly. I also like the Mig 15, but for a first module I say again I only recommend the L-39 https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/modules/albatros/

They also said that Syria and Afghanistan maps are being worked at, so tbh I would save my money for that.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I took a look at the last version of Team Fusion's 4.5 mod for White Cliffs of Dover known as the "Blitz" version and it kind of plays (and looks) like crap. Audio issues, micro-stutter, slow texture loading on plane models, etc. Can't believe they're selling this on Steam now. DCS World 2.5 looks like a dream in comparison.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Here is another example of the kind of lighting that Deferred Shading produces. You can see how the light reflects from metal surfaces and it's so strong that you will actually see it glint.

If I now turned this around 180 degrees the vibrance of colors is also unique, and has nothing to do with the unnatural colors that people get by using Reshade.

The effects are sometimes so bright that I find it weird sitting in a dark room in February and looking at a blindingly sunny day. This isn't bloom however but an actual attempt to simulate brightness.

Just make sure you have enough AntiAliasing to remove the artifacts, and it feels really good. I can't run 8x times AA MSAA or my frames take a big hit but 4x is already quite good.

 

[Runciter]

The planes look good indeed but the terrain is pretty cheap. The higher density mesh doesn't work well with low detail textures. I was expecting more from the 2.5 Caucasus map.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I'm tempted to play Falcon BMS v4.33 with my Thrustmaster T.1600m flightstick that sits in storage and was never used for more than 5 minutes. It's a miracle I survived that installation tutorial from the Benchmark Sims website though by some moron who felt it necessary to document with screenshots literally every single mouse-click of the installation procedure you make. It took them a while to ban that idiot.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The planes look good indeed but the terrain is pretty cheap. The higher density mesh doesn't work well with low detail textures. I was expecting more from the 2.5 Caucasus map.

Possible, but textures can be upgraded by mods. It's just one gigantic amount of work and I prefer they release the update instead of perfecting it for 5 more years. There is also a point to stop looking at the terrain and start doing other things. There is enough to do with the plane itself, the high fidelity flight model rocking your plane in the air etc.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Well, I got my old Thrustmaster T.1600M flightstick out of storage and it has a beautiful dead zone with excellent self-centering for a cheap piece of shit, but fuck, that blasted, BLASTING green LED light that activates every time you movie the stick really chaffs my ass. Not a big deal I guess since i can always put a piece of black electrical tape on it. I also noticed that moving the stick into the southwest position and letting it center feels a little sticky compared to the other positions but doesn't actually affect gameplay. It's just an OCD thing with me and I must live with it since I'm not going to get a perfect stick for the price I paid for it (about $30 USD), though I am open to suggestions on how to fix this sort of thing. The little throttle slider on it is functional but let's face it - it's pure Toys R Us. Oh, and Falcon BMS is ball-bustingly difficult just to take-off with a learning curve the size of the 50 foot woman's vagina in that B movie from the 50s. Christ, I don't remember flight sims being this difficult on my old C64.