Are We In A Sim Gaming Dark Age?
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- Things were better and we lost our way in combat flight sims. As 2022 closes and we begin 2023, I wanted to lay out something that I have been thinking on. It is a weird time for simulation gaming, in some ways, we are modeling stuff that I never expected to be modeled but on the other hand, we have regressed significantly from a gameplay standpoint. Happy New Year!!
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:09 Part 1: The Golden Age of Sim Games
10:01 Part 2: Our Dark Age
17:55 Part 3: The Future
21:20 Outro
Music (In order of apperance)
ES_Capriol Suite_ II. Pavane (Version 2) - Traditional
ES_Danse des Mirlitons (Version 2) - Traditional
ES_La Donna E Mobile (Version 2) - Traditional
ES_The Barber of Seville - Traditional
ES_The Four Seasons_ Violin Concerto in E Major, RV 269, 'Spring'_ I. Allegro - Traditional
ES_Waltz From Swan Lake - Traditional
ES_Deep River - Traditional
ES_Cello Concerto Op. 85 In E Minor, Op. 85_ I. Adagio - Traditional
ES_Sarabandes Version 2 - Traditional
ES_I Vow to Thee, My Country - Traditional
ES_Prelude In C Major (BWV 846) (String Version) - Traditional
ES_Children's Corner, L. 113_ Movement VI_ Version 1 - Traditional
Sources:
sites.google.com/site/falcon4...
stormbirds.blog/2022/12/04/un...
stormbirds.blog/2022/09/12/le...
Outro Music:
• Synthwave / Retrowave ...
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Text Block for Algo:
enigma,enigma89,dcs,war thunder,BMS,IL-2,IL- 2 Great Battles,DCS World,Falcon 4.0,WWIIOL,Aces High,IL-2 1946,1946,Sim Games,Sim gaming,SImulation games,air sims,combat flight sims,microsoft flight simulator,enigma dcs,enigma il-2,enigma war thunder,enigma BMS,enigma 1946
This channel focuses on combat flight simulators like DCS World and IL-2 Great Battles. If you play either of these games or flight simulators like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and enjoy aviation and dogfighting then this channel is for you. Even if you are coming from War Thunder and BF2042, you can learn to fly these combat flight simulators.
I play using TrackIR5 and do not use VR, this means that I am able to capture footage for tutorials, how-to-guides and other multiplayer tips and tricks video in 1440p.
Eagle Dynamics has made it easier than ever to learn DCS because the game is technically free. The game has the F-15, F-16, Su-27, Mig-29, Mig-21, Mig-19, Mig-15, F-86 Sabre, Jf-17, Mirage 2000, F-18 Hornet and F-14 Tomcat. There are soon other modules coming such as the Mig-23 and F-4. Lastly, there are helicopters like the Mi-24 Hind and AH-64 Apache.
The same is also true for IL-2 Great Battles. With Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Kuban, Battle of Bodenplatte, Battle of Moscow and Battle of Normandy being released, there is an immense amount of variety covered. The Bf-109, Fw-190, P-51, Tempest, P-47, Mc.202, Stuka, Ju-88, He-111, and so on are all in the game. I focus on making videos to make that part accessible so you can dive into IL-2 Multiplayer. - Hry
I may get flamed for this video but I simply miss having persistent large scale dynamic campaigns that I could get invested into. I really hope that we get this again in modern day sims. To me it seems like such a shame to take all of the hard work everyone has done to take these beautiful full or semi-full fidelity planes and play them on such desolate and static environments. Let me know what you think. I hope this video is seen as a call for hope and not to be a huge bummer. Let's hope we get some progress in 2023. Happy New Year Everyone!
Pretty thoughtful, hard to get flamed for it (hopefully) 🙂
I think there is an even bigger point here, video game industry as a whole had forgotten the value of dynamic & large scale gameplay with its emerging stories and replayability value, and focused on other things. I think we might be at a turning point though, things like the battle royale genre & its affiliate highlight that you can do more than arena gameplay & retain players pretty well. You had to have PUBG developed as a mod/community thing for devs to realize it 😅
WT I think is less a cause and more a symptom, it's where people default in lack of an alternative. Failing a meaningful large scale campaign and emerging gameplay you might as well go for the second-best in terms of 'addictiveness', e.g. the meta progression and unlocks, and stick with quick arenas for the gameplay. But I think it took more people from non-sim games (e.g. world of tanks) and "upgraded" them than the reverse, but makes sense that you'd see these from your point of view.
YES I agree completely Enigma. I get tired of the sim community drooling over clouds and rivet counting fidelity. Start demanding a compelling game (and associated elements like competent AI) to go along with the simulation being built.
And ED is so invested in scripted campaigns to be a substitute to this. No offense to Baltic Dragon or anyone else building campaigns.. I just don’t want to see that and it’s not an acceptable replacement for what BMS delivers on 25 year old software
Asa developer, I am an ex-wwiionline player and I have spent time on your Cold War server. I have lot to say so please stick with me. First to a degree you are right. I am going to stick to DCS as it is my choice, I haven't played War Thunder for a long time. I joined ww2online 12 months after its launch, boy it was rough but as you highlighted it improved and was fun. It suffered from being a small design/development team but the payback was the rolling campaign made it fun. Its weakness was getting out content and features due to some early architecture issue and the code base. Now the Enigma Cold War server does give you a feel for the WWIIONLINE and I commend people to try it. I did a design for road convoys to resupply units at the front, whether the design would work with the current server remains to be seen. But the big issue is the integration of the client to a server. Also the need for a more dynamic feel to the Enigma server to give it a lived in feel for some PvE combat as well as PvP. A weakness in ww2online. I wish I could help as I am developer of over 30 years experience. But I am not a games developer so I am not sure what I could do for you? Oh and I am an old air Cold War Warrior.
Your analysis of the results of the war are spot on. Here in Europe many external contractors now come from Eastern Europe to help meet the shortage of commercial developers like myself. In my current employment we have a large number of them working remotely to help us develop a new product. Then someone started a war! Now most of the team are in Moldova, but there is a member in Ukraine. They are working so hard to try and keep working to feed their family, in trying conditions. In Moldova there are power cuts making production slower due to Russian air strikes and bombardment. Thank god for cloud storage of source code. At a previous job we had developers from Kiev who were Sim developers cross training to get some new skills away from games. Nice bunch, who I have no contact with alas, clearly they have this year likely been thinking of something other than writing games! There is a shortage of developers in the world and games development is the least well paid so most developers migrate to commercial work. With Russia and Ukraine being at war many people are focussed in survival not development of any software! It is from this region that many of the companies who write combat sims come from. For there to be a Renaissance new games houses will need to appear in the Western Europe and other parts of the world for it to occur.
Good luck Enigma and I wish you all the success in the world for I think we seek the same thing.
Did Total Air War have dynamic campaigns ? You are complaining about the state of things ? ha!, what about us, the very few that would like a single player dynamic campaign to justify those 60$ modules of DCS. The thing is that i really want the Hind but for the same money i can buy Warhammer Darktide and can play tens if not hundred of hours of good co-op fun rather than a beta helicopter with no campaign just quick missions.
“We have more buttons to press but less to do” is quote of the decade for simming…
Honestly. Roughly thats 'gaming' in general these days... i lot of the points that Enigma talks about is relatable in sense to modern day gaming as a whole..
that's why i do rally racing. at least some of the skills transfer to an average day to day life. I can better evaluate immersion breaking moments since I know how to oversteer in everything irl from small economy cars to large dually pickups, very little to do with controls other than what gets the dopamine going.
limited controls, all the feel goods. Like guitar hero, but the sim is close or identical to real life
As BMS dev , surviving from Antic age , i would like to thank you fot this video that captures exactly why we continue working on Falcon 4.0 legacy :)
Excellent! Thanks for your work
BMS dev, I'll be happier if you could work on present 4.5 & 5th generation fighters fitted with AESA & PESA radars + large MFDs instead. There's already DCS giving low & high fidelity cockpit fighters from cold war to 90's era with more aircraft filling the void trying to complete the collection.
There's no way you could fight DCS in their field therefore it's better for you to focus on current & upcoming generation fighters to capture your different field of audience instead. It shouldn't be hard for you if you're not making high fidelity cockpit. As long as you have the cockpit layout and get know roughly how they work after visiting western & eastern manufacturers at few expo, you could make it happen. Why not add these fighters into your arsenal & sell it on Steam?
US - F-15EX, F-15C with AESA AN/APG-63CV3 AESA, F-16V, F/A-18E/F (added advantage F-35A/B/C & F-22).
Russia - Su-27SM3, Su-30SME, Su-35S/UBS, Su-34M, Mig-29SMT/M2 Mig-35, Mig-31 (Su-57 extra mile)
China - J-10C, J-11D, J-15B, J-16, J-20A/B
NATO - EF2000, Rafale C/M, Gripen
@@jayjay53313 a lot of that stuff is classified, it'd either be very unrealistic and therefore not a simulator or they'd get in a lot of trouble if it was realistic
@@Flaruwu come up with realistic ones first especially aircraft available for export market, they could provide general information needed for this game expansion. Almost all 4.5 generation aircraft shouldn't be a problem in low fidelity
I thought Falcon 4.0 was dead, hadn't heard mention of it in years.
My first real Multiplayer experience was Falcon and I was hooked. I joined a LAN group who literally handed me a a phone book sized print out of the Falcon Manual and told me read certain chapters first and come back in a couple of weeks for a flight in the dynamic campaign they had been running for months( yes Months). I dutifully read the chapters and then practice flew some training missions until the Next LAN weekend came .I joined them and I still remember that experience like it was yesterday I'm now nearly 50 years old and I'll never forget how alive it felt and how everyone got involved with what the next mission would be and what that outcomes influence it would have on the campaign. Would we split in to different Flights and do a multi pronged Approach? Would we perhaps take a new airfield? Our choices mattered a great deal. Cooperation was key. LAN group members came and went due to Real life and then eventually disappeared into the Memories of a few old men. I wasn't able to get that feeling again until I joined a Online Squadron a few years later and played IL2 1946. A fun experience and some great memories but no Falcon. Then came DCS World ,Graphics to die for, cockpits full fidelity an active and passionate community. But sadly It lacks that Alive feeling of the incredible Dynamic Campaign Falcon Had. I have gotten to a point in DCS where I load up the sim and then just either sit in the main UI and Don't know what to do or just jump into a plane and go for a sightseeing flight. Because I know that to start a Multi hour mission where It will likely Bug out and can't finish it will sap my will to play. I have literally every aircraft Bar a couple I buy every Campaign that seems interesting but never quite gives that feeling again. Then a new Module comes out and I'm excited to learn it and play for awhile only to remember the problems the SIM has Not addressed and the Dynamic Campaign it lacks.
Totally agree with u
Oh yes! I printed my falcon manual out at work. Was it 400 pages??
I have exactly the same situation. I own every modual and just about every static campaign. I then do just as you sit in the UI.... Funny; after you have all that DCS has to offer but still find it boring. However, I just useually end up on a multiplayer server flying around (then only to have players run into me). Or trying to fly a formation without any voice contact. Hope something changes soon
I was never able to join a LAN group and enjoy multiplayer, there is a special place in my being for Falcon 4.0.
Falcon's dynamic campaign is the only true simulation of modern air combat I've played because of the threat layers and level of activity in the AO. You truly needed to know how your radar and avionics functioned to be successful. The immersion of getting to know the AOs and see them develop was second to none in my opinion.
There was another sim that had a great campaign that was dynamic as well. I forget the name but it was from the early 2000s.
From your points, a dynamic campaign for DCS would make wonders for this simulator!
DCS probably is in the best position to lead us forward, we just need the dynamic campaign
Wait for BMS 4.38
@@MaxWaldorf is this a meme, or are they planning on something special for 38 ?
@@alexysaintemarie4259 wait for the 4.37 trailer for more...
On the discord we showcased a couple pics as well...
@@alexysaintemarie4259 VR Support is the big thing, plus they will be able to develop separate avionics for other aircraft other than F-16
As a DCS content creator myself, I've come across the same issues. Frankly, I don't think that the base code will be updated in order to allow for our Wishlist that you have posted. The stated problem is that making planes and tanks has a direct impact on the bottom line. Updates to the code may or may not bring in new players. The flight sim community is a very niche, middle aged, whale heavy group with disposable income. This demographic has largely spent the money that they want on the base games... the only way to engage their wallets now would be to keep the treadmill of planes and tanks going. Unfortunately, the larger the library of that content grows, the harder it will become to patch it all in to the updated engine *IF* it were to be made... unfortunately, the longer we travel down the path of milking the whales, the less likely it will be that we will ever get anything else.
If ED came out and said that they don't have the income to make large overhauls of the code, but offered a patreon, or something like that in order to fund it, I'd pay. I'd contribute a lot for it. Even if I didn't get anything but the updated product, the same updated product that most everyone else would get for free, I'd be grateful that it was being done and that I got to help make that happen.
It's a problem of economic incentives, DCS' current business model doesn't incentivizes that but if they added a premium account-like system (gives you access to all the terrains ?) it would change the incentives.
@@Tetemovies4 Which very quickly turns into a subscription for what we previously were able to buy directly. The less flight sim games emulate modern gaming monetization the better if you ask me.
@@er00ic Yes that's the point, it's a subscription my argument would be null if it wasn't.
@@er00ic That depends on what the subscription is FOR. A subscription for modules is dumb: it just means you have to keep paying for something you already bought.
But a subscription service more akin to an MMORPG makes sense: a subscription for an actual ongoing SERVICE. In DCS, I would absolutely pay a subscription fee for a service that developed 2-3 sophisticated missions per week and offered them on a server with a live Game Master managing REDFOR. Missions with proper IADS, multiple brigades on the ground in sensible fighting positions, actual allied strike packages designed to work together with cooperative strike, SEAD escort, DCA escort, jammer support, and assigned tankers, tasked to strike a sensible target set.
War thunder has posed itself to capture a huge section of the market base for several reasons. It has variety (which is important at some point) but more importantly I believe it captures so many players because it easily provides "sim-ish" gameplay in short packages (15 to 30 min in airRB). The controls are the same across all vehicles (I don't need to learn a new cockpit to be a decent pilot in a new airframe) and I can easily sit down and play a few games without having to dedicate a couple hours like I might have to in other fuller sims.
Its alluring to casual players because its more sim than theyre used to, and the variety is overwhelming.
Its alluring to more serious players because of the convenience, and doesnt require hours of dedication to milk *some* outcome of fun from.
It is perfectly posed to suck up the most players with the blandest experience, and then milk the money out of them.
I don't think its a "bad" game, but its definitely run by a bad company that doesn't *really* care about its players past its ability to make money off of them, and as you said, the lack of any kind of dynamic interesting campaign has set a bad standard for the rest of the industry and players.
Never played those old games, but if IL2 had a proper sense of scale in a multiplayer setting I think I'd shit my pants. Engaging large numbers of human + AI fighters and bombers would be a dream come true.
WW2OL was a mindblowing experience. Joining a large squad was a no-brainer, and you'd get with your air wing on a saturday to put up 20 or so fighters and a half dozen or more bombers to support your ground guys operation. That was coordinated with a few other big squads, and your counterparts on the other side would always come and ruin your plans. It was wild! Deal with the enemy air, maybe get lucky and strafe a few trucks of infantry heading into the contested city, giant furballs, the whole deal.
Might want to checkout aces High 3, it has the large multiplayer arena. Base is smaller than it use to be but still can get up to 150 on weekends. I have played there since 2006 along with IL2 and WT. I keep going on back to AH.
you should definitely try out the old games. Firstly they are free and secondly they are still developed further to this day. The immersion is so much better, Hell, even the physics engine in Il-2 1946 is way more realistic than what Great Battles have (WT is based on that physics engine, by the way). The dynamic campaign in Falcon 4 BMS is mindblowingly realistic. The wealth of different mission that can be flown is huge. And every time you play it, the campaign will develop differently with a bunch of whole new challenges.
@@josefwitt9772 Aces High was pretty fun too, especially the fact that is was a way to play sim and manage bombing a lot better, allowing you to fly 3 bombers at once (with the AI flying the other two until you got shot down).
please read the reply to the original post that i put up il2 cliffs has everything you can name about a full war scenerio
At this point, I am unsure DCS has either the engine or the staff capable of creating a dynamic campaign. Perhaps when that extra thread arrives it might open things up, but I remain skeptical.
BMS announcing incoming VR support got me to immediately pick it up, once that arrives it's at least an auto-try from me.
I think ED's core team have been stuck on implementing multicore for a few years now. It's understandable, adding multicore support to an existing engine isn't easy, there are so many potential pitfalls. It does need to be done before anything else is bolted on to the engine, though; not just for performance reasons, but also for architectural reasons - it's easier to develop a new feature when the foundations of the engine aren't changing drastically underneath you. I reckon that when multicore ships, we'll see faster progress on core content features, as the majority of the core team will then be able to switch to working on other content pieces.
I still believe that ED really cares and will deliver the dynamic campaign. We will see. At some point it HAS to happen. I would imagine that I am ahead of the curve in terms of burnout and that other players will reach the point that a lot of us are at. It is just a matter of time IMO.
@@Enigma89 We've all got our fingers crossed, really. As there really is SO much potential there with DCS. One thing I would never accuse them of is not caring, but yes the burnout and fatigue with constant DCS engine/code limitations really does start to get to you.
@@Malakhit24 It would certainly make sense, but my main concern is that the rollout of multicore could understandably be incredibly messy. It may not open up moving staff onto other projects if it's a bit of a disaster on launch.
I really hope BMS gets vr working.
I think you articulated this perfectly. As someone who didn’t grow up with the older sims, I was and still am unfamiliar with them. After looking into them, I’m surprised to see they had so much to offer. Once I got into dcs, I was blown away by sim, but after some time I started to feel there was something missing. I think the dynamic Cold War server is the closest we have to filling that gap. Thanks for what you do for the community.
Thank you!
Good articulation, bad microphone. Those breathing and salivating sounds really distracted me from the point, got to repeat parts of the video and concentrate on what was being said
@@sungasunga9301 Video was fine. Sounds like you have some attention span issues.
In the old days we had a lot of CONTEXT. I am from the days of Microprose, I played F-19 and F-117, Jane's, etc. We didn't had much graphics but it was a lot of fun, because they had content and context, thus helped a lot to immerse in the phantasy. Now it is all open world. I guess this add to the theory that humans need purpose in life and even in games to have fun.
I'm also from that era.... F19! WHAT A GAME! Playing that on the 386 for hours on end was amazing. I never got bored of it. Then TFX, EF2000, F22. All great campaigns with good pilot progression, medals, etc.
I still fire up F-117 from time to time. I just started playing DCS a few weeks ago and I feel the same stagnation. Beautiful game but just feels unfinished if you want the sense of scale it just isn't there.
Makes me wonder if there is a gap for a low-fidelity sim, that focuses more on those moving pieces.
Gunship 2000 was my favourite from Microprose. I often wonder if the lack of graphical detail sparked the imagination and thus the combination created something more than modern games can offer. I see people complaining about big manuals in DCS but old school games had big manuals too, though not so complicated.
Jane's USAF was my favorite as a kid. Never found anything as fun.
@@ilkkakoski82 I don't recall that game. I've just been looking up all the classics on YT. In my memory, EF2000 was almost real graphics 😂🤣
I wonder if I'll look back at FS2020 in 2040 and think it looks terrible?!
Here is what WT did right: I don't need to read a 300 page long instruction manuel to then get shot down in a 60€ module for a few weeks while using a 300€ HOTAS on a 2000€ rig with a 200€ trackIR kit until I can get one good sortie. WT is what brought me back to sim-lites like Squad, PS and GHPC, I like having a simulation happening behind the screen but I don't have the time/willpower to spend 35hrs/week to learn to fly/drive a vehicle at a mediocre level (and then repeating that process for every new 60€ module) especially when other time consuming hobbies are involved.
Edit: Now WT is far behind me but it showed me the type of simulation/ease of use ratio I wanted to have access to and a slow renaissance might be happening with indie devs exploring new avenues as GHPC is showing for tank sims.
I've started playing dcs (yeah, modern mfd stuff) with just the simpliest Logitech joystick and after around 50 hours have been scoring positive kd in gs server, even without headttacking. Of course I feel like average player skill there isn't that high, I scored more than 2 kd while being drunk as hell after around 400 hours, but you are overrating learning and equipment curve a lot. Dcs can give you positive feedback quickly without building a cockpit in your house of you are willing to learn
WT gets around the initial time investment problem but it's definetly more time consuming than actual sims.
GHPC is the best hope we have to break the yoke of the snail
you dont need to read the 300 page manuals to fly in dcs either
@@Tetemovies4 yeah, but no one actually thinks about having fun anymore. I try to, and it works. I play air arcade mostly. Everyone else is focused on grinding the top vehicles.
Tarkov really is the best example IMO. I'm not one for looter shooters to begin with, but that was a game I was quite hyped for only to play it for a few days, get some middling loot, get bored, quit, and then repeat the process every 6-12 months. The hideouts are really the only new thing (besides one or two new maps) that happened prior to my current hiatus and all it did was add another annoying reason to have to play Groundhog Day: The Game, against players with insane gear and lightning reflexes. If your gameplay loop requires constant resets to prevent stagnation so bad even Brezhnev would blush, you haven't made a game, you've made a particularly advanced slot machine. PUBG held my attention for even less time as it had all the features (or lack thereof) that I dislike in Tarkov while also having a very "generic mid 20teens FPS" feel to it. On the other hand, while I also take long breaks between sessions and think it gets repetitive, I actually enjoy vanilla DayZ standalone as it gives me options and doesn't give me baggage. I can explore, survive, hunt players, team up, whatever - and without mods, I don't have to deal with gamey power fantasy shit like traders with safe zones and god tier equipment, or doomforts popping up everywhere.
When it comes to campaigns and old sims... DID's flight sims, particularly with their Total War system, were amazing. I nearly had to repeat a year of school thanks to F-22 Total Air War. I'd sit in the AWACS mode for hours, hopping between flights as a virtual international incident played out. I highly recommend trying it if you can get a hold of the game; I once also saw a really good short documentary piece about the company and their rise and fall here on YT, though don't remember the channel it was on. On the ground, M1 Tank Platoon II provided a similar fix for my burgeoning tank nerd. You know me well enough to know which game I consider to have inherited its mantle, so I'll leave it there for now.
All in all, really good points, and really well made. Use your CZcams influencer street cred to make the BMS guys finish the 16A pit quicker and I'll come join you.
I hope they do it, would be amazing. Thanks for sharing your experience. Very much on the same wave length regarding tarkov and pubg
Tarkov was ruined by the skill system but I agree, constant resets is no way to make a game.
I completely agree with you, and I'm in the same boat in regards to taking a hiatus from Tarkov. However, Nikita did say the game servers will no longer wipe when the game is in stable release, and when that day comes I will pick the game up again as I am still very fond of it, but in the meantime I hate having my progress wiped every 6 months
Dude you totally missed the actual problem with dynamic campaign and tarkov. Tarkov have so much potential, it's still on Beta, and it's been accomplishing a lot in realism terms. Those skills systems are realistic to a certain extent and even rewarding I'd say.
Nikita isn't any other big company ruler around the world. He have real plans to make Tarkov an actual Military Simulator. The clues are everywhere, taking away arcade players to Arena is one, inserting BTR vehicles into the game that you can shoot the turret and some other basic mechanics. Tarkov is still BETA it's not something to compare to a full game release!!!
Man fuck the recoil imbalance among players
It's one thing for me to suck from not being a lightning fast 18 year old anymore, but now they want me to grind out all this bullshit to be on a level playing field?
Too many times I've caught people's sides or behind and it didn't matter because I didn't OHK them. They just snapped and gunned me down. Good ammo or not
Thanks to WT I got into IL2 and eventually DCS because I wanted more realistic experience, and maybe it will drag more people like me to these games. But I'm actually glad we have only few sims now because of example of Hardcore FPS games. When I was starting there were just few of them if we don't count really old ones. Most famous probably Arma 3, Verdun, Red Orchestra and Insurgency. All had lot of players and experience was awesome. Then developers of Insurgency came out with Day of Infamy, later with Sandstorm, Verdun developers made Tannenberg and Isonzo this year, Squad became a thing, Tarkov, Post scriptum, Beyond the wire, Hell let loose, and even Ready or not, Ground branch or Zero hour are famous now. Main point is community got devided between these games and most of them, even they are so good, are dead now just because no one is playing them and it's making me sad because I had a lot of fun in them. Sometimes less games is better for community even tho they are not perfect, at least we have people to play with.
I just bought a joystick to play dcs after playing WT for a year.
Lol what? Plenty of people play hell let loose, post scriptum and squad.
@@willsimpson3783 Hell Let Loose and Squad, yes. Post Scriptum is dead.
Dude the Arma Russian servers are so good to play... It's crazy how deep in detail hey go over to build massive military simulator experience out of game you'd never imagine.
They fill up their arma servers so fast, and also, I'd say that Russian gaming companies can turn the tide of all this dark age of Simulator Era Games.
Micropose still disappoints me, I hope they'll change, and maybe we'll see like: stormworks with a very concise multiplayer campaign being polished.
EDIT: most of servers are full and just to correct, they're locked to their community, which isn't hard to join, just requires some Russian language knowledge.
The issue with transferring people to these sims is most dont want to spend money on a joystick. dont want to spend money on the modules and taking time to learn everything about the aircraft with a 20 year old pc
I grew up with Ace Combat. I love aviation and when I discovered War Thunder back in 2013-14, my mind was blown. Aircraft could shoot at eachother and you could destroy engines. Clip wings. It was so much compared to what I had always known. So I've stuck with it. I have tried to get into DCS in other flightsims but I don't exactly have the space for a HOTAS set up. College sorta kills that for now. But War Thunder was always good about mouse-aim. That's why I stuck around.
Nevertheless, you hit the nail on the head. It is very repetitive. The only reason I stick with it is because I'm interested in the next big thing and I'm a bit competitive in the skies. Monkey Brain happy when I get a kill. But it is bland in the end. And I don't know how they can change it. However, there is a part of me that is hopeful for a possible future with dynamic missions. War Thunder has been taking notes as of late when it comes to other games in the flight genre. The battle music has been something that is niche, but they've put effort into. Larger maps have been popping up in Air RB. And there is generally some experimenting that is being done.
But, that could just be me being hopeful. My hope is to one day be able to boot the game up and find myself battling in what is essentially an Ace Combat mission but actually a multiplayer dynamic campaign. But the groundwork is currently not there for that. Honestly they could probably do with working on some smart AI to flesh the world out a bit. As for other games, I would like to escape the jail of War Thunder. I think whenever the F4 drops from Heatblur, I might be in a position where I can take a look at least. But time will tell.
As a BoS pre War Thunder guy, you could go fully flight stick and sim with WT and back in 2012 it was pretty novel. IL2 and DCS did it better in the long run but WT was there. But yes their strength is Arcade and somehow because of the budget crowd realistic took over.
I own almost every module in dcs except for maybe 2 or 3 and I haven't touched the game in months. After playing regularly since early 1.5 there are just too many issues that have been overlooked for years. This combined with the lack of content has been the reason why i've taken a bit of a hiatus from dcs.
But why would they do more when there is ppl who will buy any airplane they make, why waist time on things that dont bring money , when ppl will buy new airplanes no mather what. They can be lazy when it comes to what Enigma talks when there is so many players who will just keep buying new stuf no mather what.
@@countzero7 The people who are buying every new module that releases aren’t the problem. The problem is that eagle dynamics entire business model depends on the preorder and early access sales to drive development. That has been an issue for a long time and is the reason we got half baked modules for a few years. Pretty much anything the released by belsimtek/ED between the hornet and the F-16. Eagle dynamics needs those sales in order to fund development.
same here. i own so many dcs modules but havent played dcs in about 6 months. its riddles with issues for me i cant overlook so ive stopped playing until it becomes usable for me. I got a quest 2 for christmas so i bought vtol vr and WOW. It is so incredible. So thats what im going to play for the long term!
Same here but no more money for Ed!
@@countzero7 Counter point, if people essentially boycotted DCS and stopped buying modules, they would have no budget and would have even less reason to work on the game, it would be abandoned and everyone would go "what did you expect, nobody is buying anything and the player base is dead" Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Since simulation reached home computers (basically since gaming itself started in the eighties) we have been pursuing fidelity. We have come to a point in which companies sell fidelity airplanes because that's what we simmers thought we were after. Turns out, that was only partly true. After long sessions learing and training unbelievably true-to-life airplanes, we find ourselves missing that old feeling.
Bottom line: thx for having created the cold war server. It means A LOT in this context.
Well said!
Same story with racing game.
We have super duper simulators, but where is the classic Gran Turismo formula ? (GT1 to GT4)
I want to play a career mode where you need to pass painful driving licences and grind early championships with a shitbox car that you get to upgrade slowly.
Meanwhile in modern Forza, the game basically gives a 500 hp Corvette after 5 minutes of gameplay 😂
And modern Gran Turismo has you grinding for hours to collect cars you cannot use in any race 😵💫
My dream wish: all hard core developers come together to create a consortium. For campaigns we have Command from Matrix, for infantry we have Arma, for air: DCS and BMS, scenery: fs2020 and soo on. Each developer with its expertise. And we have Unreal Engine 5 and VR technology. Soo we have everything to make a leap on sim but the problem os get everyone to work together. Hell, we even have Kerbals to weaponize space! 😄
IMO, the solution would be for someone to take the DIS protocol that lets various military sims communicate and revamp it for the modern, civilian, sim era. You don't have to have as detailed coordination among the developers as long as everyone uses the same protocol.
@felcas WWIIOL continues development in 1.0 with new content and complexities (indirect artillery from 13k meters) while being committed to transitioning our massive gaming world to UE5.
I used to think DCS was all about that: allowing us to drive tanks or other vehicles like in that T-72 sim or even captain a naval vessel with its plethora of arsenals besides flying fancy jets (that will eventually be supplanted by bombers).
For the records AI crashing on ground was a 4.36 bug (not in 4.35 ) on alternate theater , this is fixed in 4.37 :)
Thanks for noting
I still remember the full two-page ad for Falcon 4.0 in PC Gamer.
"Perfection is never rushed. It actually travels at about Mach 2."
I know ED has said they're working on a dynamic campaign, but once you play BMS, you see all the features supporting that dynamic campaign, and they're not in DCS. There's just a lot of really basic stuff that BMS does which DCS doesn't. It feels like a chasm that ED cannot bridge in my lifetime on their current game engine at their current pace of development. I don't think 1C Game Studios can do it either. I sincerely hope I am wrong.
I understand these are companies with financial constraints, but it feels like people are drifting away. I still buy modules to support them, but each new module generates less interest for me. I just don't see myself buying the DCS F-4 or the Eurofighter or the F-15E. I'm also reluctant to get my hopes up for the next IL-2 module, because I can't imagine what they could do to excite me if it isn't the Pacific Theater or the Korean War. I don't think I'll be buying another IL-2 module that isn't one of those.
Thanks for sharing your perspective and making a thoughtful response!
It's worth noting there is a dynamic (sort of) campaign for Great Battles - Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator which works fairly well though it is single player and coop only. Other limitations hamper the Great Battles series from providing the experience you're looking for. E.g. no strategic bombers and the computational cost of it's AI limits engagement sizes. And the engine timers. The GD engine timers.
"The snail may get bored of printing money." thats a good one
DCS is amazing and that's where I pin my hopes for the future of flight sims. IL2 suffers from what I think are insurmountable problems and War Thunder is in another type of market entirely.
DCS is sadly a broken mess with UFO AI, worse damage models than IL-2 CLoD which released in 2011, and a mismash of maps and planes that cannot create a cohesive theater with any fidelity or scale. It also runs like garbage in VR, which is the present and future.
@@virtual_warbirds I'm actually optimistic about VR in DCS. It doesn't run at peak efficiency now, but up until last year it was nearly unplayable.
@@rickeydart3040 no dude, it's gotten so much worse then early 2.5 it's unplayable for over half my squadron.
Greg!!!!
I’m only a warthuder player, and I don’t even play on PC but what you is say super valid. They just added the F-16 and Ming-29 and nothing felt like it changed. I didn’t know any of those old sims existed but I love the idea of them, thank you for bringing them to light. I really hope new games come out with a full dynamic war.
That would be great, and I agree. I think War Thunder can actually make that type of game work by utilizing the WWM framework for individual campaigns with different vehicle types including putting player controlled ships, planes, and tanks in the same match, wih dynamic objectives, spawns, and combat areas appearing on the map. Even just modernizing the current modes of Air RB and Air Sim would probably make players very happy though lol.
as much as i already enjoy regular war thunder (rb and sim), i really do yearn for larger live campaigns on assymetrical maps. there are already a few games on friggin roblox that manage to pull this off, so it's really disapponting seeing war thunder remain with arcade-y gameplay when it could flesh it out and satisfy the strategy side of milsims.
War thunder is not even a sim lmao, it's just some dumb arcadey game where you fly and shoot everything. How is it a sim?
Dear Sir, everything you say about the status and future of swimming is correct. We have a long way to go to delivering on our vision of Dynamic Campaign despite working on this core element for quite some time. The rate of development is too slow for my liking but it is moving in the right direction and I trust will meet with your expectations. Thank you for your passion and support. Happy New Year to you and your family. Kind regards, Nick
Thank you for taking the time to watch and to comment. If I may take a bit more of your time, I would really impress upon you to make sure that the dynamic campaign system is able to support multiplayer day one. I wish you, your family and company's staff a happy new year and good fortune into 2023.
@@Enigma89 Dear Sir, thank you for your kind wishes. MP from day one message received. Let me review and revert back to you at some time. Maybe we could have a chat in the New Year. Once again, all my very best wishes to you and you family. Yours Nick
Sure I am happy to chat, my email is enigma89gaming@gmail.com Happy new year.
Having come of age in the "golden era of sims", I don't have rose colored glasses of that time. As great as Falcon 4.0 and IL 1946 are/were...they were incredibly niche by the time of those iconic releases. Falcon 4.0 was a bargain bin title quickly at the local retailers I went to. The sim community was small even then and marred by bug ridden messes of marquee titles at launch that took ages for patches or community fixes. IL 1946 came out at a budget consolidation of the IL-2 series after all. IL 1946's heyday lasted because of the community investment. That's the issue. Modern gaming makes modding harder and the focus on monetized multiplayer makes single player content harder to come by. A dynamic campaign should have been standard, but at that point one is designing a game within a game and development funds are tight as is in this niche space. I don't see this as a dark age, so much as a transitional one. The core sim audience is older (the genre always skewed toward the older crowd like hardcore turn based wargames do) and said audience wants a mix of the best from the past with the modern fidelity of today. That will come at a cost and there might not be enough of a community to justify said cost unless it grows. DCS alone needs a better entry and tutorial system, along with SP content that can make sense of it's complexities to novices and noobs. DCS has some of those basics already, but there needs to be more consistency so that core game updates don't keep breaking SP campaigns for example. More focus needs to be on the "bones" to justify all the effort into what are some of the best simulations of combat aircraft ever made.
Yeah,
Indeed sadly th3e dynamic campaign which will never fet old to players is exactly opposite to what is the goal of game/sim developers.
They want us to buy new shiny airplanes and when we're done with learning it and realizing there's little to do with that - we would be next one :(
I was very very very young when IL-2 came out, but I still loved playing it at as a 4 to 5 year old. The entire pacific theater and European theater at my finger tips. Without growing up with this on my grandparents computer I wouldn’t be where I am today. It not only showed me how good gaming could be but put me in my career path today already on my way to fly with United Airlines and learning to fly the T-6 Texan with my local Commemorative Airforce wing. If I were stuck with these arcade fast paced tasteless game like war thunder I don’t think I’d ever be motivated or inspired like I was growing up.
As a producer/designer of a Falcon 4.0 release (OIR) I agree. There’s a lot of potential in DCS, but it just doesn’t feel alive. The F4 campaign was and is the king
Also, as a producer/designer of Air Warrior, I like the mention of Aces High and WW2OL but frown on not mentioning the sim that literally spawned them both (HiTech started by creating a viewer for AW cam (replay) files). :-)
Great video!
Make a falcon world 5.0!
Thanks for your work on the project! I would imagine it must feel surreal to see people talking about Falcon 4.0 still after all these years.
@@Enigma89 Thank you! I love following along with what you're doing with the online campaign. Haven't flown MP DCS yet, but plan to at some point. Probably not before the Phantom.
Curious, as a MiG-21 driver, what you think the Phantom will be like in your cold war scenarios? The NVAF had problems with the Phantom, but I think a lot of that was down to tactics - they didn't use the vertical a lot. Wondering whether the Phantom dominance will translate, if at all, to online DCS. I'd be interested in a video followup to the ED 2023 and beyond next week that gives your ideas about how the coming cold war planes will change the play you're currently seeing.
@@garycooper4512 I don't have a good answer. We will have to feel our way through it. The F-4 is really capable so we hope to balance the scenario or throttle F-4 usage in order to make it fit within our universe.
thank you for your work on Falcon 4.0, it made my childhood! Dynamic campaign was amazing, I've spent countless hours just tweaking the ATO. Regarding the Phantom, as a fairly new MiG-21 driver I think the Sparrow will make a difference (maybe it'll be king of SARH, you know, in the land of the blind...) as the only thing the reds got going for it is the measly R3R. MiG-21 drivers better come up with updated tactics (perhaps copy the NVAF tactics?). I don't think the usage need to be throttled as it fits 100% in there.
I’ll be honest, I have been simming for a long time. I think EF2000 was one of the first sims to make me realize the value of dynamic game play, even though it didn’t work that well. DCS does a great job of making the plane you are flying seem as real as possible, but we could use a campaign generator. I took a break from flights sims after they started to lose their mojo. When I did go back, DCS was the only choice for me. But I’m more of a purest when it comes the simulation, hence the word. I want to feel like and have the learning curve of a real plane. I hoping that improvements will come. For me simulation is not a all out kill fest like say a Call of Duty style game. I like the depth and the investment of time. That said, I would like to see DCS get past that one hurdle (dynamic campaign) that from my point of view would elevate the game to new heights. I have my fingers crossed that we will see it soon.
I will cross my fingers with you, let's hope we hear news in 2023.
Oh man, I used to play SEF-2000 (the Windows version) and boy do I miss a dynamic campaign. It was awesome to see the results of your actions change the balance of the war.
Its why I miss Janes simulations. I had the Longbow gold back in the day and was fun to play the Apache in that game. You had to worry about ground troops as well as other threats. You have several campaigns to play and even a training set of missions to teach how to fly and use the chopper.
You sir just hit the nail dead center on the head, DCS is all shiny and good when you are new to it but old timers tend to get VERY disappointed as time goes by with such a poor depth of dynamic combat simulation. Thank you for bringing awarenes about this topic, i knew i did well subscribing to your channel. Happy new year to you all, i hope for the best for everyone.
Thank you for your support Pokri
MSFS 2020 is what funneled me into DCS. One of the hurtles for me getting into flight sims was justifying to myself the cost of a HOTAS. Flight sims can be a real money sink and that means you have to be truly passionate about it.
I had countless hours of fun playing the original Falcon 4.0 and Allied Force. Dynamic campaigns were great. Missions were unpredictable and varied. Also liked influencing the outcome. Might be worth mentioning CFS3. That game also included a dynamic campaign where your efforts directly influenced the outcome of the overall campaign.
I'm so glad you did this video. Few months ago I found out about BMS, immediately jumped right into it. I have never played DCS because of the amount of knowledge you have to gain for flying one aircraft, but when I found out about the dynamic campaign on this game I went nuts reading the manuals. But I thought to myself, why has this dynamic campaign not been implemented in other games? There are others that attempt the same (such as Strike Fighters 2) but none will have the same feeling as actually fighting another country's army and being just another pilot in a huge scale war as this game does. This has to be implemented MORE.
Another point: in old times we had more time to play and sims was simpler. Now even warthunder is more complex then many top line sims from the past (way back before falcon 4). And now, we have less time to play and if you like hard-core sims , you really need to dedicate yourself, because hard-core sims are astronomically more complex then before. Result: many people don't want to invest that much time to learn hard-core sim but just have fun with a soft-core sim. Jump in have fun, bail out.
Oh god this. Every time I get nostalgic and enthusiastic for BMS I remember the 2+ hour torture it is to configure and remember all the goddam key assignments.
I'm glad I watched all the way through -- top notch content. You make great points about how there is a way forward to make these games better -- love the hopeful message. I think you're right.
Much appreciated!
Random question, did you ever try World War mode during one of the seasons for War Thunder? Road to the West (which was Fulda Gap and Battle of the Chinese Farm) was some of the most fun I've ever had in games, period.
You really put words on feelings. Awesome video as usual 👍
All my best wishes for 2023 !
Thank you! You too!
I appreciate your take on this. I started with war thunder and got fed up with everything about it. When I switched to DCS, I found a great community and fell in love. I feel very lucky to have joined DCS when I did. There’s so many amazing modules available, so many more on the horizon, plus the promise of engine improvements shows me that DCS could be the way forward(emphasis on could).
I'm not nearly old enough to have experienced this sim 'golden age' you talk about, turning 23 in the next couple of months.
I did switch to DCS in 2020 after having played War Thunder for a grand total of 7 or 8 years after finally losing the hope of some actual development in regards to a dynamic campaign or more fleshed out game-modes, despite the amount of money and time I stuck into that game (which I will say, I still don't regret).
I came to DCS initially because the work the community did on the community servers on their own dynamic campaigns was pretty astounding, and it was a lot of fun to play. Though, recently I've been making a lot of co-op missions myself and I've noticed DCS's native lack of complex mechanics for a lot of things like SAM sites, aircraft AND ground AI and an overall lack of depth in the high-fidelity modules they release; The IFF-system being one of them. I believe this to be the reason why there's this *NEED* for a massive community effort to get any kind of dynamic campaign set up and working.
I believe the core to this problem being that both titles (War Thunder and DCS) do not have any real competition in their respective target audiences.
World of Warplanes is infinitely worse than War Thunder in nearly every aspect, in my opinion, as it does all the same things War Thunder does but at a worse level. Granted that it doesn't have the same predatory economy system that War Thunder does.
And with NOR being a military sim project, DCS has no competition at all; MSFS 2020 is targeted to a whole different audience and the only other alternative we recently saw a sneak peek of turned out to be for military use. DCS has no reason to push for too much innovation.
I'm very grateful to the community for all of these great pieces of script and all of the mods that allow me to 'complete' the sim and turn it into an experience I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else.
I played War Thunder for years before eventually switching to Il-2 as Gaijin continues to further nerf the economy into the ground. Mostly play the Career (Dynamic Campaign) mode. Absolutely love flying my 109s.
Nice to see Aces High get a shout-out. You know your stuff.
I'm 40. First flight sim I played was Aces of the Pacific when I was a kid. Then I stopped until this year and got into DCS by way of VTOLVR of all things. I'm having a good time learning the modules, but I can definitely see how we are consuming content too quickly.
I actually had DSL in 1998. I was in a beta program that gave us 768Kb connection in 1998. It was a huge difference. Downloaded around 75kbs instead of 2.5kb.
@enigma you need to check out the dcs candyland server it is the first dynamic campaign i have seen, that there is no telling what ai will come to the front lines, it is a PVE but this current campagin has been a PVE/PVP which has been amazingly fun
Yes.
Back in the good old days we had multiple companies making good flight Sims, today there are 2, il2 for WW2 and dcs for non WW2.
BMS kind of counts but it's a mod of a golden age game.
Insightful video, subbed.
Well, ED JUST updated us on their development of dynamic campaign for DCS. Hope it'll be good...what a coincidence that you just released this video and now the news update regarding this exact matter
Interesting perspective. I think you'll always have this divide between sim pilots who fly via game pad versus those of us that use a HOTAS setup. Many of us like the depth and feel of each airplane, its systems and mastering it. Many couldn't be bothered - too complex. I notice you didn't feature any clips from Aces High...i know they are still around, I played that sim for many years. Just haven't seen anything "new" there that made me want to go back
The graphics in Aces High are super dated, almost to the level of the original SU27 from 1995.
Be careful of rose-tinted glasses.The dynamic campaign in Falcon 4.0 barely worked when it was released. It was extremely buggy. I never managed to get through 2 days of the campaign, until BMS was released.
Exactly, before BMS became what it now is, Falcon 4.0 had a lot of issues.
One point I definitely agree with you on is in regard to MSFS, talking about just adding new aircraft onto the same structure without core improvement. So much unrealized potential because the devs are content to print money instead of make the sim better and more immersive.
Your written summary sums it up very nicely. I still can't believe that no one has developed a dynamic campaign since Falcon 4 and IL-2!
They can't. The current games work under cores that just can't manage them. Until they're willing to start over from a blank sheet, it just can't be done it seems. BMS works because deep down, the bones of Falcon 4.0 were well considered and solid. With that mods and add-ons can basically accomplish anything a group of competent programmers can think of. Especially as a non-commercial product that doesn't have to deal with licensing costs and limitations.
The way the game Business works now means these kinds of goals are unattainable commercially.
@@mzaite Then I'll just keep on playing BMS, until someone comes along and make a modern flight sim with a dynamic campaign. I'm sure someone will. Thanks for your reply.
As someone who grew up in the war thunder Era and sort of graduated to dcs I had never thought of it like this before.. interesting
Same here but i graduated to GHPC am more of a tanker then a pilot never the less what he said was also intresting
I never realized that the dynamic campaign for Falcon 4 was made by an intern. That's really impressive! I'm hopeful that the current big flight sim games will make some of these changes in the next few years, but at this point I'm watching the indie community. Microprose has a few upcoming flight games they're publishing (B17 Flying Fortress the bloody 100th, The mighty eighth vr, Tiny Combat Arena) that look pretty good. If they do well enough, maybe it'll stir up additional interest in sim or sim-lite development from other developers and we'll start seeing a revival in the flight sim genre. Fingers crossed, anyways.
Yeah it was pretty surprising when someone told me and dug up the article for me. You can read more about it here. sites.google.com/site/falcon4history/interview
@@Enigma89 Cool that he went from doing this to becoming a Technical Director at EA. Wish we had more interviews like these and dev diaries from games in that era. Lot of interesting things to learn there.
have you ever tried Total Air War F-22? It's also a Sim game developed in 1998, in which you are locked to playing the F-22. From what it seems from a description I saw about the game, it has some kind of an algorithm that adjusts the type of missions to the player's skill, but I never knew how to play the game that much outside of simple gun dogfights in custom lol
I know progress on dynamic campaigns was just announced, but this video is still so great, because there's no guarantee that DCS' dynamic campaigns will be this advanced, and this video clearly lays out the ultimate goal. I really hope DCS gets there... and hopefully someday beyond!
You're spot-on, and I'm glad someone else identified how WT and the like ruined the current sim landscape. Only indie projects are really pushing back against this for now (ex: GHPC). The consequences of the current state of the market are very interesting in ways I didn't expect - in particular, the audience perceptions and demands we deal with are striking in how clearly they've been molded by WT (i.e. "WT brain rot").
I really wanted to mention GHPC in here because I think it offers a ray of hope to break the yoke from the Snail. The way that those guys are talking about their game is very refreshing. I thought this video was getting quite long and I haven't tried GHPC yet because I only really play multiplayer so I am waiting for that to come but I will jump in with two feet on that game. I am really rooting for them.
What about war thunder is a good game, it has no simulation and it is not comparable to il2GB or DCS, steel beast!!! It's a good game with good and bad things, it's silly to blame him for something or insult his community.
I'm going to insult the CODs because people don't play Post scriptum Squad or Arma 3... wtf?!
@@Enigma89 I think you should pick it up. It's on sale for a few more days I think and I picked it up for christmas. Even if you don't make videos on it, it's a ton of fun to mess around with in your free time
Not suprised the lead dev of GHPC is shilling on his own game like it's some sort of miracle lol.
It seems it's not all doom and gloom, there's a sim for each niche, WT for casual flyers with limited time, DCS/Il2 BoX for those who want something more advanced. Also BMS is growing strong. Their TvT events are fantastic, and new 4.37 trailer looks soo tasty ;). So I hope it's gonna be fine in combat flightsims land.
I remember the golden age with fondness and I thought by now we have had more dynamic environments not less, thank god for indie dev's, they are rekindling some great 90's content ,helicopter gunship dex is just one guy and recreates Gunship! feels for me. Great article and now a subscriber.
Hi, I'm 20 years old. I do not have enough knowledge about the sim community but I can say this. I am a slave to the snail that is Gaijin. I love that game so much. I love tanks and I love planes (nobody plays naval). I do intend one day to build a sim setup so that I can play war thunder sim. Sometimes I catch myself side-climbing in first person in my aircraft and I can't help but ogle at all the fascinating dials and seeing how lowering/ raising my throttle affects them. I will also go on to say that I am a MEC (Manual Engine Control) enjoyer and even though I know the difference between automatic and manual controls is very small, i'll fully open the radiators of my P-51 Mustang every single time that I take off of the runway. I have thought about playing DCS one day but there's one thing that is always at the back of my mind: the complexity of aircraft controls and the price of planes. Granted War thunder premiums are slowly approaching the cost of planes in DCS. I do hope one day to join the sim community, not just for aircraft but also for racing (especially Rally sim). Thank you for your informative and thought provoking video Enigma, have a nice day.
14:33 wow my man hates war thunder and goes into it to grief
im all up for griefing russian bots
A real giga chad
I played a lot of IL-2 in my teenage years and I truly miss the sense of scale and immersion like you. I do however truly hope that the large amount of new 3rd party devs in DCS, will prompt eagle dynamics to develop the game engine and leave modules to 3rd parties.
Let's hope!
Yeh man Il2 had a great atmosphere, even the old school music and art style. Made it feel so immersive.
Great video, sir. I remain hopeful for a renaissance with our hobby!
After drooling over Falcon 4.0 dynamic campaign for years I realized that I only missed: 1. Proper complex ATC. 2. Persistent battle damage of assets and influence on the next mission. 3. Populated environment. You know, without ending every mission with only AWACS, 1 jet and an indestructible Georgian Mi-24 on fire within the radius of 1000 km.
War thunder had the opposite effect on me actually it made me more interested into dcs
Agreed on the war affecting output. This year has been pretty stale for most sims, with minimal new content. Not to mention the now grey area of creating more modern eastern equipment.
Well said
One of the OG STALKER devs was KIA a few days ago.
The Phantom devs also said the war is a big part of why that module wasn’t released this year.
Fully agree with the overall take here though. I’m not even excited for nee modules now because I don’t have anything new to do with them.
Great video!
The thing about vehicle driven development is it's a demand side phenomenon. There's a hunger among players to get their particular favourite plane. DCS basically gives players what they want but very slowly, and WT has successfully converted vehicle demand into gameplay demand/profit by putting the most beloved jets behind a 1000h playwall/$1000 paywall
Why arnt you using sim mode in war thunder and not using cockpit mode in rb???
Woah, a 20 min of Enigma talking? Who's going to watch it? Well, count me in :)
Hey I used to watch your Project Reality stuff! Cool to see you're still posting sim gaming vids.
@@ActionScripter well, that was unexpected! Thanks? I don't know how to react! xD
Well, PR definitely letf a mark on us!
The sim world really is small :D Cool to see a familiar name after so many years.
@@rossmum indeed! I has been happening a lot lately hahaha
Enigma- DCS needs dynamic campaigns to bring new life into it, and the ability to run them as well
ED two days later- HAPPY NEW YEAR! Have some dynamic campaigns! and engine improvements as well!
Good video with some interesting points.
I started simming when I got my hands on the original IL2 sometime in the early 2000´s. What may not be obvious looking at it now was how much of a revolution that game was. This was an era where 3D cockpits were far from the norm, and damage modeling pretty much ment a healthbar. The level of quality in IL2 simply blew everything else out of the water! I think one of the reasons we entered the "dark age" of sims was simply because so few could compete. This was also around the time when console gaming really started to take of. With the original Xbox and PS2 on the market, more gamers (and developers) were drawn to their accessibility rather than studying flight manuals to understand virtual planes. Flightsims was a pretty mainstream genre up until then, and almost everyone I knew who had a computer had some sort of flightsim for it.
As for DCS or IL2 taking things to the next level, I personally won´t hold my breath. DCS has been in a state of "almost great" for ten years or more. I remember thinking a decade ago how they would only need a few years to iron out some bugs to really have a home run on their hands. I´m still waiting. The only reason i jump in to DCS now is if there´s a particular plane I´m interested in learning. Which to be fair is the core strength of DCS, and I don´really see anyone else reaching the same level or width in at least a decade.
IL2 can be great, but seems to have been treading water a bit lately. I read an interview recently with a member of the development team who quit, and it didn´t sound like IL2 is in a super healthy place right now. Of course, I would be happy to be surprised by either of these sims, as they have provided many hours of entertainment throughout the years.
You're right on. Modern flight sims are a relatively shallow, non-immersive experience. It's time to get old-school again! BMS with VR and the upcoming new terrain engine will see a surge of new players no doubt.
It'll be interesting to see what the expanding and re-visioned IL2 team are working on now - they seem pretty excited about it (latest DD). And ED in their latest update have just given a progress report on their dynamic campaign engine - maybe a year or two away?
Probably AI is the other key factor that really needs to get to a new level. Maybe the tech is getting there with the pretty amazing but limited GPT 3.5 and the much heralded upcoming GPT 4 as a sign of general AI progress. Fingers crossed. Things in that field seem to be moving pretty fast.
Keep up the good work. And buy yourself a New Year coffee or whatever on me. :) Cheers & salut!
I appreciate it thank you for your kind words. Also very curious on what happens in IL-2.
BMS fanboying, ChatGPT simping that shows you have no idea what you are talking about or what it even is (its not fucking AI, its an LLM). Lol. Really checking the boxes for the desperate whiners I expected in these comments.
16:10 bro what the fuck
Good on you for putting such a huge amount of thought and effort into this. I don’t have the level of knowledge or experience to comment intelligently one way or the other, but just wanted to offer my compliments.
Here's an alternate opinion: why would I jump into more hardcore sim gameplay when I can "enjoy" less forgiving one? For casual players, hardcore sim may not be the final destination, but to stay somewhere between the arcade and realism.
The whole argument of players being "trapped" in WT isn't just wrong, it's obviously wrong if you stop to think about it even for a moment. War Thunder isn't keeping anyone from DCS any more than Genshin Impact is. You can't grow potatoes out of turnip seeds, no matter how much you water and cultivate them. The millions of people playing Genshin Impact aren't just buds awaiting to bloom into beautiful DCS potatoes under the right circumstances. And while DCS and WT are thematically similar, they are fundamentally on different levels of hardcoreness. The bulk of casual WT pilots flying with a mouse are never ever going to become DCS players, no matter how often you water them, or how much dynamic content there is in DCS.
aw cute, he has an entire 5 minutes segment of bullying a T-72 just because of decals. What else, do you fire down teammates because you don't like the sound of their voice?
"Bro I try to stay as apolitical as possible" - some Ukroid after proudly harassing someone who shows support for Russia.
@@fuzionzz8415 "I see myself as a very neutral person" *harasses those who show support to a widely disputed side*
@@TheArcticFoxxo Not to mention just being completely useless to his team lol.
@@xSupra Screws around in spawn while he's in one of the more capable tanks of his team that was more than able to cap B or C, possibly saving the rest of his team that was holding A
I remember reading somewhere that the programmer responsible for the Falcon 4 campaign didn't know what they were getting into and said if they had known they wouldn't have done it.
Oh yes i remember WW2 Online pretty well, i mean i was still young but the memories of that Game and what you could do in that massive Campaign still blows my Mind.
I play WarThunder since 2012 and i just can't anymore, it is really just the same with more Vehicles.
“I’m trying to be A-political”
*shows 5 minute clip of bullying Russia supporter
Deserved
@@rayotoxi1509 I LOVE “Corrupt side (Ukrainian) Vs. Corrupt side (Russian).” I WANT TO BE GIVEN A FALSE DICHOTOMY AND WAGE WAR WITH MY FELLOW MAN
Yes, this degenerate political moment, encouraging war and ethnic strife, killed this youtuber for me. No matter how reasonable things he says about games, he will be perceived with nausea. However, what difference does it make if his main audience happily eats US/NATO propaganda, then everything is OK, the losses are insignificant, and even favorable - they lead to a more politically consistent audience.
@@rayotoxi1509 does that mean we should go to lower BR's and bully every single german WW2 tank?
I wouldn't call it a dark age. On paper we have more modules and features than we've ever had before buuut I would however call it a awkward period where transition needs to happen.
We're living with games that are these old legacy projects. Ancient codebases and limited markets.
In a time where life is getting more and more expensive, dropping cash on a HOTAS and a powerful PC just to run DCS is less and less appealing. This makes it difficult to justify extensive large scale projects like dynamic campaigns or even large refactoring to sort things out.
Fundamentally DCS, WT and BoX were not designed to have dynamic gameplay. Hell they weren't really *designed* at all. Not in a way that would be recognised in more western gamedev circles. You rightfully picked this up with BMS that at it's core the supporting systems are there to create a better gameplay loop.
So what does this mean? It means either the big boys have to hard pivot, something expensive and risky. ED seem to be sloooowly moving this way, but they could fuck it up.
Gaijin will never change, why would they? They're printing money.
F2P games leach off the same feedback loops as gambling, While they can serve as a funnel they should not be seen as market leaders in any sense beyond revenue.
So we gotta hope for new products have to step in.
This is for me where the is quite a bit of hope, there is a vast void for more systems driven semi-sims along the lines of "GHPC". Games that simulate enough to make the gameplay feel representative but also doesn't waste time and resources on endless fidelity and ignore the context a piece of equipment like a tank is supposed to work in.
Nobody is doing this for flight sims yet though and I don't know if it will happen soon. Gamedev is hard, generally speaking unless you are lucky you will be underpaid and potentially mistreated. Small Indie studios can and have stepped up but it's an incredibly risky proposition for folks. Add the layer of the niche interests required to get into sim gaming and you get the idea.
This makes it very difficult to retain the technical talent required for the complicated bullshit that is making a Sim.
Still, if a relatively small team can get together and develop and idea with realistic scope that plans from the start to incorporate Recon, SAMs, Mission planning, CSAR etc, make the required compromises on presentation. They'd have something special. If they need QA then I'll be first on that boat :)
That still leaves ED's efforts, for now we are a captive market and can only hope. But I do think they are trying, it's just if they can do it before everyone's patience runs out.
Recent community efforts have helped shed light on the need for more dynamic content, but it will always be an uphill battle at current until significant momentum is gained.
Just a few loose thoughts
Enfield
👏
Additionally, any successful ...successor. Needs to be as playable on a controller as HOTAS. We need to remove the barrier to entry to proper simming. This can and should be done.
@@SuperMegaCyrus Tico used to rock a 360 controller while being one of the top killers in a 21, with the shittiest missiles to boot. It can be done, and older Cold War airframes are the way 😤😤
It would appear from recent posts that ED are going ahead, and have been working on a dynamic campaign engine, in conjunction with more ground units, re-skin of some existing units and hopefully more logic in the AI.
A point not considered in the video is that many players have economical restrictions which prevent them from acquiring a 2000 USD machine exclusively used for entertainment and used by a single person. That's why War Thunder seems to "trap" so many sim players, is not that they are trapped by the game, they're trapped by their budget. War Thunder offer an experience which only require 500 USD to access (Gaming Console) sometimes even less (previously owned machines). All of which makes me think that the Sim world is not in a dark age, it diversified to accommodate different budget requirements. Tryhards can acquire their 5000 USD set ups, and the rest of us just play War Thunder.
15:10 congratulations for blocking a player that wants to play the game that makes i definitelly better , btw i dont care if you support ukraine or russia i think its odd to put either flags on your tank let other do and put on their tank they want
"Try keep the channel as apolitical as possible" 14:17
*clip of soyboy raging on a friendly player over a Z*
Im so proud of him
Oh the irony of me listening to this from my phone while I side climb in my MiG-21MF in Air RB of War Thunder.
my first sim was IL2 Birds of Prey on the xbox 360, but I really graduated to war thunder when i got a pc. Now as I've grown older and gotten more into actual sims I'm playing a lot of DCS and FSX
Z
Dude. You're saying that War Thunder has it's flaws - fair point. At the same time you're ruining a match by bamping into that Z player. I get why you might be doing it and by all means write the guy in a private section, tell him his is supporting an agressor and etc. But eh you'll just ruin a match for 10 other players. I'm so tired of these Russia/Ukraine supporters team killing each and getting in each other's way. I hope you'll get banned for doing stuff like that.
P.s. to everyone who's gonna be triggered by my comment:
I don't live in Europe or anywhere near it, I have no idea of what's going on there, I come to play a video game and I see crowds of cringe ass dimwits ruining games *becoz flag/Z/Azov Sign* (highlight the one you like more).
He doesn't care as he does not even play War Thunder. His account is like lvl 20 and just a bunch of top tier russian premiums with negative KD. Also the "Jagdgeschwader 26" Nazi larper name on his account tells you everything you need to know about his opinions on Ukraine.
@@b4sed0nwh4t yeah man, I honestly don't want to offend anyone as I'm sure I don't see the whole picture as I'm very far from the conflict. This guy though right at the start of the video states that he's out of politics and at the middle of the video is harassing his teammate.
This is a very rude and juvenile move. Let's assume that the side he's on is truly righteous and is better then he's just compromising the side he represents by acting as an absolutely toxic person and very selfish player who gets to ruin everyone else's game due to his own thoughts and beliefs.
I agree very much with everything you said. - 38 years old; original flight games for me were Microprose European Air War, Pacific Air War, and B-17 Flying Fortress. Got back into flight games after War Thunder. Played for two years and then went onto playing IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles pretty mitch exclusively. On the official IL-2 forums and elsewhere, I'm always taking about how we need to be given actual ways to play, not just planes and maps, no matter how accurate they are.
Hello sir! I am the annual winner of the King of The Hill event in Aces High of 2019 and playings since 2004. I do feel somewhat the same about modern flight SIMs. But luckily Aces Hight is still rocking on with special events and the regular arena still attracts more than 50 players at one time up to 250 online at the same time. Aces High 3 might not look as good as the newest games, but the mmo aspect of AH is great and is truly an uniek experience.
Upcoming month we will have another special event spanning 4 weeks with about 70 players singed up. Axis Vs Allies 1943 the battle of Paris. Flying bombers, escorts and intercepters, simulating the battle with both sides having a change to win this key battle. Feel free to join my squad and see what it is all about. I will have a chat with the organization to get you all settled. (Or anyone else that is interested for that matter)
Happy new year sir
Tell em Dutch!
Eagler
@@eagler8196
you're wrong
Seriously, laughed my ass off watching this. It's like a bad hoggit post in video format. Even has the falcon 4.0 delusions and WT ranting.
SJW emitting virtue signal+20
I hope Putin sees this, bro.
I started in MS Flight Sim 95 and SU-27 Flanker from 95. It was inevitable that I found my way back to Eagle Dynamics through the SU-27 module. The 90s had so many sims! Tanks, boats, sums, mechs, space, towers, ants... Lol. It was a really interesting time for pc gaming.
Great Thesis! Yes, you are right, I have some thoughts but I've feel like you are tapping into the Zeitgeist for sure. I will say there is a trend in FOMO for bygone era's but your thoughts draw a line and make sense. Just always keep in the back of your mind that, " No, one" is going to make you feel young and excited again in the same way as the real sims back in the day. Love your work!
You bullying the dude with the Russian flag made me dislike the video , but tis a nice video nonetheless
lmao at the bullying of the Z
for me there is also a problem with sims for new pilots (like me ) learning a whole manual take time and when you figured how to fly and use the basics systems of the plane you are crushed by the vet who played for years ; this is the only thing that make me stay on war thunder ( even having a few dcs planes and il2 ready to play ) ( by the way if you know a good entry point to flight sim i'm interested in it )
@enigma We at CRS appreciate the shout-out for WWIIOL. We continue to develop new content while working toward UE5. Massive scale and combined arms is the brass ring which we hope to bring to UE5. !S, tex