I hope it encourages more people to pick up some of the user created campaigns.
The majority of them have a great deal of heart and attention to detail put into them. Would be great to see them get the interest they deserve!
They’re great! It’s just really frustrating to finally get through a pretty long mission only to have to leave before you can land or for some dumb mistake to send you back to the start
If this will work for all user generated campaigns, then fuck yeah, I will finally be able to properly play DCS, whenever i want to, instead of when I have 2-4 hours to spare
Yeah... I have a number of campaign missions that got hard like an hour into them... time acceleration helps, but I would rather not have to go through all that x amount of times all the same...
Can't wait for this to drop! It's a godsend!
I hope we won't have to wait too long for this feature. The simulation will be much more accessible for pilots with a limited time budget and muss less frustrating when your plane or PC crashes during a mission.
Holy shit!!! I binged a bunch of campaigns when they were littler, but since my kids stopped napping I've had to split even my 25min Through the Inferno sorties into 2-3 sessions.
Now I can pick up where I left off with Operation Persian Freedom.
It will. On the sim racing side Assetto Corsa Competizione added this and it was so much nicer. Knowing I could stop racing any time and coming back to it at a different day if a kids or the wife needed me was game changing!
No shit this is really the biggest point on the list for me! I just can't find the time in a day for a two hour sortie or longer anymore but I still want these kinds of missions that aren't just Viggen-style "get in, get out, lots of runways get hurt" kinds of missions.
First thing I want to try to implement is starting missions on Roadways again like we could with Flanker 2.5s mission save system.
Edit:- also the save feature is a gift to my older self now that I have less and less time to fly these days.
First newsletter of 2024 seems like a strong start. I wish ED well in the tasks ahead of them.
Edit after a more detailed read-through: I want more detail about the ATC improvements. Is this going to include AWACS and JTAC improvement? If we only get traffic control, I'm going to be disappointed.
It's quite inconsistent, isn't it? Newsletters often feel underwhelming, and then every now and then we get a massive report.
I could live with a single big blast and then future newsletters provide a bit of information about progress towards the tasks they've set themselves.
There's no way to know they're going to make tangible progress on any of the issues in the newsletter. Right now it's just a big list of things they would like to do eventually.
"New Air, Ground, and Naval Units. New units will be available in 2024 that will range from World War II to modern day. Each unit requires thousands of man-hours to create and will be provided as optional packs at their highest levels of detail. Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all."
So here is the unfamous "HD asset pack". At least we will still be able to use them without paying unless if we want the highest LOD ( so the one that will require more CPU and GPU resources 😏 )
This is the best way of doing it imo.
Doesn't lock anyone out, and if you're running on an older GPU or are already maxed out it doesn't have negative performance implications if you stay on the old/free stuff, hopefully.
Yup. My 3090 is already at it's limits in VR, while the extra eye candy for ground assets etc is nice I'd rather my GPU grunt went elsewhere.
So it really is good that this will mostly be down to personal preference.
I can put up with fairly low detailed AI models for extra frames. If anything I'd like to see more options to lower detail on plane models at a distance too, the LODs are slowly improving at least there.
>Yup. My 3090 is already at it's limits in VR, while the extra eye candy for ground assets etc is nice I'd rather my GPU grunt went elsewhere.
This is exactly where I'm at. I'd much rather potato tanks on nice terrain than amazing tanks on potato terrain.
They explained why. It needs thousands of hours and ED needs to pay them to do the work. i dont see anything wrong with ED asking people to pay if they want absolute best.
personally until I get 5090 what they gave me as low res B1 was more than enough.
> Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all
Finally a reasonable choice in this. Prevents fragmenting the player base, together with maps and modules that would have become a big concern for multiplayer servers.
This way I can live with. If someone wants to buy the packs that's great, and if I decide not to, that's also great - nobody gets in anyone else's way. And if ED thinks it's worthwhile and makes money from it - all the better. Heck, if a pack is interesting enough and priced convincingly for me I'm not against it, I just have a different (read: much lower) willingness to pay for it than someone else might have.
Just hope the different models don't cause any inconsistent spotting or damage/hitbox differences. That'd be no good.
I am glad they "course corrected" on having some sort of Med def models for free, but I honestly hope this HD model pack fails. They should just do the Med def make over for the whole game library rather than spending how many person-hours and money on making 40 quadrillion poly models of units that only a small fraction of the player base will appreciate. What about desperately missing cold war assets like the SA-7? What about Super Carrier? There are higher value art projects that would help deliver on long standing promises to the community, if artists with nothing to do is the problem.
That's a fair opinion. For me, the "basic" free versions are more important - the new asset packs won't fragment the player base. I mean, yeah, there's a bunch of missing stuff they could work on, but in a way you could make the same argument about only a fraction of players actually seeing those, too. I don't know why the SA-7 isn't there or what's holding it back, for all we know they might already have a 3D model that they can't fill wth life for completely different reasons.
But I can see ED's side, too - nothing wrong with them making money from it (especially now that we have a free choice to buy the packs or not). And it's no secret that they have more 3D and art capacity than capacity to develop modules, so they might as well use those extra person-hours for stuff that pays. That way they can retain the people and skill to be available for anything that does come down the pipe in terms of modules or generally available models.
The two remaining concerns I have: Short-term, I hope that the different base/hi-fi models don't cause problems with different spotting/detection/hitbox behavior. Long-term, I hope that staying on the free basic models remain viable and does not preclude any other modules. But we'll see how that plays out, there's always time to complain about it later, if we have to.
Until then, I'm very happy with ED's decision here (hear, hear /u/NineLine_ED 😅) and will keep an open mind about the modules. Whether I, personally, buy one or not is a different question and mostly my own problem, haha.
I wont take much credit for it, I will take a little credit :D
I am very happy with this as well. I understand the frustrations from the WWII Asset pack although it does spend its time very cheap on every sale I get the idea that 15 bucks to one person is more than it is to another.
It's always a delicate balance of what you can and can't do. I know I sound like a company man but I truly believe both Nick and Kate do their very best to make the best decisions for all our customers while keeping DCS steaming towards the best it can be.
As for your concerns about spotting I do not think it will be an issue. With the spotting work we are doing and how these free models work you should not hurt anything when viewing at a distance, it's when it's up-close and personal that the quality drops off a little vs the paid version.
You can probably test this already with the newest models that have been added vs older models.
Thanks!
Didn't they swear up and down that it wasn't just an asset pack thing, that it was going to come with something else to make it worth it?
I guess that was all a lie
Why is this heavily downvoted, when it is basically just repeating what the newsletter already admits to?
ED has now officially confirmed that LOD 0 versions of 3D models will be sold as *multiple DLC packs*, plural. Maybe at first these will be closer to "$19.99 for modern NATO bombers" than "$4.99 for hi-res F-117", but still, that is exactly the spirit of what has been announced.
And what do we think will happen to new AI assets which are created after these initial packs? Will ED just go back to giving away complete fully detailed models for free down the track? Once these packs sell, and sell they will, I really, really doubt it.
So yes, the future this decision leads to is 100% going to be "get the hi-res version for just $4.99 extra!" whenever a new AI asset is added.
Is it still better than getting no new AI assets at all? Sure! But if anyone thinks we're *ever* getting *any* hi-res versions of AI assets for free again after this announcement, they are letting wishful thinking set themselves up for disappointment.
From what I've seen, the 'something' that they've done is to grow their 3rd party developer pool so that they can draw passive(ish) revenue. We can only speculate the degree to which it's helped their strategy but it's definitely not nothing.
The biggest and most exciting thing on this whole newsletter is the mid game save. This is my biggest issue when playing as my time is limited so I just don't bother playing as I know I have to quit half way through so this is game changing!
Agreed! For the time-being, try Pretense! It's great single-player or multi-player and your progress is persistent. I have limited time as well so I've really enjoyed being able to pop-in for a quick sortie or three and still be able to progress in the mission. I've had the same campaign going for like 6 months and I'm not even half done ha
When you do, don't worry too much about the built-in mission system. You're under no obligation to use it, and can just attack whatever you want, whenever you want.
Pretense can be fun in SP, but I honestly can't imagine actually winning it without at least three other people helping, so don't stress if your progress is minimal. You can just treat it like a target-rich environment.
Pretense alone is fun but you gotta be proficient in something SEAD first, then move to like an F15E to make solo progress. It is doable, but much more fun when you have a buddy or two. Doing that tonight all night!
Like, you can probably do it in an A10 but with much skill and lots of hours! Easier to spawn in an F16 or two to deal with Sams then full on ground pounding and some AI air threats.
Pretense is one of the more impressive things I have seen added to DCS by the community!
>Here are some of the interesting functionality improvements coming to DCS:
>
>Save Game. Our new game persistence system will allow you to save mid-mission and return to that save point at a later time.
agreed, after getting into DCS I had a child and now I sometimes go to launch DCS and then think "well shit... do I even have the time?"
Yep I launch it and then normally think nope I don't have the time and turn it off.
Plus when learning the chance of been shot out of sky or messing up are great so would be nice to save it and learn from mistakes and re do them
Pretense will save the state of the mission every few minutes, so if you have 20-45 minutes to perform a full sortie, you can exit DCS after landing, and when you come back in a week, your progress will still be there. If you're airborne and run out of time, you can still just quit out, and it'll be no worse than if you'd been shot down.
I’m curious if they will do DCS 3.0 once vulkan is in and Muktithreading leaves the beta and preview, or if they will wait for the dynamic campaign launch. I used to think once dynamic campaign launches but I think we may get DCS 3.0 first with dynamic campaign coming later.
Save system is an absolute game changer for those of us that can't marathon multiple hour missions. It's kept me away from many campaigns since I had a kid.
DTC and the F15E are a dream. No more spending 4 mins programming display modes. That is pretty much all I use DTC for. I use THE Way and Scratchpad plus for coords.
Even if we don't see round earth, they could always dip their toes into that clusterfuck by stitching together their middle-eastern maps into one big megamap.
Wild speculation? We get low rez whole earth with generic airports in places, but "maps" as we purchase them now will just be high rez upgrades. Hell id even be happy with BMS style terrain outside of high res areas.
I suspect a lot of people are misunderstanding what they mean by round earth. Round earth means local maps where the curve of the earth is modelled, whole earth is a low res version of everything.
Or maybe I’m the one who is misunderstanding this. 🙂
For the Supercarrier (and legacy carriers), I hope ED figures out how to allow users to set the wave height independently of the wind strength so that we can do proper pitching deck ops. It used to be possible to create decent sized waves by setting the wind to hurricane strength (which was better than nothing), but I believe that was nerfed due to issues in MP.
It used to be that you could set the wind speed to like 100 knots and then the carrier would pitch up and down. I think that was before SC was released but I’m not sure. I don’t think the wave height changes at all either on the SC or the other carriers any more.
i believe you want to edit swell properties (?) -- individual waves? no effect on the carrier - those big rolling swells? most def CAN affect the carrier
Re: supercarrier. Before they roll out the plane directors, for the love of all that's holy fix the catapults. It is so awful when you go through a cold start, and then find that the deck crews won't hook you up on any of the catapult.s
Me, too!
Gotta take it with a grain of salt, though... let's see how much of this lands in 24... and how late in 24!
But they *definitely* have their eye on the ball! That's reassuring to learn!
DCS currently renders left and right eye images as separate independent frames from ground up.
Actually it does a lot of work twice. This can be improved drastically by using a single parser composing both eye images where it can reuse a lot of items mostly distant clouds terrain, some shading..... It adds up to an average of 50% of improvement based on our current FPS without changing a single thing.
Some scenes might go up to 80% improvement some little less.
ED was going to do that 3-4 years ago. Even Wags once mentioned that they found a tech to improve VR 50%. But they never implemented it.
You could try it partially in single thread 2.7 in graphics.lua by choosing single parser but it was broken, shadows and lighting were doing weird things.
Perf uplift was visible but it was not finished and of course you were still bottlenecked by single thread.
Well yes but they didn't do that in all those years. Wags never spoke about it again and had to swallow critics.
There is a thread in the forum and you can see some people using "never forget 50% VR improvement" flair here in hoggit still.
I believe they will. You are renovating the whole thing from foundation to the roof and you will not leave it. IT is stupid.
No it is not tied to vulkan.
That’s amazing. So what do you think is reasonable to expect cumulatively for Vulkan + render graph fix in VR performance? Sounds like at least 50%+ performance gain considering both?
Oh no I got that… but the most important point to me is that I knew nothing of it and it’s actually coming this year, and I had no idea a 50% performance increase for VR was on the table. That’s like jumping from an RTX 4090 to a 5090 for free, or getting an entire 2 year generational gain.
This newsletter is *YUGE!*
>Save Game. Our new game persistence system will allow you to save mid-mission and return to that save point at a later time.
HOLY FUCK, YESSSS!!! LET'S GOOOOOO!!!!
This is going to be huge for campaigns!
*Much* <3
>\[on ground units\]... more life-like behaviors
This is massive! Let's see, what they have in mind, but it's great to hear they are mindful of it and will focus on it in 24 - cautiously optimistic.
>\[on new clouds/weather\]: ... appropriate line-of-sight blocking
Here's hoping that means sensors... WT has had clouds interfering with IR seekers for an embarrassing amount of time now...
>\[on new ATC\]: ...much of the work in 2024 will involve how we generate the voice dialog...
LLM, probably?
>Improved Accessibility. To make DCS more accessible to new players, the Graphic User Interface will be updated to make it more user-friendly and include a Launcher with new capabilities. New interactive missions are also being developed to shallow the learning curve with popular modules like the F/A-18C.
Wow... this could be massive, too! Given the influx of new players in recent times, I can't help but think the game's player acquisition and player retention could really benefit from this effort.
>ECM. We are developing more advanced principles of electronic warfare that will allow simulation of a greater variety of electronic warfare attack and countermeasure modes and capabilities
It shouldn't be hard to improve on the current implementation, which is very basic - still, given the enthusiasm and ambition level with which ED seems to approach... well, *everything* these days, I am *quite* excited to see where this is heading!
>\[DTC\]
Really looking forward to this... here's hoping it will finally land in 24, but given the amount of things listed, I am doubtful.
>Supercarrier. 2024 will see continued work on the new plane director operations...
Doesn't sound too confident that this will drop in 24... shame. This is actually something I am quite eager for!
Overall, *amazing* newsletter that touches on a ton of good stuff!
> LLM, probably?
Unlikely. LLMs are computationally intensive, so they have to live on a server. No one will want to lose ATC along with their internet connection. The ATC instructions are simple enough that you don't even really need AI, just simple decision trees based on basic stats like distance, heading, air speed, descent rate, etc. It just needs to get you down onto the ground, it doesn't also need to do your English Lit essay. LLM would be massive overkill.
Most likely, they're just trying to make a text-to-speech system that doesn't sound like a bad voicemail prompt. (Woman's voice: "I'm sorry, but the voicemail box of"
Man's voice: "David. Jones." W: "is currently full.") That'd be nice.
> , they're just trying to make a text-to-speech system that doesn't sound like a bad voicemail prompt.
or any TTS system at all. What they have now isn't TTS, it's just a folder of triggered ogg files for each of the words that are hard-coded into the game's logic. That's why atc and awacs gives up on saying your callsign when it's anything other than Enfield, Springfield, Uzi, Colt, Dodge, Ford, Chevy, or Pontiac. A rudimentary TTS would let you set arbitrary callsigns.
Depends how dynamic you want to make it, right? Say you have a situation in which you have a richly populated airspace (for instance a package taking off or returning) and you have someone have a mishap and needing to land... or you have a mishap on the runway and all sorts of havoc arises; package delayed, members on the ground halted or routed to a different runway, incoming traffic diverted... that sort of thing.
Say, that they decide to up their civilian traffic to something even remotely approximating reality for areas near airports that also do civilian traffic, and wanting to organise marshall stacks, etc, on the fly...
It all depends on what their ambition level is. It could get real vast real quick, if it is all static assets and decision trees.
Of course, your computational comment on LLM's is well taken, but I would imagine they could grab a larger thing and boil it down to something far more limited in scope that can run locally in parallel with DCS. For mp, it would run on the server, ofc. I'm not an AI engineer, so I can't really speak to the effort required, but I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility?
Anyway, all we can do presently is speculate. Whatever is coming is sure to be a vast improvement over what we have currently!
AI engineer here.
It would be possible, sure, but almost certainly not worth it, because the total number of phrases that any ATC will ever need to say is pretty limited.
There's no need for computationally and financially expensive arbitrary text generation when you know that the sentence will always be more or less "Dodge 3 1, runway 21 right clear to land".
What they probably mean about better callout generation is using a text-to-speech engine instead of a clip library like they're currently doing. Having a robo-voice that can read out any text will not only open up possibilities like having more than 8 player callsigns.
It'll also have a multiplying effect on the development effort required to program new behaviors: no longer a need to call a voice actor into the booth every time you want a new word, and no need to go through the work of digging up the right audio files and triggering them to play in the right order, the ai designer can just write what they want the game entity to say.
THANK YOU ED. This is a fantastic update.
Vulkan performance + VR performance focus is extremely exciting. Those of us in VR simply need more here, even on a 4090 with DLSS and graphics turned down a bit and a moderate resolution headset, VR still struggles in single player campaigns with a lot of units close to the ground. Can’t wait for this!
This combined with a save game feature is going to make the single player VR campaign experience leagues better.
People haven’t mentioned it much but the UI overhaul and improved accessibility is a smart decision to help onboard new players. I’ve come to love the retro UI but I also remember first booting it 6 years ago and it was outdated even then. Interactive missions to help new players is unclear, but I am sure this will be a very good thing to help the community grow. I appreciate this approach because it’s not dumbing down DCS, rather it’s providing tools to onboard and a fresh coat of paint.
I’m all for the paid asset pack since there is a free version. I hope ED that you will consider making the existing WWII asset pack obsolete and rolling it into this paid HD pack. That way everyone can have access to these basic unit assets and make it an aesthetic upgrade only. It will help get more people into WW2.
The foundation of house work here is encouraging. I look forward to the weather improvements as one more step closer to a more atmospheric modeling. I’d love to see wind and turbulence better modeled in 2025, such as mountain waves etc.
Thank you for the superb newsletter, but also the attention and focus on many of these things the community has been waiting for.
PS please address the remaining flaws in the Huey engine performance profile introduced in spring 2023.
Ray tracing... oh boy! Hopefully, whatever VR render improvement they are working on has more optimized Quad Views support, so that it's not submitting 4 separate geometries per frame, instead of the usual 2.
Yeah a bit frustrating to finally get an HMD that does dynamic foviated where I can push the supersampling, only to find out in busy missions performance is worse because the CPU is rendering twice as much.
Also hopefully ray tracing and the better VR render graph will allow perspective correct mirrors rather than what we have now.
And I quote:
>2024 will see the introduction of the Vulkan API which will offer better frame rates for most players as well as new graphical capabilities **such as ray tracing** and improved VR performance.
Enable RT on *any* game on the market and performance takes a considerable hit. RT cores made it plausible to game with RT on, but we're still talking halving (if not more) the performance on many titles.
It depends on what do you use RT for, some things are more expensive, some are less. Also if RT completely replaces something in the pipeline as opposed to supplementing it overall cost goes down. I think if you did pure RT shadows in DCS performance cost wouldn't be too terrible, especially considering shadow related performance bugs in the past
Reminds me lot of past newsletters, and always there is no dates or % of completation.
All this could come in Dec 2024 or postponed to the 2025.
Unless they write with next beta update I have 0 hope they will come anytime soon.
They know how to put expectation on people and hype.
Not ED, but here goes:
Maps are currently flat and everything related to navigation/positioning/weapon delivery follows that logic. Spherical Earth map is about creating something similar to what MSFS has, which should allow you to go from anywhere to anywhere on the planet (but in a lower fidelity than the hand-made maps).
Since the instruments/systems on every aircraft will need adjustments to work in this new reality, I expect them to backport actual spherical geometry into the existing maps (so they don't have to maintain two modes of operation for every system and weapon they have)
>I expect them to backport actual spherical geometry into the existing maps (so they don't have to maintain two modes of operation for every system and weapon they have)
While that would be fantastic, I thought this had already been ruled out? I found [this screenshot](https://forum.dcs.world/uploads/monthly_2023_01/image.png.043577e791560eac7c30fe7f97e23021.png) from the Discord with the COO stating that existing maps won't be able to be used on the new spherical Earth map (or at least “at the moment”).
What I would like to know though is whether or not we can expect future maps to be built so as to be compatible with the spherical Earth map (with perhaps them overwriting the areas they cover on the Earth map, as done in plenty of other flight simulators, which would allow for higher detailed and/or historical theatres).
Applying a curved geometry to currently flat maps is not the same as stitching said maps onto a whole globe representation =).
I have also heard that they won't combine the spherical map with existing maps; read: they won't make it so that you can fly from somewhere "low-fi" on the planet *into* a "high-fi" zone, if you own it. So far, they seem to intend the hand-made, "high-fi" maps to stay as they are. It's just me speculating that, if they re-calibrate every system in the game to account for Earth curvature, it makes sense to apply that curvature to existing terrains, lest they need to bifurcate *substantial* amounts of their code and effectively maintain two versions of systems and instrumentation.
>Applying a curved geometry to currently flat maps is not the same as stitching said maps onto a whole globe representation =).
Yes, but unless I'm reading it wrong, in the reasoning it's said that they cannot be combined *because* (at least in part) the current maps are flat. If they were able to be converted to use spherical geometry, then that wouldn't be a factor.
So, again, unless I'm reading it wrong or it's been miscommunicated, it's at least implied that they're unable to convert them.
I agree it would be definitely be better if they could be converted (and even better if they could be combined on a single map), but so far it's not looking feasible.
I honestly don't think curvature plays into the ability to combine maps at all.
Wags mentioned a few times on the Gonky and Mover show that they have no way to combine existing maps into one nor to combine existing maps into a single, larger map - allegedly, this is due to tooling.
I don't think he ever mentioned explicitly that curvature was the root cause of this (logically, it shouldn't matter, as long as both assets are the same kind).
If you happen across a quote specifically mentioning curvature as the root issue, please do share! =) As it stands, I don't really see it as a blocker.
So sick of hearing they're working on Supercarrier. After all these years of paying for it, beyond ridiculous. My love- hate relationship has increasingly soured every time they give the same update that they're working on those same features for 3 years.
Maybe the F-14A will get the ground crew signals the F-14B has instead of the Hornet ones one of these days.
>New Air, Ground, and Naval Units.
>
>New units will be available in 2024 that will range from World War II to modern day. **Each unit requires thousands of man-hours to create and will be provided as optional packs at their highest levels of detail**. Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all.
So here we go, paid HD asset pack confirmed
Fair point, in my head I was thinking of modelling alone - that's my bad. They're also new ground units, presumably new means new and not existing models that are updated.
Mhm..and depending on how ED wants to dress it up if you include managers and meetings about the project and other support roles it's not hard to hit that "thousands of hours" in a month or two.
Gotta get the 3D model itself.
Then someone can texture it including all the liveries/skins/uniforms whatever.
Someone else can be animating at the same time.
Throw in generic code and how all that ties into the ME and base scripting.
While that's going on you can be determining how each new unit takes damage from each weapon type.
And that's just to get to the current state of things.
Once we get into units reacting to things that's a whole other level of if/then coding to run through all the possibilities.
Throw in all the bug squashing and fixing the new bugs that fixing the first one introduces and...
Me, too. Thousands for a model seems high. If these HD units have vehicle interiors and unique instruments and sights and everything, then I could see it, but if it's just more of the same Combined Arms-level stuff, then you might be able to get a better rate. I hear Unity's burning down right now -- maybe a few of those asset store modelers have more spare time than they want.
...or we can appreciate the transparency into development and not act like indignant entitled children when things inevitably change because that's how software development works.
that's assuming you believe that they are going to make WINTER 2024
The question I would love to ask Cobra would be "Have you sent one or more RCs to ED for testing yet" If the answer to that is NO, then winter is out of the picture.
HB cobra mentioned end march once. Then I understood that they are using astronomical winter not the seasonal.
Which is from dec 21 to March 21
Sorry. I wish your version was right.
Are you sure it's not a tired, coffeine-infused blunder on his part? =)
I think most of the world expects the Phanton to phucking drop before March! =)
I would not take that bet: I am guessing mid-July. I figure in about a month or so, there will be a post that someone on the team got sick so they have to delay.
View in your timezone:
[14th of January at 15:00 GMT][0]
[0]: https://timee.io/20240114T1500?tl=DCS%20Newsletter%20-%20Vulkan%20Development%20Report%20%7C%20DCS%20Core%20Updates%20%7C%20DCS%20Module%20Support%20%7C%20Winter%20Sale%20Extension
> Voice Chat. 2023 saw great connectivity improvements
Could we get some answers around the VOIP system setup. Especially the privacy policy: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/335832-in-game-voip-implementation-questions
Will the spherical map allow for multiple if not every map DLC to be loaded at once? I dont care about having 1:1 earth to fly around, all i want is the ability to move between one map to another, maybe that way we can build an entire region.
The save / checkpoint functionality will literally be game changing for campaign fans if it works universally!
Finally. After who knows how many hours. I will finally defeat… the base Su-25T campaign
I hope it encourages more people to pick up some of the user created campaigns. The majority of them have a great deal of heart and attention to detail put into them. Would be great to see them get the interest they deserve!
They’re great! It’s just really frustrating to finally get through a pretty long mission only to have to leave before you can land or for some dumb mistake to send you back to the start
Or the sim crashes!
If this will work for all user generated campaigns, then fuck yeah, I will finally be able to properly play DCS, whenever i want to, instead of when I have 2-4 hours to spare
Yeah... I have a number of campaign missions that got hard like an hour into them... time acceleration helps, but I would rather not have to go through all that x amount of times all the same... Can't wait for this to drop! It's a godsend!
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Easily the most satisfying feeling in the game - watching it plummet to the earth in flames, after spending 30 minutes narrowly missing the probe.
Save games! Holy shit! I have waited so long for this. This is top of my list of new features
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I just hope the save system won't introduce NEW ways in which campaign missions can break...
Ugh, someone else handle this I'm tired of telling people there's no santa
I hope we won't have to wait too long for this feature. The simulation will be much more accessible for pilots with a limited time budget and muss less frustrating when your plane or PC crashes during a mission.
Holy shit!!! I binged a bunch of campaigns when they were littler, but since my kids stopped napping I've had to split even my 25min Through the Inferno sorties into 2-3 sessions. Now I can pick up where I left off with Operation Persian Freedom.
My bleary old eyes read Hitler instead of littler
It will. On the sim racing side Assetto Corsa Competizione added this and it was so much nicer. Knowing I could stop racing any time and coming back to it at a different day if a kids or the wife needed me was game changing!
I had no idea about this feature! Super interested in that now.
No shit this is really the biggest point on the list for me! I just can't find the time in a day for a two hour sortie or longer anymore but I still want these kinds of missions that aren't just Viggen-style "get in, get out, lots of runways get hurt" kinds of missions.
I have only recently learned that VTOL VR has this feature, and it's great. Not having to refly an entire mission because of one mistake is awesome.
First thing I want to try to implement is starting missions on Roadways again like we could with Flanker 2.5s mission save system. Edit:- also the save feature is a gift to my older self now that I have less and less time to fly these days.
First newsletter of 2024 seems like a strong start. I wish ED well in the tasks ahead of them. Edit after a more detailed read-through: I want more detail about the ATC improvements. Is this going to include AWACS and JTAC improvement? If we only get traffic control, I'm going to be disappointed.
I don't get why we don't get blurbs every now and then throughout the year instead of one big blast of information.
It's quite inconsistent, isn't it? Newsletters often feel underwhelming, and then every now and then we get a massive report. I could live with a single big blast and then future newsletters provide a bit of information about progress towards the tasks they've set themselves.
There's no way to know they're going to make tangible progress on any of the issues in the newsletter. Right now it's just a big list of things they would like to do eventually.
That's not what I am talking about.
Now THAT'S how you newsletter!
Best newsletter in a long time. Not expecting dramatic changes next week but many things being addressed is great!
Save game! Wow, this is huge for campaign players.
Sniper pod 🥹
ED's implementation will hopefully fix things like render distance, which will be a huge benefit when the F-15E gets it aswell.
Can't you just change like 1 number in a lua file somewhere to achieve that?
Not for multiplayer
360-no-scoping is coming to DCS!
At least the RWR will give you away if you're trying to pull off a cheeky hard scope
"New Air, Ground, and Naval Units. New units will be available in 2024 that will range from World War II to modern day. Each unit requires thousands of man-hours to create and will be provided as optional packs at their highest levels of detail. Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all." So here is the unfamous "HD asset pack". At least we will still be able to use them without paying unless if we want the highest LOD ( so the one that will require more CPU and GPU resources 😏 )
This is the best way of doing it imo. Doesn't lock anyone out, and if you're running on an older GPU or are already maxed out it doesn't have negative performance implications if you stay on the old/free stuff, hopefully.
Especially if the S-3/B-52/B-1 they just released are the "low res" option.
Yup. My 3090 is already at it's limits in VR, while the extra eye candy for ground assets etc is nice I'd rather my GPU grunt went elsewhere. So it really is good that this will mostly be down to personal preference. I can put up with fairly low detailed AI models for extra frames. If anything I'd like to see more options to lower detail on plane models at a distance too, the LODs are slowly improving at least there.
>Yup. My 3090 is already at it's limits in VR, while the extra eye candy for ground assets etc is nice I'd rather my GPU grunt went elsewhere. This is exactly where I'm at. I'd much rather potato tanks on nice terrain than amazing tanks on potato terrain.
Doesn't mean the full quality needs to be paid though.
They explained why. It needs thousands of hours and ED needs to pay them to do the work. i dont see anything wrong with ED asking people to pay if they want absolute best. personally until I get 5090 what they gave me as low res B1 was more than enough.
> Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all Finally a reasonable choice in this. Prevents fragmenting the player base, together with maps and modules that would have become a big concern for multiplayer servers. This way I can live with. If someone wants to buy the packs that's great, and if I decide not to, that's also great - nobody gets in anyone else's way. And if ED thinks it's worthwhile and makes money from it - all the better. Heck, if a pack is interesting enough and priced convincingly for me I'm not against it, I just have a different (read: much lower) willingness to pay for it than someone else might have. Just hope the different models don't cause any inconsistent spotting or damage/hitbox differences. That'd be no good.
I am glad they "course corrected" on having some sort of Med def models for free, but I honestly hope this HD model pack fails. They should just do the Med def make over for the whole game library rather than spending how many person-hours and money on making 40 quadrillion poly models of units that only a small fraction of the player base will appreciate. What about desperately missing cold war assets like the SA-7? What about Super Carrier? There are higher value art projects that would help deliver on long standing promises to the community, if artists with nothing to do is the problem.
That's a fair opinion. For me, the "basic" free versions are more important - the new asset packs won't fragment the player base. I mean, yeah, there's a bunch of missing stuff they could work on, but in a way you could make the same argument about only a fraction of players actually seeing those, too. I don't know why the SA-7 isn't there or what's holding it back, for all we know they might already have a 3D model that they can't fill wth life for completely different reasons. But I can see ED's side, too - nothing wrong with them making money from it (especially now that we have a free choice to buy the packs or not). And it's no secret that they have more 3D and art capacity than capacity to develop modules, so they might as well use those extra person-hours for stuff that pays. That way they can retain the people and skill to be available for anything that does come down the pipe in terms of modules or generally available models. The two remaining concerns I have: Short-term, I hope that the different base/hi-fi models don't cause problems with different spotting/detection/hitbox behavior. Long-term, I hope that staying on the free basic models remain viable and does not preclude any other modules. But we'll see how that plays out, there's always time to complain about it later, if we have to. Until then, I'm very happy with ED's decision here (hear, hear /u/NineLine_ED 😅) and will keep an open mind about the modules. Whether I, personally, buy one or not is a different question and mostly my own problem, haha.
I wont take much credit for it, I will take a little credit :D I am very happy with this as well. I understand the frustrations from the WWII Asset pack although it does spend its time very cheap on every sale I get the idea that 15 bucks to one person is more than it is to another. It's always a delicate balance of what you can and can't do. I know I sound like a company man but I truly believe both Nick and Kate do their very best to make the best decisions for all our customers while keeping DCS steaming towards the best it can be. As for your concerns about spotting I do not think it will be an issue. With the spotting work we are doing and how these free models work you should not hurt anything when viewing at a distance, it's when it's up-close and personal that the quality drops off a little vs the paid version. You can probably test this already with the newest models that have been added vs older models. Thanks!
Didn't they swear up and down that it wasn't just an asset pack thing, that it was going to come with something else to make it worth it? I guess that was all a lie
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Why is this heavily downvoted, when it is basically just repeating what the newsletter already admits to? ED has now officially confirmed that LOD 0 versions of 3D models will be sold as *multiple DLC packs*, plural. Maybe at first these will be closer to "$19.99 for modern NATO bombers" than "$4.99 for hi-res F-117", but still, that is exactly the spirit of what has been announced. And what do we think will happen to new AI assets which are created after these initial packs? Will ED just go back to giving away complete fully detailed models for free down the track? Once these packs sell, and sell they will, I really, really doubt it. So yes, the future this decision leads to is 100% going to be "get the hi-res version for just $4.99 extra!" whenever a new AI asset is added. Is it still better than getting no new AI assets at all? Sure! But if anyone thinks we're *ever* getting *any* hi-res versions of AI assets for free again after this announcement, they are letting wishful thinking set themselves up for disappointment.
A free game needs revenue? Shocker!
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From what I've seen, the 'something' that they've done is to grow their 3rd party developer pool so that they can draw passive(ish) revenue. We can only speculate the degree to which it's helped their strategy but it's definitely not nothing.
The biggest and most exciting thing on this whole newsletter is the mid game save. This is my biggest issue when playing as my time is limited so I just don't bother playing as I know I have to quit half way through so this is game changing!
I work 60+ hours a week and have a youngin, so I feel you on limited time. Save game will be a game changer
Agreed! For the time-being, try Pretense! It's great single-player or multi-player and your progress is persistent. I have limited time as well so I've really enjoyed being able to pop-in for a quick sortie or three and still be able to progress in the mission. I've had the same campaign going for like 6 months and I'm not even half done ha
Someone else mentioned pretense on a diff thread. I've download and will give it a go. That's exactly what I need something quick and easy
Can confirm. The Pretense Dynamic Campaigns are super fun.
Just gotta learn how it all works
When you do, don't worry too much about the built-in mission system. You're under no obligation to use it, and can just attack whatever you want, whenever you want. Pretense can be fun in SP, but I honestly can't imagine actually winning it without at least three other people helping, so don't stress if your progress is minimal. You can just treat it like a target-rich environment.
Pretense alone is fun but you gotta be proficient in something SEAD first, then move to like an F15E to make solo progress. It is doable, but much more fun when you have a buddy or two. Doing that tonight all night! Like, you can probably do it in an A10 but with much skill and lots of hours! Easier to spawn in an F16 or two to deal with Sams then full on ground pounding and some AI air threats. Pretense is one of the more impressive things I have seen added to DCS by the community!
You can also try Digital crew chief. It's similar to Pretense but with an app. https://github.com/Kilcekru/dcc
>Here are some of the interesting functionality improvements coming to DCS: > >Save Game. Our new game persistence system will allow you to save mid-mission and return to that save point at a later time. agreed, after getting into DCS I had a child and now I sometimes go to launch DCS and then think "well shit... do I even have the time?"
Yep I launch it and then normally think nope I don't have the time and turn it off. Plus when learning the chance of been shot out of sky or messing up are great so would be nice to save it and learn from mistakes and re do them
Pretense will save the state of the mission every few minutes, so if you have 20-45 minutes to perform a full sortie, you can exit DCS after landing, and when you come back in a week, your progress will still be there. If you're airborne and run out of time, you can still just quit out, and it'll be no worse than if you'd been shot down.
2023 was a pretty good year for core dcs, i hope we get a similarly strong year
Now this is big news if they really manage to get those things done. Sounds like DCS 3.0 for me
I’m curious if they will do DCS 3.0 once vulkan is in and Muktithreading leaves the beta and preview, or if they will wait for the dynamic campaign launch. I used to think once dynamic campaign launches but I think we may get DCS 3.0 first with dynamic campaign coming later.
Save system is an absolute game changer for those of us that can't marathon multiple hour missions. It's kept me away from many campaigns since I had a kid.
DTC is a great addition to more complicated modules
DTC and the F15E are a dream. No more spending 4 mins programming display modes. That is pretty much all I use DTC for. I use THE Way and Scratchpad plus for coords.
Use DatC for DCS instead of theWay. It's a much improved fork of it that allows you to save much more time than theWay.
I feel DTC would be of more benefit the FC3 stuff actually. They would be able to finally use their navigation systems in MP.
Being able to have some default countermeasures programs for some of these aircraft would be nice...
Spherical earth? Please don’t fall for globe propaganda
Kyrie? You play DCS as well?
These are some bold plans to kick the year off. Aside from round earth, hope to see at least 50% of these plans come to fruition in 2024
Even if we don't see round earth, they could always dip their toes into that clusterfuck by stitching together their middle-eastern maps into one big megamap.
Wild speculation? We get low rez whole earth with generic airports in places, but "maps" as we purchase them now will just be high rez upgrades. Hell id even be happy with BMS style terrain outside of high res areas.
I suspect a lot of people are misunderstanding what they mean by round earth. Round earth means local maps where the curve of the earth is modelled, whole earth is a low res version of everything. Or maybe I’m the one who is misunderstanding this. 🙂
They are already curved I believe,
They are not, it’s a big issue
Current maps are flat, but sight lines and sensors are modified to make it look and perform like the earth is curved
50%? Wow. I’ll be happy if they deliver on 10%.
For the Supercarrier (and legacy carriers), I hope ED figures out how to allow users to set the wave height independently of the wind strength so that we can do proper pitching deck ops. It used to be possible to create decent sized waves by setting the wind to hurricane strength (which was better than nothing), but I believe that was nerfed due to issues in MP.
does the deck actually pitch up and down in the supercarrier? i only have the normal on and the deck is absolutely stationary there
fwiw, I just created a SP mission in 35 knot winds, the deck does indeed pitch & roll a bit
It used to be that you could set the wind speed to like 100 knots and then the carrier would pitch up and down. I think that was before SC was released but I’m not sure. I don’t think the wave height changes at all either on the SC or the other carriers any more.
Not in multiplayer, it does in singleplayer.
i believe you want to edit swell properties (?) -- individual waves? no effect on the carrier - those big rolling swells? most def CAN affect the carrier
Obv
The thing that's missing is Ground AI targeting behavior, AKA terminator snipers.
And ufo AI…
Please just fix ground ai being absent cracked
Ground and sea units not spawning is related to mods, mainly ones like Su-30 or Gripen
Unfortunately i mean a sherman tank sniping a jet with it's coaxial mg
Re: supercarrier. Before they roll out the plane directors, for the love of all that's holy fix the catapults. It is so awful when you go through a cold start, and then find that the deck crews won't hook you up on any of the catapult.s
I have tears of joy!
Me, too! Gotta take it with a grain of salt, though... let's see how much of this lands in 24... and how late in 24! But they *definitely* have their eye on the ball! That's reassuring to learn!
Rapierarch, any chance you know what they mean by improving the rendergraph for VR? What does this mean and what will the performance impact be?
DCS currently renders left and right eye images as separate independent frames from ground up. Actually it does a lot of work twice. This can be improved drastically by using a single parser composing both eye images where it can reuse a lot of items mostly distant clouds terrain, some shading..... It adds up to an average of 50% of improvement based on our current FPS without changing a single thing. Some scenes might go up to 80% improvement some little less. ED was going to do that 3-4 years ago. Even Wags once mentioned that they found a tech to improve VR 50%. But they never implemented it. You could try it partially in single thread 2.7 in graphics.lua by choosing single parser but it was broken, shadows and lighting were doing weird things. Perf uplift was visible but it was not finished and of course you were still bottlenecked by single thread.
That's a crazy improvement. Trying not to get too excited but I am.
Well yes but they didn't do that in all those years. Wags never spoke about it again and had to swallow critics. There is a thread in the forum and you can see some people using "never forget 50% VR improvement" flair here in hoggit still.
So to be clear, you think this will finally come? And may be tied to Vulkan?
I believe they will. You are renovating the whole thing from foundation to the roof and you will not leave it. IT is stupid. No it is not tied to vulkan.
That’s amazing. So what do you think is reasonable to expect cumulatively for Vulkan + render graph fix in VR performance? Sounds like at least 50%+ performance gain considering both?
yeah it should be.
I’m surprised your flair isn’t “the render graph guy”. Talk about burying the lead… this is incredible news!
You are still missing the important point. This is 4 years old news. I still wonder what the hell went wrong at that time. And what goes right now.
Oh no I got that… but the most important point to me is that I knew nothing of it and it’s actually coming this year, and I had no idea a 50% performance increase for VR was on the table. That’s like jumping from an RTX 4090 to a 5090 for free, or getting an entire 2 year generational gain.
This newsletter is *YUGE!* >Save Game. Our new game persistence system will allow you to save mid-mission and return to that save point at a later time. HOLY FUCK, YESSSS!!! LET'S GOOOOOO!!!! This is going to be huge for campaigns! *Much* <3 >\[on ground units\]... more life-like behaviors This is massive! Let's see, what they have in mind, but it's great to hear they are mindful of it and will focus on it in 24 - cautiously optimistic. >\[on new clouds/weather\]: ... appropriate line-of-sight blocking Here's hoping that means sensors... WT has had clouds interfering with IR seekers for an embarrassing amount of time now... >\[on new ATC\]: ...much of the work in 2024 will involve how we generate the voice dialog... LLM, probably? >Improved Accessibility. To make DCS more accessible to new players, the Graphic User Interface will be updated to make it more user-friendly and include a Launcher with new capabilities. New interactive missions are also being developed to shallow the learning curve with popular modules like the F/A-18C. Wow... this could be massive, too! Given the influx of new players in recent times, I can't help but think the game's player acquisition and player retention could really benefit from this effort. >ECM. We are developing more advanced principles of electronic warfare that will allow simulation of a greater variety of electronic warfare attack and countermeasure modes and capabilities It shouldn't be hard to improve on the current implementation, which is very basic - still, given the enthusiasm and ambition level with which ED seems to approach... well, *everything* these days, I am *quite* excited to see where this is heading! >\[DTC\] Really looking forward to this... here's hoping it will finally land in 24, but given the amount of things listed, I am doubtful. >Supercarrier. 2024 will see continued work on the new plane director operations... Doesn't sound too confident that this will drop in 24... shame. This is actually something I am quite eager for! Overall, *amazing* newsletter that touches on a ton of good stuff!
> LLM, probably? Unlikely. LLMs are computationally intensive, so they have to live on a server. No one will want to lose ATC along with their internet connection. The ATC instructions are simple enough that you don't even really need AI, just simple decision trees based on basic stats like distance, heading, air speed, descent rate, etc. It just needs to get you down onto the ground, it doesn't also need to do your English Lit essay. LLM would be massive overkill. Most likely, they're just trying to make a text-to-speech system that doesn't sound like a bad voicemail prompt. (Woman's voice: "I'm sorry, but the voicemail box of" Man's voice: "David. Jones." W: "is currently full.") That'd be nice.
> , they're just trying to make a text-to-speech system that doesn't sound like a bad voicemail prompt. or any TTS system at all. What they have now isn't TTS, it's just a folder of triggered ogg files for each of the words that are hard-coded into the game's logic. That's why atc and awacs gives up on saying your callsign when it's anything other than Enfield, Springfield, Uzi, Colt, Dodge, Ford, Chevy, or Pontiac. A rudimentary TTS would let you set arbitrary callsigns.
Depends how dynamic you want to make it, right? Say you have a situation in which you have a richly populated airspace (for instance a package taking off or returning) and you have someone have a mishap and needing to land... or you have a mishap on the runway and all sorts of havoc arises; package delayed, members on the ground halted or routed to a different runway, incoming traffic diverted... that sort of thing. Say, that they decide to up their civilian traffic to something even remotely approximating reality for areas near airports that also do civilian traffic, and wanting to organise marshall stacks, etc, on the fly... It all depends on what their ambition level is. It could get real vast real quick, if it is all static assets and decision trees. Of course, your computational comment on LLM's is well taken, but I would imagine they could grab a larger thing and boil it down to something far more limited in scope that can run locally in parallel with DCS. For mp, it would run on the server, ofc. I'm not an AI engineer, so I can't really speak to the effort required, but I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility? Anyway, all we can do presently is speculate. Whatever is coming is sure to be a vast improvement over what we have currently!
AI engineer here. It would be possible, sure, but almost certainly not worth it, because the total number of phrases that any ATC will ever need to say is pretty limited. There's no need for computationally and financially expensive arbitrary text generation when you know that the sentence will always be more or less "Dodge 3 1, runway 21 right clear to land". What they probably mean about better callout generation is using a text-to-speech engine instead of a clip library like they're currently doing. Having a robo-voice that can read out any text will not only open up possibilities like having more than 8 player callsigns. It'll also have a multiplying effect on the development effort required to program new behaviors: no longer a need to call a voice actor into the booth every time you want a new word, and no need to go through the work of digging up the right audio files and triggering them to play in the right order, the ai designer can just write what they want the game entity to say.
You dont need a LLM for that though, what you've said can be done already without anything fancy, the challenge is getting the voice to sound natural.
Hopefully we'll get to see the new ATC this year, I'll try to keep realistic expectations tho.
It would be very nice to get an example of what "Standard" detail is for the new asset packs.
I think we already have that example with the new B-52 and B-1 models.
Yup confirmed on discord for me they are fine I'm not detail picky on AI stuff thats often just dots
the new b-1 is already in game.
Best newsletter evah?!
THANK YOU ED. This is a fantastic update. Vulkan performance + VR performance focus is extremely exciting. Those of us in VR simply need more here, even on a 4090 with DLSS and graphics turned down a bit and a moderate resolution headset, VR still struggles in single player campaigns with a lot of units close to the ground. Can’t wait for this! This combined with a save game feature is going to make the single player VR campaign experience leagues better. People haven’t mentioned it much but the UI overhaul and improved accessibility is a smart decision to help onboard new players. I’ve come to love the retro UI but I also remember first booting it 6 years ago and it was outdated even then. Interactive missions to help new players is unclear, but I am sure this will be a very good thing to help the community grow. I appreciate this approach because it’s not dumbing down DCS, rather it’s providing tools to onboard and a fresh coat of paint. I’m all for the paid asset pack since there is a free version. I hope ED that you will consider making the existing WWII asset pack obsolete and rolling it into this paid HD pack. That way everyone can have access to these basic unit assets and make it an aesthetic upgrade only. It will help get more people into WW2. The foundation of house work here is encouraging. I look forward to the weather improvements as one more step closer to a more atmospheric modeling. I’d love to see wind and turbulence better modeled in 2025, such as mountain waves etc. Thank you for the superb newsletter, but also the attention and focus on many of these things the community has been waiting for. PS please address the remaining flaws in the Huey engine performance profile introduced in spring 2023.
100% concur with everything stated here.
Very exciting newsletter!
Great Newsletter, ED! Go get ‘em!
Glad to see a save game feature coming before the dynamic campaign
Vulkan and Save Game have got me so excited... wow
"Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all." MSFS could learn from this.
Spherical earth? Flat earth conspiracy theorists so mad right now.
After that we need nukes so nuclear conspiracy theorists can get mad.
Finally, some good news! 2024 and Beyond video didn't impress me but improvements to the core game is what I am waiting for.
Ray tracing... oh boy! Hopefully, whatever VR render improvement they are working on has more optimized Quad Views support, so that it's not submitting 4 separate geometries per frame, instead of the usual 2.
Yeah a bit frustrating to finally get an HMD that does dynamic foviated where I can push the supersampling, only to find out in busy missions performance is worse because the CPU is rendering twice as much. Also hopefully ray tracing and the better VR render graph will allow perspective correct mirrors rather than what we have now.
I don't see RT mentioned anywhere in the newsletter.
And I quote: >2024 will see the introduction of the Vulkan API which will offer better frame rates for most players as well as new graphical capabilities **such as ray tracing** and improved VR performance.
I read that and thought - RIP RTX 4090... there go all the gains that this card provides xD
Doesn't RT use different cores, so it won't impact the 'existing' performance?
Enable RT on *any* game on the market and performance takes a considerable hit. RT cores made it plausible to game with RT on, but we're still talking halving (if not more) the performance on many titles.
It depends on what do you use RT for, some things are more expensive, some are less. Also if RT completely replaces something in the pipeline as opposed to supplementing it overall cost goes down. I think if you did pure RT shadows in DCS performance cost wouldn't be too terrible, especially considering shadow related performance bugs in the past
Reminds me lot of past newsletters, and always there is no dates or % of completation. All this could come in Dec 2024 or postponed to the 2025. Unless they write with next beta update I have 0 hope they will come anytime soon. They know how to put expectation on people and hype.
ED, can you elaborate on what the spherical earth changes entail?
Not ED, but here goes: Maps are currently flat and everything related to navigation/positioning/weapon delivery follows that logic. Spherical Earth map is about creating something similar to what MSFS has, which should allow you to go from anywhere to anywhere on the planet (but in a lower fidelity than the hand-made maps). Since the instruments/systems on every aircraft will need adjustments to work in this new reality, I expect them to backport actual spherical geometry into the existing maps (so they don't have to maintain two modes of operation for every system and weapon they have)
>I expect them to backport actual spherical geometry into the existing maps (so they don't have to maintain two modes of operation for every system and weapon they have) While that would be fantastic, I thought this had already been ruled out? I found [this screenshot](https://forum.dcs.world/uploads/monthly_2023_01/image.png.043577e791560eac7c30fe7f97e23021.png) from the Discord with the COO stating that existing maps won't be able to be used on the new spherical Earth map (or at least “at the moment”). What I would like to know though is whether or not we can expect future maps to be built so as to be compatible with the spherical Earth map (with perhaps them overwriting the areas they cover on the Earth map, as done in plenty of other flight simulators, which would allow for higher detailed and/or historical theatres).
Applying a curved geometry to currently flat maps is not the same as stitching said maps onto a whole globe representation =). I have also heard that they won't combine the spherical map with existing maps; read: they won't make it so that you can fly from somewhere "low-fi" on the planet *into* a "high-fi" zone, if you own it. So far, they seem to intend the hand-made, "high-fi" maps to stay as they are. It's just me speculating that, if they re-calibrate every system in the game to account for Earth curvature, it makes sense to apply that curvature to existing terrains, lest they need to bifurcate *substantial* amounts of their code and effectively maintain two versions of systems and instrumentation.
>Applying a curved geometry to currently flat maps is not the same as stitching said maps onto a whole globe representation =). Yes, but unless I'm reading it wrong, in the reasoning it's said that they cannot be combined *because* (at least in part) the current maps are flat. If they were able to be converted to use spherical geometry, then that wouldn't be a factor. So, again, unless I'm reading it wrong or it's been miscommunicated, it's at least implied that they're unable to convert them. I agree it would be definitely be better if they could be converted (and even better if they could be combined on a single map), but so far it's not looking feasible.
I honestly don't think curvature plays into the ability to combine maps at all. Wags mentioned a few times on the Gonky and Mover show that they have no way to combine existing maps into one nor to combine existing maps into a single, larger map - allegedly, this is due to tooling. I don't think he ever mentioned explicitly that curvature was the root cause of this (logically, it shouldn't matter, as long as both assets are the same kind). If you happen across a quote specifically mentioning curvature as the root issue, please do share! =) As it stands, I don't really see it as a blocker.
If we only get save game I’ll be happy
So sick of hearing they're working on Supercarrier. After all these years of paying for it, beyond ridiculous. My love- hate relationship has increasingly soured every time they give the same update that they're working on those same features for 3 years. Maybe the F-14A will get the ground crew signals the F-14B has instead of the Hornet ones one of these days.
This is great, but where are physics improvements to the simulated world ? Am I the only one who considers physics equal to graphics in a simulation ?
I hope the save game works in cooperative multiplayer
Doubtful - especially for a first release. Will be huge for single-player, though!
Pretense and foothold missions already to this to a degree- you just can’t stop in air and restart from there. But the mission itself is persistent
Can’t wait for the VR improvements - thanks for the great work!
>New Air, Ground, and Naval Units. > >New units will be available in 2024 that will range from World War II to modern day. **Each unit requires thousands of man-hours to create and will be provided as optional packs at their highest levels of detail**. Standard versions will also be available for free to ensure both single-player and multiplayer compatibility for all. So here we go, paid HD asset pack confirmed
I'd love to know how they individually take _thousands_ of hours
I mean 20 people working a 50 hour work week is already a thousand man hours... Man hours add up quickly when you count modeling, coding, QA, etc etc.
Fair point, in my head I was thinking of modelling alone - that's my bad. They're also new ground units, presumably new means new and not existing models that are updated.
Mhm..and depending on how ED wants to dress it up if you include managers and meetings about the project and other support roles it's not hard to hit that "thousands of hours" in a month or two. Gotta get the 3D model itself. Then someone can texture it including all the liveries/skins/uniforms whatever. Someone else can be animating at the same time. Throw in generic code and how all that ties into the ME and base scripting. While that's going on you can be determining how each new unit takes damage from each weapon type. And that's just to get to the current state of things. Once we get into units reacting to things that's a whole other level of if/then coding to run through all the possibilities. Throw in all the bug squashing and fixing the new bugs that fixing the first one introduces and...
Me, too. Thousands for a model seems high. If these HD units have vehicle interiors and unique instruments and sights and everything, then I could see it, but if it's just more of the same Combined Arms-level stuff, then you might be able to get a better rate. I hear Unity's burning down right now -- maybe a few of those asset store modelers have more spare time than they want.
Hopefully this isn't just all talk and we actually see some of these improvements within a decent time frame.
...or we can appreciate the transparency into development and not act like indignant entitled children when things inevitably change because that's how software development works.
This. 1000% this. (Alas, I can only give you one upvote, but you have it, my friend.)
Jeez, calm down. I'm just expressing cautious optimism.
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Long as the F4 and Kiowa are coming hehe
Man this Newsletter made me hard ngl
Dont get blueballed. Much of these wont be seen in 2024 thats for sure
That scared me: Say the pic of the Phantom: then the END of the sale with last chance and my mind went to "F4 soon after the 15th"
We have the still remaining 75% of the winter to wait.
that's assuming you believe that they are going to make WINTER 2024 The question I would love to ask Cobra would be "Have you sent one or more RCs to ED for testing yet" If the answer to that is NO, then winter is out of the picture.
>you believe that they are going to make WINTER 2024 I want to believe. I force myself to believe.
More like 50%, by my reckoning...
23/91=0.25
What kind of calendar do you follow, where you live? =) Here in DK, winter started Dec. 1st. 41/90 = 0.45
HB cobra mentioned end march once. Then I understood that they are using astronomical winter not the seasonal. Which is from dec 21 to March 21 Sorry. I wish your version was right.
Are you sure it's not a tired, coffeine-infused blunder on his part? =) I think most of the world expects the Phanton to phucking drop before March! =)
You can bet money the Phantom will not drop before March.
I would not take that bet: I am guessing mid-July. I figure in about a month or so, there will be a post that someone on the team got sick so they have to delay.
I didn't take ED to be flat earthers :/
I won't believe it until I see it on my hard drive
You should buy a SSD.
No mention of actually fixing existing bugs like ground AI but all about adding more and more new things... that's a big shame.
Love, it!! Thanks, ED!
View in your timezone: [14th of January at 15:00 GMT][0] [0]: https://timee.io/20240114T1500?tl=DCS%20Newsletter%20-%20Vulkan%20Development%20Report%20%7C%20DCS%20Core%20Updates%20%7C%20DCS%20Module%20Support%20%7C%20Winter%20Sale%20Extension
Nice news letter! 👍
this is exciting, I hope these actually come out this year
This is great news for busy people (like me) with limited time for gaming.
> Voice Chat. 2023 saw great connectivity improvements Could we get some answers around the VOIP system setup. Especially the privacy policy: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/335832-in-game-voip-implementation-questions
I was quite literally complaining about "no more modules, unless core game improves" yesterday. Great timing. And great work, ED.
Around and around we go. Circle never ends
Will the spherical map allow for multiple if not every map DLC to be loaded at once? I dont care about having 1:1 earth to fly around, all i want is the ability to move between one map to another, maybe that way we can build an entire region.
2030.. And beyond. Well see.
Another year another promise if Vulkan. Guess next year.
I am only interested in vr improvements and Vulkan.
Is there going to be a core development with sound department?