Eh. Those 2 have different circumstances, latter being space which is quite hot atm even.
I wish i could love the outer atmospheric stuff. But it just doesn't give me the goose bumps.

They are different, yes, but I was more referring to the cost... $40-60 per module for DCS so two modules can easily get to $100 and over, and that's not counting additional terrains. For Star Citizen, well, while you don't **NEED** to buy the more expensive ships with real-life money, the option is there and seems like there are many takers.

Low cost labor in former CIS states, aka made by code peasants...

But hell, DCS imo is UTTER SH*T. That's the end of it. Maybe some ppl is willing to settle for less, but not me. And afaik, not you either. How many here is still banned? If their product is actually good... ok NO, even if their product is excellent, banning ppl still makes them UTTER SH*T. But no, bought the Hog, played for a week and learned all the switchology. Deleted and NEVER installed again. -- what's the point?

For me, DCS is the glorified 'Made in China' version of a flight sim. It is a different example of the decline of the genre.

Actually, I motion for another subject. This one is so knee-jerk reaction nowadayz that it's not even remotely interesting talking about it........

Hahahaha....

But you missed the point there. I wasn't arguing about "product quality".... just the cost and the fact that the market **WILL** bear it. Imagine if people pay whatever they pay for DCS modules, but imagine if it were a proper simulation...

This is actually a good point. It is not exactly about the price, but about how to solve this problem of unpopularity, which should be solvable. Thing is we are unavoidably biased. The video gaming industry will have to believe it as well, which atm they do not. Like I mentioned in the "self fulfilled prophecy", if they break the loop, there's a chance it will happen.

Market perception in the end comes down to human psychology. Make belief. Or what is it they say make it and they will come. However I think it does take a visionary of sorts to take an innovative approach and make it happen.

How do you shape a flight sim that most gamers find boring, unapproachable, unrelatable and make it interesting - While remaining a full blown quality flight sim. Is VR the answer. Is AI the answer. Is open modding the answer. Or something else that I'm incapable of thinking. I don't know, but I think a solution is there to be found.

All of it is the answer. However, with limited resources, the art is finding which ones to prioritize and which ones can be put aside for the meantime.

DCS is the result of hardcore simmers wanting every rivet and switch in it's proper place and for all the avionics etc. to match the real world aircraft.

Concentrating on these things leaves little time and resources to build a dynamic campaign or otherwise make DCS seem "alive".

There aren't enough of you to make it economically feasible, I suspect.

I recently read a price list of a DCS related add-ons, that you could pay $800.- for everything. I suspect that there are a few people who will eventually collect all the DLCs (I have some doubts that they will thoroughly play them all). And still DCS doesn't have the dynamic campaign that you're asking for. Which to me suggests that on the one hand a full theater simulation is hard to do, and on the other there aren't enough people willing to pay the amount of money necessary to make it happen (or, that there are enough people willing to pay more and settle for less). At the end of the day $100.- is only 2 ... 2.5 times as much as a regular AAA game title, but I doubt that flight simulations sell 40% of the numbers of a AAA title. That's why you don't get AAA game content in the typical flight simulation (...or the lack of entertainment value, compared to a AAA title, prevents a bigger success, take your pick).

I don't think that this is the honest truth.
Rivet replication and focusing on systems simulation and maybe improving the flight model and the rendering quality simply is much easier to accomplish.
A fully dynamic simulation of ground and air war in a campaign would be something that had to be developed only once and could then be applied to every title and add-on that ED produces, and would immediately boost its value for rather obvious reasons. So, from a business perspective, if the task was relatively easy to accomplish, it would be a no-brainer to do it since it is an expansion that is "orthogonal" to the rest of your line-up - it has the potential to expand the value and depth of every single DLC that you have.

I suspect however that other flight sim developers have absolutely no idea how to make it happen - IOW, it's rather hard to do, and IMO this was the major know-how accomplishment that Microprose developed over a decade of wargame title development which culminated (and died) with Falcon 4. Just because Microprose demonstrated 20 years ago that it's possible to do it doesn't mean that you could easily replicate it, even if you looked at the Falcon 4 source code (which can be considered an "open source" - even if it isn't from a commercial/legal perspective). And apparently (see above) they can sell their games without it because the core fan base will buy new DLCs without this capability.

Scary.....but true.

Eh? Didn't ED say FC2 and FC3 were their biggest sources of income? Heck, the American air superiority fighter in that line isn't even DCS-level but is rather an FC3 aircraft!! How does the F-15C's avionics match the real world counterpart? Please don't use "fidelity" as an excuse... ED never had any intention to build a DC or make the theatres more "alive." Even after their poll showed that their customers wanting a DC, it isn't in their roadmap at all.



I think the typical DCS customer who is happy with ED's direction isn't one that looks for a serious study sim. They're more like the FSX crowd that want to try different aircraft and get a rough feel of how to fly each one, but never really mastering any single one. This market is also more likely to enjoy sight seeing (and posting screenshots), flying under bridges, or inside deep canyons. How much does a "serious" FSX simmer spend on the hobby with regards to aircraft, add-on airports, photo-real scenery, mesh updates, etc? They can easily pay a big amount!

Agreed. I'm not a coder but a coder has told me this. plus I also thought it as so before that. If you also do coding for SB that makes 2.



On the F4 DC code, from what the BMS coders (and other community coders before BMS) said it is very hard to understand. I suspect it is doable, but it just takes a lot of time and effort to do so, out of the scale of free modding. But I also suspect you know more about it because last I heard eSim employed one of them...

But I have my own thought on this from another perspective. "Too hard to do" is to some degree a made-up excuse by some because they don't want the users to know what they have is watered down. It is not "technically" impossible, because while it is indeed an MPS specialty, there are many other sims of the old era that featured a DC, made by other developers. While none of them to the complexity level of the F4 engine, most of them were pretty awesome.

There're also sims of old that do not have a DC, say some of Jane's, that were also fun. They featured story driven campaigns with continuity among them. I'd even say that DC is not an absolute must to make a kickass sim. But on the whole level, big changes rather than different business models or just strapping on new technologies, have to be made for this genre to move forward. If the 90s and 00s brought fun gameplay features and the 10s made system fidelity, what is next. Because the current ones are stagnating. If things like War Thunder is the answer, then yes this genre is probably dead. However I'm hopeful it will resurrect later if that is the case.

I think a big portion of it is simulators have gotten $hitty as of late. ArmA 3 is the center of this, and is the worst "simulator" to come out in history. Worst, sleaziest developers of them all to. I hate those guys with a passion.

What? I thought people loved ARMA 3 because it's good??

I think its that when we were young simulation games were the best in gaming.Nowadays you can be a thug running around a city robbing cars or planes while wooing a girl etc.Its just gaming surpassed simulations IMO.Now its just older gamers sticking with simulations and I believe its because we are old and know life is nothing like what you get in games.

I don't see any decline - quite the opposite : we are living in the golden age of Civil Flight Simulation

there never was so many choices and so many developers engaged in releasing so many high quality add ons

I don't code, so my word bears little authority. But I occasionally speak to those who do, and, well, I have a bit of a say in design questions for SB Pro.


Note that I didn't say "too hard to do", just "harder to do than rivet replication". And if today's audience is buying today's flight simulations without a solid story/campaign background, well, from a business perspective that's what most developers will do - focus on the low-hanging fruit that's still sufficient to help you sell your product.

I had a large write up planned in response then decided it wasn't worth my time. Then I realized that's what happened to a lot of the market for sims... It's just not worth the effort anymore to please the purists...

A change in intellect of the human species would be a genetic change, it would take millions of years to see any change. Just a guess on the millions part

Personally there are issues as I age, I am smarter but lazier, there was a time when I would be modding all my sims, now I rarely mod anything

My eyesight is a major barrier as well as I grow old. And bitter

I think this is wrong... sure, it may not be worth the effort to please the purists, but that is also probably a very, very, very small part of the overall customer base. Even then, if the developer is up-front and firm with their goals, then eventually, the purists either fall in line or go play something else. If the developer continues to promise the moon and can't even get 10 feet off the ground, well, that's a different story altogether.