You and I make care about the distinction between released and available in a build for public testers but no one else on the planet does. They consider NTTR released (it's not), 2.5 released (it's not).

<Long version>
You clearly haven't been playing or involved with DCS for very long......There are 1000's of people playing and testing DCS, there is an army of testers going through every possibility and highlighting bugs and errors. It's ironic you mention the A10 and the Shark because if you venture into the ED subforums for these modules you'll also find literally hundreds of problems that the community have raised from 2011 and 2009 respectively and they are still outstanding problems even today.

Add to that the associated issues that each patch and core upgrade brings and you have many many modules that are just left to rot. Regardless of how much back slapping you want to give ED they simply haven't got a good history of releasing software on time to a high standard and even less impressive record of actually seeing their work through to completion.

Their beta release of 2.5 just cements their appalling attitude and disdain to their customers. Let's see when the 'release' version of 2.5 arrives because one thing is sure, and that is there are a lot of issues with the current beta and it's a long way from being to the standard expected from what any other developer would call a 'release' version......never mind the two weeks that ED thinks it may take to get there. That alone clearly shows that ED think this software is very close to being ready for release as it stands now. Go and look in the relevant sub-forum of 2.5 on the ED message board and see the pages upon pages of issues. Most of it is performance related......The community have barely scratched the surface of 2.5 campaign and module integration yet! I fear we'll get the same old ED that fixes a few issues , leaves the bulk of them intact and calls upon their famous slogan of 'everything is subject to change' and is totally reliant on their censored community to defend their ever-changing engine with 'it will never be truly finished' moniker.

One word.....'baseline'. ED should try it sometime instead of blindly falling over each obstacle they find as they stumble around in the dark in a farce that never pauses for breath.


<Short version>
ED's products are in a perpetual state of beta......they receive so much feedback but fix so little no-one can defend the state and lack of polish on their software. People talk about these betas as if ED are doing everyone a favour yet the entire DCS World has never even left beta. Seriously, just how much time and how many chances do they need to improve things?

Well, 2 weeks has come and gone.... how are we doing with the Release version?

As David_OC says, it seems like the community is generally happy with 2.5 so that means there isn't much broken with it, right?

Given that the ED '2.5 Open Beta Bugs and problems' thread has 27,000+ posts, I'd suggest all is not rosy. I've given.up on the complete and utter mess. ED incompetence and utter ineptitude on show for all to see yet again. It will be many months before this even resembles a beta never mind getting anywhere close to a 'release'.........but this isn't coming as a surprise is it!

What the heck have ED been working on for the last 5 years, because it clearly wasn't 2.5, nor does it seem to be the hornet or putting any progress or polish to their previous line up of unfinished modules. Good to see them supporting a new payware campaign in their latest newsletter.......What could possibly go wrong with that given they can't even get the core engine baselined?

I thought that Charnwood campaign was released already in the past? The name sounds familiar, that's all. I thought maybe they've re-worked it to function properly in 2.5 and that's why they're announcing it again.

If there's that many bugs in 2.5 Beta and yet ED initially quoted 1-2 weeks between Beta and Release, then it would look like ED had absolutely no clue about the state of 2.5 Beta when they released that 1-2 weeks statement. That or they don't really give a fk about giving correct/achievable deadlines anymore. Either way, not good.

Actually ED has done something very good too - and because I have trashed them so much in this forum, I'd like to use this opportunity to say thanks to them for a change;

So thank you ED for giving me opportunity to get all these planes, beautiful graphics for a cheap price I never knew I could be so interested in IL-2 series, so thank you for steering me into right direction

The latest announcement was for Steam. Charnwood has been available since some time in December, IIRC.

I can only shake my head at the people who voluntarily installed the for-testing-only build (often deleting their for-actually-playing build at the same time) and are exasperated that it has issues expected of experimental software. They get mad and stomp off in a huff how they aren't going to take this kind of treatment!

If you want to play DCS, play DCS. If you want to be a tester then test DCS.this.is.a.testing.version. I swear it's like someone who buys a construction site to complain that the houses on it aren't finished. That's what it's for! You're not supposed to inhabit a house that's half built!

To be fair, if you're told that this Beta is out now and the Release will follow in 1-2 weeks, you're really given the impression that the Beta only needs a little fine-tuning before the Release is, well, released.

How many of us simmers are actually critical of ED? vs. how many are blind sheep that are grateful for whatever scraps fall off ED's table? They are being misled, and actively so, but such has been ED's practices for a good while now.



Indeed it is! I missed the two short lines stating this. Thanks!

I think we can extend that to just about any sim or modular type of game. DCS, ArmA, obviously Star Citizen. FSX from what I am told feels similar due to needing various 3rd party modules which are all developed at difference paces. Perhaps IL-2 BoS is the exception to this rule in modern sims? Far from ideal but sadly I think it has become expected for anything slightly related to this genre.

I'd completely disagree......take your Arma example for starters, BIS listen to the community and provide updates and free content. Their games are supported and it doesn't like it's all about the money and making a profit.....there appears to be a genuine passion about their work and what they do for their customers. I wouldn't say that Arma 3 for example would ever be classed as a beta - just like Arma 2 then sure, there are bits that are clunky but it's absolutely a polished game, the possibilities are so vast and the game is so large and so immersive but it's certainly not unfinished and I can't recall any problems and bugs that have been there for years and years, especially after being reported which you can't say for DCS or any single module that is part of that 'world'.

I'm not so sure that you can even class Star Citizen in the same class either, it's very much an ongoing alpha which the devs don't try to hide in any way, shape or form.

In addition to what Paradaz said, I think you're confusing RELEASED games that are then patched/tweaked/fine tuned with ED's perpetual-beta status.

You really think that there's much difference between versions? Nope. It really doesn't matter cause all versions have bugs. When people install betas they get certain features sooner, because for incompetent ED it takes ages to fix any bugs and people would have to wait fixes forever. And then there's this fact that ED's early access titles come to beta first, so people install rather install it to get the new modules quicker.
One question: Have you looked at bugs reports section for release version? Feel free to compare it to betas section.

Beta "Because we are incompetent enough, let's use our customers to find the bugs" Version
Release "We hope that they found all the bad bugs, maybe we fix some of them" Version

2.5 is as bugged as VEAO's POS hawk....and that really says something about the state of 2.5. Here is the proof




ED should have blocked attempted install of the hawk....or completely erased all traces of VEAO being a 3rd party dev before the release of 2.5 or perhaps 1.5.

DCS says minimum requirement is 1.5 as it says on all modules.

And how is that different from the titles I mentioned? ArmA 3 was in alpha/beta for well over a year, the campaign released even later, and many of the fixes and improvements came well over two years post release. Star Citizen will end up being the same, as stated years ago. FSX and its derivatives are essentially the same in regards to many of the 3rd party projects. They're all on going projects that will never have the quality equally superb in every aspect. They're partially developed, released, small bits added on, small bits then revamped, then later other bits are updated, ect.

I'd rather go back to a traditional release style myself. All of these games, especially simulator type of games, are never feature complete and the quality varies wildly.

Arma3 was alhpa/beta for a year....correct. DCS has been alpha since 2008 yet you struggle to see any difference!

Here....I punched in the question on everyone's mind the best military sim into google and arma 3 comes up well before DCS.

perhaps if ED\TFC\Belsimtek sorted out the bugs before the release of Arma3 (2013), maybe it would be king of the google search.....before someone jumps on the bandwagon, these screenshots were taken in a private window so that searches prior were not a factor.





the addition of "combat flight simulator" in the search would have surely brought up DCS\TFC\Belsimtek if it was as good as Sobek and Co say it is in these very forums yet it reverts back to "Lock on Modern Air Combat" go figure...(see what I did there cichlidfan)

And you think the broken-ness of ArmA 3 and FSX is the same level as DCS? So if it's not 100%, it doesn't matter if it's 98% or 54%, just to fit your narrative?

ArmA 3 was released September 2013. DCS (World) was released 2008. Is ArmA still in Beta? How about DCS?

Star Citizen doesn't even fit in here as it's clearly in alpha state and the devs are still hammering away at that game. FSX is done, no more development done on it for years now, but tell me again how a patch in FSX would break the FSX tutorials?

I just got a weird thought --- what happens to those who stick with 1.5.xx when ED updates their aircraft modules? Will we end up with modules that are 2.5-compatible and modules that are 1.5.xx-compatible? I can't see fixes to modules to work in 2.5 to still be working in 1.5.xx. 2.5 is a core revamp, isn't it? It's not just pretty graphics on top of the old engine?

V1.5.8 is the end of the road. There will be no further updates to that version, that includes the modules as well. How long ED will keep that version available to download is unknown.

All further work will be in v2.5 only which won't affect v1.5.8 at all.