Cant think of many

Falcon 4.0
EECH
Mig Alley
JSF
M1 Tank Platoon 2
Rowan's Battle of Britain
EF2000
TAW

any others that I'm missing?

Longbow 2 had dynamic elements if I remember correctly, but still had scripted missions

Good topic.

How about which sims that do NOT have a dynamic campaign but for which a third party DC is available?

Isn't CAP 2 supposed to have a DC? *

*edit* I think it was planned,so may not be implemented just yet.

Digital Integration's Tornado had one if I remember correctly.

Tornado (and Desert Storm), in the command mode. Not 'fully dynamic' in real time, but war goals set by player, and campaign progression and situation in response to player squadron and allies accomplishments. Campaign mode had freedom to plan missions to accomplish tasked orders, with tasking being dependent on outcome (arguably more realistic than command, but less dynamic).

What do you mean by "dynamic" in a campaign?

Rise of Flight has a campaign where the missions are generated before flight, so every campaign is going to be different.

So is that "dynamic?"

The older Microprose sims such as Gunship, Gunship 2000, F-19 Stealth Fighter, F-15 Strike Eagle 2 and 3, etc., at least felt like they had dynamic campaigns, though were quite simplistic by today's standards.

@ Dart - Rise of Flight has a decent dynamic campaign. I've never had a single career turn out the same, and the sequence and progression of missions were always different, even out of the same aerodrome.

Strike Fighters series have a dynamic campaign, you cannot set your objectives, but the missions are generated by the sim itself and you can have an impact on the war destrying transport planes, or helping armies attack/defend certain locations.

Dynamic campaign always meant your mission successes or failures affected the campaign as a whole. So, fail to destroy your assigned bridge targets and enemy armor attacks your ground troops. Destroy your assigned SAM sites and your bombers make it to their targets.

Falcon 3.0 had a dynamic campaign as well.

All of that can occur in the same mission you're flying. A well-scripted DCS mission can do this.

One aspect of the DC is that you actions two or three missions ago still affects the campaign now. Destroyed an airfield? It could take a few days for it to be back online. Destroyed the bridge near that airfield? It could take weeks to fix the base now. That corridor you cleansed of SAMs on Day 1 of the campaign will be a major avenue into enemy territory even on Day 4. This is what cannot be done in DCS, at least the last time I tried making missions for it. You bomb that bridge and it's fully repaired in the next mission unless the mission creator scripts in some method of destroying said bridge before you overfly it, giving you the impression of the persistence of the effects of your actions.

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe!


You could play as either the 8th USAAF and direct the strategic bombing campaign against Germany or you could play as the Luftwaffe and be responsible for allocating fighter defenses for the different industries and also fly missions. The progress of the war would be affected by your performance on each mission.

Battle over Britain (2?) had a dynamic campaign - destroy a fighter airfield and in the next days you have less fighter opposition in the air; destroy a part of the Chain Home radar, and enemy fighters are late to the party, ...

I should have specified that the future was affected by your successes and failures. Obviously if your mission was to provide SEAD for a flight of bombers 15 minutes behind you but you failed, the bombers got shot down or had to abort. But if you succeeded, you had a safe ingress route like you mentioned.

Dynamic campaigns are ones in which the battlefield is perstinant between missions and the campaign engine reacts to events occurring during missions or during events occurring in during the engine clock.

So the true DC is a digital battlefield where the engine is playing as both sides. Assists won or lost are accounted for and can the reactions of the game engine.

Falcon 4 would be the closest to a true DC. ROF would be the farthest away. ROF I would classify as a random generator. As far I can tell one mission has no effect on the next and there is no operational impact to the campaign situation—it’s simply one random mission after another.


For another with DC was 1942: Pacific Air War. There was also a real old that I can’t remember the exact name—something like AV8B Harrier 2.

Yes, absolutely this one. You could command the strategic disposition of the carrier groups and then fly a mission.

1942 PAW doesn't get it's due. It's hardly ever mentioned when people speak of golden age flight sims but it is to this day my all time favorite sim. I spent hours upon hours flying strikes against enemy carriers or shore targets and defending friendly carriers or Henderson Field or Munda etc. from enemy attack. Even flew my first MP co-op missions in PAW with my best friend.

And I have the GOG / DosBox version on my PC right now.

I flew this coop as well. If I remember correctly, you could even multicrew the dive bombers and torpedo bombers that had a rear gunner.

I think you may be right.


I remember there were these stock messages you could send to another player with a couple of keystrokes (stuff like "Break Left" etc)

and there were a couple of slots you could write your own custom messages you could send. One I had was "Watch this Willie"*


*as spoken by Duke Cunningham to his RIO Willie Driscoll. This was years before Cunningham disgraced himself.

PAW was one I really wanted to like but my hardware was sorely not up to the task at the time. I remember trying to play it with terrible performance and frequent crashes.

I remember it was reviewed by mainstream gaming mags in the day with great reviews.

I wonder if any of those still publish magazines? I cancelled my subscription to PC Gamer back in 2001 or so.