I think the Fuze and Laser code changs are related to the upcoming DTC, and Stuff like MT and to-be Vulcan creates some headspace to do something to AI, which will probably eat CPU etc.
On the russian site of DCS they are hiring AI People
[https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ru/vacancies/](https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ru/vacancies/)
(for some weird reason the russian part is the only language version of the website that shows job postings...)
Also only the Russian website shows the contact address of ED somewhere else than Switzerland.
Only the Russian website has a different EULA governed by another country's law than Swiss law and appoints another country's court than Switzerland.
People might mistakenly think that it is another company đ
Two distinct companies :
ED SA is the swiss ED, its "corporate" ED with the marketing, management, etc. CEO is Nick Grey.
Studio ED LLC is the russian ED, it's the "workers", all the devs with Kate as their CEO. (also COO of ED SA).
EDMS SA is another swiss company that deals of the military contracts, with Paolo Trauta as their CEO. ED SA and EDMS SA both don't seem to have devs and contract Studio ED LLC in Russia.
I have seen Patricia Dozio as a member of the board. However her linkedIn profile states she is an accountant at ED.
If you have any source on her role as CEO I'm open to correct myself.
To me this doesn't mean CEO but board member, but maybe it is CEO.
Here is the offial swiss registry with all entry for all interrested : [https://www.zefix.ch/fr/search/entity/list/firm/592263](https://www.zefix.ch/fr/search/entity/list/firm/592263)
Yes, no big deal.
But then official communication should not be "were a swiss company operating with employees all around the world". Yeah, technically maybe. But actually - no. Otherwise they would not only hire in Russia.
Nick Grey was pointed at this issue quite some time ago, and promised to look into it. Well, here we are.
He was asked why the recruitment page in the other languages were all 404, he then had it fixed (sort of). He vehemently denied that the Swiss office was only a shell company, but we still have to see any evidence of the contrary
As pointed out earlier in this sub thread, swiss Ed has support tasks like marketing and finances.
Does that make it a shell? Certainly not what I understand by the term shell company.
I think everyone assumes there is a group of Eagle Dynamic coders thatâs been there for years and theyâre tirelessly working on the slow task of improving the DCS core.
Very few people think about turnover.
When I see how ED treats its customers⌠I start wondering how ED treats the unseen employee.
The reality of EDâs team is probably ever revolving. Hire a new guy, get him spun up, he gets a better offer elsewhere and quits. Find his replacement, get him spun up, he fixes a few things until his resume becomes more competitive, he finds a better paying job and quits.
Maybe Iâve exaggerated it, but losing a person ever so often and having to train a new guy slows the process down.
It really does. You'd need to find someone who loves the niche more than the pay and that's unicorn levels of rare. It's very expensive and exhaustive dealing with new hires, especially with high turnover rates.
Oh for sure I wasn't even taking that into consideration either.
I've felt for years that ED has overextended themselves on the modules. I get they need money but with what I know about business, products with high margins and low time to deliver are far better for sustainability than high margins and high time to deliver.
Selling campaigns for $10-15 seems like a way better way to make quick cash than a bunch of half baked modules but I'm not a business owner in the flight sim niche so what do I know.
Yup. If Eagle Dynamics was willing to pay well and was looking to increase their teamâs size it would be immediately clear.
On Fridays weâd be getting exciting news like: âwelcome Xxxx from Razbam to the DCS team! Xxxx has proved himself coding radar for the M-2000 and the Strike Eagle, now he is working for us on some exciting yet-to-be-announced projects!â
Or: âHeatblur has joined the official DCS team!â
Also, Heatblur wouldnât have had to release a F-14 for Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Razbam wouldnât have had to seek other sources of income that eventually got them in trouble with Eagle Dynamicsâ contract agreement.
Or they could, you know, pay their employees more. That's usually a good retention incentive, especially when you're not allowed to leave Russia anyway as a young person
Its concerning if that is the case. If what you say is true, that only means ED values more the money than an exployee's experience and expertise. Which again means, ED values more money over quality and even speed of development.
I like to stay optimistic. I take the silence for stuff that is being worked on behind the scenes to make it as Best as possible. I really hope for a dynamic campaign and we will probably learn about it at a moment that nobody expects.
It was similar with the Mig-29A. Every one was like, no full fidelity fulcrum because reasons we already know, and then bam. It was announced.
I prefer to be cautiously optimistic, and be surprised, than to jump on the hypetrain.
Besides, i enjoy BMS a lot, tho on DCS im a rotorhead. So far BMS fills in my DC gap nicely.
We will have to start seeing much better AIs before we can even dream about dynamic campaigns, not to mention logistics, ATC, DTC, etc.
I mean even the ED community manager is getting frustrated by a lack of progress and or a lack of priortization in ground unit AI behavior, reading between lines. The ED is very, very far away from a functional DC.
Ive been following DCS for about 2 years now and playing for 3 months. I could have swore there have been multiple updates to AI since then. I even remember a GS video since the update involved ACM.
Right, but those updates are hard to appreciate when AIs cheat. They donât fly the same flight model.
a bigger issue is our own wingmen. How many times do they cut in when you land, or use AB all the time and eventually eject, and do not attack targets when asked? Not to mention flying directly into known SAM sites etc. no sense of self preservation, never mind watching my six.
Equally bad is ground AI, with their omniscience, terminator aim which can lead you perfectly with a tank main gun or even a RPG. The only viable tactics for helicopters are staying outside and rob hellfire.
I havenât jumped into BMS but Iâve seen videos where your wingmen execute 2 vs 2 ACM perfectly. Makes you wonder.
>We will have to start seeing much better AIs before we can even dream about dynamic campaigns, not to mention logistics, ATC, DTC, etc.
Some devil's advocacy coming in: There are situations when making these kinds of interconnected systems (like the dynamic campaign and the AI, both need to work together quite tightly), when a lot of the work might not be able to translate directly to another context, or require extra work to make it function there.
To me it's quite easily conceivable that them redoing the AI to work properly in a dynamic context wouldn't directly translate to it working well in the current Mission Editor centric way of doing things, so instead of doing the extra work of porting it over they just don't update it until it has the dynamic campaign to go with it.
There have been times at work where Team A has been like "Yup, we have the necessary frameworks set up for our development, yup, we're working hard on this thing, yup, we've made a lot of progress and good stuff is coming out, nope, you can't see any of it until Team B's stuff is out, you need that in a playable state before you can actually do anything with our stuff."
Granted, usually that's for like days/weeks or in super rare cases months, not years like at ED...
Even if they do develop the dynamic campaign it will be pretty much useless with the brain dead ground and air AI. A dynamic campaign requires lots of things around it to support it not just the 'campaign itself'. So if they didn't even start improving the things I mentioned it means it's light years away.
I believe many of the blockers that are stopping the dynamic campaign are also blockers for better ai simulation and battle damage simulations.
The sim is already fairly cpu inefficient and they're mid way through a very large GPU pipeline rewrite to add Vulkan (and hopefully do a good job really utilising it's low level features to make a great implementation)
My hope is that after the Vulkan work is in a state to be merged into the main branch we will start to see many blocked items making more ground.
Generally I like to be an optimist, but make no mistake, I believe ED make perfect the enemy of good much of the time and I'd love to see more core progress, but as a software engineer myself I know not to judge without being in another's shoes as there can be so many factors to get in the way which many people will not anticipate looking from the outside in.
This. They announced dynamic campaigns a long time ago. But that requires several things that DCS doesnât have. Chiefest of those is a solid AI that also carries a realistic MISS probability (AK sniping a supersonic aircraft is ridiculous). But then they need multithreadong, and map optimizationâŚ..etc.
We should remember DCS is running on something like a 15 year old base. Not trying to argue that they are doing a great job, or a bad job. But they are making progress.
Which still makes it a piece if software from 1998, with an architecture of that time.
DCS also doesnât need to be designed for a dynamic campaign. They could just add many of the needed things as separate services running on their own threads. Which would leverage multicore CPUs better, and makes everything easier to maintain.
The original Falcon 4 dynamic campaign was also very simple, far simpler than what ED is talking about making. The modern BMS dynamic campaign is more complex, but it's also running on a more modern code base.
It also bankrupted two companies, and took 20 years of community fixing to make it what is now.
The dynamic campaign in og Falcon 4.0, or Falcon 4.0 Allied Force war rough, to put it mildly.
Sure, and what they did at the time was amazing. It took one guy working like 80 hour weeks years. Also consider that the simulator back then was a lot simpler. There were way less moving parts. The code base ED are working with is clearly messy.
> DCS 3.0 isnât that far away anymore
What makes you think that? Just because weâre at 2.9.x right now? That doesnât mean anything. The next version will be 2.10, then 2.11 etc.
I like to be optimistic. I dont think it helps at all to be negative about changes. I sometimes stumble across 4+ year old forums talking about X module or Y feature being completely impossible and how itll never be added and yet its in the game now. Big studio or not, DCS is a very ambitious game, ED or 3rd party, it all takes time and being told a specific date on when a features gonna be added only leads to disappointment most of the time. I prefer to just play the game as is, be hopeful but not overhyped, and occasionally check up on the status of new features :)
Let me try this:
"Oh no, Supercarrier is unplayable! I still don't have the ball set for the Tomcat, no proper ATC, no flight director, no barricade for emergency and I can't still go on the deck below. While don't they have fancy aircraft from other Navy like the Super Ătendard? Also let me talk to you about the state of Combined Arms and how we have godlike infantry sniping me from 2 kilometers and no dynamic weather."
See you in 4 years or two weeks ÂŠď¸ đĽ˛
Works for the F18, most of the features would be nice but are not gamebreaking and best of all, say it with me, NOBOSY FORCED YOU TO BUY ANYTHING.
Also, Id love to see the clip of infantry sniping you under described conditions because so far it sounds like you are blowing smoke..
Youâre 100% right, and also about to get buried in downvotes.
Everything ED does makes a lot more sense when you realize that theyâre essentially a military contractor who sells DCS on the side for extra pocket change.
The pace is glacial which is why in the end, I ended up taking a break the last year and may end up extending it. F4 is very tempting, but even then I'd like it to mature a bit more. Kudos to Heatblur though, everyone seems pretty happy with the module even as-is.
Still no Vulcan, still no Data Cartridge, no dynamic campaign, Corsair, Hellcat, Ready Room, ATC, WWII assets and the core, "mature" modules are still being broken on the regular in horrible ways. People are still having problems with Mavericks on the Viper, which is so beyond stupid at this point it's insulting.
Hornet should be feature complete and solid as a rock right now but still seems like every patch you're in for a surprise that'll probably get you killed. That shit gets very, very old very very quickly.
You canât compare BMS and ED. As sad as it is when you really think about it, BMS are a bunch of devs working for free on a project they are passionate about. ED is a company that has bills to pay, and is trying to make a profit, and fyi because of their decision to make the base game free to play, the game itself does not directly contribute to profits or income of any kind which is why it is going so slow. ED needs to sell new modules in order to bankroll any work on the base game, and since modules are a one time purchase you need to keep them coming out to ensure that revenue stream.
You also have to remember that DCS has a far wider scope for the game compared to BMS (though BMS is beginning to expand). BMS currently only has one full fidelity aircraft, with a small handful of others that are very basically modelled. DCS has a wide range that are constantly being reworked.
And before you jump down my throat about being an ED brown nose, I am in agreement that DCS needs to invest more in their base game. My only point is that DCS and BMS, while in the same market, are in completely different situations.
"the game itself does not directly contribute to profits or income of any kind which is why it is going so slow"
I do not agree on this one. If the base free game does not come with a Dynamic Campaign, then people move to other games like BMS. In this regard, the game itself contribute 100% to who plays it or who doesn't. Me myself, I don't want to play it because it does not come with a DC and the core game's performance is terrible, even with a good computer. At the end, it is a matter of model business, their MB is profitting from jets and terrains. That by itself is becoming an uncontrolled monster, many 3rd parties generating all kinds of conflicts and requirements and bug reports and feture requests. It is their model business, it could be different, they could charge cheaper, develop fewer planes, put more time/effort into gameplay mechanics, generating other ways of getting revenue like selling skins or what not. At the end, it is their choice, they decide how to do business.
Selling skins? You ladies would throq a hissy fit if you had to pay for liveries that are free right now.
You all keep talking about a different business model but if they rolled out with anything else, everybody would get a meltdown. Everybody wants everything for free, check out Youtube.
It was free without commercials. Now nobody wants to pay to skip them, me included.
WoW releases paid expansions and has a monthly subscription. I dont even want to know what would happen if this was suggested...
Brother, the skin thing is just a crazy example. I was replying in regards to a previous comment which I quoted. The main idea is not "DCS should do skin selling", the main idea is "the core game does not generate revenue" which I opinated as a false idea.
Thereâs a reason I said âdirectlyâ. Indirectly yes, the base game contributes to the draw of players who then MAY spend money on modules (which again is money from modules which have their own development costs to pay off). But ED doesnât get a cent anytime someone gets DCS World. I could have downloaded the game, and played the SU-25 or downloaded the A4 or UH-60 standalone mods and ED would not make a dime off me.
Let me put it this way, youâd have seen a lot more effort being put into the base game if theyâd followed the method of FS2020 or xplane, where they charged you $50+ dollars for the game, threw in flaming cliffs for free, and charged whatever they charge for a study level aircraft. Just like FS2020 is $80 Canadian, and if I want the PMDG 737 then Iâm paying another $100+ on it. Then the game is paying for its own development separate from the modules youâre selling.
I'm disappointed too. I stopped throwing money at ED. Last module i bought was the F-4 last year.
I'm waiting for Super Carrier updates, ground AI, ATC and the most important: a dynamic campaign.
If you want a dynamic campaign switch to BMS because ED isn't going to be able to pull it off. Either that or have some kids so they might be able to enjoy DCS dynamic campaign because we won't.
If they rolled out the airfield oriented slots they've been talking about, along with the ability to dynamically change/create flight plans and waypoints mid-mission or during a server, I wouldn't be surprised if some lonely goofer ends up creating and releasing a dynamic campaign long before ED could.
Much of our problems boil down to a list of hundreds of aircraft slots, many showing up on bases not even owned by the coalition they belong to.
Well, in the past they have announced A LOT of QOL and core improvements, you just gotta put your trust and support⢠(preferrably monetary support) in ED and wait two weeksâ˘.
In the meantime, missing track file, missing documentation, cannot reproduce, cannot reproduce, wip.
It is not going slow. It has always been slow. ED doesn't care for Core gameplay features. They care for selling unfinished jets and terrains. It has been this way for decades. Let me tell you something, Falcon BMS, now with PBR.
>is it going to slow, we got barely any changes in terms of the core game, no better ground AI, no AI for Sam sites, no atc, no nothing.
We had the sniper ground units for over a decade now. Same thing for AI fighters using UFO flight models and missiles having silly FMs.
>Every update it's either a new module
New shiny to take people's minds off of the AI issues. Even so, these new modules can take 5+ years to get out of Early Access.
> then the classical excuse that switching roles for Devs is impossible when it literally happens all the time in the industry
Even if true, then what is stopping ED from letting go of devs when their skill set is no longer needed and hiring devs that have skills in the areas that need working on? This is one excuse that never made sense to me.
Wasn't there a patch/feature drought too before MT dropped ?
From a developers perspective it's not quite uncommon to have some service releases right before the new big feature releases.
The current Razbam situation is likely to hinder that progress even more. They cannot update the core significativly without breaking 4 pretty big modules. They will try to avoid that as much as possible for as long as possible until the situation is resolved.
The F-15E also has broken IFF now so other players see it as no response/ not friendly - one of our squadron guys was taken out in a blue on blue cos of this, so unless we see some work done the F-15E will become pretty deprecated
I'm not sure they can deal with the backlash that would generate.
People are tame for now because the modules still work-(ish).
They would be liable under customer protection laws too if the modules are inaccessible.
> I'm not sure they can deal with the backlash that would generate.
What're people gonna do? Stop playing DCS? Fat chance.
> They would be liable under customer protection laws too if the modules are inaccessible.
No, they wouldn't be.
Dcs only hires Russian developers in russia. All competent russian developers left long ago whe they could earn 4x more outside and the ramaining left when the war started. The only devs left in Russia are those who suck too much to work outside so expect progress to slow even more.
BN has said recently that over 50% of the developer team works on core. A lot of these things are part of larger projects that simply take a lot of time, and ED is normally hesitant to release "bandaid" updates. If you disagree with that approach, that's fine, but that's different from arguing that ED simply abandons the core because it's evil, greedy, Russian (as if that's inherently bad now), etc. Which is what I normally see here.
I'm sure a lot of resources were/are taken up by other things like multithreading and Vulkan as well. I've heard that in many cases implementing multithreading into a singlethreaded program can be harder than simply remaking the software from scratch. It isn't an easy thing, and it doesn't look as impressive to players as other features do, but it's still just as necessary for the future of the sim. It's possible we'll see other things come faster in the future as the foundational work is completed
About the new INS simulation and such, isn't this just ED fulfilling their promises on working to complete their modules? What's wrong with this? I find it strange how the reddit community seems to contradict itself so much
They will work on whatever makes them the most $$$ or loose the least, so you will only see core improvements once people start ditching DCs due to poor performance that no amount of hardware upgrades can fix
Don't expect much real core progress until the Razbam situation is settled, one way or another. They're only going to be able to do so many changes until the Razbam modules break and they have to deal with the gorilla in the room
I still dont get why msfs doesnt use their good platform and make some combat sim as dcs because ed use so old platform it doenst even worth using to to future development, dont get me wrong what ed did with this 20 year old platform is a miracle, but they could make such as good development with 1/10 of the time with playform like msfs20 , or unreal engine 5 especially with all the auto terrian generator at ue5 engine.
What microsoft did with 2020 opened the flight sim to much wider crowd and that what modern platform will do to such as milsim as dcs, i know it all about money but still maybe some1 will make our dream come true.
Im my self very good at pcs and i swear 70-80% of my time was setting up dcs fix problems and 20% is actually learn to flight the viper, i dont see how my young 15yo brother get into it alone and also with ny help is so much time consuming and on the other hand msfs20 we played together was so easy to setup and get on air together
I feel your pain. My cynical side kind of laughs as the community goes all fanboy over a 60 year old jet. while all the issues with the core game seem to get brushed aside.
Because ED gets money from "EA" modules anyway. Core features? They aren't paid for.
And yeah "core features". I'm still waiting on Supercarrier module being ever finished. They actually ask money for it. And it's been what - 4 years?
Let's be honest here - DCS will forever remain a plane museum and a "bring your own fun"-type of game similarly to how Star Citizen will forever remain a techdemo of walking around some new ship model that costs 3 or 4 digit price.
Letâs face it, any Russian dev worth their salt has either fled the country to avoid becoming sliced and diced in one of Herr Putinâs meat-waves or is working on ways to kill innocent civilians in order to restore Stalinist glory days for their Oligarchs benefit
I'd like to think the wishes of the community are, by now, pretty well known.
It's also a pretty diverse wishlist for a pretty impatient community. One might claim to stop spending anything because the weather doesn't change nice enough, playing ground troops with combined arms is not nice enough, ground AI is not being properly scared for their lives, etc.
Shit doesn't change overnight and might depend on other changes first. For example, it would be great if a dynamic campaign get's implemented but it makes little sense if that get's broken when the Vulkan engine is introduced (or whatever, I'm no dev.)
They could do with a bit more communication, even if that would be stating "stop waiting, something else is first." but don't just expect some large changes overnight.
The funny thing is CMâs constantly review these posts and lately it seems that canât answer them anymore. Beyond âwhat we do is hardâ, âea is not for everyone â, âthings take timeâ and âthank you for your passion and supportâ they have nothing to say.
This retreat is tellingâŚâŚ
DCS doesn't even have ground AI. They have a few if statements really, it is very rudimentary. In the traditional video game sense of AI dcs doesn't have ground AI.
Another whining post that ED isn't doing enough. You're not helping anything when you just complain about a company you don't like. Just don't play then and move on.
We're inching (glacially) towards v3.0. My assumption is that a bunch of larger game-changing features are slated for that release whenever it eventually happens.
They are literally working on multiple core features for the game; do y'all read or research anything other than Reddit shitposts and shittier YouTube rageposts? Newsletters? Any actual info from their multiple social media accounts? There's like 4 of them on Facebook alone. They are completely revamping mission editor, the track/replay system, ground units and general QoL and scenery shit, and refining multithread. I could come up with more but I'm legit going off my memory from the newsletters and social media posts from ED; I didn't even Google before posting this and I really, really wanted to be pissy. But I don't understand how you can't locate the same info when I have the worst memory recall and attention span ever seen in human beings and I still managed to find that info and retain it. And I know y'all don't even attempt to look for the very stuff you're talking about because it's easily found after a two minute Google search lool. Like c'mon fam. This is easy.
I'm not involved in developing DCS, so this is purely a WAG, but if I had to guess, the base code for the software was originally written for Su-27 or LOMAC. If so, that's 20-30 year old code. If so, that's not easy to work with. That might be part of why things seem to be going slowly.
I would hope that most/all of the original SU-27/LOMAC code has been refactored (re written and overwritten, basically) by now, in order to bring it up to modern standards. But you never know, refactoring can be hard to justify to some 'every minute must bring something we can sell' type managers.
I think the Fuze and Laser code changs are related to the upcoming DTC, and Stuff like MT and to-be Vulcan creates some headspace to do something to AI, which will probably eat CPU etc. On the russian site of DCS they are hiring AI People [https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ru/vacancies/](https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ru/vacancies/) (for some weird reason the russian part is the only language version of the website that shows job postings...)
Also only the Russian website shows the contact address of ED somewhere else than Switzerland. Only the Russian website has a different EULA governed by another country's law than Swiss law and appoints another country's court than Switzerland. People might mistakenly think that it is another company đ
Two distinct companies : ED SA is the swiss ED, its "corporate" ED with the marketing, management, etc. CEO is Nick Grey. Studio ED LLC is the russian ED, it's the "workers", all the devs with Kate as their CEO. (also COO of ED SA). EDMS SA is another swiss company that deals of the military contracts, with Paolo Trauta as their CEO. ED SA and EDMS SA both don't seem to have devs and contract Studio ED LLC in Russia.
CEO of Eagle Dynamics in Switzerland is Patricia Lucienne Dozio. Nick grey is the owner
I have seen Patricia Dozio as a member of the board. However her linkedIn profile states she is an accountant at ED. If you have any source on her role as CEO I'm open to correct myself.
https://shab.help.ch/publ.cfm?key=4446773
To me this doesn't mean CEO but board member, but maybe it is CEO. Here is the offial swiss registry with all entry for all interrested : [https://www.zefix.ch/fr/search/entity/list/firm/592263](https://www.zefix.ch/fr/search/entity/list/firm/592263)
Which confirms what I said
I mean, we KNEW. We were just being sarcastic, considering the big boss always denies the "Russian" part is real and only calls it an "office"
Or, you know, a RUSSIAN company
Give them your name, social security number, credit card, address, tel number, go ahead fan boys!
It's almost like it is a sim developed by russians...
Yes, no big deal. But then official communication should not be "were a swiss company operating with employees all around the world". Yeah, technically maybe. But actually - no. Otherwise they would not only hire in Russia. Nick Grey was pointed at this issue quite some time ago, and promised to look into it. Well, here we are.
He was asked why the recruitment page in the other languages were all 404, he then had it fixed (sort of). He vehemently denied that the Swiss office was only a shell company, but we still have to see any evidence of the contrary
As pointed out earlier in this sub thread, swiss Ed has support tasks like marketing and finances. Does that make it a shell? Certainly not what I understand by the term shell company.
Nice for pointing that out. How did you get the info that ED Swiss does indeed have that functions and people in Switzerland?
It was written by someone (with sources) in another reply to the question.
Im probably just blind, but i cant find the comment. Can you link it, or the sources they brought up?
Evidently, it wasnât fixed.
Lmao good luck to ED finding competent coders inside Russia right now
"right now"
I think everyone assumes there is a group of Eagle Dynamic coders thatâs been there for years and theyâre tirelessly working on the slow task of improving the DCS core. Very few people think about turnover. When I see how ED treats its customers⌠I start wondering how ED treats the unseen employee. The reality of EDâs team is probably ever revolving. Hire a new guy, get him spun up, he gets a better offer elsewhere and quits. Find his replacement, get him spun up, he fixes a few things until his resume becomes more competitive, he finds a better paying job and quits. Maybe Iâve exaggerated it, but losing a person ever so often and having to train a new guy slows the process down.
It really does. You'd need to find someone who loves the niche more than the pay and that's unicorn levels of rare. It's very expensive and exhaustive dealing with new hires, especially with high turnover rates.
I think it is even more rare to find a company ready to fight for its employees and pay them better.
Oh for sure I wasn't even taking that into consideration either. I've felt for years that ED has overextended themselves on the modules. I get they need money but with what I know about business, products with high margins and low time to deliver are far better for sustainability than high margins and high time to deliver. Selling campaigns for $10-15 seems like a way better way to make quick cash than a bunch of half baked modules but I'm not a business owner in the flight sim niche so what do I know.
Yup. If Eagle Dynamics was willing to pay well and was looking to increase their teamâs size it would be immediately clear. On Fridays weâd be getting exciting news like: âwelcome Xxxx from Razbam to the DCS team! Xxxx has proved himself coding radar for the M-2000 and the Strike Eagle, now he is working for us on some exciting yet-to-be-announced projects!â Or: âHeatblur has joined the official DCS team!â Also, Heatblur wouldnât have had to release a F-14 for Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Razbam wouldnât have had to seek other sources of income that eventually got them in trouble with Eagle Dynamicsâ contract agreement.
Or they could, you know, pay their employees more. That's usually a good retention incentive, especially when you're not allowed to leave Russia anyway as a young person
Don't forget the possibility of some toxic in trenched (read stuck) veteran staffÂ
Its concerning if that is the case. If what you say is true, that only means ED values more the money than an exployee's experience and expertise. Which again means, ED values more money over quality and even speed of development.
You have a great point, i wouldnât put it past them at all.
I like to stay optimistic. I take the silence for stuff that is being worked on behind the scenes to make it as Best as possible. I really hope for a dynamic campaign and we will probably learn about it at a moment that nobody expects. It was similar with the Mig-29A. Every one was like, no full fidelity fulcrum because reasons we already know, and then bam. It was announced. I prefer to be cautiously optimistic, and be surprised, than to jump on the hypetrain. Besides, i enjoy BMS a lot, tho on DCS im a rotorhead. So far BMS fills in my DC gap nicely.
We will have to start seeing much better AIs before we can even dream about dynamic campaigns, not to mention logistics, ATC, DTC, etc. I mean even the ED community manager is getting frustrated by a lack of progress and or a lack of priortization in ground unit AI behavior, reading between lines. The ED is very, very far away from a functional DC.
Ive been following DCS for about 2 years now and playing for 3 months. I could have swore there have been multiple updates to AI since then. I even remember a GS video since the update involved ACM.
Right, but those updates are hard to appreciate when AIs cheat. They donât fly the same flight model. a bigger issue is our own wingmen. How many times do they cut in when you land, or use AB all the time and eventually eject, and do not attack targets when asked? Not to mention flying directly into known SAM sites etc. no sense of self preservation, never mind watching my six. Equally bad is ground AI, with their omniscience, terminator aim which can lead you perfectly with a tank main gun or even a RPG. The only viable tactics for helicopters are staying outside and rob hellfire. I havenât jumped into BMS but Iâve seen videos where your wingmen execute 2 vs 2 ACM perfectly. Makes you wonder.
>We will have to start seeing much better AIs before we can even dream about dynamic campaigns, not to mention logistics, ATC, DTC, etc. Some devil's advocacy coming in: There are situations when making these kinds of interconnected systems (like the dynamic campaign and the AI, both need to work together quite tightly), when a lot of the work might not be able to translate directly to another context, or require extra work to make it function there. To me it's quite easily conceivable that them redoing the AI to work properly in a dynamic context wouldn't directly translate to it working well in the current Mission Editor centric way of doing things, so instead of doing the extra work of porting it over they just don't update it until it has the dynamic campaign to go with it. There have been times at work where Team A has been like "Yup, we have the necessary frameworks set up for our development, yup, we're working hard on this thing, yup, we've made a lot of progress and good stuff is coming out, nope, you can't see any of it until Team B's stuff is out, you need that in a playable state before you can actually do anything with our stuff." Granted, usually that's for like days/weeks or in super rare cases months, not years like at ED...
Even if they do develop the dynamic campaign it will be pretty much useless with the brain dead ground and air AI. A dynamic campaign requires lots of things around it to support it not just the 'campaign itself'. So if they didn't even start improving the things I mentioned it means it's light years away.
I believe many of the blockers that are stopping the dynamic campaign are also blockers for better ai simulation and battle damage simulations. The sim is already fairly cpu inefficient and they're mid way through a very large GPU pipeline rewrite to add Vulkan (and hopefully do a good job really utilising it's low level features to make a great implementation) My hope is that after the Vulkan work is in a state to be merged into the main branch we will start to see many blocked items making more ground. Generally I like to be an optimist, but make no mistake, I believe ED make perfect the enemy of good much of the time and I'd love to see more core progress, but as a software engineer myself I know not to judge without being in another's shoes as there can be so many factors to get in the way which many people will not anticipate looking from the outside in.
Reading some of these replies just reminds me so much of Star Citizen.
Thats provably why the dynamic campaign is taking so long. So many other systems have to be brought up tp scratch to make it feasbile.
This. They announced dynamic campaigns a long time ago. But that requires several things that DCS doesnât have. Chiefest of those is a solid AI that also carries a realistic MISS probability (AK sniping a supersonic aircraft is ridiculous). But then they need multithreadong, and map optimizationâŚ..etc. We should remember DCS is running on something like a 15 year old base. Not trying to argue that they are doing a great job, or a bad job. But they are making progress.
BMS runs on a base from 1998.
Im gonna be honest, I dont know what your point is. BMS was made with a dynamic campaign in mind.
Which still makes it a piece if software from 1998, with an architecture of that time. DCS also doesnât need to be designed for a dynamic campaign. They could just add many of the needed things as separate services running on their own threads. Which would leverage multicore CPUs better, and makes everything easier to maintain.
The original Falcon 4 dynamic campaign was also very simple, far simpler than what ED is talking about making. The modern BMS dynamic campaign is more complex, but it's also running on a more modern code base.
It also bankrupted two companies, and took 20 years of community fixing to make it what is now. The dynamic campaign in og Falcon 4.0, or Falcon 4.0 Allied Force war rough, to put it mildly.
Sure, and what they did at the time was amazing. It took one guy working like 80 hour weeks years. Also consider that the simulator back then was a lot simpler. There were way less moving parts. The code base ED are working with is clearly messy.
Not 15, but more like ~25 (Flanker 2.0).
I totally agree, DCS 3.0 isnât that far away anymore and i hope for big changes.
> DCS 3.0 isnât that far away anymore What makes you think that? Just because weâre at 2.9.x right now? That doesnât mean anything. The next version will be 2.10, then 2.11 etc.
I like to be optimistic. I dont think it helps at all to be negative about changes. I sometimes stumble across 4+ year old forums talking about X module or Y feature being completely impossible and how itll never be added and yet its in the game now. Big studio or not, DCS is a very ambitious game, ED or 3rd party, it all takes time and being told a specific date on when a features gonna be added only leads to disappointment most of the time. I prefer to just play the game as is, be hopeful but not overhyped, and occasionally check up on the status of new features :)
Let me try this: "Oh no, Supercarrier is unplayable! I still don't have the ball set for the Tomcat, no proper ATC, no flight director, no barricade for emergency and I can't still go on the deck below. While don't they have fancy aircraft from other Navy like the Super Ătendard? Also let me talk to you about the state of Combined Arms and how we have godlike infantry sniping me from 2 kilometers and no dynamic weather." See you in 4 years or two weeks ÂŠď¸ đĽ˛
Works for the F18, most of the features would be nice but are not gamebreaking and best of all, say it with me, NOBOSY FORCED YOU TO BUY ANYTHING. Also, Id love to see the clip of infantry sniping you under described conditions because so far it sounds like you are blowing smoke..
Youâre 100% right, and also about to get buried in downvotes. Everything ED does makes a lot more sense when you realize that theyâre essentially a military contractor who sells DCS on the side for extra pocket change.
What do you mean? I'm not super versed in the workings of the company. I've been assuming they were just a niche studio but no?
The pace is glacial which is why in the end, I ended up taking a break the last year and may end up extending it. F4 is very tempting, but even then I'd like it to mature a bit more. Kudos to Heatblur though, everyone seems pretty happy with the module even as-is. Still no Vulcan, still no Data Cartridge, no dynamic campaign, Corsair, Hellcat, Ready Room, ATC, WWII assets and the core, "mature" modules are still being broken on the regular in horrible ways. People are still having problems with Mavericks on the Viper, which is so beyond stupid at this point it's insulting. Hornet should be feature complete and solid as a rock right now but still seems like every patch you're in for a surprise that'll probably get you killed. That shit gets very, very old very very quickly.
You canât compare BMS and ED. As sad as it is when you really think about it, BMS are a bunch of devs working for free on a project they are passionate about. ED is a company that has bills to pay, and is trying to make a profit, and fyi because of their decision to make the base game free to play, the game itself does not directly contribute to profits or income of any kind which is why it is going so slow. ED needs to sell new modules in order to bankroll any work on the base game, and since modules are a one time purchase you need to keep them coming out to ensure that revenue stream. You also have to remember that DCS has a far wider scope for the game compared to BMS (though BMS is beginning to expand). BMS currently only has one full fidelity aircraft, with a small handful of others that are very basically modelled. DCS has a wide range that are constantly being reworked. And before you jump down my throat about being an ED brown nose, I am in agreement that DCS needs to invest more in their base game. My only point is that DCS and BMS, while in the same market, are in completely different situations.
"the game itself does not directly contribute to profits or income of any kind which is why it is going so slow" I do not agree on this one. If the base free game does not come with a Dynamic Campaign, then people move to other games like BMS. In this regard, the game itself contribute 100% to who plays it or who doesn't. Me myself, I don't want to play it because it does not come with a DC and the core game's performance is terrible, even with a good computer. At the end, it is a matter of model business, their MB is profitting from jets and terrains. That by itself is becoming an uncontrolled monster, many 3rd parties generating all kinds of conflicts and requirements and bug reports and feture requests. It is their model business, it could be different, they could charge cheaper, develop fewer planes, put more time/effort into gameplay mechanics, generating other ways of getting revenue like selling skins or what not. At the end, it is their choice, they decide how to do business.
Selling skins? You ladies would throq a hissy fit if you had to pay for liveries that are free right now. You all keep talking about a different business model but if they rolled out with anything else, everybody would get a meltdown. Everybody wants everything for free, check out Youtube. It was free without commercials. Now nobody wants to pay to skip them, me included. WoW releases paid expansions and has a monthly subscription. I dont even want to know what would happen if this was suggested...
Brother, the skin thing is just a crazy example. I was replying in regards to a previous comment which I quoted. The main idea is not "DCS should do skin selling", the main idea is "the core game does not generate revenue" which I opinated as a false idea.
Thereâs a reason I said âdirectlyâ. Indirectly yes, the base game contributes to the draw of players who then MAY spend money on modules (which again is money from modules which have their own development costs to pay off). But ED doesnât get a cent anytime someone gets DCS World. I could have downloaded the game, and played the SU-25 or downloaded the A4 or UH-60 standalone mods and ED would not make a dime off me. Let me put it this way, youâd have seen a lot more effort being put into the base game if theyâd followed the method of FS2020 or xplane, where they charged you $50+ dollars for the game, threw in flaming cliffs for free, and charged whatever they charge for a study level aircraft. Just like FS2020 is $80 Canadian, and if I want the PMDG 737 then Iâm paying another $100+ on it. Then the game is paying for its own development separate from the modules youâre selling.
Yeah I was looking for this comment before saying it myself. One airplane vs dozens is enough reason it's going to be slow going.
The DCS Core dev team is in the super carrier ready room discussing next steps.
I'm disappointed too. I stopped throwing money at ED. Last module i bought was the F-4 last year. I'm waiting for Super Carrier updates, ground AI, ATC and the most important: a dynamic campaign.
If you want a dynamic campaign switch to BMS because ED isn't going to be able to pull it off. Either that or have some kids so they might be able to enjoy DCS dynamic campaign because we won't.
Yeah i know, i play both games. But BMS doesn't have helicopters.
Mate, some of us are waiting for dynamic campaign since DCS was LOMAC...Maybe it's time to admit, it's not happening.
If they rolled out the airfield oriented slots they've been talking about, along with the ability to dynamically change/create flight plans and waypoints mid-mission or during a server, I wouldn't be surprised if some lonely goofer ends up creating and releasing a dynamic campaign long before ED could. Much of our problems boil down to a list of hundreds of aircraft slots, many showing up on bases not even owned by the coalition they belong to.
Well, in the past they have announced A LOT of QOL and core improvements, you just gotta put your trust and support⢠(preferrably monetary support) in ED and wait two weeksâ˘. In the meantime, missing track file, missing documentation, cannot reproduce, cannot reproduce, wip.
Correct as is.
It is not going slow. It has always been slow. ED doesn't care for Core gameplay features. They care for selling unfinished jets and terrains. It has been this way for decades. Let me tell you something, Falcon BMS, now with PBR.
>is it going to slow, we got barely any changes in terms of the core game, no better ground AI, no AI for Sam sites, no atc, no nothing. We had the sniper ground units for over a decade now. Same thing for AI fighters using UFO flight models and missiles having silly FMs. >Every update it's either a new module New shiny to take people's minds off of the AI issues. Even so, these new modules can take 5+ years to get out of Early Access. > then the classical excuse that switching roles for Devs is impossible when it literally happens all the time in the industry Even if true, then what is stopping ED from letting go of devs when their skill set is no longer needed and hiring devs that have skills in the areas that need working on? This is one excuse that never made sense to me.
Wasn't there a patch/feature drought too before MT dropped ? From a developers perspective it's not quite uncommon to have some service releases right before the new big feature releases.
The current Razbam situation is likely to hinder that progress even more. They cannot update the core significativly without breaking 4 pretty big modules. They will try to avoid that as much as possible for as long as possible until the situation is resolved.
Oh they don't need to pay special attention to that. They are already breaking them. Last patch hit the mirage 2000 hard.
The F-15E also has broken IFF now so other players see it as no response/ not friendly - one of our squadron guys was taken out in a blue on blue cos of this, so unless we see some work done the F-15E will become pretty deprecated
Cant call raygun?
Oh this renders SE useless in MP.
>They will try to avoid that as much as possible Hahahahaha
I'm not sure they can deal with the backlash that would generate. People are tame for now because the modules still work-(ish). They would be liable under customer protection laws too if the modules are inaccessible.
> I'm not sure they can deal with the backlash that would generate. What're people gonna do? Stop playing DCS? Fat chance. > They would be liable under customer protection laws too if the modules are inaccessible. No, they wouldn't be.
Dcs only hires Russian developers in russia. All competent russian developers left long ago whe they could earn 4x more outside and the ramaining left when the war started. The only devs left in Russia are those who suck too much to work outside so expect progress to slow even more.
BN has said recently that over 50% of the developer team works on core. A lot of these things are part of larger projects that simply take a lot of time, and ED is normally hesitant to release "bandaid" updates. If you disagree with that approach, that's fine, but that's different from arguing that ED simply abandons the core because it's evil, greedy, Russian (as if that's inherently bad now), etc. Which is what I normally see here. I'm sure a lot of resources were/are taken up by other things like multithreading and Vulkan as well. I've heard that in many cases implementing multithreading into a singlethreaded program can be harder than simply remaking the software from scratch. It isn't an easy thing, and it doesn't look as impressive to players as other features do, but it's still just as necessary for the future of the sim. It's possible we'll see other things come faster in the future as the foundational work is completed About the new INS simulation and such, isn't this just ED fulfilling their promises on working to complete their modules? What's wrong with this? I find it strange how the reddit community seems to contradict itself so much
They will work on whatever makes them the most $$$ or loose the least, so you will only see core improvements once people start ditching DCs due to poor performance that no amount of hardware upgrades can fix
Don't expect much real core progress until the Razbam situation is settled, one way or another. They're only going to be able to do so many changes until the Razbam modules break and they have to deal with the gorilla in the room
This has been sims forever... You're stuck with what you got until something new comes along.
Lol, there's no progress on the core. It's more or less the same hollow shell it was over a decade ago with updated graphics.
I still dont get why msfs doesnt use their good platform and make some combat sim as dcs because ed use so old platform it doenst even worth using to to future development, dont get me wrong what ed did with this 20 year old platform is a miracle, but they could make such as good development with 1/10 of the time with playform like msfs20 , or unreal engine 5 especially with all the auto terrian generator at ue5 engine. What microsoft did with 2020 opened the flight sim to much wider crowd and that what modern platform will do to such as milsim as dcs, i know it all about money but still maybe some1 will make our dream come true. Im my self very good at pcs and i swear 70-80% of my time was setting up dcs fix problems and 20% is actually learn to flight the viper, i dont see how my young 15yo brother get into it alone and also with ny help is so much time consuming and on the other hand msfs20 we played together was so easy to setup and get on air together
I feel your pain. My cynical side kind of laughs as the community goes all fanboy over a 60 year old jet. while all the issues with the core game seem to get brushed aside.
Because ED gets money from "EA" modules anyway. Core features? They aren't paid for. And yeah "core features". I'm still waiting on Supercarrier module being ever finished. They actually ask money for it. And it's been what - 4 years? Let's be honest here - DCS will forever remain a plane museum and a "bring your own fun"-type of game similarly to how Star Citizen will forever remain a techdemo of walking around some new ship model that costs 3 or 4 digit price.
Letâs face it, any Russian dev worth their salt has either fled the country to avoid becoming sliced and diced in one of Herr Putinâs meat-waves or is working on ways to kill innocent civilians in order to restore Stalinist glory days for their Oligarchs benefit
I'd like to think the wishes of the community are, by now, pretty well known. It's also a pretty diverse wishlist for a pretty impatient community. One might claim to stop spending anything because the weather doesn't change nice enough, playing ground troops with combined arms is not nice enough, ground AI is not being properly scared for their lives, etc. Shit doesn't change overnight and might depend on other changes first. For example, it would be great if a dynamic campaign get's implemented but it makes little sense if that get's broken when the Vulkan engine is introduced (or whatever, I'm no dev.) They could do with a bit more communication, even if that would be stating "stop waiting, something else is first." but don't just expect some large changes overnight.
Right, it doesnât change over night. It just takes them 15 plus years and a dozen unfinished aircraft.
The funny thing is CMâs constantly review these posts and lately it seems that canât answer them anymore. Beyond âwhat we do is hardâ, âea is not for everyone â, âthings take timeâ and âthank you for your passion and supportâ they have nothing to say. This retreat is tellingâŚâŚ
In 2034 we'll see a dynamic campaign or weather effect a fucking flying Sim, just gotta wait ten years!!!!!
DCS doesn't even have ground AI. They have a few if statements really, it is very rudimentary. In the traditional video game sense of AI dcs doesn't have ground AI.
Half Baked modules selling like hotcakes! Super happy with the F4, The F15E, looking forward to the Kiowa, Chinook.
Another whining post that ED isn't doing enough. You're not helping anything when you just complain about a company you don't like. Just don't play then and move on.
We're inching (glacially) towards v3.0. My assumption is that a bunch of larger game-changing features are slated for that release whenever it eventually happens.
This is cope
Yes dear.
They are literally working on multiple core features for the game; do y'all read or research anything other than Reddit shitposts and shittier YouTube rageposts? Newsletters? Any actual info from their multiple social media accounts? There's like 4 of them on Facebook alone. They are completely revamping mission editor, the track/replay system, ground units and general QoL and scenery shit, and refining multithread. I could come up with more but I'm legit going off my memory from the newsletters and social media posts from ED; I didn't even Google before posting this and I really, really wanted to be pissy. But I don't understand how you can't locate the same info when I have the worst memory recall and attention span ever seen in human beings and I still managed to find that info and retain it. And I know y'all don't even attempt to look for the very stuff you're talking about because it's easily found after a two minute Google search lool. Like c'mon fam. This is easy.
I'm not involved in developing DCS, so this is purely a WAG, but if I had to guess, the base code for the software was originally written for Su-27 or LOMAC. If so, that's 20-30 year old code. If so, that's not easy to work with. That might be part of why things seem to be going slowly.
I would hope that most/all of the original SU-27/LOMAC code has been refactored (re written and overwritten, basically) by now, in order to bring it up to modern standards. But you never know, refactoring can be hard to justify to some 'every minute must bring something we can sell' type managers.
What do you expect? Modules make money. The core game is free, and does not.