homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation DCS World DCS: F-14A/A+/B By Leatherneck Simulations

N.B. Digital Image Design ("DID/DiD" ie. EF2000 and Total Air War) not to be confused with Digital Integration ("DI", ie. Tornado, Apache Longbow, Hind, F-16 Fighting Falcon and F/A-18 Super Hornet).

Man, All those combat flight sim's that where released in the late 90's. It seemed like their was a new combat flight simulation released ever other month. It was the golden age of flight simulation.


Heat2151
USN Retired'08

We had a new Janes game every few months

Skate,

Here's the one that started my addiction to combat flight simulations. This was another great one released late 1997.




Heat2151
USN Retired'08

N00b!!!!

I never got FA because I'd already bought USNF, the USMF addon, ATF, the NATO Fighters addons, and then USNF 97 which was USNF+USMF+Vietnam natively in Windows (the others were all DOS). When FA came out and it was nothing than all the others wrapped into one and running in Windows (when I had my config altered so I could boot into DOS instead of 95 and play DOS games directly) I skipped it.

I played Israeli Air Force after it, but was disappointed in the canned missions only and the need to jump between planes to succeed in most missions. I thus skipped the USAF sequel, although I heard later it was better, because I lost interest in the series with that.



The Jedi Master

I had USNF, and a majority of the problems never got fixed until the MF expansion.

I had every Janes sim through F-18.

the WWII, Janes Attack Squadron, and JASF were meh.

Janes's USAF, still badass to play even to this day...

Thank you. People always confuse DiD with DI. Probably because they were both awesome, just as their names were similar. Though DI actually did it more realistic in the Avionics department, whereas DiD was more gamey in TFX, EF2000 and TAW.

For DI's Super Hornet, they did actually "promise" to bring out an add-on that would add a Dynamic Campaign engine, similar to their Tornado. It never happened. But Call of Duty and The Sims happened, and the unwashed masses + the bean counters discovered the gaming market. This is why we can't have nice things anymore.

Regards
heartc

I got ATF and only played Longbow, that was the shiznit fo sho, but ATF pretty much didn't appeal to me and after that my taste for sims went elsewhere.

You never played F-14 FD??



The Jedi Master

FD abd FD Gold as well as JetFighter I, II, and III (IV+ were meh).

Top Gun Fire At Will (PC) was Good at the time, console versions and newer versions since sucked.

Those where the days when the combat flight simulations came in a box sets with a complete books, multiple CD's, Complete Theater Maps, Full keyboard layouts, and in some cases t-shirts...man, good or bad, you got more bang for the buck, you actually got spoiled with all the extra stuff that was included in the box. And the price of these flight simulations was around $40 to $50 UDS. That was so cool, now it's all downloadable with everything else on a pdf file. In the immortal words of Archie Bunker:



Here's another great one that proves my point:







Heat2151
USN Retired'08

As great as those games were for their time, and as much as I enjoyed the thick manuals, I wouldn't trade what we have now for what we had then. Back then, I remember having great stuff in MicroProse boxes, but I also mastered the original Gunship with a keyboard, monochrome monitor, and a 4.77Mhz XT. In the early 90s, we actually got a stick with a hat switch and more than 2 buttons (thank you kindly, Thrustmaster), a digital throttle that daisy-chained with the keyboard and you flipped dip-switches to select your game (again, H/T Thrustmaster), and the first real padlock view (Falcon 3.0). Now we have full-blown HOTAS systems, TrackIR, multiple controllers such as MFDs, and flight/systems modelling that was not possible back then. Graphics notwithstanding, these are more revolutionary than evolutionary enhancements to simming.

The thing is that this development costs a lot more money. No longer can a dev house put together a cool looking cockpit, fairly simple linear flight/damage model, some static views, and flat untextured terrain with pyramid mountains. As good as Falcon 4.0 was and is, it raised the bar to a very high level at exactly the time that publishers were jumping on the FPS/console train. Why spend 5+ years and who knows how much money on a great sim engine and campaign engine that will optimistically sell 50,000 copies when you can get a license for an existing FPS engine, hire some level designers, and crank out a game that will sell more copies with a greater profit margin per item sold? I can't blame publishers for this; if I were a stockholder in EA I would expect this.

The other thing: 25-30 years later, and the price point is still $40-50 for a title that takes a lot longer to develop, likely requires licensing, and has a guaranteed lower profit margin than its mainstream competitors. For that, I'll gladly read a PDF and reap the benefits we have gained.

Ahh yes, the good old days when 8-10 of us would invade the basement and connect every other computer together with null-model cables!

WC

I disagree for the most part. The problem for me (and others) is that I find myself not flying sims as much as I used to because the "immersion" factor isn't there anymore.

It might be a difference between online vs offline flyers though�as an offline flyer�there just isn't much reason to keep flying if the "excitement" isn't there anymore. Sure�hyper realistic cockpits and systems are great�but if you wrap that up in a sterile and lifeless battlefield�matched up with AI that is barely serviceable, it's just not very fun.

In a time where we are asked to pay extra for a scarf in a flight sim�I don't see why a developer couldn't create some sort of campaign system and then charge for it. I would gladly pay $100 for a campaign system with AI enhancements that would breathe new life into the modules I already own.

Again�this is from an offline flyers perspective.

What missions are you running?

At any given time in SP missions I can F2 through at least 2dozen aircraft, and the radio.calls are practically endless when Im not switching to tower frequency.

Not to forestall the answer, but I don't think the issue Force10 was talking about here is fully understood by looking at the number of aircraft in the air.

Well I was speaking more toward immersion.

Theres radio calls galore, in the engagement zone there are.friendly and enemy lines of ground forces shooting at each other.

That being said, DCS is no Ace Combat.

FTFY.

If a mission maker devotes tons of time to making a mission that way, then you get to see that. If not, what you get is a small number of stock missions and campaigns of varying quality and a random mission generator that can't do that.

The old sims despite their crude graphics and modeling often made me feel like a pilot flying in a war. Current sims make me feel like a pilot flying a sim. As in a full simulator at a base doing training.

I would care about my pilots in those old sims, and feel something when they were lost. Now they feel no more real than the menus and I couldn't care less if my entire flight is wiped out during the mission, they're just 1s and 0s.




The Jedi Master

And Ace Combat is no flightsim. Your point being...?

Sorry, but it's just scary. I never really bought into the argument some people brought up that the "eastern" developers just don't get it, just don't understand what the sim community is talking about when they speak of immersion and dynamic campaigns etc. I thought they just didn't bother. But when looking at what some people even from the community are saying today and when I look at the disaster that is e.g. the IL2 BoS "campaign", I'm about to start believing they just don't get it. Maybe because they just might have never flown the old western sims. We should lock them all up in a room and force them to play Tornado, Falcon3, Stealth Fighter and SWOTL for a week or two. Honest. I'll pay for the food and beer / vodka. The latter might also help if there are any issues with the graphics.