The Viggen is pure joy. Its mission profile of down low and as fast as you can go is absolutely fun at its most refined. I’m honestly more likely to recommend the Viggen over the A-10C for those looking for ground attack fun. In fact, it’s one I recommend to newbies with frequency. It’s just that good.
Anyways, here I am being as predictable as a house tour. Normandy is neat, albeit rough around the edges. Stuttering kinda bad and even freezing the system from time to time.
My inner child is weeping 
Actually it reminds me of the first time I tried to use the (semi) automatic landing system on the Mig-21. The manuals said something about practicing in daylight and clear weather…pfffft! What is the fun in that. I went with nighttime and fog.
(To put this in context, this was pre-VR and I had successfully landed the Fishbed maybe twice in daytime CAVU.)
So I follow the manual and I’m coming down (what I thought was) the glide path when I get a big bump, the gear sheers off and I slide to a stop about 300 m short of the runway…no fire but looking remarkably like @piper’s falcon. 
The last screenshots of the year (for me!):
This past year, the F-14B had to take the cake and then some. It was truly an impressive showing by all the fine folks at Heatblur, definitely worth the wait! I ended up spending far more of the year in the cockpit of this aircraft, despite my relatively poor air-air skills. From the multicrew implementation to the multirole capability, the F-14B was definitely the early access module to beat.
While Jester/Chester gets a lot of complaints, for me he’s made the aircraft possible to enjoy without a dedicated pool of RIOs and in singleplayer. The only thing that was cumbersome was LANTIRN, which took a control mod to use in multiplayer without a live RIO. Making that work was interesting, but fulfilling until the Bug got the LITENING pod. I look forward to seeing Heatblur get Chester up to speed with LANTIRN as well as the F-14A next year.
While coming out much later in the year, I consider the JF-17 a close second to the F-14B. This was definitely a surprise hit, coming with an impressive set of capabilities from initial release. Deka Ironworks have proven themselves capable of delivering a high-quality product to the community’s expectations and I hope they’ll continue to deliver in the future.
Third place, the MiG-19P. This was an unusual choice by Razbam, but the experience has been interesting. I feel that it falls short in fidelity from the F-14B and JF-17, but the team has clearly done their best to bring the aircraft alive. Alongside the MiG-21 and MiG-15, it feels like the Russians had themselves an ideal supersonic fighter in the MiG-19, getting rid of the nasty handling traits of the 15, but still capable of actually turning without choking the engine like the 21. Of course, being a simulator, we have ideal conditions that weren’t present in real life, which definitely skews the experience. I’ve only done a few hops in the Farmer, but what little I’ve done has made it seem very impressive.
The F-16C had an incredibly troubled start; my initial impressions were lukewarm. Currently, it’s pretty solid, with a fair number of capabilities and the basics handled – stuff like missing lights and no damage model caused quite a stir in the community, but both of those are in place now. I think ED did poorly at managing expectations for the module at release; currently, I feel satisfied with the present state of the module, especially the pace of development. It’s never been one of my favorite airframes, but I bought it primarily for the discount, figuring we’d have something like F-16A capability initially. That wasn’t too far off the mark. I would have traded the LITENING pod and GBUs for a damage model and external lights on initial access, but that’s just me. I’ll add that despite lacking a skin template, the community has done a remarkable job with creating good, high-quality skins for the module, which certainly adds flexibility for those of us who create missions.
The WWII scene got some new aircraft, notably the I-16 and Fw-190A-8. My general feeling of DCS’ WWII modules is too much money spent for what one gets. The aircraft are extremely well done, but don’t fit in well with the chosen map nor environment. The planeset screams more late '44/early '45 over mid '44 Normandy; this of course has been set in stone for a while now, but the rigidness of the modules tends to grate on me. Nonetheless, the I-16 and Fw-190A-8 are solid modules in their own right, even if I’ve decided to put my WWII money into IL2BoX instead.
Of existing aircraft, it was nice to get cockpit improvements for the Mirage and A-10C. The Mirage didn’t need it quite so badly, but the A-10C was closing in on a decade of age, so seeing it updated was certainly pleasing. While I consider the Ka-50 a terrible example of an attack helicopter, I am looking forward to the upgrades for it, hopefully next year. I’m disappointed that the AH-1F got the axe; DCS does helicopters very well that it feels a shame not to have more modules there, especially western attack helicopters. At least the Mi-24P is still on the table!
See you all in 2020!
Oh, almost forgot: the Christen Eagle, which came out at the very start of the year!
I didn’t feel the need to buy this one, but it sure caused a ton of consternation in the community. If anything, it certainly proved that simulation fans can be very dramatic when their expectations are dashed!
Take a look at the new screenshot thread here: DCS 2.5.x Screenshots (2020)
I will try to get a thread with summary statistics for 2019 going in the next few days 
