I don’t disagree with this, per se. While there is certainly a market for hi-fi, medium fidelity tends to be where most players skill level is. How many people do you know that buy a high fidelity jet and only learn enough to shoot missiles and drop bombs? I know several.
I feel that even though they do sell, systems rich aircraft tend to go underutilized and intimidate many.
I wonder if it’s a cost-benefit thing.
If people only want to pay $20 for a FC-level plane at most, while they can charge $70-80 for a full plane, but it only takes like 2x more work for the DCS level over and above everything the FC level already needs for its engagement in DCS World, then they make more profit over the DCS release.
This is of course, a typical thing in commerce where the more expensive something is, the higher the profit margin compared to cheap items which have razor-thin margins.
Dang it, I was gonna say that
I’ve ordered a new SSD
I have noticed that even in my line of work. If I sell the work as exclusive, specialist work, I can easily ask a fair price.
On my shopping list. Maybe by Black Friday. 
I had to take the plunge. I’ve not played dcs for so long solely due to this issue. I’ve not even tried the chinook and I’ve been excited about this for ages.
Had to make an executive decision
Man the viper is fun now with the deadzones turned off! Whee!
Away from PC…Home…and really Civilization 
Can you please tell me how Kola Summer is? Did 1/2 Stan get anything??? Thank You…I’m off to spear my supper
In many cases that’s all you need. It does seem a bit like buying a sportscar then only taking it up to 30 in the suburbs. I’m not opposed to more mid-fidelity options but everyone online these days only seems think in binary, as if everything needs to be 100% one way or 100% the other. If DCS as a whole goes mid-fidelity and nixes the high-fidelity stuff, however unlikely, I’m out. The combination of flight physics, switchology, and tactics puts me in a flow state that absolutely no other game or hobby can.
Also, per one of the HB guys on reddit the Mk82+TARPS fix didn’t fully make it to the Tomcat. I was really looking forward to this one, and I’m honestly getting really tired of HB’s patches frequently missing updates despite being listed in the changelog.
I think DCS has struck a good balance - high fidelity but with “quick start”… I can usually talk people through programming weapons and fixing the odd fault in the jet (usually caused by not using the quick start keybind 
).
IL2 BoX was the worst of both worlds IMO - “sim-isms” like the power band time limits, being able to see the control I want to interact with but not being able to remember the keybind, and having to wait for the “pilot” to press the fuel gauge button in the Spit - if you’re not going to simulate that button for me to press then just have the gauge showing all the time!!
I mean I fly combat sims to shoot at things after all…? In all seriousness I agree that the vast majority of systems programming in DCS never get’s seen/used by most owners.
I’d hazard it’s probably more like 10x the amount of work to get a DCS level aircraft, really the art/3d modeling is the same. After that you can abstract all the systems to something believable, rather than simulate. Also keeping it updated/working with every update has got be a far bigger resource investment than a FC level product. I’d hazard the margin increase between a FC module and full fidelity module is not terribly high.
Yeah, there are severe issues with the DCS codebase moving on and leaving mods and modules behind, but when I bought Falcon 4.0 I couldn’t fly my Falcon 3.0 MiG-29 or F-18 in the new sim (not until FreeFalcon and BMS at least 
).
So you gotta give ED and the module developers props for that…
I strongly doubt DCS will go mid fidelity. Although, they still sell (and recently updated) their low-fi add-ons so who knows?
A fair price or a premium price for a premium service?
Is often seen as asking too much by customers. They see the work as unskilled labour. As if even that is not worth a fair buck!
However, if I show the customer how my work, and the way my people do it is special, they will pay more than if they feel like they’re hiring me to do what they themselves can’t or won’t do.
For example this dude who wanted his yard paved over with betonia vulgaris, regular sidewalk pavers. He did some pavement himself, badly, and wants us to do the rest. I loathe that sort of thing, didn’t like the dude himself either so I told him 1200 bucks. Never heard of him no more.
Little old cat lady can’t keep her lawn in order and has a large slab of betonia. Sure we’ll rip those out, make beautiful raised borders and put in a whole lot of used cobbles. It’s difficult because they’re uneven but that also makes the pavement look very interesting in the end. She happily paid 3000.
When I look at the module prices in USD they seem fair. When I convert it to JPY, not so much I wish ED could do adjusted prices for those in countries unfairly affected by the global scam that is currency exchange, like some developers do on Steam, but I suppose they’re too niche with too small of a profit margin for that to be viable.
I am still wrapping my head around buying a DCS module in USD converted (via a shitty exchange rate) to AUD to a Swiss account?
Disco!
People, Americans anyway, seem to want bells & whistle’s, or the choice, and appear willing to pay for it[1], not acknowledging what to me seems mildly absurd. My wife’s new (the old one lasted 15 years) SUV has gizmo’s she’ll never even know exist, nor care to learn. But the marketing worked.
Had a fishing partner that owned a large car dealership (I know why a lot of famous athletes buy car dealerships now, or used to). One day while bored in a small row boat, not catching anything, I asked, “Bob, my truck is 16 years old, I’m a simple man, can I get a simple truck?”. Bob, “Naw, no money in it…we make a lot of profit off those ‘gizmo’s’”. My truck is now 20 years old.
However, for flight sim’s I like knowing those bits are in there for me to master, at some point in time. The skill it takes, even though completely useless IRL.
[1] ie; they want "it’ but don’t want to pay much for it. Whole other pile of thread bait there.
Nice to see some of the AI problems [finally] acknowledged. Some of them low-hanging fruit IMO:
Intense battles will be affected the most… - Good to hear. I’ve been struggling trying to get enough ‘stuff’ in there to make it more interesting.
…AI will make numerous passes and only drp a single bomb… - I gave up on trying to fix that one on my end like a year ago. It used to work.
The old F-14A model has been hidden in ME. - that’s nice, maybe. I assume the HB models need to be swapped with these.
Aircraft AI. Uncontrolled AI aircrafts can cause major FPS drop in certain situations - be nice to know what the conditions are as I use a lot of these. Easy to test.
Aircraft AI. Sometime aircraft ignores the task Attack group - fixed - Sometimes? Have spent many hours trying figure out, “why?”.
RAM is not being released in some case - Hmm.
Ground AI. Fixed problem with crossing bridges. - a biggie
Ground AI. Flak won’t engage - here all this time I thought it was just me (have been manually firing them).
Ground AI. When ground AI units expend all of their ammo, the unit does not rearm - yup.
Terrain engine. New terrain scenery models VRAM management system - we shall see. I’ve noticed that some old maps still stink when it come to FPS (NTTR for instance) even though they are less complex than newer ones. Hmm.
DCS: Syria Map by Ugra Media - lotta good stuff on this one