Well if YOU are getting old, I am downright ancient!
It’s true. The old stuff emphasized “game” because there wasn’t much horsepower available for realism. I couldn’t get enough back then. Today, we are damned by the power available to our developers. All of their vast talent is expended on technical and visual realism. The word “game” EVEN ON THIS VERY WEBSITE(!) is taken as an insult. I do find, though, that F4 was perhaps the last, and the greatest, expression of flight sim gaming, due of course to the campaign. You never need to fire a shot and you can still get lost in the joys of the game itself.
Even if someone has all day every day to play flight sims all the time - which is probably unsustainable you can forget ever getting to know all the features and detail in the flight sims today.
You just have to take a deep breath and go with one game or in DCS case one module usually.
Yeah and even then, the thrill of the possibility given by old, more directly approachable games’ dynamic campaign is lost.
I’ll honestly admit that while the AI was less than optimal, had performance issues, and all the flaws it had - the Strike Fighter 2 series was at a good crossroad of Sim and game.
Enough systems to keep you busy, but a dynamic campaign to keep things fresh.
It was still lacking in a lot of departments but at least I could play a couple of missions and be happy enough.
Now a mission in DCS feels better in many regards but it’s either a training mission i created myself or a static one of no consequence.
I honestly feel the DCS Dynamic Campaign is probably the next module I’m really looking forward to.
Edit: this is not, in any way or form , an attack against BMS. Just to be clear.
Those people are literally heroes and have all my respect.
What is a “Game”? Something that’s not real? We all have our notions.
I’m just the opposite I guess. But I see your point. To me: I can take the most complex, realistic, representation and treat it like a game - in a playful? manner. The reverse is harder - the physics, procedures, etc, just aren’t there.
I don’t see that. To me they are all ‘games’. An escape. Guess it’s how we, individually, approach them.
It gave me the sense of being just a small part of a larger ‘world’, or environment. An environment that resembled reasitic-ish procedures and processes. It wasn’t all about me. And to experience on some level something I’d never be able to do in real life.
As others have said on the forum in the past, DCS is more like X-Plane - the armed version of X-Plane I guess (or of course FS2020). As a single-player game DCS remains behind BMS (I’ve had to revert to doing a lot of work to create the above on my own)
The charm of BMS, and maybe any great game, is that there is a world you immerse yourself in as soon as the title sequence ends. The little planes and ground forces moving on the map, the comms, the news feed; all are there to suck you in deep. DCS and IL2 are both, by comparison, beautiful dead space.
So then someone like Reflected comes along and spends hundreds of hours filling that dead space with life. And the sim runs at a crawl in as a result. Maybe your $3000 rig runs it just fine, but you still see B17 formations turning in perfect sync and other reminders that it’s all beautifully drawn by a loving hand. There’s still no game no matter how hard they now try.
Interesting. For my personal DCS mission/campaign creator (PDMC?..someday I’ll have a name for it ) I’ve made it easier to have little messages come up like this (for instance: “USS So-and-so Launched a TLAM”). It never occurred to me in BMS how important that was. In the real world this doesn’t happen but in this virtual one it seems to help, as you say, immerse you into it all.
OTW, in DCS single-player, it’s pretty “quiet” out there (I don’t count the silly “Passing waypoint” verbosity). Though some of the BMS auto-generated radio comms were a little cringy.
I found the feed to be the least interesting part. But it’s still a piece of that larger whole that makes me care about what’s going on. It gives me the sense that I am, as you say, part of something much bigger than my own personal sandbox.
Same: I never thought twice about it playing BMS until I added the functionality into DCS. Together with your mention of it I’m now leaning towards keeping it in there.
Anyway, back to the video…how about dem basket physics! Maybe this will motivate ED? (I’ve been whining about this little bit of extra realism for a long time on YT).
Back then it was easier most played one study sim (BMS) and then you had SF for variety.
Most of my time was spent modding which takes a horrendous amount of time and also researching Cold War aerial conflicts was required to go with that. With SF you could plug the mods it into a one click environment and still get away with having 70 aircraft.
Sure the flight models were all different and you really needed to spend some time getting used to them but you could also just risk it.
You still needed to learn how stores and the environment affected the aircraft in flight. You still needed to learn how to employ Vietnam era hardware that had modelled a 75%+ failure rate tactically.
When people discussed about having or funding a hardcore BMS version of SF there was very little interest - I think StreakEagle maybe might have been the only one who really cared. And fair play to him - you will probably find him with the masses (4 people) on the early cold war servers these days launching Vietnam sorties from Batumi in Georgia.
Agreed. I’ve come to the conclusion (only took years!, cus I’m slow) that I’ll never get everything I want in my game hobby - I’m the crazy one that wants a centrifuge in my man-closet to “feel the G”. I’d justify it with the missus as ‘exercise equipment’
You arent alone. Spent 4 hours playing F117 on my laptop at work the other day and had more fun than i have for ages.
I love DCS so much but BMS just feels like real hard work. Plus all my lovely bound and printed 4.35 manuals are out of date
yeah, that’s kind of what I’m doing now. Not modding assets but writing Lua code. Geesh, I realized this week I’ve spent 99% of my time in DCS writing code & testing. Keeps me off the streets at night
Unless something ground-breaking happens in software (AI writes it all?) BMS is it, no more (warts and all). That complexity/depth just isn’t for most people. There’s more money in Wordle, Quordle, and Dordle (my wife and her family are all over these!) for this reason I suppose.
In the end, I find DCS + VR gets the nod…but if BMS ever goes 3D - goodbye DCS (I think BMS graphics are acceptable).
I do miss curling up in bed with a good, thick, flight[sim] manual. I’m such a dinosaur
Perhaps that was part of the ‘depth’ of the thing(s) back then - a different type of intensity/complexity? I “got into it” - my imagination - via the books (all there was).
!
) I’ve made it easier to have little messages come up like this (for instance: “USS So-and-so Launched a TLAM”). It never occurred to me in BMS how important that was. In the real world this doesn’t happen but in this virtual one it seems to help, as you say, immerse you into it all.