I am looking forward to it. The WW2 assets won’t be too far removed from what was available in the Korean War, so a 1950’s European scenario won’t be too far fetched. We have F86’s, Mig 15’s, P51’s (F51). A little imagination goes a long way.
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That’s actually very appealing to me. Crossing the channel towards the enemy. I am sure there will be many servers emulating a post D-day situation where Allied fighters take-off from airfields in Normandy as well.
Not entirely true. Normandy will be in the same executable as the NTTR. If you meant spreading out the community over three maps, then sure, I agree. But atleast WWII will have a real home in DCS now.
I believe the map and asset pack combination will remain for sale even after the pre-sale ends. For something like $60? It may be a steep entry purchase if you’re looking to get both the map and an aircraft. But for that you’re getting a very deep simulation.
I’m sure such servers will exist, and I’ll hope you’ll find them and enjoy them. I like the ideas except labels 
labels lead to bad habits, it makes it to easy to keep track of a bandit in a fight and eliminates the “lose sight, lose the fight” rule especially since you can see labels through your own plane. Something that I’d like would be a fictious cold winter scenario, dropping the conning altitude. People could still fly below the conning alt and remain undetected but risk getting B’n’Zed. Players flying at conning altitudes could more easily find each other.
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I feel like this has become a defense of DCS like I’m somehow discrediting it. I’m not. It’s a great simulation. It’s just concerning to me that a niche player base is being split into other niches by era. I’d be interested to see numbers, across all versions, for numbers of online players. Maybe I’m underestimating the player base, but every time I get on, there’s maybe two or three servers with 30+ players (104th, open conflict). I run 2.0 and open beta, I don’t know if steam users and release version show up in my beta servers.
Just curious to see how popular ww2 will become. Personally I’m sitting this one out till the smoke clears.
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@Gunnyhighway No offence taken here, and I am not in anyway fanboi’ing any defence.
However there is a very dedicated WW2 crowd, so the potential for numbers is there.
Of course there will be a gap to be filled by DCS in the way of a decent range of aircraft to simulate the theatre, and there is a proposed set of aircraft.
I can see potential in it. But whether or not it hits as a staple for the WW2 crowd is to be seen.
When all is said and done, if you aren’t taken with it then yes, its probably a good idea to maybe give it a miss. If it takes off and you change your mind, a module or two may be on discount then? Who knows?
I get what you’re saying. I think NTTR has been hurt by the player base split and I fear that Normandy will be affected by it more. I know myself and a couple others I fly with are holding off on Normandy for a while.
Mind you, that’s not because I don’t want it - it looks amazing - I just don’t want to put any more money into the multiple install mess right now.
Hopefully ED gets it together and has the great unification of 2017 shortly after release. It’d be unfortunate if Normandy suffers the same fate of being stuck in early access for a year and a half.
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So I get this @Gunnyhighway and maybe it will. But if you are feeling some push back to you notion in this thread it is because it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate in the game for it. It’s no longer a question of should they do it. That has already played out a hundred thousand times across a large number of forums. They already have done it. Four airframes are done. Normandy is being released on Friday. Dude it’s here.
It might be time for everyone to start to come to grips with the fact that ED is trying to give us everything. Yup grandiose statement but maybe that’s the best way to look at it. They are literally trying to span the eras, units, and maps, between the P-51D and F-18C in the same hi-fidelity flight simulator. Think about that for a moment. And no they are nowhere near close. And no they don’t care how long it takes them and whoever signs on to partner with them. And no, they don’t seem to care if you or I think it’s a good idea.
As far as I can tell, their design document for the sim only has numbers in it. It looks like this: 1944-2004
So there will be servers of people playing WW2 stuff. And there will be servers with people playing modern jet stuff. And hopefully there will be servers with people playing Korean war stuff over a Korea map. I think it’s going to be great.
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My only concern is…how much has the Hornet, Hormuz, and who knows what else been delayed by this foray into WWII?
We do have BoX for WWII, it’s not like there are no other options if you’re interested (not counting the legacy stuff like CloD and 46 and blah blah blah).
There are no competitors to DCS for jets anymore. There’s the legacy stuff, yes, but nothing in active commercial development.
I suppose if we had an “Il-2 F-4E” or “Battle over Kuwait” competitor I would be less concerned, but we don’t. They’re sticking with WWII only.
As an analogy, take 3 silicon companies. Intel (it does modern jets only!), nvidia (it does WWII only!), and AMD. AMD is trying to do jets and WWII, and it is the smallest company of the 3. They were jet only, then they bought a WWII only company and have kept trying to do both and as a result have done neither better than the competition.
I don’t want ED to be another AMD. Let them be Intel to 1CGS’ nvidia. No one likes monopolies killing innovation and raising prices, but it’s hard to argue that it’s not lousy when you’re the underdog. ED didn’t double in size to tackle WWII, they couldn’t.
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Trust me Jedi, I too wish they had released the F-18C first so I could enjoy a clickable cockpit WW2 map release week with everyone’s un-reserved excitement.
I wouldn’t at all call myself a DCS critic. But I may appear that way to some because I rarely cross the line over to full supporter and my fuzziness can be interpreted by some as coming from a “hater”. I have put more time into DCS and its forbearers than all other games and sims put together. For now I will need to continue to be fuzzy. It is hard for me to imagine how all this will gel into a single product with lots of users inside each map. But ED did what they promised. That nonsense with Maddox on his couch was a joke. But ED made a promise and they have now followed through on it in a very painstaking way with apparent beautiful results. To a lesser degree the same is true of Nevada. The Mars-pink landscape that came with DCS: A-10C turned into a fine map years later. When I originally forked over my money, I did so with no expectations of getting Nevada, the Channel or an Assets pack. I chalked those failures up as the cost of adopting early. When I realized (in the case of the Channel just weeks ago) that I would be given those things because they were somehow promised to me, I was pleasantly shocked.
ED have been discussing these very issues at conference tables and Skype calls for years. They understand the dangers that come with a fractured product better than any of us do. They will somehow make it work.
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Single player is important as well, and there is lots of interest in a highly detailed WWII map with appropriate units of the period. I think it will do well and so far it looks great. DCS was always about ‘high fidelity’ so the time consuming thing is a plus for the ‘full sim’ crowd, not a negative.
As for the splits of servers, I think this is just a period of transition for DCS - they probably wouldn’t have chosen to have separate branches or editions by choice, but the alternative is that nothing ever gets released. Once we get to 2.5 where all the maps are under one release then people can go off in their own directions of interest (WWII, 80’s, Modern) and the market will show which things grow out. I think there will always be a lot of interest in that period and ‘full sim’ stuff personally.
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“period of transition” that has lasted a very long time.
Hopefully this is the year for 2.5 and consolidation. But an honest guess would be 2018.
But Normandy will be ran under the 2.0 install, correct?
Yes, Normandy will be in 2.1 alongside NTTR.
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who told you this? 
the planes are around for some time now and there is just pre-order running for new map, thats all
I don’t understand. There’s no expiry date on any of this DCS stuff so I think that it will last long enough, or exactly as long you are interested in making it last (glass half full versus half empty).
DCS WWII was kickstarted but that hype didn’t last past the creators not being able to meet their targets.
DCS Normandy and DCS World 2.1 are looking good and I am going to get hours of enjoyment out of both! And, as mentioned, some of the WWII aircraft have been available for a while, while some are relatively new. I am enjoying them even though the are not really my cup of tea (yet).
I guess it should be obvious that your mileage may vary, likely directly proportional the effort that you put in.
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So wait… 2.1 is dropping Friday?
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Which desert island do you live on
Pen-insula. Forlorn kingdom of Wut?aly.
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From ED forums:
Dear all,
Thank you all for your patience following the rather bumpy roll-out of the Early Access ALPHA of DCS World 2.1.
As many of you unfortunately encountered, we suffered some difficulties regarding the Module Updater. This has been traced back to the size of the download and the great number of people trying to access it at the same time (more so than the NTTR launch).
Thats interesting!
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Thanks to @fearlessfrog and his linking the CLI commands, some of us were able to force the install when the GUI method stalled.
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