Mudspike’s Year In Review – 2015
By @EinsteinEP - December 9, 2015
Originally published at: Articles - Mudspike Forums
Two-thousand and fifteen CE was a big year for Mudspike. It started off with three restless and shiftless denizens of the simulation subculture somehow coalescing together to officially form Mudspike on January 18th and the rest, well, the rest is still to come!
Digital Combat Simulator was a big news maker this year: several sneak peeks at DCS World 2.0, the Nevada Test and Training Range map, the Strait of Hormuz map, the F/A-18C module, a preview of the MiG-15bis, tutorials on the Mi-8 Doppler navigator and on how to use the A-10C air-to-air TACAN, and checking out various campaign and mission offerings, including a dynamic campaign system featuring the MiG-21bis. ChuckOwl gave us some commentary on WWII Air Combat in DCS World 2.0 and his detailed AAR of an airmobile assault event. Beach got knocked around some in an advance look at the A-10C Red Flag campaign and made us all jealous and fearful at the same time.
There were quite a few FSX and X-Plane products that caught our attention this year: X-Trident’s Bell 412 and AMX International, Laborie Roland’s Airbus A400M, Dino Cattaneo’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Flight Sim Labs’ Concorde X, A2A’s Piper Cub, Ramzzess’ SuperJet SSJ-100, DMO Flight Design’s S-92 Sikorsky, SoulMade Simulations’ DHC-2 Beaver. FSX Steam Edition was big news, of course, and Beach went on a Alaskan trip, starting off with Air Alaska and A2A’s Piper Cub, then starting off on a grand adventure in that frozen state with EPOCH Alaska.
Arma 3 got a bit of interest, as well: Beach reposted his Tarnished Gold AAR with the AH-64D and shared his adventures in Operation Scotch Lass, too. Then he took us along in a Chickenhawk, gave us a peek at I Am Pilot, and described his joyride in the always impressive CH-53 Super Stallion. Fridge discussed his Arma 3 multiplayer experiences with the TFAR and ACE mods. Beach also took up an Mi-24 in Take On Helicopters: Hinds to show us what we might have missed in this sleeper product.
Strike Fighters 2 continues to warm our hearts (and keep our SSDs full!) and Beach showed us the Operation Odyssey Dawn mod, fought a Dead Is Dead campaign in both Operation Darius and War for Israel/Club Med.
We got a look at some mobile gaming options, too, including serious titles like X-Plane 10 and Infinite Flight as well as the much more casual Dustoff: Heli Rescue.
In addition to the software products, Mudspike got to play with some hardware, too: Saitek’s X-55 Rhino, Mad Catz’ F.L.Y. 5, Mad Catz C.T.R.L. mobile gamepads, and the VKB T-Rudder Mk. III.
Beach gave the budget title Helicopter Simulator 2014: Search and Rescue a second a look, and EinsteinEP took an Intercity Express full of raving
We watched IL2: Battle of Sturmovik grow over the year as well as witness the birth of IL2: Battle of Moscow. Benchmark Sims did a surprise release of Falcon 4.0, BMS 4.33 and Manic wrote us up an AAR on an experience in Tornadoes.
Stratojet, VKB’s North American partner, announced themselves on our site and gave us some very exciting insight into their upcoming products, in addition to their Mk III rudder pedals. EinsteinEP got to talk with Michael Juliano to get an inside scoop on Rogue System, the up-and-coming “DCS of space sims”, and FearlessFrog showed us what’s inside Star Citizen’s Public Test Universe.
We had our first community event, the DCS World Fly-In, which seemed to be a rousing success, even though those guys at Bethesda timed their Fallout 4 release right at the same time. *sheesh* This will definitely not be our last event!
Along with the new parking spot on the world wide web, Mudspike stepped boldly onto the social media scene with a Facebook page, twitter account, and Google+ page, but has yet to score any time on TMZ for the infamously raucous staff. Call us wild weasels, because we’re pretty good at flying below the radar! hyuk hyuk
We opened the doors to the Mudspike forums in May and the response has been fantastic. On these hallowed forums we’ve had such great conversations as:
- The epic Game Deals and Book Thread, which continues to house great deals on games, but not so much on books.
- SimFreak taking us along on his KC-135R Block 40 co-pilot training adventure.
- BeachAV8R trying (and failing) to bring culture to you uncultured swines.
- Watching BeachAV8R drool over his dream plane, the Falcon 7X (which is sadly under-represented in Benchmark Simulation’s latest update for Falcon).
- Piper opens a can of worms by asking why they can’t do dynamic campaigns.
- BeachAV8R having a blast flying as a virtual bush pilot for EPOCH Alaska.
- Screenshot recap of the Nov 13-15 DCS World Fly-In.
- A graphic horror story about weaponz248’s wanton destruction of the local blue truck population.
From those of us here at Mudspike, we want to thank all of you for being part of such a wonderful community that shares our passion for simulations and has great and wonderful contributions to make to each other.
We love you guys.
Seriously.
See you next year!
It is hard enough for anyone to map out a course of action and stick to it, particularly in the face of the desires of one’s friends; but it is doubly hard for an aviator to stay on the ground waiting for just the right moment to go into the air.
— Glenn Curtiss
