RAZBAM - DCS: F-15E Render Test and Dev Update

Flight Sims
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Knowing, from first hand experience, how painful and often incredibly boring it is to plan and execute a real word air campaign, I don’t really see it as an attractive multiplayer concept…the shortest time from initial plan to fly is 72 hrs (and that’s with shifts working around the clock).

I think trying to create a realistic dynamic campaign environment in a MP format is an unreasonable…heck, we don’t even do fully dynamic for some of our exercises, lest we miss a training point.

If the ideas to have MP fun…trust me, most Joint military exercises are not fun…the current bevy of servers offers a good range of options.

For single player fun, it seems that a well written campaign with good background seems to work. For that, you can move all the painful planning stuff and put it “under the hood”, giving the user all the fun of flying realistically planned missions, without the panful part of actually trying to doctrinally plan them.

EDIT: Getting the stuff “under the hood” correct is what I think @Franze is talking about. In general, what is it that makes mission realistic and what makes it “not so much”. He is correct, it is the planning and briefing. There are a lot that goes into planning and briefing…that’s where the mission(s)/campaign developer comes in.

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Bear in mind that you’re talking to a guy who, when he did a super bug mod for FP/ArmA, added in a buddy pod and in-flight refueling capability in a game where the map area is typically smaller than 30x30km. :blush:

You may/may not have played Longbow 2 back in the 90s, but I think the format it had was a bit similar to what you’re getting at. IE, it had the whole works of weather, commanders intent, etc. all in a opord format, with a clear objective for each flight in a given mission (recon, strike, escort, and so on). Granted, in that environment there were no refueling assets, AWACS, and so on, but in this context it’s just another part of the puzzle that can be put out there for our own uses.

My take is that DCS is rather weak in the briefing phase and debriefing phase and it would be nice if we could get more improvements there – especially at the debrief. The briefing doesn’t give a lot of room for a lot of the necessary briefing text and the big honking huge images on the left side tend to hog what should be a verbose description of the mission at hand. Actually putting together the mission is relatively easy in this context, especially if we keep the focus on what the player(s) mission(s) are. As you’re well aware, the strategic goal at the top is what determines what happens under the hood, and in the context of what a lot of us do in DCS doesn’t even touch upon that. Yeah, a lot of that would be considered filler, but if we’re going for realism, it’s an essential part of what is happening and why it is happening, coupled with what the intended end result is going to be.

What I can imagine is that, in the EECH/AH and LB2 formats, is that unless players are present, AI will take over all the tasks of a particular mission. In the presence of players, roles are available for a given mission and they take over the flight. I’m not sure how things work in the fixed wing world, but rotary wing tends to favor 2 ship over larger formations, so that’s what I tend to aim for when I build scenarios. For example, a test scenario I made had 4 Su-25Ts separated into two flights, one tasked with DEAD, the other with SEAD. A flight of AV-8Bs backed them up as an additional layer of SEAD, while a pair of F/A-18Cs provided escort from enemy fighters. A 4 ship of M2ks served as a fighter sweep, where their goal was to keep enemy Su-27s from intercepting the attackers. An E-2 provided AWACS while a S-3B was available for tanker support, though naturally they only served the M2ks, AV8s, and bugs. Now, inside of all this there was no real briefing or any background material, as it really wasn’t much more than a learning experience for trying out some stuff in the mission editor.

Anyways, rambling on and on, but if we can get some idea of what the real world system works like, we can put together missions more in tune with what we might expect if we were operating from that level. Much of this is based on my lack of what really goes on (as the last time I played multiplayer was FC1.0 in '08), so I don’t even know if anyone has tried anything like that. I did play a few missions/campaigns like that in the context of IL2, but that was a very different environment altogether.

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Good thing the sim isn’t reality then :slight_smile:

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I agree with the briefing part. I’ll have to fiddle around with things but I don’t see how one can do it all in a DCS briefing. I’m thinking of additional PDF files (jet like aircraft manuals) that you can load up on a pad.

The idea is to balance what the DCS briefs are good at showing (and providing that text and those graphics), what you need as a condensation of that material on a handy pad, and what goes on the in DCS cockpit kneeboard cards.

BTW, is it me or did the soviet aircraft just move their kneeboards from the lower right corner to the lower left corner (Mig-21 and Su-25T)?:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

…I know that back in the day the communists were considered leftists while capitalism was considered rightists…but I think this is taking that idea to the extreme…just say’n:wink:

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I think you can add custom images to a briefing, so that might give a little bit of flexibility in regards to adding things like satellite images and possibly more text, even though it’s not the ideal format. It does raise the question of whether or not said images could also be made available on the kneeboard in flight, though.

This MiG-21 pilot is clearly right handed:

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Yes, you can add images to the briefing (and you can always bring the briefing back up while in flight by pressing LALT-B) and you can also add anything to the kneeboard. This includes images on a per mission basis. To do so, the mission file needs a KNEEBOARD folder with an IMAGES folder, with the images being in there. They should be 768 x 1024 in size.

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You would be surprised at how often people are asking for flyable tankers, or to be able to operate the boom over on the ED Forums. Hell, I’m pretty sure the first question asked when the Hornet was officially announced was if it would have buddy stores, and that question still gets asked quite often haha.

If only they knew the pain of burning a hole in the sky for hours on end waiting for receiver’s…and the receiver’s. Never. Took. Off… :fearful: :sob:

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