I’m not going to mention the Eurofighter simulator.
I’m NOT going to do that!
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Janes did both Simple and Complex Sims.
at the time, F/A-18 and F-15 were not Simple./
Not here, I agree. People are quite polite at Mudspike, but I take it you’ve never been on some of the forums dedicated to DCS fans that are found elsewhere. I stopped asking questions about the simplified avionics mode at those other forums because the responses are…unhelpful. They are also exactly the same tone as what Beach describes.
I’ve stated over and over again that I do not begrudge DCS fans getting exactly what they want. It’s their money, and their demands. The marketplace is ruthlessly efficient at taking the first and meeting the second. However, something I have noticed on CAP 2 Steam forums are people asking, “why don’t you add (insert preferred feature here) like DCS?”
Pardon me for asking, but, why would you want a title like DCS if you already have DCS?
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Very true.
And an important reflection about the development of flightsims…
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I started playing around with IL2 Sturmovik demo way back in 2001 (remember the boxy pilots?) and while it wasn’t my first sim, it was completely different at the time. I remember having all kinds of difficulties taking off and landing, coupled with just flying, compared to what had been my go-to WW2 flight sim at the time (Jane’s WW2 Fighters). Still, I got hooked, and I spent more and more time with it. I remember my first forays into multiplayer, Hyperlobby, the easy-mode dogfights, then finally the Ubi IL2 forums. It’s not a stretch to say that those who wanted “full real” were incredibly snooty and mean to those who treated it like a game, not a life.
I laugh at modern gamers and their “filthy casual” remarks compared to the flame wars over DB605 engine performance and .50cal dispersion in a simplified game that didn’t and couldn’t add those parameters because the processing power just wasn’t there at the time. My system in '01 had a 1GHz AMD processor, a GeForce 2, and a whopping 512MB of RAM! There was only so much one could do on such hardware and even my system stuttered over the cities and whatnot. Thankfully, we have a lot more power available to us today, but even then we can only go so far for a given equipment set. There are a lot of people, especially among the hardcore crowd, who want to ignore this; and yes, they still exist, just as they did 17 years ago. I dealt with a few of them when developing the AH-64D mod for ArmA2; some people said we should make it for DCS. A quick purview of DCS’s forums turned that into a whole lotta “NOPE” and a “Well, DCS is a bit more than we can shoot for given lack of data, etc.”
When you build things to an extremely realistic standard, it’s almost impossible to get everything right, and those who nitpick are very vocal about it. Further, this detracts from limited time to make sure it’s actually fun to play, which is why we do all this to begin with.
I’d like to add that there’s really not that many sims out today to begin with. Falcon 4 is pushing 20 years old now, IL2 is 17, CLOD is close to 10, SF2 is the same, CAP2 is still Early Access (and it has no multiplayer which is a sore spot for me), War Thunder is a MMO pay-to-play, ROF is now 5 years old, and many Jane’s titles are positively ancient that no longer run on current hardware. IL2:BoX is probably the most recent of the lot and FC3 is part of DCS. It’s just not a very popular genre anymore, and that’s why we don’t have many modern options.
Is it really so much to ask for a clickable cockpit and “good enough” instead of “we can’t do it because we don’t have manual XOMG-WTF-LOL-1337 ‘Urine Waste Device Usage’ for this aircraft”?
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Well, there is always the GAME mode of the sim too…but I’ll be honest, it has been probably four or five years since I engaged that mode to write a few paragraphs about it. Does anyone know how it works in the current DCS World? I mean…we do have some nice cheats like WIN HOME autostart or whatever…so there is that.
Like I said, I have days where I want to dive in to the manual and learn how to bring something to life over 15 minutes from a cold and dark…and days when I just want to fire up and immediately. I like that I have the choice for a lot of levels of depth right now. I’m guessing the F/A-18 will be the ultimate in depth perhaps (?). Does it have a CDU type thingy that is as complex as the A-10Cs?
Your counting is in error. I will correct:
The complex camp has:
Falcon 4 (w/ BMS) – Uh, I guess, but it’s really too old for me to consider viable
DCS (sans FC3) - lone modern jet title, albeit with WWII as well
IL2: CoD - recently revived WWII single theater only, no help to jet fans or those who want beyond BoB
The simple camp has
FC3 - sorta simple, but certainly far more in depth than SF2
IL2: BoX - I take it you have not played this? while the mission structure is that of a simpler title, the plane modeling is not
IL2 - Uh, I guess, but it’s really too old for me to consider viable part deux
War Thunder - you are grouping WT and FC3 planes as equivalent? seriously? and BoX?
SF2 - yes
CAP2 - not close to done, hardly a full entry
The Jane’s catalog - Uh, I guess, but it’s really too old for me to consider viable: vy harder
RoF - exactly what I said about BoX above, but WWI this time
(I’m not going to spend all night continuing)
That is some creative grouping to make 2 categories out of what is most certainly more.
You structured your argument to make it seem like DCS, BMS, and CloD are the Lexus, Jaguar, and BMW in a veritable sea of Kias and Fiats. A sea that is more accurately a puddle if you rule out any title no longer in active development by the original developers.
If you honestly are trying to say that ED shouldn’t bother trying to make an FC-class F-16 or F-15E because people who want that can just go fly Jane’s F-15 or BMS, I am here to tell you no those are nothing close to equivalent. No more than telling someone who’s having trouble finding a car to buy that they can use a bike or call Uber for their 20 mile daily commute.
What is funny is I only see this argument from the never-a-penny-for-any-but-graduate-level-models fans, that everything to a lower fidelity can be lumped together. The rest agree there is a need for these easier to make, easier to release, lower cost titles.
While to someone who makes over a million a year a person making $100k might seem little removed from someone making minimum wage, to those two there is still a world of difference.
FSX and P3D are in the Complex Camp.
Short answer, it doesn’t. I think the game avionics mode functions passably for the Russian FC3 birds, but even, then, it doesn’t function well. It works marginally better in the A-10C.
It doesn’t work at all for the American FC3 level birds.
What is funny is that this is the only argument you choose to see. There are several posters in this thread who have advocated for a sim-lite jet sim and how great that would be. I myself advocated in this thread that I would like to see any developer, any developer at all make a simple systems jet-sim. It is your personal rubric that it should be ED who does it.
Yup - that is how a reminiscing post with screenshots of SF2 goes 69 entries later about the direction of DCS and what ED should be doing to make the sim you want. Along the way we threw rocks at the posters of other forums, said a few things about the devs who disappointed us, reversed our own arguments about whether we like or don’t like flicking switches, threw crap at said switches we were only too happy to flick as recently as weeks ago.
You know what I would really love to see. ED take a team of devs aside and dedicate them to bringing the FC3 aircraft up to full switch standards and say- There. This is what we do. This debate is over. Someone else can build a jet sim with a different focus.
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A flight sim thread getting heated? No way…it’ll never happen.
I dunno guys…it isn’t worth being unfriendly over. I don’t think anyone is poo-pooing anyone else’s choices of what they like to fly. Or, at least, they shouldn’t be. Sim nostalgia is a tricky thing. Yes, I fire up EECH and, every so often Longbow 2, and while they are great sims, they have aged to various degrees.
I enjoy flying helos in Arma 3 (or VTOLs) quite a bit…and it doesn’t bother me at all that there is a scroll menu that has ENGINE ON, ENGINE OFF on it. It is a mindset I get into when I boot up A3. Similarly, I put on a different hat when I play SF2, and a different one when I play DCS.
It is pretty telling that, with exception of the Su-25T, I haven’t played barely ANY of the FC3 content/airframes. So for me, DCS is by and large a switchology sim that I have to make sure I put aside the time to get into. That said, there is room to just jump into MP and hop in a hot start slot and you can be shooting things in minutes…so if you are unhappy with the depth, it is your problem that you aren’t picking the right thing to do with it.
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That’s really not all that different from the Global. There is a Run switch for each engine. Turn one on and the corresponding engine starts, then the generators come online and there is even a flight controls BIT check that initiates when the first engine is started (and I am sure a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember without diving into a manual).
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Let me sum up:
The guys who want simple FM and gamey-game lock-shoot are window-licking mouth-breathers;
The guys who want advanced full-real not-one-rivet-less, billion-and-one-switches, and realistic procedures are no-life losers in mommy’s basement;
The guys who want a mix of accessibility and realism are flippin’ idiots with schizophrenia who can’t figure out if they want to play a real manly sim or a kid’s game.
Does that cover it? 
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… and of course lets not forget about politics: there’s those who want the stalinium russian uberplanes nerfed and the germen superior engineering to give their machines more horsepower and aerodynamic efficiency and there are those who call them luftwhiners, wheraboos and want mustangs to be as good as their daddies’ comic books made them out to be.
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Me!
Me again!
Ah…hm…
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You know you are a sissy pilot, right?
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It’s hard to argue with that 
. FADEC makes engine management ridiculously simple. You still have to monitor of course, and drink plenty of coffee ;).
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We have to bring our own coffee…
But I’m not jealous.
Noooo sir… Oh no. Nope!
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I won’t talk about the food then… 
In all seriousness, if I was just a little younger I would be making the switch to fly for the airlines. I’m a little too old to make the jump worthwhile though.
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Never too old to redefine yourself.