My personal opinion is that it’s all well and good to strive for maximum realism and accuracy where possible, but we have to keep in mind that we’re still talking about a game, which does in fact encompass simulations which are just a genre. I’m not pointing fingers at anyone for rivet counting, but to deny that they exist and aren’t a very vocal influence on the simulation community is to deny reality.
To take the Darths & Droids example: complaining that a P-51 is nerfed because the player took on 4 Bf-109G-6s and turning around and saying that the G-6 was “never that good because of chart X,” which ignores the fact that it has nothing to do with simulation accuracy and everything to do with ■■■■-poor planning and situational awareness. Basically, we forget that it wasn’t just P-51s vs Bf-109s, but entire nations squaring off against one another. As the Finns proved, even shoddy equipment can be used effectively if you’re smart about how to employ it; that’s part of what makes sims fun. When people get down in the dirt to complain about small inaccuracies and fail to look at the big picture, that’s where it all goes down the drain.
One of the many reasons I never got into DCS (beyond the StarForce DRM) was because my perception of it was a switchology, procedure simulation and not a simulation of warfare. I saw it as 90% of figuring out how to turn the aircraft on, 5% knowing all the info about how to run it, and maybe 5% of the actual mission. That may or may not be accurate because until StarForce comes out of DCS, I’ll never try it. To me, I don’t mind learning how to do all the small stuff but there has to be more to it than that; once I’ve got it around my fingers, I want to apply it. I want to see it come together in the theatre and see the implications of it beyond just “go here and bomb convoy X” in an empty world.
Essentially, I want to see imagination being used. Data and charts will never match the feeling of raw emotion when you’re in a combat situation. I can’t recall ever considering every last data point of a P-38 vs an A6M beyond the “yeah, I can get him if I do X, but if he does Y I’ll have to do Z.”
It’s always a simulation about people, never rivets.
It is some switchology - but I do think your breakdowns aren’t quite as generous to the actual mission side as they should be. Take the A-10C for instance. It takes about four minutes to start it and be ready for a mission. Of course, that is probably skipping some of the actual steps that a real pilot would accomplish (I mean, his life depends on it). Things like the BIT tests and cautions and all of the testing of the redundant systems that he needs to test prior to embarking on a mission. So already there you have some concessions to realism for the sake of gameplay. Once you’ve learned the procedure, I think the percentage of focus on the mission slants dramatically toward the actual flying of the mission, tactics, stuff like that.
And I would argue that complex systems can enhance a mission. I mean, we can all pretty much use a stick, throttle, and put the “thing on the thing” to drop bombs or strafe. But there is a perverse joy to playing the HOTAS like a mini-piano - changing the sensor of interest, zooming and panning, locking up targets, cycling nav waypoints, all while doing the normal stick and rudder stuff. I think that does more closely mirror the task saturation that a real pilot encounters. And DCS doesn’t even really throw at you all the radio and navigation management that you would normally be faced with. I think people don’t fully appreciate how just adding the radio interactions to a normal flight is a real distraction and part of professional flying that you learn to cope with. And military pilots have it even worse with VHF, UHF, inter-flight comms, ATC, and then troops or JTAC on the ground. Talk about being pulled seven ways to Sunday. I don’t know how they manage it all.
Anyway - as usual, it’s different strokes for different folks. It is kind of neat that we CAN have a mix of light and complex in DCS World. It does give opportunities to all sides to participate together at their own comfort level.
It’s those guys who lecture the developer about how wrong they are, because they read about that aircraft in a book, and that it should be able to [fill in the blank]. Even though the developer have test data and/or real pilot feedback.
I want realism. But that doesn’t mean I can’t fly around in GTA V, for fun
But given the choice, I want realism.
But, again, what is realism?
Unless I have solid proof, or own experience, I would never complain that the simulated aircraft doesn’t match some figures I read in a pilots memoir, knowing the devs have access to test data or made their own calculations. Here I’d go with plausibility, knowing very well that there are noticeable individual differences between aircraft in the same fleet.
And that’s exactly my point: a lot of people get bent out of shape over a minor inaccuracy while forgetting that they’re not even having to manage to juggle radio channels, callsigns, what assets are available and what ordnance they’re carrying, etc. To bring all that together is a huge undertaking, but it’s not as fun (or as easy) as looking in a TM and slapping that right into the engine – and that’s not to denigrate the challenge of doing such, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to have a data source right in front of you than it is to piece together an environment of chaos like warfare.
Sure, but I think the point here is that the complex guys gets fresh pieces to chew quite regularly. While the light guys starve for more.
Plus lets have a look on a addon campaigns for FC aircrafts. How many we have to date? 3 campaigns for 2 aircrafts out of 6. Not a big number imo.
There are for sure reasons behind this, no doubts. But it is nothing less than pure lack of fresh siming of this kind.
Anyway, I am also fully hapy to have in DCS both light and complex. Both aproaches makes great sense to me.
I’d like to add that a lot of the procedures one would do, for realism involve standard checks to make sure the aircraft is in a flyable conditions. Absolutely useless when you are starting with a factory fresh aircraft each time. How cool would it be if an aircraft had random defects based on usage and time for scheduled preventive maintenance? Missing a sortie in DCS because your aircraft is grounded, probably extremely frustrating but it’s what all those realism procedures are for.
To me, a simulation is mostly how capable it is of drawing me into the experience.
Take On Helicopters actually had this; you had to check the helicopter before a mission to make sure it was all good and no debris or that sort of thing was inside a critical area, or you could get a failure or performance issue in the mission.
And a cranky on call mechanic that would show up, starting the conversation with ”You again! Now what?”
No, wait! That would be too much like my real job…
But sf2 lacks VR which for me in a flight sime has become a sine qua non [not without]. There have been people who hacked it in with various constellations of (paid) support software but that won’t cut it for me. So sad as it is, to me sf2 and it’s collection of 300+ flyables is history, dead as a doornail, deceased, bought the farm, gone to pasture, passed on, resting its soul, pining for the fjords.
