When someone says Falcon BMS going away:
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Oh man, there’s another good point- the fact that Falcon BMS and everything in it is a MOD developed FOR FREE by dedicated enthusiasts.
@MBot’s “Desert X” missions, DCS Simple Radio, and Combat Flite are all developed by third parties for free on what, by any measure, is a pretty hostile developer environment. Imagine what would be possible if the architecture opened up.
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Hell yeah.
Hands up everyone who would pay 120 bucks or more for a properly working (and be iy only like the Falcon 4 one) dynamic campaign engine.
My hand is up. Come on devs do a KS campaign and I’ll prove it.
Well, Matt Wagner did say he wants it and it will be done. Eventually- when they can do it right.
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With the actual skills of some Mission makers together with MOOSE, if they implement a way to save missions status, ( as ED was able to do at Flanker 1.5 times) i think i could easily forget about any other combat sim. 
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VR is the game changer for me. There is simply no other sim out there that literally puts me into the cockpits of these aircraft. Sure, I would LOVE a proper dynamic campaign engine. That would of course be the icing on the cake. I would even give up the F111 module if it meant getting a dynamic campaign 
.
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VR is awesome for simming, aint it? It’s what i dreamed of back in the 90s when my box utterly failed to run falcon 4.0. We are living in sci-fi days my friend. Il-2 BoX VR is pretty darn good as well. They also have interesting SP campaign plans.
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So, the novelty’s never going to wear off?
You’ll be satisfied with a never ending string of $60 releases of a new cockpit to jump into and running through the same 8 scenarios ad nauseum? (here’s how to cold start. Here’s how to land. Here’s how to execute an interesting thing this plane can do. Here’s a scenario vaguely close to what the plane might actually do.)
Because that’s already gotten old for me- @Bogusheadbox is right, I find myself hopping into the next new module, learning everything, and then quitting after 2 to 4 weeks because that’s the extent of meaningful experience a DCS module has when you know the fundamentals of tactical flying and how a modern fighter’s interface (read: HOTAS and UFC-equivalent) work.
My ultimate (and probably irrational) fear is that DCS and flight sims are marching down the same road AAA gaming did. It’s a lot easier to make a visceral experience and a visual spectacle than a system of meaningful choice. Unfortunately, only one of those holds up after the first 30 minutes… and by then the producer already has your money.
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The novelty already has worn off. You are right. For long term satisfaction, one needs to be able to do interesting things with the planes within a context that makes sense. Learning to fly and fight the thing itself is one such thing, applying those skills meaningfully is something DCS is somewhat lacking in perhaps.
I am not nearly done learning all of my planes and for that foresee at least a year of full-fat flying fun for me in that. And that’s not counting future releases.
Even if learning to fly is all one could ever do in DCS, I’d get my dollars’ worth. But you are right, it’d be like a throwaway AAA game that you are ‘done’ with after a number of hours. Will it always stay like this? I like to think it won’t.
But it is what it is, and it aint what it aint. I rather see the glass as half-full and see things like MBot’s dynamic scripting, the new Il-2 SP campaigns and think the future is bright. Of course things aren’t going to stay like they are. The only constant in the universe (besides a the planck one and C and perhaps some more 
) is change.
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I can never say never, but so far, VR has rejuvenated my interest in simming. So, given the choice of a 2D sim with a dynamic campaign, or a VR enabled sim that is missing the dynamic campaign, I’ll go with the latter.
It really comes down to what you want to get out of your sim experience.
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Yeah but that’s a false dichotomy. VR’s here, it’s happening, it’s going to stick around.
The question is whether developers are going to try to build the basis of their revenue stream on “Wow factor” and novelty rather than meaningful choice and depth. Heck, even if they do go that route it’d be fine if they at least gave the community the tools needed to create said choice and depth.
The combat flight sim community in particular has some fairly high barriers to entry. Ignoring the cost of peripherals, software, and the hardware required to run it all, you’re still looking at one of the nastiest learning curves you can find in the sphere of what can be considered “gaming”.
We need the means to give simmers a reason to come back for more.
Eventually one day between IL-BoS and DCS we may have every major/popular combat aircraft simulated. It’s not impossible to imagine now even if it will take a while, and then becomes more a case of being interested in terms of airframes if they are ‘funnies’, in that they are not usually used but still interesting because they are rare (no offence @Bogusheadbox 
).
If we then have all the Gen 4.5’s that secrecy allows, and we have great graphics and great performance then I imagine the only direction future sims go would be either ‘Down’ or ‘Out’:
(a) Down. As in, give more individual aircraft depth. I think there is a market for this, as in FC3 futures and the Russian birds etc. Is there a lot more to do here though that doesn’t get increasingly niche and cost per unit / dev effort though?
(b) Out. As in give a wider simulation of things not just in the aircraft. While we have aircraft switch fidelity (kinda) then will we get more depth in terms of Agency stuff, like ATC, like JTAC, like real world navigation etc. Carriers, ships, fleets. Tanks, infantry and combined arms. Weather, environment persistent damage. There is a lot still to scale a sim out with. Simulating these ‘systems’ doesn’t require a dynamic campaign engine but still a lot of work and tech that doesn’t exist.
As odd as it sounds we might have to one day rebuy our existing modules for a ‘new platform upgrade’, as a way for the sim market to make money and exist not on individual aircraft purchases but on ‘scaling out’ the sim aspect of it. DCS World 2025 might be like getting a new OS, in that you should buy it and upgrade. I mean, once we have the major F-, F/As, A- and some B- types then wouldn’t that be the way to go?
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I think this is overestimated statement. The whole development of F4, and other MP titles at that time I would say, caused MP death.
Imo it is easy to say it was the DC because that explains why nobody did it again. But ask your self, would you do exactly the same again if you are a dev? Is there no other way? Like the semi-dynamic approach etc.?
Isnt there any other company doing prety good campaign and being still profitable? There is one sim which comes to mind, WoFF. The devs are developing next sim atm from WWII - Wings over Third Reich.
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Until they start doing some serious improvements to the way things look and work on the deck, DCS isn’t going to supplant any heli sims in the near future.
I also don’t see DCS competing with the survey sim market.
That’s a really good point. To pull from @near_blind’s opinions I don’t think what we’re looking for here is specifically a dynamic campaign, full stop- it’s a context driven mission experience. The sensation that you’re slotting into the role occupied by your aircraft in an environment that’s responding to your choices. Something different from the sensation that you’re riding along the rails placed by a mission designer to execute procedures in an appropriate setting.
How we get there is very open ended, and only one of those paths looks like a dynamic campaign. Player driven multiplayer scenarios like Blue Flag, Open Conflict, etc. are another way, as are missions with well-planned initial conditions and random starting actions like Desert Tiger, Desert Fishbed, etc.
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January is gonna be so interesting. Il-2 has always been as dry as DCS. A pure simulator where you run a scenario and learn what it can teach. But no more… when their big 3.01 update hits, it should have what you are describing, a context driven mission experience generator.
I really don’t see why that would never happen for DCS either. In some ways its already happening. The desert tiger things are practically dynamic campaigns in and of themselves.
Sorry what? Which IL-2 are you talking about? Rhetorical question, mind you.
I really disagree, but that’s just opinion vs opinion. No il-2 has always felt as sterile as DCS does now.
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