I have- they’re great! But I’m sure @MBot has some opinions on tools that don’t exist (but should) that would make his life in creating said scenarios easier. 
1 Like
all of em lol
when I say dry, I compare it to the Great Old Sims of Yore that had things like pilot logbooks and gave you medals, a spot in a squadron and a new ride if you stuck around for it (dynamics aces over the pacific, microprose gunship 2000), campaigns where you were fighting to paint a map blue, bombing an airfield would lower the amount of enemy A/C in the air etc (Falcon 3.0 / 4.0).
Those things were games first, simulators second.
The scripting engines for DCS and Il2 are almost strong enough to allow one to code a game in them to go with the sim.
2 Likes
Thank you for your explanation, I liked it.
I still sort of disagree but I do see your point.
2 Likes
AI has come a long way since 1998, surely at this point it’s nowhere near as difficult to develop these things, for instance Heatblur developing the Jester AI for the F-14, from what it sounds like it’ll have to be pretty complex and dynamic to interface with multiplayer situations and so on.
1 Like
2 Likes
In general gaming, AI is certainly ready to start taking advantages of a lot of the commodity convolutional neural network stuff that has been squeezed even down to phones now (it takes a lot to make the net, not so much to run the net, if that makes sense),
In the non-flight sim genre, the actual issue so far is not that AI can’t be better, it’s more that the players don’t really benefit from it. Simple decision tree AI is fine to beat most players, so all an emergent AI would do would be beat them more efficiently, and players hate that apparently. Because of the uneven playing field of heuristic-based AI, it’s more of a case of how to make it ‘fun’ rather than better.
Improvement using upcoming tech in Flight Sim AI is a whole another fascinating topic in itself, but at the very least the biggest change over the next few years should be just to carve out more CPU cycles to do more things. We’re still basically CPU bound, and just getting away from that will be the first major trick.
EDIT: More thoughts, as fancy coffee still full.
One fun mental exercise would be to see if we could apply improvements in image recognition and layered CNNs to see if we could build a better gaming ‘fighter pilot’. As in, give it the same inputs as we get of a pair of eyes looking around, with the same delays to operate controls/outputs.
Now, I am very sure RAND etc were doing this back in the 90’s and its well trodden ground in miltech, but thinking of this more from the aspect of perhaps WWII gen fighters and flight sim gaming. The big change over the last 6 years or so has been the ability to run this tech on home hardware (with training in the cloud, heh).
Could we build the ultimate flight sim gaming dog fighter using a similar stack to how a Tesla drives itself? I think we probably could, and we could make it fight like a real person, but with the ability to learn. Set it up as a MP client, release it on a server and watch everyone shout ‘cheat!’.
A lot of this has already been done with AI’s playing things like Super Mario or driving around in GTA5 - what would be fun would be apply it to a restricted flight sim case, more as an AI gaming experiment.
EDIT2: There are a couple of public research papers on this unsurprisingly. This one uses a neural network to learn to fly a F/A-18, although this is more on the ‘control loop’ side of things while I was thinking something a bit more pew pew and fun. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/44616 and http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:7z5S2TPbzc0J:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 etc
EDIT3: Coffee all gone!
6 Likes
What i think would really benefit DCS is the following
1). First to be able to group flights in multiplayer. I.e. when you choose a plane, you can opt to form a wing or subset of planes that can go with item 2 below
2). Allow each player to have access to a restricted version of the map editor.
Restricted in the sense how you can restrict the F10 map. Ideally it would be the F10 map with fog of war and the mission editor UI overlaid. But you could only edit parameters of your plane only or those planes under your wing or group.
That way over a dynamic campaign, a single player or wing lead or GCI can brief load out and in real time plan that particular sortie that is relevant at that particular time. It then submits and loads into the respective plane/vehicle.
2 Likes
With aircraft like the F/A-18c where planning a mission is absolutely essential, I think the multiplayer experience might suffer badly without some kind of waypoint/target point editor before takeoff.
The only reason I ever take the Viggen out on Through the Inferno or Blue Flag is because of the mission planner program by Sgt Cyanide that allows you to preplan your data cartridge waypoints and so on, and it works great!
2 Likes
Not for a flight sim, but more a proof of concept, is the Alive mod for Arma 3. http://alivemod.com/
Its a dynamic, persistent campaign generator tool. Something similar would probably be possible through DCS scripting, but who knows.
Really if someone could make an AI commander mod/script, DCS would greatly benefit.
3 Likes
Discussions like these are interesting.
But, the way I see it, it all boils down to what you find entertaining…
Simulations are by nature somewhat of a sandbox.
There’s lots of stuff to do, compared to most games, where there is a scripted storyline.
I think everybody agrees that there has got to be content. But what is content, in a sim…?
There are thousands of FSX and X-Plane users that are happy to fly around navigating the planet and shooting approaches. Their missions are all in their fantasy. These simmers don’t need scripted missions or a campaign, or you could say that they provide their own as they find pleasure in following standard operating and navigation procedures.
We are all looking for enjoyment in our sims, aren’t we?
I have been flightsimming since the 80’s. Started out on the Commodore 64. Then the Amiga 500. I have had a lot of fun in flightsims. Many flightsims back then would be considered simple mobile games, today. But they were entertaining in their own ways.
What do I find enjoyable today?
Well, I want a challenge. I like a purpose in my simming. Campaigns? Sure! Missions, yes. But I’m also a good ol’ fashioned plane nut. I like aircraft. Just flying around doing some aerobatics or pattern work can keep me occupied for a couple of hours. Not everyday though. Need diversity… A quick mission dogfight can also be a lot of fun, for a while.
But to get any long term entertainment, I need a campaign that I can immerse myself in. I don’t mind scripted campaigns at all, if they are historical or at least plausible. But what I absolutely love in a sim is resource management. I want my squadron to manage. Or a crew, perhaps. I remember Falcon and Gunship 2000 had this. And MicroProse B-17 let me manage a crew while doing the 25 missions. That was a great dimension that made me care for my fellow virtual comrades. It made me careful when planning and executing the missions, because I wanted everybody to return safe. That was my gratification and primary objective. Hitting the target was a bonus.
I miss this in sims today.
But I doubt this is everybodys cup of tea…
6 Likes
I think that what I really loved about Falcon 3.0, and that it was a game changer from then on, was the fact you weren’t A pilot. you were ALL the pilots.
You were some sort of Spirit Guide, THE Squadron. I would care for all of your pilots as each one had a name, a face, a callsign and skills.
That was then dropped in an environment that felt alive and full of activities going on whether you looked or not.
It seemed alive.
You didn’t even need all the ATO like in Falcon 4.0- for all you could know there was a complete wawr going on around you- while in fact only a few missions were actually happening.
In some sort of way Static campaigns from DCS aren’t that far- just a little bit.
One of those facet that is missing is the consequences of a mission bringing over to the next.
I don’t know if what I say makes sense but… that little je ne sais quoi is what’s missing now.
If you really look at it, it’s really so little that’s missing in DCS.
3 Likes
Like many of you I have for years begged for a Dynamic Campaign in DCS (…and IL2 and RoF). And I have finished a bunch of Falcon campaigns to both victory and defeat. Mostly defeat. BMS still looks great and plays great. But I have only pulled it off the bookshelf once since getting the Oculus. It is very possible that I will never touch it again. If, in some farcical alternate universe, DCS did a devil’s deal whereby they promised to implement a fully dynamic campaign with the cost of ceasing all VR support then I would walk away from DCS as well. It would be easy.
1 Like
“…a system of meaningful choice.”
Did you come up with that? It is brilliant. That is exactly what I want in all of my free-time endeavors. It is the single best definition for “game” that I have ever heard. My mind is blown. (…carry on…)
You guys really dug deep with this thread. I thought it would be the same old garbage but there’s been some real nuggets. We obviously give this stuff far more thought than grown men should feel justified in doing.
This has been a highly interesting discussion so far with a lot of great thoughts.
I share the sentiment that most of the excitement in DCS seems to be in regards to new modules, which can fade off rather fast. I see it with myself and also observe it in our MP group, that we always quickly run out of things to do. Learning and training seems to be by far the most common activity in DCS. But for me this training has always been just a preparation to play the game. When I originally got Falcon 4 I spent 2 weeks reading the manual, then I went on to play it! DCS clearly doesn’t work like that. Some people can sustain them-self with training for months, which is great. I usually just want to get proficient for flying the jet into war. But then where is this war? I already see the first signs with the Harrier. Dropped the bombs, VTOLed it on the spot, plugged it into the tanker, now what’s next? This is where the dynamic campaign should come into play.
While I agree that making a DC is hard, it is not that hard. After all I, someone that knows almost nothing about programming, could write a pretty extensive DC system (within the constraint possibilities of the DCS framework) in under a year in my free time. Looking back at my experience with it, I came to the conclusion that a professional programmer who actually knows what he is doing and is working full time could do wonders in a couple of months. It is just that you actually have to commit to a DC. And that I think is the real problem. Most developers simply don’t want to. I am sure that if Eagle Dynamics, in their 30 years old history, really would have wanted to do a dynamic campaign, they would have done it by now. I have read the recurring statements by ED over that years that they would love to make a DC, but so far I have not seen an actual commitment.
Of course we are not talking about the full-blown war simulator of Falcon 4.0. While this DC was fantastic and I would love to see it be replicated on the same level, a DC does not necessarily has to be of this scale. I think it is completely sufficient, and a lot easier to realize, to concentrate on an air battle, an operation. An air campaign, as dynamic campaign implies, versus a dynamic war. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to be small in geography or small in aircraft numbers. Think just Battle of Britain instead of a simulation of UK vs. Germany. What exactly such a DC would include, such as a ground war, a naval war, factories, logistics etc., would depend on the specific aircraft and scenario that should be portrayed. A Battle of Britain DC for example would not need aircraft factories or ground combat. A DC for a B-17 would not need a ground combat either but would need aircraft factories. A DC for an AH-64 would need a ground war but no aircraft factories etc. And here we actually see a major problem for DCS. A dynamic campaign that would work equally well for all of the great variety of available (and future) aircraft modules indeed seems to be next to impossible to do.
2 Likes
Interesting thoughts by y’all!
I have the impression that we don’t really have defined what dynamic campaign means so I’d like to concentrate on that a bit.
I vaguely remember we had a discussion about that, and I think Ill revive that thread (or create a new one) soon.
IMO it isn’t really necessary that it resembles what we have seen in Falcon4, to catch the essence of it there are not too many points lacking in DCSW for me.
As for @komemiute 's point:
You are right, I felt the same about Falcon3 pilots. They weren’t just AI dudes but squadron mates I kinda cared about. Little effort but very immersive!
Ohh… you are so pessimistic 
I think this thread is diferent to other similar threads. Because this thread will ends optimisticaly
With DCS 2.5 around the corner I think, and I hope, that the code base will become less moving target for the 3party and comunity and we will see many more robust scripted campaigns and also many more dynamic campaign atempts becoming DLCs.
And to coment on the ‘training and going to war’ part. You need to pretend that you are pilot in a country which is not participating in any war. So you will end up training your whole combat pilot carier.
And maybe, only the next generation of virtual combat pilots will finaly go to some virtual war
1 Like
@NEVO. Naw man. I am not pessimistic. I think we are in the greatest period of flight simming in history. I never imagined that I could consistently believe that I am actually flying. It was intended as an inward looking joke.
2 Likes
I would just like to barge in a second to praise everyone’s aplomb and to thank y’all for giving the silly topic a really diligent, meaningful and respectful thread.
Thank you.
2 Likes
No I can’t take credit for that- there’s an odd intersection between game theory, critical literature analysis and video game design that I enjoy learning about which harps on this topic a lot.
1 Like
Isnt it Sid Meier of Civ fame who coined that phrase? He used to work at microprose…
1 Like