This may be related but, apparently I’ve been living under a [simulated] rock for too long…there are people that are now teaching others how to “do stuff” in DCS (and maybe others) - and getting paid for it!?
My first reaction was, well, never mind (YGBSM in old-school parlance). However, maybe there’s something to it concerning youngsters? Logistically not sure how this would work though.
Anyway…back to my rock…
I am not sure either. But it still doesn’t bypass the game server. With Hyperlobby, you would chat with your friends, convince them all to join Wes’ server for some co-op action par excellence and click “launch”. Two minutes later you were choosing your plane. With Discord it’s “Hey guys, can I play? Really? Great? What’s the name of your server again? Oh and what’s the password? Cool! Got it. (I think)” Then you launch DCS, click Multiplayer and type the given name of the server on the search bar. Can a monkey do it? I guess so. But is it the same? Not to me.
That started a whole virtual riot. Didn’t follow through much to know what’s going on.
If anyone wants some virtual help though we have members here that can teach! Myself, @Franze, @WreckingCrew, @AndyE are online frequently enough that odds are a scheduling opportunity will be open. Price: whatever time you care to spend! I relearned some Viper basics on the fly this weekend!
These sims need that themselves. A virtual O-club where you can discuss things but don’t need to have a separate app like Discord or HL.
Older sims had something like that (SP only of course) for between the missions.
Games like The Division and Ghost Recon have it now. You can see other people in these communal areas, but you don’t have to fight with/against them. They are there if you want to try to join up with them, though. When you walk out the door, they are gone and it just you (and friends).
Most sims don’t have a FPS/third person option, although you do if you eject and survive. I think ED and Star Citizen are going to have that, though, right? Getting in and out of the cockpit and interacting?
I grant that these devs don’t seem to have the spare bandwidth to implement something like this right now that’s apparently not core to the sim, but maybe they could plan it in the future.
Isn’t that what DCS are planning to do with the ThuperCarrier ready room?
Be nice if you could “see out” from there, or wander around (or just teleport) and watch others from the crow’s nest, tower, etc (online and AI). Course, maybe that’s the plan?
AFAIK it is, indeed.
That would excite me more than just about any other single element of multiplayer. Why it is that I, someone who hates classic forms of social media, would want this I just can’t explain. But I have been begging for years. Currently I feel more alone in multiplayer than I do sanboxing in single player. But a world with other players where we could interact? That would be amazing!
You just need to come up for some co-op missions (where some structure keeps it from seeming like the other players are just AI doing their own thing) or perhaps take the plunge and multi-crew in a Tomcat as pilot or RIO (doesn’t have to be combat, just a tour perhaps). I think that may help change your mind a little bit! Not to diminish your ideal concept at all, mind you!
PvP isn’t the best it devolves back down to lone wolf play quite often in DCS (aka air-quake).
Quite right. Co-op in a nice challenging and involved scenario is by far the most fun thing to do in DCS. And that’s from a fan of airquake!
I’m reminded of the VNAO Ready Room mod:
If DCS could integrate something like this in place of our boooorrrriiiinnnggg briefing text and data-log debrief, we’d be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are now. Having the Supercarrier ready room is a step closer, but we have no idea how it’s going to work or be integrated into the experience. We’re all well aware of what 90’s era sims did in this regard and I’m going to keep pounding that drum until ED listens and actually does it.
I also enjoy coop MP quite a bit, but there can be friction there.
Some people want to be laid back and relax while flying. Others want to imitate military-style comms. They may want to form strike packages. They may want to just head to target on take off and basically fly like it’s SP but with MP comms. Some want to devote time to take off, tanking, long flights, accurate landing procedures, and others may be happy to just bail when they’re out of bombs and spawn a new plane. Some use every flight as a further training flight, messing with systems and weapons to learn something new or a better way, while others will just fly the same FC3 plane again because they care more about blowing up SAMs than HOW they blow up SAMs. Some want/need labels, others want nothing to do with them.
The trick is finding a group to fly with that is flexible enough not to push what they want on you that is also around when you are.
My take on it has been that its not that young people have less or no interest, Its that young people are not attracted to the dry, humorless form of simulation that the elders have drifted to after having their own fun and games, years earlier.
No mission or reward structure is part of it, but its also a general community miasma/attitude where P3D users boast that they are not using the sim for anything as childish as entertainment, and are instead conducting "serious flight training following all the real life parameters that…
YAWN!!!
Opppps, sorry, where was I?
Its not that there is anything wrong with approaching simulation from that standpoint, but with it has come a tendency to look down/deride anyone not using flightsims in a very particular narrow way, and the attitude is palpable on many forums with causal references to not wanting things “dumbed down” for the “Console kiddies” who should "go back to their Xbox’s. Etc.
Those “console kiddies” are lurking and watching (like I did) and seeing that is NOT encouraging.
There is also how that attitude gradually removed the traditional “ramps up” and extensive training missions that were once standard for the genre, instead tending to assume everyone is at near PMDG level.
P3D completely got rid of missions for a while, and many in the community brag proudly how they never used an FSX mission. (those are for children!)
Dumping bags of flour? Ufos? Flying through rings? OMG!
X plane, with its original impenetrable engineers only user interface used to drop new users straight into the cockpit of a 747 with not an ounce of explanation, and if you are an MSFS2020 Alpha or Beta tester you will find numerous threads in the user forum from people howling that any hint of user friendliness makes this new offering a horrible kiddie-centric toy of a game…
Bleah! Why would youngsters pop into that atmosphere? Does it sound like fun?
So instead, its War Thunder that has the millions of players. Shrugs
@HiFlyer - Yup.
The frustration comes from the preferences of others reducing my options; the hardcore want it to be difficult (fundamentally it is); the casual want it to be simple, quick, and easy to start.
Hmm, kinda like my new BBQ grill: I’t’s a pellet grill. I load it with pellets, turn it on, set the temperature and, viola!, I’m cooking over wood, with all the benefits that includes. However, my nephew has started a [quite popular it seems] website on BBQ’g - they call me, “Cheater!”.
I’m the console kiddy of BBQ’g.
Funny.
Pff. Purists. As if someone else having even the option of taking a shortcut diminishes their world. And not just on flight-sims. It happens in all kinds of things. Religious purists for example, the horrors those have caused over the centuries…
I’ve once heard a guy going on a Teamspeak rant on how irritated he was that people didn’t use the NATOPS to learn a plane… I mean… come on…
It’s highly disappointing people don’t spend 100K and a multiyear program to learn how to fly a real aircraft so they can properly fly in a simulator! 
Well of course you’re upset - he didn’t say Chuck’s Guide! 
Thus, the Hollo Pointe crowd!
There’s another rub to add to the mix. Simulators are a way to step into the dream of flying. That dream is founded in reality, current or historic. When I was 16 and learning to fly I KNEW that a Pitts, F-14, B747, AH64, P-51D or STS MIGHT be part of my future reality. If I were 16 now, most of those things would not be. A current fighter like the F-35 fights for you while you eat a sandwich. Where’s the fun in that? Robots flying airliners are just a matter of time. The P-51 will cost you $3 million and you will have to fly it with such tender care you might as well save your money and buy a Mooney. The good news if you are 16 is that, for example, powered paragliders are pretty cheap, exciting as hell to fly and relatively easy to learn. And that is just one of many toys and adventures that are in the hypothetical 16yo’s future, but that might not have been as accessible to some of us growing up in the '80’s. So I see the kid’s decision not to bother with flight sims as rational. It is a hobby that has little to no relationship to any activity he could hope to aspire to even if that’s what he or she wanted.
None of this means that the game can’t be made compelling enough to be fun AND accurate and capture his attention. There just needs to be an acknowledgement on the part of the developer that they keep perfecting the same half of the complete package.