Skelthos

There is a certain segment that throws a fit if everything is not how they personally believe it should be, often using historical accuracy as their weapon of choice even though their version of reality is often questionable at best and often just wrong. They do tend to be rather vocal, which does seem to cause some developers to hold back. The truth is that everything in our sims is a compromise, none of it is even 90% accurate across the board. Fully agree that a close enough Zero is better than nothing or just reskinning existing assets. The Corsair is looking great!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Steam would have no real interest in such arbitrary limits, infact I would argue that the opposite is true. They make their money selling other people's games, trying to dictate what APIs, etc are used by those other people, which would drive devs away from the platform not get them to drastically redesign their game. When you run into limits like this, it is likely not the distribution platform, but rather a limitation that the game devs built in, or an artifact of the API used by the devs. Random example: The XInput API that used to be part of DirectX had a hard limit of 4 USB game controllers, if you made a game using XInput for controllers that was the limit, no matter where or how you distributed the game. Not trying to support or defend Steam, but would rather see them brought to task for their questionable business practices, rather than things they likely had no control over.

So many of my old books like that are gone, lost in various moves over the years. Possibly floating around in some box we have not opened since the last move though.

The engine timer issue is a tough one to solve, in a real engine there are so many factors that add together to dictate when that exact engine in those exact conditions would fail. Engine 1 can last twice as long as engine 2 because engine 2 has a crankshaft that was dropped at the factory and has micro fractures in it, and engine 3 has a hose that has a thin spot. I had contemplated some type of variable, maybe something along the lines of a minimum time based on the book + a random amount of time. With some audible or visual queue for the player to notice he is pushing it too far? MaxT=Emin+Eran if EMaxT- MaxT-WarnT then TempGuageSpike or something along those lines.

The appeal of Steam is not that it is mandatory for good MP or for anticheat etc, it is player reach. Steam has some 120 million active users monthly, and is 75% of the market for digital distribution of games. There are a lot of potential missed sales by avoiding it entirely I think the smart thing to do is the same trend we see with other popular flight sims and offer it both stand and on Steam.

The only advantage PSVR has is that game developers have a single platform with a single hardware spec to program and optimize for. If they released it for PC this advantage would be lost. It is only plug-and-play on the PS5 because it is a closed environment. Specs for the headset also fail to stand out, in fact, the PSVR rolls in spec-wise roughly comparable to the Quest 3 at a higher price point.

Discord offers the ability for real-time text conversations along with voice chat.

The Corsair is looking really good, but I am much more excited for the Phantom release. Just not currently enough in DCS to fly the Corsair against.

Far from my first sim but EAW is the first one I flew online multiplayer in at all. Such a good game!

It very quickly becomes muscle memory, you make sure you bind the buttons to similar functions across planes and after a very short time, you do not need to see the buttons. A button box or 2 to get rid of the need for the keyboard and you are golden personally I use the Winwing MIP for this. Cost is absolutely an issue for many people, other people just do not get along with VR, they get sick from it, or just do not like it for whatever reason. There are definitely trade-offs and is an individual preference. I always recommend trying VR if possible before investing in it.

Assuming you have a computer that can support it, VR is much more immersive. It feels like you are in the cockpit versus staring at a flat screen. Properly set up in VR everything appears life-size and fully 3D you feel like you can reach out and touch everything. Really hard to explain almost something one needs to experience to fully understand. That said I am not sure I would say it is the go-to these days, VR is a niche market, and although it is a growing market that growth has been slow but steady. Judging by what little data is publicly available one would estimate that roughly 3-5% of the PC gaming market owns a VR headset. Possible that the sim space has a slightly higher uptake but I have never seen actual data to support that theory.

CGI has come a long way, but I have yet to see a movie where it is not instantly apparent that the sequences use CGI. Not sure I would call it seamless, but I think it will eventually get there.

The issue with overall sub numbers is we do not know how many are retained by the new content, how many are cyclical and will resub when the next season of a show drops, how many dropped for reasons unrelated to content production, or how many are subbed for any particular content. Also missing is the break-even point for sub numbers, what is the minimum number of subs needed to maintain investor profit margins? Not saying Star Wars has not run its course, I think it has, it is certainly not the draw it was almost over 40 years ago. I just would not link total sub-numbers for Disney + directly to new Star Wars content.

This is the only thing keeping me from playing it. At this point, no VR support in any sim is a complete deal breaker for me.

Absolutely, a beta tester saying XYZ does not feel right or feels bad, is good for the developer. I was more speaking towards the trend you see from some developers who seem to cave into or make drastic design changes because of a few beta testers, or even worse people who saw a twitch stream of someone doing beta, screaming. Not calling out any particular developers as you see it across multiple genres. A good developer should filter any feed back that is not constructive in nature.

Long term I would love to see all the theaters that have been traditionally under represented in flight sims included. Burma Malaya/Singapore would be great additions.

Crew member chatter in multicrew aircraft increasing situational awareness is a great idea at least in my opinion.

One would hope that the main testing will be done by someone invested in getting the sim the best in can be and can be as un biased as possible. If the dev team is good, the beta testers will have no impact on the direction of the game and will just be used to iron out bugs.

Current AI like ChatGPT is decent at generating basic code, however it is not code you can just plop in. It is generic, you will need to modify it to fit your purpose. It is also often wrong or highly unoptimized. It can be used to assist, but still needs someone who knows what they are doing micro managing it. It will get there someday I am sure but not there yet.

Zeus was released in 2000 if I am not mistaken. So newer than Caesar III by a couple years but still an old game.

Looking really good, eagerly awaiting the VR implementation, cannot play combat sims anymore without it.

This is exactly right, no interest in the big PVP dogfights, personal preference is more realistic missions and co-op for multiplayer.

Yup I saw he said that about the Buffalo. My comment was more aimed at concept art in general. I would never look at concept art and assume it was exactly what was being planned or what is coming. Probably just bad wording on my part.

My 2 dogs.