Would a engine upgrade be in the cards?

[DetCord12B]

On 7/13/2020 at 3:03 AM, Asgar said:

you want the devs to implements horrible performance and technology that still doesn't work properly years after it's initial implementation? no thanks

 

This. all of this. Ya know, I remember when the community was begging for dedicated servers and then ED implemented them. It took nearly a decade to do it, but they did it... ?

 

BoX's terrain might look dated and it might have some questionable performance data for some of the aircraft but if offers what amounts to an unparalleled and well-rounded experience in SP and MP alike with dynamic campaigns, great FM's, tons of user content, modability, and a dev team that actually listens and continually improves their products in a timely manner.

 

So I most certainly agree, lets leave the ED business model to ED.  

 

On 7/11/2020 at 7:16 PM, BlitzPig_EL said:

The really important thing a new game engine could bring is the ability to have proper numbers of units (land, air, and sea, human and AI) on the map.

 

This engine limitation is whats really holding the series back and its a big one. The fact that older games like CLoD can simulate hundreds of AI aircraft together with a hundred plus players is quite telling with regards to how the Digital Nature Engine is utterly lacking. That said, I don't know if this barrier can be broken with the current tech they're using.

 

 

[DBFlyguy]

2 hours ago, DetCord12B said:

 

This. all of this. Ya know, I remember when the community was begging for dedicated servers and then ED implemented them. It took nearly a decade to do it, but they did it... ?

 

BoX's terrain might look dated and it might have some questionable performance data for some of the aircraft but if offers what amounts to an unparalleled and well-rounded experience in SP and MP alike with dynamic campaigns, great FM's, tons of user content, modability, and a dev team that actually listens and continually improves their products in a timely manner.

 

So I most certainly agree, lets leave the ED business model to ED.  

 

 

This engine limitation is whats really holding the series back and its a big one. The fact that older games like CLoD can simulate hundreds of AI aircraft together with a hundred plus players is quite telling with regards to how the Digital Nature Engine is utterly lacking. That said, I don't know if this barrier can be broken with the current tech they're using.

 

 

 

 

200 bombers and flak... and the frame rate doesn't seem too much affected... YES PLEASE.  Hopefully someday this will be possible with BoX without having to completely start over again like they had to after Rise of Flight...

[SJ_Butcher]

I would like something like unigine2, the version 2.10 looks amazing and fit this kind of projects easily.

 

 

To me it's a matter of time, the cost to develop your own engine is too high and complex, it's much better to licence the best engine that fit your needs and develop your game/sim, if you don't do it the market will eat you. I will not buy the Normandy because it don't catch my attention, I don't expect just more planes and a new map, I expect that the game evolves to something better with more features, better image quality, critical complains fixed too. Besides I fear what MS 2020 will do to this sim.

Edited August 11, 2020 by SJ_Butcher

[DetCord12B]

1 hour ago, SJ_Butcher said:

I would like something like unigine2, the version 2.10 looks amazing and fit this kind of projects easily.

 

 

To me it's a matter of time, the cost to develop your own engine is too high and complex, it's much better to licence the best engine that fit your needs and develop your game/sim, if you don't do it the market will eat you. I will not buy the Normandy because it don't catch my attention, I don't expect just more planes and a new map, I expect that the game evolves to something better with more features, better image quality, critical complains fixed too. Besides I fear what MS 2020 will do to this sim.

 

UNIGINE is absolutely amazing, especially now that it has a fully implemented sim SDK and is already in use as a commercial flight simulation training system.

 

[Rei-sen]

16 hours ago, DetCord12B said:

The fact that older games like CLoD

If I remember correctly, the development of CloD started in 2009, while the development of RoF engine started in 2007.

 

Ideally, Unigine would be awesome for creating a flight sim, but still, I think CloD engine is still pretty good. It has some fundamental things done right. No wonder, since Oleg knew what he was doing. This engine was developed with WWII in focus from the beginning. 

 

I hope 1C will heavily focus on developing and improving CloD engine. If there is an engine that is capable of recreating massive carrier based battles for Pacific and large formation of bombers for proper representation of western theater air combat, not just a tiny part of it - it's CloD.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Arthur-A

[DetCord12B]

54 minutes ago, Arthur-A said:

If I remember correctly, the development of CloD started in 2009, while the development of RoF engine started in 2007.

 

Isn't the CLoD engine a heavily modified version (though considered separate) of the previous iteration used in 1946? Hell, it has repeat code variations throughout it from older versions as seen in 1946. The same delimited parsing is present in a whole slew of file sets and configs. Could easily be wrong though.

 

Quote

I hope 1C will heavily focus on developing and improving CloD engine.

 

As much as I enjoy CLoD, it's just too old to devote any sort of monetary investment in. The tech limitations are evident in just looking at what it is and isn't capable of like enhanced terrain, weather, tex-res, the renders, etc.

 

Quote

If there is an engine that is capable of recreating massive carrier based battles for Pacific and large formation of bombers for proper representation of western theater air combat, not just a tiny part of it - it's CloD.

 

Task Force Admiral for example is a game that simulates hundreds upon hundreds of assets simultaneously while featuring complex FM's and DM's for the aircraft portrayed, and its an RTS...

 

These engines have existed for quite some time. The issue for IL-2 isn't that an engine doesn't exist to fit the platform, they most certainly do (Outerra, UNIGINE, IBeX, etc). The primary issue remains that a great many indies studios are in similar circumstances. That being that they're comfortable in the dev-suite they're using and will avoid changing at all costs. Why? Well because it costs lots and lots of money to shift from one engine to another and to retrain the entire dev-staff in said software development kits.

 

Not such a big deal with regards to EA or Ubisoft with almost bottomless pockets, but 1C and 777 it is. 

[Rei-sen]

18 minutes ago, DetCord12B said:

The tech limitations are evident in just looking at what it is and isn't capable of like enhanced terrain, weather, tex-res, the renders, etc.

Take a look at DCS 1.5 and 2.5. CloD can be changed like that. It's not a limitation, just a matter of enough time-resources. It doesn't have real limitations such number of aircraft, bad damage model, etc.

[Mika_87]

Dcs 2.5 is looking fine. But after what we have seen in fs2020 it is just not enough, at least in my opinion. New fs show what is possible and after that every other sim look outdated. Will i still play il2. Yes. Will i like it. Yes. Will i buy more il2 sims in future. Yes ?

[Rei-sen]

FS2020 might look cool, but it's not a combat flight sim. For me that means no fun.

[Luftschiff]

Whenever people ask why don't [company] just switch to a better/new engine, they always underestimate the work and hidden costs (not just monetary ones) - or plain misunderstand what an engine is and does. I've used the metaphor earlier in this thread already but think of it as a fully operational, wartime (i.e product is already selling and in use) aircraft factory. When designers come up with a new cool design that appears to be superior in some ways - why doesn't the factory immediately start producing the new fighter aircraft?

• Planes are already at units, being used to good effect and suffering attrition - they need replacement, they need replacement parts.
  These are your customers demanding more content, patches and updates for IL 2.

 

•  The staff at your plant have great experience producing the current fighter, they can build them quickly and are adept at fixing any issues that come up. Even modification kits and upgrades to the airframe can be quickly incorporated into the assembly line. You are proud of them, they're doing good work.
  These are the devs, having devoted thousands of hours to become skilled with their tools and processes, at bugfixing, incorporating new technology etc. They deliver on time and under difficult circumstances.

 

•  Your factory has a full complement of machinery and equipment for producing the parts for the current fighter. It has taken time and tons of money to buy, install and maintain them. This is the current engine. It has been built to great cost and does its job.

 

Enter the new fighter design, the new engine. It promises to be truly great at [thing] and wow, look how pretty and sleek those lines are. Surely this will beat the competition and win the war.
We need it NOW. 

To start producing that new fighter, you need to throw -everything- away. 
You have none of the tools and machinery required. They must be built, refitted or purchased. This is a huge monetary cost, and having them delivered and ready for production will take a long time. Months, maybe years before you have the same kind of assembly line built up again. But it can be done.

Your staff have little or no training on these new machines, with these new schematics - and though it can be learnt, those thousands of hours they had will largely be wasted. Problems that crop up will take a long time to figure out and solve, and since the old machinery has been trashed, no updates or fixes can be made to the old fighter design - no replacement parts can be produced. With the staff relearning their job and all the machinery being repurposed, the fighter fleet currently fending off the enemy and keeping our pilots in the air will start to dwindle under combat and attrition. Planes that used to be rolling off the assembly and being shipped to front line units on a weekly basis aren't. 

But oh, when the Triebflügel finally starts to roll off the assembly lines again, maybe one a month, in early 1947, then we'll show those pesky allies!
-

The fact of the matter is that the design (new engine) will always be untested, no matter how promising the predictions are. Engines always have problems.
It's not simply a matter of comfort with existing tools that make companies stick to their guns, developing a new engine is a monumental risk and halts production, something that even large companies might not be able to afford. Bethesda is still producing 109's on their 18 year old creation engine. It took Ubisoft 12 years to start phasing out Dunia. 

Yes, eventually the 109 may start to prove insufficient. But understand fully the reasons germany kept producing them, and you may understand why 'Engine upgrade' is easy to say but not any kind of holy grail.

[Lusekofte]

52 minutes ago, Mika_87 said:

Dcs 2.5 is looking fine. But after what we have seen in fs2020 it is just not enough, at least in my opinion. New fs show what is possible and after that every other sim look outdated. Will i still play il2. Yes. Will i like it. Yes. Will i buy more il2 sims in future. Yes ?

You will find such funded cfs when playerbase exceed 2020 customer base. 
remember planes and objects has no dm. 
it is not comparable. 
 

 

35 minutes ago, Arthur-A said:

FS2020 might look cool, but it's not a combat flight sim. For me that means no fun.

To some degree I agree. But a civil sim with task to do like bush flying. Fire bombers and transport missions are fun. 
But Tobruk occupy my little flying time. So I have not bought it yet, sitting on the fence and see if my interest increase 

 

As a sidenote, I believe GB developers in  general have more ambitions than I and many here. I believe if they had more funding, recourses and time we would have all things and more into this game. 
But currently it is not so, still we receive more improvements than I expected

Edited August 12, 2020 by 216th_LuseKofte

[TWC_Ace]

The biggest flaw of this game is its limited game engine. It just cant take more than 60 planes in the air in MP without issues. Also clouds are worse than in ROF. Something must be done because if not we woould never have large bomber formations or big online dogfights without issues (like we have now). Also, we can forget about PTO.

[I.JG3_CDRSEABEE]

Has the engine reached its limit or is it being watered down for low end machines to run? Maybe its time for people to upgrade their computers.

[SJ_Butcher]

2 hours ago, Arthur-A said:

FS2020 might look cool, but it's not a combat flight sim. For me that means no fun.

 

I hope they use the to revive the combat flight simulator, we need competition in this market.

[Dutch2]

10 minutes ago, SJ_Butcher said:

 

I hope they use the to revive the combat flight simulator, we need competition in this market.

 

First we have to see the real results on FS2020, but from what I did see on Youtube, this 2020 technology must have opend the eyes of all the Russian flysim studios and there sub-contractors.  

Sorry 1c, no pre-order BoN, my wallet is now waiting for the FS2020-VR module and the needed RTX3080-10Gb. 

[kendo]

2 hours ago, =VARP=Tvrdi said:

The biggest flaw of this game is its limited game engine. It just cant take more than 60 planes in the air in MP without issues. Also clouds are worse than in ROF. Something must be done because if not we woould never have large bomber formations or big online dogfights without issues (like we have now). Also, we can forget about PTO.

 

Rise of Flight clouds always looked a bit Walt Disney to me.

 

Have you tried BoX clouds set at Ultra? I've been amazed at how good they can look recently.  

[grcurmudgeon]

4 hours ago, Luftschiff said:

Whenever people ask why don't [company] just switch to a better/new engine, they always underestimate the work and hidden costs (not just monetary ones) - or plain misunderstand what an engine is and does. I've used the metaphor earlier in this thread already but think of it as a fully operational, wartime (i.e product is already selling and in use) aircraft factory. When designers come up with a new cool design that appears to be superior in some ways - why doesn't the factory immediately start producing the new fighter aircraft?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)

 

But aside from that, the point is very correct. Anyone who says "just grab an engine and start using it" doesn't realize how much work is often required to adapt that engine to your particular game's needs.There may be parts of it that are unnecessary but take up memory / processing, or it doesn't quite fit your specific AI needs, or any of a number of other issues, especially when you need to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of it. I'm familiar with cases of some of the popular engines needing 50% of the base engine code needing to be changed to work for specific games.

 

There are limitations for every engine. This one seems very focused on detailed modeling of the aircraft, not hundreds in the sky at once. If that's not what you want, then ClOD is sitting there for you. But this one definitely keeps improving, and maybe we'll start getting more and more aircraft in the air as time moves on. When discussing an engine switch you always have to be ready to discuss what you are willing to give up in order to get the new features you want.

[AndyJWest]

23 minutes ago, grcurmudgeon said:

Anyone who says "just grab an engine and start using it" doesn't realize how much work is often required to adapt that engine to your particular game's needs...

 

Indeed. And anyone looking for how 'grabbing an engine' and then trying to adapt it to do something it wasn't designed for should look at the festering money-pit that Star Citizen has become. To be sure, Star Citizen has other problems too (e.g. endless feature creep, and Chris Roberts' ego), but the choice of an unsuitable existing engine (CryEngine, and its later derivative Lumberyard) was almost certainly responsible for many of the issues which have plagued it.

 

As far as I'm aware, there are no commercially available game engines which have been demonstrated to be capable of handling the sort of complexity and scale required for a next-generation air combat simulator. Engines are designed for mainstream products, not niches with requirements not encountered elsewhere.

[Gambit21]

There are some other available engines that are designed for simulations. However the concerns/complications outlined above still apply.

[Luftschiff]

1 hour ago, grcurmudgeon said:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)

 

But aside from that, the point is very correct.

 

I should hope so, the point of the short story is exactly the point I'm making!

[grcurmudgeon]

42 minutes ago, Luftschiff said:

 

I should hope so, the point of the short story is exactly the point I'm making!

Yeah, poorly worded by me, I recognized that story in your post and it's why I posted it. You can get lost chasing technology...

[ShamrockOneFive]

On 8/11/2020 at 8:59 AM, DetCord12B said:

 

This. all of this. Ya know, I remember when the community was begging for dedicated servers and then ED implemented them. It took nearly a decade to do it, but they did it... ?

 

BoX's terrain might look dated and it might have some questionable performance data for some of the aircraft but if offers what amounts to an unparalleled and well-rounded experience in SP and MP alike with dynamic campaigns, great FM's, tons of user content, modability, and a dev team that actually listens and continually improves their products in a timely manner.

 

So I most certainly agree, lets leave the ED business model to ED.  

 

 

This engine limitation is whats really holding the series back and its a big one. The fact that older games like CLoD can simulate hundreds of AI aircraft together with a hundred plus players is quite telling with regards to how the Digital Nature Engine is utterly lacking. That said, I don't know if this barrier can be broken with the current tech they're using.

 

 

 

That works because the AI is so much simpler than the AI in Great Battles. You may then say "But they fight better" and you may be right about that but it helps that the AI there don't use the real flight model and its none more evident then when you try and get into a dogfight with one and they out roll you at twice the roll rate as they aren't bound by the same flight model. There's a price to be paid using either method.

 

Scaling the experience up for 1CGS in whatever they do next would be something to add to the wish list. Being able to do more AI units in the air, on the ground, and all around would be a considerable engineering feat if they could pull it off and not lose the good parts of about what the AI does do in Great Battles.

[Rei-sen]

1 hour ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

the AI there don't use the real flight model and its none more evident then when you try and get into a dogfight with one and they out roll you at twice the roll rate as they aren't bound by the same flight model

That's just a matter of tweaking some parameters. If done right, the AI will fly within the aircraft capabilities. Honestly, I haven't seen an unrealistic UFO-like AI behavior in CloD yet. What I immediately see is utter dumbness and worthlessness of AI in BoX. Really, don't need to spend a lot of time to find that out.

8 hours ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

But a civil sim with task to do like bush flying. Fire bombers and transport missions are fun. 

Yep, that is definitely fun things to do in a flight sim. I think that for those things a damage model has to be present. If MSFS 2020 will have it, I might buy it.
And most likely I'll buy Deadstick when it comes out.

[ShamrockOneFive]

4 minutes ago, Arthur-A said:

That's just a matter of tweaking some parameters. If done right, the AI will fly within the aircraft capabilities. Honestly, I haven't seen an unrealistic UFO-like AI behavior in CloD yet. What I immediately see is utter dumbness and worthlessness of AI in BoX. Really, don't need to spend a lot of time to find that out.

 

Get behind a slower rolling fighter (say a P-40... not super slow but not super fast) and watch them out roll you.

 

It's not as bad as DCS' AI which can definitely float through their on an anti-grav machine but it's not great either. I will take the AI in Great Battles over both of them because at least they are playing by the same rules.

[Rei-sen]

1 minute ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

I will take the AI in Great Battles over both of them because at least they are playing by the same rules.

After hours of playing in various BoX SP Careers and Campaigns, and all the frustration due to the dumbness of it's AI I beg to differ.

[RedKestrel]

14 minutes ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

 

Get behind a slower rolling fighter (say a P-40... not super slow but not super fast) and watch them out roll you.

 

It's not as bad as DCS' AI which can definitely float through their on an anti-grav machine but it's not great either. I will take the AI in Great Battles over both of them because at least they are playing by the same rules.

 I remember old Il-2 1946' AI where the 109s would dive towards the deck, then pull up hard and zoom upwards in a way that you could never do in a player-flown plane, even with the more simple flight model of that game. The AI was smarter but stuff like that was frustrating, and even the better combat AI was quite predictable in the way it reacted to you. 

[Lusekofte]

I like groundatrack scripted campaigns in GB. I really do. And so far I like only one career and that is JU 88 over Stalingrad. 
You really do not have to deal with stupid wingmen in these types. 
Because GB wingmen must be the most dumb and utter useless things air ever saw. In that aspect earlier IL 2 ai was way better. 
But I am glad some are happy with it. My flying are now only Whimpy. 
a bomber demanding more homework than any GB can offer, AI that does it job with no sudden turns causing the rest to collide for so change their mind and tirn the other way. I really apprechiate servercapability in cod and that extra level of complexity. For that I can live without VR and the general more beautiful GB

[=BES=Senor_Jefe]

My fear is not that the devs are not doing enough.  In fact, I'd challenge someone to find me a game that goes through a significant patch update as often as IL2 which gives enhancements on top of fixes.  Yes there are still some glaring issues, and I see most in VR due to an engine not originally optimized for it (how could it have been?!).

 

However, my concern is with the engine in general.  While not overly "old", I do wonder how much can be squeezed out of it without absolutely killing all sense of performance for the average Joe.  EVENTUALLY, an engine change will be needed, but hopefully the devs are critically thinking about this before it negatively impacts the user to the point they go to that "other" combat sim.

 

Military analogy incoming!!!:  it's like cramming 100lbs of shit in a 50lb ruck...

[Lusekofte]

1 hour ago, Arthur-A said:

I'll buy Deadstick

Me too. I buy it with or without 2020. Because I will fly bushflying only in both anyway. I reslly do not need the entire world

[coconut]

3 hours ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

That works because the AI is so much simpler than the AI in Great Battles. You may then say "But they fight better" and you may be right about that but it helps that the AI there don't use the real flight model and its none more evident then when you try and get into a dogfight with one and they out roll you at twice the roll rate as they aren't bound by the same flight model. There's a price to be paid using either method.

 

Having the ability to use the complex flight model with the AI is nice, but being limited to that is not good. It's especially useless AND costly for bombers, who don't behave one bit realistically anyway (box flights with passive gunners, or disorganized wobbly-tumbly crowd with sniper gunners). Let the handful of AI fighters I'm dogfighting use the complex flight model, have the rest use a cheaper one.

 

Regarding the topic: I think the engine is mostly fine. Eventually it's bound to fall behind engines like Unreal with more money behind, but there's always a risk that Unreal wouldn't meet one of the requirements for simulation. After all FS2020 went for their own engine too, meaning when they started none of the other general-purpose engine were affordable or good enough.

The real problem is the limitations that the devs seem to be putting on themselves, like full-fledged flight and damage model for every plane, everywhere, all the time. It's a technical major tour de force to achieve that, but its value to me as an end-user is limited.

[Wolfpack345]

3 hours ago, Arthur-A said:

After hours of playing in various BoX SP Careers and Campaigns, and all the frustration due to the dumbness of it's AI I beg to differ.

Everyone likes to rag on the Great Battles AI but it honestly is not that bad.   Like Shamrock said they are playing by the same rules which is refreshing and impressive! 

People who complain about the AI love to point to 1946. The AI in 1946 is not that great to be honest... and it cheats! If it were as "Simple as tweaking a few perimeters" then how come all other flight sims have this issue?  People are viewing these older games through rose colored glasses.  

 

[LizLemon]

1. Gamma correct pipeline

2. PBR

3. "Flipbook" explosions/smoke

4. Gamma correct pipeline

5. Fix the tree lighting

6. Atmospheric scattering instead of a texture

7. Gamma correct pipeline

8. Replace the SSAO with GTAO

9. HDR 10 support

10. Gamma correct pipeline

11. Remove the tracer/light scaling

12. Support masks for grass

13. Deform the terrain mesh by using the tile texture heightmaps

14. Gamma correct pipeline

15. Some kind of GI, at least for cockpits

16. Penumbra on shadows in cockpits

17 Gamma correct pipeline

And lots of silly stuff like fixing the missing stars, minneart shading for the moon, tone down the sun bloom/flare at low sun angles. And just fix the rainbow bloom already

which is partly because its not gamma corrected....

.

[SJ_Butcher]

1 hour ago, LizLemon said:

1. Gamma correct pipeline

2. PBR

3. "Flipbook" explosions/smoke

4. Gamma correct pipeline

5. Fix the tree lighting

6. Atmospheric scattering instead of a texture

7. Gamma correct pipeline

8. Replace the SSAO with GTAO

9. HDR 10 support

10. Gamma correct pipeline

11. Remove the tracer/light scaling

12. Support masks for grass

13. Deform the terrain mesh by using the tile texture heightmaps

14. Gamma correct pipeline

15. Some kind of GI, at least for cockpits

16. Penumbra on shadows in cockpits

17 Gamma correct pipeline

 

  Hide contents

And lots of silly stuff like fixing the missing stars, minneart shading for the moon, tone down the sun bloom/flare at low sun angles. And just fix the rainbow bloom already

  Hide contents

which is partly because its not gamma corrected....

.

 

 

Nice summary, could you please point examples on your point? Looks like you have the knowledge to show us some examples. Thanks.

[Feathered_IV]

7 hours ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

 

I like groundatrack scripted campaigns in GB. I really do.

 

I can’t do the ground attack stuff in GB.  Even though it is one of my main areas of interest within the existing game options. All player satisfaction (for me) is optimised right out of there by the vanishing smoke and flame that disappears in 20-30 seconds, even in ultra settings.  Any feeling of accomplishment or immersion is quickly lost and exercise feels futile to me. So much so that I prefer to look elsewhere to spend my gaming time. 
 

For a title which is named after a Sturmovik and which is so top heavy with fighter bomber types and geared towards small unit tactical operations, I am sure this is a shortcoming that the developers are very much aware of.  On a positive note though, with the new competition from Microsoft 2020 and Desert Wings etc I suspect there will be a big push on extra graphical flourishes In GB over the next 12 months or so.  I really look forward to seeing what new improvements get added to the game to give it more of a payoff once the shooting starts.  More bang for buck, if you’ll excuse the pun 
 

 

Edited August 13, 2020 by Feathered_IV

[Gambit21]

15 minutes ago, Feathered_IV said:

I can’t do the ground attack stuff in GB.  Even though it is one of my main areas of interest within the existing game options. All player satisfaction (for me) is optimised right out of there by the vanishing smoke and flame that disappears in 20-30 seconds, even in ultra settings.  Any feeling of accomplishment or immersion is quickly lost and exercise feels futile to me. 

 

I would like to see a column of smoking, burning wrecks behind as well.

 

This is actually possible to do in the editor with static vehicles. It’s a lot of logic to lay down, but doable. Simply placing a fire/smoke on each vehicle and activating it when the vehicle dies. 

 

I may do a bit more of this with the next project. Including with train cars and such.

Normandy carnage.

 

That said, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Lusekofte]

5 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

can’t do the ground attack stuff in GB

Well my ability too overlook this is probably a product of lack of choices. 
when I have time I fly with mates in coop. 
we use a ai leader to steer us to waypoints triggering escort and so on. Then in battlezone he disappear. 
Having to deal with only enemy ai, witch can be pretty convincing and dangerous in initial engagements. GB is a treat to fly. 
But to me, the slaughter of favorite US designs. The timers and primitive engine dm. The lack of complexity in all tasks is the slow running motor wearing me down. 
It is no doubt the most beautiful cfs to fly in. In many ways very rewarding spending time with.  I simply have a brake from it. 
Getting back stronger when Tiffy and Mossie arrive. Love the Tempest, Tiffy is gonna be great , and with no weapon restriction like Tempest always get by mission makers

[CanadaOne]

6 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

I can’t do the ground attack stuff in GB.  Even though it is one of my main areas of interest within the existing game options. All player satisfaction (for me) is optimised right out of there by the vanishing smoke and flame that disappears in 20-30 seconds, even in ultra settings.  Any feeling of accomplishment or immersion is quickly lost and exercise feels futile to me. So much so that I prefer to look elsewhere to spend my gaming time. 

 

True dat!

 

If the smoke would last longer it would act as a good target indicator for a second pass. And it kinda takes the fun out of it when you lay waste to a train or convoy and seconds later there's nothing to show for your efforts and map looks as dead as what you just nuked.

[grcurmudgeon]

Right, there are lots of improvements that the game still needs, but they don't necessarily need an engine replacement, they just need the continuing updates to the existing one. They did just do a major chunk of work to switch to deferred rendering, for example, and they continue to improve the AI and other features. 

[ShamrockOneFive]

16 hours ago, coconut said:

 

Having the ability to use the complex flight model with the AI is nice, but being limited to that is not good. It's especially useless AND costly for bombers, who don't behave one bit realistically anyway (box flights with passive gunners, or disorganized wobbly-tumbly crowd with sniper gunners). Let the handful of AI fighters I'm dogfighting use the complex flight model, have the rest use a cheaper one.

 

Regarding the topic: I think the engine is mostly fine. Eventually it's bound to fall behind engines like Unreal with more money behind, but there's always a risk that Unreal wouldn't meet one of the requirements for simulation. After all FS2020 went for their own engine too, meaning when they started none of the other general-purpose engine were affordable or good enough.

The real problem is the limitations that the devs seem to be putting on themselves, like full-fledged flight and damage model for every plane, everywhere, all the time. It's a technical major tour de force to achieve that, but its value to me as an end-user is limited.

 

I think the biggest problem the project has had is years with no AI developer on staff. Likely those are circumstances they couldn't have avoided (its tough being a small sim developer) but I think the AI could have been a lot further along if it had time to develop alongside the rest of everything. The wobbly bomber formations are improving and it seems that this is an area that their AI programmer is busy working on things.

 

I think there's a potential smart middle ground for the AI to use the complex flight model but maybe... not all of it. This is where the new AI for DCS World is apparently headed. A much more complex system than present (the AI flies using their old SFM technology which is very simplistic) but maybe without quite all of the nuance of the human flight model. That would be a suitable middle ground and maybe a place to go in the future that could help boost the numbers of assets operating at once without incurring the wonky flight physics problem and rolly polly aircraft that annoy me so much.

 

I'm sure its not a simple matter to do that either.