Are We In A Sim Gaming Dark Age? 

I may get flamed for this video but I simply miss having persistent large scale dynamic campaigns that I could get invested into. I really hope that we get this again in modern day sims. To me it seems like such a shame to take all of the hard work everyone has done to take these beautiful full or semi-full fidelity planes and play them on such desolate and static environments. Let me know what you think. I hope this video is seen as a call for hope and not to be a huge bummer. Let's hope we get some progress in 2023. Happy New Year Everyone!

“We have more buttons to press but less to do” is quote of the decade for simming…

As BMS dev , surviving from Antic age , i would like to thank you fot this video that captures exactly why we continue working on Falcon 4.0 legacy :)

My first real Multiplayer experience was Falcon and I was hooked. I joined a LAN group who literally handed me a a phone book sized print out of the Falcon Manual and told me read certain chapters first and come back in a couple of weeks for a flight in the dynamic campaign they had been running for months( yes Months). I dutifully read the chapters and then practice flew some training missions until the Next LAN weekend came .I joined them and I still remember that experience like it was yesterday I'm now nearly 50 years old and I'll never forget how alive it felt and how everyone got involved with what the next mission would be and what that outcomes influence it would have on the campaign. Would we split in to different Flights and do a multi pronged Approach? Would we perhaps take a new airfield? Our choices mattered a great deal. Cooperation was key. LAN group members came and went due to Real life and then eventually disappeared into the Memories of a few old men. I wasn't able to get that feeling again until I joined a Online Squadron a few years later and played IL2 1946. A fun experience and some great memories but no Falcon. Then came DCS World ,Graphics to die for, cockpits full fidelity an active and passionate community. But sadly It lacks that Alive feeling of the incredible Dynamic Campaign Falcon Had. I have gotten to a point in DCS where I load up the sim and then just either sit in the main UI and Don't know what to do or just jump into a plane and go for a sightseeing flight. Because I know that to start a Multi hour mission where It will likely Bug out and can't finish it will sap my will to play. I have literally every aircraft Bar a couple I buy every Campaign that seems interesting but never quite gives that feeling again. Then a new Module comes out and I'm excited to learn it and play for awhile only to remember the problems the SIM has Not addressed and the Dynamic Campaign it lacks.

Falcon's dynamic campaign is the only true simulation of modern air combat I've played because of the threat layers and level of activity in the AO. You truly needed to know how your radar and avionics functioned to be successful. The immersion of getting to know the AOs and see them develop was second to none in my opinion.

From your points, a dynamic campaign for DCS would make wonders for this simulator!

As a DCS content creator myself, I've come across the same issues. Frankly, I don't think that the base code will be updated in order to allow for our Wishlist that you have posted. The stated problem is that making planes and tanks has a direct impact on the bottom line. Updates to the code may or may not bring in new players. The flight sim community is a very niche, middle aged, whale heavy group with disposable income. This demographic has largely spent the money that they want on the base games... the only way to engage their wallets now would be to keep the treadmill of planes and tanks going. Unfortunately, the larger the library of that content grows, the harder it will become to patch it all in to the updated engine *IF* it were to be made... unfortunately, the longer we travel down the path of milking the whales, the less likely it will be that we will ever get anything else.

War thunder has posed itself to capture a huge section of the market base for several reasons. It has variety (which is important at some point) but more importantly I believe it captures so many players because it easily provides "sim-ish" gameplay in short packages (15 to 30 min in airRB). The controls are the same across all vehicles (I don't need to learn a new cockpit to be a decent pilot in a new airframe) and I can easily sit down and play a few games without having to dedicate a couple hours like I might have to in other fuller sims. Its alluring to casual players because its more sim than theyre used to, and the variety is overwhelming. Its alluring to more serious players because of the convenience, and doesnt require hours of dedication to milk *some* outcome of fun from. It is perfectly posed to suck up the most players with the blandest experience, and then milk the money out of them. I don't think its a "bad" game, but its definitely run by a bad company that doesn't *really* care about its players past its ability to make money off of them, and as you said, the lack of any kind of dynamic interesting campaign has set a bad standard for the rest of the industry and players.

Never played those old games, but if IL2 had a proper sense of scale in a multiplayer setting I think I'd shit my pants. Engaging large numbers of human + AI fighters and bombers would be a dream come true.

In the old days we had a lot of CONTEXT. I am from the days of Microprose, I played F-19 and F-117, Jane's, etc. We didn't had much graphics but it was a lot of fun, because they had content and context, thus helped a lot to immerse in the phantasy. Now it is all open world. I guess this add to the theory that humans need purpose in life and even in games to have fun.

I think you articulated this perfectly. As someone who didn’t grow up with the older sims, I was and still am unfamiliar with them. After looking into them, I’m surprised to see they had so much to offer. Once I got into dcs, I was blown away by sim, but after some time I started to feel there was something missing. I think the dynamic Cold War server is the closest we have to filling that gap. Thanks for what you do for the community.

Thanks to WT I got into IL2 and eventually DCS because I wanted more realistic experience, and maybe it will drag more people like me to these games. But I'm actually glad we have only few sims now because of example of Hardcore FPS games. When I was starting there were just few of them if we don't count really old ones. Most famous probably Arma 3, Verdun, Red Orchestra and Insurgency. All had lot of players and experience was awesome. Then developers of Insurgency came out with Day of Infamy, later with Sandstorm, Verdun developers made Tannenberg and Isonzo this year, Squad became a thing, Tarkov, Post scriptum, Beyond the wire, Hell let loose, and even Ready or not, Ground branch or Zero hour are famous now. Main point is community got devided between these games and most of them, even they are so good, are dead now just because no one is playing them and it's making me sad because I had a lot of fun in them. Sometimes less games is better for community even tho they are not perfect, at least we have people to play with.

I grew up with Ace Combat. I love aviation and when I discovered War Thunder back in 2013-14, my mind was blown. Aircraft could shoot at eachother and you could destroy engines. Clip wings. It was so much compared to what I had always known. So I've stuck with it. I have tried to get into DCS in other flightsims but I don't exactly have the space for a HOTAS set up. College sorta kills that for now. But War Thunder was always good about mouse-aim. That's why I stuck around. Nevertheless, you hit the nail on the head. It is very repetitive. The only reason I stick with it is because I'm interested in the next big thing and I'm a bit competitive in the skies. Monkey Brain happy when I get a kill. But it is bland in the end. And I don't know how they can change it. However, there is a part of me that is hopeful for a possible future with dynamic missions. War Thunder has been taking notes as of late when it comes to other games in the flight genre. The battle music has been something that is niche, but they've put effort into. Larger maps have been popping up in Air RB. And there is generally some experimenting that is being done. But, that could just be me being hopeful. My hope is to one day be able to boot the game up and find myself battling in what is essentially an Ace Combat mission but actually a multiplayer dynamic campaign. But the groundwork is currently not there for that. Honestly they could probably do with working on some smart AI to flesh the world out a bit. As for other games, I would like to escape the jail of War Thunder. I think whenever the F4 drops from Heatblur, I might be in a position where I can take a look at least. But time will tell.

At this point, I am unsure DCS has either the engine or the staff capable of creating a dynamic campaign. Perhaps when that extra thread arrives it might open things up, but I remain skeptical. BMS announcing incoming VR support got me to immediately pick it up, once that arrives it's at least an auto-try from me.

You sir just hit the nail dead center on the head, DCS is all shiny and good when you are new to it but old timers tend to get VERY disappointed as time goes by with such a poor depth of dynamic combat simulation. Thank you for bringing awarenes about this topic, i knew i did well subscribing to your channel. Happy new year to you all, i hope for the best for everyone.

DCS is amazing and that's where I pin my hopes for the future of flight sims. IL2 suffers from what I think are insurmountable problems and War Thunder is in another type of market entirely.

Tarkov really is the best example IMO. I'm not one for looter shooters to begin with, but that was a game I was quite hyped for only to play it for a few days, get some middling loot, get bored, quit, and then repeat the process every 6-12 months. The hideouts are really the only new thing (besides one or two new maps) that happened prior to my current hiatus and all it did was add another annoying reason to have to play Groundhog Day: The Game, against players with insane gear and lightning reflexes. If your gameplay loop requires constant resets to prevent stagnation so bad even Brezhnev would blush, you haven't made a game, you've made a particularly advanced slot machine. PUBG held my attention for even less time as it had all the features (or lack thereof) that I dislike in Tarkov while also having a very "generic mid 20teens FPS" feel to it. On the other hand, while I also take long breaks between sessions and think it gets repetitive, I actually enjoy vanilla DayZ standalone as it gives me options and doesn't give me baggage. I can explore, survive, hunt players, team up, whatever - and without mods, I don't have to deal with gamey power fantasy shit like traders with safe zones and god tier equipment, or doomforts popping up everywhere. When it comes to campaigns and old sims... DID's flight sims, particularly with their Total War system, were amazing. I nearly had to repeat a year of school thanks to F-22 Total Air War. I'd sit in the AWACS mode for hours, hopping between flights as a virtual international incident played out. I highly recommend trying it if you can get a hold of the game; I once also saw a really good short documentary piece about the company and their rise and fall here on YT, though don't remember the channel it was on. On the ground, M1 Tank Platoon II provided a similar fix for my burgeoning tank nerd. You know me well enough to know which game I consider to have inherited its mantle, so I'll leave it there for now. All in all, really good points, and really well made. Use your RU-vid influencer street cred to make the BMS guys finish the 16A pit quicker and I'll come join you.

I own almost every module in dcs except for maybe 2 or 3 and I haven't touched the game in months. After playing regularly since early 1.5 there are just too many issues that have been overlooked for years. This combined with the lack of content has been the reason why i've taken a bit of a hiatus from dcs.

My dream wish: all hard core developers come together to create a consortium. For campaigns we have Command from Matrix, for infantry we have Arma, for air: DCS and BMS, scenery: fs2020 and soo on. Each developer with its expertise. And we have Unreal Engine 5 and VR technology. Soo we have everything to make a leap on sim but the problem os get everyone to work together. Hell, we even have Kerbals to weaponize space! 😄

For the records AI crashing on ground was a 4.36 bug (not in 4.35 ) on alternate theater , this is fixed in 4.37 :)

Here is what WT did right: I don't need to read a 300 page long instruction manuel to then get shot down in a 60€ module for a few weeks while using a 300€ HOTAS on a 2000€ rig with a 200€ trackIR kit until I can get one good sortie. WT is what brought me back to sim-lites like Squad, PS and GHPC, I like having a simulation happening behind the screen but I don't have the time/willpower to spend 35hrs/week to learn to fly/drive a vehicle at a mediocre level (and then repeating that process for every new 60€ module) especially when other time consuming hobbies are involved. Edit: Now WT is far behind me but it showed me the type of simulation/ease of use ratio I wanted to have access to and a slow renaissance might be happening with indie devs exploring new avenues as GHPC is showing for tank sims.

Since simulation reached home computers (basically since gaming itself started in the eighties) we have been pursuing fidelity. We have come to a point in which companies sell fidelity airplanes because that's what we simmers thought we were after. Turns out, that was only partly true. After long sessions learing and training unbelievably true-to-life airplanes, we find ourselves missing that old feeling. Bottom line: thx for having created the cold war server. It means A LOT in this context.

Having come of age in the "golden era of sims", I don't have rose colored glasses of that time. As great as Falcon 4.0 and IL 1946 are/were...they were incredibly niche by the time of those iconic releases. Falcon 4.0 was a bargain bin title quickly at the local retailers I went to. The sim community was small even then and marred by bug ridden messes of marquee titles at launch that took ages for patches or community fixes. IL 1946 came out at a budget consolidation of the IL-2 series after all. IL 1946's heyday lasted because of the community investment. That's the issue. Modern gaming makes modding harder and the focus on monetized multiplayer makes single player content harder to come by. A dynamic campaign should have been standard, but at that point one is designing a game within a game and development funds are tight as is in this niche space. I don't see this as a dark age, so much as a transitional one. The core sim audience is older (the genre always skewed toward the older crowd like hardcore turn based wargames do) and said audience wants a mix of the best from the past with the modern fidelity of today. That will come at a cost and there might not be enough of a community to justify said cost unless it grows. DCS alone needs a better entry and tutorial system, along with SP content that can make sense of it's complexities to novices and noobs. DCS has some of those basics already, but there needs to be more consistency so that core game updates don't keep breaking SP campaigns for example. More focus needs to be on the "bones" to justify all the effort into what are some of the best simulations of combat aircraft ever made.

"The snail may get bored of printing money." thats a good one

I still remember the full two-page ad for Falcon 4.0 in PC Gamer. "Perfection is never rushed. It actually travels at about Mach 2." I know ED has said they're working on a dynamic campaign, but once you play BMS, you see all the features supporting that dynamic campaign, and they're not in DCS. There's just a lot of really basic stuff that BMS does which DCS doesn't. It feels like a chasm that ED cannot bridge in my lifetime on their current game engine at their current pace of development. I don't think 1C Game Studios can do it either. I sincerely hope I am wrong. I understand these are companies with financial constraints, but it feels like people are drifting away. I still buy modules to support them, but each new module generates less interest for me. I just don't see myself buying the DCS F-4 or the Eurofighter or the F-15E. I'm also reluctant to get my hopes up for the next IL-2 module, because I can't imagine what they could do to excite me if it isn't the Pacific Theater or the Korean War. I don't think I'll be buying another IL-2 module that isn't one of those.

I'm glad I watched all the way through -- top notch content. You make great points about how there is a way forward to make these games better -- love the hopeful message. I think you're right.

I had countless hours of fun playing the original Falcon 4.0 and Allied Force. Dynamic campaigns were great. Missions were unpredictable and varied. Also liked influencing the outcome. Might be worth mentioning CFS3. That game also included a dynamic campaign where your efforts directly influenced the outcome of the overall campaign.

I was very very very young when IL-2 came out, but I still loved playing it at as a 4 to 5 year old. The entire pacific theater and European theater at my finger tips. Without growing up with this on my grandparents computer I wouldn’t be where I am today. It not only showed me how good gaming could be but put me in my career path today already on my way to fly with United Airlines and learning to fly the T-6 Texan with my local Commemorative Airforce wing. If I were stuck with these arcade fast paced tasteless game like war thunder I don’t think I’d ever be motivated or inspired like I was growing up.

It's worth noting there is a dynamic (sort of) campaign for Great Battles - Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator which works fairly well though it is single player and coop only. Other limitations hamper the Great Battles series from providing the experience you're looking for. E.g. no strategic bombers and the computational cost of it's AI limits engagement sizes. And the engine timers. The GD engine timers.

I’ll be honest, I have been simming for a long time. I think EF2000 was one of the first sims to make me realize the value of dynamic game play, even though it didn’t work that well. DCS does a great job of making the plane you are flying seem as real as possible, but we could use a campaign generator. I took a break from flights sims after they started to lose their mojo. When I did go back, DCS was the only choice for me. But I’m more of a purest when it comes the simulation, hence the word. I want to feel like and have the learning curve of a real plane. I hoping that improvements will come. For me simulation is not a all out kill fest like say a Call of Duty style game. I like the depth and the investment of time. That said, I would like to see DCS get past that one hurdle (dynamic campaign) that from my point of view would elevate the game to new heights. I have my fingers crossed that we will see it soon.

I'm so glad you did this video. Few months ago I found out about BMS, immediately jumped right into it. I have never played DCS because of the amount of knowledge you have to gain for flying one aircraft, but when I found out about the dynamic campaign on this game I went nuts reading the manuals. But I thought to myself, why has this dynamic campaign not been implemented in other games? There are others that attempt the same (such as Strike Fighters 2) but none will have the same feeling as actually fighting another country's army and being just another pilot in a huge scale war as this game does. This has to be implemented MORE.

Its why I miss Janes simulations. I had the Longbow gold back in the day and was fun to play the Apache in that game. You had to worry about ground troops as well as other threats. You have several campaigns to play and even a training set of missions to teach how to fly and use the chopper.

MSFS 2020 is what funneled me into DCS. One of the hurtles for me getting into flight sims was justifying to myself the cost of a HOTAS. Flight sims can be a real money sink and that means you have to be truly passionate about it.

Another point: in old times we had more time to play and sims was simpler. Now even warthunder is more complex then many top line sims from the past (way back before falcon 4). And now, we have less time to play and if you like hard-core sims , you really need to dedicate yourself, because hard-core sims are astronomically more complex then before. Result: many people don't want to invest that much time to learn hard-core sim but just have fun with a soft-core sim. Jump in have fun, bail out.

Hi, I'm 20 years old. I do not have enough knowledge about the sim community but I can say this. I am a slave to the snail that is Gaijin. I love that game so much. I love tanks and I love planes (nobody plays naval). I do intend one day to build a sim setup so that I can play war thunder sim. Sometimes I catch myself side-climbing in first person in my aircraft and I can't help but ogle at all the fascinating dials and seeing how lowering/ raising my throttle affects them. I will also go on to say that I am a MEC (Manual Engine Control) enjoyer and even though I know the difference between automatic and manual controls is very small, i'll fully open the radiators of my P-51 Mustang every single time that I take off of the runway. I have thought about playing DCS one day but there's one thing that is always at the back of my mind: the complexity of aircraft controls and the price of planes. Granted War thunder premiums are slowly approaching the cost of planes in DCS. I do hope one day to join the sim community, not just for aircraft but also for racing (especially Rally sim). Thank you for your informative and thought provoking video Enigma, have a nice day.

I’m only a warthuder player, and I don’t even play on PC but what you is say super valid. They just added the F-16 and Ming-29 and nothing felt like it changed. I didn’t know any of those old sims existed but I love the idea of them, thank you for bringing them to light. I really hope new games come out with a full dynamic war.

As a producer/designer of a Falcon 4.0 release (OIR) I agree. There’s a lot of potential in DCS, but it just doesn’t feel alive. The F4 campaign was and is the king Also, as a producer/designer of Air Warrior, I like the mention of Aces High and WW2OL but frown on not mentioning the sim that literally spawned them both (HiTech started by creating a viewer for AW cam (replay) files). :-) Great video!

Dear Sir, everything you say about the status and future of swimming is correct. We have a long way to go to delivering on our vision of Dynamic Campaign despite working on this core element for quite some time. The rate of development is too slow for my liking but it is moving in the right direction and I trust will meet with your expectations. Thank you for your passion and support. Happy New Year to you and your family. Kind regards, Nick

I appreciate your take on this. I started with war thunder and got fed up with everything about it. When I switched to DCS, I found a great community and fell in love. I feel very lucky to have joined DCS when I did. There’s so many amazing modules available, so many more on the horizon, plus the promise of engine improvements shows me that DCS could be the way forward(emphasis on could).

You really put words on feelings. Awesome video as usual 👍 All my best wishes for 2023 !

Nice to see Aces High get a shout-out. You know your stuff.

You're spot-on, and I'm glad someone else identified how WT and the like ruined the current sim landscape. Only indie projects are really pushing back against this for now (ex: GHPC). The consequences of the current state of the market are very interesting in ways I didn't expect - in particular, the audience perceptions and demands we deal with are striking in how clearly they've been molded by WT (i.e. "WT brain rot").

As a long time War Thunder player, I agree regarding the dynamic campaign. We did have something called World War Mode, but it was extremely basic and tough for individuals to get into as the matches were both short and dominated by squadrons of quite literally a pool of 128 people rotating in and out 24/7 and coordinating each match so that each incidence would result in a victory. I would love something nice and massive like this but I think that it may become dominated by a few select groups.

After drooling over Falcon 4.0 dynamic campaign for years I realized that I only missed: 1. Proper complex ATC. 2. Persistent battle damage of assets and influence on the next mission. 3. Populated environment. You know, without ending every mission with only AWACS, 1 jet and an indestructible Georgian Mi-24 on fire within the radius of 1000 km.

I'm not nearly old enough to have experienced this sim 'golden age' you talk about, turning 23 in the next couple of months. I did switch to DCS in 2020 after having played War Thunder for a grand total of 7 or 8 years after finally losing the hope of some actual development in regards to a dynamic campaign or more fleshed out game-modes, despite the amount of money and time I stuck into that game (which I will say, I still don't regret). I came to DCS initially because the work the community did on the community servers on their own dynamic campaigns was pretty astounding, and it was a lot of fun to play. Though, recently I've been making a lot of co-op missions myself and I've noticed DCS's native lack of complex mechanics for a lot of things like SAM sites, aircraft AND ground AI and an overall lack of depth in the high-fidelity modules they release; The IFF-system being one of them. I believe this to be the reason why there's this *NEED* for a massive community effort to get any kind of dynamic campaign set up and working. I believe the core to this problem being that both titles (War Thunder and DCS) do not have any real competition in their respective target audiences. World of Warplanes is infinitely worse than War Thunder in nearly every aspect, in my opinion, as it does all the same things War Thunder does but at a worse level. Granted that it doesn't have the same predatory economy system that War Thunder does. And with NOR being a military sim project, DCS has no competition at all; MSFS 2020 is targeted to a whole different audience and the only other alternative we recently saw a sneak peek of turned out to be for military use. DCS has no reason to push for too much innovation. I'm very grateful to the community for all of these great pieces of script and all of the mods that allow me to 'complete' the sim and turn it into an experience I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else.

Yes. Back in the good old days we had multiple companies making good flight Sims, today there are 2, il2 for WW2 and dcs for non WW2. BMS kind of counts but it's a mod of a golden age game.

Insightful video, subbed.

It’s gone from, “What could we let the players do” with very specialized sims to, “how much can we nickel and dime to give the players the bare minimum.”

14:33 wow my man hates war thunder and goes into it to grief

I played a lot of IL-2 in my teenage years and I truly miss the sense of scale and immersion like you. I do however truly hope that the large amount of new 3rd party devs in DCS, will prompt eagle dynamics to develop the game engine and leave modules to 3rd parties.

Here's an alternate opinion: why would I jump into more hardcore sim gameplay when I can "enjoy" less forgiving one? For casual players, hardcore sim may not be the final destination, but to stay somewhere between the arcade and realism.

Great video!

Random question, did you ever try World War mode during one of the seasons for War Thunder? Road to the West (which was Fulda Gap and Battle of the Chinese Farm) was some of the most fun I've ever had in games, period.

As someone who grew up in the war thunder Era and sort of graduated to dcs I had never thought of it like this before.. interesting

I think if you took anyone from 10+ years ago and showed them DCS as it stands today, they would say we cannot possibly be in a dark age. In the 90s each module would be a standalone title, with varying quality and quantity of campaigns, mission editors, community support, etc. Then after like 2 years the devs would release the next title and the old one would just be an as-made piece of gaming history. Want to fly Falcon 4.0 in formation with someone playing Jane's F-15 up against a couple Flanker 2.5 guys? Pure fantasy outside of this year's MSFS. Today we have a small number of sim ecosystems, but the content within them and the shared nature of it all is incredible. And, not for nothing, but BMS as it exists today is part of the modern landscape. Play the original F4.0 from the disk sometime - it's got good bones but jeeeeez.

War Thunder player here. To be honest, I never treat it as a simulation because it simply isn't, no matter whoever claims it is, even for the "Simulator" mode. It's an arcade game with some "realistic" elements. It may looked like one back in 2013-2014, until Gaijoob realized that they could not milk anything from developing new game modes (dynamic campaign included) and has gone for keep adding new toys with the horrid grinding instead. I tried DCS World with the Su-27 module 5 years ago and I loved the combat system. It looked even more robust than whatever War Thunder is today. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of spending majority of my free time cruising from point A to point B. I prefer the Ace Combat-style gameplay with a bit of "realism". That's why I still play War Thunder until there is the replacement. However, if there is someone who is interested in War Thunder for the modern planes and doesn't mind the lengthy gameplay, I will tell them to stay away and go for DCS World instead. I mean, it takes way much less time to learn how to fly your favorite module than grinding for the same plane in War Thunder from the zero. The grinding mechanic is that bad. For the dynamic campaign, at least there is a hope that ED will develop it for you all one day, while Gaijoob will give you none.

Interesting perspective. I think you'll always have this divide between sim pilots who fly via game pad versus those of us that use a HOTAS setup. Many of us like the depth and feel of each airplane, its systems and mastering it. Many couldn't be bothered - too complex. I notice you didn't feature any clips from Aces High...i know they are still around, I played that sim for many years. Just haven't seen anything "new" there that made me want to go back

War thunder had the opposite effect on me actually it made me more interested into dcs

Hello sir! I am the annual winner of the King of The Hill event in Aces High of 2019 and playings since 2004. I do feel somewhat the same about modern flight SIMs. But luckily Aces Hight is still rocking on with special events and the regular arena still attracts more than 50 players at one time up to 250 online at the same time. Aces High 3 might not look as good as the newest games, but the mmo aspect of AH is great and is truly an uniek experience. Upcoming month we will have another special event spanning 4 weeks with about 70 players singed up. Axis Vs Allies 1943 the battle of Paris. Flying bombers, escorts and intercepters, simulating the battle with both sides having a change to win this key battle. Feel free to join my squad and see what it is all about. I will have a chat with the organization to get you all settled. (Or anyone else that is interested for that matter) Happy new year sir

A point not considered in the video is that many players have economical restrictions which prevent them from acquiring a 2000 USD machine exclusively used for entertainment and used by a single person. That's why War Thunder seems to "trap" so many sim players, is not that they are trapped by the game, they're trapped by their budget. War Thunder offer an experience which only require 500 USD to access (Gaming Console) sometimes even less (previously owned machines). All of which makes me think that the Sim world is not in a dark age, it diversified to accommodate different budget requirements. Tryhards can acquire their 5000 USD set ups, and the rest of us just play War Thunder.

It seems it's not all doom and gloom, there's a sim for each niche, WT for casual flyers with limited time, DCS/Il2 BoX for those who want something more advanced. Also BMS is growing strong. Their TvT events are fantastic, and new 4.37 trailer looks soo tasty ;). So I hope it's gonna be fine in combat flightsims land.

Agreed on the war affecting output. This year has been pretty stale for most sims, with minimal new content. Not to mention the now grey area of creating more modern eastern equipment.

Oh the irony of me listening to this from my phone while I side climb in my MiG-21MF in Air RB of War Thunder.

I think you are right. I very recently made another comment under a video lamenting the fact that there is no dynamic campaign available. My example was IL2GB which has a very limited set of missions in the pilot career after one week in a squadron you have seen it all and then it is just repeat the same stuff over and over again until the next date in which the front changes and then it starts over. I think the issue stems from a focus on the MP side. As you admit you do not care about SP. But SP is exactly where a dynamic campaign has the most benefit. In MP you already get somewhat "uncertain" mission profiles due to the more chaotic and more unpredictable nature of MP. Yes I get that certain bases, spawns etc. are set and known and the IFF in DCS is too perfect but you get the human element in the enemy behavior at least. The raise of the internet and MP made players forget SP and that had consequences in game design. The devs took notice of this and relocated their resources accordingly. In the end you describe how the community makes their own dynamic campaigns on MP servers, the community fixes in MP what the devs neglected. But why would the devs improve if there is a.) no or less money in it and b.) the community does it for them anyway? A new shiny module is ultimately more profitable for them. It doesn't help either that currently the scene is dominated by Russian Studios. Eagle Dynamic? Russian. 1C? Russian. Gaijin? Russian. WarGaming? Belarusian. If I have learned anything in my decades playing online than that Russians love to be competitive. It is no surprise to me that in that space a lot of companies dominating are from the former east block. MicroProse who made Falcon 4.0 or the Jane's stuff from EA which had dynamic campaigns where from before the internet got big and made in the USA, EF2000 had one made in UK. In terms of IL2GB and DCS they also mostly focus on real scenarios. What I mean is in IL2GB you can not for example win as a German because Germany lost WW2, that you shoot down idk 2k Russians planes alone doesn't matter for the outcome on the east front. In DCS you get maps of past true conflicts. In Falcon 4.0 the story is fictional about a war between the Korean states in the 90ies that never happened. Plausible but still completely fictional. In EF2000 it was a conflict in the Baltics, again completely fictional. My point is if all you do is reenact history you can not have a truly interactive and dynamic campaign because you have certain starting conditions and a set end. A truly interactive and dynamic campaign would mean that Nazi Germany could win WW2 or the Arab League could succeed in destroying Israel etc. And that would be for obvious reason rather controversial. In my previous comment I conceded that if getting something like that means forgoing historical relations and turning it into a fantasy story similar to e.g. Ace Combat I would gladly agree. So no longer would I fly e.g. a Nazi Germany Bf-109 but idk a Teutonic Order Bf-109. Fine by me. It is a shame as with today technology a dynamic campaign could also be more immersive than ever. Imagine landing your aircraft and instead of directly going to a menu screen you could get out of it and walk over to an HQ building which represents a 3D environment of what used to be a manu screen. Kinda like Wing Commander or Tie Fighter used to be in their campaigns. Being able to do a proper walk around of your aircraft instead of just switching to some 3rd person camera of the vehicle or free move camera etc.

I never realized that the dynamic campaign for Falcon 4 was made by an intern. That's really impressive! I'm hopeful that the current big flight sim games will make some of these changes in the next few years, but at this point I'm watching the indie community. Microprose has a few upcoming flight games they're publishing (B17 Flying Fortress the bloody 100th, The mighty eighth vr, Tiny Combat Arena) that look pretty good. If they do well enough, maybe it'll stir up additional interest in sim or sim-lite development from other developers and we'll start seeing a revival in the flight sim genre. Fingers crossed, anyways.

Be careful of rose-tinted glasses.The dynamic campaign in Falcon 4.0 barely worked when it was released. It was extremely buggy. I never managed to get through 2 days of the campaign, until BMS was released.

Я пришел в авиа симы через СБ War Thunder, хотя впервые сыграл в Ил-2 в 2001 году, но был слишком юн. Последние лет 5-6, я постоянно злюсь из-за того, что Улитка бросила EC и не развивает игроые режимы. Ты, буд-то мысли мои произнёс. Причем это совсем не ограничивается симуляторами, вся игровая индустрия в точно таком же тёмном веку находится. Обычно я привожу в пример Батлфилд 1942: многоместные бомбардировщики со взлётом с аэродрома, управляемые игроком авианосцы-базы(функционирующие как авианосец), подводные лодки. Когда я представлял себе, будучи подростком, каким будет Батлфилд будущего, я видел что-то очень впечатляющее. Сейчас у меня есть IL-2 BoS (+Yak-1b, La-5fn), я немного играю в DCS, но для меня дорого, покупать dlc и модули, а каких-то супер захватывающих игровых режимов там нету, что бы был хайп и можно было затянуть знакомых поиграть. Среди всего, во что я играл онлайн, как ни странно, именно Planetside 2 меня впечатлил своим режимом. Реальная война за территорию, без очков и ограничений по времени, каждому типу геймплея (пехота, самолёты, танки, классы) есть применение. Конечно там очень не хватает возможности подключить джойстик, трекир и полететь по взрослому. Я не могу понять, почему никого не заботит вопрос баланса и игровых режимов. Визуальная составляющая стремиться к реализму, а геймплей деградирует. Это даже не тёмные времена, это чума. Верю и надеюсь, что всё измениться.

I think another unwanted precedence that War Thunder has made is that when someone graduates from it to something like DCS, they're expecting the same type of quick game play loop: log on, get into match, kill a coupel things, die, end of match. Something that doesn't help is that getting involved in a dynamic campaign in DCS, etc. isn't straight forward, it's feel nebulous if there isn't something to help a player understand whats happening and what they can do to help. Otherwise its: Log on, take off... now what? Fly around until I die? I think FPSes have been able to iterate on the formula more because it's a bigger community (probably because of it's approachability - you dont have to study to learn how to move, point, shoot). So we've ended up with things like Arma, Squad, Ready or Not (in order of scale lol). Arma and Squad are set up so that the game can be fantastic and immersive just gotta find the right lobby/server. I think the Renaissance will follow the money and I think the money will come when things are more streamlined. How quick can you get a player to having fun? In the sim genre it's probably more apt to ask how quick can you get a player immersed in game and (feeling like they're) affecting the environment positively. Things like Gunner Heat PC and Nuclear Option are another piece to the puzzle. Its easy to jump in and play (as opposed to Steel Beasts and DCS). And we have to mesh all that into our busy daily lives. So maybe something like Squad or Nuclear Option sized (1 - 2 hour games) that effect a larger campaign? Idk, I think a lot of the different aspects have been done well in a lot of places, someone just needs to bring them together

@enigma you need to check out the dcs candyland server it is the first dynamic campaign i have seen, that there is no telling what ai will come to the front lines, it is a PVE but this current campagin has been a PVE/PVP which has been amazingly fun

The whole argument of players being "trapped" in WT isn't just wrong, it's obviously wrong if you stop to think about it even for a moment. War Thunder isn't keeping anyone from DCS any more than Genshin Impact is. You can't grow potatoes out of turnip seeds, no matter how much you water and cultivate them. The millions of people playing Genshin Impact aren't just buds awaiting to bloom into beautiful DCS potatoes under the right circumstances. And while DCS and WT are thematically similar, they are fundamentally on different levels of hardcoreness. The bulk of casual WT pilots flying with a mouse are never ever going to become DCS players, no matter how often you water them, or how much dynamic content there is in DCS.

I think you're right about DCS. How many of us DCS players have told a wingman; "Just over there is where the SAM site spawns, watch out." Or something similar? So while I agree with your statements, I don't think you touched on what I see as the biggest problem DCS has. Their utter lack of consistency is the biggest problem as I see it. MiG-21, but no F4? No MiG-17? A spitfire Mk Ix, but a BF-109 K4? No Stuka? Hurricane? F4F? P38? A6M, Kate? Every historic aircraft has a nemesis, and ED is famous for not making a nemesis. Again, how long has the MiG-21 been out, without player flyable F4s? DCS development teams doesn't flush out the modules with assets and player modules to match. This means that any scenario thought up by a mission maker, is going to be...imperfect. There is no 20mm Orliken AA gun, no Vietnam map, no Cold war era infantry units (FAL infantry anyone?). There is no way in mission editor to make your own airport. There are no Japanese modules or assets, because "what war in the pacific?" DCS developers have the attention span of a goldfish, they simply want to get the next module out, without looking at the sim as a whole and finding holes to fix/ patch/ plug. They allow third party developers to make whatever, with no regard for how it fits. Cool, I like airplanes and helicopters and I'll take what I can get, but someone at ED needs to get out a whiteboard and make a plan to fill the massive holes in the sim. ED could put out bids to developers, "We need a A6M in 1 year. Who can do it?" and then pick the best one. Contract bidding by developers would help. Ed could say, "sure you can make such and such a module, but you also must make these 5 AI assets to help our core game." Again, the attention span of a goldfish. Fill the voids ED. Nemesis modules, consistency, and hold 3rd party developers to so sort of schedule. Make a campaign worth something at the very core of the game. Make the world feel more... correct. (I believe sheep are the most popular livestock in most of the world...no sheep assets in DCS. No camels to smoke, no horses pulling ammo carts in war weary Germany..., no water buffalos for Asia, no Donkey's or mules for Korea.) Granted there are sheep in the Falkland's map, but they're part of the scenery and can't be moved. Despite that map, and the most famous war surrounding the area where both sides used FAL rifles...nope can't have infantry with FAL's. You can't shut off the lights to a city in DCS by bombing a central power plant. DCS cities don't have a power grid, they have magic lights that always come on. (How many more options for mission editors would it be if you could bomb a central powerplant and knock out power to a city?) There is nothing that comes as close to flying combat aircraft as DCS, which is very, very sad. Basically, combine the ground unit modeling from war thunder, with the world from Flight Sim, and the aircraft modeling from DCS (plus their assets and nemesis if those ever come out) and you'd have one hell of a simulator.

I think you're completely right, and it's something I hadn't even thought about until now. DCS becomes somewhat more playable with the DCS Liberation campaign generator, but progress stalled now, the devs have gone into an ukrainian crusade, and at this point someone's gonna have to do a new but similar campaign generator from scratch. I find the AI in BMS very irritating and it's the reason I stopped playing BMS, seeing B-1 bombers that I was escorting, fly right into manpads and AAA, fellow F-16s not react to being intercepted, etc. But at this point, BMS is the best we have.

15:10 congratulations for blocking a player that wants to play the game that makes i definitelly better , btw i dont care if you support ukraine or russia i think its odd to put either flags on your tank let other do and put on their tank they want

Woah, a 20 min of Enigma talking? Who's going to watch it? Well, count me in :)

I'm 40. First flight sim I played was Aces of the Pacific when I was a kid. Then I stopped until this year and got into DCS by way of VTOLVR of all things. I'm having a good time learning the modules, but I can definitely see how we are consuming content too quickly.

I remember the golden age with fondness and I thought by now we have had more dynamic environments not less, thank god for indie dev's, they are rekindling some great 90's content ,helicopter gunship dex is just one guy and recreates Gunship! feels for me. Great article and now a subscriber.

You're right on. Modern flight sims are a relatively shallow, non-immersive experience. It's time to get old-school again! BMS with VR and the upcoming new terrain engine will see a surge of new players no doubt. It'll be interesting to see what the expanding and re-visioned IL2 team are working on now - they seem pretty excited about it (latest DD). And ED in their latest update have just given a progress report on their dynamic campaign engine - maybe a year or two away? Probably AI is the other key factor that really needs to get to a new level. Maybe the tech is getting there with the pretty amazing but limited GPT 3.5 and the much heralded upcoming GPT 4 as a sign of general AI progress. Fingers crossed. Things in that field seem to be moving pretty fast. Keep up the good work. And buy yourself a New Year coffee or whatever on me. :) Cheers & salut!

16:10 bro what the fuck

The same thing has happened in sim racing too. Basically all the modern sims have gone all in on multiplayer online racing. The single player experience with things like career progression, quality AI opponents and championships have all taken a back seat to a focus on e-sports that never gained any traction (apart from maybe iRacing but that has it's own serious caveats). Modern single player racing in sims is basically single sprint races against dodgy AI with nothing to show for it at the end of the race. Older sims had career modes, training and license tests, car and track unlocks as you progressed through the campaign. There was a lot more game even if the simulation wasn't as high of a fidelity.

I am old fart and this video really nails it. It's the emptiness of the simulated world. In my late teens I played a lot of microprose's F-19 stealth fighter (Amiga). Even it had quite rich environment. A lot of radars to avoid, enemy combat air patrols, ... You could plan your own route to target and back and hope that nothing comes on way. Then I played shortly Hornet Korea, which was my first sim for PC. It had nice graphics for Voodoo 2 card but dull missions. Falcon 4.0 changed it all. I spent countless of hours with it. Then came original IL-2. Nice graphics and lot of flying. Again emptiness if you fly out of missions route or target area. My saviour was VEF (virtual eastern front), a kind of dynamic online campaing where single missions was hosted by individual players. Then LOMAC, again emptiness and it has continued since. Lately I have played more War Thunder than DCS simply because it's easy to take part for simulation missions and for a degree you can do what you want: dogfight, attack or be sneaky attacker avoiding enemies. My dream would be something like DCS combined with Falcon 4 stylish AI war engine. I even don't require modern DCS degree of avionics simulation. LOMAC/Old DCS level with working basic avionics (which is more than war thunder offers) is enought. But environment must be lively.

Why arnt you using sim mode in war thunder and not using cockpit mode in rb???

aw cute, he has an entire 5 minutes segment of bullying a T-72 just because of decals. What else, do you fire down teammates because you don't like the sound of their voice?

The irony in the War Thunder take. The main reason i return to WT is because of the dynamic Enduring Confrontation Mode for Sim mode which i missed in DCS until Enigma open his server. So imo WT changed quiet alot from 2013 to 2017 maybe since then it didnt really changed much as i think EC mode came out in 2017 but its not death match what i liked about it unlike DCS which most servers were either PVP Operations or PVP death match server (Growling). Also BMS is obviously part of the modern things as the mod is a modern thing.

Good video with some interesting points. I started simming when I got my hands on the original IL2 sometime in the early 2000´s. What may not be obvious looking at it now was how much of a revolution that game was. This was an era where 3D cockpits were far from the norm, and damage modeling pretty much ment a healthbar. The level of quality in IL2 simply blew everything else out of the water! I think one of the reasons we entered the "dark age" of sims was simply because so few could compete. This was also around the time when console gaming really started to take of. With the original Xbox and PS2 on the market, more gamers (and developers) were drawn to their accessibility rather than studying flight manuals to understand virtual planes. Flightsims was a pretty mainstream genre up until then, and almost everyone I knew who had a computer had some sort of flightsim for it. As for DCS or IL2 taking things to the next level, I personally won´t hold my breath. DCS has been in a state of "almost great" for ten years or more. I remember thinking a decade ago how they would only need a few years to iron out some bugs to really have a home run on their hands. I´m still waiting. The only reason i jump in to DCS now is if there´s a particular plane I´m interested in learning. Which to be fair is the core strength of DCS, and I don´really see anyone else reaching the same level or width in at least a decade. IL2 can be great, but seems to have been treading water a bit lately. I read an interview recently with a member of the development team who quit, and it didn´t sound like IL2 is in a super healthy place right now. Of course, I would be happy to be surprised by either of these sims, as they have provided many hours of entertainment throughout the years.

I wouldn't call it a dark age. On paper we have more modules and features than we've ever had before buuut I would however call it a awkward period where transition needs to happen. We're living with games that are these old legacy projects. Ancient codebases and limited markets. In a time where life is getting more and more expensive, dropping cash on a HOTAS and a powerful PC just to run DCS is less and less appealing. This makes it difficult to justify extensive large scale projects like dynamic campaigns or even large refactoring to sort things out. Fundamentally DCS, WT and BoX were not designed to have dynamic gameplay. Hell they weren't really *designed* at all. Not in a way that would be recognised in more western gamedev circles. You rightfully picked this up with BMS that at it's core the supporting systems are there to create a better gameplay loop. So what does this mean? It means either the big boys have to hard pivot, something expensive and risky. ED seem to be sloooowly moving this way, but they could fuck it up. Gaijin will never change, why would they? They're printing money. F2P games leach off the same feedback loops as gambling, While they can serve as a funnel they should not be seen as market leaders in any sense beyond revenue. So we gotta hope for new products have to step in. This is for me where the is quite a bit of hope, there is a vast void for more systems driven semi-sims along the lines of "GHPC". Games that simulate enough to make the gameplay feel representative but also doesn't waste time and resources on endless fidelity and ignore the context a piece of equipment like a tank is supposed to work in. Nobody is doing this for flight sims yet though and I don't know if it will happen soon. Gamedev is hard, generally speaking unless you are lucky you will be underpaid and potentially mistreated. Small Indie studios can and have stepped up but it's an incredibly risky proposition for folks. Add the layer of the niche interests required to get into sim gaming and you get the idea. This makes it very difficult to retain the technical talent required for the complicated bullshit that is making a Sim. Still, if a relatively small team can get together and develop and idea with realistic scope that plans from the start to incorporate Recon, SAMs, Mission planning, CSAR etc, make the required compromises on presentation. They'd have something special. If they need QA then I'll be first on that boat :) That still leaves ED's efforts, for now we are a captive market and can only hope. But I do think they are trying, it's just if they can do it before everyone's patience runs out. Recent community efforts have helped shed light on the need for more dynamic content, but it will always be an uphill battle at current until significant momentum is gained. Just a few loose thoughts Enfield

“I’m trying to be A-political” *shows 5 minute clip of bullying Russia supporter

I started in MS Flight Sim 95 and SU-27 Flanker from 95. It was inevitable that I found my way back to Eagle Dynamics through the SU-27 module. The 90s had so many sims! Tanks, boats, sums, mechs, space, towers, ants... Lol. It was a really interesting time for pc gaming.

One point I definitely agree with you on is in regard to MSFS, talking about just adding new aircraft onto the same structure without core improvement. So much unrealized potential because the devs are content to print money instead of make the sim better and more immersive.

"Try keep the channel as apolitical as possible" 14:17 *clip of soyboy raging on a friendly player over a Z*

Dude. You're saying that War Thunder has it's flaws - fair point. At the same time you're ruining a match by bamping into that Z player. I get why you might be doing it and by all means write the guy in a private section, tell him his is supporting an agressor and etc. But eh you'll just ruin a match for 10 other players. I'm so tired of these Russia/Ukraine supporters team killing each and getting in each other's way. I hope you'll get banned for doing stuff like that. P.s. to everyone who's gonna be triggered by my comment: I don't live in Europe or anywhere near it, I have no idea of what's going on there, I come to play a video game and I see crowds of cringe ass dimwits ruining games *becoz flag/Z/Azov Sign* (highlight the one you like more).

This is why I still enjoy playing Aces High III. The player base is not what it once was, but the dynamic war and camaraderie you build by flying with guys for years, or well over a decade in my case, just makes the game. AH took a big hit when War Thunder came out just like the rest, and really hasn't been the same since player base wise. Still, it has a loyal base still, though smaller, and the constant revolving war with 3:00 AM Base takes and multi-hour missions keep it going. I definitely share the same feelings and hope things improve for sims in the future.

Bit late to the party, but I've got some comments on this: -I remember when I was a kid, you needed "a" computer to play any flight sim. Not a NASA computer, just a very basic one. Sadly graphics and features are growing much faster than hardware. So much so, that you see sudden revivals of very old games, such as BMS (or Project Reality, in the infantry side). -The barrier of entry to flight sims is immensely high, the investment of a high end pc + hotas + sim game/modules (which are expensive) + very demanding human hours vs playing free War Thunder on almost any device is a no-brainer for potential players. And those hours not only go to learning, but to actually setting up the game and mission to play. Its insane! If you have two hours, you cannot play DCS to something fun, but can have quite a lot of matches in War Thunder** -I started combat flight "sim-ing" in ArmA 3, and transitioned into IL-2, and later DCS. Having the whole incentive in the world, the lack of clear and easy access information on how to actually flight made it so I spent 80% of my time in ArmA and 20% learning in the other sims. I believe MSFS has a decent but not perfect tutorial, it is a step in the right direction. **I much prefer IL-2 or DCS than War Thunder, but apples to apples, for the not super-hardcore player, it is hard to beat. And I hate that. I wish I could hop into DCS, and have a dynamic mission to try CAS in 5 clicks. And to finish, my bet is in that one of these new engines will eventually be a very good platform for developing these type of games. I see a not so distant future in which there are community driven mods for a very good engine. Imagine ArmA 3 mods, but in a high fidelity sims.

Z

You bullying the dude with the Russian flag made me dislike the video , but tis a nice video nonetheless

Yeah, like Enigma, I've enjoyed flight sims since the late 90's. Ahhh, the "Golden Age" of flight siming... you know: IL-2 1946, HyperLobby, TeamSpeak, TrackIR 3, etc... That's the time you'd see well over a thousand online players on any weekend night. A significant chunk of these guys belonged to squadrons. Very much a fun time in my life. Like Saturday night poker, I looked forward to the weekends to share with my squadron buddies. We still keep in touch, two decades later. --- You're right Enigma, we are in the "Dark Ages" of combat flight sims.

Your written summary sums it up very nicely. I still can't believe that no one has developed a dynamic campaign since Falcon 4 and IL-2!

SJW emitting virtue signal+20

you're wrong

You do have a really good point. I have seen this myself when I have tried to get friends into DCS. They ask, "but what do you do?" I realized that is a hard question to answer. You can buy some campaigns for your aircraft (more money?) or go on public servers, but again you are beholden to what the community makes. While it is fun to make your own missions for your group, it is time consuming. 40+ hours to make a good in-depth mission for a group of 30 people to fly for 90 minutes and then it's over. I am hoping with DCS having their new dynamic campaign right around the corner (this year hopefully) it will break this cycle. I do have to say though that sometimes just "flying" (navigating, refueling, monitoring your aircraft and airspace around you) in DCS many times is it's own reward.

lmao at the bullying of the Z