Quote:
Originally Posted by Threadfin
OK, fair enough nippelspanner. I disagree with your analogy and it's far more than a matter of taste. And I accept that calling DCS 'rubbish' isn't fair. The sim is good looking, the aircraft, systems and weapons are well modeled for the most part and the 'pits are gorgeous. Beyond that though I have little good to say.
For me, DCS is a fantastic flight sim while BMS is too, while also being a fantastic combat flight simulation. Beyond the actual software though, DCS, to me, is a mess. Haphazard development map, fractured community, substandard releases, ridiculous forum and so on. There's much dissatisfaction and downright hostility in the DCS community. So even if someone might think I am full of sh!t, it's out there for all to see.
If you like DCS that's great. Have fun if it scratches that itch. Having more sims is good. I was wrong using the word rubbish to describe a sim that does indeed have good qualities, even if I personally feel it misses the mark in many facets I believe are essential to a sim that models combat aircraft. Good hunting.
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I think this is a great analogy, and thanks for taking a fair perspective on it.
Honestly, I would have to agree with you completely on this, too - I do like what DCS does and I'm happy that it seems to have a live and active community of both players and developers behind it. I think what they definitely nailed was the development and sales model with 3rd party content. Not that it's a new thing, as it's basically a more modest version of what the Flight Simulator payware scene looks like - but it is good that it seems to be doing well in a combat simulator too. As a result, DCS is easily the finest "study sim" there is - if you're willing to pay to get all the various high-detailed aircraft.
Falcon is a study sim too - though even in these latter-day versions, a true study sim of the F-16 only (with other flyable aircraft doing a fine job of being plausible, but still often relying on F-16 systems modeled underneath). DCS aircraft do have a number of finer details modeled in some respects, but overall I'd argue that the BMS F-16 is still the ultimate simulated combat aircraft - though it is helped by the fact that the F-16 comes in more versions and deploys a greater range of weapons than any DCS plane does. At the end of the day, if I had to pick only one aircraft to fly in a combat sim, that'd have to be it.
What's more important, though, is the rest of the simulation - DCS does boast better graphics, physics, and even the (for now mostly theoretical) ability to play as ships and ground units (something Falcon was originally envisioned to do as well, but it was just a pipe dream at the time). But F4's campaign just blows everything out of the water. Ultimately, it's the difference between well-choreographed scenario play in DCS (and all credit due to great scenario designers of course!) vs. a live, unscripted, massively complex air/ground/(somewhat sea) combat theater in F4, essentially a self-playing strategic wargame where things like integrated air defense systems, supply, morale, manufacturing etc. all play an active role.
I say it without the slightest irony or exaggaration, but IMO Falcon 4.0 is not just a great game but one of the most ambitious pieces of software ever written. That ambition made for a pretty much unplayable game on release - but ultimately, it is still the closest we ever got to having a computer game where you can actually be part of a full-scale war, and interact with any of the hundreds of aircraft and thousands of ground vehicles - in 3D - which are meanwhile interacting with each other in all sorts of ways. Now it's nearly been two decades, and Falcon is still as close as you can get to a full-scale virtual war you can participate in first-person - and not because it's better than other sims, but because nobody has even attempted to do something so stupidly daring since. Can't blame them - F4 was not a financial success, and was among the reasons Microprose folded not long after its release. But even next to other great dynamic campaign games like the Enemy Engaged series, what it set out to do is pretty jaw-dropping to this day. And after all these years and a stubborn community, the fact is - that dynamic war in Falcon makes for a game that's infinitely richer than anything else out there, including DCS. And amazingly, it's not just singleplayer, but you can have all the campaign features in multiplayer too (and now it actually works and is stable, too!)
DCS will probably continue to draw the lion's share of multiplayer interest though, because it is better at multi-platform play - and at the end of the day, dynamic campaigns are not as important to most playing online. Most people tend to be more interested in human opponents, not the AI backdrop there. But in singleplayer - or even smaller-scale coop play - Falcon is going to be hard to beat. So I totally agree - I think that compared to anything out there including DCS, Falcon just has more to it as a game. But I don't think that's meant to make others look bad! More sims = better for us all
