Like most, I am very reflective toward the end of the year and I wanted to read the room and see where we were at with our mood on things via our survey. I hope you all found the survey results to be interesting as well as my takes on things. I don't expect or necessarily want everyone to agree with me but I do hope what I shared gave you something to think about. I look forward to seeing you all in our video game skies soon.
To me, the tragedy of War Thunder is that they have, hands-down, the greatest potential of any game in either the air or ground sim space. With the foundation of their robust netcode, staggeringly optimized graphical engine, easy accessibility, and hundreds of vehicles, they could reach for the stars. Instead they have chosen to double down on their skinner-box infinite money machine design, where the only choice is undirected, ahistorical, grab-bag TDM, and the only constant is grind. The result is massive amounts of unhappy gamers playing it and having their imagination and hope for what a vehicle combat game could be slowly burned from their brains. I dare not hope that this will change.
Dude, I know what you mean. I quit warthunder 2 years ago and only started playing again last week. I never rage quit or even get frustrated when playing DCS, but warthunder will piss me off more often then not because of dumb reasons. Warthunder just feels like COD at this point.
Great to see a content creator actually asking these type of questions. My answer to this video would be enormous, so I think having a video as answer is more suitable. But I'll tell you this: I actually agree with 90% of your video. You're not unreasonably hyped nor a killjoy when it comes to the current scenario on flightsims. I would like to point out two things: 1) People don't complain on WT for the fidelity, but in fact on how bugged and mediocre the gameplay is and the insufferable grind. 2) Kerbal 2 may finally become what the fans wanted in 2024. I don't wanna get my hopes that high but there is hope indeed. My video on the flightsim scenario's script was rewritten so many times I don't know if I'll ever record it but in case I do, I'll post on the discord. Cheers and have a great 2024 enigma.
I was hoping to post this the last week of 2023 but this became a MONSTER not to make but to prepare all of the data. Special thanks to Parab for helping me with the statistical analysis.
I have to hand it to Aerges this past year. The F1 released 1.5 years ago and over that time we received so many updates to the FM, Damage model, weapons, new variants, and systems that it has been one of the only modules in DCS that I felt like I got a good deal for buying early. The F-15E was very rough in the start and for the most part; it still is. The Mirage F1 is an amazing quality module and with 3 variants available and all of its weapon choices it likely is the clear winner for a fun Cold War aircraft. I doubt it will be unseated in that regard until we see the MiG-23, MiG-29A or mainly the F4. As it stands it is amazing value and probably my favorite DCS module. DISCLAIMER: I am biased as my first die-cast plane model as a child was an F1 so I have always loved it. It really highlights the need for more 70s-80s planes, the Phantom and Flogger will be very welcome additions and I would love to see earlier variants of the Hornet and Viper come along. Mirage III and/or an Israeli Kfir and Dagger would also be AMAZING additions to add to the roster. This is why we are in dire need of an FC4. We need many planes and they do not all need to be FF to be fun.
@@rwhunt99 It is a lot of work, and RAZBAM is a very small team. I do not hold it against them. I just feel as though making the F-15E the highlight of the year is lackluster. Yes we got it, yes it flies, but it was borderline useless for months as with no IFF you just got TK'd by braindead F-16 pilots.
@@jts0221 Yes, I agree, I was looking back at their history with the Mirage 2000c, and the Harrier. They completely redid everything I learned in procedures which made it very difficult to relearn muscle memory, years after they put out the modules with virtually no updates.
I think you’re 100% right in saying going forward its less important about specific planes and more important how they interact. Releasing the F4 along side a 4th gen fighter would be significantly less beneficial to the community than releasing the F4 along side a bunch of Vietnam assets. If they were to focus on an era like that it would drive more of the community to play a finished product and time period rather than having the community split on what they do because of what their favourite aircraft is.
BMS is in my opinion the better sim especially for viper drivers. And yet I play DCS more often a lot of the time just due to the more accessable multiplayer and the variety in the game
Agreed. The MP side I think is the primary thing that was hushing the BMS adoption. There's no real dedicated 24/7 servers running at the moment like in DCS, so you're either stuck hosting your own server and trying to coordinate people to join it (which is like herding cats, if you're lucky enough to not have an ISP using CGNAT) or playing the TEs or Campaign in SP. Also the UI of the MP in BMS does need an update to something other than just the original late 90s dialog that doesn't even know what the hell DNS is and has you typing in IPv4 addresses and specifying bandwidth settings manually. A lack of a centralized server browser does hurt the chicken and the egg problem of getting dedicated MP servers since it makes discovery much more difficult.
I'll live in that game if they ever get it going, especially with VR and a decent amount of multiplayer. Let's hope they don't have a mediocre launch and scare away the whole player base as soon as they release it
Ive been playing IL-2 recently and server are ok, currently the usual 3 servers are at full of high capacity (combat box, finish, and dont recall the other one) last couple days Ive been having a blast with IL-2
For me the Labour of love this year was BMS hands down. Behind the scenes there were many many changes to how BMS works. THis really makes it future proff and I belive the future for BMS is very bright. Finally they were able to add a new aircraft with own avionics, and own systems. That alone is something to be praised. But below the radar (pun intended) they added Link 16 for the F-15C which kind of shipped unnoticed. Now they already teased it for the F-16 which will be a game changer as well in how you operate in BMS. Also Link 16 feels belivable with realistic ranges and hostiles can still very much pop up. So you still need SA but have a great tool on your hands. I'm sure the guy there have still a lot in store!
@@HighAspect So you wrote FM twice, yet it’s better than DCS. Let me guess you never tried BMS? Yes it is an old game, yes it’s graphics are somewhat bad but when I’m busy fighting in BMS I don’t even notice this. Probably hard to get for you ;)
9:15 I agree with this take entirely as someone who grinded out the freshly released F-15A and finished up on a few other top end jets the game has to offer. It just doesn't allow space for tactical gameplay and where it does, it's so fast paced that the engagement aspect is gone. The good thing though is that the concurrency of battles you can have within an hour with these fancy new jets is insane and never seen before. You could play 3 battles within a span of 20 minutes back to back and is just easier to get into. Also you should try out Star Citizen. It has a very in depth flight model system for a sci-fi space game with a lot of believability. Though it's more focused on guns and msls are an after thought, fighting in zero g with 6 DoF is certainly an experience to have, though it's in an alpha (11 years running) with fundamental flight models constantly in flux.
The Snail needs to make the top tier lobbies way smaller. Doing a 8vs8 could suddenly make things way more interesting. I have not dove into SC yet. I have heard it's just another DCS.
It’s definitely not DCS, and the direction of the game is to allow for more gameplay focus in aerial/space combat. They basically want what would be early cold war aerial combat, but in space However, at present the ’campaign level’ dynamics that you would probably want, are not really present in SC. It’s more like server-wide occasional events and isolated team duels. Space combat is a profession of sorts, but large-scale org related combat just isn’t there yet
@@Enigma89 Pardon my reply, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on *why* 8v8 would help top tier. As a long time WTer I personally found that having more players at those higher tiers helped matches, as it provided more opportunity for at least one opponent to flank, made the matches last longer which allowed for more gameplay (ground striking, flanking), and allowed more oppressive aircraft to be easily countered with numbers (A single Su-27 could team wipe a team of 8 and still have two missiles left over.). RB EC will never happen so I believe the next most reasonable thing to help would be to split spawns into two airfields on differing sides of the map per team.
"You could play 3 battles within a span of 20 minutes back to back and is just easier to get into." I really disagree that this is a positive at all. If that 3 battles is straight up garbage, then it really doesn't matter how many games you can do within 20 minutes. The current 16v16 top tier is a cluster fuck with missiles from all directions and require inhumane situational awareness. You basically run around like a headless chicken, slinging missile here and there and the match end. It's very rare that you get to use the full capability of the plane, 90% of the time you're just playing as a missile truck trying to missile someone who can't keep track of 6 people at the same time.
I think the dataset is a good one and I agree that War Thunder could be a great game but their predatory business practices and game design hurt the community too much, I'd hate to see that become the standard for sim gaming going forward (even though unfortunately its obviously working for them)
It was a great year for me. Discovered ECW and Grayflag servers which made DCS multiplayer come alive and just got into VR which has completely changed my experience of flying in a sim for the better.
I am getting into DCS again after a long hiatus flying the FC3 planes, just need to get more suitable hardware. I do also have high hopes for GHPC even though I will be in the old folks' home before it comes out of early access. The guys at Radian Simulations are the best though, I am 100% sure they will make the best tank sim ever! I also believe we need more games like Combat Pilot, Helicopter Gunship DEX and the like making sim games more accessible to people like myself who wants realism on a certain level without the need to sacrfice both jobs and our families to be able to learn to fly a plane or manage a tank on the battlefield.
I myself am guilty of saying "Yea I'll try BMS when X happens". I even have gone so far to download the installation files for it. However, my issue, which I believe can resonate with a lot of people is it is just a new sim. Players like me who almost strictly play WW2 or early cold war will have the same learning curve of DCS for BMS, which can seem like such an energy suck or chore sometimes. I know that it's my own job to get over that etc, and fully intend to in 2024, however that has been the reason during 2023. With the new graphical upgrades coming to BMS, alongside hopefully a renewed multiplayer as the masses flock to the game (we hope :-) ), I am fully prepared to embrace BMS as a regular sim in my library. Very good video, really enjoy these analytical, large perspective videos that really showcase the state of the sim market. Cheers.
Oddly enough I've been playing Squad after their new Infantry Combat Update. It adds better suppression, stamina, and aiming mechanics and makes gunfights feel more realistic and less like people just clicking on heads in Counter Strike. It feels odd to talk about sim gameplay for infantry level shooters but people are trying to make more realistic shooters, I'm looking forward to new ARMA.
The reason I haven’t installed BMS and the reason many others don’t is because when I graduated from war Thunder and found dcs it got be very comfortable with many things about it and bms just feels like another sim to learn. I also am worried about how to get falcon 4.0 and then finding out how to install the bms mod
Original Falcon 4.0 is easy to get via valves and cdproject online stores. BMS installation is also pretty straightforward,: Install original falcon anywhere on your system, download latest BMS full installer, follow installation wizard Run the updater to check/install any updates that may came after installer was released. If you are familiar with F-16 switchology it shouldn't take more than 1h to have it fully set up with at least most important key assignment done. BTW dear YT stop censoring me, it's silly.
@@6XENO9 Any recommendations of a website to download it from? i have not been ably to find anything except steam which blocks me from editing core files.
I'm happy about their decision to do Korea and I think they made the smart choice. From their perspective, they know that other people are already going for pacific. they know that modern is already covered by DCS and BMS, they know that DCS already has a massive headstart on Vietnam, and the scale of that conflict is probbaly a bit oo much for them to do right first time around any time soon. My favourite jets are the korean ones. So fun yet simple. And massively underated. AsEnigma said, Korea has hardly been done. The IL-2 time likely were thinking strategically, long and hard about giving people a reason to choose their game over others, therefore they have to offer somethign different. I think Korea will be a perfect one for them to do. Great theatre, great aircraft, not too much a departure from WW2 era props, but just enough a step up that it will be fresh and interesting new combat.
As Enigma rightly points out, the overall hollistic experience for the theatre that the F-86 and MiG-15bis have in DCS is lacking. IL-2 team have a huge chance here to make something that coan only be found on their game and platform apposed to others.
Hot take: War Thunder has done more for the simulator niche than any other game in the last decade. They are the only one that has solved simulations age old problem: accessibility. The benefit is it is a launch platform for the hobby to expand it's audience.
I have never heard a bigger nonsense ,War Thunder fun arcade, say it's a simulator is just nonsense, it's not even close to DCS,and you must not forget that enigma is sponsored be War Thunder
@@marcius778 Sorry but you are incorrect. I am not sponsored by War Thunder, I have only ever had one video be sponsored by War Thunder. There was no sponsor in this video if there was it would have been properly disclosed. Having partnered with a company before in the past does not negate the points in future videos. There is immense value in gaining access to the Snail because it allows me to compare how they work versus the other games. Based on this experience, it is extremely clear to me that the Snail is simply on another level compared to the other games. They have their sh-t together and they know what they are doing. To paint a picture of what's it like to work with the Snail vs other sim games, it's like working with a Fortune 500 company vs the pizza store around the corner. The Snail is simply just in another league because they are so massive and acknowledging their muscle is simply just being aware of a fact.
@@jimmydesouza4375 VR is definitely one of the parts that bugs me most with WT. It has gone from working awful, to working great, back to working awful more times than I can count
I don't generally do polls, as you pointed out, they are not generally a good representation of the user base and what is particularly frustrating for me, is you can get whatever results you want simply by asking the questions to steer the results. While I am not a Fan Boy of DCS, it is the only Sim I use (right now), and from my perspective, it's come a long way since I started over ten years ago. I am also a positive individual, so when you're playing in a Beta version of a game, you have to expect bugs. Just because it took a certain number of days to address a particular bug does not mean they were not aware of it, but more probably it was difficult to fix. I used to fly Falcon 3 and 4 and played with BMS, which i liked, but for several reasons, I preferred DCS. Now, it has a lease on new life and the future is brighter and I might have to take another look at that in later development. I say, because DCS has improved a lot over the last three years ( I think they were resting on their laurels until they realized other companies were moving forward and they needed to pick up the pace) that We are in a golden age and there is a ton of interest in flight sims, especially in DCS (although I don't have any numbers to back that up), and we can look forward to steady improvements (it's not glamorous to see day to day work results in coding and other tedious work) so people don't realize all the exciting things going on in the background. One more thing, there is a difference between a flight sim (study sim) and a true flying "Game". I was never a hard core gamer but I was always interested in flying. I think that is another important thing to consider- there are many variations of Flight sim gamers, from hard core by the book, to just casual pilots who enjoy simply flying and shooting things up. Right now, no matter what kind you are, there is something out there to keep your attention
I literally don't understand one bit why some people are pessimistic about DCS's future. Would love to hear their take on this, because I can't for the life of me see their point.
Thank you for a great analytics (yours) and very useful feedback in terms of the survey. Despite subscription with notifications I've missed it (like many others, probably), but 1k people is a good start. (TLDR!) Was it a good year? For DSC: MT and huge step towards realism and built-in functionality of radios are big enough steps from simulation point of view. IL2 is great best for PvP and VR, but people got used to get new toys while guys are busy with new project. BMS: yeah, so many people are excited, but 4.38 (new terrain and gfx) rumours really made people wait, I guess. So 2023 was good for sim-cade games that give people enjoyment on subject, sometimes involve sim tactics plus new "reality" - VR. Btw, in 2024 : - many of those simcade players will join DCS/BMS. - BMS is really gonna push DCS with its dynamic-campaing, now (then) with better visuals (at least number of people who will try it, will be more significant). - DCS will get same momentum of improving existing modules, with occasional splash of interest on newer MiG and middle-east maps. Overall, only 3rd party developers can fill all those gaps in each era, starting from WW2 (it's called DCS World after all). Only some kind Dynamic Campaigns , "VulcanAPI" or "built-in VoiceAttack" modules can make big enough waves now. IL2 - I am so happy they took Korea, instead of Pacific. It would be a really sad story if both ED and ex-1C team would be fighting for people interested in same theater. Personally, I hope ED will focus (themselves and working with 3rd parties) on each era at a time, making a WW2 + dynamic campaign first, for example. While 3D engine still needs many optimisations (try to walk in forest of Marianas). Immersion is the key and MP community are really helping ED on this side. I wonder if BMS, after finishing 4.38 will eventually get under Microprose umbrella?
Personally I think that BMS is too dense for the average player, or the average DCS flyer, to really get into (I saw it had VR, tried it, and couldn’t get into it like I did with DCS about a year ago). What I am glad to see is that people really do enjoy flight sims and believe that things will be better, sometimes I feel as if people latch on to harsh criticisms and fail to see how comprehensive and awesome sims are (DCS particularly which I am partial to). Thank you for doing this investigative work!
My issue with getting into BMS is just the amount / simplicity of learning resources. I'm not familiar with the F-16 in DCS either, but I've gotten as far as taking off in BMS so I'm not hesistant to play it or anything. When want to get into flying the F-16 or when my desire for better gameplay overcomes my hesitation to put in the effort, I'm going to use BMS
TBH I did not take part in this survey, as I fly BMS almost exclusively due lack of time. With so many questions being DCS specific I didn't felt I'm entitled to take part in it. It'd help if there was an answer that would indicate I'm not a user of the product that is a subject of some particular questions. Yep I'm worried some of the important things in sim of my choice are taking a bit long to make, but still I'm fairly optimistic.
I know it's not "tecnically" a 2023 game, but I would highly suggest to take a look at "Juno". It used to be called Simple Rockets 2 and it started as a mobile game. But latest updates turned the game into a quite decent alternative to KSP2, almost entirely focused on procedural parts rather than pre-made meshes. Some might consider it barebones still, but it kept me entertained while waiting for KSP2 to release the science update (which while still a bit messy, it's already a step in the right direction).
I found the analysis really interesting, and I agreed with almost all of it but one comment I would make around you saying how long multiplayer was down for DCS is that as I fly on small servers with 2/3/4 friends I still found multiplayer viable. I think a clarity might be large server multiplayer was not viable. Thanks for the work behind this!!!
Personally I predominantly fly single player but I think my opinion of 2023 somewhat aligns with yours. I think 2023 was not a great year for Sim game play but I think it will be very important; you have called the Sim World in the Dark Ages and I will agree with this if we think of the Dark Ages as a precursor to the Renaissance. DCS has shown that they are heading in the direction of more immersive gameplay, their latest newsletter brings up improvements to infantry, ATC, ECM, weather, dynamic campaign, and Global World, these likely would not have been possible without the multithreading they incorporated in 2023. IL2 was basically on hiatus making minor SP improvements but they have used that time to improve their realism and immersion into a game that quite frankly had become a bit stale after BON and BOBp. Finally we have the introduction of the first ground up Sim in more than a decade in Combat Pilot. In short, I don't think we got a lot in 2023 but a lot of progress was made to make the next couple of years something to really look forward to.
Reading the comments, i understand the community doesn't feel the need to put in the effort to learn BMS. Its totally understandable as it may feel like a big task or a chore. But same could be said for DCS and IL2, most people have to learn them too right? With each update, BMS continues to bring an easier and realistic sim experience from the ui to the dynamic campaign engine. And i also understand the wow of graphics that most players want, well that is gonna change starting next update. As a member of the BMS community, i invite you join any BMS discord and i give you my word, the whole community will ease you into the game. Lastly, thank you enigma, hope you dispense some freedom in the F-15C, hope i wasn't a bad teacher 😄
I used to play War Thunder multiplayer with a M&K year’s ago, on Realistic difficulty, before I purchased my first HOTAS. I have thought about going back to it with my WinWing HOTAS and play it in the Simulator difficulty. You also earn more XP and Credit’s on the harder difficulty modes I believe. So finally I could maybe unlock the really fast RAF twin engined prop fighter. I forgot the name but it’s a lighter, fighter version of the Mosquito.
Lower tier grinding got a lot easier. You will be able to unlock the Hornet really quick. Economy is better, almost as good as it was back on 2016/2017. BUT. To counter bottling, they nerfed Sim rewards a lot. There is a cap for every 15 minutes of gameplay now... So RB is now a ton better for grinding.... But still, grinding as a whole got easier. And sim is more active than it's ever been!
As far as why no one is playing BMS. The UI is old and hard to use if you're not already familiar with it. I boot that game up and have basically no idea what I'm doing. There is a severe lack of documentation which makes BMS a lot harder to learn, especially for someone who hasn't already learned the F16 or G15 in another sim.
@MultiJp51 well thanks for that. I've spent literal hours looking for documentation online and only ever found physical manuals on ebay. I've never once seen this mentioned anywhere. I've also just now noticed the giant "Open Docs Folder" in the BMS launcher and I feel like a dunce. Welp, here i come BMS...
War Thunder Is A Jump In And Go Type Of Sim. But What Killed It For Me Was The Grind. What I Liked About IL-2 And DCS Was No Grind And Everyone Got The Same "Equipment".
As much as I want to get round to trying BMS, and have looked at it in the past, for me, its from back then to now, the inferface seems a bit daunting for a newcomer and relative noob to learn, and AFAIK there isn't built in tutorials and such to get me going. My intention has effectively been to learn with tutorials etc the F16 in DCS, and then move across to BMS once I'm comfortable......but then I broke my leg :D
@@er00ic thanks I'll take a closer look then but always nicer to have something a bit more interactive for the dumb like me..... tho if they're good pdfs and it follows the actions closely then great....as problem with Dcs sometimes its easy to get completely lost if do a step wrong
Well, I waited for VR for BMS. Installed, played a bit and just resigned because the VR was unusable. If you are looking for answers the feature implementation is different from feature usability.
So would you categorize people who play on their own squadron servers or otherwise private servers with a select group of friends as playing multiplayer? Or does multiplayer suggest playing on a server like ECW or Tempests?
I think there are 2 things holding me back from giving DCS a perfect rating is lack a Datalink/EW improvements, and better ground unit damage models. Otherwise I find it on par to BMS in my opinion.
1st time I see this channel, I would have answered this survey too. I've been in SIMS since 2001 and yes, I'm using VR eventhough it's quite an unfair match against non VR users that can turn their camera views like Owls do while we break our necks to see behind us. I played DCS a little but the multiplayer is too complicated to me. I mostly play IL2 and War Thunder where you can find multiplayer games fairly quick and also, they have so much more WW2 models than DCS. I know War Thunder is kind of meh into really simulating a plane but like you mentioned, all the planes are living well against one and other in this one. I really don't like jets by the way so that's why I chose those 2 SIMS rather than DCS. Cheers !!!
12:07 I have gotten into BMS because of the Eagle release. So far, I lament the missing of the same "modifier" thing the F-16 uses, since I am limited with my HOTAS setup and can't map everything that I need to have at the ready like I could with DCS. I flew the Viper a bit in the game and was hooked! It's a fun experience, sadly I just dislike the Viper, which means that flying that instead of the Eagle feels more like a chore. That I still had a great time so far, just shows me how much I'll play the game when I can do so in a plane I enjoy.
There should be dx shift command not coupled with viper avionics you can use, but in fact something like pinky switch+dx shift for Eagle may be unavailable (assuming F-15C not uses pinky switch command).
As mainly a WT player, and one who has spend considerable time playing air sim, it really saddens me how much WT sim is neglected by Gaijin. It has so much potential, and there really isn’t any competition on the market in that niche. The fidelity is nowhere near that of DCS, but there is a greater variety of planes to fly and you can learn how to fly a new plane in minutes and master it in hours. The cockpits for the new jets are also modeled surprisingly well. I hope Gaijin does something about Sim in 2024.
not many people on BMS ? simple: the graphics. most players, even sim players, won't touch a game unless it has modern graphics. that's why Laminar fixed their clouds all year long, that's why most people enjoy MSFS and cannot shut up about it while it certainly doesn't have the best flight dynamics. me ? i'd rather have more control over my ground units in BMS, like a real RTS game.
I was shocked at how much the F1 got rated when it seems only people who play Enigma server use it. I hardly ever see it on 4YA servers and I'm lucky if I ever see someone streaming the F1 on Twitch. I watched a French Steam flying last night and could understand a thing he said, but I like watching video's on it as it a beautiful plane. Unfortunately I refunded mine on Steam as I didn't enjoy the complicated, outdated way of using ground ordinance. If the F1M does ground attack more like the 2000C, then I may consider buying it again and if they add more weapons. I mostly play ground attack.
For me we'll always be in the dark ages until someone comes along and recreates the same scale as wwiionline with hundreds or thousands of players existing in the same massive world, but in a more modern engine. I'd like to see war thunder or the new IL2 iteration attempt this, but I guess the financial incentives just aren't there.
If war thunder had IL2's level of cockpit fidelity, and just basic navigation/radio down it would be absolutely unstoppable. Unfortunately, your biplane gets a perfectly accurate GPS moving map with live marked opponents even in Sim and radio comms are nothing to speak of. As for cockpits, The RPM gauges on several of my jets do not match the sim's RPM value and several switches are inverted from their actual positions when set (Airbrake being in when marked out etc), so minimally interactable cockpits feel like they would be a large undertaking to say the least. I know nothing I said above will be done, because that is not WT's intention, as far as I can tell. With the opensourced game engine and the new NAU engine coming out, I am optimistic there will be some degree of asset or code availability, whether released or leaked, that enables a community opensource start from the basis of some of the work WT has done. Imagine an opensource War Thunder project building off the engine, assets etc with user code like BMS, adding cockpit and nav/radio/mission planning functionality etc.
I've had trouble playing DCS in MP until recently due to my older hardware. I'm wondering whether the 1/3 days down would have looked better if server operators did not insist on running the beta edition. I don't think it's fair to knock down DCS just because a relatively small group insists on only using beta versions.
In my personal opinion, I do think you are unnecessarily negative or pessimistic regardging IL2. Without compromise, it is a great game to play; the best if you want to play WW2. The VR implementation is still the best and I fly with my friends multiple times a week having a blast, no compromises or putting up with medriocre stuff because there also are some good bits. Just unadulterated fun, but that's just me
Out of all the games IL-2 is my favourite one. The issue is that no one is playing it in US East time zone. The servers are very empty and that kills the game for me.
@@Enigma89 In case you do have friends to fly with in your time zone, you may want to give the Wingwalkers server a go. It's a coop server, though you can (only) find it in the "Dogfight" server list in IL-2. NB: there is a WW1 version and a WW2 version, when we fly we mostly fly WW2. There is a huge list of missions, so great variety and all missions aim to be dynamic, i.e. the AI scales dynamically from 1 (low) to 6 (high) with the number of pilots on the server. (Almost) all missions are based on historic WW2 theatres and specific historic situations. Quite often, there are already other people when we fly Wingwalkers, but it also happens it's just my friends and me flying and we're still having fun due to the dynamic missions. Some missions can actually be won by a small group of pilots, though others not so much. I find it really well executed, it's really a lobor of love, much attention to detail. We don't always fly Wingwalkers, but when we do, we tend to enjoy ourselves quite a bit, would recommend.
My Steam hardware survey detected and submitted that I have no VR sets. I have 3 - I just use them wirelessly... so the steam survey is under reporting VR usage a TON
It might also be overstating since it breaks down ownership of individual headsets when most people, like yourself, have multiple. Really no way of knowing without breaking in to the code. Also it never tells you that it has detected a VR headset, wired or wireless, at least it never has for me while I have had my index.
@@Enigma89 oh well, I completely missed this, anyhow great video, I think you are the only RUclipsr to really take a deep look in the overall state of flight sims (or combat flight sims at least), so thank you.
People are so negative for War Thunder mostly because of the grind, it's long and frustrating, but the Snail has basically fixed the economy this year, the grind is not as painful anymore, now it's just a matter of fixing top tier Air RB. We need an "Enigma's Cold War Server" styled game mode, where there's enough objectives in a dynamic frontline so people can have the space to act, instead of everyone making a furball in the middle. I wish you and your team could run a custom lobby for War Thunder, based on your rules, but with Air RB controls/camera. Wouldn't aid the grind, but would be a great place to decompress and have meaningful battles.
What does RB have to do with Sim battles...And no,the economy is not "basically fixed" .Talk to any of the WT air sim streamers and see what they answer you.
I gave BMS a couple of tries. Once before VR, then tried again afterwards.. Its really hard to get into... the 2nd time i tried with VR, i had some issue where my VR resolution was super high. My framerate was something like 1FPS and i could not find a way to fix it. Its just hard for me to dedicate a whole week to learning the game like I did with DCS back in the day Also.. the hate for War Thunder is dumb. I guarantee 99% of the people that shit on it havent tried Sim mode. I went to it after playing DCS for years, and its pretty much the only flight sim Ive been playing for the last 6 or 7 months.
If i can't click everything in a cockpit, the game is a hard pass for me, as i hate binding 1000 controls, despite having a good hotas setup. Il2 doesn't fall under that category because in that game there are only a few controls. But as i get close and close to present day jets and stuff, i hate the experience if i don't have full fidelity cockpits. This is why things like Flaming Cliffs 3 is a hard pass for me. I get it people percieve it as value pack, good for them..but for me, is bad value. I don't want other war thunder games to pop up. I don't care about the quantity of the vehicles in a game, but the realism and the features it has.
ED has significant revenue from non-civilian products...their devs are not dedicated to DCS 100%, or even close to that. Hence the snail. There is room for a new player to focus on combat simulation, focusing on aircraft and not beholden to government contracts.
According to who? And what "non civilian" products? The only non civilian products I have ever even seen ED mention are claims that they have military versions of some of their DCS modules but I personally suspect that might not be the truth due to the many realism issues with the DCS modules. A nice example being that they claimed the A-10C module was a gamified version of a military sim, but the A-10C was missing major features of the jet and had a bunch of incorrect switchology (the whole point of this type of sim).
I find the easiest (and unfortunately the most offensive) way to explain this is that DCS just feels like a tech demo compared to BMS. DCS has some great things about it but they stop as soon as you exit the cockpit. The AI in DCS is inexcusably bad, the AI in BMS is believable. The map, airplane and asset selections made by DCS look like they were selected by a random number generator, in BMS they feel cohesive. BMS has a fully working dynamic campaign where you will get a lot of different challenges thrown at you. In DCS, everything is very sterile and scripted. If you like gen 4 stuff but have not played BMS then you should really hop on. It will really allow you to experience gen 4 for the first time in a setting that has some meaningful depth. DCS may cover more stuff in general but it's wide and shallow while BMS is narrow and deep. Now with this all said, DCS does some things that other games can't do like helicopters and it has some decent coverage of planes in the cold war era. For me, I play ALL the games. They all have some great things about them and all of them have some bad things about them.
Multiple F-16 blocks simulated in quite a detail (system failures included), hi-fidelity F-15C, capable AI, decent IADS, superb ATC, robust AWACS comms, larger maps, functional/dynamic and diverse across the map weather, DTC coupled with proper tools to plan your mission, whole comms system to to manage your wingman/flight element and employ preferred tactics during mission and famous dynamic campaign on top all of that.
One thing about BMS right now that is I think is a hurdle for a lot of people without good control hardware is the lack of ability to mix keyboard and joystick for binds like it's possible in DCS. And this is something that was possible before. I for example lack my left hand below the elbow and I cannot use the throttle part of a traditional HOTAS setup. I might have a fix for that in VKB's modularity money pertaining later on. With that, i could join back in today by just copying over my DCS joystick binds.
i think everybody knows how close to being great warthunder is and thats exactly the problem, its so close yet the devs are uncapable of doing anything good with it. It is no surprise that every other game Gaijin has made was a giant flop.
Its the graphics. Same thing with games like MSFS vs Xplane 11/12. Xplane should by definition, be better due to the superior physics and more ammounts of addon aircraft. But msfs remains at #1, due to the graphics
Im on a Q2 and Try IFF'ing a saber or an A4 in a fur ball at anything less than point blank is maddening I can see smudges at 5 and can make out ground targets at say 3
I actually left this out of the video but 2.9 was so broken a couple of servers were thinking of going to stable branch. Before we could make the switch, they pushed 2.9 to stable and broke that as well.
I think a lot of people have invested a lot of money and time into DCS and they just aren't willing to invest time and money into other flight sims. That's my problem, I've spent a lot of time and money on DCS over the years and I'm not jumping ship.
@@Enigma89 I'm pretty heavily invested in IL2 as well, going back more than 20 years. I have almost every addon for Great Battles. But I fell out of il2 a few years ago for DCS. The Korean theatre is probably my favorite with the f-86 so I'll be getting that. Not into any modern era jets though I'll putz around with them in DCS. Sims that focus on those are out. Been working on my F5e and Mig 21 lately as those are fun. I'm not into the modern era button simulators.
@@Enigma89 This wouldn't be an example of sunk cost. Sunk cost is continuing with something you otherwise would not want to despite having no realistic chance of it improving because of the time/money you have spent on it. This is just the problem that the more complicated a game is the more time you have to invest into it and you only have a limited amount of time.
I think it just comes down to the community you play with. My group all play DCS and think jumping to a game like BMS for example is pointless as DCS already has a F16 and F15 and provides similar things. Why download multiple games that are essentially the same when DCS provides more. I would say the only game that can compete with DCS is IL2 for the WWII niche but like you said DCS has the player base and is more user friendly. I also think IL2 fell off as well, I used to play it for WWII but idk I just stopped touching it. If DCS could replicate IL2's damage model then I can see that game being forgotten. If DCS had a competitor I bet DCS would get the ball rolling a lot faster. Example: MSF2020 released with amazing clouds that everyone loved. DCS pushed out the 2.7 cloud update real quick. I bet when NOR was first announced before people realized it was not for the public, DCS was sweating. *edit* Also I got a quest 2 VR recently just for Vtol and I have been loving the laid back atmosphere.
I'd disagree with statement DCS and BMS are much the same, but it takes a bit deeper dive to understand how those two are so much different. But I understand if one is MP player mostly and all of his flying buddies use one sim, it ain't make sense to push everyone to use the other.
@@6XENO9 I understand that BMS is more of a Sim compared to DCS and has more in-depth aspects and more believable AI. DCS is already really nice and is easy for people to get into. But if you have a good mission maker you can completely change the DCS experience and have people never look for anything else.
Typing the comments is really laggy lately, so I'll keep the banter short. I'd say 2023 was just okay. F-15E is great, though it doesn't give me the passions that planes flying from the BOAT do. BUT, unlike some years, I feel 2023 was slower on releases, but they were higher in quality, as far as I can tell, none of them were nigh upon useless early cold war planes or WWII planes that I'd buy IL2 if I wanted to fly. I'd say... Good planes, no trash this year. Could some mid cold war planes fit in? Sure. Could the F-4? Sure, but since we're getting an airforce version, I'm not that interested. Some years you get planes that are standouts too far removed to fit in modern DCS, some years you get nearly useless planes from the early to mid cold war, but at LEAST it isn't the very early years when we didn't get a single real fighter and had about 3 aircraft of any type to fly in full fidelity after like 6 years.
I got rid of IL2 GB sadly as the updates were really annoying. Each update was like 10 GB due to the fact that it will install everything even if I didn’t own it. No interest in flying circus, but the last few updates were heavy on that. Waste of my time and internet bandwidth.
Personally I think sims usually focus too much on the competitive multiplayer aspect of things. If you are not into MP you are the least cared about player. AI and campaign stuff is neglected or does not exist at all. That the only (active) game with a dynamic campaign is still Falcon 4/BMS is mind-boggling to me. On paper I should love BMS but in reality I can't bring myself to even try it. Being build on a 26 year old game it looks incredibly dated. I get that graphics ain't everything but when the menus scream Windows 95 at you it is a hard sale. And on top of that with increased capabilities also comes a increase in complexity. Being build for the pros the learning curve is probably more like a cliff. I just wish I had something more modern like that which would be more accessible and user friendly. Maybe Falcon 5 will be that but honestly I think Falcon 5 is like 10 years out, I don't expect to hear from that any time soon. IL2 GB gets boring over time in SP because of the many limitations the game has. The AI always goes for a turn fight and the missions are incredibly limited in variety. I mean I have a Luftwaffe real time Normandy carrier running and I think the exact same patrol pattern over the landing beaches pops up like 20 times in a row. Another limitation the game has which makes it feel older than it is are the units and the mission design in general. I could be wrong but in career mode there never seems to be more than 32 aircraft active at one time, usually split right the middle for friend and foe. And then there are no heavy bombers. Unless you create a mission yourself most missions will take place at around 6 000 ft and it is mostly so that you will only encounter targets right at the patrol/target point. Getting ambushed/intercepted never really happens. Combined all that results in a very predictable and limited experience. DCS has different issues. For a SP player the most important one is probably that you either need to purchase campaigns or study the mission editor as generated mission seem to be all over the place. I think the 4th generation fighter era is probably the best developed but besides that it becomes rather fractured. Vietnam and WW2 often lack assets and maps.
The problem with this survey is that this is essentially a DCS multiplayer fan site so the results reflect that. Since the sample is skewed the results are meaningless as respects other sims. Probably would be better to just focus the survey on DCS and releated issues as that would provide some meaningful information. As it stands this survey tells me nothing (as respects non DCS sims).
Re your Hot Take on New IL2 at 14:20 - the IL2 team mention in their "Brief Room Episode 3: Questions and Answers Session" of 20 Jan 2024 (at ruclips.net/video/xzR14LuCrRY/видео.html , first question answered at 0:29). It's not much insight but they do say it's next after their current development project...so my guess would be not before 2025 (?).
My 2 cents about multiplayer vs single player are: 1, I have several campaigns and lots of SP missions. But i play mostly MP, why? Well because i want to feel like i'm actually in a digital combat simulator... Short of some campaigns, SP is very sterile and unimmersive. 2: I want to see other people taxiing at bases and taking off. I want to feel like there are actual naval ops going on(although most of the time few people do naval ops in MP). It's not just about seeing AI aircraft, players and people on coms make the game more immersive, even if everything isn't 'milsim' and it's just a bunch of dudes faffing around in planes. I hate DCS core so much because of that sterile SP experience. The complexity and knowledge required to make SP feel immersive and not feel like ARMA 3 AR arsenal is too much.
Graduated from single player to multiplayer? You don't graduate from single player to multiplayer, you graduate from multiplayer to single player. Multiplayer is where most sim players start, engaging in furballs and ya, ya, ya with their online friends. Multiplayer is as far from "simulating" flying aircraft in a war as you can get. Then the more serious sim players graduate from trying to herd cats in multiplayer to a great campaign theater single player experience like in IL-2 Great Battles. I graduated from multiplayer to single player as I'm sure most single players did. Wonder why good multiplayer simming is so hard to find? Because it's mostly about trying to herd cats, which is ultimately a futile effort. You can't do it.
Personally, it's not so much the best year. Fewer people are playing DCS and even less PvP format. Even on the 4YA PvP servers are empty and DDCS is now just blue side since they removed F16 and the like from Red team. If you love old planes your server is the best but overall it's going down for me. 12:43 what this may not reflect is people who played a lot DCS, stopped playing it but could come back playing if some problems were addressed.
I can't believe you had Wings of Flander's Fields in the best sim question but not Aces High III. ;o) They are past their prime but still can scare up 120 players a night on their Main Arena. Their organized historical reenactment scenarios are still unique and unmatched anywhere else. They have a cadre of event organizers that have perfected them over 20 years. I would still love to see an interview of the Aces High dev from you. He was at the center of much of the initial combat flightsim pioneer days. He single handedly built two of the best WWII sims of their day: Warbirds and Aces High. A lot of history and insight to the beginnings of the genre there. And the initial devs of WWIIOnline are all cut their teeth on online sims working for Hitech on Warbirds. $0.02.
aces high fucking sucks, it's the most arcade pile of trash excuse for a flight sim with the absolutely oddest group of old men still flying it you will ever see. Digital ammo readouts in every plane, trash physics, trash graphics, just absolutely not even worth talking about. It's like an old folks home for people stuck in 2003. Still flying on their saitek 290 getting into wild dogfights with labels and digital ammo readouts.
@@jonredcorn862 LoL. Some of what you say might be true. ;) I think it is a better WWII sim than say WT. Just for the Scenarios if nothing else which I don't think anyone else does to the same levels and regularity. But compared to Wings over Flanders Fields? ;)
Wings over flanders fields is the greatest ww1 sim ever made. It's the got the best AI of any sim, the best career mode, it's the most epic showdown of biplanes seen since ww1 so to talk shit about it is embarrassing. Could of called out any other sim on the list and I wouldn't be as mad. @@jasonirby3382
The few times i played bms I spent 1 hour of briefing for every sortie and about 10-15 minutes of flying to target then getting shot down or flying back to designeted airfield
True, but even if don't get shot down. It's an entire hour and a half until i get to do something and then i need to stick to specific strategies so my teammates don't get shot. Frank Ladavatz gave a talk on realism in games that reflects how bms makes me feel. I don't want to have to go through PowerPoint point presentations in order to do bvr fighting
Bohemia intentionally release broken and overpowered DLC to try to get extra revenue. That killed my enjoyment of the company and I have been playing Bohemia games since flashpoint.
F-15 should have been a HD SINGLE [ Seater ] E just like AH64 is just too too detailed [ i do like em [dcs tread] and not fun to fly. I have Harrier F18 & mult-package ED .
![[4K] Watch SpaceX Catch A Starship Rocket From Space!!! #IFT5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pIKI7y3DTXk/mqdefault.jpg)
Like most, I am very reflective toward the end of the year and I wanted to read the room and see where we were at with our mood on things via our survey. I hope you all found the survey results to be interesting as well as my takes on things. I don't expect or necessarily want everyone to agree with me but I do hope what I shared gave you something to think about. I look forward to seeing you all in our video game skies soon.
To me, the tragedy of War Thunder is that they have, hands-down, the greatest potential of any game in either the air or ground sim space. With the foundation of their robust netcode, staggeringly optimized graphical engine, easy accessibility, and hundreds of vehicles, they could reach for the stars. Instead they have chosen to double down on their skinner-box infinite money machine design, where the only choice is undirected, ahistorical, grab-bag TDM, and the only constant is grind. The result is massive amounts of unhappy gamers playing it and having their imagination and hope for what a vehicle combat game could be slowly burned from their brains. I dare not hope that this will change.
Well said, also congrats on GHPC being the game that has the most positive outlook out of all of the game surveyed ⭐
@@Enigma89 Thanks for the spotlight! Also shame on me for coming in here with a negative outlook to bring down the mood haha.
Dude I just wanna fly cold war jets in WT without grinding literal thousands of hours.
Dude, I know what you mean. I quit warthunder 2 years ago and only started playing again last week. I never rage quit or even get frustrated when playing DCS, but warthunder will piss me off more often then not because of dumb reasons. Warthunder just feels like COD at this point.
@TIEpilot918 or having to buy GE or Premiums to make the grind "bearable".
I think 2024 would be even better. BMS 4.38, potential DCS dynamic campaign and Phantom, and really, things keep getting better.
I def think we are in a better position for the new year to be better than last year for sure.
There is a 0% chance the dynamics campaign in 2024. Ways himself said the dynamic would enter a playable alpha state no earlier than 2025.
@@Enigma89I have a question. What’s your opinion on the new il2 dlc coming out late 2024. Fortresses and fockewolfs. B17 will be added
Great to see a content creator actually asking these type of questions. My answer to this video would be enormous, so I think having a video as answer is more suitable. But I'll tell you this: I actually agree with 90% of your video. You're not unreasonably hyped nor a killjoy when it comes to the current scenario on flightsims. I would like to point out two things:
1) People don't complain on WT for the fidelity, but in fact on how bugged and mediocre the gameplay is and the insufferable grind.
2) Kerbal 2 may finally become what the fans wanted in 2024. I don't wanna get my hopes that high but there is hope indeed.
My video on the flightsim scenario's script was rewritten so many times I don't know if I'll ever record it but in case I do, I'll post on the discord. Cheers and have a great 2024 enigma.
I was hoping to post this the last week of 2023 but this became a MONSTER not to make but to prepare all of the data. Special thanks to Parab for helping me with the statistical analysis.
Great video and extremely informative!
I have to hand it to Aerges this past year. The F1 released 1.5 years ago and over that time we received so many updates to the FM, Damage model, weapons, new variants, and systems that it has been one of the only modules in DCS that I felt like I got a good deal for buying early. The F-15E was very rough in the start and for the most part; it still is.
The Mirage F1 is an amazing quality module and with 3 variants available and all of its weapon choices it likely is the clear winner for a fun Cold War aircraft. I doubt it will be unseated in that regard until we see the MiG-23, MiG-29A or mainly the F4. As it stands it is amazing value and probably my favorite DCS module. DISCLAIMER: I am biased as my first die-cast plane model as a child was an F1 so I have always loved it.
It really highlights the need for more 70s-80s planes, the Phantom and Flogger will be very welcome additions and I would love to see earlier variants of the Hornet and Viper come along.
Mirage III and/or an Israeli Kfir and Dagger would also be AMAZING additions to add to the roster. This is why we are in dire need of an FC4. We need many planes and they do not all need to be FF to be fun.
I agree, what bothers me is; it is a very important module in DCS, and RazBam has a very spotty record in speed and getting out updates.
@@rwhunt99 It is a lot of work, and RAZBAM is a very small team. I do not hold it against them. I just feel as though making the F-15E the highlight of the year is lackluster. Yes we got it, yes it flies, but it was borderline useless for months as with no IFF you just got TK'd by braindead F-16 pilots.
@@jts0221 Yes, I agree, I was looking back at their history with the Mirage 2000c, and the Harrier. They completely redid everything I learned in procedures which made it very difficult to relearn muscle memory, years after they put out the modules with virtually no updates.
I think you’re 100% right in saying going forward its less important about specific planes and more important how they interact.
Releasing the F4 along side a 4th gen fighter would be significantly less beneficial to the community than releasing the F4 along side a bunch of Vietnam assets. If they were to focus on an era like that it would drive more of the community to play a finished product and time period rather than having the community split on what they do because of what their favourite aircraft is.
Thank you for the BMS shoutout! I'd love more content on that as DCS was so disappointing 2023
BMS is in my opinion the better sim especially for viper drivers. And yet I play DCS more often a lot of the time just due to the more accessable multiplayer and the variety in the game
Agreed. The MP side I think is the primary thing that was hushing the BMS adoption. There's no real dedicated 24/7 servers running at the moment like in DCS, so you're either stuck hosting your own server and trying to coordinate people to join it (which is like herding cats, if you're lucky enough to not have an ISP using CGNAT) or playing the TEs or Campaign in SP. Also the UI of the MP in BMS does need an update to something other than just the original late 90s dialog that doesn't even know what the hell DNS is and has you typing in IPv4 addresses and specifying bandwidth settings manually. A lack of a centralized server browser does hurt the chicken and the egg problem of getting dedicated MP servers since it makes discovery much more difficult.
9:58, lets all give our prayers and blessings to the soldier that voted the F4 as the best module of 2023
They must have not known about the 2022 release date!
Falcon BMS is such an underrated sim. In my opinion, it presents a far more accurate simulation of the F16 than DCS.
BMS is an old video game, out of date graphics, out of date systems, etc. why do we keep pushing this narrative
Because it has quite a few mechanics in a vast superior way to their dcs counterparts, or even complete absence thereof in dcs
@@Bull_10RR I agree. I think saying it’s “outdated” is irrelevant if it represents the core simulation of an F-16 in a superior way.
I'm excited for Korea in IL-2...It's looooong overdue that someone finally do a Korean Theater where the Migs and Sabres actually fight in Mig Alley
I'll live in that game if they ever get it going, especially with VR and a decent amount of multiplayer.
Let's hope they don't have a mediocre launch and scare away the whole player base as soon as they release it
Ive been playing IL-2 recently and server are ok, currently the usual 3 servers are at full of high capacity (combat box, finish, and dont recall the other one) last couple days Ive been having a blast with IL-2
What continent are you from? I mostly have 30 people servers
@@Ray-lf1eo EU, but pretty sure wings of liberty is from US was just playing it with 65 players, even managed to get escorted as a ju88
For me the Labour of love this year was BMS hands down. Behind the scenes there were many many changes to how BMS works. THis really makes it future proff and I belive the future for BMS is very bright. Finally they were able to add a new aircraft with own avionics, and own systems. That alone is something to be praised. But below the radar (pun intended) they added Link 16 for the F-15C which kind of shipped unnoticed. Now they already teased it for the F-16 which will be a game changer as well in how you operate in BMS. Also Link 16 feels belivable with realistic ranges and hostiles can still very much pop up. So you still need SA but have a great tool on your hands. I'm sure the guy there have still a lot in store!
FM isn’t good in BMS though. It’s an old game, old graphics, simple FM. Why do we keep pushing this false narrative?
@@HighAspect So you wrote FM twice, yet it’s better than DCS. Let me guess you never tried BMS? Yes it is an old game, yes it’s graphics are somewhat bad but when I’m busy fighting in BMS I don’t even notice this. Probably hard to get for you ;)
@@TheFietek yes it’s a fun old game with a good campaign engine 👍
9:15 I agree with this take entirely as someone who grinded out the freshly released F-15A and finished up on a few other top end jets the game has to offer. It just doesn't allow space for tactical gameplay and where it does, it's so fast paced that the engagement aspect is gone. The good thing though is that the concurrency of battles you can have within an hour with these fancy new jets is insane and never seen before. You could play 3 battles within a span of 20 minutes back to back and is just easier to get into.
Also you should try out Star Citizen. It has a very in depth flight model system for a sci-fi space game with a lot of believability. Though it's more focused on guns and msls are an after thought, fighting in zero g with 6 DoF is certainly an experience to have, though it's in an alpha (11 years running) with fundamental flight models constantly in flux.
The Snail needs to make the top tier lobbies way smaller. Doing a 8vs8 could suddenly make things way more interesting.
I have not dove into SC yet. I have heard it's just another DCS.
It’s definitely not DCS, and the direction of the game is to allow for more gameplay focus in aerial/space combat. They basically want what would be early cold war aerial combat, but in space
However, at present the ’campaign level’ dynamics that you would probably want, are not really present in SC. It’s more like server-wide occasional events and isolated team duels. Space combat is a profession of sorts, but large-scale org related combat just isn’t there yet
@@Enigma89 Pardon my reply, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on *why* 8v8 would help top tier. As a long time WTer I personally found that having more players at those higher tiers helped matches, as it provided more opportunity for at least one opponent to flank, made the matches last longer which allowed for more gameplay (ground striking, flanking), and allowed more oppressive aircraft to be easily countered with numbers (A single Su-27 could team wipe a team of 8 and still have two missiles left over.). RB EC will never happen so I believe the next most reasonable thing to help would be to split spawns into two airfields on differing sides of the map per team.
"You could play 3 battles within a span of 20 minutes back to back and is just easier to get into."
I really disagree that this is a positive at all. If that 3 battles is straight up garbage, then it really doesn't matter how many games you can do within 20 minutes. The current 16v16 top tier is a cluster fuck with missiles from all directions and require inhumane situational awareness. You basically run around like a headless chicken, slinging missile here and there and the match end. It's very rare that you get to use the full capability of the plane, 90% of the time you're just playing as a missile truck trying to missile someone who can't keep track of 6 people at the same time.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you do these videos. So great for our little niche community
I appreciate that!
Thank you for the video. Very interesting!
I think the dataset is a good one and I agree that War Thunder could be a great game but their predatory business practices and game design hurt the community too much, I'd hate to see that become the standard for sim gaming going forward (even though unfortunately its obviously working for them)
It was a great year for me. Discovered ECW and Grayflag servers which made DCS multiplayer come alive and just got into VR which has completely changed my experience of flying in a sim for the better.
I am getting into DCS again after a long hiatus flying the FC3 planes, just need to get more suitable hardware. I do also have high hopes for GHPC even though I will be in the old folks' home before it comes out of early access. The guys at Radian Simulations are the best though, I am 100% sure they will make the best tank sim ever!
I also believe we need more games like Combat Pilot, Helicopter Gunship DEX and the like making sim games more accessible to people like myself who wants realism on a certain level without the need to sacrfice both jobs and our families to be able to learn to fly a plane or manage a tank on the battlefield.
I myself am guilty of saying "Yea I'll try BMS when X happens". I even have gone so far to download the installation files for it. However, my issue, which I believe can resonate with a lot of people is it is just a new sim. Players like me who almost strictly play WW2 or early cold war will have the same learning curve of DCS for BMS, which can seem like such an energy suck or chore sometimes. I know that it's my own job to get over that etc, and fully intend to in 2024, however that has been the reason during 2023. With the new graphical upgrades coming to BMS, alongside hopefully a renewed multiplayer as the masses flock to the game (we hope :-) ), I am fully prepared to embrace BMS as a regular sim in my library. Very good video, really enjoy these analytical, large perspective videos that really showcase the state of the sim market. Cheers.
Oddly enough I've been playing Squad after their new Infantry Combat Update. It adds better suppression, stamina, and aiming mechanics and makes gunfights feel more realistic and less like people just clicking on heads in Counter Strike.
It feels odd to talk about sim gameplay for infantry level shooters but people are trying to make more realistic shooters, I'm looking forward to new ARMA.
BMS suffers from not having good graphics, but soon it will. FANTASTIC game though and the team is simply amazing.
I got excited at first about VR in BMS, but every time I see that landscape and that grey lighting, I get completely put off by it...
The reason I haven’t installed BMS and the reason many others don’t is because when I graduated from war Thunder and found dcs it got be very comfortable with many things about it and bms just feels like another sim to learn. I also am worried about how to get falcon 4.0 and then finding out how to install the bms mod
Original Falcon 4.0 is easy to get via valves and cdproject online stores. BMS installation is also pretty straightforward,:
Install original falcon anywhere on your system, download latest BMS full installer, follow installation wizard
Run the updater to check/install any updates that may came after installer was released.
If you are familiar with F-16 switchology it shouldn't take more than 1h to have it fully set up with at least most important key assignment done.
BTW dear YT stop censoring me, it's silly.
@@6XENO9 Any recommendations of a website to download it from? i have not been ably to find anything except steam which blocks me from editing core files.
@@Saber-ut8ri See gog Falcon Collection, extra downloads tab. I cannot be more specific, because YT deletes my comments.
It's really sad that IL2 GB did all these nice addons and then avoided the Pacific Theater just like that.
I'm happy about their decision to do Korea and I think they made the smart choice. From their perspective, they know that other people are already going for pacific. they know that modern is already covered by DCS and BMS, they know that DCS already has a massive headstart on Vietnam, and the scale of that conflict is probbaly a bit oo much for them to do right first time around any time soon. My favourite jets are the korean ones. So fun yet simple. And massively underated. AsEnigma said, Korea has hardly been done. The IL-2 time likely were thinking strategically, long and hard about giving people a reason to choose their game over others, therefore they have to offer somethign different. I think Korea will be a perfect one for them to do. Great theatre, great aircraft, not too much a departure from WW2 era props, but just enough a step up that it will be fresh and interesting new combat.
As Enigma rightly points out, the overall hollistic experience for the theatre that the F-86 and MiG-15bis have in DCS is lacking. IL-2 team have a huge chance here to make something that coan only be found on their game and platform apposed to others.
Hot take: War Thunder has done more for the simulator niche than any other game in the last decade. They are the only one that has solved simulations age old problem: accessibility. The benefit is it is a launch platform for the hobby to expand it's audience.
I have never heard a bigger nonsense ,War Thunder fun arcade, say it's a simulator is just nonsense, it's not even close to DCS,and you must not forget that enigma is sponsored be War Thunder
@@marcius778 Sorry but you are incorrect. I am not sponsored by War Thunder, I have only ever had one video be sponsored by War Thunder. There was no sponsor in this video if there was it would have been properly disclosed.
Having partnered with a company before in the past does not negate the points in future videos. There is immense value in gaining access to the Snail because it allows me to compare how they work versus the other games. Based on this experience, it is extremely clear to me that the Snail is simply on another level compared to the other games. They have their sh-t together and they know what they are doing. To paint a picture of what's it like to work with the Snail vs other sim games, it's like working with a Fortune 500 company vs the pizza store around the corner. The Snail is simply just in another league because they are so massive and acknowledging their muscle is simply just being aware of a fact.
Yeah, warthunder acts as a gateway drug, it's pretty good. I'd play the hell out of it if they ever fixed VR.
not to mention the fantastic performance with even using low pc specs AND VR. No other sim comes even close.
@@jimmydesouza4375 VR is definitely one of the parts that bugs me most with WT. It has gone from working awful, to working great, back to working awful more times than I can count
I don't generally do polls, as you pointed out, they are not generally a good representation of the user base and what is particularly frustrating for me, is you can get whatever results you want simply by asking the questions to steer the results.
While I am not a Fan Boy of DCS, it is the only Sim I use (right now), and from my perspective, it's come a long way since I started over ten years ago. I am also a positive individual, so when you're playing in a Beta version of a game, you have to expect bugs. Just because it took a certain number of days to address a particular bug does not mean they were not aware of it, but more probably it was difficult to fix. I used to fly Falcon 3 and 4 and played with BMS, which i liked, but for several reasons, I preferred DCS. Now, it has a lease on new life and the future is brighter and I might have to take another look at that in later development.
I say, because DCS has improved a lot over the last three years ( I think they were resting on their laurels until they realized other companies were moving forward and they needed to pick up the pace) that We are in a golden age and there is a ton of interest in flight sims, especially in DCS (although I don't have any numbers to back that up), and we can look forward to steady improvements (it's not glamorous to see day to day work results in coding and other tedious work) so people don't realize all the exciting things going on in the background.
One more thing, there is a difference between a flight sim (study sim) and a true flying "Game". I was never a hard core gamer but I was always interested in flying. I think that is another important thing to consider- there are many variations of Flight sim gamers, from hard core by the book, to just casual pilots who enjoy simply flying and shooting things up. Right now, no matter what kind you are, there is something out there to keep your attention
If DCS Dynamic Campaign, and hopefully associated ground unit AI/damage changes release in 24, it's looking pretty good.
I literally don't understand one bit why some people are pessimistic about DCS's future. Would love to hear their take on this, because I can't for the life of me see their point.
Thank you for a great analytics (yours) and very useful feedback in terms of the survey.
Despite subscription with notifications I've missed it (like many others, probably), but 1k people is a good start.
(TLDR!) Was it a good year? For DSC: MT and huge step towards realism and built-in functionality of radios are big enough steps from simulation point of view.
IL2 is great best for PvP and VR, but people got used to get new toys while guys are busy with new project.
BMS: yeah, so many people are excited, but 4.38 (new terrain and gfx) rumours really made people wait, I guess.
So 2023 was good for sim-cade games that give people enjoyment on subject, sometimes involve sim tactics plus new "reality" - VR.
Btw, in 2024 :
- many of those simcade players will join DCS/BMS.
- BMS is really gonna push DCS with its dynamic-campaing, now (then) with better visuals (at least number of people who will try it, will be more significant).
- DCS will get same momentum of improving existing modules, with occasional splash of interest on newer MiG and middle-east maps. Overall, only 3rd party developers can fill all those gaps in each era, starting from WW2 (it's called DCS World after all). Only some kind Dynamic Campaigns , "VulcanAPI" or "built-in VoiceAttack" modules can make big enough waves now.
IL2 - I am so happy they took Korea, instead of Pacific. It would be a really sad story if both ED and ex-1C team would be fighting for people interested in same theater.
Personally, I hope ED will focus (themselves and working with 3rd parties) on each era at a time, making a WW2 + dynamic campaign first, for example. While 3D engine still needs many optimisations (try to walk in forest of Marianas). Immersion is the key and MP community are really helping ED on this side.
I wonder if BMS, after finishing 4.38 will eventually get under Microprose umbrella?
Another view on DCS in 2023/2024 ruclips.net/video/Yqfp9BgNz90/видео.html
Top games simlight games ruclips.net/video/XVIKOIj597o/видео.html
Personally I think that BMS is too dense for the average player, or the average DCS flyer, to really get into (I saw it had VR, tried it, and couldn’t get into it like I did with DCS about a year ago).
What I am glad to see is that people really do enjoy flight sims and believe that things will be better, sometimes I feel as if people latch on to harsh criticisms and fail to see how comprehensive and awesome sims are (DCS particularly which I am partial to). Thank you for doing this investigative work!
My issue with getting into BMS is just the amount / simplicity of learning resources. I'm not familiar with the F-16 in DCS either, but I've gotten as far as taking off in BMS so I'm not hesistant to play it or anything. When want to get into flying the F-16 or when my desire for better gameplay overcomes my hesitation to put in the effort, I'm going to use BMS
TBH I did not take part in this survey, as I fly BMS almost exclusively due lack of time. With so many questions being DCS specific I didn't felt I'm entitled to take part in it. It'd help if there was an answer that would indicate I'm not a user of the product that is a subject of some particular questions. Yep I'm worried some of the important things in sim of my choice are taking a bit long to make, but still I'm fairly optimistic.
I know it's not "tecnically" a 2023 game, but I would highly suggest to take a look at "Juno". It used to be called Simple Rockets 2 and it started as a mobile game. But latest updates turned the game into a quite decent alternative to KSP2, almost entirely focused on procedural parts rather than pre-made meshes. Some might consider it barebones still, but it kept me entertained while waiting for KSP2 to release the science update (which while still a bit messy, it's already a step in the right direction).
I found the analysis really interesting, and I agreed with almost all of it but one comment I would make around you saying how long multiplayer was down for DCS is that as I fly on small servers with 2/3/4 friends I still found multiplayer viable. I think a clarity might be large server multiplayer was not viable. Thanks for the work behind this!!!
Personally I predominantly fly single player but I think my opinion of 2023 somewhat aligns with yours. I think 2023 was not a great year for Sim game play but I think it will be very important; you have called the Sim World in the Dark Ages and I will agree with this if we think of the Dark Ages as a precursor to the Renaissance. DCS has shown that they are heading in the direction of more immersive gameplay, their latest newsletter brings up improvements to infantry, ATC, ECM, weather, dynamic campaign, and Global World, these likely would not have been possible without the multithreading they incorporated in 2023. IL2 was basically on hiatus making minor SP improvements but they have used that time to improve their realism and immersion into a game that quite frankly had become a bit stale after BON and BOBp. Finally we have the introduction of the first ground up Sim in more than a decade in Combat Pilot. In short, I don't think we got a lot in 2023 but a lot of progress was made to make the next couple of years something to really look forward to.
Reading the comments, i understand the community doesn't feel the need to put in the effort to learn BMS. Its totally understandable as it may feel like a big task or a chore. But same could be said for DCS and IL2, most people have to learn them too right? With each update, BMS continues to bring an easier and realistic sim experience from the ui to the dynamic campaign engine. And i also understand the wow of graphics that most players want, well that is gonna change starting next update. As a member of the BMS community, i invite you join any BMS discord and i give you my word, the whole community will ease you into the game. Lastly, thank you enigma, hope you dispense some freedom in the F-15C, hope i wasn't a bad teacher 😄
If DCS could make combined arms be just a fraction of what War Thunder has it would make that forgotten module more worthwhile.
I used to play War Thunder multiplayer with a M&K year’s ago, on Realistic difficulty, before I purchased my first HOTAS. I have thought about going back to it with my WinWing HOTAS and play it in the Simulator difficulty. You also earn more XP and Credit’s on the harder difficulty modes I believe. So finally I could maybe unlock the really fast RAF twin engined prop fighter. I forgot the name but it’s a lighter, fighter version of the Mosquito.
Lower tier grinding got a lot easier. You will be able to unlock the Hornet really quick. Economy is better, almost as good as it was back on 2016/2017. BUT. To counter bottling, they nerfed Sim rewards a lot. There is a cap for every 15 minutes of gameplay now... So RB is now a ton better for grinding.... But still, grinding as a whole got easier. And sim is more active than it's ever been!
As far as why no one is playing BMS. The UI is old and hard to use if you're not already familiar with it. I boot that game up and have basically no idea what I'm doing. There is a severe lack of documentation which makes BMS a lot harder to learn, especially for someone who hasn't already learned the F16 or G15 in another sim.
BMS sis probably the most documented sim of all time. It’s all located in your doc folder from 1998 until now :)
@MultiJp51 well thanks for that. I've spent literal hours looking for documentation online and only ever found physical manuals on ebay. I've never once seen this mentioned anywhere. I've also just now noticed the giant "Open Docs Folder" in the BMS launcher and I feel like a dunce. Welp, here i come BMS...
War Thunder Is A Jump In And Go Type Of Sim. But What Killed It For Me Was The Grind. What I Liked About IL-2 And DCS Was No Grind And Everyone Got The Same "Equipment".
As much as I want to get round to trying BMS, and have looked at it in the past, for me, its from back then to now, the inferface seems a bit daunting for a newcomer and relative noob to learn, and AFAIK there isn't built in tutorials and such to get me going. My intention has effectively been to learn with tutorials etc the F16 in DCS, and then move across to BMS once I'm comfortable......but then I broke my leg :D
They have training missions, but you have to follow along in a pdf
@@er00ic thanks I'll take a closer look then but always nicer to have something a bit more interactive for the dumb like me..... tho if they're good pdfs and it follows the actions closely then great....as problem with Dcs sometimes its easy to get completely lost if do a step wrong
Well, I waited for VR for BMS. Installed, played a bit and just resigned because the VR was unusable. If you are looking for answers the feature implementation is different from feature usability.
Have you seen the new DCS Olympus?
Is it possibe to integrate into online modes to help create a more dynamic experience?
DCS Olympus Trailer.
ruclips.net/video/0ppoDZKKpGw/видео.htmlsi=N9RkWioBsdHSkqrJ
I saw it but did not try using it.
@@Enigma89 you should, its really powerful.
So would you categorize people who play on their own squadron servers or otherwise private servers with a select group of friends as playing multiplayer? Or does multiplayer suggest playing on a server like ECW or Tempests?
I think Coop is good but pvp is where you really begin to learn because AI is so poor
I think there are 2 things holding me back from giving DCS a perfect rating is lack a Datalink/EW improvements, and better ground unit damage models. Otherwise I find it on par to BMS in my opinion.
Did you see the interview on game dev between GHPC and Why485? It's an interesting discussion on sim game dev.
IL2 korea is the most exciting thing to me right now. Ive been wanting a true Korean war game for years and no body in any genre has produced
1st time I see this channel, I would have answered this survey too. I've been in SIMS since 2001 and yes, I'm using VR eventhough it's quite an unfair match against non VR users that can turn their camera views like Owls do while we break our necks to see behind us.
I played DCS a little but the multiplayer is too complicated to me. I mostly play IL2 and War Thunder where you can find multiplayer games fairly quick and also, they have so much more WW2 models than DCS. I know War Thunder is kind of meh into really simulating a plane but like you mentioned, all the planes are living well against one and other in this one.
I really don't like jets by the way so that's why I chose those 2 SIMS rather than DCS.
Cheers !!!
12:07 I have gotten into BMS because of the Eagle release. So far, I lament the missing of the same "modifier" thing the F-16 uses, since I am limited with my HOTAS setup and can't map everything that I need to have at the ready like I could with DCS. I flew the Viper a bit in the game and was hooked! It's a fun experience, sadly I just dislike the Viper, which means that flying that instead of the Eagle feels more like a chore. That I still had a great time so far, just shows me how much I'll play the game when I can do so in a plane I enjoy.
There should be dx shift command not coupled with viper avionics you can use, but in fact something like pinky switch+dx shift for Eagle may be unavailable (assuming F-15C not uses pinky switch command).
I fly DCS and BMS and both I can map everything I need using a combination of hotas and keyboard. No issues at all.
@@6XENO9 Yeah, DX Shift is only available on the Viper AFAIK.
@@peterp4037 Not a fan of using my keyboard next to HOTAS, I only struggle mapping the Eagle to my HOTAS. Vipet is fine because of the DX Shift.
@@SoaCrow Have you considered using Joystick Gremlin or some such third party to emulate shifted behaviour for your setup?
As mainly a WT player, and one who has spend considerable time playing air sim, it really saddens me how much WT sim is neglected by Gaijin. It has so much potential, and there really isn’t any competition on the market in that niche. The fidelity is nowhere near that of DCS, but there is a greater variety of planes to fly and you can learn how to fly a new plane in minutes and master it in hours. The cockpits for the new jets are also modeled surprisingly well. I hope Gaijin does something about Sim in 2024.
not many people on BMS ?
simple: the graphics. most players, even sim players, won't touch a game unless it has modern graphics.
that's why Laminar fixed their clouds all year long, that's why most people enjoy MSFS and cannot shut up about it while it certainly doesn't have the best flight dynamics.
me ? i'd rather have more control over my ground units in BMS, like a real RTS game.
Me enjoying my Tornado in BMS🗿
I was shocked at how much the F1 got rated when it seems only people who play Enigma server use it. I hardly ever see it on 4YA servers and I'm lucky if I ever see someone streaming the F1 on Twitch. I watched a French Steam flying last night and could understand a thing he said, but I like watching video's on it as it a beautiful plane. Unfortunately I refunded mine on Steam as I didn't enjoy the complicated, outdated way of using ground ordinance. If the F1M does ground attack more like the 2000C, then I may consider buying it again and if they add more weapons. I mostly play ground attack.
For me we'll always be in the dark ages until someone comes along and recreates the same scale as wwiionline with hundreds or thousands of players existing in the same massive world, but in a more modern engine. I'd like to see war thunder or the new IL2 iteration attempt this, but I guess the financial incentives just aren't there.
I have been trying to chase that high from WWIIOL and basically left in the cold since then
If war thunder had IL2's level of cockpit fidelity, and just basic navigation/radio down it would be absolutely unstoppable. Unfortunately, your biplane gets a perfectly accurate GPS moving map with live marked opponents even in Sim and radio comms are nothing to speak of. As for cockpits, The RPM gauges on several of my jets do not match the sim's RPM value and several switches are inverted from their actual positions when set (Airbrake being in when marked out etc), so minimally interactable cockpits feel like they would be a large undertaking to say the least. I know nothing I said above will be done, because that is not WT's intention, as far as I can tell. With the opensourced game engine and the new NAU engine coming out, I am optimistic there will be some degree of asset or code availability, whether released or leaked, that enables a community opensource start from the basis of some of the work WT has done. Imagine an opensource War Thunder project building off the engine, assets etc with user code like BMS, adding cockpit and nav/radio/mission planning functionality etc.
BMS would be my dream game, but it is just too sim heavy for me personally.
Personally, I've tried to get into BMs repeatedly, but I just don't find the 4th gen fighters as engaging as the modules in DCS or even IL2
I've had trouble playing DCS in MP until recently due to my older hardware. I'm wondering whether the 1/3 days down would have looked better if server operators did not insist on running the beta edition. I don't think it's fair to knock down DCS just because a relatively small group insists on only using beta versions.
I am no fan of open beta but stable is just as bugged
In my personal opinion, I do think you are unnecessarily negative or pessimistic regardging IL2. Without compromise, it is a great game to play; the best if you want to play WW2. The VR implementation is still the best and I fly with my friends multiple times a week having a blast, no compromises or putting up with medriocre stuff because there also are some good bits. Just unadulterated fun, but that's just me
Out of all the games IL-2 is my favourite one. The issue is that no one is playing it in US East time zone. The servers are very empty and that kills the game for me.
@@Enigma89 In case you do have friends to fly with in your time zone, you may want to give the Wingwalkers server a go. It's a coop server, though you can (only) find it in the "Dogfight" server list in IL-2. NB: there is a WW1 version and a WW2 version, when we fly we mostly fly WW2.
There is a huge list of missions, so great variety and all missions aim to be dynamic, i.e. the AI scales dynamically from 1 (low) to 6 (high) with the number of pilots on the server. (Almost) all missions are based on historic WW2 theatres and specific historic situations. Quite often, there are already other people when we fly Wingwalkers, but it also happens it's just my friends and me flying and we're still having fun due to the dynamic missions. Some missions can actually be won by a small group of pilots, though others not so much.
I find it really well executed, it's really a lobor of love, much attention to detail. We don't always fly Wingwalkers, but when we do, we tend to enjoy ourselves quite a bit, would recommend.
My Steam hardware survey detected and submitted that I have no VR sets. I have 3 - I just use them wirelessly... so the steam survey is under reporting VR usage a TON
It might also be overstating since it breaks down ownership of individual headsets when most people, like yourself, have multiple. Really no way of knowing without breaking in to the code.
Also it never tells you that it has detected a VR headset, wired or wireless, at least it never has for me while I have had my index.
was the survey on the discord? I completely missed this.
Discord and on YT community post
@@Enigma89 oh well, I completely missed this, anyhow great video, I think you are the only RUclipsr to really take a deep look in the overall state of flight sims (or combat flight sims at least), so thank you.
My call ist the onboarding isn't easy enough. BMS should be on Steam to push ease of install
warthunder went from Mig23 and F14 to mig29 and F16 then Su27 and F15
meanwhile DCS :
People are so negative for War Thunder mostly because of the grind, it's long and frustrating, but the Snail has basically fixed the economy this year, the grind is not as painful anymore, now it's just a matter of fixing top tier Air RB. We need an "Enigma's Cold War Server" styled game mode, where there's enough objectives in a dynamic frontline so people can have the space to act, instead of everyone making a furball in the middle.
I wish you and your team could run a custom lobby for War Thunder, based on your rules, but with Air RB controls/camera. Wouldn't aid the grind, but would be a great place to decompress and have meaningful battles.
What does RB have to do with Sim battles...And no,the economy is not "basically fixed" .Talk to any of the WT air sim streamers and see what they answer you.
I gave BMS a couple of tries. Once before VR, then tried again afterwards..
Its really hard to get into... the 2nd time i tried with VR, i had some issue where my VR resolution was super high. My framerate was something like 1FPS and i could not find a way to fix it.
Its just hard for me to dedicate a whole week to learning the game like I did with DCS back in the day
Also.. the hate for War Thunder is dumb. I guarantee 99% of the people that shit on it havent tried Sim mode. I went to it after playing DCS for years, and its pretty much the only flight sim Ive been playing for the last 6 or 7 months.
If i can't click everything in a cockpit, the game is a hard pass for me, as i hate binding 1000 controls, despite having a good hotas setup. Il2 doesn't fall under that category because in that game there are only a few controls. But as i get close and close to present day jets and stuff, i hate the experience if i don't have full fidelity cockpits. This is why things like Flaming Cliffs 3 is a hard pass for me. I get it people percieve it as value pack, good for them..but for me, is bad value. I don't want other war thunder games to pop up.
I don't care about the quantity of the vehicles in a game, but the realism and the features it has.
ED has significant revenue from non-civilian products...their devs are not dedicated to DCS 100%, or even close to that. Hence the snail. There is room for a new player to focus on combat simulation, focusing on aircraft and not beholden to government contracts.
According to who? And what "non civilian" products? The only non civilian products I have ever even seen ED mention are claims that they have military versions of some of their DCS modules but I personally suspect that might not be the truth due to the many realism issues with the DCS modules. A nice example being that they claimed the A-10C module was a gamified version of a military sim, but the A-10C was missing major features of the jet and had a bunch of incorrect switchology (the whole point of this type of sim).
As someone who knows literally nothing about BMS, what does Falcon BMS offer that DCS doesn't? What's the selling point?
I find the easiest (and unfortunately the most offensive) way to explain this is that DCS just feels like a tech demo compared to BMS. DCS has some great things about it but they stop as soon as you exit the cockpit.
The AI in DCS is inexcusably bad, the AI in BMS is believable.
The map, airplane and asset selections made by DCS look like they were selected by a random number generator, in BMS they feel cohesive.
BMS has a fully working dynamic campaign where you will get a lot of different challenges thrown at you. In DCS, everything is very sterile and scripted.
If you like gen 4 stuff but have not played BMS then you should really hop on. It will really allow you to experience gen 4 for the first time in a setting that has some meaningful depth. DCS may cover more stuff in general but it's wide and shallow while BMS is narrow and deep.
Now with this all said, DCS does some things that other games can't do like helicopters and it has some decent coverage of planes in the cold war era.
For me, I play ALL the games. They all have some great things about them and all of them have some bad things about them.
Multiple F-16 blocks simulated in quite a detail (system failures included), hi-fidelity F-15C, capable AI, decent IADS, superb ATC, robust AWACS comms, larger maps, functional/dynamic and diverse across the map weather, DTC coupled with proper tools to plan your mission, whole comms system to to manage your wingman/flight element and employ preferred tactics during mission and famous dynamic campaign on top all of that.
The first selling point is that it is free 😂
@@MultiJp51 color me intrigued!
@@MultiJp51 straight to the point as usual. You've totally nailed it my friend :D
One thing about BMS right now that is I think is a hurdle for a lot of people without good control hardware is the lack of ability to mix keyboard and joystick for binds like it's possible in DCS. And this is something that was possible before. I for example lack my left hand below the elbow and I cannot use the throttle part of a traditional HOTAS setup. I might have a fix for that in VKB's modularity money pertaining later on. With that, i could join back in today by just copying over my DCS joystick binds.
tbh, i kinda regret buying the F-15E haha. cuz its like f-18. sorry its just me. but still im gonna buy all modules in dcs lol.
i think everybody knows how close to being great warthunder is and thats exactly the problem, its so close yet the devs are uncapable of doing anything good with it. It is no surprise that every other game Gaijin has made was a giant flop.
Its the graphics. Same thing with games like MSFS vs Xplane 11/12. Xplane should by definition, be better due to the superior physics and more ammounts of addon aircraft. But msfs remains at #1, due to the graphics
2:00 we vr players need DOT labels at five miles, for the love of god enigma please put DOTS on your sever please please please.
If you need DOT at 5 miles in VR, than you're not doing VR right. I can spot at 20 miles without dots in VR
Im on a Q2 and Try IFF'ing a saber or an A4 in a fur ball at anything less than point blank is maddening I can see smudges at 5 and can make out ground targets at say 3
@@MeltDown950what setup are you using? I'm running a ryzen 7 and a 4080 with 64gig ram on m.2 and using a quest 2 think I need a new head set
No, we do not need dots. Stop ruining VR for the rest of us.
@@jimmydesouza4375 ok and could you list your setup please so I can get a better idea of what I can improve
I dunno if 2023 was a good year for Sim Gaming. But I know the Enigma server is carrying weight for DCS relevancy.
Why didn't servers use the stable version if there were game breaking bugs with the beta?
I actually left this out of the video but 2.9 was so broken a couple of servers were thinking of going to stable branch. Before we could make the switch, they pushed 2.9 to stable and broke that as well.
I think a lot of people have invested a lot of money and time into DCS and they just aren't willing to invest time and money into other flight sims. That's my problem, I've spent a lot of time and money on DCS over the years and I'm not jumping ship.
Sunk Cost Fallacy is real but it can be AND not OR.
@@Enigma89 I'm pretty heavily invested in IL2 as well, going back more than 20 years. I have almost every addon for Great Battles. But I fell out of il2 a few years ago for DCS. The Korean theatre is probably my favorite with the f-86 so I'll be getting that. Not into any modern era jets though I'll putz around with them in DCS. Sims that focus on those are out. Been working on my F5e and Mig 21 lately as those are fun. I'm not into the modern era button simulators.
@@Enigma89 This wouldn't be an example of sunk cost. Sunk cost is continuing with something you otherwise would not want to despite having no realistic chance of it improving because of the time/money you have spent on it.
This is just the problem that the more complicated a game is the more time you have to invest into it and you only have a limited amount of time.
I think it just comes down to the community you play with. My group all play DCS and think jumping to a game like BMS for example is pointless as DCS already has a F16 and F15 and provides similar things. Why download multiple games that are essentially the same when DCS provides more. I would say the only game that can compete with DCS is IL2 for the WWII niche but like you said DCS has the player base and is more user friendly. I also think IL2 fell off as well, I used to play it for WWII but idk I just stopped touching it. If DCS could replicate IL2's damage model then I can see that game being forgotten.
If DCS had a competitor I bet DCS would get the ball rolling a lot faster. Example: MSF2020 released with amazing clouds that everyone loved. DCS pushed out the 2.7 cloud update real quick. I bet when NOR was first announced before people realized it was not for the public, DCS was sweating.
*edit* Also I got a quest 2 VR recently just for Vtol and I have been loving the laid back atmosphere.
I'd disagree with statement DCS and BMS are much the same, but it takes a bit deeper dive to understand how those two are so much different. But I understand if one is MP player mostly and all of his flying buddies use one sim, it ain't make sense to push everyone to use the other.
@@6XENO9 I understand that BMS is more of a Sim compared to DCS and has more in-depth aspects and more believable AI. DCS is already really nice and is easy for people to get into. But if you have a good mission maker you can completely change the DCS experience and have people never look for anything else.
Is the IL2 Korea a new Game or just a nother Great Battle?
No one knows
Typing the comments is really laggy lately, so I'll keep the banter short. I'd say 2023 was just okay. F-15E is great, though it doesn't give me the passions that planes flying from the BOAT do. BUT, unlike some years, I feel 2023 was slower on releases, but they were higher in quality, as far as I can tell, none of them were nigh upon useless early cold war planes or WWII planes that I'd buy IL2 if I wanted to fly. I'd say... Good planes, no trash this year. Could some mid cold war planes fit in? Sure. Could the F-4? Sure, but since we're getting an airforce version, I'm not that interested. Some years you get planes that are standouts too far removed to fit in modern DCS, some years you get nearly useless planes from the early to mid cold war, but at LEAST it isn't the very early years when we didn't get a single real fighter and had about 3 aircraft of any type to fly in full fidelity after like 6 years.
I got rid of IL2 GB sadly as the updates were really annoying. Each update was like 10 GB due to the fact that it will install everything even if I didn’t own it. No interest in flying circus, but the last few updates were heavy on that. Waste of my time and internet bandwidth.
Personally I think sims usually focus too much on the competitive multiplayer aspect of things. If you are not into MP you are the least cared about player.
AI and campaign stuff is neglected or does not exist at all. That the only (active) game with a dynamic campaign is still Falcon 4/BMS is mind-boggling to me.
On paper I should love BMS but in reality I can't bring myself to even try it. Being build on a 26 year old game it looks incredibly dated. I get that graphics ain't everything but when the menus scream Windows 95 at you it is a hard sale. And on top of that with increased capabilities also comes a increase in complexity. Being build for the pros the learning curve is probably more like a cliff.
I just wish I had something more modern like that which would be more accessible and user friendly.
Maybe Falcon 5 will be that but honestly I think Falcon 5 is like 10 years out, I don't expect to hear from that any time soon.
IL2 GB gets boring over time in SP because of the many limitations the game has. The AI always goes for a turn fight and the missions are incredibly limited in variety. I mean I have a Luftwaffe real time Normandy carrier running and I think the exact same patrol pattern over the landing beaches pops up like 20 times in a row.
Another limitation the game has which makes it feel older than it is are the units and the mission design in general. I could be wrong but in career mode there never seems to be more than 32 aircraft active at one time, usually split right the middle for friend and foe. And then there are no heavy bombers. Unless you create a mission yourself most missions will take place at around 6 000 ft and it is mostly so that you will only encounter targets right at the patrol/target point. Getting ambushed/intercepted never really happens.
Combined all that results in a very predictable and limited experience.
DCS has different issues. For a SP player the most important one is probably that you either need to purchase campaigns or study the mission editor as generated mission seem to be all over the place.
I think the 4th generation fighter era is probably the best developed but besides that it becomes rather fractured. Vietnam and WW2 often lack assets and maps.
The problem with this survey is that this is essentially a DCS multiplayer fan site so the results reflect that. Since the sample is skewed the results are meaningless as respects other sims. Probably would be better to just focus the survey on DCS and releated issues as that would provide some meaningful information. As it stands this survey tells me nothing (as respects non DCS sims).
Re your Hot Take on New IL2 at 14:20 - the IL2 team mention in their "Brief Room Episode 3: Questions and Answers Session" of 20 Jan 2024 (at ruclips.net/video/xzR14LuCrRY/видео.html , first question answered at 0:29). It's not much insight but they do say it's next after their current development project...so my guess would be not before 2025 (?).
My 2 cents about multiplayer vs single player are: 1, I have several campaigns and lots of SP missions. But i play mostly MP, why? Well because i want to feel like i'm actually in a digital combat simulator... Short of some campaigns, SP is very sterile and unimmersive. 2: I want to see other people taxiing at bases and taking off. I want to feel like there are actual naval ops going on(although most of the time few people do naval ops in MP). It's not just about seeing AI aircraft, players and people on coms make the game more immersive, even if everything isn't 'milsim' and it's just a bunch of dudes faffing around in planes. I hate DCS core so much because of that sterile SP experience. The complexity and knowledge required to make SP feel immersive and not feel like ARMA 3 AR arsenal is too much.
Just started War Thunder a month or so ago. I'm enjoying it but jesus christ the grind is slow.
Don't make it your goal to collect more vehicles. Just play to get your mind off other stuff.
What do you think of ArmA Enigma?
Unoptimized but cool
What about WW1 genere, Flaying Circous grow in 2023.
Flying circus got bucketed into il2 gb
Graduated from single player to multiplayer? You don't graduate from single player to multiplayer, you graduate from multiplayer to single player. Multiplayer is where most sim players start, engaging in furballs and ya, ya, ya with their online friends. Multiplayer is as far from "simulating" flying aircraft in a war as you can get. Then the more serious sim players graduate from trying to herd cats in multiplayer to a great campaign theater single player experience like in IL-2 Great Battles. I graduated from multiplayer to single player as I'm sure most single players did. Wonder why good multiplayer simming is so hard to find? Because it's mostly about trying to herd cats, which is ultimately a futile effort. You can't do it.
I don't think you realize how bad the AI is in single player.
Personally, it's not so much the best year. Fewer people are playing DCS and even less PvP format. Even on the 4YA PvP servers are empty and DDCS is now just blue side since they removed F16 and the like from Red team. If you love old planes your server is the best but overall it's going down for me.
12:43 what this may not reflect is people who played a lot DCS, stopped playing it but could come back playing if some problems were addressed.
I can't believe you had Wings of Flander's Fields in the best sim question but not Aces High III. ;o) They are past their prime but still can scare up 120 players a night on their Main Arena. Their organized historical reenactment scenarios are still unique and unmatched anywhere else. They have a cadre of event organizers that have perfected them over 20 years. I would still love to see an interview of the Aces High dev from you. He was at the center of much of the initial combat flightsim pioneer days. He single handedly built two of the best WWII sims of their day: Warbirds and Aces High. A lot of history and insight to the beginnings of the genre there. And the initial devs of WWIIOnline are all cut their teeth on online sims working for Hitech on Warbirds. $0.02.
aces high fucking sucks, it's the most arcade pile of trash excuse for a flight sim with the absolutely oddest group of old men still flying it you will ever see. Digital ammo readouts in every plane, trash physics, trash graphics, just absolutely not even worth talking about. It's like an old folks home for people stuck in 2003. Still flying on their saitek 290 getting into wild dogfights with labels and digital ammo readouts.
@@jonredcorn862 LoL. Some of what you say might be true. ;)
I think it is a better WWII sim than say WT. Just for the Scenarios if nothing else which I don't think anyone else does to the same levels and regularity.
But compared to Wings over Flanders Fields? ;)
Wings over flanders fields is the greatest ww1 sim ever made. It's the got the best AI of any sim, the best career mode, it's the most epic showdown of biplanes seen since ww1 so to talk shit about it is embarrassing. Could of called out any other sim on the list and I wouldn't be as mad. @@jasonirby3382
The few times i played bms I spent 1 hour of briefing for every sortie and about 10-15 minutes of flying to target then getting shot down or flying back to designeted airfield
Skill issue
True, but even if don't get shot down. It's an entire hour and a half until i get to do something and then i need to stick to specific strategies so my teammates don't get shot.
Frank Ladavatz gave a talk on realism in games that reflects how bms makes me feel. I don't want to have to go through PowerPoint point presentations in order to do bvr fighting
2023 is better maybe, but not that much better.
Flogger and my soul is to dcs
it was a bad year. until we got more mirages. then it was a good year
A lot of people sleeping on Arma Reforger and upcoming Arma4
Bohemia intentionally release broken and overpowered DLC to try to get extra revenue. That killed my enjoyment of the company and I have been playing Bohemia games since flashpoint.
F-15 should have been a HD SINGLE [ Seater ] E just like AH64 is just too too detailed [ i do like em [dcs tread] and not fun to fly. I have Harrier F18 & mult-package ED .
I have never liked BMS and to use it now just waste time and energy for the DCS world..
bms is very limited of airframes
That true but with the new tech they are finally able to develop new planes. BMS is nw the only sim out there with a clickable F-15C cockpit.