Rumblings through the DCS community have continued for some time about the state of RAZBAM’s M2000c module. Some have complained about unfinished features while others have praised the module. RAZBAM has been listening and doing something very interesting – securing an, to my knowledge, unprecedented level of access to the Armée de l’Air Française’s Escadron de chasse 2/5 “Ile de France.”
Still flying the 2000C
Escadron de chasse 2/5 “Ile de France” still flies the Mirage 2000C and 2000D in active service making them the best source for information on how the Mirage 2000C flies and operates. RAZBAM has been actively working to make connections with Armée de l’Air and specifically this squadron. They have succeeded too!
That work behind the scenes has been going on for a while and now we have dual statements on the matter. The first one appeared on RAZBAM’s Facebook page:
RAZBAM Simulations M2000c development team has always been aware about some of the community complaints about the DCS module not being complete or buggy, and the apparent “abandonment” of the product from us.
Well, we can finally make a public statement regarding this iconic aircraft in DCSW:
The Armée de l’Air Française’s Escadron de chasse 2/5 “Ile de France” has been reviewing the module and agreed with us to help in getting it as close as possible to the real aircraft within the realm of what can be made public.Escadron de chasse 2/5 “Ile de France”‘s pilots have flown the DCS module and while they are quite surprised about the accuracy of it, they have pointed out some issues that need to be corrected, curiously enough, most of them have nothing to do with public complains.
This collaboration has been running from some time, but it’s just now that we received clearance by the Armée de l’Air Française to make public such participation.As more authorization to reveal information on this mutual participation is given, more info will be posted.
And then we had a follow up statement on the ED forums:
Here is more information regarding The Armée de l’Air Française’s Escadron de chasse 2/5 “Ile de France” involvement in the DCS M2000C enhancement:
While it has been recieved by some with a justified skepticism, This is not something that has just happened, this has been in the works behind the scenes with reviews from the French Air force, approvals from Generals, Commanders, and Captains of various squadrons on multiple bases expanding future aircraft.
As of right now we will have full base access, access to active pilots flying the aircraft every week, access to simulators, equipment and documentation that can be shared to public knowledge under the Armée de l’Air Française strict and severe information disclosure policy. These are aircraft that are in active service, information is VERY sensitive to all parties involved. Reason why it’s taking this long to fix and or enhance our DCS module.
In the next month we will post videos, pictures of our initial base visits, and other information as our partnership expands. This is a real and absolutely incredible task we have worked hard to give you DCS pilots the best and most authentic aircraft possible.
A detailed simulation of the 2000C is difficult with the high degree of sensitivity that remains around active service aircraft but it looks like a positive and working partnership will let RAZBAM improve the module further without running afoul of anything too sensitive.
Despite the criticism that exists, many in the DCS community hold the M2000C module in high regard. It’s my favourite DCS module and the aircraft that I’m mostly likely to hop into for a quick mission. I’m still learning many of the systems but I’m getting good at start-up, weapons and sensor handling. More importantly, I find the 2000C to be incredibly fun to fly. RAZBAM has done a great job with this module but it sounds like they will be doing even more.
If RAZBAM’s new partnership results in an even more accurate module, all the better.
In all of this, there was one other little tidbit of information that came out which I think can be looked at with extremely cautious optimism. A question posted on Facebook asked:
Is the secrecy the reason we likely won’t ever be able to get a 2000-5 or a 2000B/D?
RAZBAM’s page admin responded with:
the world is full of surprises..
Is this RAZBAM just waxing poetic? Or is it a hint that other variations of the Mirage 2000 are now possible thanks to their new partnership? Would these variations be entirely different aircraft from the 2000C or included as part of the package?
It’s really hard to know what is going to happen here as there are many more questions than we have answers.
Stormbirds 
That’s always comforting to know actual pilot had given feedback on a sim, it’s great they could achieve that!
It’s a really nice module, this Mirage 2000, and the fact it’s coming with a very well crafted training and campaign (plus the 2nd DLC campaign from Baltic) make it all the more interesting.
It’s taken quite a while to be fair, and having bought it in pre-release from day one was exciting, but it subsided with the slow progress and the poor manual in its first version. Once the campaign available, it was a pleasure to re-discover the Mirage, even if it was not entirely completed. And it was a good surprise to see the new version of the manual recently!
But I can understand some people were frustrated, and it happened with other modules which didn’t have a nice campaign to give a new interest, for example the MiG-21 was great add-on which has been neglected again and again, sadly, and which has no worthy campaign and one of the worst training set I saw (perhaps behind the Huey). And despite a few short bursts of activities when M3LLC came to exist and debugged a bunch of old bugs, and the recent screenshots, I’m not sure this module will ever succeed. Perhaps it has more chance in MP but I’m not into that kind of things. Hopefully it’ll benefit from a rebirth if someone makes a good campaign.
And that shows why ED should probably take more care of its mission design environment. Most games or sims that have been successful mostly owned it to 3rd parties being able to provide content. A lone aircraft is by definition “content” for sure, but if there is nothing to do with it but learn to fly it, it can’t last very long, and once the initial release has seen the peak of the sales, I imagine there must be little interest for the developers to keep maintaining an aircraft with decreasing revenues. So I have a hard time understanding why the support for campaign design is left in shambles and all the effort is put into new aircraft, it looks like a continuous headlong rush to maintain an interest that could be amplified much more easily through campaigns, actual training missions (and not the poor excuse for it we often see, turn that knob, then that knob, no feedback, most of the time with ridiculously simplified checklist).
And it’s apparently the same in other sims, like IL-2, or even X-Plane or P3D which simply don’t have any support for proper scripting. What is more surprising is that developers like 1-C acknowledge the greatest market part is SP, not MP.
Who knows, perhaps one day…
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Eagle Dynamics and their third party contributors do need to step up the game with regards to keeping older modules compatible, relevant, and filled with content. Not shipping with a full campaign for an expensive product like many of these planes are does tend to be disappointing. Heatblur and RAZBAM seem to be most committed to that in varying degrees.
Also curious what you mean about IL-2 not having proper scripting. That is true of the first gen but 1CGS’ version of IL-2 definitely has very complex scripting and both the paid for and user created Scripted Campaigns are VERY good.
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They’re good, and certainly better than nothing, but they require a lot of monkey work.
I have to say I haven’t actually written any entire mission for IL-2 so I can’t be definite, but I’ve helped a campaign dev who was having a real hard time with the problems of building his missions, and I read others saying the same things. For example having flight formations in which the user is not leader, one has to create waypoints for each individual aircraft. Then for some of them, like heavies, it’s very hard to make them start at the same speed, they tend to separate immediately and tuning that is exhausting. The editor in itself is not the most convenient, finding stuff is hard, and understanding what a mission does by looking is just impossible, it’s a complete mess. Sometimes it would crash or save a corrupt file… it just doesn’t feel mature.
In comparison DCS editor is stable at least, understanding a mission is slightly easier – not much. Having the lua option is great, but there is no access to any of the aircraft controls from lua, and including lua script is awkward at best. It’s also very problematic if you want to copy/paste trigger/actions from other missions using the GUI approach… because the functionality doesn’t exist 😉 It keeps all the text in the dictionary even if you delete actions. You can’t land, re-arm and take off with the AI, actually you can’t control it much. There are a ton of little quirks, as the wind direction being sometimes right, sometimes 180° off… and I could go on and on.
Oh, and neither have an undo feature 😀
I made, or tried to make training lessons for the Fishbed, and it’s incredible the time one has to spend for little things. Some more elaborate way to support state machines, or lua, would already help a lot. A debugger tool too. Simply being able to save the current state of a mission to help with the testing would save days if not weeks. I’m a software and microelectronics developer, perhaps I’m spoiled with modern development tools, but when I see the state of the tools available in those sims, I just want to curl up in a little corner and cry.
Overall, I just find that both (especially IL-2) are aimed to very, very limited and typical missions like take-off, shoot enemy, land, and it’s done. Of course, another limitation is the AI, and for sure, it’s very hard to build a good AI so we have to be patient.
Still, I find that in DCS people are very creative in their campaigns, the level of quality is quite impressive, especially with voice and radio communications. And I don’t know if you or others feel the same way, but it can really help appreciate a plane. Take for example the Museum Relic campaign, one of the best around, really made me learn, enjoy and like the Sabre, which otherwise I would have ignored so far. Or some of the old (revamped) qualification campaigns for the A-10C really get the user to master that beast, even if that’s more technical and less “relaxing”, it makes you want to go further 🙂
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Anyway, all that ranting just to say this is a great module 😉 And one that, like the A-10C, has actual content to play with.
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