DCS World devs talk about new state saving feature, new spring sale, and air racing event coming up

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The DCS World Weekend News update is out and it contains the usual smattering of news and information about upcoming content and features. The state saving feature sounds interesting but also maybe not what you were expecting. There’s also a sale underway!

State saving is coming but is it what we’re hoping for?

When I report the news on various flight sim features, I sometimes know immediately what the developers or PR folks are talking about and sometimes I need to look things up. This one has me scratching my head a little bit.

This DCS World Weekend News update reports that progress is being made on a new state saving feature. We’ve known about this feature for some time and the thing that made me most excited about it was the potential for doing a lengthy campaign mission, stopping, saving, and then coming back to it later when more time was available. After reading through the description of what they are building, I’m not completely sure that’s what this is.

Reportedly the feature will remember if you were in a plane, where it is, where other aircraft are, what other units are doing, what their speed and direction and locations are, if they’ve been destroyed or not, what has been stored in warehouses by logistics units, etc. That sounds like a save game system but then I read the description of what it’s intended for and we have this.

The Mission State Save feature is aimed at giving players an easier way to create new missions based on the saved events state of the played mission. New Save does not save the state of everything in a mission but rather applies the theatre of operations events to a newly generated mission. This allows you to create linked missions with persistence between them.

This almost sounds like its more aimed at creating persistent states for campaigns, the dynamic campaign system to be specific, but potentially for other scenarios too with multiplayer getting quite a bit of mention.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased to see progress towards both the dynamic campaign and other core DCS World features that hopefully will enable better and more flexible gameplay. How this works in practice I still have a lot of questions. Let me know in the comments on what your read of this is.

Air racing

I always think the sandbox elements of a combat flight sim can lead to some great non-combat experiences too and air racing is certainly one of them. This weekend there’s an upcoming DCS Mustang Air Race championship coming up hosted by the Black Angels. Real time race results on Discord and on the event homepage should make for some interesting experiences.

This weekend, make sure you tune in to an exciting new DCS Mustang Air Race Championship, hosted by our dedicated community members Black Angels. Inspired by Nick Grey’s recent feedback, they have improved their race result export system to update in near real-time, ensuring that pilots can see their lap times both on their Discord and on the event homepage. Join in for free practice sessions on the 7th and 8th of March, with the main competition taking place on the 9th of March featuring the iconic P-51 and free TF-51 Mustangs.

Spring sale underway

Spring hasn’t quite sprung where I live but it is time to start thinking about a new season and with a new season comes a new DCS World sale. The usual array of discounts are on offer with older products getting the best discounts while more recently released products remain at full price or with limited discounts.

Still, if you’re thinking of buying something to add to your DCS World hangar, this is a good time. Check out the DCS World e-Shop for the sales and visit the DCS World forums for the latest DCS World Weekend News update.

16 responses to “DCS World devs talk about new state saving feature, new spring sale, and air racing event coming up”

  1. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    No Kiowa on sale……Come on Polychop make it happen

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      Yeah a little discount on that would be great to see. Reminds me I need to get to reviewing it too!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    2. Urgent Siesta Avatar
      Urgent Siesta

      Even tho I paid full price for the Kiowa, I don’t regret it one single bit and would purchase at full price AGAIN.

      AND, PolyChop also substantially fixed up the Gazelle after all these years, so since I got that one at half price, I figure it evens out between the two 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        That’s really good to hear! I’ve got to dive into the Kiowa properly soon. I have another DCS review of the F-5E first and then I think it’ll be Kiowa time.

        Like

  2. DdayWarrior Avatar
    DdayWarrior

    Listing to Wags Q&A recently, I understood that the fixing the replay system is rather difficult because of the underlying systems. In my mind, save system state and the replay system have some things in common. So I am not holding my breath. It would be very good if it can happen and work correctly.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      That would be ideal!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  3. CanadaOne Avatar
    CanadaOne

    No sale on Steam for a few days it seems. Thinking about getting the L-39, but not much left to buy. Oh well.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      You’ve got the complete collection!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  4. Braul Avatar
    Braul

    I’m not buying anything until I see some real progress on the core. While I think the save feature is a step in the right direction, I’m not sure that it has any use outside of simple missions, I don’t think this will work with the scripted campaigns.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      That is a big question on how useful it is as a save game feature for long scripted campaigns. Here’s hoping.

      What other core updates are you hoping to see soon?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. Braul Avatar
        Braul

        For the most part I’d like to see them complete some fog/dust work, since it’s release, I get screen flickering in 2D, which is annoying. I’d like to see just a little attention to the ATC, even just removing the “Unable to clear for takeoff” message would be a win, but in general I don’t see how they can even think about releasing the dynamic campaign without some work in that area. The other things that would be nice, like Vulkan, VR enhancements, etc. will probably never see the light of day. I also want to see more progress on the EA modules and terrains. They release the stuff and yeah, I get EA, but then no progress for months and then they announce some remastered module.

        Like

      2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        The ATC thing is a bigger one for me for sure and you make the same point that I’ve been saying to people for a while. Dynamic campaign is the goal but to get there properly they need to fix a lot of core issues like ATC – it needs to be able to handle large numbers of aircraft departing and returning.

        The flickering fog and dust issue might be worth tracking down some support on. I haven’t heard that as a popular issue so it could be a shader or driver issue maybe?

        Like

    2. Urgent Siesta Avatar
      Urgent Siesta

      “real updates on the core…” SMH…

      What you really mean is “features that are important to ME”.

      There’s a looooooong list of Core functionality updates that people tend to ignore for some reason.

      I started playing in 2018 and the improvements in the simulator since then are simply astounding.

      We can all debate on ED’s priorities and rate of progress, but I challenge you to find a better combat flight simulator out there (and Falcon + BMS is NOT it for a number of reasons).

      I’m not saying the oft repeated list of features we all want wouldn’t be great, but if nobody else is doing even as good a job, then is it really so surprising that ED is taking so long, either…?

      Like

      Reply
      1. Braul Avatar
        Braul

        Let me know how you feel in a few years. I’ve been part of the ED community since the Flanker days, and if you take the time to dig through the forums, you’ll see that there are countless issues and bugs in the core system that continue to be overlooked. It’s truly frustrating.

        When it comes to an all-around better combat simulator, BMS is leagues ahead of DCS in many key areas. From the immersive ATC to AI wingmen who don’t run out of fuel and eject, to the dynamic campaign, BMS offers a much more complete experience. On the other hand, DCS feels sterile, especially for those playing single or scripted missions, which have limited replay value. Yes, DCS has impressive visuals, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a better combat simulation.

        ED seems more focused on chasing the next dollar than addressing core issues. While I understand it’s a business, they need to show real progress on the foundational aspects. The newsletters often tout the next big feature—be it the dynamic campaign, Vulkan, VR enhancements, etc.—yet years go by without any meaningful updates.

        You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, and I appreciate your response.

        Like

  5. felcsarbr Avatar
    felcsarbr

    My enthusiasm for DCS news has been solely dependent on the Dynamic Campaign functionality. I need that, a lot.

    My time has been spent on building dynamic scenarios/playgrounds for me and co-op, Briefing Room random missions after a lot of template tuning. It is been fun but obviously under uses the sandbox capabilities and Briefing Room has its fair shares of bugs and livery mismanagement. I’m still trying to figure out the later.

    I’m not a scripted mission consumer but state saving is a good ‘yay’ of a news towards dynamic campaign. Needs more: cockpit state saving, cockpit randomized state on cold to get the worth out of pre flight checklists, the data cartridges saving for avionics etc…

    These things are needing a good ‘full afterburner dash’ of progress and releases to be able to scratch that so increasingly annoying itch.

    Still love the sim. One of my go to things to decompress.

    Like

    Reply
  6. butcher75 Avatar
    butcher75

    So confused about the save game. It doesn’t sound like a simple save the game while doing a campaign mission then reload later sort of thing.

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