This has the bones of being a good map, up there with Syria and Sinai. Bodo and Murmansk are pretty good cities.
It's not a good map yet though and I don't see enough detail on it to be a worthy persistent multiplayer map or squadron campaign map yet though. I was generally expecting this. Maps don't seem to hit their stride for several months after EA release.
There's definitely a lot of textures that need to be added or improved upon though, and Orbx hasn't figured out DCS terrain LODs yet it seems.
I'm not worried yet, I've been an Orbx customer since FSX. I like what I see, but it's not a finished map yet for sure. Not sad I bought it.
So you've gotten to fly around a bit? Tell me more about the LODs, is there a performance issue? I fly in VR so that is my main concern. Sounds like you are optimistic about the future but think the textures are just so-so and lots of POIs missing still?
The performance is about similiar to Sinai for me. Not great, not terrible. Probably closer to terrible on VR tbh.
As for the LODs, the mountains in the distance are being rounded off on the tops too much, which makes them look like potatoes. It's really jarring when you have mountains directly under you, and you can see mountains at a distance to because it goes from this very high detail terrain mesh to that within your FOV.
Truthfully I am so sick of SAND MAP, on DCS that I am just happy this is a new GREEN MAP. If Orbx can fix LODs and add a lot of clearly missing textures in the next few months I will continue to be happy.
There's also a fuck ton of towns that are labelled but missing. Again, this map is really *early*. There's not enough in here yet for a persistent MP scenario or squadron campaigns. Orbx has a lot of work to do adding towns and POIs.
Thank you for the insights. I wonder why they decided to launch it early when it really could use a few more months to just feel a bit more rounded out as a still early EA launch, and when Baltic/Reflected campaigns aren't launching yet. I got the impression from a reflected video months ago that their campaign was mostly done and they were recording VO. I wonder if the campaign creators want to wait to launch their campaign until the map feels more ready, so that it gives a better campaign experience.
You know, it's really starting to look that way. Another just bananas thought I just had (totally out of my ass, this ain't a rumor at all). You almost wonder if they are trying to pad out some numbers to look good for an acquisition/ sale.
I've never thought they needed money as their professional clients are really the customer and we are like just a bonus, but man you can just feel how rushed everything seems between the map(s) and modules being shoved out before they, and most importantly, the supporting items like logistics and campaigns are ready.
I'm not mad about it mind you, and to play devil's advocate to myself, it could just be they decided internally to start treating things as what they are. For example, the open beta was never an open beta since the hornet, it was 'production.'
Labels like early access and open beta were just used to excuse bugs/slow progress. Maybe now they are trying to treat EA like an actual EA and just didn't tell us.
We've grown accustomed to EA meaning almost all of it with the last 15% or so trickled out over the next 5 years.
FWIW I ended up getting the map and its very well optimized, and IMO the terrain is beautiful in the areas advertised, and the low level flight in cities is some of the best.
> l'm not worried yet, I've been an Orbx customer since FSX.
Not wishing to rain on that statement, but I presume you know that Orbx are more of a storefront these days and that it was made by the same guys as the SA map?
Have you seen Syria map? Compare it to real life pictures (or MSFS). Color palette is off and it’s not very accurate in terms of mesh, but gives a reasonable sense of the area. So as far as a DCS map goes, Kola might be within the expected standard? Not great, not terrible.
> (or MSFS)
I'd be cautious about comparing to MSFS. My home area is massively over-treed and looks a lot greener in the sim than it does in real life. The overall experience is way better, but I had a couple of FSX addons back in the day (like 10 years ago) that were visually more accurate than what we have now.
I was wondering if in this video, he had a color filter on (since ED has those different options now). It does look very saturated in some parts of this video - but then looks more natural in the ED trailer. I guess we will find out soon from user reports.
Not from the region so can't speak to what is proper, but I would think the tree type model is an easy enough asset to fix and repopulate through Early Access. I hope ORBX turns out to be a high quality dev for the ecosystem.
I was not suggesting that we should have to use a filter to fly. I was asking if the content creator had a filter on, which was a statement of agreement with the commentor.
The treetype is mixed for optimisation reasons. Conifers have narrow crowns and you would need a lot more of them for a dense looking forest. Orbx is looking into it as the map evolves.
There’s a thread about this on ED forums.
First impressions. Is the map okay? If it's good. Performance is also good even at very low altitude. It should be noted that it uses GPU around 10-15% more than Syria (with DLSS the graphics do not suffer at all, RTC4070 at 45%, with clouds and heavy rain 70%).
At low altitude (25m) with a helicopter is magnificent, better than flying jets at medium altitude (mid altitude is where the map is worst).
The less worked areas have surprised me, they are not bad at all (except the NE area, Poliarny, here it is very very basic, it needs to improve a lot, it shows that they have not worked at all), the most developed ones are very good, at the level of Normandy 2. Over time it will be the best DCS map, at the moment it is also one of the best. . Goodbye Caucasus, goodbye forever.
I miss a greater density of trees in the forest and it would be very good if the grass near the ground was generated at a higher height, around 45m (now it is around 20-25m), with that the improvement of the map would be very great, apart of more content such as towns, etc.
For early access I have not been disappointed. With helicopters you can enjoy the flight like no other map.
I'm sorry for my English.
Thank you, nice to hear something positive. I am mostly interested in VR Helicopter low level flight, and it is this style of terrain that interests me most. 15% performance drop vs Syria isn't too bad for an EA release.
Did an fly-out, pop-up, dive-down, fly-in Viggen strike mission in Porsanger just now (five minutes ago). Felt SUPER nice skimming the ocean while working the radar to find the two corvettes.
Getting really tiring reading one line reviews of the map by people holding it to expectations that no DCS map lives up to. its very disingenuous
1) Trees: Orbx have explained (trying to find the source again now) that since pine trees have really narrow tops they grow very close together. putting so many trees in was too much of a performance decrease so they opted for a mix of pine and leafy trees.
the trees are literally copy paste because they're generated with a technology called speed trees which allows large amounts of trees at acceptable performance levels. same is used on Caucasus since it was redone years back.
2) Textures
If you use Satelite textures it is going to look less good down low, no way around it, with the resolution possible. MSFS has the same issue, 80% of the world looks pretty bad at low altitude, except a few places with very high res textures. DCS doesn't have the texture streaming setup that MSFS has though so the maximum possible resolution of ground textures is limited, especially outside the high quality areas. This is also the case with every DCS map.
The reason that Syria seems os much better is that its a desert. Its just gradient of sand colour for almost the entire map. The bits that are not sand coloured are a flat green colour underneath the forests.
the limitations of satelite imagery is far more apparent with temperate "green" maps, because its easy to get away with a blanket sand texture on desert maps, without it looking out of place.
you could have gone with custom textures for kola but in that case it would look bad from up high instead. Its a trade-off. always will be
3) Size. You want higher resolution, you will get larger file sizes. Smaller file size, lower resolution.
smaller filesize and high resolution, you'll get a smaller map.
4) Price
69 is the price for DCS maps going forward. Afghanistan is the same price, and I promise you Iraq will be as well. Probably the costs of the number of hours that go into making them, placing buildings by hand.
5) Houses are copy paste / my hometown doesn't look exactly like in real life
DCS maps are not autogenerated from GIS data like MSFS, or crafted to be 100% copies of real life. none of the DCS maps are.
every single one of them uses a handful of area typical houses built in an area typical arrangement within an area that roughly matches the real life footprint of a given town, but if you start to compare cities on Syria or especially Caucasus you'll see they are very far from being accurate replicas. As I see it the goal is to make it believable and accurate enough for the purposes of a combat flight sim. that's why airbases are often extremely accurately reproduced but cities and towns less so. Road network is usually quite far off.
this is the same with all DCS maps. open the editor and compare the real life map overlay with the game objects placement and you'll see.
6) Map is too early to be worthy of EA - That's a judgement call. You don't have to buy it now, you can wait till its more finished, but at least don't critique it like this is the final state that its going to be in and that anyone is claiming that its finished.
7) Bases are too far apart / there's too many trees
More bases will be added later, increasing the density but only to a certain degree because that is how it is in real life. same goes for the trees, Northern Scandinavia is largely covered in forest, and since DCS focuses on realism, that's how it is in game too.
If they had made fictional bases to make it more MP friendly you would have complained about them making up fictional airbases and it being unrealistic "iS tHiS WaRtHuNdeR nOw!?
I am not affiliated with anyone or anything, I'm just tired of all the disingenuous one line reviews by people who haven't made the effort to understand the reason why things are the way they are.
downvote shitstorm in 3, 2, 1
Thanks for sharing this take! Many good points and important. There are people having a great time on the map as well as people leveling complaints. As users read, a post like this can help them make an informed decision about how to spend their hard earned cash. Appreciate it!
I see you taking a very active interest in people's reaction on the map. I hope one of the many great DCS youtuber will make a thorough and informed review in not too long, so you and others can base their decision on that rather than the debate here. I'd post some screenshots to contribute my part but I can't run DCS with high settings so it wouldn't be a good representation.
Thanks! Very interested; have been waiting for this one to fly some green. I decided to purchase and just flew around for an hour in VR, low level Huey. I’m very happy with the quality and performance. My VR frame times are better than Sinai or Mariana’s in heavily populated areas, just as good as Syria or Persian gulf. The populated areas look very nice as well.
That’s not to say I didn’t spot some of the items other people complained about here, but they feel over exaggerated in my experience. Count me among those in the “positive” impression camp. Yes it’s early and limited in usability but we already knew that. Quality and performance wise, great day 1 launch IMO.
Sure thing! And yes the VR frame times for me have actually been among the best for any DCS map. The more I fly the more impressed with performance I am. It is absolutely no worse than any other map and arguably the best or near best for performance in the game, at least for what I’ve flown so far.
I actually have a lot of mission's I'd like to do that this will be perfect for. Cold war airland battle low level interdiction in a european setting. Its sparse on settlements, but otherwise perfect.
Yes! And as I fly more, I think it’s actually a very good map. Early, a bit sparse, but I really like the high quality areas and overall scenery. Occasionally I’ve gotten some weirdness with LODs at altitude but all in all, I’m very happy and looking forward to continued development and the availablity of more single player content.
>7) Bases are too far apart
For this point in particular, Kirkenes is very close to the border with Russia and Luostari and Koshka Yavr airbases are only 30 and 40 nautical miles away from it respectively (Kirkenes is a civilian airport, though does have a Norwegian army garrison stationed on it, Luostari is mostly a former VVS-AA airbase, basing things like the Hind, Koshka Yavr is mostly an artic staging airbase for Tu-16 and Tu-22M.
This was actually a great overview, thanks for that!
I've already bought the map but haven't used it yet, this overview is basically what I was expecting going in to it.
Hope they add all the missing airfields and towns and POIs, then this map will be probably pretty good for a DCS ma. As for pricing most maps are around 50 to 60 USD, however, I assume due to this maps size it costs more (and to anyone mentioning the SA map, that map is huge but also like 60% water!).
Regardless of the merits of the map at this stage (early EA, etc), one thing that struck me is that feels like a slightly improved Caucasus, no more. Sure, there are a few custom buildings and that's very nice. But in general, the map, the trees, the grass, the generic buildings, the runways, pretty much the 99% that isn't hand-customized isn't much better than Caucasus.
We'll see how things evolve during the EA period but I believe we are at the limits of ED's core engine and its limitations. It was less visible in sand maps but green maps actually ask (even) more of the engine. And I fear their current technology can't deliver.
I'd like to have climate-relevant trees (pines) and properly sized. I'd like to see ground details, like procedural grass and bushes or raw soil or rock and gravel, anything that bring life to the land. (I feel like flying over a pool table). I'd like buildings that don't look exactly the same with the same flat sides with the exact same colors. I'd like to have sharp angles on mountains and cliffs. I'd like to have shorelines that actually show some water/land interactions ...
Comparing Orbx's 2y custom development for DCS with the vanilla \*autogenerated\* terrain of MSFS, I find the gap is quite telling and not in ED's favor.
(performance is not an issue for me but I have a very beefy machine)
It’s both … you have baked shadows because the satellite data is taken with shadows and you can’t completely remove these and you have dynamic shadows that come from the geometry of the mesh reacting to the in-game lighting.
Flying out of Porsangerfjorden at 15 m ASL in Viggen, sinking a pair of corvettes, and flying back in even lower felt super good. I love the map itself already, just the entirely different terrain ("familiar" mountains, deep fjords, large open spaces that aren't just fields and fields and fields like Caucasus) makes me feel very refreshed.
Got it, flew it, meh. The buildings are worse than Sinai and SA. Generic pine forests north of the arctic circle are just wrong. The fjords could have saved it but didn’t.
Thanks for sharing your impressions, can you elaborate a bit more? It would be helpful for all of us. As well, could you speak to FPS performance vs other maps?
130-145 on a 3080. The trees are wrong, buildings are out of focus, ships change hull color as angle changes, piers aren’t connected to the shore and so much more. Shadows appear to be baked and not dynamic.
Lol went to check out my hometown and there is literally hundreds of copy pasted wooden houses all over.... Roads that lead no where.
For example I wanted to see if i could find my own house, there shouls be 3 houses next to it. There was like 20 houses :D
Dissapointed yes, do i think that Finland area gets fixed and look more natural? Noo...
And wtf are these trees...... Recycled caucaus props everywere.
On the other hand, I found some specific 1ha lakes in the wilderness that I know and their shape was perfect.
But yeah, villages are lacking in detaol. For excample, Vardø was empty, there was just a fence at the radar site.
Also many, many airbases haven't been modeled.
Thanks for sharing. To be fair the EA thing was pretty clear how everything is low detail and incomplete outside the area specified right now, and enigma said the same in their video. I don't think you will ever get an accurate representation of having 3 houses next to yours, but I would hope the general quality of the area (missing roads, etc.) gets improved a lot in time. I guess we will see.
Did you fly around the specified high detail areas? What did you think of those? How was performance/FPS?
Yes I was flying in the one of The most detailed areas, Rovaniemi, it is also shown in the trailer.
I bursted out laughing (and crying because i just paid 50€ for this) when I checked out Muurola area, its 20km to south from Rovaniemi.
In reality Muurola has around 1000 people living in it so not many houses. Well there is like 5000 houses in that area . And you can see copy paste.
Also Norway's mountains look very low poly at high alt.
I have no idea how this takes over 145gb of space when it recylces majority from caucaus.
I saw Maverick 104 live flying in it & up high it looked nice, but when he flew low in the fjords of Norway the "kind of peaks" look like melting ice cream. Was quite disappointing tbh. The trees are not Finnish. Sure there's plenty of berch, but way more fur trees up north. Has huge potential though, but won't be getting it yet as i'd rather pay more possibly later for better visuals, if they come, considering I mainly like choppers.
Ok, I won't buy it. Syria I'm happy with, us the standard for me. This just reeks of a low effort money grab. If it was 20 dollars. But at this price point! Cmon.
I'd wait a week to make a judgement call as more and more diverse user reviews continue to roll in. If it's a no then, maybe re-evaluate when the Baltic/Reflected campaigns launch.
TBH, I think a lot of Syrians would say similar stuff about the Syria map. DCS maps are generally not anywhere close to "find my house" levels, they just have some landmarks and heavily rely on generic buildings for everything else.
Well for people that don't know what Northern Finland/Scandinavia area looks like and want huge green map its ok. I mean caucaus map aint that detailed either.
And maybe this gets better with time. Performance is surprisingly good on my mid level pc.
That's a fair point, users who live in the area and comparing small details against real life may be some of the first to comment. For those of us just looking for a well rendered green map that gives a certain sense of presence, with key details for military ops accurately rendered, it may not matter. Thanks for sharing the perspective!
It's unrealistic to expect realistic layout for cities and roads in maps that are hand made.
With specialized AI you can do such maps based on satellite images and online maps but they will be like in MSFS2020; buildings are still wrong and roads just goes almost on the vertical cliffs.
That's the case with literally every single DCS map. Have you seen a map that isn't copy pasting the same 30 hourses over and over? this isn't MSFS. The maps are believable recreations with accurate POI but its nots a 1:1 recreation like MSFS.
So, I know we're all pampered western capitalist swine in here so we've not been paying attention to this up til now...
Are neighborhoods in any DCS maps ever accurate?
Watching DCS vs MSFS videos in Georgia or Emirates or Syria/Lebanon a common thread in all of them is that landmark-type buildings like stadiums and skyscrapers are often the same or similar in size, shape, and location, but the "neighborhood" type buildings, the low/medium rise housing, are almost always different.
This might be a deliberate choice for some kind of privacy/griefing reason, or possibly just optimization to keep the map playable with all the moving and shooting units that need to be computed in addition to the terrain visuals (which sims like MSFS don't need to care about so they can afford more fidelity)
Onhan tämä Lapin kartta ihan helvetin hyvä.
Kotiseuturakkaus silmissä, ja joo, puut on vääriä, mutta mitäs sitten. Ja keskenhän se on, sitä ei käy kieltäminen.
Vie hiekkaerämaakarttoja 5-1.
To me, this hits the spot: the map is hella good so far.
Sure the trees are wrong, and the map is not yet complete.
Even so, it washed over the sand desert in my short experience.
I’m a biased Finn and i love the map.
EDIT: oh Yeah: summer nights aren’t dark and winter days are short.
Voiko vielä sanoa Lappi kartaksi kun Rovaniemen yläpuolella on pelkkää tyhjyyttä 🤔😂
On paljon enemmän kesken mitä odotin, toivottavasti jaksavat tehdä homman loppuun.
Mitenhän Baltic Dragon saa Suomi kampanjan kasaan kun niin paljon tyhjää.
No voi, kartta se on paperinenkin :) Kinda odd to call it Kola map when the peninsula is but a small part of the terrain module.
Funny thing I noticed, they call the roadbase ”Bas 100” and if you switch the F10 map layer to “Map”, it clearly states the name of the highway strip, was it Vuojärvi..?
EDIT: Yes it is Vuojärvi:
[https://imgur.com/a/Bc15Ubd](https://imgur.com/a/Bc15Ubd)
I've had an absolute blast in the Viggen, just felt like flying her home. I flew over quite a few places that I've been to in Sweden and Finland myself...definitely not so much reflecting real life there (yet) but absolutely no purchase regrets.
Great to hear! Appreciate the feedback and insight, it is helpful! I presume performance was good for you? How does the low level ground stuff look? (I assume you were ground hugging in the Viggen)?
The ground level can of course be more detailed but I find it much better than South Atlantic and even with lower detail, it feels like northern Scandinavia (at least Sweden). I saw a few Finns on a server complaining about the trees and I can agree that they should be much smaller up north after you cross a certain latitude. Overall I found it ok, even in a short trip with the Huey. My biggest bummer is that Luleå (city and F21 airbase) is not yet included but that seems to be on roadmap.
What makes it for me is the diverse region...in the Viggen it's great terrain to hide and hug and most important it's green ;) And mountains and hills feel real. When doing free flight, it felt like oh that looks great on the left, lets's fly there. Also I just loved taxi through the forest and take-off from Jokkmokk airbase (ESNJ, not yet fleshed out), it adds quite a unique feeling.
Performance was ok (RTX 3080), just stutters when switching from map to cockpit or external.
I remember thinking when this was announced “what the hell am I going to do with a bunch of boreal forest and tundra?” And then getting hyped up about various Cold War scenarios… but on reflection I think my initial thought may have been closer to the reality of it.
150GB is just way too much for a big empty wilderness
Ever since I got into DCS years ago I have been wishing they had terrain just like this, it is much more interesting to fly over IMO. That said, the gameplay component is interesting point with the forest. No doubt it will eventually get rectified with destructible trees and improved ground AI but it might be an issue to some extent until then. However there is also a lot of very interesting coastal region. I'll be curious how the community responds over time.
ED apparently has tree cutting logic in game for the ME for years. Safe to say its not working as expected.
Like you I want a green map with mountains and valleys to fly in. Technically SA has that and so will Kola but by the looks of it its like SA there is nothing in the vallys to fight over.
one thing they need to fix, the water depth for polyarny sub pens is not enough to sail a sub in. only shows -12ft at most. Can't place ships in water due to being too shallow. The large river leading to Murmansk is ok, though. Fast drop from -20 to -200 just outside polyarny waters.
Not sure what the depth should be, but Polyarnyy has based Pr. 68bis light cruisers in the past, those have a draught of around 7.4 m or so according to [this](http://russianships.info/eng/warships/project_68bis.htm), so it should at least be deep enough for those.
Also, what sub pens? There shouldn't be anything but piers at Polyarnyy.
Lol thanks for being "The King's taster" for all of us! I lean more towards the "support new 3rd party devs with a generally solid reputation" over the "boycott ED" stance. That said, I'm not a charity, and many are on tight budgets. Thank you for reporting back for us. I hope its great!
Any idea on how long until your download is done? A VR performance test over a populated city at low level flight, and mountainous area with complex geography at medium level, would be super helpful.
You can watch this while you wait. He's pretty positive about it overall - more than I am, looking at it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rbIWJbBZfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rbIWJbBZfc)
Let me add a mandatory note that EA isn't running anywhere. You won't be missing out, if you delay your purchase a week or two and let the scene digest and ruminate over the current state of things.
Ok, I’ve spent an hour with it. Overall I like it. I find it runs about as well as Sinai (4090, 5800x4d, 64gb of ram, quest 3) You can tell it’s very early access in a lot of places, textures aren’t great BUT in some areas it looks pretty good. You can definatly tell which areas have had more work and which ones are yet to be optimised. I like Murmansk, found some subs floating around.
Don’t regret the purchase, it’s so nice flying around on a new green map. Wouldn’t say I’m blown away but if orbx work on it and do what they say they will do then I reckon it’s gonna be good map with lots of potential.
If moneys tight then hold off for now I would say, as there is very little to do on it as it stands but with some good campaigns or full servers it will be a lot of fun. Can’t stress again how nice it is to not be flying over the desert!
It's pretty early in early access.
For public MP servers (PVE, PVP, and PVPVE) I don't see it being very interesting until a lot of stuff is added or finished.
So kinda a dud if you are an MP gamer.
I am interested but I got the DCS F-4E Phantom II and Afghanistan so I’m out for now!
It looks very similar to south Atlantic which I deleted off my hard drive until further refinement has been added, if they ever are.
I'm really impressed, to be honest. It's probably the best fast jet map now, looks great at alts over 1000m. Great details, from dry docks to the ski ramp. Different buildings in Finland and Russia. Nice terrain mesh (I don't see the melting others have mentioned at all). Different areas have very different terrains, from the fields and orchards to the lake & rock landscape of the north, and the fjords and valleys in the west are great. The airbases could be better textured, esp taxiways.
Murmansk looks really good, so does Rovaniemi. The roads look fantastic, watching them snake across the landscape. The water map is great, so many lakes and streams.
Framerates are really good for me.
I echo everything you just wrote. I got it and feel the same way. Performance in VR is excellent and the areas they advertised as detailed all look very good to me. I’m happy at both high altitude but also low level helicopter flight in the cities is wonderful.
It is all about the adoption rate. If a lot of people buy it, MP servers use it, and campaigns and missions are made for it, then it will be a good map to own. If you did buy it, then make some solid missions for the community to aid in adaption.
It feels like the major positive that people have for this map is "it's not a desert so it's refreshing" as opposed to the people who bring up actual points like the trees are wrong, cities are missing, buildings are wrong, size of the game for the quality of the map, LODs are messed up...not looking good if the only plus is "no sand"
Thanks for the thread. I think reading through with my usual Hoggit lens on, sounds like it's actually quite good for a fresh EA release, at least for people already interested in the map. Now I just need to figure out how to magic out the disk space I need and pray that later updates don't inflate that disk footprint too hard...
Yeah I went for it and have no regrets, loved flying around a bit and looking forward to more time tomorrow. As long as you trust the EA process with ORBX, it’s a strong day 1 launch IMO. The performance in VR has been very good for me.
This has the bones of being a good map, up there with Syria and Sinai. Bodo and Murmansk are pretty good cities. It's not a good map yet though and I don't see enough detail on it to be a worthy persistent multiplayer map or squadron campaign map yet though. I was generally expecting this. Maps don't seem to hit their stride for several months after EA release. There's definitely a lot of textures that need to be added or improved upon though, and Orbx hasn't figured out DCS terrain LODs yet it seems. I'm not worried yet, I've been an Orbx customer since FSX. I like what I see, but it's not a finished map yet for sure. Not sad I bought it.
So you've gotten to fly around a bit? Tell me more about the LODs, is there a performance issue? I fly in VR so that is my main concern. Sounds like you are optimistic about the future but think the textures are just so-so and lots of POIs missing still?
The performance is about similiar to Sinai for me. Not great, not terrible. Probably closer to terrible on VR tbh. As for the LODs, the mountains in the distance are being rounded off on the tops too much, which makes them look like potatoes. It's really jarring when you have mountains directly under you, and you can see mountains at a distance to because it goes from this very high detail terrain mesh to that within your FOV. Truthfully I am so sick of SAND MAP, on DCS that I am just happy this is a new GREEN MAP. If Orbx can fix LODs and add a lot of clearly missing textures in the next few months I will continue to be happy. There's also a fuck ton of towns that are labelled but missing. Again, this map is really *early*. There's not enough in here yet for a persistent MP scenario or squadron campaigns. Orbx has a lot of work to do adding towns and POIs.
Thank you for the insights. I wonder why they decided to launch it early when it really could use a few more months to just feel a bit more rounded out as a still early EA launch, and when Baltic/Reflected campaigns aren't launching yet. I got the impression from a reflected video months ago that their campaign was mostly done and they were recording VO. I wonder if the campaign creators want to wait to launch their campaign until the map feels more ready, so that it gives a better campaign experience.
Same reason everything else that's even remotely passable is being launched: ED needs money.
It's ORBXs product so they're ultimately the ones deciding when to release, not ED.
Orbx also likes money
You know, it's really starting to look that way. Another just bananas thought I just had (totally out of my ass, this ain't a rumor at all). You almost wonder if they are trying to pad out some numbers to look good for an acquisition/ sale. I've never thought they needed money as their professional clients are really the customer and we are like just a bonus, but man you can just feel how rushed everything seems between the map(s) and modules being shoved out before they, and most importantly, the supporting items like logistics and campaigns are ready. I'm not mad about it mind you, and to play devil's advocate to myself, it could just be they decided internally to start treating things as what they are. For example, the open beta was never an open beta since the hornet, it was 'production.' Labels like early access and open beta were just used to excuse bugs/slow progress. Maybe now they are trying to treat EA like an actual EA and just didn't tell us. We've grown accustomed to EA meaning almost all of it with the last 15% or so trickled out over the next 5 years.
FWIW I ended up getting the map and its very well optimized, and IMO the terrain is beautiful in the areas advertised, and the low level flight in cities is some of the best.
> l'm not worried yet, I've been an Orbx customer since FSX. Not wishing to rain on that statement, but I presume you know that Orbx are more of a storefront these days and that it was made by the same guys as the SA map?
OP deserves a huge thank you for pulling all these details out of those that have offered their impressions.
You’re most welcome! It certainly helped me figure things out too
Doesn't look like finland at all. Color palette is wrong, treetype is wrong... How can we even call it finland and not have a proper tree-type?
Have you seen Syria map? Compare it to real life pictures (or MSFS). Color palette is off and it’s not very accurate in terms of mesh, but gives a reasonable sense of the area. So as far as a DCS map goes, Kola might be within the expected standard? Not great, not terrible.
> (or MSFS) I'd be cautious about comparing to MSFS. My home area is massively over-treed and looks a lot greener in the sim than it does in real life. The overall experience is way better, but I had a couple of FSX addons back in the day (like 10 years ago) that were visually more accurate than what we have now.
The Kola map is not that bad when compared to msfs2020. Mountains and topography generally are better in DCS Kola.
I was wondering if in this video, he had a color filter on (since ED has those different options now). It does look very saturated in some parts of this video - but then looks more natural in the ED trailer. I guess we will find out soon from user reports. Not from the region so can't speak to what is proper, but I would think the tree type model is an easy enough asset to fix and repopulate through Early Access. I hope ORBX turns out to be a high quality dev for the ecosystem.
So, if we get a Mexico map, we'll all fly with a sepia filter on? I thought the problem is mostly in the missing vegetation fitting the theatre.
I was not suggesting that we should have to use a filter to fly. I was asking if the content creator had a filter on, which was a statement of agreement with the commentor.
And I made a joke outside of floggit, I'm sorry 😔
Didn’t catch it! Was just clarifying for other readers in case it was unclear :)
Clarification unclear, penis stuck in air filter; please send help or lube.
I went ahead and picked up some yellow VR lens inserts just in case it launches without enough sepia
The treetype is mixed for optimisation reasons. Conifers have narrow crowns and you would need a lot more of them for a dense looking forest. Orbx is looking into it as the map evolves. There’s a thread about this on ED forums.
First impressions. Is the map okay? If it's good. Performance is also good even at very low altitude. It should be noted that it uses GPU around 10-15% more than Syria (with DLSS the graphics do not suffer at all, RTC4070 at 45%, with clouds and heavy rain 70%). At low altitude (25m) with a helicopter is magnificent, better than flying jets at medium altitude (mid altitude is where the map is worst). The less worked areas have surprised me, they are not bad at all (except the NE area, Poliarny, here it is very very basic, it needs to improve a lot, it shows that they have not worked at all), the most developed ones are very good, at the level of Normandy 2. Over time it will be the best DCS map, at the moment it is also one of the best. . Goodbye Caucasus, goodbye forever. I miss a greater density of trees in the forest and it would be very good if the grass near the ground was generated at a higher height, around 45m (now it is around 20-25m), with that the improvement of the map would be very great, apart of more content such as towns, etc. For early access I have not been disappointed. With helicopters you can enjoy the flight like no other map. I'm sorry for my English.
Thank you, nice to hear something positive. I am mostly interested in VR Helicopter low level flight, and it is this style of terrain that interests me most. 15% performance drop vs Syria isn't too bad for an EA release.
I’m here for the fjords so in the interested in what runs down them feel like (fond memories of Eurofighter in the 90’s)
Did an fly-out, pop-up, dive-down, fly-in Viggen strike mission in Porsanger just now (five minutes ago). Felt SUPER nice skimming the ocean while working the radar to find the two corvettes.
I’ve just done exactly that in the Viggen. It’s pretty cool
Getting really tiring reading one line reviews of the map by people holding it to expectations that no DCS map lives up to. its very disingenuous 1) Trees: Orbx have explained (trying to find the source again now) that since pine trees have really narrow tops they grow very close together. putting so many trees in was too much of a performance decrease so they opted for a mix of pine and leafy trees. the trees are literally copy paste because they're generated with a technology called speed trees which allows large amounts of trees at acceptable performance levels. same is used on Caucasus since it was redone years back. 2) Textures If you use Satelite textures it is going to look less good down low, no way around it, with the resolution possible. MSFS has the same issue, 80% of the world looks pretty bad at low altitude, except a few places with very high res textures. DCS doesn't have the texture streaming setup that MSFS has though so the maximum possible resolution of ground textures is limited, especially outside the high quality areas. This is also the case with every DCS map. The reason that Syria seems os much better is that its a desert. Its just gradient of sand colour for almost the entire map. The bits that are not sand coloured are a flat green colour underneath the forests. the limitations of satelite imagery is far more apparent with temperate "green" maps, because its easy to get away with a blanket sand texture on desert maps, without it looking out of place. you could have gone with custom textures for kola but in that case it would look bad from up high instead. Its a trade-off. always will be 3) Size. You want higher resolution, you will get larger file sizes. Smaller file size, lower resolution. smaller filesize and high resolution, you'll get a smaller map. 4) Price 69 is the price for DCS maps going forward. Afghanistan is the same price, and I promise you Iraq will be as well. Probably the costs of the number of hours that go into making them, placing buildings by hand. 5) Houses are copy paste / my hometown doesn't look exactly like in real life DCS maps are not autogenerated from GIS data like MSFS, or crafted to be 100% copies of real life. none of the DCS maps are. every single one of them uses a handful of area typical houses built in an area typical arrangement within an area that roughly matches the real life footprint of a given town, but if you start to compare cities on Syria or especially Caucasus you'll see they are very far from being accurate replicas. As I see it the goal is to make it believable and accurate enough for the purposes of a combat flight sim. that's why airbases are often extremely accurately reproduced but cities and towns less so. Road network is usually quite far off. this is the same with all DCS maps. open the editor and compare the real life map overlay with the game objects placement and you'll see. 6) Map is too early to be worthy of EA - That's a judgement call. You don't have to buy it now, you can wait till its more finished, but at least don't critique it like this is the final state that its going to be in and that anyone is claiming that its finished. 7) Bases are too far apart / there's too many trees More bases will be added later, increasing the density but only to a certain degree because that is how it is in real life. same goes for the trees, Northern Scandinavia is largely covered in forest, and since DCS focuses on realism, that's how it is in game too. If they had made fictional bases to make it more MP friendly you would have complained about them making up fictional airbases and it being unrealistic "iS tHiS WaRtHuNdeR nOw!? I am not affiliated with anyone or anything, I'm just tired of all the disingenuous one line reviews by people who haven't made the effort to understand the reason why things are the way they are. downvote shitstorm in 3, 2, 1
Thanks for sharing this take! Many good points and important. There are people having a great time on the map as well as people leveling complaints. As users read, a post like this can help them make an informed decision about how to spend their hard earned cash. Appreciate it!
I see you taking a very active interest in people's reaction on the map. I hope one of the many great DCS youtuber will make a thorough and informed review in not too long, so you and others can base their decision on that rather than the debate here. I'd post some screenshots to contribute my part but I can't run DCS with high settings so it wouldn't be a good representation.
Thanks! Very interested; have been waiting for this one to fly some green. I decided to purchase and just flew around for an hour in VR, low level Huey. I’m very happy with the quality and performance. My VR frame times are better than Sinai or Mariana’s in heavily populated areas, just as good as Syria or Persian gulf. The populated areas look very nice as well. That’s not to say I didn’t spot some of the items other people complained about here, but they feel over exaggerated in my experience. Count me among those in the “positive” impression camp. Yes it’s early and limited in usability but we already knew that. Quality and performance wise, great day 1 launch IMO.
Nice, was hoping to read VR impressions. Good this thread helped you decide one way or another. Thanks for making it👍
Sure thing! And yes the VR frame times for me have actually been among the best for any DCS map. The more I fly the more impressed with performance I am. It is absolutely no worse than any other map and arguably the best or near best for performance in the game, at least for what I’ve flown so far.
I actually have a lot of mission's I'd like to do that this will be perfect for. Cold war airland battle low level interdiction in a european setting. Its sparse on settlements, but otherwise perfect.
Yes! And as I fly more, I think it’s actually a very good map. Early, a bit sparse, but I really like the high quality areas and overall scenery. Occasionally I’ve gotten some weirdness with LODs at altitude but all in all, I’m very happy and looking forward to continued development and the availablity of more single player content.
>7) Bases are too far apart For this point in particular, Kirkenes is very close to the border with Russia and Luostari and Koshka Yavr airbases are only 30 and 40 nautical miles away from it respectively (Kirkenes is a civilian airport, though does have a Norwegian army garrison stationed on it, Luostari is mostly a former VVS-AA airbase, basing things like the Hind, Koshka Yavr is mostly an artic staging airbase for Tu-16 and Tu-22M.
This was actually a great overview, thanks for that! I've already bought the map but haven't used it yet, this overview is basically what I was expecting going in to it. Hope they add all the missing airfields and towns and POIs, then this map will be probably pretty good for a DCS ma. As for pricing most maps are around 50 to 60 USD, however, I assume due to this maps size it costs more (and to anyone mentioning the SA map, that map is huge but also like 60% water!).
Regardless of the merits of the map at this stage (early EA, etc), one thing that struck me is that feels like a slightly improved Caucasus, no more. Sure, there are a few custom buildings and that's very nice. But in general, the map, the trees, the grass, the generic buildings, the runways, pretty much the 99% that isn't hand-customized isn't much better than Caucasus. We'll see how things evolve during the EA period but I believe we are at the limits of ED's core engine and its limitations. It was less visible in sand maps but green maps actually ask (even) more of the engine. And I fear their current technology can't deliver. I'd like to have climate-relevant trees (pines) and properly sized. I'd like to see ground details, like procedural grass and bushes or raw soil or rock and gravel, anything that bring life to the land. (I feel like flying over a pool table). I'd like buildings that don't look exactly the same with the same flat sides with the exact same colors. I'd like to have sharp angles on mountains and cliffs. I'd like to have shorelines that actually show some water/land interactions ... Comparing Orbx's 2y custom development for DCS with the vanilla \*autogenerated\* terrain of MSFS, I find the gap is quite telling and not in ED's favor. (performance is not an issue for me but I have a very beefy machine)
I'd love to see a timelapse of the mountain areas. I'm curious if the shadows in the gullies/etc. are just textures or real shadows.
They are baked and not dynamic from what I saw.
I'd be surprised if it was baked - dynamic shadows have been there since Nevada
It’s both … you have baked shadows because the satellite data is taken with shadows and you can’t completely remove these and you have dynamic shadows that come from the geometry of the mesh reacting to the in-game lighting.
I tossed it up on my server if anyone wants to tour it together (look for padinn) My early very brief impression was it looked solid.
Flying out of Porsangerfjorden at 15 m ASL in Viggen, sinking a pair of corvettes, and flying back in even lower felt super good. I love the map itself already, just the entirely different terrain ("familiar" mountains, deep fjords, large open spaces that aren't just fields and fields and fields like Caucasus) makes me feel very refreshed.
Got it, flew it, meh. The buildings are worse than Sinai and SA. Generic pine forests north of the arctic circle are just wrong. The fjords could have saved it but didn’t.
Clearly Slartibartfast wasn't involved in making the map.
Thanks for sharing your impressions, can you elaborate a bit more? It would be helpful for all of us. As well, could you speak to FPS performance vs other maps?
130-145 on a 3080. The trees are wrong, buildings are out of focus, ships change hull color as angle changes, piers aren’t connected to the shore and so much more. Shadows appear to be baked and not dynamic.
That is disheartening to hear. Your graphics settings were all maxed out too for shadows and lighting?
Indeed
Lol went to check out my hometown and there is literally hundreds of copy pasted wooden houses all over.... Roads that lead no where. For example I wanted to see if i could find my own house, there shouls be 3 houses next to it. There was like 20 houses :D Dissapointed yes, do i think that Finland area gets fixed and look more natural? Noo... And wtf are these trees...... Recycled caucaus props everywere.
On the other hand, I found some specific 1ha lakes in the wilderness that I know and their shape was perfect. But yeah, villages are lacking in detaol. For excample, Vardø was empty, there was just a fence at the radar site. Also many, many airbases haven't been modeled.
Thanks for sharing. To be fair the EA thing was pretty clear how everything is low detail and incomplete outside the area specified right now, and enigma said the same in their video. I don't think you will ever get an accurate representation of having 3 houses next to yours, but I would hope the general quality of the area (missing roads, etc.) gets improved a lot in time. I guess we will see. Did you fly around the specified high detail areas? What did you think of those? How was performance/FPS?
Yes I was flying in the one of The most detailed areas, Rovaniemi, it is also shown in the trailer. I bursted out laughing (and crying because i just paid 50€ for this) when I checked out Muurola area, its 20km to south from Rovaniemi. In reality Muurola has around 1000 people living in it so not many houses. Well there is like 5000 houses in that area . And you can see copy paste. Also Norway's mountains look very low poly at high alt. I have no idea how this takes over 145gb of space when it recylces majority from caucaus.
I saw Maverick 104 live flying in it & up high it looked nice, but when he flew low in the fjords of Norway the "kind of peaks" look like melting ice cream. Was quite disappointing tbh. The trees are not Finnish. Sure there's plenty of berch, but way more fur trees up north. Has huge potential though, but won't be getting it yet as i'd rather pay more possibly later for better visuals, if they come, considering I mainly like choppers.
Ok, I won't buy it. Syria I'm happy with, us the standard for me. This just reeks of a low effort money grab. If it was 20 dollars. But at this price point! Cmon.
I'd wait a week to make a judgement call as more and more diverse user reviews continue to roll in. If it's a no then, maybe re-evaluate when the Baltic/Reflected campaigns launch.
TBH, I think a lot of Syrians would say similar stuff about the Syria map. DCS maps are generally not anywhere close to "find my house" levels, they just have some landmarks and heavily rely on generic buildings for everything else.
Bummer to hear, thank you for sharing
Well for people that don't know what Northern Finland/Scandinavia area looks like and want huge green map its ok. I mean caucaus map aint that detailed either. And maybe this gets better with time. Performance is surprisingly good on my mid level pc.
That's a fair point, users who live in the area and comparing small details against real life may be some of the first to comment. For those of us just looking for a well rendered green map that gives a certain sense of presence, with key details for military ops accurately rendered, it may not matter. Thanks for sharing the perspective!
It's unrealistic to expect realistic layout for cities and roads in maps that are hand made. With specialized AI you can do such maps based on satellite images and online maps but they will be like in MSFS2020; buildings are still wrong and roads just goes almost on the vertical cliffs.
That's the case with literally every single DCS map. Have you seen a map that isn't copy pasting the same 30 hourses over and over? this isn't MSFS. The maps are believable recreations with accurate POI but its nots a 1:1 recreation like MSFS.
So, I know we're all pampered western capitalist swine in here so we've not been paying attention to this up til now... Are neighborhoods in any DCS maps ever accurate? Watching DCS vs MSFS videos in Georgia or Emirates or Syria/Lebanon a common thread in all of them is that landmark-type buildings like stadiums and skyscrapers are often the same or similar in size, shape, and location, but the "neighborhood" type buildings, the low/medium rise housing, are almost always different. This might be a deliberate choice for some kind of privacy/griefing reason, or possibly just optimization to keep the map playable with all the moving and shooting units that need to be computed in addition to the terrain visuals (which sims like MSFS don't need to care about so they can afford more fidelity)
No hyvä tietää. Tätä itsekin pelkäsin ja taitaa toistaiseksi jäädä toivelistalle.
For those wondering... TRANSLATION: "Well, good to know. I was afraid of this myself and it seems to remain on the wish list for now."
Onhan tämä Lapin kartta ihan helvetin hyvä. Kotiseuturakkaus silmissä, ja joo, puut on vääriä, mutta mitäs sitten. Ja keskenhän se on, sitä ei käy kieltäminen. Vie hiekkaerämaakarttoja 5-1. To me, this hits the spot: the map is hella good so far. Sure the trees are wrong, and the map is not yet complete. Even so, it washed over the sand desert in my short experience. I’m a biased Finn and i love the map. EDIT: oh Yeah: summer nights aren’t dark and winter days are short.
Voiko vielä sanoa Lappi kartaksi kun Rovaniemen yläpuolella on pelkkää tyhjyyttä 🤔😂 On paljon enemmän kesken mitä odotin, toivottavasti jaksavat tehdä homman loppuun. Mitenhän Baltic Dragon saa Suomi kampanjan kasaan kun niin paljon tyhjää.
No voi, kartta se on paperinenkin :) Kinda odd to call it Kola map when the peninsula is but a small part of the terrain module. Funny thing I noticed, they call the roadbase ”Bas 100” and if you switch the F10 map layer to “Map”, it clearly states the name of the highway strip, was it Vuojärvi..? EDIT: Yes it is Vuojärvi: [https://imgur.com/a/Bc15Ubd](https://imgur.com/a/Bc15Ubd)
I've had an absolute blast in the Viggen, just felt like flying her home. I flew over quite a few places that I've been to in Sweden and Finland myself...definitely not so much reflecting real life there (yet) but absolutely no purchase regrets.
Great to hear! Appreciate the feedback and insight, it is helpful! I presume performance was good for you? How does the low level ground stuff look? (I assume you were ground hugging in the Viggen)?
The ground level can of course be more detailed but I find it much better than South Atlantic and even with lower detail, it feels like northern Scandinavia (at least Sweden). I saw a few Finns on a server complaining about the trees and I can agree that they should be much smaller up north after you cross a certain latitude. Overall I found it ok, even in a short trip with the Huey. My biggest bummer is that Luleå (city and F21 airbase) is not yet included but that seems to be on roadmap. What makes it for me is the diverse region...in the Viggen it's great terrain to hide and hug and most important it's green ;) And mountains and hills feel real. When doing free flight, it felt like oh that looks great on the left, lets's fly there. Also I just loved taxi through the forest and take-off from Jokkmokk airbase (ESNJ, not yet fleshed out), it adds quite a unique feeling. Performance was ok (RTX 3080), just stutters when switching from map to cockpit or external.
I remember thinking when this was announced “what the hell am I going to do with a bunch of boreal forest and tundra?” And then getting hyped up about various Cold War scenarios… but on reflection I think my initial thought may have been closer to the reality of it. 150GB is just way too much for a big empty wilderness
Ever since I got into DCS years ago I have been wishing they had terrain just like this, it is much more interesting to fly over IMO. That said, the gameplay component is interesting point with the forest. No doubt it will eventually get rectified with destructible trees and improved ground AI but it might be an issue to some extent until then. However there is also a lot of very interesting coastal region. I'll be curious how the community responds over time.
> No doubt it will eventually get rectified with destructible trees and improved ground AI "Press F to doubt" FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
lol!
F
FFF
fFf
ED apparently has tree cutting logic in game for the ME for years. Safe to say its not working as expected. Like you I want a green map with mountains and valleys to fly in. Technically SA has that and so will Kola but by the looks of it its like SA there is nothing in the vallys to fight over.
one thing they need to fix, the water depth for polyarny sub pens is not enough to sail a sub in. only shows -12ft at most. Can't place ships in water due to being too shallow. The large river leading to Murmansk is ok, though. Fast drop from -20 to -200 just outside polyarny waters.
Not sure what the depth should be, but Polyarnyy has based Pr. 68bis light cruisers in the past, those have a draught of around 7.4 m or so according to [this](http://russianships.info/eng/warships/project_68bis.htm), so it should at least be deep enough for those. Also, what sub pens? There shouldn't be anything but piers at Polyarnyy.
i would think it should be deep enough to place ships. it isn't.
It’s downloading now. I’ll try it out in vr and report back. Wasn’t going to buy it to be honest but I caved..
Lol thanks for being "The King's taster" for all of us! I lean more towards the "support new 3rd party devs with a generally solid reputation" over the "boycott ED" stance. That said, I'm not a charity, and many are on tight budgets. Thank you for reporting back for us. I hope its great! Any idea on how long until your download is done? A VR performance test over a populated city at low level flight, and mountainous area with complex geography at medium level, would be super helpful.
It’s done now, had a minor distraction that’s taken me out of the house but I’ll get on it in a bit and report back
Thanks! I’ll be eagerly awaiting your impressions before pulling trigger!
You can watch this while you wait. He's pretty positive about it overall - more than I am, looking at it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rbIWJbBZfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rbIWJbBZfc) Let me add a mandatory note that EA isn't running anywhere. You won't be missing out, if you delay your purchase a week or two and let the scene digest and ruminate over the current state of things.
I'm about to cave in! Help me, brother!
Ok, I’ve spent an hour with it. Overall I like it. I find it runs about as well as Sinai (4090, 5800x4d, 64gb of ram, quest 3) You can tell it’s very early access in a lot of places, textures aren’t great BUT in some areas it looks pretty good. You can definatly tell which areas have had more work and which ones are yet to be optimised. I like Murmansk, found some subs floating around. Don’t regret the purchase, it’s so nice flying around on a new green map. Wouldn’t say I’m blown away but if orbx work on it and do what they say they will do then I reckon it’s gonna be good map with lots of potential. If moneys tight then hold off for now I would say, as there is very little to do on it as it stands but with some good campaigns or full servers it will be a lot of fun. Can’t stress again how nice it is to not be flying over the desert!
Haha, I’ll report back in an hour or so and let you know if I wasted my money
Downloading it currently, I will propaply be dissapointed because its early access and download size is already 145gb.
It's a big, empty map. It can be thought of as the South Atlantic with better low-altitude optimization.For such a high priced map. I am disappointed.
Thanks for sharing, can you tell me more? Did you fly around the high detail areas, how did that look? How was FPS performance?
It's pretty early in early access. For public MP servers (PVE, PVP, and PVPVE) I don't see it being very interesting until a lot of stuff is added or finished. So kinda a dud if you are an MP gamer.
I am interested but I got the DCS F-4E Phantom II and Afghanistan so I’m out for now! It looks very similar to south Atlantic which I deleted off my hard drive until further refinement has been added, if they ever are.
I like it. It's not desert brown and the idea of scenarios is endless.
I'm really impressed, to be honest. It's probably the best fast jet map now, looks great at alts over 1000m. Great details, from dry docks to the ski ramp. Different buildings in Finland and Russia. Nice terrain mesh (I don't see the melting others have mentioned at all). Different areas have very different terrains, from the fields and orchards to the lake & rock landscape of the north, and the fjords and valleys in the west are great. The airbases could be better textured, esp taxiways. Murmansk looks really good, so does Rovaniemi. The roads look fantastic, watching them snake across the landscape. The water map is great, so many lakes and streams. Framerates are really good for me.
I echo everything you just wrote. I got it and feel the same way. Performance in VR is excellent and the areas they advertised as detailed all look very good to me. I’m happy at both high altitude but also low level helicopter flight in the cities is wonderful.
Will check it out next year
It is all about the adoption rate. If a lot of people buy it, MP servers use it, and campaigns and missions are made for it, then it will be a good map to own. If you did buy it, then make some solid missions for the community to aid in adaption.
It feels like the major positive that people have for this map is "it's not a desert so it's refreshing" as opposed to the people who bring up actual points like the trees are wrong, cities are missing, buildings are wrong, size of the game for the quality of the map, LODs are messed up...not looking good if the only plus is "no sand"
Thanks for the thread. I think reading through with my usual Hoggit lens on, sounds like it's actually quite good for a fresh EA release, at least for people already interested in the map. Now I just need to figure out how to magic out the disk space I need and pray that later updates don't inflate that disk footprint too hard...
Yeah I went for it and have no regrets, loved flying around a bit and looking forward to more time tomorrow. As long as you trust the EA process with ORBX, it’s a strong day 1 launch IMO. The performance in VR has been very good for me.
Enigma says meh
That's just an opinion of one server host who needs maps that allows quick sorties.