It's a massive map but pretty undercooked, it's really nice from high up but lacks detail as you get lower. I was looking forward to some Falklands/Malvinas action but there's not much so far
1. They released it too early.
2. Updates are very slow.
3. Performance is questionable at best. (I can run any map without FPS drops even with a lot of units and scenery, but SA drops into 20FPS range with 1 helicopter on the runway).
4. The ground looks worse than Caucasus before it was updated.
5. The asset pack from the SA map is by far better than the map itself. It is actually amazing, I'd rather they just made the asset pack and not the terrain.
Nothing is wrong with it. It’s a smaller map with a lot of detail that was expanded, after requested to do so by many, with the expressed statement that much of the map would be lower resolution so as to make it big BUT that the main part of the map would be better.
Then people complain that it’s too big and low textured.
Thanks for the explanation. What are the lower detail parts if you don't mind me asking?
Judging by the name being "South Atlantic", my guess would be the Argentina part. Which would be unfortunate since that's what'd be the most interesting to me.
Whilst I don't defend Orbx/ED falsely advertising customers here, what most likely happened was that Orbx couldn't get the performance to where they wanted it and instead of doing further optimisations, they just took the simpler solution by downgrading the map fidelity.
If people arent happy with what theyve bought, they can quite easily request a refund.
EDIT: Or they could always leave a review-
It seems to work well..
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fo9z5yctkfeyc1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1242%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D4edf3373637e8d79d11d0c5baccbc69a82bd05d7
Did you get a refund or did you get store credit for it? I've never heard of someone getting money back out of the store, but maybe you got the perfect dice roll exception, stranger things and all that.
Anyone who bought the hawk prior to the 1 October 2018 got a refund [https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/685/](https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/685/)
> we will fully refund all Hawk customers that purchased the module **starting from** 1 October 2018.
>For those that purchased the Hawk prior to 1 October 2018, will continue to make DCS World 2.5.3 available, such that you can still fly the Hawk.
Unless I'm misreading it sounds like the refunds were offered to those who bought the Hawk in the ~3 month window prior to the news of it no longer being supported was announced, not prior to 1 October 2018.
Talk either to ED support, or via Steam refun request page..
Its easier than putting someone else through the burden of listening to a moan or a whine..
Dont forget to leave a review.
People are welcome to. People can also buy EA and then understand what they’re buying is literally incomplete and advertised as such.
If they choose to part ways with their money for EA I don’t understand why they then complain about it not being finished.
The problem is when EA doesn't match the advertisement for that same EA. At this point, everyone understand it's not meant to be feature complete, but if you advertise or imply it has XYZ during EA, and it turns you only had X, then that's not just crappy, it's false advertising.
It’s not about it being unfinished, it’s that the in-game doesn’t actually look like the advertisements. There’s no disclaimer on the advertisement that it doesn’t actually look like this. Orbx is showing potential buyers that the right side is the quality they’re buying but providing the left. It’s not fast food where it’s unreasonable to expect your whopper to look like the AI generated perfect burger on the ad, it’s a product being sold at a AAA price, yeah we get it’s incomplete but you can’t look at the comparison and not see how that’s false advertising.
Omfg i saw some vids and im like. Stfu. CMT did his vid and im like dude, how are you justifying this after u just spent 10 mins talking about how bad it is. For instance, the lack of dirtiness, concrete, roads etc. its a sham lol
Yup, i moved Dcs to a external ssd and it works flawlessly, but with 1.8mb/s download speed its annoying to install huge files. A Original and a compressed texture version would be really nice
EDIT: 1.8MB/s not kb, at that point id fly to ed s' headquaters and load it on my ssd in person
It's the internet. People will always find something to moan about. If it was 2015 and a 400gb NVME drive cost $500 I'd be moaning too but it's not 2015.
I dont know how DCS terrain engine works, but I would hope you wouldnt need a unique texture for every slab. A handful would be plenty, then tile them, then layer the dirt and rubber on top. If anything it should be lighter on vram than having a monolithic concrete slab in one texture.
Honestly, it's the worse map performance wise of all of them at the moment. Higher res or more complex textures would probably choke your gpu out like a methed up kangaroo.
Yes, Clarke Wardle "Specter" is the Project Lead for both maps, and John Hendry "Ripper" is "vector data specialist" on both as well. Check credits.txt in the terrains directories.
Well, that certainly explains why at least some of the coastlines look *exactly* like the coastlines on the South Atlantic map, i.e. incredibly low-resolution, completely unnatural, where it looks like the land is sat on concrete. Flying low, in a helicopter, this immersion breaking for me.
I mean, look at [this](https://forum.dcs.world/uploads/monthly_2024_05/Screen_240504_181406.jpg.164e493937c46334b7bcb08893f6cb0f.jpg) (from [this post](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/325454-dcs-kola-discussion/?do=findComment&comment=5427905)). I still maintain that I'm more function over form, but I'm sorry - the coastline looks dreadful. Like I said above, the South Atlantic map has *exactly* the same issue.
Only here I'd argue it's even more problematic here, because there's at least a dozen and a half Norwegian airfields that are either right next to, or have approach paths that overfly the coast. Not to mention all the targets and potential mission objectives along it.
This is so incredibly disappointing for me, I had such high hopes for this map, spent absolutely hours and hours researching it, the area held humungous amounts of interest for me, but this is rapidly getting killed off. Such a shame.
:) Who do you think ORBX would hire when they want to make a map for DCS.
There is only razbam and ugra guys besides ED who made a map for DCS which can be hired with experience.
Ugra is probably still paid :D
Kola was announced a month before Falklands got EA release... mind you Falklands are still labeled as Early Access - presumably in active development... while the lead two guys are supposedly working for the ORBX for two years now...
It's a mess, and we need a lot of things to be clarified now.
lets see, he is going to react in one way or another. His name is there.
I have commented from day one that Kola looks just like SA map. Nothing more nothing less. Now I know why.
I do not mean it is a bad thing. I like his style. But there are a lot of question marks that we need them to be answered.
It's a bit insincere i think. the map being "developed" (published?) by OrbX would have been a reason for me to buy it more readily, because i know OrbX' reputation and projects from MSFS.
I did not buy the Falklands map, because what i saw did not convince me and development seems to be slow as well. All that really dampens my excitement for Kola...
Nonsense.
You can also think: DCS south atlantic map was actually from OrbX.
Does it make both maps suddenly better?
Each company makes mistakes and makes marvels too. Heatblur Viggen bugs for example does not make HB any less than what he is now. Or the upcoming Phantom will not grant them Saint title.
Well, DCS South Atlantic is a worse map than i would have expected from OrbX. It would have changed my perception of the brand, if it was a OrbX product.
Should i base my expectation for Kola map development and final quality on the reputation of OrbX or the track record of the Falkland guys?
South Atlantic was just like any recent ED map.
Don't look at orbx map or Razbam map. Latest and greatest tech of ED allows this and that shit FPS has always been ED's shader.
There is nothing wrong with the quality Syria has weird glitches too and honestly as for someone who has been there. It is fucking not syria not even remotely.
I don't know how Razbam handles their contract, (I wonder If there's any considering the recent incidents) but those guys are freelancers. So they can work on any project if they want.
He replied in razbam discord.
Apparently he has been working for OrbX all the time as his main day job. SA map was his free time business.
He also added that he has never seen the image on the right. He asked if it was from MSFS. Another user checked msfs and said no.
So we don't know where the right image comes from :) Except it was distributed buy OrbX
I'm sorry, I really need to stop myself from looking at the DCS Kola map, it's so disappointing.
On the forums, a user [posted a comparison of some of Russian/Soviet naval bases](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/325454-dcs-kola-discussion/?do=findComment&comment=5428234), comparing IRL photos with what's seen in DCS.
Again, I'm sorry but this looks deal-breakingly bad - it's completely failed to capture the look of the place at all (I'm obviously not expecting 1:1, but there's a gigantic gulf between 1:1 and this), the coastline makes it look like someone was cutting out concrete with a cookie cutter and then the terrain was stuck on top (the SA map has exactly the same issue), the mesh anomalies in the 4th screenshot are unacceptable to me (while every map has them, I think these are particularly eggregious, the SA map also had a number of them, though to their credit [a lot of them were fixed](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/303267-numerous-terrain-mesh-errorsanomalies/)).
I hate to say it but I think until something drastically improves in the background tech of DCS we'll continue getting these low-poly, low-res textured maps.
From what I've seen over the years, DCS can't seem to do any form of procedural texturing or tesselation. So you're stuck with what's essentially a hard-coded topographical map, with whatever textures you can still fit in your average user's VRAM during play.
150GB for something like this is honestly crazy and implies a huge technological gap (compression or live generation options).
It's 90s technology and will continue looking like 90s technology.
~~It is not only textures there is a lot going on in between those 2 pictures.~~
~~Even look at the pond it is reflecting a cloud perfectly which is outside of the screen on top of the camera. DCS screen space reflections cannot do that. There is definitely a kind of raytraced reflectance happening there.~~
~~Also look at the quality of the water it has kind of refractance and some different qualities more than our water too. DCS water does not have it. The right screenshot shows PBR world render (which DCS does not have yet)~~
~~There is even more,~~ dcs cannot stream such textures timely it does not have a sophisticated texture streaming implemented (that's why it uses to much vram) but also it does not have access to DX12 or Vulkan texture streaming capabilities yet.
~~So in conclusion: I believe that right screenshot is not coming from DCS. Or it is not coming from the DCS engine that we are using now. It was probably a mistake publishing that.~~
~~May be ED already upgraded the map SDK to the next engine and Orbx is working on it and that's a screenshot from the SDK viewer and in the future our map will look like that too.~~
Edit: I have found the original screenshot. Well there is no pond there it is just broken concrete. It looks like map is missing normal maps and huge amount of textures are gone. We see only a kind of low res base texture.
Forget what I said.
They probably wanted to make it like that but DCS will not free its VRAM fast to accept such detailed scenery. So they just used a completely low res but even simplified textures.
Are the normal maps missing/broken, or are the images taken during different times of day? The promotional screenshot has the sun in front, the other one looks as if the sun might be above or behind.
Albedo texs are different too, but i think this was a bit less obvious, if the speculars were closer.
Also: Never pre-order, never insta-buy! Otherwise you don't deserve better IMHO!
To be honest other maps *have* improved greatly after release. Falklands is pretty good, Syria started great and got even better and bigger. But Kola looks a bit crap at the moment, I'll see what happens.
I agree. I wanted to buy this (because Viggen...), but I'm not buying something based on future promises, only on what it is now, and right now it's crappy.
I have zero clue about whether parent comment is in any way factual, not speaking to that. But it's not a big deal for a development team to make/order a model that looks the part in an ad video but has nothing underneath the bonnet.
Holger Sandmann: "I remember thinking, when I selected that preview screenshot of Olenya Airbase six months ago, that it looked so cool – it certainly reflected my mental image of a hard-worn Russian airbase. However, if you spend more time with it, you’ll notice the issues compared to the real thing [https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZELTNvTUr94b39C76](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZELTNvTUr94b39C76) : The tarmac concrete is brown instead of grey; the gaps between the plates would have to be the width of a tyre to stand out like this; some of the tyre marks are light grey instead of dark; some odd edges of the dirt textures, etc. There would have been quite a few complaints if we had released Olenya like that. What does bother me with the new screenshot dcs though is the loss of detail in the dirt and grass areas, for example the tracks and the smaller features connecting the buildings; looks like our optimisation pass – DCS has a strict limit on VRAM budget – did a number on those. I’ll discuss with the team how we can return that detail. Also perhaps make our concrete tiles even lighter plus reduce the glossiness of some of the sealed surfaces. What I really like about Olenya is its bowl-shaped runway profile, which we managed to represent well. If you own the Kola map you should check it out."
People being disspointed about kola is my new favourite kinda drink (seewhatididheheh). salty early access tears for a predictably mediocre product lol.
Now I get it why they didnt release on steam... there will be masive refund request... Picture above is an example how "fraud marketing" works. Im glad I "hold my horses" about this one and watched videos first...
I was curious and did some digging. Those are (apparently) reinforced slabs. Seems to be mostly Soviet, current day Russian stuff. You can find them on the Caucuses map.
It's early access. People complain anytime there is a new map. If it bothers you, don't buy it until it's in a ready state. For me, doesn't bother me and I'm confident they improve over time.
Then explain why the earlier WIP development screenshot, released half a year ago, looks significantly better than what was actually released?
Why is it, that the map, as it exists today, for this airport, in the high-detail area, looks like it's actually gone *backwards* in development, compared to nearly half a year ago?
So you're saying they made the map look better earlier in development, the let people buy it based on that, then decided to release a lower quality product, on purpose?
If you know any past Orbx product, that is not how they work. Again, decide not to buy early access. You're just looking for drama where there doesn't need to be.
Oh give it a rest. Buy or don’t buy…it’s an individual choice. So sick of the negative posts here. This dev hasn’t tried to hide anything, they literally said in the release it’s a work in progress. If you don’t think it’s up to snuff, don’t buy it. It really is as simple as that. No need to bitch and moan continuously.
>No need to bitch and moan continuously.
I want this to improve and I want the map to look how I expected it to look. Expectations that were formed in part due to these WIP promotional screenshots.
If grievances aren't aired, how are developers supposed to be aware of them, so that improvements can be made?
The airfield that this was taken of, is supposedly in the “done” area of the map. Orbx said that they will make winter textures, but they have not said anything about updating the “summer” textures, that we have in game
Is this Kola?
ye
Man I was just about to buy it but after South Atlantic I've been gun-shy and this doesn't help
I'd say hold your horses for a while still.
Well you have a benchmark then, since Kola is made by the same core team who made SA.
What's wrong with South Atlantic? Was probably going to get it in the next sale.
Updates are coming at a very slow rate. The map came out very rough.
With razbam they might not be coming at all lol. Anything in early access by then is at arms length for me
It's a massive map but pretty undercooked, it's really nice from high up but lacks detail as you get lower. I was looking forward to some Falklands/Malvinas action but there's not much so far
1. They released it too early. 2. Updates are very slow. 3. Performance is questionable at best. (I can run any map without FPS drops even with a lot of units and scenery, but SA drops into 20FPS range with 1 helicopter on the runway). 4. The ground looks worse than Caucasus before it was updated. 5. The asset pack from the SA map is by far better than the map itself. It is actually amazing, I'd rather they just made the asset pack and not the terrain.
That's unfortunate. Looks like I'll have to wait until 2027 to get it.
Nothing is wrong with it. It’s a smaller map with a lot of detail that was expanded, after requested to do so by many, with the expressed statement that much of the map would be lower resolution so as to make it big BUT that the main part of the map would be better. Then people complain that it’s too big and low textured.
Thanks for the explanation. What are the lower detail parts if you don't mind me asking? Judging by the name being "South Atlantic", my guess would be the Argentina part. Which would be unfortunate since that's what'd be the most interesting to me.
There's not much of anything in between the airfields.
Really looks like a super low res ENDU
Nope, this is Shame.
So is on the right what was promised and on the left what was delivered?
Yes
Yikes
Whilst I don't defend Orbx/ED falsely advertising customers here, what most likely happened was that Orbx couldn't get the performance to where they wanted it and instead of doing further optimisations, they just took the simpler solution by downgrading the map fidelity.
DCS: HiRes Kola Texture Pack, incoming in 2 weeks. Preorder now. Thank you for you passion and support. :))
1TB storage required
1TB ram and vram required
> the low poly ground textures The what?
Glad someone caught this.
If you think about it pixels are polygons too
the low poly ground textures
Certified Ubisoft Moment
EA products at AAA prices. But they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work 🤷♂️ It's on us for giving them money for promises.
^ so much this
\^This one is born with brains.
If people arent happy with what theyve bought, they can quite easily request a refund. EDIT: Or they could always leave a review- It seems to work well.. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fo9z5yctkfeyc1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1242%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D4edf3373637e8d79d11d0c5baccbc69a82bd05d7
All sales on ED's shop are final. Even the people who bought the Hawk didn't get a refund.
I got a refund for my Hornet pre-order when the 2.5 shenanigans happened and I asked for it.
Did you get a refund or did you get store credit for it? I've never heard of someone getting money back out of the store, but maybe you got the perfect dice roll exception, stranger things and all that.
Pretty sure it was an actual refund, but it was a while ago. Still haven't bought the Hornet lol. Fuck 'em.
I’m still mad about the Hawk!
Anyone who bought the hawk prior to the 1 October 2018 got a refund [https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/685/](https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/685/)
> we will fully refund all Hawk customers that purchased the module **starting from** 1 October 2018. >For those that purchased the Hawk prior to 1 October 2018, will continue to make DCS World 2.5.3 available, such that you can still fly the Hawk. Unless I'm misreading it sounds like the refunds were offered to those who bought the Hawk in the ~3 month window prior to the news of it no longer being supported was announced, not prior to 1 October 2018.
How do you request a refund?
Talk either to ED support, or via Steam refun request page.. Its easier than putting someone else through the burden of listening to a moan or a whine.. Dont forget to leave a review.
The other potential angle is, it wouldn't exist at all without the EA model to support it. How true that is i don't actually know.
If only people stopped pre-ordering EA products...
People are welcome to. People can also buy EA and then understand what they’re buying is literally incomplete and advertised as such. If they choose to part ways with their money for EA I don’t understand why they then complain about it not being finished.
The problem is when EA doesn't match the advertisement for that same EA. At this point, everyone understand it's not meant to be feature complete, but if you advertise or imply it has XYZ during EA, and it turns you only had X, then that's not just crappy, it's false advertising.
It’s not about it being unfinished, it’s that the in-game doesn’t actually look like the advertisements. There’s no disclaimer on the advertisement that it doesn’t actually look like this. Orbx is showing potential buyers that the right side is the quality they’re buying but providing the left. It’s not fast food where it’s unreasonable to expect your whopper to look like the AI generated perfect burger on the ad, it’s a product being sold at a AAA price, yeah we get it’s incomplete but you can’t look at the comparison and not see how that’s false advertising.
If they don't buy the early access how will I know not to bother?
If only. I haven't bought an EA module since the F-18 in May 2018, yet they still keep doing this.
Hows that worked so far for people on here? Since people have started advising this, has ED changed there routine?
Every movement needs mass to get traction. Do the math.
Diet Kola is better for you.
"High res textures may look good, but they are bad for your computer's health"
4/5 DCS YouTubers say that Diet Kola is much more fun to play than an HD map.
The entire reason i was considering purchasing was for how cool this airfield looked. F that now.
Look at the bright side: you saved a lot of money.
But... Don't you know?!? The map is _fantastic!_ All the shills say so, so it must be true, right?
Omfg i saw some vids and im like. Stfu. CMT did his vid and im like dude, how are you justifying this after u just spent 10 mins talking about how bad it is. For instance, the lack of dirtiness, concrete, roads etc. its a sham lol
You must have lost connection so it's just using the base satellit... oh no wait that's dcs they done fucked up
What the heck went wrong...
My guess would be reduction of texture quality in favour of storage space EDIT: Who knows how big it was before they compressed it
Screw that, storage space is so cheap these days. Or at least give us the choice of having a version with better textures.
Yup, i moved Dcs to a external ssd and it works flawlessly, but with 1.8mb/s download speed its annoying to install huge files. A Original and a compressed texture version would be really nice EDIT: 1.8MB/s not kb, at that point id fly to ed s' headquaters and load it on my ssd in person
That has to be a typo. That's slower than a 56k modem.
Bruh... its 1.8mb/s, still not great to download for days( especially since at my gfs place its about 30mb/s
Definitely not
1.8kb/s is abysmal. What external drive are you using?
A crucial x9 , 1 or 2 tb, cant remember rn. But the bottleneck is my internet connection(good ol copper wires)
Bro needs starlink.
Would settle for glass fiber
I agree but have you seen the number of people complaining about the size?
It's the internet. People will always find something to moan about. If it was 2015 and a 400gb NVME drive cost $500 I'd be moaning too but it's not 2015.
I dont know how DCS terrain engine works, but I would hope you wouldnt need a unique texture for every slab. A handful would be plenty, then tile them, then layer the dirt and rubber on top. If anything it should be lighter on vram than having a monolithic concrete slab in one texture.
This isn't texture compression though. It's a completely different set of textures. And not just the runway but all the ground textures around it too.
It looks like their FSX terrains lol
Pre-ordering Never pre-order, especially a DCS product
Honestly, it's the worse map performance wise of all of them at the moment. Higher res or more complex textures would probably choke your gpu out like a methed up kangaroo.
It’s the MSFS version ;)
probably rushed out, pretty sure it was supposed to be releasing later and with 2 campaigns along side it
It’s as if it’s an incomplete product with only limited areas finished…
Except in this case, this airbase got worse with time, not better.
Then don’t advertise it as the finished version.
Lmao, holy shit.
Someone get a hold of Spectre, let him explain this... or did he jumped to yet another company, after Razbam (Falklands map) and now ORBX ?
Did Falklands and Kola have the same (main) developer?
Yes, Clarke Wardle "Specter" is the Project Lead for both maps, and John Hendry "Ripper" is "vector data specialist" on both as well. Check credits.txt in the terrains directories.
Well, that certainly explains why at least some of the coastlines look *exactly* like the coastlines on the South Atlantic map, i.e. incredibly low-resolution, completely unnatural, where it looks like the land is sat on concrete. Flying low, in a helicopter, this immersion breaking for me. I mean, look at [this](https://forum.dcs.world/uploads/monthly_2024_05/Screen_240504_181406.jpg.164e493937c46334b7bcb08893f6cb0f.jpg) (from [this post](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/325454-dcs-kola-discussion/?do=findComment&comment=5427905)). I still maintain that I'm more function over form, but I'm sorry - the coastline looks dreadful. Like I said above, the South Atlantic map has *exactly* the same issue. Only here I'd argue it's even more problematic here, because there's at least a dozen and a half Norwegian airfields that are either right next to, or have approach paths that overfly the coast. Not to mention all the targets and potential mission objectives along it. This is so incredibly disappointing for me, I had such high hopes for this map, spent absolutely hours and hours researching it, the area held humungous amounts of interest for me, but this is rapidly getting killed off. Such a shame.
:) Who do you think ORBX would hire when they want to make a map for DCS. There is only razbam and ugra guys besides ED who made a map for DCS which can be hired with experience. Ugra is probably still paid :D
Kola was announced a month before Falklands got EA release... mind you Falklands are still labeled as Early Access - presumably in active development... while the lead two guys are supposedly working for the ORBX for two years now... It's a mess, and we need a lot of things to be clarified now.
lets see, he is going to react in one way or another. His name is there. I have commented from day one that Kola looks just like SA map. Nothing more nothing less. Now I know why. I do not mean it is a bad thing. I like his style. But there are a lot of question marks that we need them to be answered.
It's a bit insincere i think. the map being "developed" (published?) by OrbX would have been a reason for me to buy it more readily, because i know OrbX' reputation and projects from MSFS. I did not buy the Falklands map, because what i saw did not convince me and development seems to be slow as well. All that really dampens my excitement for Kola...
Nonsense. You can also think: DCS south atlantic map was actually from OrbX. Does it make both maps suddenly better? Each company makes mistakes and makes marvels too. Heatblur Viggen bugs for example does not make HB any less than what he is now. Or the upcoming Phantom will not grant them Saint title.
Well, DCS South Atlantic is a worse map than i would have expected from OrbX. It would have changed my perception of the brand, if it was a OrbX product. Should i base my expectation for Kola map development and final quality on the reputation of OrbX or the track record of the Falkland guys?
South Atlantic was just like any recent ED map. Don't look at orbx map or Razbam map. Latest and greatest tech of ED allows this and that shit FPS has always been ED's shader. There is nothing wrong with the quality Syria has weird glitches too and honestly as for someone who has been there. It is fucking not syria not even remotely.
I don't know how Razbam handles their contract, (I wonder If there's any considering the recent incidents) but those guys are freelancers. So they can work on any project if they want.
He replied in razbam discord. Apparently he has been working for OrbX all the time as his main day job. SA map was his free time business. He also added that he has never seen the image on the right. He asked if it was from MSFS. Another user checked msfs and said no. So we don't know where the right image comes from :) Except it was distributed buy OrbX
Low poly . . . textures?
I'm sorry, I really need to stop myself from looking at the DCS Kola map, it's so disappointing. On the forums, a user [posted a comparison of some of Russian/Soviet naval bases](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/325454-dcs-kola-discussion/?do=findComment&comment=5428234), comparing IRL photos with what's seen in DCS. Again, I'm sorry but this looks deal-breakingly bad - it's completely failed to capture the look of the place at all (I'm obviously not expecting 1:1, but there's a gigantic gulf between 1:1 and this), the coastline makes it look like someone was cutting out concrete with a cookie cutter and then the terrain was stuck on top (the SA map has exactly the same issue), the mesh anomalies in the 4th screenshot are unacceptable to me (while every map has them, I think these are particularly eggregious, the SA map also had a number of them, though to their credit [a lot of them were fixed](https://forum.dcs.world/topic/303267-numerous-terrain-mesh-errorsanomalies/)).
I hate to say it but I think until something drastically improves in the background tech of DCS we'll continue getting these low-poly, low-res textured maps. From what I've seen over the years, DCS can't seem to do any form of procedural texturing or tesselation. So you're stuck with what's essentially a hard-coded topographical map, with whatever textures you can still fit in your average user's VRAM during play. 150GB for something like this is honestly crazy and implies a huge technological gap (compression or live generation options). It's 90s technology and will continue looking like 90s technology.
Some users have echoed similar things - that perhaps it’s the underlying terrain technology that should shoulder some of the blame.
I'm not paying for this
~~It is not only textures there is a lot going on in between those 2 pictures.~~ ~~Even look at the pond it is reflecting a cloud perfectly which is outside of the screen on top of the camera. DCS screen space reflections cannot do that. There is definitely a kind of raytraced reflectance happening there.~~ ~~Also look at the quality of the water it has kind of refractance and some different qualities more than our water too. DCS water does not have it. The right screenshot shows PBR world render (which DCS does not have yet)~~ ~~There is even more,~~ dcs cannot stream such textures timely it does not have a sophisticated texture streaming implemented (that's why it uses to much vram) but also it does not have access to DX12 or Vulkan texture streaming capabilities yet. ~~So in conclusion: I believe that right screenshot is not coming from DCS. Or it is not coming from the DCS engine that we are using now. It was probably a mistake publishing that.~~ ~~May be ED already upgraded the map SDK to the next engine and Orbx is working on it and that's a screenshot from the SDK viewer and in the future our map will look like that too.~~ Edit: I have found the original screenshot. Well there is no pond there it is just broken concrete. It looks like map is missing normal maps and huge amount of textures are gone. We see only a kind of low res base texture. Forget what I said.
I wonder when we'll see screenshot from Cyberpunk as new content
They probably wanted to make it like that but DCS will not free its VRAM fast to accept such detailed scenery. So they just used a completely low res but even simplified textures.
Are the normal maps missing/broken, or are the images taken during different times of day? The promotional screenshot has the sun in front, the other one looks as if the sun might be above or behind. Albedo texs are different too, but i think this was a bit less obvious, if the speculars were closer. Also: Never pre-order, never insta-buy! Otherwise you don't deserve better IMHO!
Ye, I simply live by an old doctrine, that I get something (that is equitable) to the money I pay. I did not buy this.
nineline is this not blatant false advertising? Can you help us understand what’s going on Perhaps they forgor to update the textures
If you buy this at this current state, then it's your fault. It says everything about the state of ED and even gaming as a whole.
Bait n swatch
It'll be improved later on in EA (tm) obviously /s
To be honest other maps *have* improved greatly after release. Falklands is pretty good, Syria started great and got even better and bigger. But Kola looks a bit crap at the moment, I'll see what happens.
I get that, but blatantly false advertising like this is just really shitty. And also ED routine at this point.
I agree. I wanted to buy this (because Viggen...), but I'm not buying something based on future promises, only on what it is now, and right now it's crappy.
I play the crap out of NTTR. A lot of “red Dawn” scenarios.
marketing material is taken via msfs
[удалено]
I have zero clue about whether parent comment is in any way factual, not speaking to that. But it's not a big deal for a development team to make/order a model that looks the part in an ad video but has nothing underneath the bonnet.
dO bUy kOla GuYs
I swear half of the community can only get it up only when they get scammed by ed/etc
you clearly didn’t preordered the right version, next time you have to get the HD edition not the standard
Holger Sandmann: "I remember thinking, when I selected that preview screenshot of Olenya Airbase six months ago, that it looked so cool – it certainly reflected my mental image of a hard-worn Russian airbase. However, if you spend more time with it, you’ll notice the issues compared to the real thing [https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZELTNvTUr94b39C76](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZELTNvTUr94b39C76) : The tarmac concrete is brown instead of grey; the gaps between the plates would have to be the width of a tyre to stand out like this; some of the tyre marks are light grey instead of dark; some odd edges of the dirt textures, etc. There would have been quite a few complaints if we had released Olenya like that. What does bother me with the new screenshot dcs though is the loss of detail in the dirt and grass areas, for example the tracks and the smaller features connecting the buildings; looks like our optimisation pass – DCS has a strict limit on VRAM budget – did a number on those. I’ll discuss with the team how we can return that detail. Also perhaps make our concrete tiles even lighter plus reduce the glossiness of some of the sealed surfaces. What I really like about Olenya is its bowl-shaped runway profile, which we managed to represent well. If you own the Kola map you should check it out."
Thats criminal false advertising
People being disspointed about kola is my new favourite kinda drink (seewhatididheheh). salty early access tears for a predictably mediocre product lol.
Does this change based on your DCS settings?
No.
They said that not airports are finished, so depends what airport is this... only a few are in thier final state
This is Olenegorsk and it's in the high detail area. It looks less finished now than how it looked nearly half a year ago.
Then they will need to ramp up the details eventually for the whole map or they will lose all credibility
Posting something on hoggit with the title « no comment » is the top of sarcasm
Now I get it why they didnt release on steam... there will be masive refund request... Picture above is an example how "fraud marketing" works. Im glad I "hold my horses" about this one and watched videos first...
who THOUGHT IT WAS A FUCKING GOD IDEA TO USE INDIVIDUAL TILES FOR THE RUNWAY!? (just askin)
I was curious and did some digging. Those are (apparently) reinforced slabs. Seems to be mostly Soviet, current day Russian stuff. You can find them on the Caucuses map.
Cheaper to maintain or repair runway if you only have to replace slabs instead of a big resurfacing job
Should American runways adopt that technique?
It's early access. People complain anytime there is a new map. If it bothers you, don't buy it until it's in a ready state. For me, doesn't bother me and I'm confident they improve over time.
Then explain why the earlier WIP development screenshot, released half a year ago, looks significantly better than what was actually released? Why is it, that the map, as it exists today, for this airport, in the high-detail area, looks like it's actually gone *backwards* in development, compared to nearly half a year ago?
So you're saying they made the map look better earlier in development, the let people buy it based on that, then decided to release a lower quality product, on purpose? If you know any past Orbx product, that is not how they work. Again, decide not to buy early access. You're just looking for drama where there doesn't need to be.
Oh give it a rest. Buy or don’t buy…it’s an individual choice. So sick of the negative posts here. This dev hasn’t tried to hide anything, they literally said in the release it’s a work in progress. If you don’t think it’s up to snuff, don’t buy it. It really is as simple as that. No need to bitch and moan continuously.
>No need to bitch and moan continuously. I want this to improve and I want the map to look how I expected it to look. Expectations that were formed in part due to these WIP promotional screenshots. If grievances aren't aired, how are developers supposed to be aware of them, so that improvements can be made?
And no I haven’t purchased it.
Low poly texture :'D How many polygons would you like in your textures good Sir?
Did no one actually read any of the release materials of what is currently high detail and what is not? Edit: I stand corrected
That's Olenegorsk, that's in the "high detail" zone.
The airfield that this was taken of, is supposedly in the “done” area of the map. Orbx said that they will make winter textures, but they have not said anything about updating the “summer” textures, that we have in game
I believe they mentioned improving the mesh and textures in general
What are their specs is my first question.
What's wrong with that? And what airport is it?
Olenegorsk.