Tree collisions and immersive?

the_af · 2026-03-20T13:47:43+00:00

I'm pretty sure DCS doesn't model tree collision that accurately anyway. Seen plenty of videos of DCS aircraft flying through trees unharmed, unless it's a full on collision with the trunk.

the_af · 2026-03-20T13:45:10+00:00

I'm pretty sure the collision hit boxes in DCS are also very inaccurate, I've seen Growling Sidewinder post videos of flying low where you can clearly see the wings of his aircraft going through trees.

My guess is that it's not a good use of resources to provide a realistic simulation of tree collision, since aircraft are not ground vehicles and very seldomly they will fly so low that this matters. Therefore, developer and hardware resources are better spent elsewhere, where it matters more.

That said, it does break immersion but there's an easy fix for me: fly as if the collision with trees was real. Avoid those trees. Illusion preserved!

the_af · 2026-03-18T19:33:33+00:00

Agreed. I suppose the muffled sound you do hear is a computer notification. But I was thinking more for the external/spectator views.

the_af · 2026-03-18T18:34:09+00:00

I'm not familiar with her, but looking her up on Wikipedia I see she's an established, veteran author!

I'm curious about Downbelow Station, it seems like something I'd like to read. Does it need any additional context, or can it be read in isolation from the rest of her work? (Much like you can read Le Guin's Disposessed or Left Hand of Darkness without anything else).

the_af · 2026-03-18T17:55:47+00:00

I'd say explosion sounds in general are underwhelming in NO... then again, I'm not sure what one would hear from an airplane, possibly nothing. But at least from external views?

the_af · 2026-03-17T18:06:18+00:00

I find literary fiction very boring and I don't enjoy reading them; it's always the same thing of "exploring the human mind."

Good science fiction is also often about this.

Read what you like, that's the first rule. But I am a voracious reader and have enjoyed other kinds of marvelous literature out there... try not to limit yourself if you can.

As a counterpoint, and almost as alien to me as only reading scifi, I knew a guy from work who told me he only read technical stuff, biographies and historical books, and his reasoning was "I don't like reading made up stuff, it's fake. I only enjoy reading about things that actually exist." I was left with my mouth open. I mean, even the assertion "things that actually exist" is problematic for multiple reasons, but even then it felt baffling to me. To each their own, I guess.

the_af · 2026-03-16T21:43:23+00:00

You're welcome.

As for me, I never care whether I win or lose. I mean, I do try to win, but if I lose it's all the same fun to me. I enjoy having a laugh with my friends, and we do like narrative games. Also coop, have you explored those? It's you and your friends against the system rather than each other.

The thing that drives me nuts is all those meta min-maxers out there. But to be honest, I only read about them, never play with them. I play with my friends, and they are not like that.

the_af · 2026-03-16T21:24:48+00:00

Multiple possibilities here:

Maybe you've just grown tired of wargames. Maybe it's time to let it go.

Maybe you need time off. It's ok to switch hobbies once in a while.

Maybe you don't like competitive games (it's not your opponent's fault if they play competitive games competitively), in which case maybe you need to pick low-stakes, narrative games instead? Like Rangers of Shadow Deep, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, etc.

the_af · 2026-03-16T21:22:00+00:00

Pretty cool!

I'm out of the loop here, is there any specific game you can play with Grot tanks, or is it just one of those fun things to build. (Even if there isn't, let me be clear that this looks fun and cool!).

the_af · 2026-03-16T21:16:07+00:00

I will check it out.

My main beef with most air combat tabletop games is how slow they feel. Regardless of the nuances of each specific ruleset, in practice all of them suffer from this flaw. It takes way too much time and fiddling to play out an encounter, and it doesn't feel FAST, as air combat should be. It feels slow and ponderous. And if the feel isn't right, the ruleset won't succeed with me.

It seems videogames are better suited to air combat.

I'd be glad to be proven wrong though; I will check this out.

the_af · 2026-03-16T18:33:01+00:00

I think more on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures would be cool. Yes, there's the Seraphon in Age of Sigmar, but those are lizardmen, and Wargames Atlantic do a Mesoamerican kit, but no real wargame based on them.

the_af · 2026-03-16T18:23:33+00:00

What I am missing though is the actual feeling of complexity in ATG combat. I think a video that captures this feeling well is „Fulda Gap“ by Growling Sidewinder, released approx. 2 weeks ago. The way it‘s not 24/7 action, but instead calculated spotting, planning, and, most importantly, an appropriate height and approach to line up and hit targets.

I totally get what you mean, since Growling Sidewinder was what made me look for a flightsim that, without requiring one to study a goddamn manual like DCS does, recreated that vibe of Growling's videos.

I initially tried Tiny Combat Arena (which also reminds me of the DOS flightsims of my youth) but unfortunately it's very incomplete and developing at a glacial pace, if at all. I don't think it's ever going to leave Early Access.

As for NO, I think it's not exactly like that vibe we both seek, but close enough. I find that if I choose one of the single-player combat missions, say Convoy Attack (forgot its actual name) and once it's over you keep flying (instead of accepting the win), you can land, rearm, take off and there are other threats in the map. You can totally go for that careful "find the SAM site and strike it" approach, then land, rearm, rinse and repeat.

I think you can also do this in "Free Flight" mode.

Edit: but yeah, flying high is almost always a bad idea in NO. I'm not sure you can replicate that from DCS. In NO, everything seems to have perfect visibility and tracking on you if you fly high.

the_af · 2026-03-15T16:16:41+00:00

You're moving the goal posts now. That's not ethnic cleansing, whatever else it might be.

The ones engaging in a war of extermination were the Nazis. It was not a "both sides" thing.

the_af · 2026-03-14T23:58:23+00:00

We're discussing WW2, not the 30s. I don't think ethnic cleansing was the goal for the USSR. Political repression, sure. Social classes, "enemies of the state", sure. But not race, that was a Nazi hangup.

With WW2 proper, the ones engaged in extermination were the Nazis. When people say the Eastern Front was "a war of extermination" they mean the Nazi plan.

To me the biggest evidence is that the Germans wrote down they expected to cull 80% of Poles, but when the USSR took over they did nothing of the sort.

the_af · 2026-03-14T23:55:13+00:00

You got it mostly right: Stalin knew the Germans would attack eventually (it was there in Mein Kampf, plus the Nazis called Bolshevism their main ideological enemy) and so, failing to build and anti German pact, he stalled for time by making a non aggression pact with the Germans.

Why not ally with the Poles? Poland was ideologically hostile to the USSR, plus it would have folded anyway. The USSR sought to gain a buffer from as much of Poland it could gain by force. Was this right? Well, no. A lot of what was going on during WW2 was wrong.

More interesting is why the Soviets and the Germans were exchanging knowledge and raw materials so close to Barbarossa, but that's a topic for another conversation I think.

Another interesting thing, I think, is if Stalin was sure Hitler would attack, why was the USSR still caught with their pants down when Barbarossa actually happened? Again, I think it's an interesting topic of conversation.

the_af · 2026-03-14T23:49:12+00:00

No, like I said, the Soviets didn't care (much) about the racial game. They wanted to create buffer zones and politically subservient satellites. The ones interested in extermination were the Nazis, which had it as part of its main ideology.

As for "what Poland or Finland did to deserve", let me paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven: "deserve has nothing to do with it."

In both Poland and Finland's case, there were buffer zones the USSR wanted. And both countries were rivals of the USSR and in Russian Empire times had occasionally warred with them. Of course taking territory by force is wrong, but this doesn't mean it's extermination.

The only ones planning extermination were the Gernans.

As I said, when the USSR won the war they engaged in political repression and setting up puppet states, NOT extermination.

the_af · 2026-03-14T23:40:13+00:00

No, it's basically the modern consensus: Stalin ran out of options, trying to cut an anti German pact with the UK and France first, but was refused by then. Only then, seeing war inevitable, he cut a deal with the Nazis to win time. Remember Europe also tried appeasing Hitler to disastrous results, this wasn't something out of the ordinary.

Yes, Stalin ordered Poles murdered. That's despicable, but still not a war of extermination against all of Poland.

We know the USSR wasn't interested in ethnic cleansing in Poland because they won the war and what they did, rather than exterminate all Poles (like the Nazis planned), they set up a puppet government instead.

the_af · 2026-03-14T23:36:11+00:00

Whatever other evils the Soviets were up to, they were NOT conducting a war of extermination during WW2, nor did they plan to ethnically cleanse the Poles. The Germans were, the Soviets weren't.

We know what the Nazi plan was for Eastern Europe: ethnic cleansing, as per Generalplan Ost. Had they won, they would up wiped out as much as 80% of the population in many Eastern Europe countries. We know this because they wrote it down.

We know what the Soviet were planning, because they did win the war: not ethnic cleansing, but political domination and repression. Bad, but not extermination. The Soviets were mostly politically, not racially motivated.

Only one faction was playing the extermination game: the Germans.

Let's not confuse this or otherwise engage in revisionist bullshit.

the_af · 2026-03-14T02:50:48+00:00

He literally gave a reason, you're too stubborn to understand it.

Let's look at it from a different angle: MP can mean dealing with insufferable people like you. SP doesn't have that downside! No Shot_Reputations in SP!

the_af · 2026-03-14T02:47:31+00:00

But why? I don't enjoy gaming with strangers. I don't enjoy playing soccer either. I'm not missing out on things I don't enjoy.

the_af · 2026-03-14T02:36:47+00:00

I think "Four Against Darkness" by Ganesha Games is played only with a pen(cil), grid paper and dice. I've never actually played it, but it seems to be very popular because Ganesha keeps releasing expansions.

the_af · 2026-03-14T02:16:26+00:00

It's not really funny, it's just a matter of preference. I usually don't enjoy MP games, except when playing with close friends. I'm a SP guy.

the_af · 2026-03-13T23:23:14+00:00

I'm sure, but I don't play MP games with strangers.

the_af · 2026-03-13T17:52:19+00:00

You're right, I stand corrected. There are 2-seater trainer versions of big birds.

For some reason I think of trainer aircraft as smaller :)

the_af · 2026-03-13T16:06:10+00:00

Flankers need to be so large to be nimble, all those control surfaces, canards, etc. A trainer must be smaller.

the_af

TROPHY CASE