In my iFly thread running parallel at the moment I have already said that I have u-turned on my former scepticism about A-10, and pre-ordered it. But I indeed expect it to be not to offer the fascination related to mission flying like for example F4 did, or SH3, or SBP, but to keep my interest exclusively through studying the manual and managing the bird to get it flying like I want, like in a module for FS9. Also, the looks just have caught me, the cockpit'S graphjics look phantastic.
I also run Black Shark over here - and mission flying just does not interest me in there. I just struggle to make the machine do what I want without crashing.
As far as I'm concerned, the DCS sims to me are very much like cockpit modules or exclusive platform simulators for FS9. I do not deal Black shark as a combatsim/game, and I probably will not do that with A-10 as well.
And just for the record, my past criticism of Eagle Dynamics was not so much the AI in their products, but the sterile world and lacking immersion said world is offering. Missions lack atmosphere and excitement, me thinks, the world just feels is lifeless, sterile, and cold. They just do not compare to what I have experienced in F4, Microprose sims, SBP, or SH3. Flanker 2 was superior in physics to Falcon 4, but what let it down was lacking atmosphere and Falcon'S superior avionics modelling. And since then, this basic deficit never changed with Eagle Dynamic's releases, me thinks. Their competence with the DCS releases obviously is focussed on the completeness of the platform simulation - not on world simulation and immersion going beyond the switchology. But, no doubt, this is also a question of personal preference. So feel free to disagree with me.
Having read the A-10 manual's first 100 pages, I think it will be easier to get into the A-10 than the Black Shark. More stuff and terminology in there that looks familiar from other sims. After all I just cannot think "Russian".