SonofEil

I know it’s obvious but I haven’t seen it mentioned in this thread, but has everyone checked to make sure their NWS/autopilot control binding hasn’t been duplicated or erased? I had this happen with my autopilot ‘master’ (attitude hold) toggle switch a couple updates ago. In the bindings page it had inexplicably moved to a blank column. I deleted the assignment and re-bound (binded?) to my warthog throttle quad and it worked fine after that.

It's not fixed. The lights still enter the cabin where they shouldn't, they're just not shining on the instrument panel anymore (thankfully). Turn on the position lights/rotating beacon and look behind you, the lights are still reflecting off the interior cabin doors etc. In F2/external view they're still reflecting off the back of your head etc. It's an improvement, yes, but the core issue still exists.

Can I kindly suggest that you adjust the visual damage representation so that it isn't symmetrical? On my post flight walk-arounds I frequently see damage that is visually identical on port and starboard sides. Doesn't look very convincing.

Yeah that’s probably accurate. I’m happy to switch schools. Auto hover has always worked for me. You have to hand fly it into a stable hover before engaging the auto hover, but once engaged it holds pretty well.

TL/DR: Fly without the autopilot. I hadn’t flown the Black Shark since A-10C Open Beta was released. So, what, a little over nine years? (Damn.) But in the back of my mind it’s always been my favorite module. It was the first heli sim on any consumer platform that was worth a damn, subjectively it’s still the most interesting aircraft in DCS, and its also still one of the most brutal weapons delivery vehicles in the game. If you can sneak within a few km of your targets you’re virtually guaranteed to eff them up, with fuel and ammo to spare. I’ve been flying the Shark again for about two weeks now and couple nights ago I had a minor revelation. I’d been getting a little frustrated with the actual flying of the Shark, specifically the well-known argument between pilot intentions, autopilot and trim. The mechanics of it came back to me relatively quickly, but so did the mild annoyance at its quirks. Training and tutorials on flying the Ka-50 have always focused on the autopilot and trim systems, and for good reason. They make the bird exceptionally stable. When I first started flying the Shark back in ‘09 I experimented a few times with flying with the autopilot channels disengaged. Disastrous results usually ensued and I just reasoned that she was always meant to be flown with autopilot on. This notion is backed up in the manual and checklists, on Reddit, YouTube videos, and here in the forums. As far as I can tell it has always been gospel: from startup to shutdown, use the trimmer to fly the autopilot. It’s an idiosyncratic but effective, if not somewhat obnoxious way to fly. Since 2010 I’ve flown ~100 or so hours in the DCS Huey (love it!) and a little over 20 hours of real world helicopter time (wish it was way more but I didn’t end up going that route), so I know the basics of flying choppers. I finally decided once again to shut off all channels of the Shark’s autopilot, fully expecting a wild ride...and... Nothing! She actually flys like a helicopter. In fact, the Shark is fun as hell to fly with the autopilot channels disengaged and I’ve found that it’s actually easier to do certain things like effective strafing runs with the cannon and rockets. I haven’t completely abandoned the autopilot of course. Once established in cruise flight I’ll engage the channels and waypoint following. And it’s still fun to find some trees, set the auto hover and pick off long range targets with Vikhr missiles or lob some precision cannon rounds. But besides that almost all of my maneuvering flight is done with the autopilot off. So that’s it. Im probably really late in realizing any of this but that’s my little revelation that I thought I’d share. And I’m really looking forward to the long needed updates to this still-fantastic module!

Love the A2A guys! Talented bunch and one of my favorite ‘mom and pop’ shops. They’re aviation and sim nerds to the bone. I’d be very interested to see what they have in mind for DCS.

I’ve taken a couple hits in the F-14 that've done less damage than expected, once or twice being able to turn on the shooter. The vast majority though end in substantial, mission-ending systems damage. Many of the times I’ve been hit have ended in immediate corkscrew into the earth (~50% guesstimate). Honestly there are a lot of real life stories that reflect similar results. Sometimes a missile has a weak warhead (though this is almost certainly not simulated), sometimes a plane just gets lucky and survives a hit. The problem is that none of us have real life metrics to back up what should happen if a -120 hits an F-14 square in the spine. You feel the Tomcat is overly robust, I feel like it’s a decent approximation of the randomness of weapons effectiveness. As with all things DCS there’s plenty of room for improvement, but “game breaking” it is not. In any case, the F-14 is way better than the Hornet was in its first few months, where any scratch on the paint equaled instant pilot death. That was frustrating.

You’re impressed with HB’s sounds because it isn’t their fault that they suck? That’s...a little confusing but ok. I see the [DCS BUG] label a lot here in the HB forums, and no doubt DCS has a ton of issues, but minus a technical hangup or two the poor sound quality, and especially the awful quality of the sound mix is very much a HB problem. And I’m not saying other modules and DCS in general don’t have sound issues, they obviously do. But the now hundreds of posts on multiple threads of “wtf is wrong with F-14 sounds” clearly shows that the Tomcat in particular has problems. The link you provided deals almost exclusively with the returning sonic boom, which, good news of course, but contains no mention of any of the technical details which HB claim are limiting their sound profiles. Overall, of course ED is working on their own sound engine. They should be. :megalol: You may like them more than in other modules. You may think they’re more ‘fun’ or ‘interesting’ or ‘immersive’ or whatever, but if we’re using realism as the metric then HB missed the mark by a wide margin. Don’t believe me? Ask Victory205, former Tomcat pilot and one of HB’s own SME’s, if this is what it sounds like flying in a real Tomcat cockpit. Less subjectively, what about the broken 3D implementation with jarring spatial changes of environmental sounds? (This is most obvious when using VR.) Or the lack of environmental changes at all with canopy opening/closing? Or if you lose your canopy in flight (Jester eject) and you can hilariously still hear your clickety-clack throttles clacking away? I’m going to guess that you have no frame of reference at all what it’s like to be on, in, or near a combat aircraft. That’s ok, not everyone gets that opportunity. Or maybe you have and for some reason just really prefer an arcade-y approach to your simulations. Weird, but everyone is different. But again, if realism is the metric then HB’s F-14 sounds, external and internal, fall far short.

Bananimal, THANK YOU!! I've been waiting for a mod since day one. F-14 is currently my favorite module, phenomenally well done in every respect except the sounds. Both in-cockpit and outside they are terrible, easily the worst in DCS (or at least the modules I own). The haphazard 3D implementation in-cockpit is particularly obnoxious. The only thing I'll disagree with you on is that I doubt this is due to laziness. While the flight model and external textures have been claimed to be in various states of finish for over a year now, the sounds were explicitly stated to be temporary almost up until release in March. I get the impression that either the 'sound guy' did the best he could and just doesn't have the skills for this sort of development, or HB doesn't have an actual sound guy at all and it was a second hat worn by another member of the team. The poor state of the F-14 sounds is much more likely a consequence of budget and/or lack of skill than laziness.

Ah, I was responding to the original thread topic which was referring to:

I’m not going to argue that DCS doesn’t need new clouds and a completely overhauled weather engine. It does, badly. And it’s an update that’s unfortunately been promised and not delivered for a bunch of years now. At the same time it’s a little disingenuous to visually compare DCS to that other console game. Sure it has great clouds and rain and smoke, but look at the comparatively low poly count and lack of details on the aircraft and weapons, the even smaller environments all obscured by haze. Look at what passes for ‘physics’ and ‘flight modeling’ over there. DCS and the other game have wildly different design philosophies and goals. One is 80% splashy effects and eye candy, the other uses its resources on ultra-realistic visual aircraft representation and complex physics and systems modeling. I’m perfectly ok with this.

The storytelling isn't of the quality it was in seasons 1-5, but it's not Lost by any stretch either. As someone who doesn't care for fantasy at all, I've been thoroughly impressed and entertained for the past eight years.

GodDAMM we were all spectacularly wrong! One more episode!

And that’s the correct way to take it. The Tomcat crew on FPP wasn't particularly generous towards the A model and its finicky GE engines, among a couple other perceived deficiencies. Victory205 has taken issue with that representation and called into question whether they actually flew the Tomcat and, if so, how (un)skilled they were at it. Here’s the thing though, it’s guy-who-hasn’t-flown-a-Tomcat-in-15-years against other-guy-who-hasn’t-flown-a-Tomcat-in-15-years. Nobody has perfect memory, everyone remembers similar experiences differently, and 15 years (a reasonable guesstimate) is a long damn time. As far as I’m concerned the FPP Tomcat crew has just as much credibility as Vic205. (Actually, scratch that. Vic has the disadvantage of being an Anonymous Internet Guy while the FPP Tomcat crew does not. I know Heatblur vouch for Vic205’s credentials so I’m not questioning his authenticity, just pointing out that we don’t know who he is or his experience. (Also, I’m not asking.)) There are plenty of first hand accounts of the GE engines being unreliable and underpowered, and there are first hand accounts saying that they were just fine. It’s actually possible (likely even) that both ‘sides’ are telling the truth as they experienced it. (I know how sensitive people can sometimes get here, so again, this isn’t a knock against Vic205 or an endorsement of anyone else. I absolutely appreciate all of Vic’s contributions to this sim and in no way am I questioning his bona fides.)

They’re supposed to release some news when April 2019 rolls back around.

If DCS ever gets its ground game in order (they won’t), having U-27A / AC-208 and O-2 Skymasters would be excellent FAC/CAS assets. I’d buy both in a heartbeat.

Whoa, that would be awesome! I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t. I see you’re still trying to prevent even the discussion of expanding DCS beyond your narrow idea of just a few dogfighting airplanes. Got bad new for you, your gatekeeping isn’t working.

Haha, that’s basically my take as well.

The only reason I'll ever bring a wingman, in any module, is to use as a decoy.

Is there a value in one of the config files that will leave the info bar on by default?

Another track. F-14EJECTFAIL2.trk

Yeah...about that.:noexpression:

Unfortunately I’m out of town this week so I can’t access the tests I’ve already done, but I’ve managed to narrow it down so that I can at least avoid the problem. The problem is directly related to the Tomcat’s deck sliding and/or relative wind speed. The Tomcat can’t launch at “realistic” carrier speeds, meaning ~25kts wind over the deck. If your carrier speed is set higher than around 15 knots then you’ll experience wicked deck sliding in the F-14, attached to the shuttle the plane will shake fairly consistently, and you won’t launch after salute. There may be a weather/wind component required (ex. 17kts carrier/8kts wind or 10kts carrier/15kts wind), but with realistic winds over the deck the Tomcat won’t launch after saluting. Lower the carrier speed and/or wind velocity (below realistic values) and the ability to launch returns.

I don’t know the first thing about coding or scripts. Is there a way to get a Predator to lase just using the stock Mission Editor?

Is this like an art project or something?