Stretch

I just wanted to throw my hat in the ring amongst all these people who flew FSX for years, then did their first real-life flight training in a 172. My experience is largely the same: I knew where everything was and how to work it -- instruments, radios, transponder, etc. I needed some assistance getting through the preflight checklist but I'm sure that, when you guys fantasize, you don't fantasize about the preflight. "Oh look at this Hog -- it's all preflighted and ready to go -- I just have to hop in and turn on the APU..." So with a little preflight assistance I got her started up nice, taxi was just fine, radio work was OK, but I sounded more like a Falcon 4 pilot ("request takeoff") than a civvie pilot ("ready for takeoff"). Takeoff was fine too (MUCH better than my first takeoff in a tailwheel, god help me). Landing was even all right, if not pretty. Like everyone else said, I stare too much at the instruments, even today. :P There were a few important things missing, though... - Local procedures around Oakland airport. This is stuff they never model in the sim, stuff like VFR reporting points, typical departure and arrival procedures, shorthand names for prominent areas in and outside of the airport, etc. - Checklist mentality. That structured, rigid mentality of rhythmic checklist completion. I am happy to say I took that back with me to the sim and it makes a big difference. - Getting a "feel for it." This REALLY depends on the airplane. I was able to land a Cessna 172 my first time with no major issues, just some bounces, but that's because a blind idiot could probably land a 172 well enough. This is in stark contrast to when I first landed (attempted to land) a Cessna 182. The heavier engine requires a lot more finesse with airspeed and trim on final ... I would have killed myself if my instructor weren't there to save the day.

Oh yeah, I don't disagree that F4 does not model the many ways you can depart an F-16.

So undoubtedly the departure modeling in any Falcon game is very sub-par... however you can still depart the Viper in the game if you'd like to play with your MPO switch. In general, get your alpha up really high and put full deflection on two or more axes simultaneously. In other words, get slow and nose high and shove your stick in one of the four corners. This tends to overwhelm the FLCS's ability to keep your jet stable, and it will depart. Your aircraft's nose will begin bobbing up and down as your altimeter winds down like a homesick meteor. To recover, flip on the MPO and "oscillate in phase" (move your stick up as your nose goes up, and vice versa). Eventually on one of your nose's downward dips, airspeed will build enough that you can regain control.

Yep. Yep. :)

So by arcade mode you mean a next-gen helmet mounted display, 360-degree electro-optical aircraft and missile detection and tracking, over-the-shoulder heater launches, and next-gen integrated battlefield display, right? Cuz I'd love to see that stuff ...... in DCS: Lightning II. In 2017. :D

The order is placed. I mostly went with your suggestions Gadroc as they were very good and backed up by the Internet at large. I opted for a Noctua CPU fan and a (unlit) Cooler Master case because people by and large said they were very quiet. I decided against aftermarket GPU fans, fan controllers, and mobo fans because I decided not to spend money to solve a problem that I didn't know I was going to have. I'm going to build, probe, and buy additional fans if necessary. Hope I didn't forget anything in the order! :D If I did I'm sure I will find out and as long as nothing catches fire it'll just be a simple learning experience.

I gotta ask ... why are you using keymapping for your throttle?

Add'l thought: What can you guys recommend in the way of fan controllers? Along with being a quiet rig the g/f would appreciate if it doesn't have any lighted casemods (again, so she can sleep). Given that, are there any decent fan controllers/temperature displays that don't light your box up like a Christmas tree? Or do you recommend monitoring temps in software?

Likewise Gadroc, outstanding info. My first question -- how long have ATI's vsync issues been around? In other words, three months from now will this be a thing of the past? Like you I've got a GeForce card right now, and like you it sounds like a 747 after 3 minutes of any reasonably modern game. First and foremost I want a fast card, but if it's no quieter than my 8800 GT I'll be disappointed. Is the stock fan on the 5870 quiet, or do you recommend a third-party fan? (Is it even replaceable?)

So with the impending release of DCS: Warthog and the IRS giving me a nice refund check, I figure it's time to throw out my 4-year-old box and build or buy a new gaming PC. It's been about 10 years since I've built a PC and I have really no idea what's in and what's hot. I'm OK with investing a lot of money on this box (but not a ridiculous amount) and build something to last me more than a few years. Ideally this would be a very fast box but the g/f (who is already iffy on the price) would really much appreciate a quiet box so she can sleep. (My current video card is noisy as all hell.) Here's what I've come up with so far: Chipset: i7. I'm thinking 960, as the 970/980 are six cores and everyone says don't waste your money on the two extra cores. The 970/980 are called "Extreme Edition" -- are they actually any faster than the 960, other than just having two more cores? Mobo: X58 -- no idea about the relative benefits between EVGA, Asus, etc. Memory: 6GB, as I think most games would be hard-pressed to use more than 6, right? Cooling: Not sure if liquid cooling is any quieter or worth the price. Thinking of just picking any highly-rated cooling fan on Amazon unless there's some awesome brand I should know about. Power Supply: 1000 or 1200W (can't determine if I'd need 1200 for the SLI), ideally there's a quiet brand? Video: Basically, I'm deciding between 1x or 2x Radeon HD 5970. 2x SLI is probably overkill for today's games but what it comes down to is, is it better to get 2x SLI now or just replace the video card when faster ones come out later? HD: Can't decide between 256GB SSD or some high-performance magnetic hard drive. I have an SSD on my work laptop and it's fast as HOLY CRIKEY so I figure that's gotta be pretty awesome for games. But it's so expensive. Maybe just swap out for an SSD when they come down in price (and reinstall everything again...) Sound: Already have a SoundBlaster Fatal1ty and there isn't really much better AFAIK. NIC: Do cards like the Killer Xeno Pro (so-called "gaming NICS") actually make a difference? I guess I don't really see how a gaming-specific NIC can magically make your ping better. Anything else I should be aware of?

All the Falcon variants do one thing and one thing only: simulate the F-16 very well. Any pit you get isn't going to come close to how the Viper is done in F4.

Certainly yes at 15,000. 300 KIAS indicated at 15,000 feet is around 400 KTAS. Just checked using the wonderful Wolfram Alpha.

And if it's a totally dumbed-down game, then what? Make no mistake: If Microsoft releases a neutered console-friendly version of Flight Simulator, the choice was NOT between that and a hyper-real study sim. The choice was between that and no sim at all. There's no need to be bitter because you wouldn't have gotten your dream sim anyway. Honestly, it's not a bad thing either. We should be welcoming games that swell our ranks, even if they're not hardcore enough for us. Some of these guys will eventually make the step up to DCS!

If you want to "cheat" (some would consider it cheating, some would not) you could use your AI wingmen ... they will never attack friendly units. So you could have them recon and see if they pick up the unit or not (though be aware that they might miss the unit if their skill level is low too), or you could just order them to attack the unit and hear if they say "unable" (though they might say unable for other reasons). Like any IFF technology, your wingmen aren't a silver bullet, but they can help.

- Using any mods, either manually installed or with ModMan? - Have you changed your UAC preferences since installing the game? For example, have you enabled or disabled User Access Control since installing?

The Thrustmaster Warthog is in a class above the Logitech G940. If you get a G940, plan to sell it in the future should you ever get your hands on a Warthog. The difference might not be obvious through pictures, especially to someone who is just getting back into HOTAS systems, but trust me: They are in completely separate classes. I have Saitek's rudder pedals and I have good things to say about them. In 3 years they haven't stopped working (which is more than I can say for my old set of CH pedals). The only problem is one of the nonfunctional plastic pieces at the base broke off, and I had to glue it back on. Functionality wasn't affected, just the pedal's grip on my rug.

FSX is very fun to fly 100% because of the missions. If it weren't for the missions I'd have probably flown around a few times, checked on some of the scenery, then moved on. I have Aerosoft's Flight Tales and a few other mission packs and it's very fun.

So a better question is, aside from engine start or an engine failure (where you would move a throttle to or from idle cut-off), when do Hog drivers decouple their throttles?

Nice, I was referring to the panel below the wall though, behind the Shkval scan speed rotary. :)

Would be nice to have the switches functional even if they have no effect on the game engine, so I can feel like I'm doing a realistic checklist flow. That's what I like about OpenFalcon ... configuring my mode-3 and setting the switches on fence check even though it doesn't make a lick of difference. Likewise for the radar altimeter, even though there's no people modeled that could get cancer from it.

In a campaign, is the only way to figure out where your fix points are to edit the mission? I'm troubled by this because sometimes viewing a mission in the editor can spoil what should be surprises. I guess the only other way is to describe the fix point in the mission brief?

This is strictly for laughs ... don't take it personally. Post 1: The Question. Typically a totally innocent question. ("The EKRAN told me to turn on rotor anti-ice ... what do I press and why?") Posts 2 through 9: Helpful Answers. The best of our community ... detailed, helpful explanations. ("You need to turn on the anti-ice switches on the overhead panel. Aircraft collect ice at high altitudes which impacts performance and can cause rotor disk intersection. To combat this the rotors, engine, and windshield all have anti-icing equipment.") Posts 10 through 100: Arguing over Minutiae. Even though the previous posts were technically correct, they weren't detailed enough for the hardcore junkies, who require exacting precision in all answers. So they quabble over minor points. ("Actually it's not altitude that causes icing, it's the presence of visible moisture at below-freezing temperatures." Nevermind that the guy never actually said altitude CAUSES icing.) Posts 100 through 10,000: Detail Junkies Arguing with other Detail Junkies. Now the other hardcores start reading the objections of the first hardcores and, desperate to show off their knowledge, start finding flaws in these responses. ("ACTUALLY, icing can occur at temperatures above freezing as well; it depends on the presence of suitable nucleation sites which provide the impetus for liquid water to become solid.") The OP has long since given up on following the thread. Posts 10,000 through 100,000,000: Argument Moves to Something That Doesn't Even Have to Do with Black Shark. Now we've gotten to a level of detail that is irrelevant to Black Shark. Any hope of extracting useful information is now lost -- it's just a war between flight sim junkies to see who knows the most. ("You guys are forgetting about CARB ICING, the most lethal kind of icing, which can happen at ANY temperature WHETHER OR NOT there's moisture." Does the Ka-50 Black Shark have a carburetor? Of course not!) (Remember, strictly for :megalol: !)

OK, here's the best I can give for an explanation. The Shkval requires a sufficient source of AC power to stay on. The Ka-50 has two ways of receiving AC power: external AC ground power, or the AC generators. To receive external AC ground power, all of the following must be true: You are on the ground, you have asked the maintenance crew for ground power (via the radio), and you have the External AC switch on. To receive AC generator power, all of the following must be true: The engines are running, the AC sys generator switches are on, and rotor RPM is high enough. Your rotor RPM is indicated by a dial on the left side of the cockpit. You control this RPM primarily with the collective (which is different from the throttles), though increasing the throttles does affect rotor RPM somewhat too (as well as a multitude of other smaller factors). When your helicopter is on the ground, rotor RPM may not be high enough to support AC power without external ground power attached. As for the yellow circle in your HUD, verify that the HUD mode switch is in NORM and not STBY. In Standby mode the HUD displays a fixed reticle for aiming.

I'm pretty surprised the Ka-50 doesn't have an OAT gauge! Well ... I think it doesn't. I've looked all around for one but can't find anything. There's a gauge that goes from -10 to +10 on the ceiling right above the pilot's head, but it's nonfunctional in game and I don't know what it does in real life. Anyway, OAT is helpful to predict icing altitudes and of course to configure the Vikhr prior to launch. (YES I KNOW that it's not modeled in the sim but I'm a realism junkie so I like my switches set correctly.) For now I just study the briefing (though it usually only gives the weather at the takeoff location and altitude) and use the temperatures input into the ABRIS. (Don't know where those magic numbers come from, and of course they're only useful if you're at the planned altitude over each waypoint.) Does the real Ka-50 not have an OAT gauge?! How do you guys deal with OAT issues? Mission designers: It would be excellent if your briefings included in-depth weather charts; icing altitudes, radar charts, prog charts, etc. I would definitely make use of these graphs when planning my ingress and egress strategy, and I'm sure others who take this game to heart would as well.

Interesting and related question: Is a real life Pave Penny compatible with the real life Hokum laser target designator? I suspect no, but I'll hear what the experts have to say.