Rex

Eh, making a joke about it doesn't mean I don't understand it. it's a great solution if your outage is planned (for whatever reason, psychic or otherwise). That said, there used to be a better offline mode, and if I was a betting man, I'd wager that most Internet outages are unplanned and unexpected. By "most" I'd even go so far as to estimate 99 out of 100 or better. I remember not long ago DCS allowing me in even without a connection, automatically going to "offline mode", with the obvious exception of multiplayer, when a DCS auth server was down. I'm not sure when exactly that changed, but it hasn't always been this way for me. I'm very fortunate in that I do not general have problems getting/staying online(knock on wood), as I have three redundant connections (occupational requirement), and the day I first posted in this thread, I was NOT offline when I was booted from the Mission Editor, nor was I have any Internet problems, save for the DCS one. Everything else was working flawlessly. That said, multiple connections mean multiple IP addresses, and it's possible I could have automatically rolled interfaces when I was in the mission editor, thus changing my DCS Rig's IP addresses. I didn't realize that would be a problem working in the mission editor, and it doesn't really make sense why it would be, but maybe it is. Point-to-point connections had already been configured to be "sticky" (ie. once established, the the same connection is used until termination), but after the last incident, I created a static route for DCS through my lowest-latency connection, and it hasn't recurred. Alas, a lot can go wrong with a scheme like this, and some of us put a lot of time into this hobby. It's disappointing that it's so easy to lose, not just the enjoyment of our modules, but data as well, because when you get booted from the mission editor, no save is performed first. I understand and acknowledge that this is the way it is, though. I wish it wasn't but nobody really cares what I wish.

I am a BF-109 DCS pilot, and I have some tips for the Spitfire that I guarantee will get more kills. These are tips that very few people are aware of, and if you use them, everyone will think you are some kind of "super pilot". 1. Cut the throttle while turning. Most people enter turns way too fast, and they keep the throttle maxed while turning. Wrong, Wong, wrong. Power makes your turning circle wider, what you need to do is get right above stall speed, and then PULL HARD with the power at idle. The lower you execute this maneuver the better. The spit turns best at 50'-100' AGL. 2. Need to catch an enemy plane? Full flaps! I know it's sightly counter-intuitive but a Spitfire exhibits behavior called "flap draft". You know how race cars go faster when they are directly behind another car? Same concept. The flaps form a pocket of air directly under the plane, which significantly reduces drag and helps get the plane moving. 3. Inverted Flight = Better Performance. The Merlin engine is mounted upside-down in the fuselage due to space constraints. Inverted flight allows you to get the most power from the engine. 4. Adjust sights. There is a well known flaw in the Spitfire that causes the sites to be calibrated way too far in front of the target during deflection shots. To compensate, what you need to do is sight just behind the plane when firing. Missing will be a thing of the past. This is especially true when targeting the BF-109. For some reason, the Spitfire gunsight leads the BF-109 about twice as much another planes. Rumors are that a German spy infiltrated the Supermarine plant and altered the blueprints. Now that you, know, however, always aim behind the plane your trying to shoot. 5. Landing gear ... not just for landing! Similar to flap draft, there is another phenomenon known as "gear effect". Have you ever heard of "ground effect", where a plane experiences less drag near the ground (look it up!). Well, Spitfire gear is mounted just aft of the circumferential point, which basically puts you in ground effect regardless of altitude. When you need maximum performance, and you need it NOW, drop the landing gear, and hang on tight! Have you ever ridden a slingshot projectile? Well you have now! Look, we've all been there. Dogfighting can be challenging, but with these tips, you'll be racking up kills in no time. People will be saying "Hey, who is that? Is that Alphagamer1981 or is that Eric Hartman. P.S. I know you're a Spit pilot, so sorry to use a German pilot in that last example. I tried to think of an Allied pilot to use as an example, but while there are over 100 German pilots with 100 kills or more, the top Allied pilot only had 40 kills, and the third best was already in the 20s, so yeah, so when it comes to real aces, there is only one country to choose from. It's not that the Allied pilots weren't as good ... they totally were ... they just took more vacations or something. Honestly, I lost track of all the excuses, maybe the ground crew kept forgetting to put ammo in the planes, but they were totally every bit as good. Now if you go by kill CLAIMS, whoo boy, the Allies literally shot down every man, woman, and child on the planet .. five times over. Now that is a feat!

Indeed, there certainly is a dizzying array of reasons for an Internet connection to be unstable. That was kind of my point. Most of those reasons are not the fault of the customer, but the customer gets punished regardless. Ergo, it's customer-hostile, and an objectionable practice. One usually relegated to megalocorps for whom customer-hostility is a source of pride. Can we do anything about it? Besides complain about it, and registering our objections, I guess not. It's certainly a legitimate thing to complain about, though. And at least for me, it's out of character. Were you to look, I think you would find that my account is filled with nothing but glowing praise for DCS (and the odd admonition for profanity), and I think this is the only thing I've ever complained about. So it's not like I run screaming to the forums every time I find a bug. And your point is taken about offline mode, and I agree that this is a fantastic solution for the psychic among us. Were I psychic, I would absolutely avail myself of it, and I think this would be a reasonable solution. Alas, somewhere along the line, I lost that ability. I think my mother dropped me on my head or something. If one of you could give me a heads up before it goes down, however, I would be much obliged.

I just created an AI vs AI mission, BF109 vs Spit ... 109 on Ace, Spit on Rookies (just to give the Luftwaffe a chance). I watched the Spitfire climb at 20 degrees, starting at 133 knots. It picked up speed to about 139 knots, nosed up to about 30 degrees, and eventually came back down to 133 knots and stayed at 30 degrees nose-up. Never did it drop below 133 knots. It climbed this way for about 90 seconds until it caught the 109 (yes, caught the 109 in a climb). Never stalled, never even came close. Multiple lead suppositories. Poor 109 never stood a chance. Funeral was closed casket. AI Spitfire has a T/W ratio that modern jets would envy. For grins I created a F/A-18C vs Spitfire mission, both on Ace, guns only. This mission ran much longer, and the Hornet came oh-so-close several times, but the Spit's tight turns caused the shells to miss by two or three feet, and the Spitfire eventually prevailed here too, plunking the pilot through the canopy for an insta-kill. The AI Spitfire is the Chuck Norris of DCS.

Please accept my apology. That was not my intent. The whole thing just irks me, and I guess I took it out on the first post that struck me. I am an ashole. I didn't mean to direct ire your way. It was mis-directed. Your feedback certainly was helpful. I'm sorry.

Sure, maybe. Let's say that it is. Why is that relevant? If that is indeed the case, it is a near-certainty that he does not want his connection to be less steady, and probably did nothing to cause it. He may live in an area of the world where that's the best he can get. Or maybe he lives where his ISP is a monopoly and therefore his service is @#$@. I heard about this one obscure little country where this sometimes happens, but I forget the name of it. The Untied Status of Abracadabra or something like that. Anyway, his unstable Internet is likely not his fault. Why hold his hobby hostage over something third-world governments or widespread corporate en<profanity>tifcation? (seriously guys, you're doing substring searches for magic words now?). He paid for his modules the same as the rest of us, does he deserve to enjoy them less because he didn't have the good sense to be born to parents in a geographic area with more stable internet? Remember, he isn't playing multiplayer, in which case, sure, he'd be out of luck due to technical regions beyond his and ED's control. No, he's CREATING A MiSSION, a decidedly single-player, "offline". Good news, the unstable connection doesn't really matter in this case. Unless, due to purely selfish reasons, someone decides to makes it matter. Kicking legitimate, paid-up users out of their hobby likely won't curb piracy. It may very well increase it. How many times will someone get locked out before deciding to seek a way around it? Humans are ingenious creatures, and more often than now, they find a way. Punishing your most loyal, profitable users has become businesses knee-jerk default way of dealing with the "bad behavior" of others, but companies like EA get away with it due to pure market dominance across numerous titles. DCS is more of a niche market, and in niche markets, things like customer loyalty and goodwill are much bigger factors in a company's success. For instance, I've always purchased modules directly from ED because I wanted then to get the 30% that otherwise would have gone to, say, Steam. I also purchase modules that I know I'll probably rarely use, purely to support the company. Do you think I've ever done anything like that for EA? Do you think I've spend a nanosecond contemplating what was best for them? So it's hugely disappointing to me that they've taken this play from the Customer Hostile Playbook. Now ANY network problem, regardless of who is at fault, becomes your problem, and removes the content you paid for from your library. At least until the problem is fixed. What about people who bought their modules before this policy was initiated? And there is not one technical reason that this person needs to be barred from making their mission. The reason they cannot is 100% an ED decision. I mean, what if you move to Internet-Connection Nirvana, get a stable connection, get three backups, hire eight super-attractive women to act as your harem and indulge your every carnal impulse (I mean, as long as we're fantasizing) and hire a team of elite security guards to stand by your routers and dispatch any and all who dare to tamper with them? Can you finish your mission now? Well, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Does anyone honestly think ED themselves will never, ever experience a network outage? What if that outage is due to a mistake or bad decision on their part? It doesn't matter! Regardless of the reason, you will get punished, and you will be relieved of the modules that you've paid hundreds to thousands of dollars to enjoy. And apparently you deserve it, because ... because ... I mean, because ... actually, I don't know, you'd have to ask ED for that rationale, but make no mistake, you clearly deserve it. Unfortunately, when it becomes apparent to a company that something like this is a bad idea, it's nearly always too late to reverse. The damage has been done. Hopefully that happens later rather than sooner, but for every person posting about their problems on this forum, there are probably 10-20 who don't use the forums, so we really don't know just how often this is happening now.

I just moved a buttload of Soviet armor from the East German border, through Fulda, and into Frankfurt, and it was hilly and congested with windy mountain roads. Not much better than the what I assume the Ardennes would have been like. There was no "gap" to speak of. Why was this considered such an easy route, to the point that everyone assumed they were going to use it?

This map is already a contender for "Best Map of All Time", IMHO. It's just fantastic! There are so many air bases, if the one you want isn't modeled, use a another base as a stand-in. I mean, they have to release it at some point and 120 bases is really a lot. I think the Fulda Gap focus probably provides for the highest number of air+ground scenarios. Oh one minor thing, Ctl+F12 isn't taking me to my train. I'm sure it was a minor consideration and rightfully so, just throwing it out there as an FYI.

I just noticed "DCS Market" in the lower right. LOL.

Generally speaking, the more full an SSD is, the slower it gets, especially with writes. This has to do with wear-level algorithms and things like that (allows TRIM to work optimally I believe). SSD cells have a finite number of re-writes before they are marked as bad and taken out of the write table, so like mechanical drives, they eventually die, albeit for dissimilar reasons. Ideally, SSDs are at their highest speed & longevity when they are at < 50% capacity, although few people can actually do this, and it's not like it's orders of magnitude slower at 70% full vs, say 45%. You may or may not notice the difference much, but it's there. The lifespan is also higher since they can overwrite blocks much less often, but you'll probably replace your machine before the SSD wears out. Point being, when it comes to SSDs, if you can afford it, it makes sense on a couple of levels to buy a larger drive than you need for storage. I'd personally go for 4TB. You never know how big the DCS Des Moines map is going to be when it comes out.

Wow, really good job. Just outstanding! I thought Normandy 2.0 was awesome, and it is, but Ugra-Media may have outdone themselves with Germany. The detail is top-notch, I'm finding all kinds of interesting things in Berlin. It just looks fantastic from every angle. Really nice job! 10/10 My screenshot is poorly-composed and doesn't do it justice, but this map is a must-own IMHO.

I don't Understand the "Anchored" orbit or how it differs from a circular orbit. It seems like if you put the waypoint at the anchor, they are the same thing. Can someone please explain how it works? Pretend that I'm 5 years old, which doesn't take much imagination to do. Thank you!

Thanks very much! That seems to have helped!

I just had the Mission Editor CTD twice, taking all of my unsaved work with it, when I tried to load a Static Unit from a Mod (possibly the VPC Field Equipment Mod). It feels like you'd just get a "resource cannot be loaded" message while it continues on it's way. To be clear, it DOES write the "resource cannot be loaded" message in a popup, but it then panics, aborts the app, then tries to write a dump. In fact, I managed to get a video of the exact moment DCS realizes it cannot find the resource I have specified: I can't say for sure, but it might be a slight overreaction? 2025-01-10 09:42:46.034 WARNING VISUALIZER (9308): terrainSampleOptions aren't set for DemoScene with terrain rendering 2025-01-10 09:42:46.037 INFO EDTERRAIN4 (27420): ITerrainContextImpl4::setTrafficDecimation(1) 2025-01-10 09:42:46.037 INFO EDTERRAIN4 (27420): ITerrainContextImpl4::setDate( day=1, month=10) 2025-01-10 09:42:46.037 INFO EDTERRAIN4 (27420): ITerrainContextImpl4::setTextureMode(full=1) 2025-01-10 09:42:46.043 INFO EDTERRAIN4 (29956): ITerrainContextImpl4::setTrafficDecimation(1) 2025-01-10 09:42:46.043 INFO EDTERRAIN4 (29956): ITerrainContextImpl4::setDate( day=1, month=10) 2025-01-10 09:42:46.043 INFO EDTERRAIN4 (29956): ITerrainContextImpl4::setTextureMode(full=1) 2025-01-10 09:42:46.399 WARNING VISUALIZER (9308): terrainSampleOptions aren't set for DemoScene with terrain rendering 2025-01-10 09:42:46.403 WARNING SCENE (9308): Scene was removed with 1 alive objects 2025-01-10 09:42:46.408 WARNING VISUALIZER (9308): terrainSampleOptions aren't set for DemoScene with terrain rendering 2025-01-10 09:42:46.524 WARNING SCENE (9308): Scene was removed with 1 alive objects 2025-01-10 09:42:46.526 WARNING VISUALIZER (9308): terrainSampleOptions aren't set for DemoScene with terrain rendering 2025-01-10 09:42:57.532 INFO DX11BACKEND (4564): Compile shader: model/fake_omni_lights.fx:DIRECTX11=true;USE_DCS_DEFERRED=1; 2025-01-10 09:42:57.532 ERROR EDCORE (4564): Can't open file: /shaders/model/fake_omni_lights.fx. 2025-01-10 09:42:57.573 INFO DXGUI_WIN_ADAPTER (Main): resize main window to [0, 0] 2025-01-10 09:43:06.306 ERROR EDCORE (4564): Can't open file: /shaders/model/fake_omni_lights.fx. 2025-01-10 09:43:06.342 INFO DXGUI_WIN_ADAPTER (Main): resize main window to [5120, 1440] 2025-01-10 09:43:06.380 INFO DXGUI_WIN_ADAPTER (Main): resize main window to [0, 0] 2025-01-10 09:43:07.285 ERROR EDCORE (4564): Can't open file: /shaders/model/fake_omni_lights.fx. 2025-01-10 09:43:07.317 INFO DXGUI_WIN_ADAPTER (Main): resize main window to [5120, 1440] 2025-01-10 09:43:07.353 INFO DXGUI_WIN_ADAPTER (Main): resize main window to [0, 0] 2025-01-10 09:43:09.902 INFO DXGUI_WIN_ADAPTER (Main): resize main window to [5120, 1440] 2025-01-10 09:43:09.965 INFO EDCORE (Main): try to write dump information

In each case I've logged in within 3 days, so I'm not sure why this happens. As mentioned, in once case it actually kicked me out less than an hour after authorizing. This seems to be of questionable usefulness, as the only time you'd really need to use DCS offline is when you don't have a connection. This also means that when DCS servers go down, we can't auth for offline sessions. I mean, it's certainly a benefit for people with ESP/precognition. Although those people are usually too busy trading stocks and playing the lottery to use DCS, so I'm not sure how much they'll actually use it. I guess the rest of us are on our own. Yeah, the thing about EULAs is that they are wish-lists on the part of the drafter (in this case the company), which may or may not comport with the legal realities of the jurisdictions in which they are being enforced. I mean, Zappos had a EULA too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2012/10/10/how-zappos-user-agreement-failed-in-court-and-left-zappos-legally-naked/ And I'm willing to bet that most EULAs have similar unilateral-modification clauses, rendering many of them wholly unenforceable, depending on jurisdiction. I'm not stating an opinion on the DCS EULA, simply that EULAs in general are not the last word on every matter, and in the case of inability-to-access-purchases, probably would have an uphill climb to be upheld. Same with "licenses", people have to be able to benefit from they licenses the purchase. Also, if authorization is required, what happens when authorization is not possible? Is the customer bound by contract to pound sand in every denial scenario? In the USA, that would fall under contra preferentum, but I can't say for other countries. Remember, though, lawyers (the usual drafters of EULAs) don't get paid for avoiding litigation. In order for a contract to be formed, consideration has to be exchanged, and that consideration cannot be illusory (ie. you have to pay us but we may or may not provide what you paid us for at our discretion). Both parties must be ENTITLED to their respective consideration. Obviously that's the USA, and I don't imagine that it would be easy to sue ED from the USA (nor do I personally have any inclination or desire to do so). I'm simply saying that the EULA doe s not offer the blanket, ironclad protection against prevention of access that many companies assume that it does. In many jurisdiction, the customer actually does have a claim to the good and services they pay for. That said, the way things are going, if you give it a few years, this will probably no longer be the case. I think EU folks have far more consumer rights than we do, though, so that might be an even tougher nut to crack from a EULA perspective. I reiterate, the whole thing is very disappointing to me. The goodwill I've historically felt has certainly suffered, and the notion that nobody really cares about that is finally reaching the acceptance phase. The relationship between consumers and the companies they patronize certainly is a hostile one (at least in the USA), and I don't think exceptions to this exist any longer. Assuming they ever did.