Rex

Thesis what I get now, 12:45am Seattle Time Maybe the server is repopulating as you mentioned. I'll try again in a bit.

I'm back to not being able to log in. Unfortunately, it is not fixed for me.

That's what I thought too. A few hours earlier I was on a multiplayer server, so I had logged in with a working internet connection earlier today. Then, a bit later, I was in the Mission Editor, placing a flight of P51s, and suddenly .... Desktop. It looked like it had crashed, but the popup said "Session Expired", and subsequent attempts to log in were futile. Then, a couple minutes later, I tried again, and I got the following popup (attached below). Yikes, as I bought most of those. I've had almost no trouble over the years, and it's lulled me into a false sense of security about the stuff I "buy". I like DCS a lot, and it's a primary hobby at this point. I have put a lot of time and money into it, well over a G by this point ... and it's money I consider well-spent. I'm not rich, and I avail myself of sales from time-to-time, but not once have I quibbled over the price of anything or regretted spending it. In my view they've earned every penny of it by what they've put together. What I forget, however, is how quickly it could all go away, leaving me with nothing but my cat as an audience as I wave my fist and scream "but I bought it!" Nobody is going to care. It's a historically weird time to be a consumer. Be it from Amazon, or Apple, or whomever, we buy stuff that the seller can take back from us at any time, leaving us without our money and our purchase. I mean, when you really think about it, it's not a matter of "if" it's going to happen, it's a matter of "when" it's going to happen. The guy who sold you your sofa won't take it back. Ditto for your microwave. But anything digital will, at some point, cease to exist. Chances are, when it does happen, it's going to take a whole lot of us by complete surprise. Being forced to think about it, like I was today, is a real bummer.

It looks like I'm back in. I'm pretty sure it's a server maintenance effect.

I saw the red banner about system maintenance, but I had no idea that I could not do anything locally during this time. I was in the middle of creating a mission, and got booted without warning with a "Session Expired" message ... losing all of my unsaved changes in the process. Ouch. Now, when I try to log back in, DCS tells me "bad username/password"? It's 9pm Sunday where I am, I had no idea that DCS was going to be completely unusable during this "Server Maintenance". Was this anticipated? I've been a user for nearly 4 years, and have never personally seen this behavior before. Furthermore, had I not visited the DCS website recently, I would have had no clue whatsoever as to what was going on. And there's no indication of when this maintenance is scheduled to be over. It doesn't feel quite right. It's also a bit of a wakeup call. I've got thousands of dollars of content wholly dependent on a third-party server being up. Talk about an insecure feeling. It says "All of the following modules are unauthorized and will be disabled", and it lists every module I've purchased. I cannot do anything whatsoever with DCS. It feels like someone just came and swiped a ton of stuff you've paid for. Damn, fellas, this is not good. This is not good at all. I'm just assuming this is all related to the server maintenance, but I don't know this for a fact. Has anyone else experience this?

Rudel, you have a lot of awesome stuff in 'User Files' that has really enhanced my enjoyment of DCS over the years. Including the content listed above. Thank you very much for creating it.

I know this post is kind of old, and I super-agree with you in theory ... we need more ways to stay competitive against those pompous limeys and their over-fed, loud-mouthed, un-disciplined friends, but I love the Kurfurst. It's one time I'm glad they "bent" history a little bit Besides, it doesn't really matter what the Brits and their fair-weather friends fly, their pilots can't fly worth a damn anyway. I mean, it's hard trying to maneuver at 5Gs while reading a Playboy magazine and shoving a hot dog down your throat. Give 'em all the cool new planes they want ... it'll just be more for us to shoot down. P.S. Fine, I admit it, I'm going to own every one of those Allied planes myself. Just don't tell the fellas back at the German thing in Germany where we hang out with fellow Germans.

I stitched together screenshots on my 5120 x 1440 monitor to create a relatively high-res blank map of Normandy 2.0. I use this image when creating missions. If you think you might have a use for it as well, I've attached it to this post. Enjoy.

Fair enough, you know way more than I do. Thanks for the info!

I'll admit that my sources are rather lame, but I'm not all that informed on these matters, so I follow the path of least resistance. Wikipedia shows 31,700lb, but ... yeah ... Wikipedia is probably not an excellent source. That said, it's not like the CFTs are gigantic parachutes. I mean, I get it, extra weight and surface area, but we're not talking about the exact same engines. There is some extra thrust available, assuming Wikipedia is at least in the ballpark.

I don't know if this has already been posted, but I thought it was interesting: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-15e-strike-eagles-now-flying-without-conformal-fuel-tanks-on-air-defense-missions Correct me if I'm wrong, but flying the E configured like a C would result in a far more powerful plane than the C has ever been: F-15E Empty Weight (with empty conformal tanks) = 31,700 =lbs F-15E Wet Thrust = 58,320 lbs F-15C Empty Weight = 28,800lbs F-15C Wet Thrust = 47,540lbs F-15E Empty T/W = 1.84 F-15C Empty T/W = 1.65 Granted these are EMPTY weights, and those ratios come down fast once you start adding fuel, but still, that would be an absolute beast. A stripped E would spank a C like it had stolen something.

Aaah, I got it now, thanks!

Right, the problem is, it doesn’t tell me if it’s in Uncontrolled or Late Activation.. Come to think of it, I think I can just call both functions against the group. I think it will just NOOP the one that doesn’t apply.

When it comes to AI aircraft for missions, I either set them as "Uncontrolled" (starting from ramp) or "Late Activation" (starting from runway or airborne) depending on how fast I need them to respond. Sometimes I change them around, though, so instead of remembering to change the activation function, I endeavored to write a function that would activate a group, regardless of which status it is in, and always use that function to launch a group, regardless of where it's starting from. While I know how to start the groups in either situation, I've been looking, but so far haven't found how to DETECT the statuses. So far I've only found how to detect whether they are alive or dead. Reading through the group attributes, I don't see any obvious one: https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/DCS_Scripting_orig_Part_2#Group Can someone point me in the right direction on this one? Thanks, Rex P.S. I marked the two lines in question below with 'Psuedocode' function groupStart(groupname) --- Start an "Uncontrolled" group --- group = Group.getByName(groupname) local Start = { id = 'Start', params = {} } controller = group:getController() controller:setCommand(Start) end function groupActivate(groupname) --- Start a "Late Activation" group --- group = Group.getByName(groupname) trigger.action.activateGroup(group) end function deploy(groupname) --- Auto-detect group status, either Uncontrolled or Late Activation, and activate that group group = Group.getByName(groupname) if group.isUncontrolled then <---------- PsuedoCode groupStart(groupname) elseif group.isLateActivation then <---------- PsuedoCode groupActivate(groupname) end end

The app is telling me that 2.0.0.32 is available, but I can't tell how to download it. The main D/L link on the first post still shows the older version. Does anyone have any ideas?

awesome, thank you!

I am a software dev (C, Python, Java, the list is actually kind of long), but I’m brand-spanking-new to Lua. Fortunately it seems pretty straight-forward (it reminds me of Ruby a little). Anyway, apparently Lua does not have a built-in sleep() or wait() function, and the workarounds I’ve found so far all require libs of some sort. It looks like I can also write a C wrapper for it, but I don’t fully understand how DCS implements the language. I imagine a Lua interpreter is packaged in DCS, but I don’t know how it would use something like LuaRocks packages, and I don’t know if wrapping C will work in DCS. Hence a couple of questions: #1. Does the DCS interpreter include any common libs. Like ‘os’’? #2 How do you deal with time delays. For instance, start 3 uncontrolled groups, at 120 second intervals. I include Mist and Moose in all of my missions, but I haven’t delved into all the docs yet. I needed to include Mist to get witchcraft running, and I’ve only used Moose for RAT so far. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

Got it! Duh, I should have seen those. It was obvious, I'm just stupid. Thank you!

Quick question: How do you rename the presets?

Wow, this new version is awesome! Thanks so much Skatezilla! (if that is your real name) So far it's worked brilliantly on my rig. Much appreciated!

you're welcome, have a nice day

I'm willing to bet that neither himself or next of kin would give a rabid dog fart about any of it, and are probably well aware of the wide variance in senses of humor amongst the human population at large. They also no-doubt possess the wisdom to realize that attempts to dictate the funniness, or lack thereof, to each person they encounter, is a futile effort which is completely unworthy of their time and consideration. And I don't think you have any idea what the people in these forums have achieved. In fact, I'm 100% sure that you do not. I may indeed be immature and have an infantile sense of humor, but in my opinion, you're a ... (gee BigNewy ... how can I legally express this?) ... donkey cavity? I don't think your hold on the moral high-ground is as tight as you think it is. This whole "you've sullied the name of a hero by finding amusement in it" routine just feels silly and contrived. Like most Internet outrage, it just feels "everyone look at me" phony. In my humble opinion, of course.

Agreed 100%. Declaring one's superiority for thinking differently than another person is the ultimate sign of human maturity. Me good/you bad is also the most prevalent type of post on the Internet by a pretty wide margin, meaning that you're clearly in the sizable company of fellow mature folks.

Sounds like a great guy. I bet he had a sense of humor too.