SlipHavoc
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An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
Actually 12 times so far by my count. I guess when the only tool you have is a ctrl-c, everything you encounter resembles a ctrl-v. -
An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
Sorry, but you're the one who is confused, and you just keep repeating the same wrong things over and over. If you haven't gotten that by now, I don't think you're going to, so I'm done here. -
An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
I thought I had a feeling of deja vu, and indeed you've posted about this phenomena before and in much the same style. If you still don't understand after all these posts why the FOV isn't going to be the same for everyone's setup regardless of monitor size and difference, then I probably won't be able to explain it to you either. But I'm pretty sure you're the one who is confused here. -
An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
Yes. When I look at them from across the room, or from 2 inches away, they take up different amounts of room in my visual field. However, they only take up the same amount of room in my visual field as they would in real life at one specific distance, and that depends on how big my monitor is. I'm glad you've found an FOV that works for you, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone else. -
An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
I have no idea what you mean by "realistic relativity". Monitors exist on a scale all the way from a tiny phone screen to a huge cockpit dome simulator, and there is no single FOV that will give a realistic view on all of them. I'm not sure why you think 56 degrees, or 52.5 mils, or 41 degrees, is the magic number that will. If you want to see the same thing on your monitor as your eyes would see through the same size viewport in real life, the FOV you need depends on the size of your monitor and how far it is away from you, and there are already online calculators that will tell you what FOV you need. -
An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
Yes, obviously it does, if you want to see what your eyes would actually see if you were sitting in the cockpit of a real plane. This is why I say you must be talking about something else, but you are either unable to communicate exactly what you are talking about, or I'm unable to understand it. -
An F/A-18C Lot 20 Cockpit that Looks and Feels... Right (56° FoV)
SlipHavoc replied to Bowie's topic in DCS: F/A-18C
There is no single zoom level that will give an FOV that's the same as real life on every size and distance of monitor. This is obvious with a few simple examples, and as another person pointed out, there are already a bunch of online calculators to help you set up your FOV so what you see on your particular monitor is the same as what you would see in real life. So I think you must be talking about something else, but it's impossible to say what because your communication is unclear. -
I also have this problem, haven't seen any solutions yet, or instructions on how to properly use it. I think I have everything set up correctly, but it only ever dispenses one bunch of bomblets per press, even if I hold down the pickle button, and it usually falls very long.
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The skill in the F-16, F-18, and other more advanced planes isn't in the bombing itself, it's in bombing more heavily defended targets, in worse weather and/or at night, while still being able to keep SA on other threats or respond quickly to support calls. Doing all of that also takes skills, just different ones than the MiG-29 requires, in the same way that manual dive bombing in the MiG-15 or F-86 requires different skills in the opposite direction. For any generation of planes, there are easy missions, hard missions, and impossible missions. The next generation of planes makes easy missions trivial, hard missions easy, and impossible missions hard, and they have their own impossible missions which would be completely suicidal in earlier generations.
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I think I can confirm it's using the baro altitude for ranging, or something at least: If you dive at the target, laser on (symbol on HUD), then Active Pause and turn the pressure adjustment knob on your altimeter, the range indicated on the scale on the left side of the HUD moves as you turn the knob. I tested in ISA conditions (1013 hPa), and had to turn the pressure knob to about 1007 hPa to get the range scale to match what I calculated with trigonometry based on altitude and map distance. But on the other hand, I had to turn the pressure knob to about 1045 hPa to get the pipper to match where the bombs actually fall. (Active Pause is incredibly useful for figuring all this out.) Some assumptions I'm making: The slant range itself should only come from the laser; that should measure the straight-line distance from your plane directly to the ground under the pipper, which is the slant range. That should not be affected by the altimeter setting or anything else. And I'm assuming the HUD scale should be showing the slant range. However, the weapon ballistics, which means how the weapon flies through the air and where it will actually impact, should depend on the baro altitude, as that is a measurement of air density, which will affect the flight path, and hence where the pipper should be drawn on the HUD. So it does feel like something should happen when I turn the altimeter pressure knob, as that will make the system think I'm in thicker or thinner air and that the weapon will fly in a different arc. It seems like there has to be some cross-communication between these systems, because drawing the pipper in the right place on the HUD needs both the slant range and the baro altitude, and as the baro altitude changes, that moves the pipper, which should move the point the laser is shooting at, which will change the slant range, which will also move the pipper. I assume that programming all of this so it actually works, draws the pipper in the right spot for all the different weapon types, and does so within whatever tiny fraction of the minimum-spec CPU slice they're budgeted for, is a huge pain in the butt. Kind of amazing that it works as well as it does!
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Radar cross section is not affected by whether your radar is on or off. However I think your radar can be detected by enemy airplane RWR systems, and that will alert them to your presence. I'm not sure if ground targets can pick up your radar emissions though; I suspect they can't. It would be interesting to do some empirical testing on this.
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After the hotfix patch, I still can't get KGMUs to work reliably. They still fall short, and still only dispense only a single cluster of bomblets even though I'm holding the pickle button. Has anyone gotten them to work? And if so, how?
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So many experts here on the SPO-15, too bad none of them can agree on how it works.
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There were some specific things that weren't addressed in the recent Wags video on Ground Attack in the MiG-29, so I experimented and put together some stuff that I've figured out that might be helpful to people: The Air/Ground switch (left console forward) only affects the cannon symbology; it isn't needed for other A/G weapons. The middle and outboard pylons are logically combined, and A/A weapons take priority in the weapon selection for those pylons. You cannot fire/drop the middle pylons until either the outboards or the inboards are empty. If the inboards are empty, set the Pylon switch to Inboard to select the middle pylons, and if the outboard pylons are empty, set the Pylon switch to Outboard. This means if you are carrying R-27s or A/G weapons on the inboard pylons, you don't technically have to fire them before you can fire the middle pylon A/G weapons, as long as your outboard pylons are empty. All weapons of the same type always fire/drop simultaneously, and from both sides. If you turn off the laser designator (with Target Acquisition Symbol Control Button), you can't turn it back on for 30 seconds. In other experimentation I've done, I found that the SAPHEI cannon ammo cannot damage a BMP-3, but the AP ammo can. The AP still kills airplanes pretty well, but not as well as the SAPHEI. I haven't figured out how to use the KMGU dispensers yet though. They seem to only drop one bunch of bomblets rather than a continuous stream (even if the All/Single switch is set to All), and the accuracy is way off. It sounds like the upcoming hotfix patch may at least fix the accuracy though, so I'm waiting until then to do any more experimenting with those.
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I was just going to post about this, and I see people have beaten me to it! This is also a problem in the L-39. I would really like to have English cockpit labels, and English speech, but native metric instruments, HUD numbers, etc. In the L-39, the manual is all in metric units, as is most information you can find about it online, so it's very convenient to have the cockpit in metric units so I don't have to convert back and forth to figure out takeoff and landing speeds, etc. The MiG-29 manual unfortunately all seems to be in English units, even though almost no one flew the MiG-29 in real life with English units. If you set the Avionics Language to English, and the Units to Metric, and the Special tab options to English cockpit, you get a really weird mish-mash of stuff: one airspeed indicator in kph, the other in kts, the altimeter in meters and what looks like mmHg, but the radar altimeter is in feet, and the HSI and fuel gauge show miles. IMO it really needs to be all one or the other, and it would be nice if it were a simple switch. Here's my wishlist: One setting to control default units for map and infobar (toggleable in game in the F10 map with the existing button at the top). One setting to control speech language (e.g. speech and text from ATC, AWACS, crew chief, flight engineer, etc.) And then in the Special tab, for each plane, one setting for cockpit labels and one setting for units. The units setting should also control what instruments are shown (the metric or English airspeed indicator for instance, which are physically different in the cockpit, not just a different label).
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After a lot of guessing, I discovered that the kneeboard folder for custom kneeboards is "MiG-29 Fulcrum", e.g.: C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\DCS\Kneeboard\MiG-29 Fulcrum I tried MiG-29-Fulcrum, MiG-29_Fulcrum, MiG-29, MiG_29, MiG29A, MiG-29-9.12, Mig-29_9.12, MiG-29-9.12A, and several others before I found that exactly one other kneeboard folder contains a space (the F-86F Sabre), and tried it, and that worked. Phew!
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I noticed this a while ago as well, when I tried to arm up with HOBOS and they're off the bottom of the list. My workaround was to make some loadouts in the mission editor and save them, then you can select those saved loadouts when you're spawned in the mission and you'll have the weapons. You can then still change the other pylons to be something else if you want.
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I love how they're putting in 120 airbases, plus dozens of smaller fields and helicopter bases, and like half the comments about it are "not enough airbases, you should have put in my favorite ones, unplayable, will not buy".
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I found a possible bug with the 1LOOK RAID mode. In both RWS and TWS mode, with 1LOOK off (DATA OSB, 1LOOK unboxed), you can lock a target with STT, press the RAID/FOV HOTAS button to enter RAID mode (boxes EXP), press again to leave RAID mode, unlock the target, and the radar returns to your search settings (azimuth and bar). However, with 1LOOK on, lock a target with STT, press RAID/FOV HOTAS button, press again to leave RAID mode, unlock the target, and the radar is now in a very fast 3 deg azimuth scan. Pressing the azimuth OSB then sets the azimuth to 23, 43, 63, 83, and then 140, and then cycles correctly through 20, 40, 60, 80, etc. Track file attached, please let me know if you need any other info. Thanks! Keywords for searching: 1look, one-look, one look, raid F-18 radar 1look raid bug.trk
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I've been doing some practice with the radar and found an issue with the TWS mode. Normally, you should only be able to have a 6-bar scan with a 20 deg azimuth, and if you set the bars and azimuth with the OSBs, that is enforced. But if you set the azimuth to 80 deg using the OSB, and then use the HOTAS controls to set the bars (move the TDC cursor up to the bar setting and use TDC press to select), you can select 6B and the radar will remain at 80 deg azimuth, which it shouldn't be able to do in TWS. If you then press the azimuth OSB, it will be set to 20 deg and can't be changed, which is correct for 6-bar. Short track file attached, please let me know if you need any other info. Thanks! F-18 radar hotas tws bug.trk
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Germany Cold War Announcement | Steam Spring Sale 2025
SlipHavoc replied to Graphics's topic in Official Newsletters
None of the maps in DCS look like they came from a 25 year old game console. That's language inflation at work again. You can speak up without resorting to the most extreme adjectives. -
Germany Cold War Announcement | Steam Spring Sale 2025
SlipHavoc replied to Graphics's topic in Official Newsletters
It seems there is a language inflation thing happening over the last decade or so. Things are not merely bad or suboptimal any more, they're abysmal, abhorrent, terrible, disgusting, worst ever, etc. And things aren't good or better any more, they're fantastic, amazing, glorious, epic, brilliant, etc. It's really annoying. No wait, I mean, it's abysmal, abhorrent, terrible, disgusting, and worst ever. -
Germany Cold War Announcement | Steam Spring Sale 2025
SlipHavoc replied to Graphics's topic in Official Newsletters
Almost every plane we have in DCS, other than the WW2 props, is a Cold War era plane. People seem to forget that the Cold War didn't end in 1975, it ended in 1991, and included the entire first decade of the computer revolution. There were plenty of planes with MFDs, HUDs, FLIRs, and other technology that is still relevant today. The F-15C, F-16C, and F-18C are all Cold War planes, and so is the F-15E. It's always fun to see the Viggen brought up in this context as well, since the AJS-37 that we have in the game didn't enter service until after the Cold War (1993 or so). Although I do think it would be great if ED could add an option to the Mission Editor to restrict pilot helmet options, so missions could enforce whether HMD and/or NVGs are available. Other than weapons, that's probably the single biggest and most noticeable anachronism for a Cold War setting for the F-16 and F-18. -
I think they learned a lesson about roadmaps, which is that people take them way too seriously, and then literally for years afterwards, bring up stuff that hasn't been done for various reasons, always in the most rudely sarcastic and negative way possible. I'd be quite surprised to see any kind of official roadmap published for 2025.
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A couple years ago I published the initial DCSAutoMate version. It was pretty rough, with a bare-bones console interface and very little error checking, but it worked. I'm now happy to announce **DCSAutoMate v1.0.0**, which is pretty close to the vision I originally had for the program in the beginning. It's now a proper Windows GUI, and although still basic, has a much easier interface and a lot more capability. The GitHub page has the full documentation, as well as the source code and a complete zip file: https://github.com/SlipHavoc/DCSAutoMate Main features: Write your own Python scripts to completely customize any startup checklist in DCS. Scripts included for the following modules: A-10C and A-10C II A-4E community mod AH-64D AJS-37 Viggen AV-8B NA Harrier C-101EB and C-101CC F-15E F-16C F-4E F-5E F-86F F/A-18C Ka-50 Blackshark II and Ka-50 Blackshark III Mi-24P Mi-8MTV2 OH-58D UH-1H All included scripts have at least Cold Start and Hot Start, many also have Air Start and Shutdown, and support multiple variations such as ground or carrier, day or night, HMD or no HMD, etc. Uses DCS BIOS to move any cockpit control, and can now also read cockpit controls to make your scripts reactive. Can also send keyboard commands to DCS to move controls that aren't mapped in DCS BIOS. Open source and free to modify or customize as you wish. I've made this primarily for my own personal use, so the included scripts do the startups that I use myself, which aren't necessarily the "proper" steps, but are reliable and get the plane into a fully combat-ready state. Most of the scripts are heavily commented, and DCS BIOS has pretty good documentation so they should be easy to change. Inspiration for this originally came from programs like DiCE, DCSTheWay, and DCS Scratchpad. My thanks to those authors for showing some of what can be done, as well as the maintainers of DCS BIOS, ED for designing a great game that supports things like this, and the authors and maintainers of all the many Python libraries, IDE tools, and other infrastructure that goes into even a small project like this!
