Skuva

I hate the modelviewer, the camera controls are the worst. Moving liveries around so model viewer can see and update them takes almost as much time as restarting the entire game, and in the end it doesn't even look exactly like in game (it seems to have a different lighting system). And I can't test the changes that affect functionality of displays and hud. So no, the model viewer isn't easier than the game to do the stuff I want to do, I've tried it. Just to clarify, I'm editing cockpit textures from multiple aircraft.

Previously, when editing textures you could quickly check how it look inside the game by just restarting mission (Shift R). Now this doesn't work anymore because the game seems to be fetching all texture right from application launch. This makes working on texture significantly harder. If this is intended, it makes no sense. I hope it is a bug.

I'm not sure if I can just publish it, because I'm doing stuff on top of other people's work. For example the Su-25T, I'm modifying on top of Devrim's translated textures. I might redo it on the original russian cockpit and post it for everyone, but that will take time and good mood. I'm also still looking into modifying shader files to change the tint when the shkval is On, but that enters a completely diferent realm from just editing images, that I'm still learning. EDIT: I'm in a good mood (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3334407/)

Part of what makes it look so much worse than the Ka-50 is the old paper texture that goes over the screen. You can see it here https://forum.dcs.world/topic/327959-su25t-shkval-contrast/#comment-5315132 as I attempted to give it a more realistic look, which involved darkening the texture. It improves contrast a bit when in shadows, and reduce considerably the effect of the sun over it.

It is basically just gen 2 night vision. But what we always got in DCS was actually a frankenstein monster mixing the Mercury with the Khod (actual FLIR). In real life the Mercury just stinked hard. It was just old tech night vision on cocaine, it had separate lenses for the 2 zoom options, and one of them wasn't even movable, pilots had to spot targets on the fixed wide fov image, then zoom in, and then move the camera towards the location he remember to have seen the target, AND IT WASN'T EVEN STABILIZED!!! That's why results in tests where very underwhelming and the thing never saw the light of day, badum tss. I'm not sure if making the Mercury more and more realistic is the best way to go considering this plane is the first most players get to experience. I bet players would hate using a realistic version of the Mercury, as it would be at least 10x worse than using the Shkval (given numbers on spoting distances). And considering ED already entered the realm of semi-historical gadgets with the Ka-50, and our current Mercury is still quite far from the real thing with some unrealistic features while lacking others, like adjustable contrast/brightness, I don't see why not just go for a franken MerKhod. You can read a bit more about it here: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/soviet-targeting-pods-mercuriy-lltv.40466/#post-565967

I always thought it was my cheap twcs and it's crappy analog stick. But opening thrustmaster's monitoring tool side by side with DCS I can see the input is transitioning smoothly between axis, but the slew in game keeps getting stuck or ignoring one of the axis completely during transitions. It happens on ALL FC3 aircraft.

No, because I play mostly in VR. This is the reason I started my quest on improving Su-25T and FC3 cockpits, because evrytime I go from a FF module back to Su-25T/FC3 I feel like going back to FSX, blurry mipmaps, old DDS format with lots of artifacts, details that made sense 10 years ago but not anymore with new lighting systems.

The idea of following laws is to not end up in the gulag. Now about FC3 level aircraft, I sincerely think they just don't want to do it. Because Gaijin is already at the MiG-29SMT, and no one there has been arrested yet, so there is clearly the possibility of modeling almost any aircraft under some limited fidelity.

I've been tweaking all FC3 cockpit textures and this is driving me crazy. It's straight up a geometry problem, you cant even paint to hide it. I guess this thread would have better chances of being seen at https://forum.dcs.world/forum/866-flaming-cliffs-3-bugs-problems/ Doubt they will want to fix it, but anyway to prevent a case of "erm, trk?" and get the thread thrown into oblivion, here's trk su-25A_canopy_frame.trk EDIT: In case someone is confused, this is how it is suposed to look (source: old wags video). Taking by some videos dates this problem appeared anytime between 6 to 8 years ago.

In that track the missile is simply following proportional navigation based on its last calculated path to intercept and end up being correct enough to prox fuse, because the target is not maneuvering enough. Replaying the track and doing slightly different maneuvers to lose lock at different times yields different results. If you lose lock after the target's initial maneuver the missile will intercept because it made the correct enough prediction. While if you lose lock before the target finishes the initial diving turn the prediction will be way off and the missile will miss everytime.

There is little content for the A-10A to be found on the DCS Files, specially regarding cockpit liveries. We've only got a few based on ricardo's work, and although they are amazing jobs, I crave for one that is not worn down so much, one that would look right on a cold war scenario, not perfectly mint, but also no paint peeling off everywhere. And also a bit more authentic. So here is my initial attempt at it: Default <-> Mine Detailed info about it seems hard to find, I'm taking inspiration from this set of photos that I managed to find. If anyone have ideas or sources that could help me getting colors and details right, please share. And tips about modding cockpits, because I'm new to all this. EDIT: I uploaded the first version, those interested can download here (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3334417/)

It looks like they are changing the mercury again in an attempt to make it more realistic, as a photosensitive camera instead of a weird copy paste flir. So it is possible they are already aware of the issue because they are trying new stuff. My guess it that they copied the night vision effect from the Ka-50's goggles but the scaling ended up wrong.

How would one add normal maps for textures that originally don't have it? I tried adding some for the Su-25T and adding the lines to descrition.lua but it doesn't have any effect. Is it not doable? does ED need to recompile the model or something? The only aircraft that has normal maps by default is the MiG-29, and the Su-27 partially. Those are easy to edit, and you can get good results by just cleaning compression artifacts and adding some simple edges where was just flat before (see comparison below, added to radar display frame and weapons station). I wish to give the same treatment to the Su-25, A-10A and F-15C and the rest of the Su-27.

We been forever aflicted by the blind curse that makes impossible to see navigation lights from 1km+. What is holding ED from implementing a white flashing dot on top of players with nav/strobe lights on? Going even further, could be way harder to implement, add some offset red/green/white dots dependant of aspect.

@cookiemonste have you ever found what causes the cockpit glow a few seconds after entering it? Its like there is another specular layer on top, because even if you make the spec files pink it reduces the effect a bit but it is still there. Does it have something to do with the "-sp" files? the 15 is the only FC3 aircraft that have those files and have this glow. Also, did you managed to darken the side panel instruments? this is the best I could do and still doesn't feel that much dark. EDIT: I found the culprit for the front panel glow (comparing with Coltrogue's textures, because he managed to fix it), it's the f'ing seat (ACES2-01 and 02), the thing shines like gold.

The extreme washed out effect happens because the "whiteness" of the sun sums with the "whiteness" of the texture, the texture is old and didn't have a problem with the old DCS lighting system. Reducing the "whiteness" of the texture you get almost the same washed out effect of the ka-50 Look how the left AAV is almost invisible on the default su-25t, while the ka-50 has no problem seeing it. Well, regardless of your beliefs, I'll be using my livery and will publish it for others when I finish, including for the FC3 aircrafft that suffers the same problem.

you disagree with the photo you posted yourself? Have you lived in the 90's? have you ever seen how a crt tv look with sun shining on it? it doesn't become a unseeable piece of white sand paper, you can still watch stuff on it, it is just a bit nuisance. Also, the current shkval is the way it is because ED added a lot of new shiny beautiful effects to the game while neglecting older assets, just compare the su-25t with the ka-50. null

I'm editing the cockpit to remove mipmaps (they are useless on the su-25t and FC3 anyway, because dcs alocates the entire textures into vram regardless of settings, and just show you the respective mipmap), and to make the shkval less broken and a bit more realistic with a baked reflection even.

I'm trying to do something like musolo's display idea and it is ridiculous what can be acomplished by just reducing brightness and contrast of the display texture. Image below shows the display against the sun, the half left is tweaked, while the half right is default, the waypoints 2 and 4 are completely washed out. Edit: I'm also fidling with the su-25T and trying the get the shkval to be less broken and a bit more realistic

I think the confusion is that the inside numbers on the 25's indicator are not Mach. The indicator on the Su-25 (A and T) gives IAS and TAS While the indicator on Su-27/33 gives IAS and Mach

Earlier this year a problem with the Patriot missile max speed was reported, acknowledged and fixed. But even though other missiles got reported in that thread they got overlooked and haven't received a fix to this date. I perceived this problem initially with the S-25L missile, that behaves way too different from it's dumb cousins S-25O/OFM. After some more investigation I found out this speed cap is plaguing many missiles in the game, most of them SAM's. From what I managed to test, the ones with problems are HAWK, SA-2, SA-3, SA-6, SA-8, SA-11, SA-15, HQ-7. To be more specific, the bug refers to the missile hitting a max speed wall during flight that makes no sense with how solid motor work, physics work, or with real life data. It is clearly noticeable with the S-25L as you can fire it in a dive and after hitting the "wall" the missile begins to decelerates as it descents even if it is still burning, because the "wall" seems to be a function of altitude. Also clear by how the Hawk's fire control completely overestimates its range and fail to hit a target moving straight. The SA-10 and Patriot are currently working as expected. I don't know of other problematic SAM or A/G missiles apart from these, but there could be more, if anoyone else could help testing. SA11_speed_bug.trk Hawk_speed_bug.trk S-25_speed_bug.trk SA2_speed_bug.trk SA3_speed_bug.trk SA6_speed_bug.trk SA8_speed_bug.trk SA15_speed_bug.trk HQ7_speed_bug.trk

The way around it is to edit aircraft livery files and swap all of them of a lighter one with the same names. But you will need to redo this process on evry update/repair. Would be awesome if ED just added an option in-game to do this automatically. I don't need one entire 300mb F-14 livery for every god damn tail number/drawing. I don't care if one guy in the server is using it. It has no gameplay value like actual camo liveries, and even the useful ones could simply be downscaled significantly without losing its purpose.

I find it weird how the system manages to keep a perfect stabilization while "locked" (saying lock because that's how its called in control settings), but when you slew it loses any stabilization and goes back into "relative to LoS" as before lock, like if all the gyros and laser ranging gets turned off. I imagine the system would keep the same stabilization and just add the pilot input to it (like we see in the Mi-24), but it could be like this IRL for some reason I have no way to understand. Another question would be: if the system really goes back into relative to LoS temporarily for corrections, why is the sensitivity so low? Its to the point the general concensus is to try to steer the aircraft way more than try to slew the designator, because it's way too hard to maintain such a perfect stable flight so the slew can go the direction you want.

Additionally, having a dynamic IPD that decreases with each zoom level would help a lot with the cross-eyed problem, thus mitigating fatigue and sickness when zooming at cockpit instruments.

I'll be taking measurements