RAMjb

Not only that, it's a 3 year old trustworthy laptop that I've developed a liking for, and that I expect to keep for some time to come (finances won't allow for anything else, anyway) :D. No, I don't expect "Good performance" But I do hope for "decent performance" given that it still is avobe the minimum requirements, and given that some other posters experienced such decent performances with systems more limited than my own's. So, any hint to squeeze any further FPSs will be more than welcome. I know I don't own a top class rig (far from it) and that I can't expect miracles, so I don't. But I do think my system can make BS work with decent framerates, more than what I'm getting now, and deliver a very good simulation experience. Even with the problems I'm experiencing I'm already getting that, so I'm looking to further improve it in any way I can.

That's the point: If I'm doing a rocket pass using boresight mode I'm not talking the extra work to range. I'd have enough of a hard time trying to keep the plane steady and without drifting (and usually, failing trying to do so), to also take care of the forward-fixed shkval to do any kind of rangefinding. I simply use the fixed gunsight mark and estimate where will rockets fall. And of course, between my estimations being crap and my flying not much better :D, I hit nothing. By "laser assisted" I mean using the uncaged shkval to get a proper lock on the enemy target. That way I -can- hit things. Now and then, in a full moon night, when Venus is in conjunction with Mars and Jupiter is the ascendant over Piscis :megalol:. But its the only way I can get any kind of hit with rockets. Of course being my piloting skills as fantastic as they are the only way I get to put the rocket pipper over the target reticle in a more or less steady fashion, is if I am in a very slow motion or almost a hover. With any kind of speed, I wont put pipper over reticle, I'll be actually firing when one briefly passes over the another. And of course, again I hit nothing ;) I'm not saying anything about the quality or usefulness of rockets as a weapon, just stressing the point: you -really- need to have a proper control of your chopper before hoping for any kind of precision. And even then I think it will still a relatively unnacurate weapon. But with me, it's not a weapon. It's more like some kind of harmless nice chopper fireworks :D But that's because I suck, not because the weapon does. Of course everything I said avobe is also appliable to the 30mm in boresight mode. Anything not guided, I'm not hitting with it, period. Guess practice will improve that but things are like that right now for this poor noob, hehehe.

ahhh yes, now I know what you say. Will give it a try, but also have to say that in quite many FPS stuttering I've experience there was no dust present, or at least none that I could see. Worth a try anyway, will see if this helps. Thanks a lot :)

For now what I dream of is for DCS to publish a flight sim , based on the F-14 Tomcat of the 80s era, and its expected role of intercepting soviet naval aviation bombers doing anti-carrier sorties, with the high attention to detail they're showing in BS and promise to deliver with A-10C. One of the flight sims I've most enjoyed ever was Microprose's "Fleet Defender". The plane itself I always was in love with (probably my favorite jet fighter ever. Nothing will beat the Fw190 as favorite fighter, however, hehehe) and that flight sim was really enjoyable. It's a plane that hasn't been the point of attention of many simulators either...and one that a lot of people are in love with... /edit: I know it's highly implausible for this to ever happen, as ED is focusing on mostly modern combat and equipment, and the F-14 was retired from service some years ago. But well, that's why this is a "dream" ;)

What's me I can't hit the broad side of a barn with those things. At least not in boresight mode. I'm still too lousy of a pilot and have problems keeping the chopper steady for a proper guns/rockets pass, so I end shooting rockets everywhere but to the target I want to hit. in my case they're TRUE area effect weapons. Dispersion is a term that acquires a new dimension when I'm firing rockets in a boresight rocket pass :D Maybe if I tried aiming anywhere else BUT to the target, I'd get better results :megalol:. For sure, can't get any worse. (Laser assisted things improve somewhat, but using rockets that way, hovering at 3km from the target, is to ask for a MANPAD or even a BMP launched missile to kick your butt, as I've learned the hard way).

I tend to think that I'm not a military client. Thankfully I guess. I'm just a civilian enjoying a hobby and who has purchased a piece of entertainment software. Something DCS:BS is. That's what what I purchased. Military clients don't purchase Black Shark, they do purchase more specialized (and I guess way more advanced and even closer to the real thing) training software. That, I haven't purchased, nor is what Glowing Amraam displayed in his clips. I'm a customer of entertaining software who decided to give the step of purchasing a product because I saw a series of clips in youtube that were the definitive "nail" for me to go and buy it. I purchased BS because of the evident quality of the product, it's high fidelity to the real thing. I was also seriously taken aback by the DRM protection system to the point that I would've left the game alone, and I'd have done it had I not stumbled upon those clips which convinced me to get over my personal hate of StarForce as a DRM, and buy the product. And because of that, and because I've tried Black Shark and found it as satisfying as I could ever hope for, I'll probably purchase A-10C aswell (will have to check if my laptop can handle it, tho, as it struggles to deal with BS as it is). So in the end his clips may make me buy not one, but two of ED's products, and probably any following add-ons if the quality level remains this high. In the end, what he has achieved is one more, present and potentially future, customer, and a loyal one. And I'm not an easy customer, not by far. And I'm sure I'm not the only one he has "won" for Eagle Dynamics. Again, not by far. Yes, I haven't spent millions on a product like the military does. True. I haven't purchased the product they use either. I have purchased a different, stand alone, product. And I guess ED cares about numbers of copies sold to the entertaining market aswell, not just for the military. I'm just a +1, a very minimal percentage of the market that product has been sold to. But I'm in there. Without GA's videos I wouldn't be even that. If you say that's negligible, its your view. But I say that ED does this simulations in order to make some money, and that they should be proud to have Glowing Amraam doing those advertisement videos, because he really achieves what those clips intend: to attract more people into buying the product. but well, yes, this is totally off-topic. Just wanted to answer you. I don't think this is an absurd question, nor that it is a "closed case". DCS:BS is an entertainment product, so will be A-10C, and any further add-ons for this series. If ED publishes this series is because they want them to be a commercial success on their own. And I'm part of that, as every other customer here is. We might mean less money but we also are a market for them. Don't ,ever, neglect that. I'm sure they don't. Markets are hard to win and VERY easy to lose. And if Glowing Amraam helps them to win customers in a difficult market, why shouldn't I congratulate him for doing so?.

I'm the living proof on how much can a good movie creator influence a difficult customer as myself. I went from opposing to buy Black Shark -DRM related considerations and lack of HOTAS prevented me to- to purchasing it (and a HOTAS set to fly it, on top of that), just by watching your clips in youtube (and by noticing that most customers had no big issues with Starforce in Black Shark. I hate the thing with a passion since SH3 was released and had to wait 2 months before I was able to play it). So, while what you said **might** be true for most customers, there's certainly a percentage that without a work like you did won't purchase the product. True, without an exceptional product you wouldn't make the impressive clips you made, but fact is that you made a truly exceptional work with what you had at hand and that you succeeded what you were expecting to do with your work (reaching for more customers and convince some of them to purchase the simulator). I'm sure I'm not the only one who gave the step after seeing your videos. And that is no small feat, requires quite some skill, and means you did a wonderful job that succeeded in what it was planned to achieve. Not bad, huh? :) Not a secret I admire your work, I guess... ;)

lol... so you also have a "laptop black widow" sister?. I got one too. Worse yet, each time she has any problem related with her computers, I get a phone call so I can magically solve them for her (living at 450km from where she is, btw :P), which equals at least twice per week. Dunno what the heck she's got with PCs, but I dream on the day she gets an iMac or something that I know nothing of so she can leave me alone, rofl. not sure this might be the case with my laptop, I rarely get to see the fan accelerating to high speed on it and if it doesn't I guess it's because it's keeping the CPU cool enough. But will check for the cooling grills just in case, you never know. Stutters tend to happen when action is nearby but also happen another times, and those are pretty much random. I do have a cooling base (one of those things you put under the laptop, which has several fans on itself and helps keeping the thing cooler) I rarely use. I'll give it a try aswell and see if the stutters dissapear with it. oh already did that myself before, and with several laptops. I think I even still have a printed maintenaince manual on how to dissasemble it from the last time I did it (had to check for the AC connector which had loosened a lot and was preventing the AC plug to insert clearly). Bad news is that this one is hard to dissasemble (comparatibely speaking with others). Good news is, well, I've done it before. Guess its not the case, I did the update of sound&graphic drivers after trying BS the first times, and I didn't detect any drop on performance (no increase either). I've ruled out drivers problem for the time being, tbh. Thanks a lot for the input!!! :)

hey beers :) Problem is I'm not really into overclocking procedures, and besides, mine is a laptop. Thus, no real chance to put a new, more powerful fan in and even while my knowledge of overclocking is limited, I do know that without a more powerful fan, overclocking CPU=frying it ;). So I guess that rules out the whole thing... Drivers are the latest catalyst drivers. 10.5. Sound drivers are the latest from Toshiba aswell. was among the first things I checked after I installed BS, btw :) Thanks for the input anyway, and any more ideas that might help, will be more than welcome.

heya nate. What's described there is how to set Water=0. This I already did. I also got the tweaking guide alpha and tried to lower some key settings down. Thing is, I get 25-30fps which ain't bad. but now and then they will come down to 7-9fps (at the best) to later come up again to 15-25. Puzzling thing is that it sometimes happens in battle, sometimes when doing something as dull as trying to land...whatever it is ,it ruins the experience for me...

should also add, I always try to close anything open before starting BS. That means that when BS is running there's only trackIR open (and lately the task manager, because I use it and the resource monitor to check where the problem might be). I close everything else in the tray bar. I'm running at a resolution of 1280x800. Top my laptop accepts is 1440x900, haven't checked with it because results are so poor with both the 1280x800 and the 1024x768 resolutions (checked them both, there was no noticeable improvement with the lower res, so I settled for 1280x800) dunno what else to add, but if more info is needed I'll be happy to post it.

Hey there. Been flying some days now and think I have to post in here because probably what I'm experiencing isn't really normal. I've looked in this forum for some references on which fps were people getting with their machines. I've read about a guy who has good framerates with a 2ghz CPU and 2Gb of RAM. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=651752&postcount=3 I've got a dual core, 2.4ghz,, and 4Gb of RAM, yet I struggle to hit 25fps and when guns start to fire,the system struggles to hit 7-9fps. My rig isn't for sure the best around for performance but expected somewhat more, and I'm surprised that people with worse rigs are getting better experiences than me. My system is a toshiba satellite P300 laptop. 2.4GHZ dual core, 4GB RAM as I said. OS is Vista 32bit. Graphics card is an ATI mobility radeon HD3650. DxDiag is uploaded in the text attachment. I made sure sound card&graphics card are the latest for my laptop. I tried turning CCC settings pretty low (antialiasing and Anisotropic? what's that? ;). Also Catalyst AI is off). Graphic settings are all low or medium (except for water, I edited it down to 0 in the graphics file). No avail. So, well...hints, tips, anything?. I mean approaching for a landing at 25fps is more than acceptable, but suddenly hitting a wall and trying to set my chopper down at 7fps is...something I don't reccomend for a fainted hearted (even more with my "secure hand" at the stick, with just 9 days of experience flying the sim on full realism, lol). DxDiag.txt

Now, THIS is something I didn't know. I knew that by trimming in a turn it would keep said turn (because it keeps the controls centered in the attitude you selected when releasing trim button), but didn't see the implications for swiveling in a hover. And certainly with a "Rate of turn" (in this case, rate of yaw) functionality, yep, there's no reason to turn off the heading channel off once I've adjusted myself to it. Lol, yeet one more thing to practice and get used to. Sheesh!...I love this! :D thanks a lot ,Bucic, for that information. Is something I wasn't aware off and certainly gives me a new insight into the AP of the helicopter! :D

hm. I do understand the AP and trimmer by now. The AP will try to keep the attitude you trimmed in, using up to 20% of the control input the pilot has. Because of that if I'm in an autohover (or a manual hover) and I want to use rudder to swivel my helicopter to face a new direction I actually have to fight against the autopilot giving an order against mine's. If I'm in a hover facing north and want to swivel to heading 135 while on hover, if I don't disengage the heading channel (be it manually, be it via pressing the trim button and releasing it in the new direction), I will be trying to turn the chopper around while the autopilot tries to counter my wishes. Autopilot is there to help me, not to fight me. So I disengage the involved channel and reengage on the new facing. Easy, simple, and forces the AP to help me, not to fight against me. By disengaging the heading channel and reengaging it in the new direction I not only make the move a much smoother one (not being forced to fight against an autopilot input that will try to pull the nose back to its initial heading), but I'm using the autopilot to my advantage (by engaging it in the new direction I want to face, the autopilot tries to keep that direction after re-engaged thus helping me) while not being forced to disengage the other two channels which already are properly trimmed and balanced for a hover (something that happens if you press trim while swiveling to release it in the new direction. If those channels are trimmed and working why mess with them pressing the trim button if I don't really need to?). So by dis-and-re-engaging the heading channel I'm already making the Autopilot help me instead of fighting against me. I won't call that a "workaround",but operating the helicopter's autopilot to the best of my advantages...but I guess we all have our little tricks, "to do" and "not to do" things in our way of flying the chopper :)

Hey bengo. Yep, I already gave it some re-reads, that's how I came up with the idea of turning the Heading channel off for when swiveling the chopper in a hover. I do understand how it works...now. There are a lot of "little tricks" to deal with the autopilot. Is one of the best things about the chopper, but can be a killer if you don't understand it well. I've already tried the "Trim-and-turn-release-trim-later" thing. I already do that. But in combat it might be a killer: Problem is that if by any kind of accident I release the trim button in an inappropiate moment (and in combat it might happen because you're thinking on another different thing), then you'll find yourself spinning around for a good while until you can recover control (if you don't crash before). Happened to me twice while I was trying some extreme turns in the shooting range and it didn't look pretty thereafter. To re-trim the helicopter (if you don't go down first, that is), turns to be a nightmare, and if that is going to happen in front of the enemy, I'm going to kill them...with a laugh attack. I'm toying with the idea of using Flight Director mode for the times I want total control of the chopper (such as rocket&guns boresight passes, combat turns, tight reversals, etc). Much simpler than keeping a button permanently pushed down. Also don't know if turning off all the autopilot channels is a smart thing to do when you just want to keep autohover on and sviwel for, say, 80 degrees to starboard. By pushing trim you're disconnecting the autopilot and you might get out of the hover without noticing it at first, losing vital time later to recover the hover. I find it much easier to simply disable the H channel, swivel around, and reengage it in the desired direction.

another noob reporting in Heya. RAMjb here. Spanish, 32 y o. First flight emulator (I can't call "that" a simulator given the computers of the time, hehe, thankfully for I was just a kid), was Spitfire 40. For Amstrad CPC, circa 1986. And avid consumer of most flight simulators since then, in both Amstrad CPC and PC (when I got my hands in one)platforms. Even while I gave Gunship 2000 a big use, that was my last chopper sim for a long while. Been flying mostly fixed wings stuff (more exactly WW2 stuff as my favorite plane is the Fw190) for 99% of the time. I have to say that I was taken aback by BS. I was really intimidated by it. I knew it was going to be a difficult transition from fixed wing to rotary wing. Then there was the copy protection issue (I really hate systems such as Starforce, with a passion). And finally I had no HOTAS and for me it was plain to see that if I was to enjoy the transition I needed it. In the end the deciding factors were a series of promo clips I saw on youtube, signed by Glowing Amraam (guy does as a hobby. Many professionals wish they could do an editing job as his). I simply felt the need to give it a try, regardless of the Starforce issue (been on the watch on that aswell and the general lack of problems with SF I've seen related with BS was also a deciding factor). Purchasing a HOTAS was more or less a must for my activity on IL2 and other flight sims, so I gave the step. So after months since it's release I purchased a copy last Saturday, when I also purchased a X-52 FCS HOTAS. And boy I have to say I wasn't turned down: the darned chopper is as hard as I expected to fly. If not hardest. MUCH hardest :D. I've got fixed wing aircraft insticts developed after years of flying them virtually, and those are a killer in a chopper. After days of banging my head against the screen I finally got to understand, for instance, that "chasing the ball" was to be done more with the cyclic than with the rudders, and that correcting sideslips needs cyclic bank, not just rudder yaw. And that is just ONE instance. My initial instincts when I wanted to slow down or accelerate also produced some hillarious results. All my turns ended in the most unco-ordinated slipping when facing the new direction (product of underusing the rudder for not understanding the whole concept well). Other things as trim, however, I got and understood really fast (just needed to see the producer notes video about it). Not so with the autopilots, tho. After some days of crash after crash and reading a lot of internet stuff, most of it here, and looking for youtube clips for some tips on how to get a feel of the chopper (and quite some iterations on the shooting range mission, of course), I'm slowly improving. I can't do any fancy stuff like hammerheads, but at least I can land. No, really. For me the worse issues were related with transitions, and particularily with transitions to hovering without immediate use of autohover. Sideslips were a killer, I always tried to adjust with rudder and I would find myself slipping and yawing for no result. :lol: So if transitions into hover are a pain, and I had problems adjusting for sliding, landings were more something like "hard encounters with earth". At its best. Today, just a few minutes ago, I completed the 1st campaign 1st mission succesfully. Landing and turnind the chopper off included. For me is a huge sensation of accomplishment, because I was able to actually stay within 200m of the lead chopper for the whole of the mission (have to admit, I cheated twice because I lost vis on him while operating the ABRIS or the INS system, and used external views to relocate it.). I found no problem following him in turns and speed changes. I was even able to intuitivelly close up or slow down a bit to let it go (as a good fixed wing sim pilot I'll let you guess how I was trying to slow down at first :lol:) if I was lagging or getting too near. And finally I got to land at the FARP. I mean, a "small" (hey ,for me is very small!) square with an H in the middle and not a long runway with a really big parking zone to land almost anywhere I was able to finally force myself into a hover -my standard landing way until now-. Truth be told, it didn't go without problems. When doing the circuitto the FARP I slowed down to almost a hover to turn around the helicopter using rudders only, to then do the final approach at very slow advance/descent rate. Somehow I lost track of my collective and found myself in one of those nasty "vortex falls" or however it's called. I was at some 200m radar altitude at the moment my helicopter turned into a falling brick, and I thought I had blown the whole mission in the last minute, But I reacted fast ,dropped the nose almost instantly, and gained enough speed to increase collective and not smacking myself in the ground by, dunno, maybe 10 or 20 m. Then I did a proper approach and landing. Yes, all I did was to take off, follow a darned chopper around for some 40 minutes (hearing him talk about land reference points and not looking at any because I was too busy following him, LMAO) and then almost smack myself when trying to land. But hell I DID not smack myself, and I did land and turned the chopper off. I feel very very well. A nice rewarding sensation. I certainly expected this sim to deliver, but boy does it do it even more than what I expected!!! Have to say a couple things. First of all a big THANK YOU to everyone who has posted in this thread. I've read through all of it and understood a lot of things I was doing wrong because of the info posted here. Second of all: There should be a bigger emphasis to warn newcomers as me that switching Heading Autopilot off while you're in hover and rotating to face a new direction (to then engage it in that new direction) makes things MUCH easier (you don't have to fight the darned AP trying to bring the chopper nose back to where it was). I read it somewhere, think it was even here, but its a point that rarely is brought up. In fact I think my worse problem with the chopper until today was that I really didn't understand all that well how each of the three autopilot works, and that sometimes switching one of the three compensators off for a short while (usually the heading one) really help you doing what you want... So...well, hello, thanks for reading this brick of a post, and thank you all for your inputs here!. I'm a long way from being a decent "virtual pilot" of this little monster of a chopper, but certainly I'm much much closer than when I first started it :megalol: