scoobie

Thanks a lot, Golo! Lines, not numbers. On my end it's not "can be tuned up with scale knob once radar is on" - I can do it in cold & dark as well. I've attached the picture below. See, they keep saying "Dude, this plane is so simplistic that anybody can fly it", so I thought I didn't need manual for this particular plane! Yep, I was wrong RTFineM, RTFM, scoob... Thanks

Thank you! Makes sense now - weight on wheels = NWS, in-flight = push to talk. (I must have overlooked it in the manual, sorry.)

Hi, NASA6! IIRC, first few missions (3 or so) were pretty basic, like a warm-up, a welcome to your new crew, but soon you'll get transferred to the Arctic, you will get harsh conditions, where even Russians put on their caps, not always easy landings, unfortunate events etc. Even the very snow may make a landing a bit tricky for the lack of visual cues. Later on there will be another retrospection. I don't wanna spoil too much. I think you are perhaps a bit too quick giving the opinion - this campaign is not homogenous. As for flight regime constraints in the title of your post, it's only for the duration of... 2 (?) missions, then they're gone. I considered it an interesting test of my flying, I think it's unique across all Mi-8 campaigns to date (and Huey campaigns, AFAICR). Can I fly "mild", so that the passengers don't come out injured, bleeding? However, it sure is the case that people have different expectations. I liked "Larking Aviation" (not available any longer, AFAIK), which was very fast paced, short missions, nearly no cruise. On the other hand I liked The Oilfield Campaign, which includes a lot of cruise! Perhaps you are wired more towards quick/intense action, not so much towards flying straight and level for too long? Maybe, I don't know. As for me - I like both, but for example I have difficulties coping with very long missions. For example, the highly acclaimed The Enemy Within by BD, which is - for my taste - a crazy good work, contains a few missions which take like 2 hours, plus. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it's a problem for me, I work long hours and the only day I'm not tired is Sunday. So... I like missions 30-70 minutes long. See? Different expectations from different people, you can't make everybody happy, I guess. What I DON'T like in campaigns is bad communication with the player (unclear tasking/voiceovers, inconsistent trigger logic, briefings, kneeboard), that's annoying and is not uncommon, but I didn't have problems in The Crew (yes - a few discrepancies here or there, but nothing serious). Anyway, I liked The Crew campaign a lot! And it felt demanding, at least for me. And besides, Forexkor is such a "library of ideas", I'm always curious what he has up his sleeve this time If you give yourself more time to play through the campaign, it would be very interesting to have your opinion then. Oh, and don't skip mission 3 - if it's the one with the warship, don't skip it, fly it!

Hi, I'm learning F-5 (she's great fun!) and have spotted a few things that got me wondering. Some of them really feel like bugs, but some other - I really don't know. Maybe someone can shed some light of knowledge? I've filtered out things that I'm aware are already reported. Oh, and yes - these are MINOR issues. 1. (bug) FCR (fire control radar) scale backlight is always powered, i.e. even when cold & dark. This makes absolutely no sense IRL and can drain battery for no reason, so I think it must be a bug. 2. EDIT: (bug?) Aircraft cold & dark. Flip the "BATT" switch on - flood lights are now controlled by "ENG INSTR" knob, instead of "FLOOD"... until you fire up the engine. When the generator kicks in (alternatively, you may ask for ground power), flood light control is taken over by the FLOOD knob (as it should be at all times, I believe). Seems rather unlikely that they could wire the plane like this. RTFineM, not a bug, they wired it exactly that! 3. EDIT: (bug or my mistake) Pressing NWS button invokes radio menu on the screen. Is it the case for anybody else or have I messed something up in my DCS? It's a feature. 4. (observation) FCR beam trace not dimmable. In search mode beam trace (this vertical bar moving left and right, showing which part of the sky the radar is curretly illuminating) bears no interesting information, yet it cannot be dimmed and "burns" eyes at night. All other elements on the scope's screen are dimmable. My suspicion is that beam trace should definitely be dimmable, I just don't exactly know with which knob. Weapon delivery manual doesn't say it (or at least I haven't found it yet). Maybe someone else knows how it works? It may be connected to brightness knob, but I'm guessing (number 7 below). 5. (observation) Thumb switch on the stick is not animated. I'm rather insensitive to such things, but anyways - just an observation. 6. (observation) RWR control panel is hardly dimmable, burns eyes at night. The DIM knob is there, but you can't make the backlight in the buttons really dim or even decently dim. This is in contrast to the very RWR screen (with contacts etc.) which can be toned down with excellent resolution, from full bright to hardly visible (it's great!). So, either it's inconsistent engineering in Northrop (sounds rather unlikely) or slight omission in the DCS: F-5. 7. (open question) FCR brighness knob. Something's fishy here. First off, the way it is currently modelled looks very "digital", artificial, no CRT scope I ever saw looked like it, but that's not a big deal. (Shkval CRT in Ka-50 looks really analog, though it's a "TV-type" CRT screen, not a "scope-type" one) The real problem is who in Northrop came up with such feature and what he had in mind - that's a mystery to me. It is true that the manual describes the knob like this: "Adjusts the background brightness of the radar scope from off to full bright" (hence how it's modelled in DCS, I guess), but I can't think of any reason to clutter the valuable picture on the screen with useless green background... other than getting the very picture super-extra-bright. That's how TV-type CRT's worked and that's how CRT scopes worked. See here for example: https://youtu.be/8GR_6QH3uZk?t=569 Note the "light clutter" showing up all around when the beam gets very bright. Okay, in electronics you may have one of TWO reasons to set brightness as high as this, but on the radar screen such that has a separate "VIDEO" knob to control the radar blips... the only reason I can see is just to make the whole screen super-extra-bright. You do get "background brightness" control with it - it's true - but it's just a side effect, not your goal. Do you have any idea what the aforementioned misterious sentence in the manual could mean? Or why would anyone want to "drown" desirable picture in the useless green background? A radar's purpose is not to hide bandits in background, so the pilot is not worried before he dies, is it? I really don't understand it.

Thank you very much, very helpful!

If your intention was to let go of your anger, then no - it is a well known, valid technique for punishing others for own failures! Very rewarding, isn't it? Not recommended for RL flying, though. Some prefer to shoot down the wobbly tanker which doesn't know how to properly stick its boom into your "perfectly steady" aircraft, but crashing is more universal - you can also crash into bandits you can't hit with a gun (in fighters, not exactly in A-10). I do it all the time, because my aerial gunnery is THAT good I'm talking vintage planes. Moreover, typically I try to land a plane damaged by collision with another plane (if only possible), which is a pretty educational exercise on its own. To summarize: crashing into planes is good, do continue, have no remorse. P.S. Seriously speaking, if you can hang down from the boom for a few seconds already and you think that's the best you can ever accomplish (like I thought about myself), then don't stop - soon it's gonna become 15 seconds, then suddenly 25, then quickly 50 and so on until you feed your Hawg in a single sip If your main problem is throttle AND you have TM Hawg throttle, then it's good enough for the task. Do you "walk the throttles" as people here (and RL pilots) advise?

I doubt it, but I'd rather ask: Is this voice a part of the campaign's voiceovers: https://youtu.be/N53ifuvuIpo?t=74 This: "Krymsk traffic, Enfield 1-1 has departed (...)".

Just an update to my previous post above - about the "mixture of pictures" I was getting in the briefing. It has nothing to do with the campaign. Yesterday I had this mixture, but it was late, I didn't fly, just turned off the computer and went to bed. Today turned it on and everything is okay! So it's some kind of a rare quirk in DCS. Nevermind. Case closed. Sorry.

Hi, no big deal, but I was just about to play Mission 2 and noticed this... I get a different set of briefing pictures before the mission gets loaded (i.e. before I click "START") and after that (when the simulation is loaded and I need to click "FLY"). The former contains a mixture of pictures from Mission 1 and Mission 2, the latter only from Mission 2 (as expected). I didn't know it was even possible in DCS, so I thought I'd just say it - just in case, perhaps it's some kind of a bug.

Divided into how many sessions? Seriously. If you want to learn it "by violence", tormenting yourself for hours in a single take until your hand goes pale and eyes bleed - don't. It's not the way it works. Probably the best piece of advice I read on these forums (regarding AAR) was "it's like learning to play the piano". Not THAT hard, of course, but the general rule is the same - your brain simply needs TIME to gain a new skill. Time and regular repetition. People are different so I don't know what works best for you, but as a ballpark figure I'd recommend to do it like this: 1. Practice AAR no more than 30 minutes a day. (Unless you start to like it and want a bit more.) Be wary of the level of your frustration and fatigue - when it gets high and you can see you are getting worse than you were 5 minutes ago - stop it! Otherwise it will continue to get worse. Come back tomorrow or a few hours later. Ignore the fact how bad you are! Don't whip yourself, it doesn't help. Make/get a mission which starts close behind the tanker so that you don't waste time looking for and/or chasing the tanker for 10 minutes. Turn off wake turbulance - if only to get rid of one "unknown" from the equation. Revise your controllers setup if necessary - if you suffer from PIO, see if you actually swing the joystick much - if you do, it's you. If you only blow at the joystick and the plane goes nuts, it's the controller. 2. After a session of such daily AAR chore, go and have some fun with DCS, kaboom things, whatever you like. Fun is VERY important, even if flying was your job! Repeat for a few weeks or just as long as it takes. Never whip yourself for poor results. Yes, you need to try hard, but trying TOO hard leads nowhere. At one point you will notice you are gradually, slooowly getting better and better. And then you will notice that formation flying got a lot easier, somehow, magically Or - as others wisely advise - START with formation flying. It allows for some leeway - initialy you may choose to fly a bit loose with the lead and then, once you get decent at it, tighten formation and practice that. As for the cheat options, I'm not against them. For AAR it could be a virtual "bubble" of radius R, centered around the basket or the boom's tip and you'd have to stay within the buble to sip fuel. On the other hand I think it's important to understand the difference between such cheat option and - for example - unlimited weapons. The latter helps you gain a new skill, e.g. weapon employment procedure in your new plane, whereas "cheat AAR" PREVENTS you from gaining a new skill. Just saying. Your DCS is yours, so what you do with it is none of my business, but it's good to be aware of that.

OK, I hereby testify that both solutions work nice With 0.02 gain as laid out above by LeCuvier (and a pair of buttons), the reticle is perhaps a bit slow, but lets you easily set depression as you like. The minijoystick works well, too. Gives more flexibility than buttons, but the downside is that minijoysticks are "expensive" (you don't have as many of them as plain buttons/hats, typically). Anyways, my initial settings: Dead zone: 5. Saturation X: 100. Saturation Y: 100. Curvature: 60. Tweak to your liking. Think of it as "two-speed buttons" (like 6-speed gearbox on a car). Hence the extreme curvature. If you use your minijoystick primarily for Fire Control Radar TDC, you may use "modes" (in Joystick Gremlin or whatever you like to use) - you may assign the minijoystick's button ("click") as the mode switch button. In one mode you have FCR TDC cursor, in the other - reticle depression control. You don't do A/A and A/G at the same time, I think, so such modality shouldn't pose a problem.

Thanks for the tip about rotaries! Yeah, sometimes I feel so sorry for ED, they're developing HUGE software, and even such a "tiny" side issue (seemingly!) as those control assignments are such PITA, people are using different controllers, if they use up/down buttons to control some analog value (axis), then either it's too slow and takes ages to go from one extreme to the other, or if you make the buttons work faster then it's too twitchy/imprecise etc. What a headache! Some people here have suggested that "variable speed" control option could be the answer - for button pairs, not rotaries. I think... P-51 (?) has this feature for something - you press shortly and get a minute increse of a value, press and hold and it starts accellerating. For rotaries, though, such "digital axis" with adjustable "gain" sound like a good answer! But I can see ED devs jumping out the windows in panic I've just got another idea for the depression knob for the Tiger. First I'll try your settings (for an (ON)-OFF-(ON) toggle switch I use for that), but then this idea: I could use the "mouse nipple" on TM Hawg throttle. I'll set some dead zone and then put a lot of curvature on the axis, thus creating something like a "two speed switch" - pull the nipple some - slow speed (precision), pull hard - FAST. Maybe this will feel good. And MAYBE that's what ED had in mind? To use it with a minijoystick? So far I've tried depression on a classic potentiometer and it felt ugly, meh, no-no. If the nipple works nice, I'll post my settings here. ---- (Off topic.) So far I've refrained from builing a new button box. My biggest trouble is that I have limited space (I have to keep all mu stuff on the desk) and planes in DCS are just so different. I need to somehow "average" external lighting panel so that it's suitable for all (or most) planes, then average controls for radios, weapons (master arm, laser, A/A, A/G etc.) and all that stuff. It's so hard to find a sweet spot - a well balanced "average" set of controls, but at the same time a "slim" one (instead of five quare feet of buttons and knobs). Anyway, rotaty encoders are extremely appealing here - using a surface area on the box's front plate of a (very) big button, a double rotary with push gives you two "axes" (two sets of +/- switches) plus a push button. The only trouble is that Leo is charging around $35 for one (they're most likely quality stuff though). Multiply it by 6 or 8 pieces (if not more) and you get a hefty price already - for the rotaries alone! And at the end of the day... what if one day I'll try VR and - like so many others - I'll never want to return to "pancake simming" again? How do they deal with controlling stuff? Will my meticulously designed "super button box" become useless? Oh boy, flight simming has always been such trouble... perhaps I'd be better off buying a stretch of land and growing carrots instead

Thank you, LeCuvier! I will do it like this. Yes, since the analog axis is virtually unusable, I've been using +/- switches for reticle depression already and, as you say, it IS annoyingly fast (like quite a number of other controls on various planes). After a little of reflection, I think ED might have done this axis this way as a "self defence" measure. People may have less than perfect pots and 8-bit axes and if such hardware didn't work for them, they would rant about it, while ED can't do miracles. The full depression range is 235 values, so for 8-bit axis even a slightest noise/tremble (or even the A/D converter's inaccuracies, quantization error, all other errors) will make the depression readout drum tremble and people would go crazy. And these values aren't even discreet, the drum is smoothly turning from one value to another, e.g. from 134 to 135, so you can have 134.3 for example. Yeah... I think that was the reason they did it like this. Still, it's a bit of a pity for me, I understand the hardware limitations, so I wouldn't rant If 8-bit axis proved insufficient, then I'd just look for a controller with axis/axes with more resolution and perhaps a better pot or a multi-turn pot. I guess I must invest in rotary encoders at last (though I don't know if they work well in DCS). I imagine this is how depression knob should be used. Leo Bodnar has nice double encoders with push, but they're expensive and I'd have to destroy my button box and build a new one... and I'm so lazy. Nevermind Thanks again for the recipe, I'll give it a go today

Hi! Have any of you tried to bind an axis to the "AN/ASG-31 Sight Reticle Depression Knob" (in control options for F-5)? It doesn't seem to simply move the sight reticle up and down as, say, antenna elevation axis or whatever of this sort. Instead, it regulates the speed at which the reticle is travelling up or down the glass, where the axis's very center is "speed 0", reticle stopped. Move the axis a bit off the center - the reticle starts traveling, move it even furhter - the reticle speeds up. It's essentially useless like that Quite original, but useless. Feels like a "minigame" inside F-5 Yes, I know that the in-cockpit knob makes 3.5 turns whereas a typical "home potentiometer" (which I use to control pipper depression in all A/C which have some kind of a knob for it) travels by approx. 0.75 of a turn only. Nevertheless, a pot could give enough precision, it's only a question of whether it's "quiet" enough, how big a knob you put on it and besides, there are multi-turn pots out there if somebody wants to use one (I don't). For the sake of retaining the best possible resolution the axis at the center could preferably translate into the reticle's center of the whole travel range, and not depression value of 0, i.e. the reticle goes from 35 up to 200 down = 235, so axis centered could give depression of 117 or so. No, grabbing the mouse with your third hand, clicking the knob with it and now sweeping with the mouse up and down is NOT a better solution... simply because it's a worse one if you have knobs/swithes/etc. on or next to your throttle (I don't use VR).

draconus is right. No use boring people to death, but basically "free save game" (at any point you want) is unlikely to come to DCS, not in a foreseeable future at least. Regardless of the fact how disputable or not it is in a simulation. It's a killer, not just "yet another feature" to implement. If they started building DCS (LOMAC and so on going back in time) with an idea of free save game feature and then kept it as their strictest development policy, or a "company religion", then yes - it could be possible. But at this time, with a few milion lines of code not prepared for it... naah, forget it. Of course they could go back to square one and destroy/rewrite a lot of things, but I don't think people would like to wait for 2 years until they finish and then another 3 years until they squash the whole river of bugs that this would inevitably bring. Most likely also all aircraft modules would have to be "rewritten" to work with the "save/load game" feature - ED, 3rd party, all of them. Besides, which company could afford such a "restart"? (Even if users were patient enough to wait for so long.) However, "save game on mission end" feature and "tuning" the next mission according to the result of the previous one (by means of code in a mission script written by a mission author) - this is doable and ED said themselves they were doing some preliminary experimentation towards it ("dynamic campaign"). Dynamic campaign is or should be something more than just "mission end save game", but the latter is required as the basis for it. So I think it's not a question of "if", but "when" Not soon, I think, but one day... Of course such file will most likely save only the list of units still alive or those killed (or a list of events), maybe something more, but definitely not the internal state of your aircraft (e.g. what was the current tendency in pitch due to your last trim inputs etc.), nor the inner state of the "AI actors" etc. Still, it's better than nothing!

To me Caucasus (in DCS) looks beautiful. If I could ask for anything, though, I'd like those Georgian villages look a bit less generic. I find it very hard to tell between one another, they're all built from the same highly repetitive set of houses/buildings/etc. It becomes particulary acute when you're roaming around in a chopper (my favourite sport in DCS). At some point it starts to feel a bit like "auto-gen" scenery from FS2004. Flying over or near a specific village hardly, if at all, tells me where I am. I rely mostly on the terrain shape - I've got this mountain to the left, S-shaped valley to the right, so I must be more or less here. Something like that. On the other hand, what would my computer say if there were a 1000 of such house models? Is it only about RAM (I could buy more RAM), or would it require some crazy "fire power" from the PC in general? I don't know.

I think I've found it (quote from the manual - below). I wonder on which particular aircraft they mounted the compass top center. Were they planes for a primary task other than A2A, some "special" planes? I wish I knew. It seems so strange to obscure the view in a fighter with something so unimportant (normally) as a backup compass.

I can't shake off the impression that Belsimtek people got their hands on "a" Sabre, not "the" Sabre. A Sabre in a museum or some other place of this sort. It seems they might have just recreated a partly "wrong" aircraft, one that had been modified/restored. For example, when this museum/place/whatever got this Sabre, some parts were missing on the plane and later they were restored by museum people (a talented locksmith etc.) - for better or worse. Or something like that. Then, years later, Belsimtek people stormed in, photographed everything and stormed out. I suspect this kind of a scenario. I complained about bombing altimeter in another thread, but people seem to be happy to meticulously set the "target altitude" according to the manual... even though it's utterly pointless and does nothing. No one seems to have even noticed that it makes no sense. North American engineers wouldn't do pointless instruments, but what is more interesting, the instrument in DCS: F-86F even LOOKS substantially different from the one in the manual for the real plane. Now, it might have been the case that a Belsimtek guy ignored the instrument he saw in the manual and instead created "an artist's impression", fruit of his imagination. But that sounds just silly. What sounds more plausible however, is that he simply got photos of such "mutilated" instrument and recreated just this. It may be a similar/same story with the standby compass. The manual shows where it should be - I attached the pictures, so... why didn't they just do it that way? I guess they just saw and touched a Sabre where the compass was above the sight. They made a million photos (instead of using those few blurry pictures from the old manual). I'm not sure, @Wolf_ofthe_North what exactly you are referring to here: Anyway... if textures are biggest worry for some of you, I guess we're not in the same boat. I mean, yeah, why not - pretty is prettier than less pretty, as philosophers claim, but to me "first things first" should be the way to go: 1. The sound bug fixed. Other bugs (I can't tell myself - bought the Sabre not long ago, have only 25 hrs in the air). 2. Flight model at transsonic speeds investigated/reconsidered. 3. The above. The "suspicious" instruments investigated/reconsidered. 4. Is AI MiG-15 really OK? It's one of the very few Sabre's oppontens in single player... or the only one... and it seems to be too good. Too good even for human controlled MiG-15 (different flight models... maybe too different). I'm a DCS noob, so it's hard for me, but I tested F-86F vs. AI F-86F, 86 vs. AI MiG, MiG vs. AI 86 and MiG vs. AI MiG. All AI planes UNARMED, so they could only run and I could chase them forever just to see how it goes. Tell me I'm wrong, but AI F-86 is easy to catch, regardless if you chase it in 86 of MiG, and AI MiG is next to impossible to catch (at least for me) - regardless if you chase it in Sabre or in the very same type of MiG. Well, I don't know, but there may be - just may be - something strange here. 5. As @Rudel_chw says - assets of the time, something to accompany two of those wonderful, but rather "lonely" (in DCS) planes. 6. Eye-candy, if time and energy allow. The Sabre is such a delightful plane, I guess she would gladly accept a bit of attention more Yes, I know, it's a very busy time fo ED and you can't have everything in life.

Fool of a Took! (I'm talking about myself.) Thank you, Flappie! No need for dcs.log. vJoy is recognized properly. I've just figured it out. I knew it couldn't be a bug in DCS, because it just didn't make any sense - that's why my brain was overheating. But it is interesting and may happen to someone else, so... if anybody gets bitten... If you use Joystick Gremlin ("JG"), make sure it is up and running at the moment when you launch DCS. (If you comply with this, you may later kill/re-run JG as you wish - which is exactly what I need). (EDIT: Crossed-out point nonobvious, requires further investigation) Since your vJoy device is present in Windows and visible in DCS regardless of whether JG is running or not, you (like me) may come to a wrong conclusion that it doesn't matter if you start JG before DCS or after it. It DOES matter! That was my "sin". Until just recently I've used to run JG before launching DCS, both from a batch file, but I bought more planes (too many perhaps at once) and I now switch planes in DCS a lot, so... every time I had to Alt-Tab to Windows, get to JG, File/ Open Profile, Enable Profile, Alt-Tab back to DCS. (I have separate JG profiles for all planes.) That was annoying, so I came up with a new "system", where I launch JG from my Stream Deck - this time with a ready to use profile for a specific aircraft - no need to leave DCS to change JG profile. Thing is - in this "system" I run DCS first and only then run JG. That's too late! That was it. JG MUST be already running when you launch DCS. Phew! Thanks and sorry!

I must be going crazy. It's impossible. I like to use those "preset/fixed views", e.g. Ctrl-Num_0, then Num_6 ("view 6" pops up). This comes in handy when you want to access somewhat difficult part of the cockpit, such as radio knob on MiG-15 or CDU on A-10C. I create these preset views for most aircraft, then "save angles" (rAlt-Num_0), then I can use these views. Such views don't wobble with your Track IR, you may also set as big zoom as you like - very nice feature. Now... I always use the "radio hat" on my TM Hawg throttle to automatically punch the appropriate keyboard presses into DCS for me, e.g. when I press radio hat aft on A-10C, it's remapped to "Ctrl-Num_0, Num_3", which fixes and zooms the view on the CDU. It always worked in DCS, now it only works in Windows - I checked in a text editor etc. - whatever keyboard presses I map to a joystick button, Joystick Gremlin actually spits these "fake keyboard" presses out into Windows. As always. However, around the latest patch, DCS seems to have stopped responding to such keyboard presses. If they come from the real keyboard - DCS reacts. If they come from "fake keyboard" (joystick remapped to keyboard presses) - DSC does NOT react, nothing happens. But Windows can see those "fake keyboard" presses. What's going on? Has such a phenomenon occurred to anyone, ever? My brain has overheated. I don't have a faintest clue where I should look, what I should check.

Alright... it turns out that in reality my Mi-8 JG setup is more complex, so I created an example profile that depicts only the thing in question. I used "modes" for that. Damn... I don't know how to intertwine text and pictures in the post... Create an additional mode - I called it "Slaved search lights". I chose "Button 1" as a mode switch button. In one mode it has to switch the mode to the other one, in the other mode - to the first one. OK? That way it toggles between modes. Now the main part: In "Default" mode I have no mappings for "Hat 1" (which is the coolie hat on TM Warthog throttle). In "Slaved search lights" I made a "copy" of coolie hat on the vJoy virtual joystick. Now, depending on the mode, either only the former or both of them work (in the pictures I kept the coolie up). Once you've got it done in this or whatever similar fashion you like, go to DCS, assign real hat to - say - left light, and that "copy vJoy hat" to the other light. That. Is. All.

@admiki I'm happy to help, but I'm not at my home PC now, so for now I'll give you just a basic idea: 1. In DCS I assigned my coolie hat to, say, left search light (up/down/left/right) - that's no magic. Normal stuff. 2. In JG I... I'll give you exact procedure when I'm home... when I press the "slave/unslave search lights" button the first time (it's a function I made in JG, it doesn't exist in DCS), coolie hat starts being "repeated" or "shadowed" on 4 buttons of the vJoy jostick (a virtual joystick that is being "pressed" by JG software). When I press the button again, the virtual joystick stops repeating presses of the real coolie. Thus when I move my coolie, I have either only a physical throttle's ("TM Warthog Throttle" something in DCS) button presses, or I have them PLUS "shadow" presses on the virtual joystick at the same time. 3. Now you assign such "virtual coolie" to the right search light (under the column for "vJoy something device" in DCS). You actually need this "slave/unslave" button, because, unfortunately, the lights have a bad habit of getting "out of sync" over time. When you move them a lot (and that's exactly what you do with search light, right?), then the single bright spot of light (i.e. two lights illuminating the same place) gradually separates into two displaced spots. As, say, "crossed eyes". So every now and then you need to "unslave" and reposition one light to where the other is shining. Then slave again. It's a bit wonky, yes. (Of course one may use those lights separately or use just one of them, but that's not what we're talking about here.) I'll give you the exact "recipe" for JG when I get home. To answer your question 100% directly: DCS won't let you have one hardware button assigned to more than one "function" in DCS, just as you noticed. So... you can "cheat it" by making a virtual copy (or copies) of a hardware button and assign each copy to a different function in DCS. If, when you're trying to make assignment of such "multiple button", DCS shows a different button or doesn't recognize your button at all (because all "copies" of the button are pressed at the same time), you just need to revert to MANUAL assignment method - choose your button from those drop-down boxes in this window. People are so used to "automatic" assignments, that they just forgot what those drop-down boxes were there for. You can click them and choose a button from a list. Or, sometimes, you HAVE to do it that way. I wish I spoke more English, really! I hope you understand. If not - ask.

Now I get it! Apparently Puma is simply held where you leave it with friction. I didn't know that. Couldn't they be more explicit on their website? In that case, you just don't need no trim with Puma - it is like "auto-trimming" cyclic, without the need of pressing any silly buttons Good stuff, I must admit, though different from what you have in Mi-8. Mi-8 cyclic is pretty much a "force feedback joystick". "Self-centering" is a misleading term. It's "self-remaining-where-you-leave-it", but only if you use trim button. Otherwise it is just "spring loaded" (FFB mechanism loaded). It's "self returning to the position where you last released trim button" by means of "spring load". When you press the trim button, the spring load disappears... until you release it again, thus setting a new "neutral" position for a spring load mechanism.

Thanks! I'm always eager to see how other people deal with things... so I can steal cool ideas from others! Speaking of which... I can see you have "AP Altitude up/down". Does it work for anybody? I think it's some kind of a "test" switch, you can't really make her climb/descent with it (i.e. change the altitude for ALT HOLD autopilot). I mean, initially she WILL climb or descent, but then go the opposite way and finally stabilize. Am I doing something wrong? I even removed this switch from my H/W controls, I thought it was useless. @unknown Yes, I know about the chief staring through the hole But this is, say, "phase 3". "Phase 2" is when commander can no longer see the drop site (we're too close), but we're still too far to use the chief (he can't see too much ground around), so I'm using poor navigator to stare down through his open blister window, and thus I can QUICKLY assess the vicinity of the place: DMS_right - look! - DMS_left - fly! (rinse, repeat). It's faster than making the commander look down and up again (each animation takes a second and makes me a bit dizzy in the long run). The trick here is that I make the navigator get his head out the window PRIOR to the whole procedure and leave him like this, then it's only quick "switch seat" to have a glimpse down. Well... Sometimes I even use landing lights as a "precision creepage speed indicator" - the spot of light on the ground below gives you great indication of 1) if 2) how fast 3) in what direction exactly you are "creeping" above the ground. It's more precise at very small speeds than that, otherwise excellent, "hover gauge" on the commander's dashboard. But don't worry - it's just me I can't live without coming up with strange ideas.

I guess they do it simply because it must be most comfortable for them in a real helo - just click and the stick (cyclic) stays still. That's all. And they always know how she's trimmed - the stick is in that position. Not the case with a non-FFB joystick in DCS. I also saw a video on Youtube from Mi-26 (which I call "flying building") - the commander was clicking trim constantly, every two seconds perhaps... and I don't think Mi-26 is twitchy. (sigh) We all need good FFB joysticks, I guess. Steering wheels for simracers have had decent/good FFB for 15 years or so, why isn't anybody offering such joysticks (any longer)? Would price be too steep? I don't get it. Still, I concur with OP, the big lady is great, can do all sorts of things, some claim she has a soul, but definitely has a lot of depth and capability, and it just feels so good to sit in the cockpit and move that stick around Oh, and the "chirp" from the scissor link - I could listen to it all day long. Oh, BTW, don't forget to try Mi-8 like this: DMS left = commander, DMS up = chief, DMS right = navigator. It really becomes a better module when you switch seats. I didn't belive it myself, tried it... and never looked back. Startup - chief. In-flight ground observation (searching) or just looking around, for a specific place etc. - all 3 blokes in the cockpit. Cruise with DISS navigation - navigator. Sling load drop - both commander (for flying) and navigator (he sticks his head outside and looks down), general maneouvering/flying - commander. Three workplaces for the price of a single module - it's a bargain, men!