scoobie

Hi, AFAIK - no, you can't. Sling loads seem to be a special kind of objects, so DCS recognize them as such and allow you to hook them. And you can ONLY hook (then unhook) them, nothing else. Besides, these objects need 'animation' - when the hook is attaching, all of the sudden that 'harness' shows up (don't know the proper word for that). On the other hand, if the cargo can go in the trunk, I most likely works by the powers of LUA voodoo magic written by a mission creator. I think it goes something like this: there's an object X put in the scenery (by the mission author). When the player lands nearby (trigger zone) and - possibly, not obligatory - uses F10 menu item (another trigger) that says: "Load that junk in her trunk", the object simply disappears from the world and your chopper's weight is (may be) artificially increased by XYZ pounds - by a script code. Something of that sort. Two different things. Makes any sense?

@dovla: You got the dog tags imprinted in the windshield, so someone else must have got the dogs! Who's more entitled to complain, huh? :smilewink: Hi there, good people, you've already listed my dreams for Mi-8, but what you're asking for here is basically "DCS RW Ops Pack". The thing is that most of these things require development in the very DCSW, only then a module may follow and implement new features in the chopper (Mi-8 or another). Since supposedly so few people fly RW (I haven't the foggiest idea why), I don't think ED has time to do it. Besides, I believe they wouldn't like to make such "RW Ops" as a kind of a module (good idea from a financial point of view), because I think they struggle hard to prevent excessive erosion in their code base. This means they would rather have all these features programmed 'flat' in the code, in the 'base' DSCW. So... lots of work and no direct payment. Conversely, fighter jets immediately pay in thick piles of cash. So uhm... you know... I'm afraid the chances are scarce here. Still, FWIW, my 2 cents: -1 for multicrew What is going to keep you busy throught the flight if you're not the pilot flying? Set a new leg in the DISS? Tune a radio once or twice? Shoot side/rear gun for 60 seconds in a 40-minute mission? You have RIO in a Tomcat, and RIO has lots of work to do as compared to Mi-8. How many of you do RIO in MP? 4 people? For a 1000 who only want to sit in front and drive/shoot. Not too many, is it? AI RIO in Tomcat was a must - too much workload for a single guy, but it's not the case in Mi-8. My impression is that people ask for multicrew, because they THINK it would be fun, but if they actually got the feature, they would play for 2 days and get bored, then everybody would only want to be the pilot again. So, if such feature requires a significant amount of time/effort on the devs part, then why squander time implementing a next to useless feature (IMHO, of course)? Really, I must be missing your point. Maybe there's something super cool about multicrew for Mi-8 and I just can't see it. Oh, to make things worse, it turns out that mulitplayer people are a small minority in DCS (absolutely shocking news to me, really! supposedly only like 10% DSC user fly MP). So, 10% times small RW community equals 23 people who would actually pay for it. Will not happen. Someone here claimed it's nearly impossible to manage Mi-8 single-handedly. That doesn't seem to be a fair statement to me. If you have problems, it most likely means there's something wrong with your setup. Either you don't have enough hardware on the desk (controllers) or perhaps you've made assignments to your controllers that are not essensial during the flight (and thus 'squandered' your limited H/W resources/buttons/whatever). You could, and perhaps should, use some whizz-bang software such as Joystick Gremlin + vJoy (I do), or anything that will work for you. It works wonders, trust me! It only needs a bit of creativity on your part. Really, to me Mi-8 feels only a bit more complex than Huey. +0 for bambi bucket. Sure it would be beautiful to have this (hell yeah!), but the trouble is not with the bucket, but with proper fires. Quite a bit of research to do, then programming, for example, the flames must 'know' what material they got in contact with and how the fire should spread according to that, so it means all scenery objects in DSCW would have to be able to 'say' what they are made of. So maybe you'd have to rewrite the sceneries? All of them? How about 3-rd party sceneries? Tonne of work only with that and there's another tonne of various ascpects of fire to sort out. Sure, you could go for severe simplifications, but then users will complain that fires are so unrealistic/ridiculous etc. (well, DSC is not a fire fighting simulator, after all). Then you'll have a myriad of bugs to squash, and on top of that the big question, probably without good answer: how not to fry the users' GFX cards with these fires? I'd like to fight fire, but at 2 fps I might be unable :smilewink: +1 for working winch, oh boy, there's so much to do with the winch and it seems not so hard to implement in the current DCS as they've already done sling loading. I believe it would take 3D models of a few 'types' of soldiers hanging on the line (1, 2 or 3 of them, perhaps). Just like sling loads, different weight, only the line length controllable. * One strange idea from me - it can work nicely together with a winch, but not only that: Make AI crew members call out the distance to obstacles (toggle on/off), allowing for what they can actually see in current weather conditions (the latter might be hard to implement). Left or right (the opposite of player's current seat), rear and down. This could let you fly VFR into IMC-ish weather (cut into the bottom of the cloud, proceed through fog etc.)... well, 'crawl' into IMC at a walking pace, not fly at 100 kph, sure. That could cater for some hair-raising SAR in the mountains or just anywhere in nasty weather (the latter with GPS, I think). Normally nobody sane would risk their neck that much, but RL SAR pilots sometimes do that. It works like this (a pilot is saying): "I can't promise you anything, but let's see if we can do it"... and sometimes helicopter SAR teams do super scary things and only that way save lives. Or, it can simply let you take a chance on landing zones so tight that you wouldn't dare otherwise (IRL at least). I'm not talking about anything stupid, though. I strongly believe that simulation means "as real-life-like as it gets", but if you go an inch beyond real life, you're turning a sim into a game and immersion is ruined. Still, sometimes you may know how to enter into a tight landing zone (or hover zone), because you're still above it, but once you get in you don't really get the idea how much free space your tail rotor still has etc. (Mirrors, at least on my 1080p pancake, are mostly useless, don't know about 4K, perhaps they're better). AI crew members could help. I'm thinking about something a crew chief now does for sling loading, something like "10 right, 20 back" or whatever they say IRL (no idea). So... if you had this AND a working winch... :) +1 visible troops inside, of course we're talking about something rudimentary. No one (sane) expects a million 3D models, 150 doctor models (hell, you may even skip the busty blonde doctor Angel), 86 patient models etc. Of course not. I'd vote for this because... sometimes I just can't remember if I have passengers or not. Those missions are sometimes so tense, quick, and uhm... I'm kind of oldish and.. you know... if I could see them back there, it would make things easier for me. +1 different interiors like civilian, ambulance, VIP, cargo etc. Ha! This one is SOLELY a job constrained to the very Mi-8, has nothing to do with DCSW. At least we've got one such feature in the set :) +1 fast rope deploying. If a winch worked one day, fast roping would get easy to implement. +1 UPK/GUV/RKTS efficacy fixed, of course, but that's not an upgrade. +1 those pretty rain droplets be removed by wipers (essential for hovering/landing in confined spaces). I think DCSW must be involved in this. * Icing. People, I've been waiting for this for 20 years to no avail! Please, I won't live forever (but again - it involves DSCW). Yes, icing seems really hard to do (properly), but also seems doable to at least some sensible extent. No visual appearence, only effect on flight characteristics, engine performance, perhaps failures of specific systems (where applicable). For example, pitot tube icing has been modelled in sims for... at least 20 years, I can't remember clearly behind that. It's not rocket science, you just 'choke' the tube if flown for some time in conditions of X/Y/Z. Simplifications are not a bad thing. AFAIK no one's ever done icing in a sim (don't know about X-Plane, but I doubt it) and the good news is this would be beneficial for everyone, not only rotorheads. * If our version of the big lady had some RWR installed in real life, that wouldn't hurt, either. Other planes go 'beep', 'plonk', 'tick' so at least you know it's dangerous. In Mi-8 you only hear lovely chirping from the rotor scissor link and you think it's summer holiday. Then out of the blue you go boom and wonder what the hell happened :smilewink: Oh, damn... it was more than 2 cents. Sorry! Enough of daydreaming.