sandcat

I have the suspicion that wags is flying with the "control help" setting in special. Because I see none of the wobble that I see when I fly, or when I watch other players fly. Also does the dampening autopilot really work like that in real life? Oscillating against input, because I see none of that in real life videos. And it isn ot that it only fights strong input, every slight change in stick deflection, it wobbles then slowly oscillates until the waves are smaller. And is the Mi-24 REALLY needing rudder input when flying 200 km/h straight in real life? Because i have to hold 10% rudder to prevent drift. Does not happen on the Huey or the Mi8.

However would heading hold produce that behaviour in real life?

Something feels off when flying the Mi-24. When using the autopilot systems for pitch bank and yaw, there appears to be excessive oscillating wobbling, where the autopilot tries to fight the stick input until the oscillation slowly stops. And I think it is gamey and exaggerated. Because if you look at real life take-offs, you might see the copter slightly banking left and right. However no yaw wobble. The same for landing. Holding the rudder just right and descending, the slightest twitch in rudder will cause wild yaw wobble. Real life references: This one has timestamp: Notice at 15:03, even wags has issues avoiding the strong yaw wobble as he reduces the rudder. The copter nose wobbles up to 5-10 degrees to the side. None of that appears to happen in real life. This makes flying the copter very irritating. Because as soon as you make changes to rudder input, there is strong yaw wobbling.

I was able to test the mi24 in the trial, it is great, in every way, except that the petrovich feels like another system on the aircraft, instead of a real pilot you interact with. Because one has to memorize different hotkeys to give commands. However the F-14 showed that a more realistic and intuitive command system is possible. So why is the Mi-24 AI command interface so primitive for lack fo a better term? A player should not have to memorize keyboard commands to tell petrovich what to do. Could ED clarify on what the plans for this are and whether they will add something to it. The AI code shown off by Belsimtek is probably great however the interface feels like the dark ages of flight sims, where everything was hotkeys to memorize.

The reflection on the glass covering flight instruments in the spitfire looks wrong. Playing on latest beta branch, however the bug has been like this for 2 years.

Started DCS, then plugged stick and trackir, then clicked rescan devices. Which deleted all my joystick settings. Is there a way to retrieve them?

That would be really nice to have. Currently using petrovich feels like flying in a cockpit without any labels near buttons.

At least contextual tooltips should be added (which then can be toggled off). Because it feels currently like an MFD UI screen. A player should not have to remember what "left petrovich short" does, when it is about telling a supposed human copilot what to do.

I was flying the Mi24 for 2 days and it is a great module. However Petrovich feels a bit underwhelming in the way it is presented. For example in Wags' video, he mentions to press "left short pretrovich" to switch to a different mode. It does not feel right that players would have to learn and memorize what each directional command does in the petrovich menu. It should have a contextual menu like the F14 has. Because if players would have to rely on memorizing the coolie hat commands, then it would feel like petrovich is just a computer onboard the ship, instead of simulating interacting with a human. It would be great if a contextual menu with clear text for all the options would be added, like the F14 has. DCS was the first flight sim that removed the abstraction barrier, by allowing to click buttons instead of memorizing keyboard keys. Petrovich relying on memorized keys is a step back into this old system which does not feel right.

Would it work if I duplicate the dcs install folder to the new drive, then uninstall, then reinstall on the new folder? Will the game preserve settings for joystick and graphics after a uninstall? Because I would like not to have to use 3rd party tools or registry

Is it possible to move a DCS install to a different SDD drive without reinstalling?

I think this is some of the best DCS flying I have seen, you really have masterful control on take-off. However, I think that the minimum proficiency required to take off in a 109 is too high. Specifically because it does not allow the pilot to catch mistakes in a take off roll and correct for them. And I think that is the buggy part. In the Dora and Spitfire, it is possible with some rudder and some stick to regain control of the direction. While with the BF109, as you can see in the video I posted, as soon as it drifts left a bit, full rudder and full stick can not correct it. Also the control surfaces appear to have less authority and require more speed for authority than the spitfire. (Spitfire gets rudder at 4km/h, BF at 28km/h)

Something is not matching correctly then: BF109 rudder: Spitfire rudder: The spitfire starts to get rudder authority at 4-5 km/h. The BF109 gets barely any rudder authority at 28 km/h.

I am sure this is a bug. The control surfaces and engine power of the dora, spitfire and BF are not that different. For BF Ingame maximum effort on rudder and aileron won't stop the drift, only the extra tap on the wheel brake. And I think that is not realistic, as the videos of real life take-offs don't show this amount of effort required.

It is a bit brighter ingame. I use 1.6 gamma. I think the video compression made it a bit dark. I think this is good advice however, the 109 does not have a tail wheel lock like this, it uses a lever. Also on the spitfire, I can control take-off by stick to the right and slight rudder. Even during slow roll the rudder has enough effect and the right stick cancels out left drift. The same on the Dora, stick + slight rudder works. Even if it slips, there is enough power to correct it. But on the BF109 it does not have enough power to correct.

On the sptfire and dora, it is possible to counter the engine causing the left drift. On the spitfire, I can control the take off via stick to the right and rudder (even during starting roll)

Would a BF-109K have more torque than a dora or spitfire? I can easily counter the torque in the dora and spitfire. However in the BF-109 full stick and rudder can't stop it from drifting off to the left.

The mission is a new mission with zero wind. The curves have no limits that prevent maximum deflection. I think it might be a bug what is happening ingame. I have recorded what happens with FULL stick right and FULL rudder right. At 1500 RPM. The plane barely can keep itself straight. And any slight offbalance will cause drift into the grass. (This video is not a take-off attempt, just wanted to show how much the engine power overcomes the aileron and rudder). Video of strong left drift: For comparison, in the DCS tutorial, Wags is gently rolling it up to 2500 RPM:

I don't think the hard difficulty of take-off in a BF109 K is realistic. When I first had issues with the spitfire, I looked at real life video of a take-off from cockpit. The pilot deflects the stick all the way to the right, and then accelerates with small amounts of rudder. I imitated that and from that point, I can now reliably take off in a spitfire straight and slow. However in the BF, trying to hold stick right has no effect. I even tried pre-flight +20 trim on the aileron, no effect. What ever I do, the engine torque will pull the plane to the left. And then the only way to survive a take-off is to play the "brake/rudder minigame" which has a very sharp cut-off point where the plane just slides to the left and the take off is ruined. What kills the take off is the duration of the very precarious brake/rudder minigame. Shortening that shortens the amount of time exposed to it. So I learned to completely max out throttle to get high speeds, then nose down and rudder control to take off. However that is not realistic. World War 2 footage and modern day recordings indicate that take-offs are slow rolls and you do not see the pilot desperately twirling all over the runway or even worse taking off in a very shot time with 100% throttle. Now the counter argument will likely be that ww2 pilots are elite warriors that were exceptional in their skills. However that is not true. The average 20 year old kid in ww2 had only a few hours of instructions and training before doing their first take off. They had no access to simulators. So if the planes were really that difficult to take-off, it would have caused far more accidents and the plane would not pass testing for use in the army. Because planes are built so an average or below average trained pilot can take off in it. Yes I know the BF109 was prone to take-off accidents, but it is nowhere at the rate in DCS. I can handle the spitfire and the Dora, they took some practice to learn, however the BF109 is a pure minigame of tapping brakes/rudder in just teh right amount with a very narrow tolerance for overshooting, which causes the plane to get drifted to the left. This feels more like a gamey minigame. It should not be the case that the only safe way to take off is to slam throttle 100% to get done with the acceleration phase as fast as possible to avoid the brake minigame. And I think the engine torque should not be able to overtake the plane when the pilot deflects stick full right + rudder full right. Real life videos There is none of the violent drift to the left or attempts to correct for it on these take-off videos Ingame, when the balance is not exactly where it should be, the torque takes over and the plane curves to the left, no amount of aileron and rudder can correct it. Official tutorial: 2500 RPM + gentle stick and rudder (does not work) The official DCS tutorial on take-off say you should accelerate to 2500 rpm and use "gentle" rudder and stick input to keep level. However the engine pushes the plane left at 1500 RPM and full right stick and full right rudder can not stop it.

A newsletter mentioned in June I think that they are working on CGI objects, radar systems. Does the ww2 asset pack contain them at this point? And are they functioning?

Is it currently possible to setup a periodic-matched realistic ground intercept scenario for spitfire? For example, player takes off then navigates to the mission waypoint and gets enemy contact location passed via radio? Which leads to a second question: How would a spitfire pilot find the enemy in a ww2 scenario? Fly to a waypoint and look for targets? And what would a normal pilot be able to detect at what distance? When playing without labels?