cfrag

Thank you so much - and happy new year!

Dear @Flappie, it seems that more than a year down the line, this issue still is present. Do you have any idea if this is still being looked at? Please see below mission that can re-produce the issue at will: go to communications and turn smoke on. As soon as you descend below the altitude that you turned it on, smoke turns off; when you ascend above the altitude, it turns on again. The smoke is ON.miz

Version 2.20 -- 20241231 (user-controlled smoke trails) Sliding in on the final day of 2024, here's Mariana's Proving Grounds with a fun little addition: user controlled smoke trails. Now any pilot can try their hand at writing in the sky in any plane that they like (and own). Have a "nice slide into 2025" as we say in German: "Guten Rutsch!" Cheers and enjoy, -ch

I can't open your mission because it contains mods. That being said, from the screenshots that you kindly included you seem to be ignoring the warnings at the beginning of the mission where radioMenu and scribe both complain that they cannot connect (attach) to a radioMainMenu zone called "Mission Main Menu" Please verify that the Trigger Zone "Mission Main Menu" has an attribute "radioMainMenu"

I believe the opposite to be true: those with a deeper understanding of the current state of AI know the futility of asking a vector-based, large data basin based algorithm to even understand the question. Currently, our best AI efforts cannot understand the question, so their answers are deterministic linear results -- all they can do is look for troughs in the first derivative of the landscape defined by the question set applied to the learned data model. It works, but it can't generate new insights, it can't yet infer knowledge. Yes, people with little knowledge in the field don't know that, and they may even believe that newer AI algorithms like LLM-based chat bots do understand their questions. That's merely an unfortunate combination of good marketing, and a hefty dose of Dunning-Kruger. They don't. At some point in the future, AI surely can make that leap. It hasn't yet.

As always, thank you for chiming in, BN! I (and likely many who frequent this forum) do not really know if "it" is in progress. We do not know what progress, if any, was made in the past 5 years on "it". What many may recall is that you and your kind colleagues have - on occasion - asserted (without elaboration) that you are working on something that you at ED call "dynamic campaign". We have no way of knowing nor guessing what that comprises of: scope, maturity, preconditions, timeline, goals. Absent any guidance I (and probably others) that have, I assume "it" to be something similar to something that exists in a different title that focuses on an iconic fighter aircraft that shall not be named here. Agreed. How could we if we don't know what the scope of "this project" is? Come to think of it, it seems that neither have you (ED) correctly appreciated the complexity, or we wouldn't have NL be on the record that it "wouldn't take 5 years" (meaning: NL thought it would take LESS than 5 years to initial release) - more than 5 years ago. This is not to badmouth you, NL or any of your colleagues. This kind of misjudgments happen all the time in project management (I headed a project that was 3 years late on an initial 1 year timeline). I merely think it highly inopportune to remark how little we, your trusting customers, know -- when all that we can go on is your (ED's) communication on this subject, which, I think, has had a lot of room for improvement. May I suggest that ED improve on that? I'm not looking for particulars, but a roadmap that identifies the major milestones along the way would help a lot. For example, it seems prudent for me to guess that some milestones along the way to a DC are: 1) better ATC, 2) (unless ED is going the "Liberation Campaign" way of merely saving mission results) save/reload mission, 3) better unit AI (ground, naval, air), 4) improved cargo/supplies handling, 5) 'theater-commanding AI'. Some of these milestones could even arrive separately, and if we know how these pieces fit together, we could not only have a better way to gauge progress, we could cheer you on your way to completion. Right now, just like you stated, we don't know, and we do not know how complex the project is. Because nobody who is in the know has ever told us. Understood. Wilco. After some 10 years I hope that you understand and appreciate just how patient some of already are. And (like I) still support ED in their endeavor to bring something vaguely resembling what people dream of when I hear the words "dynamic campaign". I often wish that we had something more concrete to go by. Saying "be patient" is fine, and after a decade, be advised that it also corrodes trust. So, here's to hoping that you (ED) can share some eagerly awaited details and help restore faith in the upcoming dynamic campaign - whatever that may be.

Version 1.80 - 20241230 New player option: fog on demand All Changes Code hardening against DCS bugs (dec 2024) Fog on demand via communications Title card on map Enjoy, -ch

Not to worry. DML comes with some brief documentation and tutorials. All that pulser, rnd and cloner stuff is basic DML

Thank you for reporting back. I've now added an optional 'local' attribute to the fog zone that automatically adds the ground elevation at the zone's center to thickness to make the fog zone more easy to use. It'll be part of the next update.

I don’t have access to my computer for the rest of today, so I didn’t download the miz and neither have I taken a look at it. I have the suspicion, though, that the fog‘s thickness attribute is tripping you up. Thickness defines the upper limit altitude (in meters) that the fog reaches — in MSL!!! IIRC, most of the airfields in NTTR are much higher than the thickness given in the demo, so perhaps you can look up the altitude of the airfield you want covered in fog in meters, and add 500, and enter that value to all the thickness attributes. Does that resolve the issue?

personally, I believe that the risk is very small, provided that you only download missions from ED's user files. DCS is a small target as vector for malware authors, but you should not become complacent, so be sure to only get your missions from reputable places. I use copy/paste on the original, so I have a backup and revert by delete/renaming.

The miz spawns new aircraft every 600-700 seconds (= 10 - 11.5 minutes), as per requirements Of course. The pulser (inside trigger zone "Bogey randomizer") gives the command for a new spawn cycle, the 'zeroPulse' attribute controls if there is a pulse at mission start. it defaults to "yes", so add an attribute, call it "zeroPulse" and set the value to "no" to wait 10-11 mins for the first spawn. The pulser's "time" attribute (currently set 600-700) controls the time between spawn cycles, now set to 600 to 700 (randomized) seconds. Yes, but since that wasn't in the requirements, it would require some changes to the miz Perhaps have a look at the "CESAR in Caucasus" mission on ED's user files. It may give you some ideas.

While I love the idea of having both planes in DCS, I think that it would be good to remember that the idea of trainer aircraft does not translate well into flight-simming. In sim world, there are no downsides attached to training for a Hornet in a Hornet. You crash, you re-start, no loss. Now, for enthusiasts like me, both aircraft would be insta-purchases, even the Tweet, although I'll likely fly it alone, just for myself - probably just because of the side-by-side cockpit.

Well, I fully agree, and I do not understand why ED, owning the entire User Files space, do not integrate mission discovery into DCS, and automatically update any content that you have downloaded when it is updated. Integration could then go one step further and also integrate mission upload to user files into Mission Editor, making that part so much less painful and better. Here's to hoping,

Hmmm. Here's some unsolicited advice: don't get your stock advice from your hairdresser, and don't ask a party novelty for strategic software development insight. I do realize that Betteridge's law of headlines ("if it ends and a question mark, the answer is 'no'") also applies to most forum posts, but still... ChatGPT's answers are - as expected - a low-effort assemblage of truisms and buzzwords, arranged to sound like it affirms your question (it's a "yes"-bot, designed to make you you feel good). I won't go into details because a good deal of me believes that you know all this and are simply trolling.

Yes, and it's not particularly challenging to do so - although it does requires some scripting, and it's easily is covered by most of the available scripting frameworks. The reason why this subject doesn't come up often is a different one: A fully randomized mission as you describe isn't particularly interesting for players, as it places the element of random as its center feature, not strategy. Below, I've thrown together a mission that should match your requirements. Total building time (using a tool called "DML", but any other should do the trick) was some 15 minutes. And yeah, it gets boring fast. That being said, you could use the principles of that mission to add the element of randomization into your more interesting missions. Max Random.miz

Unfortunately, the official documentation for DCS mission scripting is next to non-existent, out of date, and misleading (at best). Hoggit is the best source of information available wrt mission scripting, and we owe @Grimes et al who maintain that site out of the good of their heart an immense debt of gratitude (THANK YOU!). And shame on ED for their continued one-finger salute to the entire mission creation community.

After a full repair of DCS (a rather lengthy process due to the multiple hundreds of gigabytes involved), Win's AV spoke up again, declaring a (probably false positive) null Now, after decades in this business, I have learned to not take warnings like this lightly. Mine is now a zero tolerance policy towards potential malware, and I will not whitelist folders, especially if they contain downloaded content over which I have no control. It's a pity that I lose my F4 for the time being, and I'm hoping that the kind folk at HB, whom I know to deliver stellar work, liaise with with the many AV vendors to have this issue resolved. And yes, my peace of mind is worth the wait - my sincere thanks to HB for making the transition period as short as possible.

Version 1.82 -- chance of fog Changes each time that you start the mission, there is a chance of fog with visibility ranging from 2.5 to 3.5 km Enjoy, and "Guten Rutsch" -ch

Yeah. Like a chainsaw can be used to open beer bottles - one way or the other. Neither elegant, nor efficient, nor very useful. Not really usable, but use-able to a certain extend. "Functional Design" is something that may have to be rediscovered for ME realm. Here's to hoping.

I just recovered from my encounter with the "multi-object selection tool" to trust myself enough to not use too colorful language. In a nutshell: I find it to be really, really bad interface-wise, with marginal added value for real-life mission creation. A squandered opportunity with obvious (but buried) potential. It's as if some alien, with little human GUI experience, and who had never used an object oriented editor, heard about "band selection", and went on to implement something from what little they understood. Whoever implemented what they thought they understood from the requirements does not, so it seems, regularly create missions. Otherwise, I think that tool would work much, much differently. Let's begin with the "Why": Why are mission creators looking for band selection? To quickly select multiple objects, and apply a change to that selection. What did we get? Some modal (impedes workflow) selection thingy, with overly complex handling, non-standard, difficult and unintuitive de-/selection schemes (plural!): something that is ill suited to quickly perform the most common tasks. To engage band selection, you have to activate band selection! For crying out loud, why modality, why the need to activate 'band selection mode'? Look at PowerPoint, any RTS, heck look at the icon display in windows Explorer to see how this most basic interface metaphor works! Band selection activates and deactivates automatically, driven by context -- it is not modal. This isn't 1990 any more. People know how to use a GUI, and they expect standard behavior. Implementing against expectation is sure to create a negative experience, and create worse results. Adding and removing objects to/from the selection is positively alien, convoluted, unpredictable (!) and breaks your workflow (you have to de-/activate more strange modes). Whatever happened to simple, universally-known "shift-clicking" to add/remove from a selection??? Calling this design "Amateurish" would IMHO be unkind to Amateurs. Worse: what is one of the most common use case for multi-object select during real-world mission creation? Change the coalition of the selection. Can we do that? No. That option does not exist. How about a base-name change (like it already happens automatically with copy/paste)? No again. How about moving the selection? Yes, but you first have to engage move mode (another mode within a mode), or press a modifier key. Look at established practice in any object editor to see how it is done, and what everyone expects. And then we have a non-standard, complex group rotation around a new, difficult to understand interface element "anchor" that has little to no additional value. When you select multiple objects, it would be much better to go the established way: draw an outline frame, and rotate around the (marked) center. That's all we need, and it's orders of magnitude easier to use. With introduction of this silly anchor metaphor, I also note that this is yet another UX-breaking non-standard way to rotate objects in ME, after that line art silliness from last year. You did know that you can interactively rotate some line art, right? Not all, and it's just almost non-discoverable, and completely non-standard, and seldom works the way that you expect. Yeah, some, but not all line art in ME switches to rotation mode (instead of resize/reposition) on every other click into the object. Not on the first click, and not the third, but on second, fourth, sixth, ... click. Really, really bad design, yes. IMHO, this entire multi-select thing has complete non-sense UX, it goes against any and all UX best practices published in the last two decades, violates most norms, and it makes ME more difficult to use, not better. Please, please, please let someone with real UX expertise review (better: design) ME interface-related elements before publishing them. And, yes, I'm happy to provide deeper feedback- I wish the kind folk at ED would ask people who have experience in UX design, or showcase their designs before they go live with them. This kind of feedback is trivial to obtain, and I would doubt that the current implementation would have passed muster even for first-year interface design students. And yes, I believe the need for better UX talent at ED is becoming urgent. The MP join dialogs are already really bad UI design, the Hook's cargo dialog abysmal, and now this....? A really bad trend. Please, a quality product like DCS should also have a quality experience to match.

Actually that's phenomenal! That AI soldier is squaring the circle! Heureka!

Same here. Windows has flagged a file in F4 as a Trojan, authorization is blocked.

This thread (subject "niche", as pertaining to market segment size) talks about popularity. If you state as fact something wildly inaccurate ("big dog in town"), expect to get called on it. If you had cached that in "I feel that" or "IMHO best in xyz", I wouldn't have objected. DCS is a tiny niche product, and I would love if - and invest myself to help - if that changed. Ah. Please be advised that on his 5th birthday, I took my godson with me in a Cherokee and handed him the controls. Yes, 5-years old can fly planes. Just not land. Flying aircraft is not difficult. Being good, precise and predictable is. Flying an exact 2 minute turn without losing or gaining more than 10 ft of alt is. Any kid can fly a plane, so what is your point? Goodness, where to start? How about being able to see when your friends are online in a miz and join them so we don't have to use Discord Invite friends to your server should you host a miz when both players own the same plane, allow one to assume controls and the other to watch and switch at will. This would allow incredible instructor/student sessions being able to pre-brief with your friends in-game using a common, annotatable map and later (during mission) have that map available in cockpit or F10 map view Arrange your and your friend's waypoints during briefing and have them download automatically into your aircraft's nav computer (if it has one), and have them displayed on the F10 map being able to choose your aircraft, position and loadout yourself instead of having only pre-arranged slots (this is slowly changing with the new dynamic spawn, so good!) being able to discover missions (i.e. browse them, and instantly download and play them) from ED's user files, including MP. automatically keep discovered content current (update them automatically should an update to a miz, livery or mod become available on ED's user files) be able to use any livery - and if not installed, have them download (even temporarily) to your computer for the duration of the game when a mission requires mods that you don't use (e.g. CAM), have them installed (and removed thereafter) for the mission on-the fly. This is also a great business-opportunity for ED to sell more packs like WWII (I'd love to see an "Insurgent asset pack" and "rescue asset pack" as well as "airfield asset pack" be able to randomly change missions on your server every n hours (I had to write a 350 line server script for this basic function) Change mission start time and weather on the fly for the server Have weather (and fog) be local -- so we can have light rain and 1000m vis fog in Haifa where we depart, while weather is CAVOK in Amman where the targets are (single and MP) Save a co-op mission and continue it later Look at a MP re-play of a mission, and jump in at any time (yes, multiplayer! Take over any plane that you own, and have the rest behave 'from file'). Have some real ATC (APR, TWR, GND). I want airfields to be active with AI planes, and then to be able to declare an emergency while inbound and have ATC clear a path for me, while deploying rescue vehicles on the ground. For the love of god, invest some resources into the "Communications" atrocity (number-driven menu) that was old in 1990's, and please, please, harmonize the way you talk to your AI (currently each aircraft does their own: Tomcat, Phantom, Apache, Hind, Kiowa - nothing is standardized) and integrate this with MP. When you are at an unfamiliar airfield, be able to request a progressive from GND/TWR, and (icing on the cake) superimpose symbols on the taxiways (maybe like it's now done in supercarrier) so you know where to go. Be able to use helper gates in MP, turn them on and off at will Look at the Hook's cargo UX and try not to cry. And on, and on. This isn't difficult to see. DCS's online experience is IMHO rock bottom. And it's much worse in single-player (note that I did not rag on ME). My point is that DCS's user experience (everything BUT the actual flying) needs a serious touch-up. To keep neophyte players interested so they stay and become long-time players. My word, please add an "IMHO" here and there to indicate that you are not asserting facts. DCS can be downloaded by anyone, and if that is accessible to you, fine. Else I strongly urge you to peruse a book on Human Interface Guidelines. DCS is one of the least accessible software titles from an UX perspective that I know. When I mean "accessible" I mean the amount of work and learning required to discover and do things that are elementary and have been standardized long ago. DCS's is terrible in this regard. For an extra frosting of frustration, enter Mission editor, place a couple of blue scenery objects, and then band-select them to change their affiliation to red. UX? Nowhere to be seen. That's YT's user engagement algorithm for you. You watch videos with DCS content, so you get served up more of the same, because the algorithm thinks that you like them, and YT monetizes that way. It does not mean that DCS content is spiking. It just means that YT knows you like DCS content and sells ads with it. My YT page is filled with vids on vintage car repairs. That doesn't mean the Jag E-Type is making a comeback. The interface designer's, clear and simple. ED want to sell aircraft, so they must make the experience good. You seem to mistake complex/complicated for sophistication. DCS is complex, yes. A good interface designer makes it accessible. A new customer in DCS (of any age) should be led through multiple, elegant stages: first set up your joystick/gear (oh, another godawful UX catastrophe - why can't I have good default settings or import them from one plane to another - inside the interface?), then ask or explain that the plane can be optionally hot-started, and then guide a new player through the first steps. DCS's way is near acrimonious. It should be fun. My apologies for being so unclear. To me it's all about good interface design. DCS's UX IMHO is terrible and should be improved to make your time in the game less a fight, and more of a friendly expedition. Taking off and landing a plane is difficult enough. Why make everything else around it unnecessarily difficult? And that, my friend, ends this exchange of ideas for us. You and I come from very, very different viewpoints, and I won't engage in this discussion over "teaching vs. the hard and manly school of knocks" because everything there has been said. I thank you for your input, and I do see that I will need to improve my communication skills. My point is not to make DCS an arcade, I want the game to become more accessible. There is a big difference, and I seem to be unable to convey this. All the best, -ch

Currently this is not supported in DCS, not even with scripting. Also (nitpick), not all aircraft are equipped with RWR.