cfrag

I disagree. [many good points removed] More simply put: any savvy dealer will give you the first fix for free.

Hmmm. Compliance wise, there is no difference between a civilian-dying and a soldier-dying animation. Humans dying may impose some age restrictions for games in some countries, and DCS is already including humans dying, so that bridge is crossed. No regulator would impose a different age restriction for a game that features killing animations for objects that wear jeans versus those that wear green or 'insurgent' uniforms. It usually is the only issue in for-profit games, and DCS is a for-profit business. I surely hope so. We already have some civ objects (cars and structures), just no civ humans. The resulting emptiness in built-up areas to me indeed is distracting. Then again, to add enough people to make a city look convincing can be a terrifyingly complex task. I'm looking at Cyberpunk 77, and even that stellar game's streets seem a bit 'empty' to me. It'll be a challenge, yes, and I hope that soon ED deign to include a few civ human objects to test the waters and allow mission creators to use them in creative ways to improve ambience and immersion.

My apologies for being obscure. Although there may be some performance hit, I do not think that this is what is keeping ED from including them. IMHO it is the financial investment into creating these. Which I think is really sad, as I agree it could make missions so much more lifelike.

You must be new here (only 20 years, young whippersnapper!) ED moves in geological timelines. Let's hope for an update (i.e. concepts of plans) at the DCS centennial celebration.

I think the entire on-line experience in DCS exhibits a decidedly mySpace-esque mid 1990's vibe that is unbecoming to a vaguely modern game. Not only would it be good to see friends if/when they are online, join their missions when they host, and chat with them directly. ED are sitting on a treasure trove of missions in their User Files, the place where contributors upload their missions. I believe DCS's experience could be made so much better if ED integrated that into DCS, allow players to discover missions for their planes and directly download (and update once downloaded) them. And ED should (IMHO) go one step further and integrate upload to User Files into mission editor. As it is right now, DCS's online UX is one of things that I try to skip when I rave about the game. IMHO, it's an embarrassment.

One does not necessarily follow the other. Creating models costs money: you need a skeleton, animate it, synch the animation to world movement, usually also implement some (performance costly) inverse kinematics, and then skin it with usually more than one skin. Since investing into the DCS core sells very few additional models, ED does it very, very sparingly. So it's not that ED want to avoid some 'controversial' content created by an ego-obsessed a&&hole looking for clicks, I believe they merely are frugal to a fault. I'd LOVE to see some civ skins for some of the (mil) "Personnel" static objects. Just give them some jeans, a civ jacket (similar to the air show crowd object), and I'd be happy. Just think how much better a civ medevac mission can be made if we didn't have to place that friggin G4 soldier and could instead replace it with a 'civ dude'.

That is your assertion. Considering that some 90% of DCS players do not play multiplayer (as evidenced by ED), and that for this to work you must set up some common time for neophytes to link up with you, and you must be able to teach flying in an interesting way, that tiny 10% sliver shrinks down to a (I assert, no hard numbers available) less than 1%. From personal experience I can tell you that in my group, there was no interest in flying a trainer, much less with me . That is merely incidental evidence, agreed. Can you put a number on "many", and more importantly, can you see a way how that would dramatically increase (in actual numbers please) sales of DCS modules? ED have the numbers on trainer modules sold. As a business they did not, in the past 10 years move on this, so I daresay that that business case (creating a free trainer for all) is not sufficiently attractive. Please explain. Which entry barrier, and what does "dramatically" mean in concrete terms? IMHO, you replace one problem with another, more complex one: Instead of trial and error by trying it yourself, you now need to find a good trainer. Because, lets be honest, I'd wager that (please do not take offense) 99.9% of the DCS community aren't qualified to teach flying. I certainly am not, and I am certified to fly. So if you want to learn how to bank'n'yank a trainer from my godson who taught himself by trial and error, sure, go ahead. How that makes it a better experience I do not have the faintest idea. I'm almost certain, though, that it won't lower any barriers. While that may be some people's sentiment, to me that seems almost wilful misrepresentation of what was written here to almost a straight-out lie. The sentiment is that it would be welcome, but the concept of a trainer simply isn't practical in a game where there are no disadvantages attached to train on the 'real' plane instead of using a trainer first. Put differently, the prevailing sentiment is that trainers in DCS, do not provide a sufficient advantage. I won't directly call BS on this, coincidental evidence does exist. Here's a thought: get yourself a trainer (Albatross, C-101 or MB, I personally think that the C-101 is best suited, the MB is much too pretty), and have your friend(s) check out the 101 on a 14 day trial. Schedule 2 hour sessions with them every other day during those two weeks, maybe more. Tip: make sure that you have a syllabus ready before they join, maybe talk them through the lessons before you join. When complete, bring your experience here, because that is tangible, worthwhile feedback that can help improve the experience for neophyte DCS users (because, I'm sure everyone agrees that that experience sucks big hairy ones). It may also help to illustrate many other DCS-specific shortcomings in the MP arena (DCS's online experience IMHO is terrible) That is because DCS' main draw is that it allows people to fly overbearing, overpowered, threatening beast of war, armed to the teeth. Few people come to DCS to fly timid ducks. People fly DCS to blow stuff up. There are other flight sims that cover the non-threating space to a T, with much better support for procedures and, e.g. ATC than DCS. If you are here, it's because you want to place fuzed ordnance on someone's ass. I assert that >99% of all DCS players come to DCS because of planes like the Eagle, Tomcat or Hornet, maybe Apache. None of those are non-threating planes, and since you can use those as trainers as well, I think your proposal is exceedingly weak. I think that only a dwindling minority would be interested in flying those non-threatening planes, even if they were free. TBH, it's one of the biggest complaints I hear about the (free) Su-25T: it doesn't pack a large enough punch. While control binding is indeed a sorely bad point in DCS, I am not sure how a trainer could solve this. Doesn't the DCS neophyte have to bind all controls before they join their trainer online? Ahem. How do you get to join your instructor's game (or ad-hoc host your own) without understanding the interface? More to the point: how does a trainer solve this? We all know that this is entirely possible, from millions of players who have successfully done this alone, in other flights sims over the past decades. If memory servers right, the Wright Brothers managed this IRL, so let's not pretend that this a real barrier. Also, let's not kid ourselves: you can't shoot a correct precision approach with ATC in DCS even if you know how, and most players don't. That does not prevent anyone from picking up the bits that are important to do this, and they use their own methods of locating, and approaching, a VORTAC or NDB. This, btw, will also what they will teach their students which immediately brings up the question: who and what controls the quality of what is being taught with trainers? If the trainers and syllabus are as bad as the tutorials, I think it would be better if we skip trainers altogether, because they would infect the students with bad habits that need to be unlearned first. Please be more specific about those psychological or social barriers, and how a trainer could help to break those down. I think that enumerating those barriers - independently if a trainer would indeed lower them - will help to make DCS a better product. I agree that there are many barriers to enjoy playing DCS; that many of them indeed make DCS inaccessible (terrible UI, worse UX, unnecessary complexity, you-gotta-be-kidding-me bad tutorials) to many a potential player. Identifying them can be the first step in removing them - the second step could be identifying ways to overcome those barriers (e.g. by adding a trainer); so let's take these one step at the time.

Perhaps you can isolate the issue into a simple miz: add only the required modules, and use radioMenu to generate the CSAR flag event. If the issue continues to appear on a dedi, we can try and look into this deeper. Else, if the mission isn't too bit, and you remove all mods, I could have a look if you want me to.

Yes, that line merely ensures that all required modules for csarManager have loaded, and csarManager will bitterly complain if not: if not dcsCommon.libCheck("cfx CSAR", csarManager.requiredLibs) then trigger.action.outText("cf/x CSAR aborted: missing libraries", 30) return false end That block is complete.

Ah, the NF-2 Lights On "flood candles" -- let's hope that the LUV's get fixed soon. Massun's objects are fantastic, and their emissive lights is nowhere near where I need them for the purpose of directing night flights. Thank you for the hint, @razo+r, much appreciated.

I'm sure that I'm late to this party - I just started a night miz that I wrote some time ago. In it, I'm using the LUV Tigr to provide active light sources at a make-shift FARP to land helicopters. Running the miz today, the Tigr's lights are gone, everything's dark, only some passive (non-emissive) lights are present. What did I do wrong?

A really nice utility. Be sure that you amend this by e.g. patching coalition.addGroup() to include all new, dynamically spawned units if your mission supports dynamic spawns, else the new units will not be included in getByID.

Version 2.4.9 - 20250508 - Update Another DCS patch, another hot mess. Somehow, the kind people at ED managed to FU a longstanding method that chugged along nicely for a decade, and broke with the last release. As I spent time to conduct more testing, it seems to mostly affect single-player, with at least local hosted missions being in the clear, and dedicated server hopefully also being unaffected (I'm still running tests on that, but testing dedicated server can be tricky). Bug Description: DCS currently cannot correctly ascertain the name of the mission that is running. The bug makes DCS always return "tempMission" as the name of the running mission. I've reported this bug to ED. Upshot: the bug affects at least the 'persistence' module in single-player, and if you are using persistence with SP currently, you MUST use the "saveDir" and "saveFileName" attributes. If you do not, persistence will not fail in SP, but it will silently write all information into a folder named "tempMission (data)" and inside that foldeer a file called "tempMission Data.txt", potentially overwriting another mission's data that wrote to this folder because it, too, believes that its name is "tempMission". I've spent a lot of time updating some of my more popular missions on UserFiles to work around the bug, yet, judging from my inbox, a lot of damage is already done (meaning: some save games got overwritten). The updated version help avoid this happening in the future, and may allow some servers to revert to an older version that was saved before the bug hit. Other than that, there was very little time to work on DML. All changes: Changes Documentation Manual - general persistence note and how persistence relates to "save state" QuickRef Demos - CSAR of Georgia: update Modules - airtank 1.0.3 - new 'chatty' attribute - CSAR Manager 4.5.2 - remove smoke when mission times out - FARP Zones 2.4.1 - better zone redaw on start-up - Reaper 1.3.2 - corrected typo in code (bug) - SSBClient 5.0.1 - reduced verbosity - valet 2.0.0 - new 'groundonly' attribute - migration to dmlZones Enjoy, -ch

Watch out for the pitchforks and torches. That's how my squad tells me that they aren't amused when I accidentally zero their scores.

Yes. We all hope

It's a callback, as I arranged with @Special K. Since it's nothing that has an open API, there is no documentation.

Oh, I think the concept is relevant all right. I fly them, they are fantastic modules, and I personally love the 'steam gauges' over glass. Trainers simply aren't popular in DCS because outside of enthusiasts, they have no purpose. Most people want to blow stuff up, and trainers are boring compared to fighters; directly training on a fighter poses no downsides in a game. Also, trainers - when used as trainers - always require two people: a trainer and a student, i.e. it is a multiplayer session. The DCS population is some 90% single-player, and anyone who has arranged an occasional MP DCS session with a new player knows how user-hostile, unintuitive and plain bad the MP UX for that game is. A definite turn-off. So, you arrange a meeting with a friend to teach you some flying skills, and you synchronize your quality time, maybe 2 hours. That can be fun; however, it is often not a stellar experience, and if your instructor doesn't know their stuff, or their syllabus conflicts with your own playing expectations, or the (prepared) mission doesn't work, it is going to be a crap experience. So I assert (without proof) that some 9 times out of 10, trainers are a great concept, and they only translate to a fine experience for that last 10 percent. So, yeah, I own them all and love them. And I'm very, very alone in my group. Trying to combat a G3 or G4 plane in a trainer is absurd, even if you go up against a neophyte, so on most servers, they don't even have slots. So - great concept, very little purpose, and still fun (to me).

ED entirely do know that they are selling a game: Since ED also sell a commercial, military version (to defence forces around the world) of DCS, this should not come as a surprise. That software isn't a game, and the difference is easy to see: you get paid for operating it. But I think I know what you mean: there are people who believe DCS to be a more 'serious' game than others, and for those who do believe that they are more 'seriously playing a game' than others, selling a trainer aircraft may be a winning proposal to those people. For entertainment DCS is just fine, and can indeed be anything to anybody. Trainers will only interest a small subset, and I think of them as edge cases (even though I own all, love them, and fly them). In my group, I'm the only one flying them, the odd one out. And I do not regard myself as a realism-obsessed rivet-counter. I'm just odd .

Version 20250506 (workaround for show-stopping DCS bug, fog, some QoL) Changes in detail - hardening against multiple DCS bugs - work-around against show-stopping DCS bug - scribe update (better time tracking) - code base update - fog, fog menu And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION.

One big fly in the ointment is that trainer aircraft do not translate to computer games, and there is no real need, nor overwhelming desire. Trainer aircraft are something for enthusiasts like me (I own each and every trainer aircraft in DCS, love them all). No average player wants to sit through boring lessons, performaing 2 minute turns. They want to blow stuff up, and fly the mighty fighters of Maverick et al, not a dinky trainer that can barely fight. I've tried with some friends, even springing for the trainer aircraft. Result: they never fly the trainer even though it was free (to them), and they learned flying with the (much cheaper) FC Eagle. There are no downsides in games to start with the real deal. Trainers simply aren't "sexy" enough. So even if ED invested the required funds (significant investment), I think it will be a dud. What I would like to see is if ED invested in tech that allows two people to fly the same plane (provided they both own it), so an expert can sit with a tyro, and talk them through or even set up the plane and they then can hand off to each other. But an actual trainer? With apologies for the cheap pun: won't fly.

I'm not sure what you mean by Dynamic Spawns. Dynamic PLAYER spawns, or the units that are spawned by spawnZones or cloners? When it comes to player spawns, that is all DCS's domain and can'f be controlled by DML. Cloners and Spawn Zones provide mission designers with methods to control spawn names. Spawn Zones use a simple 'baseName' attribute and append a unique count. Cloners provide an advanced nameScheme attribute that supports wildcards and more options than you can shake an alphabet at. Both (spawner and cloner naming) should be described in the docs.

I strongly suspect that these are not related. The bug that is discussed in that thread is that DCS.getMissionName in single-player erroneously returns the name "tempMission" instead of the correct mission file name. It does not mean that DCS is accessing a temp folder, just that the name of the mission is incorrect. That bug does not implicate any locations on your storage.

Version 2025050 (removes show-stopping DCS bug, adds more quality of life features) Changes in detail: - hardening against show-stopping DCS bug - better smoke handling for CSAR - small cosmetic upgrades to all helicopters - map shows cities slightly better - fog control And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION.

Some more detail: it seems that this bug affects single player, while at least ad-hoc mp seems to work (not exhaustively tested).

Version 1.75 - MANDATORY UPDATE, works around show-stopping DCS bug Another DCS release, another bad (show-stopping) bug to work around. v1.75 Changes • worked around a show-stopping DCS bug in persistence • improvements to CSAR mission • slight improvements to reaper drones • better airfield logic integration • PlayerScore integration with SpecialK's server mods • Airdrop ability for helo troops And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION.