Smashy

Thanks for sharing a link to this. Great interview! My favorite quotes from PilotMi8: "The good thing about simulators is that you can experiment limits of aircraft which pilots can’t, due to constraints of equipment, regulations and the desire to live." Q: What will the team work on after the Mi-24 releases? A: After the Mi-24 is out, we’ll work on the Mi-24. The amount of bugs 1000 users find instead of 10 is obviously going to be higher, so we’ll be working on that for the foreseeable future. Q: How does the Apache compare to the Mi-24? A: Why do you people care so much about the Apache? It’s too early to get a feel for it anyway, whenever there is one we’ll talk. (Friendly rivalry at ED. Love it!)

I've been using your Hornet kneeboard pages for awhile now and have found them beautifully formatted and crammed with useful information. Thanks for putting these together. I really like how information is organized on the various pages. I have ne question regarding the PDF format after doing a quick search for info. Does the PDF format require something like "Kneeboard Builder" to use in-game? Or can they be used as-is? Thanks again for creating these!

Thanks for the update, Badger! For those interested, here it is.

At the end of the day and whatever you call it, DCS is a game. It's entertainment software and I'm all for having options that maximize the fun for the widest possible audience. It's a timely topic for me because I just started focusing on in-flight refueling and if you asked me 3 weeks ago if I'd ever be able to do it, I would've said it's impossible. But I'm pretty stubborn and am the type that finds such challenges "fun" so after a couple of weeks of focused practice, I'm finally able to perform air-to-air refueling. I'm not good at it yet, but I can top off a 60% internal fuel load with 2-3 attempts (on my best days). Would I use an easy-AAR option? Probably not, but that's just me. However, I can totally understand how such an option would be great for someone else who isn't as fortunate as I am when it comes to free time or is simply not interested in learning this one thing in a game that has a thousand other things that might offer more entertainment.

I'm not so lucky. After 2 weeks or so of trying, I'm only now starting to get the hang of it. I do seem to be making progress - quicker plug-ins and staying on the hose longer. I still have a way to go to consider myself "good" at it.

Speaking of crowning achievements... This was a pretty big deal for me

All of a sudden, I recently started getting similar crashes/hangs. While I did notice similar types of error messages in the crash logs the crashes weren't as consistent in terms of time before failure. While investigating, I eventually found a large number of "The IO Operation At Logical Block Address for Disk was Retried" in the system event logs. Up until I found that, I did a bunch of troubleshooting that involved video card driver updates, memory tests, disk tests, reseating DIMMs, moving my game install to another drive, swapping SATA/power cables. The last 2 actions had positive results so I focused on that. I decided I had a bad drive, bad cables or bad onboard SATA controller. After reseating all cables, I couldn't reproduce the crash. Oh well, it looks like it's fixed for now. I'm just posting this in case anyone has similar crashes - check the event log and go from there. Also my crash logs also contained errors like this: # -------------- 20210304-173533 -------------- DCS/2.5.6.61527 (x86_64; Windows NT 10.0.19041) G:\DCS World.beta\bin\edCore.dll # C0000006 IN_PAGE_ERROR at C467BB5A 00:00000000 SymInit: Symbol-SearchPath: '.;G:\DCS World.beta;G:\DCS World.beta\bin;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32;SRV*C:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols;', symOptions: 530, UserName: 'Smashy' OS-Version: 10.0.19041 () 0x100-0x1 tl;dr - I suspect my crashes/hangs were caused by bad SATA and/or drive power connections. Reseating all cables to the SSD where DCS was installed seemed to fix things for me.

The effort->reward cycle with DCS makes it such a great experience and keeps me going. The Hornet module is especially brilliant in this regard, I think. Yeah, Usenet was the Wild West. Unmoderated flame wars, LOL!

Great "how it started, how it's going" screenshots, @wilbur81! I played Hornet 3.0 and Hornet Korea for countless hours in the past and it's one of my favorite all-time games. I also had Jane's F/A-18 but am embarrassed to say that I was too intimidated by the level of detail presented to get very far with that one. Call it being younger, impatient and lazy. . That's all changed and I'm really enjoying the complexity and challenges of the DCS Hornet module. Of course, now there's so many readily available resources to help overcome the steep learning curve. Before, it seemed the majority of my information came from documentation that shipped with the games and chatting about sims with others on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim. It's unbelievable how far PC sims have come and I feel fortunate that such a high quality product exists in such a specialized and small market. To the entire ED/DCS team, thank you for the great work. You keep shipping these incredible modules, I'll keep buying them. The passion and excitement of the development team and the community in general is infectious.

I just finished listening to the F-14 episode and really enjoyed all three parts. I especially enjoyed getting a glimpse into how the sausage is made with the Heatblur interview. Hearing the team members speak really hammers home the extreme complexity of the F-14 module and how it is such a labor of love for these guys. I mean, they're not doing it for the money and certainly not for the armchair pilot critiques from these forums :). One especially interesting thing I learned about the team was the varied backgrounds of each member. PhD in artificial intelligence, EEs, and theater/stage director in the case of Alex (IronMike?). Their enthusiasm and dedication to creating the best product possible is clearly evident. I heard the same kind of pride and excitement in Matt Wagner's voice in his appearance on the Fighter Pilot Podcast. I remember seeing the same kind of developer and community excitement with Flanker 1.x/2.x, Falcon 4.0, Jane's, et al. Unfortunately all the excitement in the world couldn't save the hardcore combat flight sim from going virtually extinct. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

The reformatted tables look great! Thanks for doing this. I've used this post as a reference during the free-to-play events to install/uninstall modules en masse from the command line. It's so much quicker and easier than the in-game module manager.

Odd. Fighterstick/Pro Throttle/Pro Pedals user here and I had no problem assigning the throttle mini stick to TDC slew control. It works as expected. The weird thing is how it works for you with one module but not another. A couple of ideas that might help isolate the problem: use CH Manager to test the throttle X/Y axes to make sure they're working as expected. I'm guessing this is the case since it works with the A-10, but doesn't hurt to check. temporarily move the diff.lua files out of the way to make sure there's nothing in there causing issues. My Hornet control config files can be found here: C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\DCS\Config\Input\FA-18C_hornet\joystick. Yours should be in a similar location. Don't delete them, just move them someplace safe. Good luck and I hope you get things sorted.

New DCS player here and I have the PG, Syrian and NTTR maps. I've spent most of my time with the NTTR map, setting up test/training missions in the ME. Count me in as someone highly interested in an NTTR paid update.

I'm always looking out for new content to listen to. Thanks for the heads-up on this podcast.

I saw this thread was updated and thought you were planning on giving the Huey a go during the free-to-play period. Instead you just went for it. I don't think you'll regret it. I suck terribly at it and have spent most of my time with the Hornet but something about the Huey is so cool. Maybe it's the fact that the systems are simple but the operation of it is pretty complex and requires more artistry than anything.

I tried to reproduce the crash today 3 separate times with 2.5.6.60966 and everything worked fine. I'm fairly sure I did not do anything differently today but I can't say that with 100% certainty. The only thing different is the uninstallation of that Steelseries package but I did see crashes last night after uninstallation. I'm puzzled but not going to complain since everything is working for now. @Flappie - thanks for the feedback. I use the default Windows 10 security program. Since everything is working, I'll leave things alone with that until the next time I see problems. If the crashes/hangs reoccur, I'll post updates here.

After a bit more testing: First I uninstalled the SteelSeries management software that updated itself earlier today. No luck. I then did some testing with the release version, 2.5.6.60966, and 2.5.6.60720. With both open beta versions, I was able to reproduce the crash only with a specific mission. All other tests were crash free. The problematic mission was a test mission that I was using to practice cold starts and VFR landings. Over time, I've added/removed objects from it to play with various things but right now it's just my Hornet sitting cold on the ramp. If I have time tomorrow, I'll see if the same mission file will cause the release version to hang.

I've tried a few more times and even tried rolling back to 2.5.6.60720. No luck, so I don't think it's version 2.5.6.60966. It's got to be something on my end. The crash logs mention different .dll files. I'm continuing to dig into this but any suggestions would be appreciated. crash.zip

I just updated and had 3 hangs that required using Task Manager to kill DCS. Cold start from McCarren in Hornet. The only mods are modification to pluginsEnabled.lua to remove module icons on homescreen and CMDS_ALE47.lua to save custom expendables programs. I've tried a repair but no luck.dcs.log The last hang showed something interesting in the log.

To be honest, this sounds way more fun and exciting than your previous experience!

Great flying man! One of my goals is to get to that level of proficiency. Thanks for sharing this.

I'm just starting out w/the Huey and it's not an easy thing to fly, at least for me. I have rudder pedals and they do help. It can be frustrating even with pedals and I personally would likely give up if I didn't have them. However, I noticed this guy does not have pedals and uses the ministick on his throttle for anti-torque control: From what I saw in his vids, his flying is very smooth and consistent. It's all down to user aptitude and patience. Pretty much like everything else in life

I took the time to setup a couple of missions and the results are inconclusive. Also, I was incorrect in my previous post. In my previous tests, I was not co-altitude with the targets, but above. That makes a significant difference I think when it comes to Doppler notching. I set up 3 tests: - co-altitude over water at 18,000 ft - co-altitude over land at 18,000 ft - differential altitude over land, me at 18,000 ft and Flankers at 12,000 ft I used AA master mode, TWS with a 4-bar/40-deg scan using interleaved PRF. I kept it in manual and tried to keep the scan centered of the group of 4 contacts. In all co-altitude tests, my results were practically identical. No glaring differences. In my overland tests with differential altitudes, I had mixed results. It seemed that the beta would have a hard time reacquiring contacts after they stopped beaming but so did the release version occasionally. The behavior seen in the beta could be seen in the release version every now and then. However, I could not get the beta to reacquire the contacts quite as reliably as in the release. That said, the differences were minimal and could be accounted for another factor in my admittedly poorly-controlled experiment. Tracks attached of some differential overland tests for anyone interested. The big difference can be seen after the headings of the Flankers swing through 90 degrees and come out of my notch. I've also run this mission multiple times using active pause and time acceleration to see contact acquisition behavior. In those tests, it was harder to see differences between the release and beta versions. I might do some more testing later if I get some time. I'd also be interested in seeing tracks of those reporting that they are seeing a definite problem. Tracks.zip

Yeah, that's a tough one to hit in the clickable cockpit when things get busy! Look for ALQ-165. I have the XMIT and REC functions bound to my HOTAS so I can toggle the jammer when needed.

I just spent some time A/B'ing the release version (2.5.6.59625.1) and the current open beta (2.5.6.60720) and air radar contacts are definitely a lot more slippery in the beta. I set up a test mission with 4 Su-27s at 10/20/30/40 miles off my nose, co-altitude. They were set to just orbit their starting waypoints. I was in active pause. I'm not sure if this affects anything so I ran a couple tests w/o active pause and didn't notice any real differences. With the release version, all 4 contacts were solid all the way up until the notch and then they'd reappear after the Flankers were no longer beaming me. I'd lose 1 or 2 a few times but for the most part, radar contact was pretty consistent. With the beta version, I had a very difficult time maintaining radar contact with all 4 Flankers. The worst part was that different contacts were dropped at different times for no apparent reason. It could be the 40-mile contact heading away from me or the 10-mile contact heading right at me. It seemed random. I ran the test multiple times, moving my scan center around and altering PRF but could not find a way to achieve the consistency seen with the release version. I wondered if the Flankers had some magic ECM enabled so I modified the test to use MiG-15s, assuming they had no ECM. Same results. I then tried with 4 Il-76s and then saw behavior closer to the release version, but still not quite as consistent. So now I'm wondering if something was changed with the Hornet's radar, RCS profiles, or both. Perhaps the new AA radar behavior is a reflection of the Real Life (TM) Hornet but it could also be something that needs fixing. I'm ok with either, but the uncertainty is what kills it for OCD me. I'm going to be using the release version for now and dip into the beta to check out the new features every now and then. Not a big deal, that's why it's called a beta.