Jayhawk1971

Shhh, don't tell Paco. I bet he'll come up with a choice callsign for me.

Yes, I do that, that's how I know I'm drifting off, either too far out or too close. The problem is once I see 6 miles (or 4, respectively) on the HSD, it's already too late. I watched Red Kite's video a couple of times, he did seem to nail it perfectly, but I have no idea how. After the third time trying I got the initial break right (to 5 miles), but after that my turn must be either too tight or to loose.

I guess I played too much "Zone 5"? I think I never was instructed to land on 21R before in any campaign on NTTR (isn't 21R/ 03L supposed to be reserved for the bigger aircraft like AWACS and tankers and such IRL?), so I suppose it was force of habit. So the trigger zone was offset to my right as I landed on 21L? Still weird that the trigger fired as I was taxiing halfway down Foxtrot (abeam Alpha North EOR), though. Edit: Funny that I never really noticed until now. Other than the fam flight I was "unsupervised", meaning missions 2 and 3 I RTB'd without any further comms due to AI being stuck with the tanker, and mission 4 triggers worked fine (just like in Zone 5). So I guess I completely forgot about 21R between missions 1 and 5.

"DCS: Unbreakable" Tomcat pilot is Bruce Willis, Viper pilot is Samuel L. Jackson's character.

I finally made it through all sets, working my way up from "below average" (LANTIRN and CCIP) via "average" (strafe) to "above average" on the low pop sets. My main issue is that I'm having a hard time maintaining the correct abeam distance during the fist two sets. I either wander a mile too close or too far at some point in this "vulture circle" of a pattern. The racetrack patterns on the final three sets where much more up my alley. Does anyone have any tips or hints on how to better judge an maintain the correct abeam distance throughout these circular patterns, while also managing to manage speed and altitude?

Found a slight glitch after landing. I got the whole "turn right onto Bravo" and following radio messages trigger well after I should. I got them while already taxiing back to parking, right around where you would turn off to the parking spots in Zone 5. Either the trigger zone wasn't where it should be, or I got some lag after landing? Mission ended without any problems after I came to a full stop. No biggie, just wanted to let you know. Some more information: I was at taxi speed at about where the trigger zone should be (the Tomcat is so "sticky" that I actually have to add power after landing to even make it to Bravo) I turned off at Bravo, crossed 21R and then turned left onto Foxtrot Then I got the triggered messages No mods installed (mod folder in saved games/DCS only contains tacview and VAICOM) In retrospect, I assume I was supposed to turn left this time to Golf and the disarming area? Tower said something about "Golf".

Here you go.

NP, I can see where timing the mission sets can become an issue, and taming that wild AI must be a massive pain in the butt as it is. Speaking of butts, mission 5 has been kicking mine! The fact that I hardly ever did air-to-ground in the Tomcat isn't helping.

For both day and night cruise formation training parts, you included an additional "press spacebar when ready" option after mission start, which I found very helpful, as it gave me time to get settled (trimming and catching up). Even though I "pre-trim" during active pause and set the throttles in anticipation of the briefed speeds, it still takes some time to get settled. This option would be very helpful for other mission sets as well.

MIssion 4 was actually quite fun and not all that difficult, somewhat of a "break" from the previous 2 missions (=not as nerve-racking as flying formation with suicidal maniac AI in the dark ). On to the next one: I've already watched Redkite's video preview of mission 5, so I'm forewarned. Unless I'll be getting an "unsat" in upcoming missions, my plan for now is to go through the campaign without repeating a lesson, then do the whole thing again more thoroughly. Hopefully by then ED has finally fixed some of the AI bugs and quirks.

Nice! Do you plan to make this campaign into a playthrough-series on your YouTube channel? It's always nice to see how others are doing. And I'm glad I wasn't the only one surprised by the very abrupt heading changes by the AI.....incidentally, I did use pretty much the same vocabulary as you did

I see you did use the CAG bird in mission 3. Made my VR-life a lot easier. Still hard enough, though (I opted not to mess with the gamma to see how I'd do; average, average, and below average for the formation stuff) BTW, nice touch with the sound effect during night AAR.

The bog-standard comms menu with which you contact AWACS, ATC, order your flight around and so on. Some campaigns/missions give you an additional menu item, accessed by the F10 key on your keyboard when the menu is "active". You need to use this in order to interact with the missions. You access this menu with the radio buttons that you have assigned.

While we're on PSA's, here's one for the "HUD-cripples": No one said not to switch the HUD display mode to either takeoff or landing to get a more fine-tuned pitch ladder for those mission 1 maneuvers; at least not after you arrived at Stuckey's Peak. Not saying you should, of course. But who's gonna know?

While this idea may certainly not be something for DCS, I admit I do miss the days when there were such "unrealistic" (by DCS standards) implementations of brand new aircraft in flight sims , like EF-2000/ TACTCOM and F-22 Air Dominance Fighter - and especially Total Air War. Even though everything about the aircraft was how the developers imagined they would work, those games were convincing enough back then, plus, they were a hell of a load of fun. They filled the niche between hard-core and arcade nicely, IMO. I really wish the whole genre would have a renaissance of sorts, with the amount of titles we had during the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. I remember when we had the luxury to not pick up a title, because there was so much competition.

Edit: I am referring to mission 2 Is there a way for the player to change the skin for Paco's bird, from low-viz to the CAG bird for this training mission set? I ask because, at least for me, spotting the "explosive seat warning triangle" on this low-viz skin with my VR headset is really hard (Vive Pro doesn't have the best resolution). This is further being complicated since the player is on the right side with the sun being on the left for most of the time, which makes it even harder to spot with lead being silhouetted against it. Formation flying is still possible, of course, and I realize that further down the road (with the Blue Lions) most Tomcats will come with low-viz anyway, but for the introduction training it would be nice if the reference points were a bit easier to spot, until the overall "sight picture" has been thoroughly imprinted onto my brain. I saw a CAG bird in the intro mission on the ramp, and that livery would make spotting so much more convenient.

Hi Greg, just finished mission 2, and after successful AAR (after I use F10-> F2 option to continue) I am told by Paco to get in a cruise formation for RTB (which I do), I get the "CNN news report", after that, lead sticks in formation with the S3 in its tanker track. I finished the mission by giving up on him and RTB'ed on my own back to Nellis (got the mission complete message after I stopped on the ramp). Presumably its our "old friend", the "AI won't detach from following another AI" bug that still hasn't been fixed by ED? Oh and BTW, you weren't kidding when you told us that this campaign will be hard as hell. Holy smokes. The only "above average" I got so far was for AAR. The rest are evenly distributed between "average" and "below average". I see myself doing a lot of reflying these missions in the next 6 months.

Hmm. That might actually have some countering effect, but then again, not nearly enough to overcome "stache power". Also, I don't think the Soviets ever could replicate Grumman's glove vane technology - it was just too awesome. (it's unclear whether even Hughes/Raytheon could have replicated this awesomeness)

I bet a Phoenix with glove vanes and frikkin' laser beams on top of it could easily kill 10 ICBM's all at once, as long as the Tomcat crew wear Cowboy hats and have proper staches.

This newsletter and the video have left me very excited and optimistic for DCS in 2023. Really looking forward to what the year will bring. Thanks.

This sounds fascinating, but also does leave me a little puzzled. Could you please elaborate a little more on that, regarding the "independent operation"? Does that mean there will be separate installs, or will campaign/mission creators have to pick whether or not to build their content with spheric or legacy maps? How will that work with MP servers? So, for example, if I play Raven One, will it load "flat PG", whereas if I start a hypothetical Raven One Part 3 mission that was made for "spherical PG", it will simply load that (spherical) map? Also, other than a proper "historic" context (like WWII or Vietnam), what would be the appeal to keep using contemporary "legacy" maps (Syria, upcoming Sinai and Kola) over the new spherical maps? Or does Spherical Earth Map quite literally mean "Earth" (as in the complete globe, similar to the other, civilian sim we shall not name)? In other words, we would get the whole globe as a single "map" - with the same or better graphic fidelity as current "dedicated maps", the only "downside" being locked into a present-day timeframe? I understand of course if it's still too early in the development process to really answer these question.

Hi, it seems myself and others have a problem getting the ground crew to remove the wheel chocks on the Tomcat using VAICOM. The feature itself works fine through the F-menu. Of note: the command itself is being recognized, and acknowledged by the crew chief ("Copy". "Wheel chocks are now removed"). He just doesn't do it. Placing the wheel chocks does work with VAICOM, though (getting both acknowledgement and actual placement of the chocks). I don't know if this is a known problem (Discord is not very research-friendly) or if this is still unreported.

HI Flappie, thanks, that worked! Mission went fine, without a hitch. Thanks again for your help.

Hi Flappie, I did a slow repair, flew the mission again, still got the exact same freezing issue, at the exact same point in the mission. Going through the log, it seems I still have those corrupted files. What I did after the slow repair is what I always do after an update: Clear metashader 2 and fxo folders Delete the VAICOM entry in the export.lua (to let the app rewrite the entry) delete the SU-27 model in SceneVR.lua (Scripts -> DemoScenes) This time I also updated VAICOM Pro to 2.8.1 before starting DCS and running the mission. dcs.logdcs.20221226-032033.crash

Thanks, will try!