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Thank you for the feedback! Cheers, Fred

First you are saying that defects do carry over (which quite frankly is hard to argue against), then you say it is silly for them to do so? I have to admit to not quite following your reasoning there. Keeping (or even adding) maintenance issues is certainly not silly. Keeping grounding issues would be - unless you're recreating a warfighting scenario where aircraft may well be put back on the line with issues which would normally render them aircraft on ground. There's wear and tear, there are grounding issues, there are issues which have to be fixed within a certain calendar time/flight time span, there are issues which can be deferred for an indeterminate time period. Repairs, scheduled maintenance/replacements (flight time or calendar time)... I think we need to keep them apart to have a meaningful conversation. If one person is talking about grounding issues and the next person is talking about normal wear and tear, common ground or even understanding will never be reached. Aircraft with unservicabilities could certainly be used to create some added depth and interesting missions! Especially in the high-tech birds. "Sorry bud, but your GPS is out*. Make sure to get that INS synched in flight every now and then". Or even throw virtual hairdryer pile-its the curve ball of flying using ded reckoning and pilotage. Now that could be fun, ten virtual hot-shots taking off to fly low-level sorties in A-10s using clock, map and compass... I'd love to watch that from behind a virtual radar screen with a cold one in hand. Of course that is what we'll be getting with DCS-purple-smiley-51D... :D *) In operational use, inability to rely on GPS would be my expected scenario.

The work-around to the lack of dynamic campaign has in other sims been mission-generators, with the persistent world in a database outside of the simulator. This of course assumes detailed event-logs generated by the simulator, in order to use for updating the game-world database. Anyone care to lift the idea to ED, to create those detailed logs for the benefit of third-party campaign generators? I have a feeling this could be done in LUA world... Ah, and the REMF brigade have an XO! :P Cheers, /Fred

Yes, blind trust in technology is the way to go... sod understanding what is going on and how to do it manually. What if the datalink fails? If the JTAC doesn't have datalink capability? (Probably rather common IRL, especially when the waste products impact the ventilation system.) If there's a digit input incorrectly into the datalink?

As if that will stop them... :helpsmilie: ;)

Viper, in an online competition environment, it would obviously not be appreciated. However I, and many with me, don't give a rat's ass about becoming virtual aces or reaching the top of a scoreboard on the aerial quake never-ending-furball-between-two-bases dogfight servers but are in it for the experience rather than the competitive side. In an online simulation of a combat environment, quite a few people would appreciate it. Seen the online wars going in RoF and Il-2? With actual attrition rates for planes and sometimes pilots as well, as well as maintenance downtime for combat repair and all the general logistics of an effective war-fighting unit? Great fun. All real-life fleets have grapes, aircraft which perform worse, are failure-prone or, frequently, both. In scenarios such as the above, it would add immensely to the experience of Being There. As for wear carrying over when writing a crate off - of course not. Unless you decide to refly. Oh, and you'd make sure to prang the grapes at every opportunity to avoid being sent up in them anytime soon... Operating as a unit would get more interesting. When #3 is stuck in an airframe which just will not keep up, what do you do? Flight lead decision time - can you slow down and still make the RV, or do you RTB #3 and continue the mission as a three-ship? Pop over to fseconomy.com sometime for a whole new kind of madness in flight simulation, with a significant following. The parallells are obvious. :)

You said you didn't know anybody who flew with random failures turned on, so I thought I'd introduce myself and get you out of that horrible predicament. :)

Viper, no good. Virtual rich doesn't do it. You have to be real-rich before I start being nice to you... ;) Kidding aside, the answer to your "why?" is the same as the answer to why most features are included in a simulator: In order to simulate reality in the best manner possible given the constraints of technology and economy. I don't want a virtual aircraft which climbs twice as fast as the real-life version, even though I would indeed want the real-life version to climb twice as fast if I flew it. For the same reason, I want use and abuse to show in the virtual aircraft, even though I certainly would be happier without it if I flew the real thing. You can simulate being a factory test pilot, fly wearing dress shoes and hit 'repair' before every flight. I'll sit here in my oil-covered Irvin suit (took forever to get the oil stains right!) and pretend to be a line pilot, griping no end about the shoddy maintenance to my virtual squad mates as I bunk down in a tent on the lawn afterwards. And I will call you a REMF. Until you prove that you are real-rich, that is... then I will only call you a REMF when you are out of earshot. :D In a world where you don't have a FADEC to keep you from doing something stupid (I wish it was really that easy...), engine wear based on engine (ab)use is also a good indicator of whether you are Doing Things Right. If you get MTBFs (or MTBOs) one third of what the next guy is getting out of his engines, then you can start thinking about how you fly. Another means of taking your simulated flying to a higher level. Cheers, Fred

Check the date again. This is "Valentine's Day", not "Quote Out of Context" day. I'll add the paragraph after the one you quoted, if you don't mind: My above statements take the billions spent on signature reduction into account - and I do have some experience from both ends of that particular stick. The invisibility cloak still is found only in Star Trek or Harry Potter, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view. To date, only one device has been invented which renders something approaching real invisibility. Ironically, in spite of the billions of dollars spent, the basic version is rather cheap (even though more complex and costly applications have been invented, allowing the same work to be undertaken faster or on a grander scale). See below.

Egg-zactly. "This feels right" is nice to hear, but rather worthless unless further quantified. In what ways does it feel right? A more graspable analogy would be cars. Someone has driven a certain type of car for, say, 2000 hours. If you commute a bit, that's a few years driving. A PC simulator of that same type of car is created, perhaps with a slightly different type of engine or a model a few years newer or older. The aforementioned driver is sat down at a computer, with unfamiliar controls, a monitor, perhaps a TrackIR system which he/she is not used to operating and, with the guidance of the design team hanging over his/her shoulder, takes the simulated car for a spin. "Yeah, just like driving the real thing". Now, is that proof that the simulation is perfect... ? This is what is being done and claimed over and over ad nausea in pretty much every flight simulator forum. Coincidentally, that's certainly not the way aircraft are evaluated out in the real world. It is approached in a very methodical manner. I'll quote myself on the matter, in a different thread: Aircraft -> Repair, and the friendly digital goblins come out with their wrenches. ;) Nah, most planes are flying with snags. That's what Minimum Equipment Lists are for. All planes have varying performance to one degree or another. They're all individuals. As e g engines come up to engine overhaul, there's less power out. The engine overhauls are timed in order to make sure that the power loss due to wear isn't above what's operationally acceptable, but that threshold is set depending on many parameters including desired availability, economics and other things which will at times be in conflict with the pilot's natural desire to have a machine which is always top-spec. In fact, machines leaving the factories are not top-spec. They're factory spec. One common method of tuning engines is to simply pull them apart and machine everything to tighter tolerances than the factory tolerances. This is known as blue-printing, and can offer significant gains. Yet, it is not done from the factory. Same thing, a threshold was set where they thought the best compromise between production time, economics, training level of the labour etc was found. E g piston rings wear with every flight hour (or for jets, blade tip clearances increase). We know that this wear reduces performance. This doesn't mean piston rings (or turbine assys/ cowl wear pads/blades etc) will be replaced after every flight - we accept the reduced performance until the engine is up for a level of overhaul including piston ring replacement after n flight hours (unless they fail and are repaired, or degrade at a rate ahead of the anticipated rate to a point where an on-condition overhaul is called for). In combat operations, higher levels of performance decrease will typically be accepted before overhauls or repairs are carried out. The value of keeping the aircraft in the air is simply higher than the value of always having them perform at their best. A sweet spot will have to be found between availability and attrition due to maintenance deficits. The world would be a horrible place without speed tape... :) I would in fact consider a high-spec recip more complex to model than a jet engine. There are more things going on. One of my first jobs included designing and implementing a rather accurate simulation of a certain turboprop engine. Throwing the power turbine and propeller on to the gas generator creates a significant increase in complexity. I've also messed with simpler models of Otto cycle engines, and there's nothing simple about them - even prior to throwing in forced induction. Jets are rather simple from a modelling point of view, IMNSHO. The governing equations are more or less trivial. Then it's just a question of getting the flows and accelerations right. Not sure if FADEC helps or not - advantages and disadvantages, but if you have the FADEC code or a good representation of it it should make life a lot easier. (Aaaah, the joys of finding errors in computer-generated 7-or-so-dimensional performance data matrices!) For MTBF to be meaningful, an assumption regarding the distribution has to be made. Won't be a bell curve. IIRC, the norm is an essentially constant failure rate, i e the flat part of the bath tub curve... but other distributions can be agreed upon for specific systems. If you are talking about parts in the same engine, the above would render a system MTBF of (1 + 1000) / 2 = 500.5 (summed uptime divided by two failures, as all the nine parts failed simultaneously) rather than 100.9... ;) Ehm. No. Mission editor - weather settings. 30 seconds and you have them. Not hard at all. All you are saying is that you yourself only fly in essentially clear blue skies (this I suspect applies to 90% of all DCS virtual aviators). Unless you enter visible moisture (clouds), you will not experience pitot (or alpha vane... to revisit an bug thwarted long ago) icing in DCS:A-10C AFAIK. Hello Nate, I'm Fred. Nice to meet you. Can we consider you to know me now, or must I make a formal friend request? ;) Cheers, /Fred (aspiring for the #1 monster poster position)

Objects are a lot easier to spot IRL, when you can see them. Hence, reduced visibility labels are a great idea and one I'll try out ASAP. Thank you, Puddle! The IRL consequence is, however, that the objects which you wish to spot do not tend to be left out in the open, so you'll only see them when they are on the move. Ideally, we'd have visual aids to spot only objects which are on the move or which we have spotted already, in which case they are indeed easier to pick out IRL than in-game (especially considering the vastly limited SA in-game). The latter is kinda hard to pull off though, until we can hook DCS into our brains... and I'm not really sure I even want that to happen. :) Cheers, Fred

Here you go - UTM/MGRS introduction. Understanding is step one. Next up is figuring out where to punch them into the computer in the aircraft. WarriorX put a tutorial together for that. And don't hesitate to ask away if you have further questions. Good luck! It might appear daunting at first but will all click together rather soon. /Fred

I think you are talking about slightly different things? :) What you will feel at the cyclic is the force required to correct for the wind and keep the helo in a steady hover... unless you cancel out the force through trimming (with the in-game limitations outlined above). When you do get feedback to the controls from the rotor system in a helo (except for the smallest ones, which can be flown without hydraulics), you are usually in a world of trouble as you have either suffered a hydraulic failure or reached the limit of the hydraulic system. Loss of control is impending. Cheers, Fred

I'm really curious about what or who this mythical "beczel" product/person is. 213, care to explain? If I'd been a poker player, the above could probably have been summed up in two words: "I call".

This is an area where the limitations of our hardware show. IRL, you'd simply apply cyclic to keep position as you ease the helo off the pad, while keeping the force cancel (trim) button depressed. The effect would be that you can let go of the cyclic at any time and you are always "in trim" - there will never be a stick force trying to return the cyclic to center. In our sim, unless we have FFB equipment in which case I think it works as IRL, we can't do this and either have to apply cyclic input or consciously retrim one or several times. Sucks to be us. For me, pretending that the force cancel button is U/S and applying cyclic until I'm enroute before trimming disturbs the experience the least. The cyclic forces are small in a TM WH anyway. Cheers, Fred

Add-on rather than update, but still interesting.

Or going the USAF way, saying "hey, I'm sitting on all the data for this aircraft - please model it for me! What kind of discount do I get if you can release a 'light' version to the public?" Financing it is the easy part. Sitting through all the griping from people who would rather have seen the Flying Flea modelled without contracting spontaneous combustion - that's the challenge! :D

This just in: It has made it into the FAQ, at least for DCS:A-10C. :thumbup:

Two more users in the forums with this issue. I wonder how many more are sitting out there who do not frequent the forums and thus probably never will get their brakes to work properly? http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1398632&postcount=4 http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1398675&postcount=7 (As a note to the last post linked, reinstalling does not always help - not even if you do several clean installs. I know...) /Fred

The full fix, for those finding this thread: 1) Unplug pedals 2) Open the registry editor (all the usual warnings apply - don't go mucking about as you can break your windows installation) 3) Find the key VID _06A3&PID_0763, search for it or look under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\CurrentControlSet\Control \MediaProperties\PrivateProperties\DirectInput The path may depend on your windows version so a search is probably your best bet. (For Saitek Combat Pedals, the key is probably VID _06A3&PID_0764) 4) Delete that key 5) Plug pedals back in and depress them fully a couple of times 6) You should be good to go. Good luck! /Fred

And then leave the autopilot off (stabilization features excepted, of course) until flying without it is second nature... ;) Edit: Coming to think of it, I barely know which buttons I have mapped for the autopilot functions today... those are on my list of things I keep forgetting due to disuse. OTOH, I'm having too much fun flying around to really employ the helo in combat... where you can put them to good use.

Likely to give you horrible control feel though, with play in the trim. Better to use a worm drive or similar I think.

Have a gander at: http://www.stclairphoto-imaging.com/360/P51-Mustang/P51_swf.html You have the trim knobs down on the port (left) side, behind the throttle. Looking at maintenance manual drawings, cockpit illustrations/photos and going by experience, I think rudder and aileron trim should be with throw as seen on the knobs but elevator trim should have a planetary gear in the mechanism making it a multi-turn affair. Regards, /Fred

Viper, the only part of that statement I have a wee (see, I'm learning!) problem with is "at this stage"... :P

Aha... sooooo.... where's the Official Bug Report thread then? Got my first! :D