kablamoman

This should be high on the priority list as it's a pretty glaring oversight related to the flight modeling.

Nobody is advocating for a "nauseating head limiter". The whole point of the original thread was the opposite.

Disagree. I believe the majority of VR users would really appreciate some more love given to the implementation, in the form of options for the users related to head limits. Still don't get why anybody would advocate against it -- either the options would be welcomed, or you wouldn't use them and their existence wouldn't affect the way you enjoy the game, anyway.

To be clear, I am not advocating that HB change the FM in any way. If through all the research and development they've concluded that the current iteration of FM is the best and most accurate depiction of the aircraft they can provide -- then I think they've done their job. I think that is what most customers want: Accuracy; not something that is specifically designed to win make-believe games online. There's is nothing that says a finely detailed model of the aircraft that is true-to-life has to "meta compete" with other modules. For one thing, HB has no control over how other teams model their aircraft, and has no control over how realistically modeled, underpowered, or overpowered they may end up being in relation to the Tomcat. You have an opinion that it can't compete unless there is a huge pilot skill disparity in its favor, and you may well be right. So what?

OP, it sounds like you've come to the conclusion that the module isn't as competitive as it used to be in the specific and controlled environment of online competitive BFM. You may well be correct in that assessment, and I would think trends showing top players having consistent results and top rankings with certain planes would either support or invalidate that contention. The better question is, why do you care what other players think? It's a subset of an internet gaming community focused on competitive aspects, and if you've spent any time in such groups, you must be well aware of the fact that 90% of players don't know what they're talking about, and there will always be someone to insist a certain weapon or vehicle is competitive when it's clearly not. Or conversely that some load out or class is balanced when it's clearly overpowered in relation to other choices. At the end of the day, with players of comparable skill levels, the actual performance of a vehicle or weapon or class in a game environment will have an impact on outcome despite Top Gun fans claiming it's "the man in the box". Best to just move on and fly something you feel is more effective, if what you care about is winning.

Sounds like you want the functionality of a typical "heading bug" on a classic HSI. The green bug on the IDN (the nav instrument on the panel), kind of looks like a heading bug, but it's really a course indicator and what you use to select a course for the autopilot to follow. It can't really be set to a specific course independently without the autopilot engaged. The closest you could do, is set your IDN bearing pointer to a specific azimuth by setting the mode knob to the ɵ (theta) position. In this position you could use the +/- knob to set a desired bearing and the pointer will depict it. However, it's not really intended to be used for this purpose (it's meant to select an offset bearing from a TACAN station, ie. a "VAD"), but I guess you could use it the way you want in a pinch. With that said I would recommend getting into the nuts and bolts of the INS -- it's pretty fun and quite powerful. Once you're comfortable with it you can start to use things like data cartridges with flight planned waypoints pre-programmed and from there get into the finer points of its use like using the RD function.

Hey much better, my friend. Keep it up. So much of the fun and mastery of flying ends up being pretty nuanced. I think that's why we all love it so much. Lots of times we use instructions like "use right rudder when you add power" or "use right rudder when you lift the tail" and "rotate at 120 knots" as shorthand for conveying the basics efficiently, but they're really lacking a lot of information someone learning really needs. How much rudder do you add? When do you add it, exactly? How fast should you add it? For takeoffs and landings, what really matters is what attitude you're trying to set and maintain, and how you do it. Not enough pilots in real life focus on this, and so rarely do you ever see players in the sim mention it. But if your focus is actually on what you're seeing out the front of the plane, and how to set that picture and make it look the way you want it to look a lot of the rote "do this at this speed", "add right rudder", "add left aileron" instructions fall by the wayside because they are no longer required. Learn what your three-point attitude looks like. At what angle does the horizon intersect the canopy from your typical seating position? A good takeoff attitude with tail off the ground is going to be a couple degrees below that. Once you have a good idea of what that looks like you can focus on using whatever control input you need, and in whatever proportions required, to set it and hold it. Same goes for directional control -- look down the runway, or at the edges if your nose it still pointed up -- are you going straight? If not, you have to fix it with the proper control deflections. Could be rudder, could be aileron, could be both. Is it working to give you the result you want? No? Maybe you need more rudder, or even brake, depending on where you are in the takeoff roll and what plane you're flying. The point I'm trying to convey is that you should be focusing on the picture out front, and making sure the plane is going where you want, and the attitude is set where desired. Try not to put so much emphasis on the paint-by-numbers approach, as if you can get away from that habit and learn how to control your attitudes and movements you can fly any plane -- the only differences you end up having to learn are what "the picture" looks like, and how much and which control inputs you need to get it.

As Art mentioned. Lifting the tail induces left yaw in a clockwise rotating prop. You would need right rudder to counteract it. lifting the tail should be done smoothly and deliberately. Don’t try to force it at too low an airspeed, wait till you’re going a bit faster and definitely make sure you’re rolling straight down the runway before you do it and then be gentle with your pitch control until you develop a good feel for it. The yaw response will be directly proportional to the pitch rotation acceleration so make it easy on yourself and ease it up. as for the nose dive I think it was mainly just being too aggressive with the pitch down… maybe coupled with the left wheel digging in as you veered sideways. For practice I’d say just try to be a little more fine on your controls. Not sure what your joystick setup is like, but if you have a short throw stick I would suggest a sensitivity curve of 20 for pitch/roll and 30 for yaw to start (right click on the individual axes in the control bindings and select “tune axis”, it will be the bottom slider) — see if that helps and you can tweak it as you get more practice and have a better feel.

Hey Maajr, I just went back and watched the in-game track you made of your DCS take off attempt. I see what you're talking about with you nosing over and going right. From what I can tell it looks like you're overcontrolling quite a bit while also trying to lift the tail before you have actually arrested the yaw-wise acceleration. I don't think the gyroscopic effect is the cause of your problems -- indeed lifting the tail should result in a left yaw tendency that requires right rudder to correct. In the track you provided, you start the roll, but then quickly oscillate right, left and right again at increasingly longer periods. Your control deflections also become more extreme in response to this, and by the time you lift the tail your nose is already well on its way sideways and into the dirt. I seems like a classic case of some pilot induced oscillation. I would recommend trying to focus on using right rudder inputs only, and merely varying the input from "a fair amount" to "a little bit less" -- but only on the right side -- in order to stabilize your directional control. Resist the urge to actually add left pedal to steer back left, just reduce the amount of right pedal, if that makes sense. Then be patient. Wait to gain a bit of speed and to be going dead straight down the runway before you try to force the tail up and the nose down (and be prepared to add a little more right rudder when you do so). The more slowly and smoothly you lift the tail, the more time you'll have to follow it with the proper amount of change to your right rudder input. I hope this helps. Good luck.

It also just occurred to me that you could unintentionally have "Take off assistance" activated in the special options menu (you can't change it while in-game, and must exit to the main menu and go to settings there to find it). This can sometimes get reset and activated between game updates, or even for particular missions and could absolutely add a bunch of unwanted rudder input that could be messing with your takeoff technique. Might want to double check that it is turned off for the P51.

Not sure what this is supposed to demonstrate -- you're not even supposed to have the gear extended beyond 170 mph indicated, but you're over 200 by the time you unstick. Maybe if there is something specific you can point to, rather than trying to glean anything from how other sims behave, that would help a bit. If anything, in real life if you were performing this kind of stunt, blazing down the runway and intentionally keeping the wheels on the ground (something you would not want to do in a heavy crosswind) I would think that only the upwind wheel would be touching if you are properly compensating for a strong crosswind. While DCS warbirds can be pretty squirrely and have some odd stuff happening, especially when the wheels are in contact with the ground at an unrealistically high speed, it's still not impossible to do what you're attempting. Just to indulge a little, here is my attempt to do what you're requesting (bonus crosswind landing, too): Here are the settings I used (~20 knot crosswind):

I don't want to take focus away from the great work that's been done, but I hope that addressing the "pea soup" green is high up on the list of priorities for the map expansion. If this is not looked at it will unfortunately mar what other progress ends up being made. Looking at the Barthek Normandy texture replacement mod may be a good starting point.

Posting again just to say I had to roll back nvidia drivers to the 512.95 (may 24) version to resolve the problem. The crashes for me started in the 516.40 driver release of June 15th. Everything I've tried subsequent to that has resulted in the same crash to desktop behavior. I have not tried the newest release (517.48) yet.

if you have fewer than 10 waypoints stored in the data cart they will be loaded as waypoints 11-20. Have you checked BUT 11 for your waypoint?

Can’t argue with that, either!

I’d say walking that fine line. Not being able to use it with 5 knots on the tail is pretty silly.

Isn’t there a long standing bug where the ILS isn’t activated unless the winds in the mission favor that side of the runway? To the folks having issues: Double check that you’re not trying to fly the ILS with a tailwind.

Find your speed and make sure you're trimmed to maintain straight and level. It sounds funny, but don't focus on the basket. Pick some element of the tanker to focus on as a reference and keep that stationary in your windscreen to maintain your position. If you focus on the basket you'll end up chasing it and oscillating up and down and side to side. Be aware of the basket, but look beyond it to focus on keeping stationary relative to the tanker by keeping whatever reference point you picked stationary. Creep up slowly into the basket so you don't have to make drastic power changes. Be aware pitch changes will also affect your speed, so yet another reason just to go slowly and be patient.

I made this a while back — might help those trying to understand how the weapon selection works.

The ones I can remember off the top of my head as not syncing up for the back seater: Emergency Wing Sweep Lever/Cover Master Caution Annunciator Standby Attitude Indicator (always flagged) Standby Altimeter Flag Caution Panel Lights Elevation Lead Panel Most are of course pretty minor, but also a bit odd considering lots of other little things seem to sync properly. Can be a bit confusing when running as a crew, especially when the guy in the front is still learning and you're trying to help out. Maybe there's a limit to how many items they can sync?

Turn it on to the [] mode. It's more or less automatic and will jam specific emitters when appropriate (the square outline on the RWR screen). Apparently in real life its function is more nuanced and sophisticated but DCS' modeling of jamming does not really allow for this. You can force PCM (priority: counter measures) with the HOTAS bind -- and indeed sometimes it will prompt you to do so -- but because of the limited DCS jamming environment it won't really do much more for you than the [] mode. It will blast everything, but will also disable your ownship radar, and you may well attract missiles that use home-on-jam and get yourself killed. I use PCM every once in a while when bugging out and running cold to pre-emptively spoil enemy radar ranging if there are bandits in the area I'm running from. Probably just easiest to leave it at [] and forget about it.

In one post you say people should be paid for their work -- that they aren't animals -- yet in the previous you deride people for not continuing to work (for free) on their passion project and/or not relinquish the fruits of their hard labor to the community magnanimously. I will not say much more than that other than I find it to be extremely distasteful. To be clear, when I said "free" in regards to the asset pack/maps, I meant free access for online multiplayer. Nobody is expecting work to go unpaid. In fact, I suspect that a more popular online showing for the WW2 product would lead directly to increased sales of modules (and maps/asset packs for enjoyment offline or to author missions) and ultimately more return on investment. You can be either one of two minds: That a strong multiplayer community drives overall sales. That online enjoyment of the product is a small portion of overall sales. In either case, it makes sense from a business standpoint that owning the maps/asset packs should not be a requirement to play on an online server running them. Either this open access for online play is a driver of more sales, or it wouldn't have that much of an impact financially anyway. In both cases, being able to join these servers without a purchase of these items would be huge in helping to grow a stronger WW2 community. The alternative, as we can see plain as day by the current state of the online community, is a product that is struggling to grow and gain the traction it deserves.

Until the WW2 asset pack and maps are free nothing will change. The way the system is set up now is a huge barrier to entry and has stunted the growth of the WW2 player base. The community has been very vocal about this for years, but ED has been stubborn and set in their ways. WW2 languishes as a result. All of this despite some amazing work with flight and sound modeling, and big improvements to damage modeling. It's really a bit of a travesty that they've stymied themselves with their sales model and done severe damage to the online community and the entire product as a result. Reasonable suggestion: Make the assets and ww2 maps free and available to play online -- this will help grow the small, stagnant community. Charge for SP and to be able to use them in the mission editor if costs need to be recouped. I feel that ED might ultimately see an increase in sales with this approach, as more people will end up interested in the product and the online community of players and servers is able to grow without any impediments.

Welcome to DCS.