Skewgear

OK, so it's a Q1/2 1943 airframe judging by the production date graphs here, which I think are reliable enough for a casual discussion. It doesn't make much practical difference: we're still flying a mid-war machine against late war aircraft. Not ahistorical, judging by some of 2TAF flying Mk.IXs until the end of WW2, unless you're specifically trying to model Normandy in June and July 1944 in which case the problem lies with the German airframes. Whether it's a B or C wing is irrelevant, really: both could carry 303s as are modelled in the game. Point of this thread is it would be truly minimal dev work to make the C/E wing option available in game by swapping the guns for 50s and calling it a different version. (In fact that's 2 different versions if you count the CWs, at which point you've got a very close approximation of the late XVIe circa 1945) Possibly the IXE was slightly heavier all-up thanks to the extra weight of 50 cal ammo? Or perhaps it carried less in the same space and therefore kept the same MAUM, I don't know.

At risk of responding to the original point, I'd like a LF.IXe. A handful of 2TAF squadrons had them and it would be nice to mix it up a bit in the 4YA WW2 server. That said, our aircraft is clearly modelling a 1942 IXb. I imagine a late Mk.XVI would be minimal dev effort over the existing IXb. Basically the same aeroplane plus the teardrop canopy and rear fuselage fuel tank.

I believe the roundels and colours are copied from MH434. Everyone knows the markings are wrong but unless ED chooses another reference aircraft, such as MH415... If we could define locked-down custom liveries in multiplayer servers I'd have all the 4YA WW2 Spitfires using these liveries. Much better colours all round than the defaults. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3318202/

One of the self-reinforcing problems with DCS spotting is that at ultra-low resolution settings the DCS game engine will show the smallest LOD dot for other aircraft out to 55nm. All the experienced WW2 players know that and have deliberately reduced their graphics settings to exploit this feature. When jet jockeys join a WW2 multiplayer server, they don't know about this exploit and have their graphics set so the game looks nice. That means they lose ~45nm of spotting distance compared with their opponents. Then they complain everyone else is pwning them before vanishing into all that richly detailed terrain. I'd really like to see ED implement a hard cutoff on visual spotting distance at 15nm in all resolutions to get rid of this exploit. It's very immersion-breaking. It would also mean I can turn my resolution back up without becoming a flying pincushion again!

It's all well and good making the point about the glowing balloon implementation of the lights making them tricky to use for their intended purpose, but whenever I use nav lights in multiplayer everyone immediately assumes I've made a mistake and starts warning me I've left them on.

4YA started with the old SoW missions but we've extended and developed a handful of those to include many more dynamic features. Our Version 2 release was last night: Each side now scores points for bomber escort. Some airfields now have destroyable warehouses so you can interrupt the supply of fuel or even airframes for the other side if you bomb the correct buildings. Ground objectives have been significantly altered to bring them better into line with historical reality. Unit selection in the ground objectives has been altered as well. Failing to complete ground objectives in sufficient time means your own supply of airframes, fuel and bombs may slow down as higher command diverts resources elsewhere. Ground targets are now marked (approximately) on the F10 map. No more messing about and squinting at lat/long coordinates! Performance has been significantly improved across the board. More and more historically accurate features are in the missions: all the squadrons, markings and liveries for the Allied side are as accurate as we can get them for now. German radar stations are gradually springing up in their historical locations, and destroying those takes out GCI and EWRS coverage. (Ditto with the Allied radar ships and ground stations. (edited to add) Player stats are available in the 4YA Discord. These update live (well, 60 second delay) on a rolling 28-day basis. You wanna keep your spot at the top, you'll have to fight for it... For version 2.1 we're planning to add AI flights that scale with the number of players on the server and RTB if enough humans are online. More maps and aerial photos of ground objectives should be coming as well. The task of bringing more and more of the old SOW missions up to the new standard is a big one and the mission dev team are constantly beavering away behind the scenes. We're also working on squadron-level stats to encourage teamwork and group flights. And if you want to immerse yourself in what 4YA WW2 has to offer, here's our richly detailed pilots' handbook: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SOr5HdDV57bF78Pell5tkpW24aXcSNKJ/view See you in the skies!

For 4YA WWII you'll need the Normandy Map, WWII Asset Pack and TF-51D installed as well as SRS. Ground objectives are marked on the F10 map. Look forward to seeing you in the skies!

We have encountered a bug in DCS Open Beta v2.7.10.19473 where a simple trigger zone linked to a switched condition trigger that displays a message to one coalition is being seen in multiplayer by players from the opposite team. I don't know how reproducible this is but we've had multiple bug reports from players since introducing these triggers. Steps to reproduce on the Normandy map. 1. Create a zone on the map where you expect aircraft will fly through. 2. Create a switched condition trigger. The conditions are: 2.1 'part of coalition in zone', blue, unit type 'airplane'. 2.2 Flag is true 'nnn', and 'time since flag nnn' = '420'. 2.3 Actions are 'message to coalition', 'red', 'Enemy aircraft spotted above the friendly airfield, Evreux less than two minutes ago!' 2.4 and flag increase = 1. 3. Run the multiplayer mission. Have a blue coalition player fly through the zone. Expected behaviour: if a blue player flies through the zone, red players will see the message. And when red players fly through the zone, no message is seen by either side. Actual behaviour: some red players see the message when they fly through the zone. Some red players have reported that they could trigger the message on themselves. This appears to affect different modules - we have had reports of players flying the P-51D and Mosquito experiencing the actual behaviour. It does not appear to be reproducible in single player mode. It also affects multiple zones/triggers spread across the Normandy map. We have 20 of these zones and triggers in each of our missions at present.

Probably. The original pilots' notes say 1 division nose down for takeoff but IMHO that needs a specific technique to prevent nosing over. (stick fully back when you select takeoff power, then ease it forward as speed builds to bring the nose down slowly) For normal takeoff at full load with no bombs I set trim neutral (as in centre of the gauge/pointing at the screw), full right rudder trim and around +8lbs boost at full rpm. The DCS Spitfire will happily take off at +2lbs boost (on a long runway!) if you want a slower and easier experience. You need to be quick to tap the rudder and prevent any swing developing on takeoff. What's wrong with the cooling system?

That's why I've made a feature request. It's up to ED to decide if they want to implement my request and if so, precisely how. They're the professional software developers who'd have to refine and implement the idea, I'm merely a consumer suggesting one potential route. A better way to implement my idea would be to have the game check for the presence of a specified non default livery before downloading a fresh copy. That would slash loading times after the first connection - or another way might be for players to be signposted to the ED user files section if they didn't have the liveries. But as I say, that kind of detail is entirely up to ED. If they think this is an idea worth implementing I'm sure they have capable devs and PMs who can design something suitable. I may have missed the formal feature request forum. Do be a dear and let me know where that is, if so.

I'm part of a mission design team that wants to use fixed custom liveries in a mission set. At present there is no option to add custom liveries that display to all clients unless clients connecting to the server have separately installed these custom liveries. Current behaviour: a) Mission designers can select one of the default liveries for a unit when placing it in the mission editor. Clients connecting to the server see the selected default livery on the unit in-game. b) If the mission designer has a custom livery installed locally, they can select that livery when placing the unit. Clients who also have that livery installed locally will see it on the unit in-game. Clients who do not have that livery installed will instead see the first default livery for the unit. Requested behaviour: The mission designer selects a locally installed livery for a unit when placing it in the mission editor. The livery is packaged in the .miz on mission save/compile. When clients connect to the server, they see the livery whether or not they have previously installed a local copy. Related behaviour: Server admins can allow clients to select their own liveries. This is not a complete solution and can frustrate the goal of the mission designer as clients may pick anachronous liveries. Real world use case: The P-51D (not the default TF-51) comes with lots of liveries. Unfortunately none of the US options with editable markings (squadron letters and airframe serial numbers, as defined in the mission editor) also have D-Day stripes. This means we have to compromise our historical accuracy goal in favour of not having 30 or 40 client slots with precisely identical markings (e.g. nose art). When we allowed clients to select their own liveries we had people in bright primary coloured Reno racers flying around, which spoils the immersion of a June 1944 battlefield.

1943 would be a fantastic year for modelling WWII combat aviation. In the Libyan desert the RAF was testing and developing the cab rank system for ground controlled close air support, the grandaddy of all CAS today. The USAAF was honing mass daylight bomber raids over Germany escorted all the way there and back. The Luftwaffe was carrying out tip and run raids on the southern English coast and vice versa for the RAF over France. Malta was a crucible of air power for both sides. Radar was coming into its own with aircraft mounted sets in nightfighters and the Kammhuber Line was a well practised operation against RAF Bomber Command.

You've more or less answered your own question there. Most Luftwaffe pilots were poorly trained and inexperienced novices by 1945 so lacked the ability to use the aircraft to the full. Unlike us in DCS, they couldn't respawn after learning from fatal mistakes. Allied air superiority kept them firmly on the back foot too.

There are two straightforward things ED could do to sort the situation out: 1) Spitfire XIV (or teardrop canopy XVI with 25lbs boost and clipped wings) 2) A Germany map. The rest of the plane set is perfectly appropriate for Q1 1945. Why the only WWII maps are themed around late June 1944 and mid-1940 baffles me. The 1942 Spitfire IXB we have now is a good fit for the Normandy map, as is the Fw190A8 and P-47D if you stretch the imagination a little. It's totally outclassed by the Me109K and Fw190D, which makes historical mission design very constrained.

Fun fact: in the 3 months after D Day the Typhoon squadrons claimed precisely 0 air to air victories and all of 1 bandit damaged. Pure ground pounders.

Has anyone got this working? I think the T1154 isn't implemented. I can get Morse sounds out of the R1155 as if I'd backtuned it to the tx frequency but that happens even while I'm winding the tx frequency knob up and down through several kHz...

Bozon's post here has reasoned out how the Mosquito FB.VI's Hispano Mk.II installation works. The delay should only apply to the first round fired and even that's very debatable and depends what specific situation ED is simulating. But for completeness... The Mosquito FB.VI was armed with four .303" Browning Mk.II machine guns and four 20mm Hispano Mk.II cannon. We know this is what's supposed to be modelled in our game because that's what it says on the DCS store page. The Hispano Mk.II* manual, Air Publication 1641F, tells us how the gun works. AP1641F Chapter 2 is downloadable from this WW2 aircraft forum. In the Mosquito the gun was belt-fed, which matters later on. Par 6 of AP1641F describes the Hispano's basic operation as follows: This tells us the Hispano is cocked either by an armourer on the ground (by hand) or in flight by the pneumatic system. Par 7 goes on to say that the firing of the gun can be controlled by a Bowden cable (like a bicycle brake) or pneumatics. In the Mosquito it's a pneumatically actuated mechanism as Peachmonkey posted earlier in this thread. For convenience I'm going to call that pneumatic mech "the trigger". (The Spitfire V's Hispano Mk.II installation worked in exactly the same way as the Mossie and this YouTube video briefly covers what I'm writing below) As par 7 of AP1641F says, the trigger works so as "to withdraw the sear and so allow the breech block assembly to travel forward, propelled by the return spring." Par 8 explains: TL;dr when the breech mechanism is released by the trigger and flies forward, it chambers and fires a round. So: the gun starts in the uncocked state. When we pull the trigger in the cockpit the pneumatic system cocks the gun and depresses the sear, allowing the newly-cocked breech mechanism to fly forwards and fire a round. That's the source of our delay: pressurising the pneumatics to cock and fire the gun. Should the delay be as long as 1 second? I don't know, but I'd be surprised if a 200psi system (per [14] of AP2019E Vol I Sect 9, AL25, Nov 1944, Mosquito FB.VI Servicing and Descriptive Handbook) took that long to function. What happens after you've fired the first burst? Does the gun need to be recocked? AP1641F again, par 10: This is repeated in par 21 in the full detailed description of the gun's operation: Once the gun is cocked the only source of delay on firing is the lock time for the pilot's trigger to operate the sear through the pneumatic system. This should be minimally different from the Browning guns. At this stage the question for ED is: are you simulating the guns being decocked when the aircraft spawns in? If so, the delay should only apply to the first burst. This might be the situation if you imagine the Mosquito armourers chose not to cock the guns on the ground. Cocking the Hispano looks like a dangerous operation because if you don't get the breech block fully rear so it engages the sear, you'll fire the gun. For simplicity I'd say the cannon delay on firing should be adjusted to match the .303" Browning guns. I don't think the 20mms' current delay-on-every-burst is correct at all.