RafaPolit

I have been enjoying the map, and now that a few MP servers are starting to show up, a more lively environment makes up for a lot of the complaints we can see on the different review channels and local posts. One thing is, to me, really important to bring all the potential this map has: the mapping of the textures onto the the terrain faces is done purely as a top-bottom projection map. This works great for flat-ish surfaces, but when you have almost vertical fiords and steep mountain areas, this approach means that, in those areas, a single pixel of bitmap covers 90% of the vertical facet, giving the map a perceived "loss of resolution" on those areas. Those vertical faces need to have a different projection mapping in order to take advantage of the beautiful terrain resolution.

I find it funny (in the best way) to read your comment as: I am also 46, I actually had Microsoft Flight Simulator '95 for which I had a home made joystick. I did step away from the arena up until recently, but I have almost every module in DCS, all the terrains (even SA), all the extras: Combined Arms, WWII, Supercarrier. We are basically a very similar player in this environment. I have a different opinion on certain key areas: the downward trend, for me, consists in the actual business model which, in principle, favors developing new modules and not focusing on existing ones to iron out features and bugs. I entered the arena mainly as a WWII warbirds pilot, and the Br-109 had a bug that, if you were using MW50, you could not refuel. This is not a small bug, not being able to refuel in ground seriously limited your ability to do "serious" longer missions. The bug was there for around 3 years if memory serves me correctly. In the meanwhile they were busy selling spitfires, mosquitos, p-47s, and completely disregarding serious bugs of other airplanes. Like this, there are, literally, hundreds of bugs that exist there that linger for years on end and there is little effort (or manpower, or budget, or flow process, or intent... call it whatever you want) to fix them, but you get new modules all the time. That is my concern /critique to the model. It's in EDs beset interest to push as many modules as possible so people keep buying instead of finishing / fixing previous ones. The Super Carrier is a similar case: I bought the SC thinking it was the only way to do carrier ops in the F/A-18. This is my mistake, 100%, but since then I have read in FB dozens of confused people asking this very same scenario: if I want to get into carrier ops, do I need the SC? So there is an "overlooked" (to not say intentional) ambiguous confusing situation for new users that, "weirdly enough" favors people buying the SC even if they weren't sure they needed it. But, again, this is 100% my fault and decision. But, that happened 4 years ago and it's barely better than the one that is not paid for, has had almost none of the promised features, and they have new teams devoted to coding NEW carriers for the WWII scenario (which has also been grossly neglected) and the purchases we already made are not yet finished (or evolved in a reasonable pace... 4 years in EA is, although more common this days, not reasonable in any way, IMHO). And then there is the third party complications, specially with Razbam. I have at least two of their products which now are threated to never be finished. Even though they are third party modules, I still bought them from ED with a backing from ED that this purchase is backed by them, I honestly wasn't aware that it's a: if the partner drops out, we have no way of controlling that, you are out of luck type of scenario. So, as much as I enjoy DCS and love flying missions, campaigns and MP servers, to me and my way of assessing my purchase's value... all these things do take away from the experience and create this friction with new modules and, as time goes by, I'm inclined less and less to purchase new additions, as I don't want to wait 4 years to get a feature offered me for $60 discounted dollars at time of release. Still, your post has 13 hearts and 2 trophies, mine has 1. So, I would argue that more people here in the forums, feel more like you than they do like me. That's OK. Not everything is a good fit for everyone, and, as others have mentioned, no one has forced to buy anything. I would just echo what Marques suggests in a recent video about the new trend of selling products in EA with the promise of features to come: when purchasing EA products, buy them considering their current value proposition, features and consider if THAT is worth it to you at the moment of the purchase. Don't buy with the promised features in mind, because that could not get into fruition. With that said, and trying to get on topic with the current thread, I honestly don't think the Kola map is currently worth $56, which is more than most AAA games these days. I already bought it. I hope it, one day (hopefully soon) would be worth what I already paid. As is, in my opinion (and mine alone) it is not. I don't think I'm a new generation entitled whiner. Maybe to me, those $56 represent more than to others due to being from third world country economies, maybe I'm just a more negative person, yeah, it could be. At any rate I wanted to reply because yours is a very well thought post explaining your point of view without minimizing mine, even if different, and I appreciate that very much.

This is, more or less, precisely it, but as a whole ecosystem. I think that the entire ecosystem needs to be "healthier": if EA models are priced right, they have reasonable levels of evolvement at the time of delivery, if bugs are fixed fast and on a regular bases, if offered features are delivered within a few months of offerings... then the ecosystem is healthy and people are happy with investing money in EA modules, as they "know" that updates are coming, that bugs are being fixed and that, even at that, you already get a "decent enough" product. This would be the ideal scenario. ED and partners are, clearly, not here at this moment in time. If, on the other hand, EA products are almost un-usable at launch time, updates don't come for years, bugs linger for years on end, and prices are too expensive, then you get a very unhealthy ecosystem where people will not invest a dime on those products. Clearly, ED and partners are not here either! At all. That's why I still buy products. So, I am not pitching them as the "most greedy and unreputable", but there are some recent developments that have moved ED a little bit further below the line. I see like this: | Ideal Environment | | | <- we are here | Balance point where people no longer intrinsically trust ED | | | | Worst case senario I believe that the "arrow" is on a "descending" pattern, not on an ascending one. From what I read, I think there's quite a bit of people that believe the same thing. If you are not, I'm happy, and if not anyone else is feeling like this, then I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Another one of EDs idiosyncrasies: EA products are launched WITHOUT that, so they can capitalize on early sales to eager people like me that just jump into purchasing it. Again, a User Experience error in judgement, especially if they want us to buy into the EA model.

It's not like there is no options. You could also create a fully fledged campaign with thousands of voice recordings. It's not like there aren't workarounds. But when you spend about an hour downloading your new terrain on launch day at peek rush hour, and after having DCS blocked in downloading for that period of time (as you cannot keep on flying while downloading), and you finally jump into the menu and want to check out the map... no, you can't, you first need to create a mission for it. It's just not a good user experience. It adds to frustrations like dealing with the same old bugs and jumping into modules that have been in early access for ages or that are, at the moment, hung in limbo with no real light at the end of the tunnel if you are ever going to get more out of your expensive purchase, or maps that have almost no use and you purchased at full price. So, it's not Orbx "fault", it's not like there's no way around it... it's just another rough edge you need to sand before enjoying the game, and when this happens often and in increasing number of areas, it starts to eat away from the experience and the trust on the developers. It also affects the model of relying on Early Access models at *almost* full price with the promise of improvements, so people start to get weary and suspicious and reluctant to jump into it, just in case it turns out to be another Razbam or Super Carrier fiasco. So, again, yeah, there's ways around it, but it gives more things to complain about and it was an easy fix! Just do EXACTLY like you posted, and create Fast Missions for 5 or 6 key modules. That's all it took FOR THEM (or ED!) to do exactly what you mention and it would have avoided all the talk about that on here.

First time flying this mission... interesting to say the least. I got down by the SAM as well, I'll try other approaches. I did miss the GBU-12 as well (left it to the auto-lasing and it started too late, bomb missed... get really scared that there was no other way to continue with the mission, but did a strafing pass and it worked. Then I got the building perfectly (I know JDAMs a bit better) and then on the ingress of the show of force I got downed by the SAM. I'll repeat it, for sure, but since I nailed the A/A Refueling, I'm wondering if it is "Safe" to jump into that part at the beginning of the mission or if that will cost me points / logistics further down the road? Thanks.

I actually didn't and I really appreciate you answering in a helpful manner and not treating me like an idiot assuming that we are expected to keep tags of known bugs (which should honestly be resolved much faster!). This was honestly very helpful. That fixed my issue with the radios. The A/G radar was complete user error on my part, I apologize for that.

As simple as the title reads: the F-15E apparently cannot access the A\G radar, and making call on the Tanker (ensuring correct frequencies) yields no result.

I just did a quick flight. Most regions seem very deserted / green patches... the world is simply not like that anymore. I hope it gets refined over time. Where are the "nice areas" to fly around that you guys would recommend? Also, F-15E ground radar, and, apparently, radios are not working for me. Anyone else had this issue? Am I misconfiguring something in the ME? As a side note, even for an Early Access, launching this without a single instant action so that people can jump right in on the more "iconic" planes seems like a missed opportunity and would cause some friction as you cannot just "jump into the map".

I've had the oposite happen: selected Refuel (instead of RTB) but the Tanker is already landed and you can't refuel. Out of fuel and crash. Yeah, I think that time windows are narrow here: spend more time aligning, doesn't work, spend too long refueling or chase the bandit the "wrong way", you end up spending too much time and the tanker is no longer available. Still, everything else works... I still haven't managed to get a SINGLE Mode 1 ACL trap with Auto Pilot all the way to the deck. It just calls "bolter, bolter, bolter" the second I touch the deck, all with auto throttle and full CPL. I'm sure this is not at all related to the mission, I think this is probably a DCS thing.

Yeah, maybe it's not for everyone

That's the major problem of this delivery mechanism. Any new update of a very small unit requires huge download bandwidth. The entire development community uses GitHub to store repos like this. Maybe it's as simple as creating such a repo. You push changes to your assets to the repo, we download the new commits locally. Git protocol is "intelligent" enough to only download the differential, but it doesn't have limits, as far as I am concerned. Since your webpage doesn't have adds or other automatic monetization measures, I don't really see a downside to this approach. The DONATE links can be included on the main README file on GitHub. It makes everything open source, which your packages already are, and it can also help you upload faster instead of having to make huge files every time. You could actually revert to a "per module" model without sacrificing any workflow. I'd be happy to discuss further details and do test runs with you for this. Let me know.

For what is worth, following this post: I now have done two attempts, in MT, but with Auto Start once and then with Stored Heading INS alignment, and, it works! Smoke stays at angels 17, goes 55NM East and calls Tape's On as expected. The full INS alignment always ends up with smoke just going to Angels 1 and heading south. Maybe this should be included in the designer's notes in the briefing and / or PDF? Thanks to the community for this inputs.

Thanks Thanks so much for this! I have flown this mission now about 20 times (not exaggeration) Indeed, I tried two times now with Auto Start (not my cup of tea!), and Storage Heading on start instead of the full INS align, and lo and behold, Smoke stays at Angels 17 and calls Tape's On, perfectly when he is 55NM from WP4. Thanks again for this input, maybe this should be included in the designer's note on the Briefing and PDF?

I tried today with ST version as that is the recommended version by the author. No joy: “cut away” and Smoke just dives to Angels 1 and start slowly going south and then just lingers there.

Just to expand, I did a fairly fast refueling this time, one minor disconnect and back on the basket. Still, same problem: - Reach WP4, call on mother - We call the "split" call (sorry, don't remember the exact term) - Smoke breaks formation, dives steeply south and settles at about Angels 1!!! (that's right, one!) flying really slow... never gets more than 15nm of separation and never the tape's on call Could this be also part of the MT vs ST problems? Really seems crazy to have to play in ST, maybe I'll give it a go. On a completely unrelated issue (and probably not mission related either) I then do the Case III recovery (even if the mission is a bust, just to practice an get into the habit of good practices in the F/A-18) and everything goes perfectly smooth in CPL P/R mode right up to the deck, I touch down perfectly, and then it's always "bolter, bolter, bolter", as if I'm not garbing the cable with the hook. I do a fly around, no fly manually (as CPL is no longer an option) and I "manually land" perfectly grabbing the cable on my "manual" pass. Weird. Obviously this is 99% sure NOT mission related, but ED's issues with the carrier, but just wanted to mention as this entire mission (with the wrong radio calls I mentioned in another bug report) is really a test of one's patience and nerves! Thanks again for looking into this! Best regards, Rafa.

Thanks for your fantastic campaigns! I whish I could move forward on this one. This should be really simple: - Jump into the plane, start the engines - Press space bar to check with Two: - first call is made ON COMMS 2 CHANNEL! (not on one) to which there is a reply, - second call is actually made on COMMS 1 (saying Comm 2 check, of course) and there is no reply back - During flight, some calls get my COMMS 2 changed to M As for the last part, Comms 2 changing to M may be the Easy Comms settings (which was on at first!), but the other two problems are true, even if Easy Comms is turned off. This may also be problems to more bugs like the "Tape's On" never getting called (as I may be on the wrong channel, inadvertently). So, basically, the automatic communications are trying to use comm 2 when comm 1 is expected. And then, if Easy Comms are on, it's actually not finding the right channel and changing it manually on Comm 2 and not using Comm 1. The triggers are checking on Comms 1, so things seem to keep on moving along, and I am missing important radio communications. I do have SRS installed and a single push-to-talk button, but I think that we all have that. Any suggestions? I really would want to NOT have to uninstall SRS for the campaigns. Thanks, Rafa.

I have just flown this mission a couple of times, and have this same problem: Smoke splits at WP4 as expected and dives to about 2000 feet and just lingers there, never the tape's on call. I do have SRS (don't we all? :P) which "may" be doing something, but I doubt it. The other "potential difference" is that I took me quite a bit to refuel... maybe time constraints may present issues (Smoke did refuel perfectly fine and rejoined with me, no issues there). I'm also creating a separate bug report about radio channels and comms, it may or may not be at all related. I'm using VR and I'm using the MT version. Thanks for any insight. Rafa.

Good evening friends! Thanks for this thread. I was wondering, if the SuperCarrier can modify the hangar... can we actually have a way to specify the Hangar per-module background? If I select the F-16 as background have one for that, if I select the P-51 have one for that one? I'm sure this is possible since it's happening with the SuperCarrier. Before I go on reverse-engineering the luas, I was wondering if this has already been achieved and I am missing the resource? Thanks.

I have been running DCS in VR for a month now and Virtual Desktop without any issue. Today, I experienced this EXACT behavior described here: the Quest 3 stream, after a few seconds of working correctly, freezes in the current frame+space. I can turn my head and see black areas beyond the rendered and frozen area, but the PC seems to still be tracking the headset and rendering correctly the view. If I close VD on the Headset and open it back, I sometimes get a few more seconds of good tracking and then the freeze again. Sometimes it just gets back to the stuck section. This would indicate that this is a VD issue, but I tried SteamLink with SteamVR and, instead of the video freeze, it just crashes to desktop, more or at the same time it would freeze on VD (and it does work for a few seconds). The one "constant" between the two are: DCS and OpenXR. Has anyone found a solution? What could be causing this? This was working perfect until last Friday. The only different thing in my PC is that I installed WSL service for windows 11, but it's a really long shot that that is what is causing the issue. What other variables can we look into?

Since everyone is getting the South area in high detail, and there are no high details in other areas at this point, this simply is not possible at this point. Common guys, it's a new system, there are questions, let's try to give SOME benefit of doubt to ED that they have spent, at least, more amount of time thinking on this than the two seconds we have had to complain about it!

Actually, this is what I fly 95% of the time. The difference is that a WWII plane needs to be 300 feet away from you to shoot you, and you from them. Using your mk1 eyeballs is perfectly fine. On modern MP servers, the “others” know you are there 80 miles away. Also, I honestly think that reading comprehension should be a crash course before allowing posting in these forums: I clearly wrote that I am not complaining, that I am ASKING how do you guys do it and how do you compensate for the lack of datalink. Obviously you and others read: “please mock me as much as you can with your pedantic attitudes and your incorrect assumptions”. Thats nice.

Well, what do you know. One day after all these discussions, the people from VD have fixed the SSW "wobbliness" in today's release. All things mostly working as expected now, within VD and with SSW enabled to give some legroom to the GPU. Let's see. Thanks again, Rafa.

Just wanted to drop here to give a note of thanks! Refelcted, your campaigns are masterpieces with the perfect balance of action, skill, leisure time just flying and "preparing" for what's ahead. Of course, if the pilot spends 15 minutes crossing the Channel, and, when faced with the enemy, dives from 18.000 feet to 2.000 feet expecting compression not to kick in and die a miserable death, it's not the designers fault! Honestly, I have flown a lot of your missions, but today I tried mission 7 or 8 from BNBOF for the first time in VR! It was a blast. I enjoyed it immensely, and I scored 120 points of enemy planes downed, which is a first for me, so I'm extra happy. Not so much with my subpar landing, but a 100 score to finish it is a true gift to inaugurate the new VR headset. Again, just wanted to drop a line of thanks! Looking forward to the new campaigns in the upcoming map. Best regards, Rafa.

Yeap! This did the trick. SSW was actually the setting that was screwing the "temporal" wobbly behaviors. I appreciate the feedback. Now I need to know why I am having black flashes (more on one eye than the other) on certain meshes / textures, this didn't happen before. But it looks like I am getting more consistent results. Indeed, VD is the better tool with the better results, no matter the environment: productivity, games, maybe media watching is better achieved via other platforms. Thanks again.