DarkFire

If I'm carrying external tanks and I hook up to a tanker, will the tanks be re-filled as well as the internal fuel? Lastly if so, do the tanks fill after the internals or before?

The published change log usually doesn't include all the actual fixes included, only the ones considered to be major or common ones I think.

Agree. Use, but use with great care!

Ah, OK. Is this a known issue then?

Very occasionally I jump in to the cockpit and as soon as I turn on battery power the missile lock tone starts blaring at me, even when there are no other aircraft in the mission. Exiting and re-entering a mission does not solve the issue. Re-starting DCS usually does. Attached are a brief .miz showing the issue and my game logs.

Agreed. I would imagine that would simply be too much for a CPU to calculate along with all the other things it has to do in the sim.

Interesting theory. For what it's worth, every excess G-load failure that I've experienced without weapons loaded has resulted in the outer ~1/3 of the wing shearing off, and interestingly it's always been the right wing that's failed. Whilst carrying a full complement of A2A missiles I typically experience total loss of both wings, i.e. both shear off at or near the wing roots. I've only deliberately done it 3 times in each configuration though so that's certainly not enough data points to definitively tell whether or not there's a difference in failure modelling between loaded & unloaded wing stations. I can't tell whether it's dynamically calculating wing stress/strain or whether the failures are entirely scripted. From the very useful table that Ironhand posted I'd be inclined to believe that the sim is doing more than simply scripting a failure beyond a certain G load, but I'm not sure about any of this at the moment. There's also the apparent 'problem' of Tacview not recording accurate G loads just before the point of failure, which makes deliberate reproduction and data recording difficult.

Good idea.

In further testing, both MP and SP, I've been totally unable to reliably reproduce the observed control behaviour. I even tried deliberately exceeding the control limits on the altitude hold ACS mode, but that didn't do it either. I had an inkling that maybe this might have something to do with my abysmal internet connection, but then DCS doesn't appear to use a server-authoritative multiplayer model, so I'm at a loss. Without being able to reproduce the issue I think I'm going to chalk this one up to 'weird stuff that happens online' and leave it at that.

I agree. I think tactical bombers would be a good fit for both the Caucasus and NTTR maps, so things like the F-15E, Tornado, F-111 and Su-24M2 would be very nice to have. I'd imagine that implementing them would be dependant on the on-going development of the A2G radar and back-seat AI code though. I vaguely remember reading that the Mud Hen is on the to-do list somewhere...

I think I'd been using altitude hold mode at some point, but I always turn it off when I don't need it any more. Hmm, sounds like I do need to check my key bindings.

So, the plot thickens. The same control sensitivity happened to me today, but being ready for it I carefully checked out what was happening. Control surfaces were undamaged and working normally. I hadn't over-stressed the airframe so there shouldn't have been any unseen airframe damage. What I did notice was this warning light: According to page 45 of the Su-27 flight manual this warning light is the "ACS reset" warning, which if I'm reading it correctly means that the aircraft was under ACS control but that input had exceeded 20% control surface deflection which resulted in the ACS switching off and entering manual control. The thing is, I hadn't been using the autopilot. Now I'm even more confused :huh:

Ah, of course. Derp on my part. So the maximum -G value at which airframe failure should occur would be -3G.

I thought it would be a good idea for the mission builders amongst us to collate our wish lists for extra features we'd like to have in the mission editor. So, here's my editor wish list: 1. The ability to edit coalitions post-mission creation. I'm aware that it's possible to do by editing the lists within a .miz file, but it'd be nice if we could do it natively in the editor. 2. The ability to use larger images for briefings. I would imagine that most people play in at least 1920 x 1080 by now so there shouldn't be any reason why we can't have briefing images that are larger than 512 x 512. 3. The ability to use short video clips, or at the very least .gif images, as well as static images in mission briefings. Imagine being able to include some "reconnaissance footage" in mission briefings! Of course the size of mission files would grow, but I don't really see that being a huge problem. 4. Instead of having separate text and images for mission briefings, I'd like to see mission briefings as a sort of 'word document' in which we could embed images, video files and audio clips. The briefing could then have pages instead of being a single scrollable text. 5. Realistic templates for ground vehicles and anti-aircraft systems, to include realistic layouts. For example, this would make placing SAM batteries or company-level armour formations massively less time consuming. 6. The ability to use custom map overlays, e.g. charts or map symbology. Requests credited to other players: 7. The ability to draw on map as I requested here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=155260 - Credit to Stratos. 8. How about making the briefing image size the standard MS PowerPoint landscape slide size? Or better yet, adopt PDF format as the standard. - Credit to bns103 9. The biggest enhancement needed is the previously teased 3D viewer capability mentioned by Wags last year. - Credit to bns103 Requests credit to Ranbi2Delta: 10. Multi select 11. 3D panning 12. View 3D objects on the map 13. Fix the wind direction display (show where the wind is coming from as opposed to where it's going) 14. Additional wind layers 15. Multiple cloud layers 16. Cloud type selection (cumulus, stratus, cirrus, cumulonimbus, etc.) 17. Additional precipitation types and intensities (light rain, heavy rain, hail, etc.) 18. Precipitation layers 19. Turbulence layers and zones 20. Individual weather stations at airfields 21. Custom weather station placement 22. Weather front placement 23. Activate/deactivate weather stations, with weather interpolation in between 24. Ability to change atmospheric pressure units from mmHg to HPa and inHg. 25. Ability to display wind in knots 26. Ability to display altitude in feet (for wind layers, etc) 27. Fix wind speed (currently it doubles the speed that is put in) Requests credited to ReconXPanzer: 28. Templates for static objects 29. 3D Mission Editor or at least more levels of zoom for greater accuracy 30. Multiple sets of waypoints for different units - what 'route they take' can be determined by triggers etc. 31. Allow small watercraft to traverse rivers where applicable (dependent on map I guess). 32. The ability to add/remove/rename coalitions as per this thread http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=161289 33. Units conversion for the ruler (gives both feet, metres, km miles, nautical miles etc) 34. Drawable objects over mission editor 35. Fix satellite view to Caucuses (not really a wishlist but hey). 36. Be able to see individual trees in Caucuses map view 37. Coordinate editing for units - again, more accurate placement. (Both Long/Lat and decimal formats would be great

Ah, sounds like you have the game set to use "game" level avionics rather than the realistic ones. In the options menus there's be an option to turn off game-type avionics.

By mini HUD, do you mean the HUD-repeater on the head-down display? There's a key to toggle the HDD between being a HUD repeater and... Normal mode, for want of a better description.

I've seen the -G limit listed as -3.5, which would place the absolute 150% airframe limit at -5.25G which empirically appears to be close to what we see in the game.

Very helpful, thanks for creating that tutorial... More please! :)

Thanks :) That is the correct track but unfortunately it seems to be bugged. Trying to play it back again does indeed result in me apparently crashing short of Pashkovsky alternate whereas in actual fact I landed and taxied all the way over to the primary runway area. I then took off again and shortly afterwards tested the G-loading beyond the point of no return... The control sensitivity problem happened with the 3rd flight. The zoom climbs are fun & the view from up there is amazing! I guess that at the top of the climb the wings generate so little lift that most of the altitude increase is due to engine thrust. It's also very interesting that very soon after the aircraft noses over, IAS is shown as ~100 - 175 and it's already supersonic!

OK, the track is uploaded here for interested parties to download: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D3293A5ED5656179!5067&authkey=!ANDCzhG4XvGwf3g&ithint=file%2ctrk I tried reviewing it again but I have to say that on my potato computer (i7 960, 16Gb RAM, GTX760) track playback is abysmally unreliable. Still, couldn't see any obvious problems that would have caused the control sensitivity issue. Some general observations: 1. Apologies for the length. Viewed at real time speed, the full track is nearly 2 hours long. 2. A good example is shown of what happens if you accidentally hit the S key instead of grabbing the glass of orange juice that you were aiming for :doh: 3. Loss of aircraft no.2 was essentially deliberate. I wanted to see exactly how much G I could pull before airframe destruction. Turns out it's quite a lot, even at nearly 100% fuel. Anyway, general constructive criticism is welcome...

Ah, I didn't know about that! I'll check that. Yes, I reset controls to centre several times before taking off again. Edited to add: Found the track. It's a shade over 40MB so I can't really upload it, but everything looked normal. Landing was well within parameters. Didn't see any damage on landing and refuelling and rearming went normally. I'll review it again more carefully tomorrow evening after I get back from work. The only thing I didn't check was whether I'd overspeeded the flaps on takeoff as I used AB which for me is very unusual, though I hit the flaps toggle at 410 Km/h which should be within acceptable parameters.

I was flying on the VA server and after wandering around for a bit landed to rearm (with smoke) and refuel. After I took off again pitch sensitivity had massively increased - it almost felt as though I was flying in direct mode though I wasn't. Both pitch control and pitch trim were extremely sensitive to the point where I could barely maintain level flight. Unfortunately as it was on an MP server I couldn't save a track, nor did Tacview record what happened because I'd crashed earlier and got a new aircraft. Attached is my game log, hope this can help on its own...

That would make sense. Short of X-raying the entire airframe to determine the level of micro stress fracturing present in structural members, the entire thing would probably be written off as un-certifiable as safe for use. Even if for some reason you did want to X-ray the entire thing this wouldn't help with any mono-crystalline parts, but at that point it probably becomes cheaper to buy a new airframe than it does to test & repair the old one.

Good point. This may be going slightly O/T, but if it were suspected that an airframe had been subjected to extreme over-G I'd expect it to be shipped (literally, not flown) to a 2nd line maintenance base where it would be totally stripped down to the bare airframe for inspection, or at least stripped down to the point at which the entire frame would be accessible. Then comprehensive testing, possible replacement or rebuild of entire sections of the airframe followed by reconstruction of the entire aircraft. I'd be amazed if the pilot saw the aircraft again within 3-4 months. If the RuAF is anything like our lot, and I'd be amazed if they were not, then during such a deep inspection & rebuild absolutely everything is inspected down to the smallest detail and are very carefully re-constructed, tested, tested again, tested some more just to make sure and then inspected again to make sure. Only then would the aircraft be subject to further test flights before being finally signed off and released back for line squadron use. Deep inspection / maintenance cycles are taken very, very seriously because so much is reliant on them: the life of the pilot and the national investment in an expensive aircraft. Referring to the 2nd image that CiberAlex posted, I take it that the 5Km, 10Km, 12Km and 15Km lines on the G v Mach diagram refer to operating altitudes? That's really, really useful information to have, thanks for cross-posting from the Russian forum :thumbup:

This is purely guesswork on my part, but what I imagine is that the airframe has a certain quantity of "health." Any G conditions then remove varying amounts of that health based on the amount of G, with higher amounts of G removing much more health than lower amounts of G, and over-G conditions removing much more. I'm imagining some sort of y = x^4 relationship between degree of G and the amount of "health" removed, i.e: Hcurrent ~ Hmax - k where k : (Gcurrent/Gmax)^4 This would account for the fact that severe over-G can subsequently result in destruction at what are ostensibly lower G values than the normal limit. I could be wrong about all of this, but I suppose it might fit the observed behaviour.