Smokin Hole

Rise of Flight isn't Crysis but it looks fabulous. So does IL2 4.10. DCS:A10 looks fine. Combat sims are obviously on a budget. They are 10 times more complex to develope yet their full-time dev teams consist of maybe 3-5 people. That's compared to dozens for the shooters. You just can't have the same expectations for the two products. The markets are as different as the capitalization. Still I honestly see where Henchman is coming from. And I have never Played any of the titles he's mentioned. I have never even seen them. My reference to Crysis is just a guess. I don't know what it is. But I'd love to fly my su25 or Ka50 in a battlefield like BF2 and do what I do best. This will NEVER happen. The days of the flight sim are therefore nearing their end. Those of us who love them are like the elves of the Middle Earth about to sail east (or was it west). After DCS:A10 and SoW it will likely be over for us and we'll be Goblins and Platoon leaders just like everyone else with a PS3.

OP, Actually I really do recommend trying Apache: Air Assault. As a game it's quite fun, beautiful, and satisfying. As a sim, well, the mere use of that word with the game is misplaced. It does show that there is a balance between gameplay and realism. You may lie on a point along that real/fun curve that no game currently addresses. Not that you are fishing for recommendations but I recommend walking away from Black Shark a bit. My guess is that it isn't finished. Already DCS:WH looks much better, has a much more powerful editor, and smarter AI seems just around the corner. And although a "merger" of the two products has never been promised, I would be awfully surprised if the improvements are not ported over. But to step back a bit, while I agree that the landscape looks stale especially when compared to shooters, the object textures look great in BS.

I find that it's easy to get too bugged with this. I use a G940, love it, and find it to be a major step forward--as much as my TrackIr. I have the FFB forces set fairly light (60% I believe). And yes there is a bit of force slop. When I trim for enroute flight I push slightly more than my desired stick position so that the trim will hold the stick where I really wanted it (in pitch, laterally no cheating is required). It holds with Enroute Autopilot very nicely. Autohover holds well also even as I touch the stick fiddling with sensors and weapons. The key I think with this stick is to NEVER use curves and use a minimum (or no) deadzone.

This thread touches on what every pilot quickly learns: the human brain is very adept at leaning and remembering complex repetative tasks so long as there is a "flow" in how those tasks are accomplished. I can still remember the flows I used in the DC-10 in 1994, and the A320 which I stopped flying in 1998. The only way for flows to be safe and effective is for them to be supported by a full understanding of what each task actually does. Both DCS products teach us flows for accomplishing basic flight and combat tasks. What players don't know and have little capability to learn are the underlying reasons for each step and the inter-relationship between different systems and sub-systems. (Although we're getting farther along as WH progresses a few steps past BS). So long as we keep our knowledge level at the minimal level it takes to succeed in both sims, we can probably learn and stay "proficient" at a dozen platforms at a DCS level of fidelity. But try to learn at the capacity of a real A-10C or Ka50 pilot and you would max out at two, IMO. Having said all that, all the sims share detailed knowledge in what I imagine must be one of the most important things for the combat pilot to remember (and hardest to keep straight): the capabilities and limitations of friendly and enemy weapons, sensors, and countermeasures. That knowledge is carried with you to each product.

I can't recall when specifically but I am pretty sure I've gotten red enemy positions via datalink. Once in a mission I created with an OH-58 serving as JTAC.

The enemy datalinks their positions to my Hog!? How. Cool. Is. That?

Well I fired up the Ka50 for the first time in a month. I wanted to see how fast I could designate a target, cover, and ERBL the location for a Lat/Long. It takes about a minute. This has the added benefit of not exposing the Ka50 during lasing. In other words I think our two worlds will exist happily (if unrealistically) laser or no laser. I still think it's a cool idea. But now realize that life as we know it will continue without networked sharks and hogs.

True again. Actually forget the laser. Just give me the OH-58.

Yeah it's a pipe dream, I know. Which begs the greater heathenistic question, where's DCS going? We will soon have two excellent, amazing, and highly sophisticated simulators that share nothing but the Editor and the DCS name? Are these two sims serving two separate online communities by design? I'd love a Kiowa. I'd also love a gold plated toilet seat. Neither will ever happen. So I'm stuck with a Ka50 that's being left behind by the new kid on the block with no functional battlefield connection to it. Was such a thing ever promised? No. But I did the dangerous thing and assumed...

Well I know how it works (pardon, but I don't know Lua script). In Eric-script it's: A10 "A" lazes with code 1688 / A10 "B" sets code 1688 = "B" sees what "A" designates. Let's not take the simulation thing too seriously. It's not as if a laser is being fired and the TGP (as modeled by DCS) is reading the wavelenth. This is just code and anything is possible. It almost certainly won't be done and I completely sympathize with why. But lots not pretend that the magic is actually taking place.

Well it would only be possible if ED assigned a laser code for reception of the Ka50 laser. Maybe the ka50 already transmits a signal readable by the TGP but I highly doubt it. Otherwise we, as Ka50 pilots, are left with smoke rockets and awkward ERBL coordinate handoffs. Not much fun IMO.

I'd considered posting this on the Warthog channel. Somehow I didn't think the idea would fly there. Maybe it won't here either. My request is this: dedicate a single A-10C laser code to allow LSS reception of a Ka50 laze. Logic says the mere thought should be DOA because it would destroy the purity of the study sim concept of the DCS series. And yes that's true. But think of what it would do for online co-op missions. It would allow live helo pilots a more active, cooperative role in the battlefield. Anyway, I don't need to explain further. I just wanted to see what others thought.

No it's not the complexity, it's the time available to the player. I switched to Rise of Flight partly out of frustration with BS/FC2. The online experience with that combo required a large time investment often with little action to show for it. That isn't to say the the experience wasn't great at times. I can recall a handful of really gratifying online sessions. With Rise of Flight the multiplayer experience is extremely up close and personal. The fights are almost physical. After half an hour on a populated server my palms are sweaty and my heart is racing. And after an hour I can walk away from my desk and return to my family completely satisfied that I had a great time. IL2 is a similar experience. So while I have loved first Flanker 1, then BS since it's release, and am learning to love the Warthog, these last two will now be single-player experiences for me. I can fully "comprehend" a half-hour flight pre-brief followed by a 1 hour coordinated CAS mission with comms and SPI handoffs, I have zero desire to invest the time when other aspects of life take priority. It's basically a question of time invested online vs the joy of the experience.

Kiowa. Easy to model. Works well on the battlefield with the A-10. And it's not all that far in capabilty from the Ka50. Plus it would relatively quick to develop.

This A-10 is complicated. Well duh! You say. I've found a big assist in learning this sim--my Kindle. Instead of paying $50+ to have the manual printed I just moved the .pdf file to the reader. It's perfectly formated and easy to read on the 6 inch display (The DX would be even better, and iPad better yet). For those of us who don't have dual monitors it's a perfect way to shave time off learning this flying bucket of bullets.