JCTherik

So, why do you need AAR assist if your tankers are dead? The point is to make it realistic as much as possible. A button that will change your curves and give you some substitute for depth perception, or getting the 135 lights on screen, I have absolutely no problem with that. Although, I'd prefer the game just fixed the lighting and rendering issues so that we can see the real lights better instead. A button that refuels for you, even if you do still need to connect yourself, I don't think that should be a thing. If you hop into aerobatics servers, you can be learning flying formations today AND having fun in the process, you don't have to struggle with attempting AAR. If you can't get the thing in the thing and keep it there, don't push it, don't try it, go fly more formations and tighter formations. It's really not that hard, the tools for learning and progressing are there, you just want it for free. I fly almost exclusively aerobatics and the main measurement for performance there is how cool the screenshot looks in F2. Usually, the tighter the formation, the cooler the screenshot. There's only one real milestone for progress this game actually hard tests you on in aerobatics is AAR, and you're trying to make that free. Btw, you're talking about the line-up lights on 135, so I guess you're probably flying f15 or f16. The f16 is notoriously difficult to keep in the position, and that's how it should be. As I said, come to the aerobatics servers and start chasing some tomcats around Kobuleti.

Yess!!! Owning planes just like we do with pilots, keeping track of flight hours in them. Also would be nice to have the airplane eventually recovered if crash landing outside of an airport. There would have to be an exception for dogfight servers, but I think we would see a bit more more realistic gameplay from people instead of the ever present fly-shoot-die-respawn loop. As it is now, the preflight checks feel really empty since the airplane always spawns pristine, with all the switches left in the same positions every time. As an alternative, it would also be nice if the servers had a limited number of physical airplanes, and when a player spawns into a plane, it would be in the state that the previous player left it in.

So, after seeing that this thread is still going after 2 weeks, let me add my 2 cents. Over all, in this form, a hard no. After reading all the "how"s "when"s and "where"s, nobody actually answered the "why". DCS is not a game with a story or progression, it's basically just a sandbox, so the only reward a player gets is learning to get better at things. Some of those skills give obvious advantages, others don't. Let me list several hard skills, or "bosses" in this game: - using technical systems, like cold start, navigation instruments, radar operations, etc - understanding technical systems, their shortcomings, failure modes, etc - runway landing - carrier landing - formation flying - AA refueling. Some of those skills give a clear advantage to the player. Learning to use steerpoints or tacan is much more convenient than constantly jumping to F10 map. Understanding the failure modes of aircraft systems allows one to limp home in a damaged bird. Landing on runways allows one to refuel and rearm instead of eject and respawn, landing on a carrier does the same, but usually closer to the action. Formation flying gives no benefit, apart from possibly confusing the enemy radar, but it's a hard prerequisite for AA refueling. AA refueling gives a player the option to trade 5 minutes of their life and a sweat soaked t-shirt for a full tank of fuel. Out of those, the AA refueling is by far the hardest, much harder than formation flying, and yet the benefit the player gets from learning that skill aren't really that big. I can air refuel well in a tomcat, but I still fail at refueling from time to time, particularly when someone's talking to me on voice chat, or when I'm deep into bingo and get nervous. I am really struggling to refuel f16. Implementing a button that allows people to refuel effortlessly would give them an advantage over players that do it manually, it would negate any achievement associated with it, and ultimately, it would remove the final "boss" from this game. Howbout we instead implement a big red button that says "WIN DCS" and when you click it, you win DCS? /s It's not like AAR is needed for anything, it's quite rare that AAR would require less fuel than gliding onto the nearest runway, the main benefit for AAR is that one can take off at quarter tank and then get a full tank at 30k feet. I really struggle to see how making AAR automatic by pressing a button would help anybody. Having only the "hit box" bigger would make no difference, since if you can't connect, you definitely can't stay in. I understand that AAR can be real pain on certain hardware, like sticks with huge deadzones or low precision, or a keyboard. Howbout instead of giving people "WIN AAR FREE" button, we get an aid that would equalize good sticks, bad sticks, keyboards and screens? Having a toggle button that would temporarily apply massive curves and saturation, to stick and throttle would make refueling similarly difficult on less precise sticks and throttles. Having a toggle button that would change the hue of other airplanes to red or blue based on if they're coming closer or moving away - ala doppler view - would allow people to see changing distances, which would put a flat screen on par with VR. Or, having some on-screen indicator of distance would do the same. I would have no issues with those, but this is not what we're talking about, we're talking about a "easy AAR button", and I think that's going against of what DCS is. Have you tried popping into aerobatics servers and fly formations first?

Is the fuel flow not supposed to account for afterburner? (F14-B, not tested in A)

- Huey, Hind, etc - A copilot requests to join - Pilot scrambles for his mouse in VR, flicks it around for a minute before finding the ever elusive cursor that doesn't show anywhere outside the accept window - Pilot finally accepts - Copilot requests control by continuously holding the letter C - Pilot accepts the control by pressing the C himself while the copilot is still holding his C - should work even if the pilot is unconscious What would this solve? Three situations. 1. Pilot and copilot are flying in a difficult terrain, copilot requests control, pilot can give him the controls without faffing around with the mouse. It's much easier to press a shortcut. 2. If the pilot gets unconscious in a bad situation, copilot can quickly request controls and pilot player can immediately accept without delay 3. In a situation where copilot requests a control, pilot ignores it for several minutes but then clicks accept, it often happens that the copilot gets the controls out of the blue without warning, sometimes leading to a crash.

- Put two people into both seats, Pilot and CPG - Pilot disables Yaw AP - CPG assumes control - CPG steps on a pedal Expected behavior - helicopter yaws, CPG sees no Yaw AP input in RCtrl-enter, no yaw trim added by the Yaw AP Actual behavior - Helicopter yaws slow, because Yaw AP is fighting the CPG as seen in RCtrl-enter. When the Yaw AP is out of range, it starts to counter-trim CPG's inputs. This is especially a problem when flying with "Microswitch acts as rudder trim" settings, since there's no microswitch in the front, there's no way to undo the trim from the zombie YawAP.

aww, a toggle button would be better, it's got nothing to do with the crew. Also, that would lead to an awkward situation if requiested to take off helmet with the canopy closed. I guess the crew would just take your helmet and then you wouldn't be able to call them again, cause you've got no mic. You'd have to open the canopy.

I don't have this issue, but could it be encoding related? Do those nicknames contain non-english characters?

Remove helmet - needs 1 toggle binding, and/or 2 Helmet on/Helmet off bindings. Helmet on - hear like in helmet, HMCD works, radio works Helmet off - hear like in helmet disabled, HMCD disabled, slightly reduced contrast or washed out colors or something to simulate the lack of visor, radio muted Bonus points - an animation. Why? I want to hear the engines spool up with canopy open in full glory. But then I have to go to settings and enable "hear like in helmet" if I want to hear people talking on the radio.

been a year, still on..

Settings: - Add two axes: MouseX and MouseY - Add 4 button inputs - MouseUp, MouseRight, MouseDown, MouseLeft - MouseCenter Effect in cockpit: MouseX left would move the cursor left at a speed proportional to the X deflection. Mouse shall not return to the centre if the axis is centered. Upon the axis centering, the cursor should merely stop moving. The movement of the mouse should be controlled by the stick, not the position. MouseY would move the cursor vertically in a similar way. MouseUp would move the mouse up by at some fixed reasonable speed, let's say, 2-3 seconds to cross the screen vertically. MouseRight, MouseDown, MouseLeft provides the other directions similar to MouseUp. MouseCenter - places the cursor in the center of the screen Effect in menu: Same as in cockpit Use case example: MouseX and MouseY would be mostly bound to a thumbstick. MouseUp and other momentary inputs would mostly be for people who don't have a free thumbstick, but do have a 4 way hat which they can assign, perhaps with a modifier. Either could be used to position the cursor onto, let's say, the left MFD, while still keeping the center of the view on the HUD. Fine adjustments can be done by head tracking movements in order to click some MFD buttons. MouseCenter - just in case one needs to center the mouse quickly. Note: DCS already contains axes and inputs that have similar names, but those don't seem to be assignable or functioning. Perhaps that's a bug? --------------------------------- Bonus feature - a head-decoupled mouse mode: Add a option checkbox into settings that would completely decouple the in-cockpit mouse movement from the head tracking movement. That would make a lot of difference to VR users, people with neck problems and people who are too hopped up on coffee to keep their head steady enough to click on a small button. Ideally, the cursor would be able to stay in any position in the entire cockpit, even offscreen, behind, etc. But if that's too difficult to implement, even a static cursor with a position limited by screen height/width would be a huge improvement. Use case example: 1. In F-14 Tomcat 2. Player uses his HOTAS thumbsticks or hats to place the cursor over the fuel gauge rocker switch on the left side of the cockpit 3. Player turns his head to the right, now looking at the fuel gauge 4. Cursor stays on the rocker switch, the cursor does not follow the head 5. Player uses the HOTAS binding to hold a left or right mouse click, which will momentarily show the external or wing fuel tank status. Wish 3: a binding that would instantly momentarily toggle between those two modes - head-coupled and head-decoupled mouse. Use case: 1. Press the toggle to get to head-coupled mode 2. Move head to position the cursor over a switch 3. Release momentary toggle (or press again if it's a regular toggle) to keep the cursor on the switch 4. Move the head somewhere else, keeping the cursor on the switch 5. Profit. Thank you.

Seems fixed in the latest patch, THANK YOU!

It's been reported multiple times, but people always hijack the thread for other complaints, so, here's a real fancy bug report again, please, keep this for this bug, and this bug only. Bug: Minor damage doesn't start the repair counter, when repair requested Note: The actual repair itself works, but the airplane has to be damaged more than just flaps or blown tire to start the 180 second timer. Can I reproduce it 100%: Yes How to reproduce: Note: I've personally seen this bug happen with stuck flaps, other stuck control surfaces and blown wheels, but there are probably other scenarios where this happens. I'll be using stuck flaps as an example, since stuck flaps are easy to produce on demand. Step1: Spawn a pristine airplane Step2: Cold start Step 3: Take off Step 4: Deploy landing flaps Step 5: Overspeed flaps, verify that they're indeed broken and they don't retract anymore Step 6: Land carefully on a friendly airport, so as not to introduce any other damage Step 7: Engine off, wait for spooldown, canopy open Step 8: Ask for repair Result: Expected behaviour: Ground crew says "Copy", and starts the 180 second timer Actual behaviour: Ground crew says "Copy", but the timer never starts Note: At the risk of repeating myself, if the airplane has some bigger damage, the timer will start and the flaps will get fixed, so, it's not the actual repair that's broken, just the initiation of it. DCS Version: DCS 2.7.16.28157 Open Beta today, but it's been BROKEN FOR YEARS! Last time I reproduced it was yesterday, multiplayer, 4YA UK Aerobatic BETA, but I don't think that matters, i've seen it broken in multiple servers.