shagrat

Yep, blast range is ok now, but the damage dealt over distance is A) a bit too excessive (my subjective opinion) and B) as it is a stand in for fragmentation too fast, as the fragments slow down faster. Keep in mind, if you dropped more than one bomb the damage is cumulative (also in real life), as the blast waves overlap (and IRL would interact). Also IRL an airburst Mk-82 would spray the whole site and damage most if not everything not armored. The thing here is damage modeling, though it has improved, isn't able to visualize things like crew incapacitated, a track of a tank damaged (mobility), though some effects are modeled. For example damaged units can't drive full speed any more, simulation of engine/mobility damage. So, yes, the current change is not perfect, but it is a big step in the right direction. For a long time, you could more or less throw a Mk-82 between a couple T-80 some 10m apart and if you were very lucky one got noticable damage. IRL the crews would have been heavily disoriented, or even injured, likely the tracks on the side of the explosion damaged and some of the optics and external weapons (DshK) damaged.

Yep, that's pretty accurate. 150m is less than half the 425m RED. So the fragmentation should incapacitate/render the majority of the site unusable, at least you would need to fix a lot of damage. As I pointed out above, currently the fragmentation is "faked" by blast damage, which is not perfect. Blast wave travels faster than fragmentation does. But actually DCS bomb damage felt like a joke, compared to real life, before. The adjustment definitely needs fine tuning, fragmentation calculated and in a perfect world even blast wave accumulation and reflection on objects, including over- and underpressure effects, but at least we now have bombs that can destroy/collapse buildings and do damage to vehicles without a direct hit! I am not sure if it's still linked on the GICHD site, but there was a nice damage area and damage distribution simulation linked, where you could see the distances on a simulated village. Also the document I linked, is really worth reading, especially the part of damage and casualty rates in urban areas (as secondary fragmentation increases the actual damage to people and unarmored/light armored vehicles). At least I hope there's an interest in understanding the real life effects and distances, with exactly the problems for weapon employment under ROE, which led to the development of low collateral damage weapons like the BLU-39 or BLU-129/B.

Wanna try? Open ground, no cover. I wouldn't recommend it! Even with eye protection, helmet and body armor... real life is different than computer games.

Also, there were modifications to the actual bomb body, that aimed at improving the fragmentation damage and radius. Like pre-fragmented casings, optimized materials and air-burst fuzes. In the recent conflicts the requirement changed toward less, but precise damage. Though typically that was addressed by separate low yield or kinetic weapons. I mentioned it in an earlier post, in DCS the difficulty is currently to balance the lack of fragmentation modeling with the effects of blast damage. Blast damage naturally travels faster than fragments. So the new adjusted blast radius is a stand in for fragmentation, which in itself is a step in the right direction and very much appreciated (finally a bomb, rather than a glorified handgrenade). On the downside, the danger to low flying aircraft is calculated by the fragmentation pattern over time, so with the blast reaching a low flying aircraft, way faster than the fragments would, we need to delay the bombs fuze in a HD low altitude attack, so we clear the excessive blast range faster. But we need to be aware, a friendly ground unit or helicopter inside the RED is not "safe". The "Danger Close" definition, is friendlies inside the 0.1 PI RED... and that's 425 m according to the GICHD document and other sources. If we assume it is a good idea to have cleared the airspace inside a 450 m radius around the impact point before(!) the bomb explodes, we should be safe.

...ever thrown a hand grenade IRL?

It's not necessarily the money, but the lack of qualified specialists in both programming and aviation including physics, that need to learn an unfamiliar development environment first... and if they exist they maybe already in a contract with aviation industry, military or both, which may or may not result in a conflict of interest, that prevent side-gigs at another developer.

No, I am aware of the process, typical timeline and do good expectation management. Or simply put, you might not be cut out for Early Access products, as your expectations mismatch greatly with reality.

Yes, absolutely. Only(!) three years, which is actually quite fast, for such a complex DCS module. And considering they did basically dump all the existing code base AND the 3D model and started from scratch along the current development (see interview below), that's an incredible development pace.

Pre-ordered! Thank you for your hard work. This will be one hell of a flight experience. Despite the perception, that there's not "much to do for a C-130J in DCS" I can't wait to do all those things we will be able to do! From supply drops, combat landings on improvised short runways, cargo delivery on a dynamic multiplayer server, to the MC-130J and infil and exfil of SpecOps teams behind enemy lines or in the Hindukush mountains in weather and at night... And the impressions from the pre-order trailer are awesome. Really looking forward to this gem!

Spekulation, aber ich vermute es wird wie bei der CH-47F mehrere Crew-Stationen geben und man kann bspw. nach hinten auf die Loadmaster-Station wechseln, während der Autopilot an ist, und Kurs hält, bzw. "Bob, der virtuelle Co-Pilot" die Maschine fliegt... Ich denke es wird auch die Möglichkeit geben Dinge wie den Frachtabwurf aus dem Cockpit (per Menü?) auszuführen, ohne extra auf die Loadmaster-Station wechseln zu "müssen". Bin mal gespannt, das Video sah sehr vielversprechend aus. Pre-Order ist erledigt. Das Anubis C-130 Mod wahr schon genial, aber das sieht nochmal nach ganz anderem Level aus.

Unter dem Balken stehen die Daten zum Download (also was tatsächlich durch die Leitung muss), oben steht der Fortschritt beim Entpacken und "installieren" austauschen der Dateien. Je nach Blockgröße deines Datenträgers können viele kleine Dateien eine ganze Menge mehr "Größe auf der Festplatte" haben, als ihre reine Datengröße. Und da DCS extrem viele Textbasierte Dateien hat, die sich extrem gut komprimieren lassen, ist das tatsächlich der größte Download mit 101 GB, nicht 180 GB.

This is an advanced feature of your windows OS and filesystem implementation, designed specifically to allow for flexible redirection, virtual folder integration (e.g. adding the same Missions or config folder to multiple DCS instances) and is used in professional IT systems, a lot. I don't mean to be rude, but it is definitely worth to learn these advanced options of your Windows OS, not only for DCS...

Well said! I absolutely agree. I know the intention of the original comment was to point out, it is a bit of advanced scripting, but the attitude of "if you don't have at least A certificate and 3 years experience in any major script language and already know lua, you won't understand" doesn't cut it. Every(!) DCS creator started learning the DCS scripting environment by reading the documentation, researching hoggit, looking at other scripts AND mostly, kindly asking this awesome community for help! And help was given, not snide comments. To make use of the new scripting features it is necessary to understand what they do, how they do it, and especially with the security implications, in a way that people don't fall back to the usual "just give every permission and it works". I've seen so many YouTube videos, posts and comments in scripts, that tell people to "just comment out the following lines" to de-sanitize the DCS lua environment and the script works fine... Some at least point out, that this means you should review ANY script in every Miz file and make sure it doesn't contain malicious actions on the io or lfs environments... but, like cfrag pointed out, my guess is the majority does not understand the implications and just did it, to "make it work".

You can use windows file system junctions for that (distribution of folders to different drives), but I recommend a dedicated 2TB SSD for DCS, I have mostly everything, installed and a bit less than 1.2 TB used.

Depends on maps and modules owned and installed! There was an update to the Sinai map that was huge, and if you have a lot of Modules that get fixes, the overall install size of DCS can get quite large. During downloads, decompressing the downloaded stuff and installing/replacing the files, it requires some additional, temporary space. If you have everything on the same disk/SSD, you should clean up things like track files (especially the large multiplayer ones), if you use TacView delete old TacView files and if that doesn't free up enough disk space, consider, temporarily deinstalling currently not used campaigns, modules or maps, until you can add a larger or better dedicated game / DCS disk or SSD.