Daemoc

I tried to have the convoy ambush something that happens in real time and something dynamic, but it never worked quite right. I think I worked once out of 10 tries. It looked cool when it worked, but it was just too unreliable. I ended up just scripting the entire event. It was still pretty fun though.

A quick screen grab from my latest flight.

I have been using this exact setup for quite a while. It works great. I am about 80% done with a 3D printed scale Huey collective. I still need to model the control plate and the additional box on the top of the head, but it is getting there. It is strictly cosmetic at the moment, but it does have a wire channel in the center if I ever get around to building a custom input device for the head.

Aye, I saw this as well. That said, in game you can run MPR until you run out of fuel. At least it used to be this way. I have been keeping myself honest and only using it during takeoff/climb, but I know you could run it forever before. I guess I have not tried it the last few updates.

As per title. No mods. I have been testing the NS 430 since the update today and it has been still acting up. The first flight I was using the Persian Gulf map, about a 30 minute flight with 5 waypoints. Frame times would spike to over 500ms about every 30 seconds or so. I kept playing with the terrain mode and if finally quit. Made it through the flight. The second flight was Nevada with 8 waypoints that was supposed to be a 45 minute flight. The frametime issue never came up this time, but I had a CTD about 8 minutes in. Just as I was going to hit waypoint 2. When it crashed, Steam and the DCS crash window started fighting each other. (this has never happened before) I had to end task via task manager to get control of my computer again so I did not get the crash log. I do have the video though if you think it would help? I will try to get this to crash again and attach logs/tracks. I just wanted to give you the heads up and see if anyone else has experienced any issues. Also, the terrain view is still all black until I change the range setting. I will have terrain color until I takeoff then it goes black again for some reason. I noticed I changed the range from 10nm to 5nm about 5 mins before I hit waypoint 2 and the terrain color came back for a second. Maybe this caused the crash?

I figured it out. It is door gunners that cause the tracks to break. It is 100% repeatable. I have done a large number of replays with the Huey and never had an issue. I just started making missions where I was using door gunners and the tracks have been breaking ever since. For now, if you want a Huey replay just do not use door gunners. You can have them equipped, you just can't let them fire. I have attached a few tracks for an example. I tried to keep them as simple as possible and short as possible. That said, the ground fire can get a lucky hit in sometimes and just take out the huey, but I have not had that happen in multiple replays of these tracks. Just an FYI. No Guns With Guns I also have a few videos uploading as I type as proof. I will edit and link once they are done. Maybe we can have @Flappie push this along. NoGun.trk WithGun.trk

I have most of those, but I spend most of my time in the Huey. You might as well use that. If the tarmac flickers indefinitely, there is something wrong for sure. I guess it could be a large building casting a shadow outside of view that is being turned off and on. Maybe behind when you turn your head which would remove it from the scene. Maybe a bugged cloud shadow? Upload a Huey track and I will take a look. I am genuinely curious now. Have you tried deleting your shaders? https://forum.dcs.world/topic/184338-what-folders-again-to-empty-when-updating/ Maybe a bugged shader is causing some issues.

I can't see the track exactly how you can as I do not own the module you are using. When I launch the track my camera is locked to a FARP and can't look around. I can access the F10 map and look at everything else from there though. The tarmac will do the same thing the grass is doing, but it will update FAR quicker. It is so quick on my end I do not see it, but it will load in stages. Your PC outclasses mine by a bit, so I am not sure why yours is taking longer to load. I have DCS installed on a high end dedicated PCIe SSD. A slower drive might make the tarmac load slower. Other factors like other software running in the background might do it too. ...malware? Also as a test: 1: Watch the track once and let everything load 2: Exit to the main menu (do not exit the game) 3: Watch the track again Does the tarmac still load in slow? Outside of that, the picture with the shadow seam you circled is in fact a cascade seam. I just noticed your shadow settings are set to medium, that is not helping. The higher you set that, the farther away those ugly cascades will be. Again, they do not go away, so there is no reason to make it look uglier by turning that down. Especially with your PC specs. That seam is really close, even for medium. You did not change any config files by chance did you?

Awesome, thanks for the examples. I will definitely take a look at those. I am not opposed to using tricks or faking things to get around certain issues, that's for sure. Even if it does not work for this particular mission, it is always nice to have options. I think I have to learn the scripting to accomplish what I am attempting though. This mission I am working on, while the biggest one I've done yet, is still rather simple. If I am having this much trouble now, I can only imagine the headache I will run into later. It would not be so bad if I did not have to completely redo everything once something breaks. Hopefully that will not be the case when using scripts. Thanks again for the info and tips gents.

Well... ...that sucks. Hey, at least I can quit trying to get it to work now. I was literally about to go insane. I already made a few changes and it seems to work. It is not what I originally wanted, but the main idea is still there so not all is lost. I guess I will really have to start digging into the scripting. Thanks for the info.

Ok, this is going to be a long one. I am not even sure what I am attempting to do is even possible, but that is the reason for this post. I am finally trying to sit down and create a complicated custom mission. Something I would like to finish and share with others rather than the little experiments I have been doing up until now. I can get troops to embark and disembark from transports if I keep it in a single unit and single stage. But let's say I want to drop troops, have them do a task, then pick them up again... That just refuses to work. Then I tried to just fake it and spawn in a new group to pick up rather than the original drop group. I have had strings of tasks work without issue, only to add a trigger that involves spawning a new unit and it will break everything. No editing way points, tasks, nothing. Just adding a trigger to the map spawning a new unit that can be transported. The original troops refuse to embark after that. Not only that, the only way I can fix that when it breaks is to completely delete all of the units tasks and re-do them from scratch. I spent the better part of 8 hours trying to get this to work and I still don't know what the issue is. It makes no sense whatsoever. Tasks that work one second just seem to break for no reason and can't be fixed unless I delete and re-do everything. I could kick a puppy at this point. Have others had any luck transporting troops more than once? Am I doing something wrong or am I just trying to do something that cannot be done?

I hear ya, I am not trying to preach and I hope I don't come off that way. Again, it's just complicated. I did look at your track. I have a video of what I see uploading as I type, but if there is indeed a video rendering issue on your end I am not going to see it on the track on my end. About the only thing I can do is show you what I see and you let me know if you see something different. The video is almost done, I will edit with the link once it is done. Until then, the only thing I can see flickering is the terrain texture pop in as you bounce around the map. That is normal. Outside of that, everything else looks as it should. My settings attached... Track video examples... https://youtu.be/06kaUU5IA3s https://youtu.be/oAdnfQpWsss

I can imagine. This is all very complicated and outside of most peoples knowledge base. I dabble in computer graphics and I still don't understand it all myself. What little I do understand I have a hard time explaining. I can imagine the ED devs would have a hard time trying to explain it as well. My guess is that's why this "issue" seems to never go away and has never been addressed. It's a graphics limitation that you have to deal with. Maybe they will have better tools to fight this once they transition to Vulkan. The issue is the shadow anomalies (flickering, popping, etc.) are caused by a number of things, all of which are just technical limitations. I have a video I did a while back that really showcased a lot of them. If you watch about the 7:00 mark or so, you will see all of them. https://youtu.be/16hkQWMwdVY?t=425 Issue 1 Cascade Seams: Cascaded shadow maps are segmented into smaller resolutions the farther you get from the camera. Each segment is blended into the next in the attempt to hide the seam, but you will see those transitions as rings at certain distances from the camera. Those are the anomalies you have circled in flappies video. Looking at the circled image, you will see the closer trees have a nice sharp crisp shadow and the trees you circled are blurry. If a shadow happened to fall right on cascade transition you would see a visible seam. Issue 2 Cascade z depth: The different cascade projectors are only rendering certain areas in the scene. Again, using my video as an example you will see the closest cascade seems to just flat out remove shadows from a lot of objects. (eg: A tall building's shadow just seems to cut off a few feet in front of the helicopter. Video timestamp 8:40) Maybe you can get someone from ED to better explain, but my crappy explanation is that the closer cascades are too close to project through the taller buildings that are farther away so no shadow is rendered in that cascade for that particular object. Issue 3 Scene LOD and visibility range: The biggest offender with shadows popping in and out altogether is the LOD and visibility range. With the sun very low on the horizon, tall objects will cast very long shadows. The shadows are so long that the engine visibility range setting will remove the object from view which obviously will remove the shadow as well. Changing LOD's will not remove the shadows completely, but they will change shape depending on the LOD rendered. Again, if you really want to understand it just google "Cascaded Shadow Maps". Those articles will explain it better than I ever could.

The shadows that flicker or change depending on how far away you are is normal. It just just a side effect of a cascaded shadow map. If you really want to understand what you are seeing, you can google it. The higher your shadow settings are the farther away that lower res shadow band is, but it will never go away. The light streaks I only see when I have motion blur or TAA enabled. (and I think it is only with multi-threading, or at least it used to be) I don't have an nVidia card so I can't say if DLAA does the same thing or not, but you could try turning it off and see if that is the case?

I saw that too, but I have not tried it myself either. The main reason for this particular question is I am starting from a ship and it is impossible for me to load troops from the ship. Right now I just ignore the loading portion and have a squad spawn at my LZ. It sort of works, but it would be better if I could load real troops in the Huey at the start. The best way I have found to trigger the LZ squad activation is when the players speed is under 1 knot, but there have been times I hit zero airspeed before I land and they appear on the ground before I land.