Temetre

Im aware you didnt make that decision, its the ED leadership, tho im gonna say "im sorry you feel that way" is a pretty bad thing to write. Coulda been sorry about ED making a change thats objectively punishes me without any doing of my own. Thats the problem, and not my feelings over it. And "someone broke the EULA and thats why we punish you too" is not a justification. ED just made a change limiting how I can access a game I put like 200-300 bucks into. ED just decided to push the problems onto players, rather than to deal with it. Maybe it wont change anything, because ED has more power than players, who also tend to have a short memory. For me I can say, I was planning to dive into helicopters and get the Hind or Apache on christmas sales, but now I have zero interest in giving ED money for them. And then I cannot use anything from Steam together with stuff I got on the Standalone. I basically just cannot use DCS World on Steam anymore. Also, whats next? Will the bind be removed, will we not be able to transfer licenses anymore? If ED makes a changes like this without telling us, theres no knowing whats their next step. Even if they dont intend to do anything currently, they might just change their mind in the future. ED has control over the platform, so it kinda matters if we can trust them. And with this we clearly cannot trust them to not make changes against our interest.

Im obviously not blaming you or anyone else working on the community side. Im blaming the ED leadership or whoever made that decision. Im sure this has been coming a longer way, its not something you do one day to the other normally. And it just feels bad to be treated like that. Nor do I know how else ED might restrict our access to the game in the future.

Why did we have a newsletter on friday, but it doesnt tell that ED just changed over the weekend so we cant use steam accounts anymore when they are connected to standlone accounts?

Gotta be real, this feels like a really trashy way to treat your customers, by the ED leadership. First, we dont even get told about this change at first and had to learn it the hard way. Thats unacceptable from the get go and shows a blatant disregard for customers and community. And secondly, this is ED arbitrarily changing how we can access the game. This is some kind of "pray I dont alter the deal further" moment. We have no choice, we werent asked, not told. Just ED changing such a fundamental thing, a principle of access the game was sold on, and we have to suck it up. This is only made worse becasue we already put up with so much. We pay silly amounts of money for modules, we accept a deeply buggy game, and we crowdfund eternal early access modules with often questionable road maps. If anything, ED should give back more to the community, rather than treat us like this and take away features. I planned to purchase more modules, eg the F-4E instantly at release, but Im gonna put those on hold. Not just because Im treated badly, but because this makes clear that I cannot trust ED to not make changes against my interest. If they did a decision like this as if its nothing, what else will they do in the future?

I might be misremembering, but IIRC someone from Heatblur actually said its probably not worth it for lack of interest, besides lack of documentation.

I included the RWR with "EW gear". The point was about compatability with the missile. I included the RWR with "EW gear". The point was about compatability with the missile. I included the RWR with "EW gear". The point was about compatability with the missile.

Obviously besides the EW gear lol

Crash could be a clue or could be nothing. But if the test doesnt find errors... its probably not the memory. Tbh I cant really thing of more things to try.

@Match Hm, that looks frustrating af. My bet is some bug/memory leak in DCS, but who knows. Its probably worth checking if your memory is fine? 1. Try Memtest64, thats a simple software that checks your RAM for errors. I once or twice had broken RAM chips, and memory-testers instantly found them. 2. I imagine you also got software for your SSDs? They usually come with specific software from the manufacturer, like "Kingston SSD Manager" or "Samsung Magician". If you havent run that, do it so it can check for damaged cells. Another thing is, your VRAM might be full when playing DCS. I dont think that should cause stutters and loading issues as severe as this, but its worth a try. Your 3080 is a fast GPU, but a bit limited in memory with only 10GB of VRAM. And DCS really loves to gobble up as much memory as possible. Easiest way to lower memory usage is just to lower textures. Imo just set the first two texture settings to low for a test run. If you still got issues, make sure youre using less than 10gb GPU memory.

Good point, someone also point that out to me on the discord. The only thing required for full supporte of STARMs on the F-4E is apparently a panel, and maybe software. I think F-4Gs are also very close to F-4Es.

Interesting! I was mostly pointing that out because Kermit seemed to say the F-8 were beloved because of their gun. Im not disagreeing the gun is useful. Im happy were getting an F-4 with gun in DCS

Tribalistic nonsense. Gotta make up groups so you can villify them for having differing opinions, I suppose.

Tbf most of the times theres tons of seperate manuals. Seems to vary quite a bit how complete the 'main' manual is.

Pilots are biased. If they are not trained to use a weapon, which has some reliability issues, and then see the weapon missed most of the predictably bad shots... yeah, of course they might think its a bad weapon and they dont wanna bet their life on it. Guns are much more predictable and under their control. Same way pilots might dislike the "feel" of FBW, when in reality it gives them so much more control about what the plane is doing, just in a more indirect way. But that doesnt mean the weapon is bad. The bit about "theres a low chance to hit" usually depends on the usage of the weapon, and you cant tell me that guns have an easy time getting kills. And its actually the prefered strategy for missiles these days to go for low risk low kill chance shots. Do that enough and you get a kill, without putting your plane too much into danger. And I think the numbers really back that up. Idk how accurate Wikipedia is, but the US aerial victory list shows 19 F-8 kills over vietnam. And the Aim-9 article claims 16 kills by F8s with Aim-9s. All available data seems to show that guns dont bring many planes down, but missiles do. The F-105s have an extraordinary amount of gun kills, but that plane was also taken out of service because of massive losses. You could say thats because its a bomber, but thats also true for the F-4s: Not all Phantoms lost were in fighter configuration.

The USAF made a lot of wrong calls. Black Wednesday happening shows clearly they didnt understand the conflict, hence they tried to adapt. And considering the F-4 went on to get most of its kills with missiles, I think that shows that a lack of gun wasnt the problem. Rather than the well docummented lack of strategy, communication and training in the scenario they found over vietnam. Late in the war, sparrows became the most effective weapon IIRC, even beyond sidewinders. The USN had better training from the beginning, and never struggled quite as much. The gun pod also seems more like a token gesture, or something for ground attack, considering how bad pods are for dogfighting (drag+no radar sight).

You could even say the F-104 was a bit too exciting

Only the 104S can use Sparrows. The G's radar doesnt got an illuminator to guide missiles.

I would argue that the F-4 proved that the cannon might be useful, but it wasnt really necessary. Even after the cannon-variant was introduced, most kills came in equal measures from Sparrows and Sidewinders. Pilots just got better at using the missiles, while technical shortcomings were sorted out. In the latter part Sparrows got most kills afaik. Its harder to make a judgement about the F-104 imo, but the concept itself might be flawed. If youre that fast, its gotta be very hard to get accurate gun hits with a B&Z fighter.

And mind that many of the 20mm kills are from F-105s. They only got two sidewinder kills. No kills for F-104s. If you look at F-4s, they are much more about Aim9/7s.

DCS is not doing trying to simulate as accurately as possible. As evidence, just watch the show with wags, where he talks about ballpark numbers, leaving out declassified features, that kinda stuff. He says they dont want a sim that "bad guys" can use for planning. Yet pretty much every scenario in DCS is fictional. Those specific SU-27s flying in DCS are almost always in places and times they dont belong. That shows that the purist view ignores the reality of the game. The use of "realism" is almost parody, when "this exact aircraft configuration" is presented as the hight of realism, and the scenario is just handwaved away. Let alone how the SU-27S is a simplified module, so it doesnt even hold up to the limited realism of FF modules. As said, Im not saying the missiles should be added to the plane, but the idea of adding them being a bigger breach of realism than anything else doesnt make sense. It might even be more believable in the common fictional conflicts in DCS, thats a context where fictional upgrades make more sense than outdated variants. You think ED is trying to make realistic tanks and ships in DCS? You can make an argument where planes and game system take shortcuts, but tanks/ships should be much more obivous. Who said that its problematic? My point was that this view of the game doesnt add up. If anything, I would turn your point around: People pretending DCS is trying to be an ultra realistic simulator are the ones who dont understand the game. Its the most realistic game simulating those planes in combat, maybe. But its clearly a game, even ED representatives are saying so. All those instant action missions, the comfort options like airstarts, the fast tutorials, air-pause, all that stuff is sign of a game trying to make learning and flying fun and accessible. Not just have the most super realistic sim. Wags talked about features they cant add or dont want to. And its not the "most realistic simulator", already because commercial sims exist. Let alone there being some big holes even in recent official modules. Isnt it telling that people even made this argument about FC3 planes, which are not even trying to be super realistic? They can do so if they want. But Im pretty sure theyd lose to commercial/military simulators. Eg the Mirage F-1s radar? Thats not realistic at all, they clearly made compromises. Frankly, "the most realistic simulation" is marketing speech, that only works compared to games. Not compared to simulators.

DCS itself runs counter to that philosophy. You cannot cite that statement and tell me you think thats serious word for word.

Normally Id be fine to have reasonable upgraded versions fitting the timeframe, and where implementation is obvious (software/controls wise). Eg if were flying a flanker in a 2010 DCS scenario, then its only realistic to have R-77/77-1. Just limiting yourself to exact historical gear at one point isnt really any more realistic, when you put the aircraft into different settings and timeframe. 'Purist' are way too eager to ignore that reality. That said, afaik we dont really got much data on 77-1, and I dont really want more magical overpowered weapons based on brochure numbers. Eg the JF-17 might be a cool module, but its got a history of being overmodeled, both in weapons and flight performance. FC3s SU-27/33 also seems a bit too good to be true, according to some tests of ITR+STR values. Let alone the IRST "radar". DCS isnt perfectly replicating planes, that should be obvious. Already for military secrecy reasons. Wags in an interview even recently said theyre sometimes putting aircraft/gear more in the ballpark numbers, to make sure it cant be used for military purposes by "bad guys". Left out features from declassified documents for that reason. Also called it a simulator game btw.

Sorry, in that post I was found I was just being kinda dumb and unintentionally hand updated the game, because i used the MT exe. So my issues mightve been just fixed by finally having the first update since 1.5 month with the re-download. That said, there was a lot of pretty serious performance and loading issues, which plagued my experience for a while, that got fixed with that. Like 2 minute loading times and stutter-issues had been a thing for me for a long time. Actually forgot how much better and faster the game ran at the start, until I did the reinstall. So im not sure, if it was really just an update that fixed everything, but sadly I cant tell.

And the Hornet spends quite some time accelerating over the runway. Frankly, this looks quite a bit slower than our DCS Hornet?

Tbf it might be even darker when you remove the jpeg compression, that tends to lighten up super dark places. I dont think it looks normal tho. I mean if thats what you ment sure, but its not the only plane I experienced it in^^ Just tested it with F-16, still lighting bug. Wouldve been surprised if it the plane. I think its the map, some weather stuff or a buggy generated map.