Stratzilla

Hey, guys. I tried to get into DCS a year or so ago and never really picked it up. I did get into MSFS - and honestly have gotten pretty skilled at it. But now I'd really like to shoot at some stuff. I have the F-18 and F-14 and decided to start with the F-18 and if I can get good with it, I'll tackle my childhood crush, the F-14 (don't laugh). I think the more I can make it similar to MSFS the easier this will be for me. What I mean are things like flaps, gear, moving and looking around, etc. I'm finding a lot of that challenging so far. (user error, I'm sure). But just to start with I'd like to tackle looking and moving around. I'm usually in VR, but for now let's just consider desktop view. This is how I do this is MSFS and I'd like to know if it's possible in DCS: I use an Xbox controller and I bound all of my ups, downs, etc to the analog sticks. I can click the start button and jump into what MSFS calls a drone camera (outside the plane) and then use those same analog sticks to move the camera in any direction, change the speed, height, etc. Then with another press of the start button I'm back in the cockpit. So if I'm in desktop view I can just grab my controller and move or look in any direction. In VR I can push start while sitting at the airport, hop out of my plane and fly through Austin airport and pull up to the bar if I want to. Or check out other planes waiting to taxi. Now - here in DCS I cannot seem to figure out how to do this. I did bind my up and down arrows (the analog sticks wouldn't actually show up when I "moved" them) but when I launch the sim - it doesn't work at all. In desktop mode I even tried to use my mouse and I still can't look around. I click RAlt+C to toggle mouse look, and the little curser disappears, but I still can't look around. I can hold scroll wheel, right click, left click and then drag up and down - nothing. I tried double clicking the middle button (found that suggestion on the forum) and my F-18 hauled ass across the airport. Since I couldn't look down to hit the brake it ended in a tragic explosion. I get that I'm green. To be honest, I'm 54 and before MSFS 2020 and DCS the last games I played constantly were Jungle Strike and Desert Strike on Sega Genesis. And I'm not kidding. (FYI - I kicked ass at both). But I am a computer nerd and am a musician and audio engineer (and dabble with 3D animation) so I have to believe I can pick this up. Any help would be appreciated. Sorry to ramble so long. Hope all this made sense. I have so many questions! Thank you.

Thanks guys - so far it has been a slow transition. Honestly, as I just finally have been able to properly control my plane I'm still on flight and landing basics (just crash landed a few nights ago, in fact!) But the missions look really fun and I've got some time blocked out over the next few weeks to dive deeper and actually complete some training missions. I've been looking at a Hotas - but it's overwhelming! I'm in VR most of the time and my muscle memory skills need some work. Even flying the airbus it's still a task to ensure I locate all the correct bindings during flight. Will have to react even faster in DCS. So before I spend more $$ I think I'll give it a little more time to see if something just look more like what I need. Those suggestions are a huge help, because I wasn't even familiar with a few of those! lol.

Guys - thanks for your replies. I have fixed the issue! The duplicated binding thing makes perfect sense - I actually had the exact same issue in my early days of MSFS so I'm a little disappointed that I didn't think of that. However - this just apparently was a deadband issue. I had that set on around 4 or 5 - I increased that to around 20 and ... pow! Life is good again! Thanks so much for giving me some excellent suggestions. Now on to actually learning how to fly this thing. I also could not resist purchasing the F-14 - so I now have that to play with. Honestly I wanted the F-14 initially, but the F-18 was offered and half off as a new DCS user and I couldn't resist. But my love has always been Tomcat since I saw The Final Countdown as a kid!! It's definitely more finicky, that's for sure. But so sexy! Will be fun learning both.

Thank you for the replies. A VKB and a <still undecided> throttle is in my near future, but trying to make do for the time being. I will definitely look into both of your suggestions regarding the wonky controls when I get home this evening. Much appreciated!

Thank you. Shame, that's really a handy feature. Oh well! I figured out the issue with my mouse not being released in the game. And I think I just need to do a service request for the username change. So that's 3 of my 4 questions ... ... but the hotas issue is literally keeping me grounded at the moment. Not sure what to do to fix that one! Any suggestions, anyone? Can't figure out why it would work in MSFS but not in DCS. Maybe when I get home (at work atm) I'll try to fly a different aircraft and see if it repeats the issue.

Hi. New to DCS, but long time MSFS VR user. Trying to bring myself up to speed with my shiny new F-18. But I have some basic DCS questions before I can get too deep into the aircraft. I’m trying to tweak the controller assignments just to try and make the workflow as familiar as I can. I’m getting there – I’ve been able to search the forum and find the answer to most of my immediate questions. But here’s a few I have not quite been able to find. 1. In MSFS I normally do all my cold startup, planning, etc in desktop mode and then use a keyswitch to jump to VR during pushback. Is that feature available in DCS? I could not find a binding for it. 2. So when I’m in VR I have my DCS screen on one monitor and a browser on the other. Then as I’m learning in DCS and have questions I can simply pause, put down the headset and look up the issue on my browser. But for some reason I can’t take the focus off the game. Not matter what I do I can’t move my mouse outside of that DCS window (I hope I explained that well). I’m sure it’s something simple but I sure can’t figure it out! 3. Finally – my Extreme 3D controller doesn’t work correctly. I noticed after my first carrier launch (which was amazing, by the way) that my F-18 was not turning very well. I started thinking “geez if this is the way this thing handles I’m gonna get destroyed in a dogfight”. Then I looked down at the F-18’s stick. It wasn’t moving right. So if I move my Logitech in any direction I see the F-18’s stick follow, but then it just sorta bounces a little bit and goes back to center. I understand it’s a FBW plane, but surely this can’t be the correct response. I was turning pretty sharp and almost crashed because moving my stick the other way resulted in that same action, and I almost couldn’t pull it out of the turn. FYI – this is the same stick I’ve used in MSFS for a year or so with no issues. Any suggestions other than “get a better hotas”?? I followed several YouTube videos regarding axis tuning, but may still be missing something. I think that’s it for now. I hope it’s ok to post all 3 questions in one post – just seemed easier than 3 separate posts. If not let me know and I’ll do it differently next time. By the way I’m using a Pico 4 with Virtual Desktop with a 4090/ 5950x system that is fined tuned pretty well for VR. Also – after creating the username, Stratzilla, I saw the community has very well known user, Skatezilla. I play guitars – I don’t skate! Lol. However, that’s way too close and I don’t want to do that to Skate and cause folks to confuse us, so how can I change my username? I was able to change it in the main DCS profile page but that didn’t change the name here on this forum. Ok I guess that’s four questions! Thanks in advance!