Tomsk

Ah I see, I missed that bit! From the pictures it looks really interesting and fun, are there groups that do this kind of stuff in DCS (in English)?

So the pictures in your post look really interesting, but sadly I have no idea what you're saying because it's not in English. Which is probably true for most people here, seeing as these are the English forums ...

That I think is the key problem. We have some of the community in War Thunder SB ... I used to be active in that community but Gaijin kept making increasingly stupid decisions and I lost interest Then we have the people doing things in CloD. That community seems to be still going strong despite the fact that CloD is essentially a dead engine, partly due to the amazing work of Team Fusion. Then we have IL2 BoS, which should be "the next big thing" ... and some people love it, but some of us find it misses the mark. Then we have the WWII planes in DCS. Which have a simply amazing fidelity and feel, and the DCS engine which seems to be getting better and better in a way the others just can't match. But no WWII maps, no WWII ground units, so no WWII scenarios. That sounds fun :-) Are there tools available for modders to build their own maps and ground units and such like? Currently the only mods I see in the mods channel are graphics mods.

So I own Battle of Stalingrad and in many ways it's a really good game. It has a good map, good period units, a good selection of planes. There are multiplayer servers that are usually populated with interesting stuff happening on them. I take it for a spin once in a while, usually in the FW-190A which is one of my favourite planes. However, it always ends the same way ... I fly it around for a bit ... then I land .. then I go fly the P-51 in DCS for a few hours. My interest is first in flight sims and second in WWII combat, and for me BoS just isn't a satisfying flight experience. It's hard to exactly point to why ... it just "feels wrong", they don't feel like planes to me, they are too light and floaty. I should love BoS, but in practice I don't play it much. I also don't see it as a great long term investment, for me that's mostly because their engine is DX9 and so it can't support VR. As a person who is first about the flying and the immersion I really do see VR as the future. DCS for me is a more compelling experience now, and I think it will be doubly so when I eventually get my hands on an Oculus Rift :-)

Is that why no one makes FFB sticks any more!? Urgh patents! Personally I love my MS FFB2, for me it makes a huge difference to the sense that I'm flying a real plane. Wish there were more FFB sticks available. As a FFB user I obviously don't mind as long as the FFB implementation stays as it should :-) However my 2 cents for non FFB use is that I agree with IvanK, the important thing is that you have to react to the pitch trim change ... the fact that you manually will have to make the stick move when in reality it would move itself is not a big problem IMHO.

I've also wondered why not many people seem to play DCS WWII online. I don't think the WWII genre is dying at all. Personally I much prefer WWII era stuff over modern jets, because fighting in modern jets is too much about handling the avionics for my taste. I like prop planes, I like how "real" they feel, I like how you have to do it all yourself - no computer assistant, I like that high performance tail draggers can be a handful. Many people feel the same. Personally I like learning the starting procedure, but if people don't there's always the magic "start my engine for me" button. I think #3 is the key. At the moment DCS feels like a modern jet sim, set in modern environments with a few WWII era prop planes that you can fly about in ... probably because that's what it is. There's not a lot to do ... it's not like you can seriously go tangle with some SA-9s in you P-51. There aren't period bombers to protect or shoot down, or sensible missions you can make ... so all you can do is "AirQuake" against other planes. The WWII planes in DCS are great, the attention to detail is incredible and I love the way they fly ... but a few WWII planes doesn't make a functioning WWII flight sim experience. But the good news is I think it's coming. Looks like the Normandy map is coming along, more planes are coming, period units are coming. The damage modelling and net code is apparently getting some needed love. So it'll take some time, but if the quality of the WWII planes we have is anything to go by then when we do get it it's going to be great. I also think #4 will happen when #3 happens. When we get some believable scenarios I think many squadrons will start moving over. Then all the modelling talent in those communities will start helping flesh out DCS. There's some incredible talent in those communities, for example I've been amazed at what Team Fusion have achieved with CloD in what is essentially a dead product. Overall I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the future of WWII in DCS :-)

Thanks hangsangb, I was wondering which one would be the better choice so that's really helpful. What do you think of the VR experience as a whole in DCS? It sounds like the ultimate in immersion, but I've not actually tried it.

I recently acquired a Microsoft Force Feedback 2 stick in eBay for £40. OMG why don't they make these things anymore, I really love it! The plane talks to you! It tells you when you're getting close to stalling, it tells you when you're running out of speed in vertical manoeuvres, it tells you when to transition from stick back to neutral on take off. Really loving the effect in DCS P-51 particularly, feels nicely modelled ... after I'd gone into the axis FF settings and told it to 'swap axis'. Can definitely recommend getting your hands on one if you haven't tried it.

Personally I agree with The LT, I honestly can't imagine flying without pedals. Once you get used to using them you start to feel before wasn't even really 'flying'.

So used the T-Flight Hotas for ages, great stick for the money. Personally I mapped the Hat Up+Down to elevator trim, Hat Left+Right to rudder trim (used head tracking so didn't need it for views). Also mapped buttons for flaps up + down, and the Comms menu. Zoom in slow and zoom out slow, fire guns on trigger and weapon release on 'second button'. Those were the main controls I used a lot, others I mostly left to keyboard.

Nice landing :-) Giving the right amount of forward stick when the mains touch does take practice ... but ... having got the hang of it personally I prefer it. Trouble with three pointers (IMO) is you need two very precise things to happen at the same time: you want the plane to run out of speed, exactly at the same moment it runs out of altitude. It's real easy to misjudge your height and stall too high over the runway, or to touch the mains accidentally with too much speed and "balloon". Especially since depth perception is limited in a sim, and your pitch attitude needs to constantly change as you slow down. In contrast, I like the wheel landing because it requires you to get one thing right: timing that forward stick. Precise altitude doesn't matter, you'll know when you hit the ground and at that point you shove the stick forward to prevent it ballooning. It's easier with a low descent rate but you can actually get away with quite a thump if you time the forward stick right. You can also wheel land at quite a range of speeds, so that doesn't need to be perfect either. I also like the improved visibility of landing on two wheels, it means I can see the horizon to help with rudder steering at that all important moment of the wheels touching. I can successfully do both two and three point landings now, but I personally feel like my wheel landings are much cleaner and safer. Not that I'm saying that doing three pointers is wrong in any way, I'm not a purist .. just that personally I prefer wheel landings.

So I had the same experience at first, I had to land fast and very very 'fine' to get it to work. But with practice I've found you can make it work at a variety of speeds and even when plonking into the ground a bit hard. The key is pushing the stick forward. Come down and be ready for the wheels to touch, when they do immediately push the stick forward. Give it a harder shove at first to get it to stick, but then quickly reduce forward pressure a bit to just hold the nose down. The harder you hit the ground the bigger that initial shove needs to be. When you can do that consistently I've found you can make 2.5 point landings (as I like to think of them). In a normal 3 point you'd hold it off inches from the ground until it stalls into the runway. With a 2.5 point landing you chop throttle at the threshold but then plop 2 wheels onto the ground and hold them there shortly before it runs out of speed and the tail drops. Looks like 2 wheeler with a very short time on two wheels, or a three pointer where you don't hold it inches above the runway you plant the front wheels instead. I almost always do this now rather than 3 point it because the timing is less critical, the risk with 3 pointers for me is misjudging the height above ground and stalling too high. The 2.5 point avoids that risk, but has just as short a roll as a normal 3 pointer.

Was just going to give a follow up to this and a big thanks to T}{OR. For ages wheel landings were a scary thing I avoided. Now they are definitely my preferred way to land. At first I could only get them to work in narrow circumstances. Speed had to be near 150mph, trim had to be right, I had to touch down very fine to avoid the bounce and it usually required a lot of runway. But practice makes perfect and now I can do them at 100mph, basically throwing them into the ground, using any vaguely sensible trim and get a nice short roll out. Overall I much prefer the wheel landing now, better visibility and avoids the risks of misjudging the height and stalling too high that 3 pointers are prone too. Not that I find 3 pointers very hard, but most of the time I'll take the wheelie :-)

Really good tip I heard from this youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/FlightChops is to "punch and jab" with the rudder. Don't hold it, if you start going off course make a quick stab and recenter then re-evaluate. If you hold it you're almost certain to over correct and get into an oscillation. Also if you really start veering off course don't be scared to tap the appropriate wheel brake to recenter, key word there is "tap" just a quick stab on the brakes can save you. If you can it's better to do it rudder only, but using the brakes is better than breaking the plane. The other tip is, watch the horizon like a hawk. Don't think about the correction you need, just watch and make it instinctively and early. Make small quick corrections even if you're not sure it's the right thing to do yet, you'll develop a feel for it. It's far easier to correct small deviations early rather than waiting until they get larger; counter every movement before it begins! You need to watch that plane on the whole roll out, there is no "time to relax" until the thing is parked and the engine is off. Also if you don't have rudder pedals, get rudder pedals. So much easier, more realistic and more fun than trying to use a twisty stick (IMHO)! Sadly this is Quoted For Truth, it just requires a lot of practice. But also, having the right idea of exactly what you're trying to do really helps.

Ha :-) I've actually not got too bad at it now, nor quite as smooth as THOR but passable. My point was more that I could see Curly's question about how the struts were modeled could be relevant even though as you say the total change in momentum must be preserved :-)

Not quite sure what you mean :-) But I can see that how the struts are modelled could have quite a big effect. It seems to me that the same moment spread over a longer time could be easier to deal with. It could also be that having the force spread out could effect how the tail behaves. I'm sure the elevator surfaces would have a resistance to downwards movement. I could imagine that changes depending on whether that was a faster shorter impulse, or a longer slower impulse. I'm not an expert on aircraft modelling (and Yo Yo definitely is so I defer to his judgement) but it does seem plausible to me that struts with shock absorbers would behave quite differently to entirely rigid landing gear, so you'd expect things to vary with how good the struts were at distributing the force over time ...

So I'm guessing the effect of the shock absorbers is to distribute the effect of the force over a longer period of time? Same total change in momentum but smaller force over a longer time. That could make a huge difference ... if the upward momentum were spread out more that will lead to the force pushing the tail down to spread out more. That would give more time to catch it with the elevator or apply various other counter forces.

@Curly and Yo-Yo: Yes, big takeaway tail draggers do not behave on landing like a tricycle geared aircraft. I had previously said it seemed very "bouncy", and it is if you get it wrong, but it seems like that's just how tail draggers are. @Justin Case: Yup it's definitely a bit easier for the beginner but I can definitely recommend learning two wheel landings also. As I understand it the real world tail draggers qualification (which is separate from a normal tricycle gear PPL) requires the pilot to be proficient with two wheel landings. This is neatly explained here: http://www.bellanca-championclub.com/WheelLandings.html

Seeing the same, pretty much every track recorded in 1.5 results in a very different outcome when you watch is back to what actually happened in the flight. Almost always you crash and die after a few minutes.

So I noticed in THOR's video that he's actually using even more nose down trim than neutral, so I tried that. It works well, you don't have to get the height quite so precisely right, when the wheels are about to touch let the nose go, power off, and the trim will hold it down. If you do it a little early it's a bit less pretty but it works okay, you can get away with a little bit late as well. As is so often the case in flying it seems that the key is choosing the right trim, I was finding wheel landings really hard with the wrong trim. Overall I'm liking the wheel landings a lot now that I've got used to them, in many ways they are much nicer than a three pointer once you've got used to them. The difference is that at 150mph the P-51 feels like a plane, at 120mph it feels like a pregnant hippo. At 120mph the nose likes to swim around all over the place, at 150mph it is much nicer behaved. You can also see what you are doing much better at 150mph. It's also nice doing much of the roll out on two wheels where the plane feels nicer, and it's easier to see the horizon. I've now watched lots of real life P-51 landings on youtube, and the vast majority are wheel landings. You can see why :-)

So this was really fascinating for me, I learnt so much from this thread!! And I'll repeat the earlier comments about being really impressed with the tone that midnabreu has taken here, wish it was more common in internet forums! So I had a go at learning wheel landings based on the information in this forum, here's my basic conclusions after many ... many ... practice wheel landings. As Thor says, it really helps to nail that speed when you wheels touch, if you're going too slow you'll have a hard time preventing the nose come up. Leave the power on, again otherwise you'll lose too much speed and up comes the nose which will mean a "bounce" (ballooning). When the wheels touch, come off the throttle fairly quickly, it helps keep the nose down. Neutral trim is a great tip, usually I like to trim for a speed on landing which for 150mph is (ish) 1 notch nose up, but neutral trim and holding the nose up with the stick actually works better here because it means when your wheels touch you can release back pressure and it gives a gentle holding the nose down force. DCS seems to be *very* sensitive to vertical speed on touchdown for wheel landings, even slightly too much and you will "bounce". It's sensitive enough for three pointers, but wheel landings you really have to get it right. If you bounce, full power and go around, I found it really hard to save them once they'd bounced. As always you have to watch the entire rollout like a hawk, but particularly I found when the tail came down it often destabilized the plane a little and extra care was needed. Eternal vigilance! I really can't imagine doing this without rudder pedals, but then I always hated twist grip rudder ... All in all I found wheel landings quite a bit harder than 3 pointers, which I was fairly confident on. A three point landing also noticeably used up a lot less airfield, and were generally much more forgiving. If you bounce a little on a 3 pointer I found I could generally save it okay, I found it much harder on a wheel landing, and so overall I can see why the manual recommends three pointers where possible. That said I agree with an earlier comment, a well executed wheel landing is a thing of beauty. I've practiced enough that only about 1 wheel landing in 10 now results in a go around. When they go wrong the problem is always the same: not judging height above ground correctly and hitting it a little too hard and bouncing. I can nail the speeds, and glide paths just fine ... but judging the height I have left I find consistently tricky. I have absolutely zero IRL flight experience and by no means an expert in flight sims, but from my uneducated opinion I find myself agreeing with midnabreu. Landings in the DCS P-51 seem a little unreasonably unforgiving of landing with too much vertical speed. The landing gear seem incredibly "springy". I found you really really have very little margin to work with here ... Maybe that's realistic but it's tough when you have no depth perception to gauge height above ground (can't wait for the Oculus Rift!). Lastly, big thumbs up to Eagle Dynamics, love the way the P-51 handles in general. No idea if it's faithful to the real thing (I'll let others argue over that) but to me it has a really nice "feel" to it :-)

Amazing! I'd always heard people talking about "Coordinated Turns" and "Keeping the Ball Centered" but I honestly never understood it ... That's because it's really not "Coordinated Turns" it's actually (watching your tracks and the videos) "Coordinated Rolls". And you don't achieve them by watching the ball (which as you say is too unstable) but by watching the nose! Seems that I have a new thing to practice with my flying now :-)