Yskonyn

I sympathise with you struggling with the learning curve and the limited hand holding this sim does for inexperienced players. But in the mean time this is unavoidable in a study sim. It's a complex aircraft and so it requires some complex reading and training before you get to grips with it. There's a reason why pilots have to do training for every type of aircraft they fly, not just one license to fly em all. ;) I, for one, wouldn't like popups or other indications in-game telling me that its winter and I should turn the anti-ice on, for example. Besides, EKRAN tells you to do that anyway if you forgot. At least it does for engine anti-ice that I know for sure. You always have the game-mode... :P Just kidding. But don't the training missions do like you want? I mean if you start them and take control immediately you can just follow the voice over's instructions.

I've noticed that after you uncage the Shkval again after first locking a target the cursor sometime seems to walk to a side by its own. At least seemingly on its own because I do not operate the slew controls at that time. If I then reset the Shkval then uncage again to designate a new target it does remain fixed on the target again. I was wondering why the system does this? Does the Shkval try to reset to neutral after uncaging when you've just locked a target moments before uncaging, for example?

It seriously sucks bigtime if you're waiting for something you really like. . . I'd press the buy button on the dcs website if I were you. Shops are closed until tuesday now, so if you buy and download now you can go hunt some easter bunnies! :P Let's face it, there's not much else to do anyway during easter...

Great to see you jumped in! Welcome again! ;) Actually if you want to go for some training with full realism (the training missions let you crash without damage) and damage modelling without having to do a specific mission you could load 'Shooting Range'. It's in the mission list if you select 'Missions' from the main menu. That's what I always do. You start with a cold and dark cockpit and you can do whatever you feel like; either go to the target area and do some weapons training or just fly around getting a feel for the helo.

Yeah good suggestion, but f HL isn't going to be updated anymore maybe someone could create a similar utility and spawn a new era with DCS as first supported product. ;)

Not quite correct. The printed manual will be an expanded one with more chapters than the PDF with the game. The extra chapters are more about background info and how to employ the KA-50 instead of just telling what each switch does. At least if I remember correctly. No word has been said, AFAIK, about wether it will be current with the upcoming patch.

What are you using for the rudders? The twist motion of the stick? If you I would suggest finding another way of controlling the rudder. The twist of the stick is far too sensitive to use it as a rudder and it's far too inaccurate as well. The tendency to chance over time out of calibration is an often heard problem with the twist stick axis. I would invest in some proper pedals. You'll need good rudder control in this sim. And using rudder in flight does not always make your rotors collide, but you have to use the rudder correctly and cautiously. If you slam it one way or the other, sure you'll overstress the aircraft. Using rudder and stick can result in some pretty awesome maneuvers without smashing the rotor blades. ;) That's a problem with the twist axis as well, because you have little room for movement you tend to overuse rudder quite easily.

Or drop ZorgDK a PM. While his server isn't UK based, I can confirm he's a laid back chap who likes to fool around with DCS online. Taking it easy, learning from eachother. We both had a blast today!

The problem with Vista and only 1GB RAM is that it leaves little memory for games because Vista is eating up a lot of that 1GB already. Secondly, DCS is a very CPU dependent game and your 1.4Ghz Dual Core is on the thin side for it. Even if your laptop has a decent video card I think you're going to struggle with performance if it would run at all. Sorry man.

Oh that's interesting to say the least! I've never heard of mumble before. I really like the idea of radio simulation! But I think playing a shooter it would really annoy that crap out of me if it had positional audio for teammates.

True! The SimBin titles are very nice. GTR Evo was a nice step upward from GTR 2 in terms of sound and graphics, although I really miss the driver's school.

Priceless! :D That's signature material! Splinter, good job on the addon, nonetheless! The name is just too funny.

If ED doesn't go this way we might have a few skillful people here in the community creating a nice startup utility. Afterall we already have DCSMAX. ;)

Indeed, the arguement here now starts about what would be good practise. That's completely off topic. The question was simply if there would be editing of a lua file possible or not, regardless why or what use it would be. ;) BTW I am a real aviator and the answer is both; yes we follow a checklist and don't just switch a few buttons if we feel like it, so everything that's supposed to be off is turned off, but that does NOT mean that we turn off every single switch/button that has an on/off label. Some system switches remain in the on position eventhough we shutdown the aircraft. These are generally systems that only work under certain conditions and are already off because other systems are off, eventhough the switch is in the on position. So you're both right. ;)

Thanks, now that I read the imdb entry and saw some screenies I think I've actually seen this movie. :) Distiler you don't have to litter your desktop at all. Just create a folder and put all the shortcuts in there if we're going to have seperate executables for every module. Keeps things nice and tidy. ;) You can even change the icon of the new folder to a nice Black Shark icon so it doesn't show the default windows folder icon.

Happy hunting! ;)

I agree. It has nothing to do with intellect at all, but not only Americans want immediate gratification, I think the shift over the years has made most people in general -in western countries as least- want immediate gratification. There was a thing on the news here a few weeks ago that the age group of 30-40 has serious 'what next?' issues. They generally have a great job, own a house, have a wife, children, big car, big kitchen, SLR camera, etc etc... and they have trouble dreaming about what they still want instead of going out to the shop and just buy what they want. They raise children who in turn get something of that pie in their perception of whats normal, so they get saturated with instant gratification as well by getting all the toys they want, consoles at young age (even cellphones!), you name it. As long as they are happy, paps and ma are happy. Then we frown when those children have short attention spans... We are emerging from an era where we have been spoiled and hopefully the recession will temper that and open eyes here and there. But we might shift the topic here a bit too much. However I do agree that the (flight)sim player demographic (for the lack of a better word) shows a lot (and I don't say all, mind you) of 'mature' people. (18+) So the market to sell to is quite different that what the big software companies aim at (teens). But that would be the same issue for any developer taking flightsims as their projects, Russian or other. I still think the money machine is the biggest factor in why it's still viable to produce flight sims in Russia, for several reasons stated earlier in this thread by several people. EDIT: And yes I do understand I've been horribly generalising people in the first part, but in light of the arguement I thought it was authorized. :P

Yeah that would be interesting to know. I don't believe the Shark is fly-by-wire but clearly with augmented flight it has a large degree of electronic assistance. The manual is not really telling us either, is it?

While you're at it also be sure to check out the latest drivers here, but DO NOT download the profiling software from here. Use the link Quirk! gave you, because that's the latest version for that. So for drivers ONLY: http://www.saitekusa.com/down/drivers.php

Where did Cage fool around with an Apache?

Famous last words: "ah great ! i felt like i forgot something" ;)

Well my X-52 has served me very well over the past 3 years and still does. I have a tiny bit of play in the stick and in the throttle, but nothing causing problems, so for a 'garbage product', as some seem to rate it, I am quite impressed. Ok, the looks of the hotas are a bit on the sci-fi side and I can understand many people do not like that and the driver support is a little sketchy as well, but in terms of functionality, though, this stick has a lot of buttons and sliders where they are comfortable to use. Well thought out ergonomics. I like it very much and just like the stories about the unusuable Cougar are probably exaggerated, this goes for the X-52 being garbage as well.

I actually used it on my X1950 Pro, but that was a firmware error on Sapphire's behalf. Something with fan control on the card. It had a too low threshold. Tray Tools was handy because it allowed you to set fan intervals manually.

Well they were right about one thing; it IS a Shark simulator! ;)

And as ED has stated more than once, they prefer to make full detail, high fidelity simulators. So only aircraft which have declassified technical info can be digitalised for entertainment for a bunch of enthousiasts to play with (that's us!) ;)