Zimmerdylan

I don't find it all that motivational...........

DITTO!!!

I'm telling you guys....The smoke is absolutely accurate. I personally have seen it many times. It's not at all overly done in DCS. As I stated earlier, I lived right at the end of the runway at WPAFB in the late 60's and into the 70's when they were still flying F86's in and out of there. They were very easy to spot and identify from that trail. In fact, if any of you here are from Dayton around that time, you may remember Island Park where Wright Pat. donated an F86 to the Parks Dept. and they put it right smack dab in the middle of that park for the kids to play on. I spent many a Saturday afternoon in the cockpit of that plane. That was back when everything on a playground was made of steel and pavement and no one was concerned about being sued because people were accountable for their clumsy kids and understood that $h!t just happens sometimes.

Your best bet for answers, and real time learning with other people there with you is to get TeamSpeak, go on to server on line. Aerobatics Online is a great place to start. There, you can talk to others who are flying along with you who can watch what you are doing and teach you while they are talking to you. I have tutored many P-51, ME 109, and 190 fliers with very little problems. Some of them as young as 13 and as old as 70. There are always great people who know what you are going through and are more than happy to help you get started on whatever issues that you may have. It's not as daunting as it seems, a little guidance, some tutorial videos, and your off. If you are ever on line, look me up in TS (Tuco). I'll get you off the ground and show you how to get there consistently, and land too. But there are many well qualified fliers who would be more than willing to help you.

Yeah, but there are some features that the Huey use to have that it no longer has because of unknown issues. No embarking for troops in the ME, some guys have issues with the flight model that has changed. It's not a big deal, there are just folks here who are wondering what the status of those kinds of things are. And it's been a while since they've seen or heard anything.

Whew....Thought my eyes were playing tricks on me........

BINGO..........

I just went and took a spin in the Spitfire to see if I could tell if there were a difference. I am sorry to say that I just don't know if they've changed anything. IMHO, if they did it was very subtle. But every time I get into the Spitfire, I am just floored by the detail and texture of it. I also enjoy the way that it flies. It's definitely a perfect example of ED's progress. The last 4 releases have been just awesome. Especially when you compare them with the old days. The ground handling I know hasn't changed as it is my least favorite thing about this module and I certainly would have noticed any improvement or change. As for the rest of the stuff, It's hard to say. I don't feel much of a difference, but maybe I feel something. As was suggested, could be the placebo effect.

You know....I'm not interested in opening a can of worms here but I have often thought of something very similar to this myself. As have people I have talked to on TS, in the servers. I'm not saying that I believe that it's likely true but the thought has occurred to me. But you must understand that I am in the United States where we hear that this is common in Russia. It's how we are programmed in a sense. Just like other cultures are predisposed in many of their beliefs about Americans and our way of life. This kind of led me to not think too much about it until I started hearing Europeans saying similar things on TS. Whether it is true or not, I cannot say, but I believe that it is planted any many people's minds. Again....I'm not saying it's fact, I'm just saying that it crosses many people's minds.

LOL.....I don't know. I'm use to shooting down and escorting AN-26's, and C-130's. I'll be shocked the first time I go for one of those WWII era bombers and they don't start dropping flares.

Sorry.....forgot all about this thread. Just go into your settings tab, Gameplay, and on the bottom of the left list of features is "Cockpit visual recon mode". Visual recon mode is the ability to place the cursor (using your mouse) anywhere outside the cockpit, right click and it tells you if there are enemy planes, units, or whatever. I believe that it only goes out about 10 miles. About the same as if you were using labels and they showed up as you got closer. So it's basically a way of alerting your team that there are enemy units around. To get the idea, go into a map in single player with labels. As you fly over or near enemy units and see the red labels, set your cursor on them and right click. It will tell you what kind of units and how far.

The Mustang burns E with very little effort. Recovering it is a serious task when the 109 seems to retain it and recover it so much easier, and is on the P51's a$$ after it loses momentum. If you do fights with the AI AC, you will notice that the P51's tactic is to totally try and stall the 109 and force it to overshoot or lose it's energy. The P51 AI doesn't fight using B&Z or energy. It in fact does the complete opposite. This tells me that The AI is using the simplest and most practical means of fighting with the plane that it's working with. And on line players who try and out turn, or out fly the 109 find themselves full of holes in short order more often than not. The AI 109 goes for the jugular as soon as the match starts, using energy and turn fighting, and is always on the aggressive even if it's been repeatedly hammered by the P-51's underpowered guns. The two AI planes could not use more different methods in air to air. That tells me something about the way they are set up and the practicality of it. The p-51 is an inferior fighter. I have no problems getting the 109 or 190 in the sights of the Spitfire. It is a very maneuverable plane. The problem after I get it there is that the plane (early release issue I believe) is so sensitive on the rudder, and stick that keeping my adversary in the sites is not easy. It's way more sensitive than the other planes, even with curves. But even when I get the axis planes to where they're taking good damage, they just speed off when they've had enough and I am left with little chance of catching them. I can see why both of the Allied planes would do well in a huge fur ball. Especially the Spitfire. I can see where they both could potentially shine in that scenario. But 90% of the air battles in DCS are 1 or 2 on 1 or 2. This shows both plane's weaknesses rather than strengths. If all battles (according to many but it has not been my experience) were held at 20,000 ft. with a lot of planes then maybe the P51 would find it's mark. But even during the war, these battles weren't at that altitude. The Germans were too smart for that. They'd come down on the bombers from above, do as much damage as they could on one run, and drop altitude as quickly as possible. In DCS, the same is likely to happen, but the DCS 109 is better at all altitudes than the P51 from what I have seen. And it would be a rare thing to see servers with 20K plus fighting, even on the Normandy servers. From what I see in the servers, the Spitfire was all the rage for about 2 weeks, and now.....you don't see it being flown much at all. The P51 is used more. Every time I go to get in a WWII plane, the Spitfire seems to be fully available because people have gone back to the Mustang, and the Axis fighters are usually the majority. As for myself, I don't fly any of them for fighting lately. It's such a lop sided battle that I don't bother with it. I've gone back to helis, and the A10 for the most part. I only get into the WWII planes for just fun flying, and maybe a ground attack mission. I've got my 4 WWII planes and probably not likely to purchase any more of them. I'll leave them to the guys who can seem to pull more out of them than I am capable of.

"Sluggish?" :megalol: Where are you reading that it's sluggish? I haven't seen anyone call it sluggish. It's just not as agile as the axis planes. After flying the Spitfire more, I'm beginning to wonder how the allies ever won the air war. If these planes are actually true to their real world counterparts. Somebody must have been really lucky........:lol: We'll all have to wait for the Normandy map I suppose, But I don't see how it will change much. If it's anything like the servers are now, the axis planes will all be occupied while the allied planes will be mostly sitting in a hanger somewhere because no one want's to be constantly out done. From my understanding, the allies had superior numbers on their side going for them. That won't be so in the servers. It's hard to tag team the enemy when you can't find a wing man. I'm glad to see that some people are getting something out of the P51. And you are correct, I suck at flying it. But I can fly the 109 very well, and the 190 pretty well too. I can fly the Spitfire fine also, but people are correct in saying that the axis planes will just fly away from you if you get them to trailing. That's happened to me time and time again. And again, I'm not complaining about the difference. I'm merely pointing it out. The axis planes are clearly superior in the ways that seem to count most. Is it true to life??? Who knows, but it's the way it is in DCS.

You see.....Here we go again. People bringing all of the charts and research into this. They don't mean much because DCS isn't reality. It's computer generated and by no means perfect. Believe what you personally experience within the simulator. Make some tracks, watch them and post them as to what's really going on within the sim. Charts and real world facts do not come in to play here. What something is suppose to be in the real world and what is happening in game are not the same. All of you guys have these expectations that this is somehow a real plane. You will never be happy with it if you maintain that level of expectation.

Yeah....Ya kind of miss the guy when he's not around. Just one of the things that you take for granted here in the forums.........

It's not an eyeball estimate. The label tells you exactly how far you are from your target. Therefore, it's pretty accurate. You can even go back and review the distance as much as you like via the track. Mine was very easily the numbers I gave. It's not rocket science.

OK....It is my opinion based on the test I just completed that ED has somehow miscalculated the convergence numbers. Any of you can do this test so I'm not going to bother posting pics. It's a pain in the butt. Set up a ground target (unarmed hopefully) put your labels on, and shoot at the ground directly next to it when you get to about .7 mi. away. You will clearly be able to see the convergence point. And to me, it is obvious that the Spitfire's convergence point is around .2 of a mile. This puts it at 1056 feet, or 352 meters. So it seems that it's exactly what they say the specs are. However, if I'm not mistaken, the Mustang's convergence was around the strong side of .4 of a mile. This puts it at 2112 ft. or 704 meters. Maybe someone can do the same test and check me on this. If this is the case......hmm. The big thing I notice between the two is that the Spitfire's convergence looks like an X as the tracers go down range, and the P51's are stretched out much more and are much less spread immediately before and after convergence. This makes plenty of sense given the substantial difference in their convergence distance. One thing is certain. The distance in the Mustang is much greater than in the spitfire, and the spitfire's dispersion rate before and after convergence is vastly different than the Mustang's. I think that if this were not the case, we would not be having the adjustable convergence debate. People are use to the convergence of the other WWII planes.

IMO.....The whole "adjustable convergence" is a lost argument. It's not practical and DCS has never had it, and it's never been much of an issue until the Spitfire came out. After playing around with the plane's guns for a bit, I can plainly see why. It's hard to be effective with it. It seems that when trying to down an adversary, you have to be at a very specific distance or your just wasting rounds. As far as I (mind the "I" here) can tell, it's not anything close to 300 meters. It's much closer. I do not see this problem so much with the Mustang. It's guns are spread out on the wings also yet the convergence isn't so difficult to use as a tool. I did a very simple test to try and figure this thing out. I'm not a person who cares much for charts, and tons of research on the internet because you could argue all day long about stuff that in a computer sim just isn't practical or cannot fully be reproduced due to the fact that there is nothing physical about a computer image. I go by what I see and experience. It's that simple. After doing some ground attack and realizing that I had to be mighty close for the guns to actually hit anything due to the convergence, I flew toward some buildings. I opened fire at the buildings until the rounds merged on the side of the building. Mind you I'm going around 220 mph. As soon as the rounds converge on the building, I pull up to avoid hitting the building. The time that I have to avoid hitting the building is much, much shorter than the time I would have in any other WWII plane. It looks more like 500 ft. than 300 yards. It's no where near 300 yards as far as I can tell. For me.......this explains why there is such a wide spread both going in to the crossover point and coming out of it. And again.....it's just my way of determining why this plane has such a wide spread. In my mind, the idea that there are only two guns may come into play also. The P51 has 6. This could account for why it's so much more accurate. However, it's convergence seems to be at a much better distance than the Spitfire. My philosophy is to wait and see where this thing goes. I'm sure that it'll get set up to everyone's satisfaction at some point. But if it comes down to making it adjustable, I'll likely not use that feature.

I don't get the relationship between the reputation and the green boxes. Some people have high numbers but few boxes, and some folks have several boxes and low numbers. It's a mystery to me. I tend to agree though that it's not worth much merit. Thanks grunf for showing me how to give rep! I appreciate it.

Right after you tell the ground crew to apply air, Are you pushing the engine start buttons (Lower left side of the front control panel) before you hit Alt+Home? Or....if your throttle isn't completely zeroed out, DCS planes won't generally let you set them to start. You have to make sure that your HOTAS throttle is all the way back.

LOL....I have no clue whatsoever how any of it works. I do know that I was ousted from these forums permanently a couple of years ago. When I was Banned, I had a negative 8 rep. Yes....negative 8. That negative 8 came with me when I was graciously taken back. Over the past 18 months or so, it's gone from that to what I have now. Not sure who did it or why, but I'm glad I made my peace with the forums and myself. Feels much better and I enjoy being part of this community. I know it all has to do with people giving you "reps" (as was stated in this thread already). Unfortunately, I don't know how it is done or I would have given them myself at one time or another. And I would also thank those who gave them to me to help me get from a negative 8 to a positive 10. So if any of you feel like you are in the big red dog house.....Don't fret too much. You can get out of it. You just have to exercise common courtesy, common sense, and realize that it's just a forum, it's all just opinions, and we're all here doing our best. Even if some of our best doesn't look the same.

Not a problem for me at all. I do get annoyed when I see someone in FULL uniform and they're not military (or not re-enacting). It makes me question their motives. But I have rarely ever seen that. Maybe twice in the 35 years I have been out.

If I remember correctly (It's been a long while). You can just run them out of ammo. I have done this time and time again. Their aim may be good but out maneuvering their rounds is pretty easy when you are just circling around them drawing their fire. After that....they're useless. I have beat many of those mission just by sheer patience. You got to be careful though. Sometimes they won't shoot at you when you are teasing them. In that case, I start my run and as I'm coming in I look for the muzzle flash. At that point I lower the nose of the AC and bank out of the run. It may not be the hero's way, but I know that it works.

Again....Great plane for it's intended purpose, and the reason Mr. Rudel was highly decorated (on the Eastern front, away from Allied fighters). And I'm sure it would be a fun addition to DCS WWII. But a cannot imagine a lot of guys flying it in a server unless they has some heavy duty escort service. http://www.2worldwar2.com/stuka.htm

 IDLE CUTOFF. The IDLE CUTOFF position is used when starting and stopping the engine. This position should be set after the engine is stopped to ensure that no fuel is allowed to enter the carburetor while the engine is not running.  RUN. The RUN position is the standard operating setting for the engine and is normally used for takeoff, climb, landing, and combat.  FULL RICH. The FULL RICH position is an emergency setting to be used only in case of carburetor failure to ensure a sufficient fuel supply to the engine. From page 83 in the flight manual