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Frogisis

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Everything posted by Frogisis

  1. These look great, it's hard to even tell them apart.
  2. The oceans could definitely use a little attention to look more naturalistic. We've had tremendous improvements in environmental graphics lately, and there are angles and altitudes where everything just looks fantastic, but it still seems like the art team is holding back and playing it really cautious with how they approach working from life to create realistic visuals. Maybe it's a way of future-proofing things so they can add more detail and levels to a technological baseline as hardware improves, instead of getting stuck with a once-convincing shortcut or fudge and having to start over, but that's just an idle guess.
  3. This is an awesome find, but yeah, they're killing my framerates for now and look all jaggy in the distance. Not quite ready for primetime but I can already tell they have a lot of potential and even now look way more naturalistic than the current clouds. Looking forward to seeing the real release.
  4. An FPS aspect would be just an absolutely bonkers level of feature creep, but the ground war could use some updates, just for more realistic mud-moving.
  5. People have been making convincing-looking explosions in games for decades; I think it's less a matter of technology than a desire to avoid accusations that people's serious, sober study sim is turning into a Michael Bay movie. But I've read accounts from real pilots saying they were surprised by how "Hollywood" even an AMRAAM hit looked, so I say pull out all the stops and let the FX artists give us the most photogenic pyrotechnics their reference footage allows.
  6. There are two small gray knobs with white stripes on the left control console, very near the back and behind all the other radio controls that you use for things like the intercom, that control the volume on a lot of the cockpit sounds. I always give them a half-turn to the left as part of my startup, to make all that stuff less obtrusive.
  7. My Top Ten: 1. Rafale 2. Rafale 3. Rafale 4. Rafale 5. Gripen 6. 'Phoon 7. Rafale! 8. Rafale!!! 9. Gripen 10. 'Phoon But seriously if we had a DCS-fidelity Rafale I doubt I would again touch any other plane.
  8. This is a very, very minor thing, and maybe someone's already brought it up, but I think some kind of option to add a page of material in between campaign missions (or even before any mission) would really kick the experience to the next level. What if you could toggle on a dedicated space to arrange text and images that would provide supplemental context and, if you're into that sort of thing, advance the campaign's storyline? I haven't had much time with the Huey so far and apparently Belsimtek tried something like this with the briefings in the included campaign, but how much nicer would it be if that kind of flavor text weren't crammed into a little column but had its own dedicated page beforehand? You could just scroll through or click right out of it if you didn't care and just wanted to go on to the next mission, but as long as, AFAIK, a dynamic campaign isn't in the works I think something like this might go a long way towards encouraging designers to squeeze the most out of the possibilities of regular old scripted campaigns by providing ready-made space for a literal script—You could technically do this already with a series of embedded pictures in the briefings, but people are more likely to give thought to something if there's an empty prompt for it. Technically-minded folks primarily into the nuts and bolts of air combat could provide supplementary comments on whatever they felt was important or worth expounding on—Say, intelligence on overall enemy forces and tactics that would provide insight into the flow of the missions themselves (the kind of thing really thorough designers sometimes already do with an included PDF, except now it could be built right in)—and the more artistically-minded could frame it in the form of, say, a series of news pieces on the progress of the campaign or even short pieces of fiction giving character to elements of your side, both sides, or even civilians in the middle watching all this go down. And I mean, what campaign-mode or pilot career feature could be better than a Joseph Campbell-esque "hero's journey?" Just 'cuz it's a study sim don't mean the only tears it evokes need to be from frustration. tl;dr Dangit I want a big blank page you could fill with a ripping yarn about intrigue, love, betrayal, redemption, and the hardest mission of all: doing the right thing, to go with my Hog drivin' but am self-conscious about that idea seeming too frivolous or twee for a serious flight sim so I wrote a bunch of extra words.
  9. Ramp starts because I'm here for the full experience and feel like it bonds me more fully with the jet. But I do air starts when I want to practice only some specific skill like dropping iron bombs or dodging SAMs—I could take off and land each time, or I could get an extra two rounds in of what I want to work on.
  10. I find SweetFX helped a lot, just by upping the contrast and making everything sharper. Going back to the stock HDR feels like looking through smog now.
  11. It's supposed to be hard, because, as GGTharos pointed out, they don't want to be seen. You get the hang of it eventually, though, taking risks and actually going down to scope out the area. It's fiendishly hard to spot them in towns, still, but that's only natural. Sometimes I use the F10 map to see what pattern of buildings they might be next to, since I figure in real life someone could give this information to me verbally. Aircraft are way too slippery, though, so I use custom labels that put a dark grey dot over them from ~6km to ~1km. I think smart scaling is the way to go—Presenting certain things (maybe only if they're moving) at something like the angular size they'd appear if you were using a real-life FOV while leaving the other, stationary things at the regular FOV, simulating the way peripheral vision is very good at spotting movement, and the way something you're really focused on can seem to dominate your visual field. Maybe this could only be applied around the edges of the screen, following an invisible version of that same "fishbowl" distortion, again to simulate peripheral vision, and things would quickly shrink to their "real" size when you look directly at them. It's going to take a lot of creative thinking to tackle this limitation, but I think good workarounds can be found.
  12. When you can't find something you try to switch your eyes to FLIR. You miss a call because your phone wasn't SOI. After getting jittery from too much coffee, you squeeze your trigger finger hoping to turn on PAC-1. You say "pickle" every time you take a dump. Someone shows you an "M" with a circle around it and you throw confetti in their face before dropping to the floor. When in trouble you look for the nearest hill to hide behind. You think "mud spike!" every time a dog looks up at you. You're playing catch and miss because you didn't make the other person SPI. You try to say "tough it out" but it becomes "trim it out."
  13. Not on that mission in particular, but I know exactly what you're talking about. It seems he has to find them himself, and will call them out, and those are the ones he'll attack without issue, but if he hasn't called them out himself, it seems like the scripting has a hiccup and sends him out anyway.
  14. I've got the slider on my X-52 set up to control the speedbrake, but recently, possibly since 1.2.7 although I can't be sure because of when I've been flying, it's stopped being able to control anything in "directional axis" mode. Mapping the same commands to a rotary instead has no effect, making it clear it's not the slider itself but the axis mode that the sim is somehow "preempting" or otherwise blocking such that it won't recognize the keypresses that occur when the control is moved. "Bands" mode works fine, but if you're familiar with that, it's obviously a problematic way to control something like the speedbrake. Directional axis mode is still functional for every other aircraft (I can map it to press the "b" for the Su-25T brake, for example) and it regularly outputs the "x" and "z" keypresses I've mapped the speedbrake controls onto, in both the A-10C control options menu, as well as in general. Watch: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz JOY_SLIDER1 is not mapped onto anything in DCS, and the only other hint I have is that sometimes in the sim, if I move the slider all the way up or down, the LEDs on the stick will briefly flash as if the HOTAS is being asked to do something unusual. This never happens outside the A-10C. I updated the drivers and profile software to the latest version and did a repair of DCS, and I can't think of anything else to do. Has anyone else had this problem? Did they find a solution? Edit: I just realized it might have something to do with having to add a line to the control file for PeterP's kneeboard mod, which, while the active part has been JGSME'd out for some time, might be too subtle a change for the repair to revert that file. I'm investigating that now... Hmm, deleting and reinstalling the A-10C module did nothing. I am officially stumped. ...It happens in a fresh 1.2.8, too, so I guess that wasn't the problem.
  15. You look for the EO button on your camera to start it 3 minutes before shooting. Your friends say they're watching the UFC Championship and you imagine people punching in numbers really fast. When you screw something up you walk away for a minute then walk back to line up another attempt. Someone asks you to go take a closer look at something and you hesitate while you search for SHORAD. You turn on your car's GPS before anything else, because of how long it always takes to warm up. CBU-97s no longer seem like something Dr. Seuss would invent. The CDU actually makes any sense to you.
  16. Same here. I'd even enjoy some fictional maps, as long as they're believable and interesting.
  17. This is great—I want it.
  18. I started making a Derpy skin for the A-10C a while back (it's a perfect fit, c'mon)... I should probably finish that.
  19. Thanks for the quick reply. That's kind of a relief, actually - My imagination was going crazy with a perfect storm of miscalibrated drivers and feedback loops unwittingly increasing voltages until something fries again. Yeah, I fully expect to be clearing stuff up like this for a while yet. The graphics programs I use are stable and running better than ever, though, so it doesn't seem like anything is seriously jamming up the works, but I'm sure it could be made more stable and efficient still. I'll do the Windows self-repair, though, for sure, and do my homework on whether I can do a non-destructive reinstall (it's Win7 Home Premium x64). Thanks again for the info. :thumbup:
  20. Thanks a ton, I'm going to try this right now. I seem to have plenty of activations left, and don't anticipate another CPU sudden death, so that shouldn't be a problem. ...Aaaaaand it worked. Awesome, thank you. Guess who's back, you stupid tanks! Well, like I said, I didn't plan for this at all. My cheap, obsolete CPU suddenly crapped out and I had to get parts stores still actually carry and get everything working again or else miss a looming deadline for work. I'd have been in a heap of trouble even getting those parts if my car-owning friend hadn't coincidentally called me right then to come hang out. I didn't think it was worth mentioning, but I did have to reactivate Windows, and did reinstall a bunch of drivers (I even had to go back to the store to buy a new CD drive for the files because the big-ass ribbon on the old one didn't have anything to plug into) but I'm not reinstalling Windows if it would erase all my painstakingly crafted reference material folder organization and other tedious effort I put in customizing everything for my workflow and tastes. This computer is already a total Ship of Theseus (I've had it since 2006, but not even the case is original - At least I bought quality this time). Do you have a link with any info about why I would want to reinstall, how to do it without losing everything, what might happen if I don't do it, and maybe how to do the most important restructuring manually if I decide not to?
  21. dcs_protect.exe (in "bin") was the file, and when I run it there's a single button saying "register event log" under the single category "Miscellaneous." It's unchecked by default, but when I check it, the "next" button becomes active. When I click on that, however...:
  22. A couple weeks ago my computer basically had an aneurysm and most of it needed to be replaced before it would even start again. Had to replace the processor, but because the mobo was old and incompatible with new ones, I had to replace that and the RAM as well. After the latest patch (the one with the Starforce fix), I got around to DCS, and it notices the change and asks me to hit "retry" in the little Starforce window that pops up, where the serial number is still right there in the text box. I do this, and it runs and says it worked and I have 8 activations left, so I press OK, but the window won't disappear ("OK" just becomes grayed out). It does this for each installed module (some of them more than once), and when I get about 5 windows deep, DCS crashes. If I deactivate all modules but one or two, I can get into the sim world itself, but can't "be" anything, only watch. The "instant action" missions will load, but I can't enter the cockpit, and the plane or helo just flies its waypoints under AI control (the Su-25T being the exception, naturally). I tried deactivation of the licenses, but that wouldn't go through because of the hardware change, and tried the web registration where you input the hardware code and serial and they give you an activation code, but that had the same results as just hitting "retry" in Starforce. Clicking on the Starforce icon in "bin" doesn't seem to get me anywhere either, though if I toggle the window's single option and press "go" or "run" or whatever, I get an error window with a bunch of alphanumerics I don't understand. I thought I'd ask if anyone had any other ideas before I just bite the bullet and do a fresh install, since I'm not even sure that would fix the issue.
  23. I absolutely love Ace Combat (Make 7 already!) and love you for making these. Any plans for some Osea, Belka, or Razgriz skins? Also, did you say you were making missions in that style? That would be so awesome... I experimented with a few just for my own practice with the editor, but it's just not the same when all you have is text in the upper right. Something with the detail, challenge, and technical realism of DCS but the balls-out "Tolkien by way of Tom Clancy" story, characters, and in-mission "radio theater" of Ace Combat would be the apotheosis of games for me. I want to be made to believe in and care about the other pilots and grunts, even the enemy ones - Who cares if it's not realistic that you could hear all that; that's exactly the kind of thing I need to cancel out the un-realism of me sitting in my apartment in sweatpants, looking at a screen and holding a plastic joystick. A while ago I made the Galm Team F-15C skins from Ace Combat Zero and put them on LockOn Files; I should go upload them here now... aaaaand it doesn't seem to be working. I'll try again later. Here they are in the meantime: Galm Team @ LockOn Files
  24. I got hit with two IR SAMs right in a row, lost the right engine (and then the left one later), most of the right wing, both MFDs and the HUD, the front and left wheels, and the right gear strut entirely. Hobbled back for a dicey belly landing at Vaziani. It was one of the first times I'd sincerely tried to bring one back all the way to the field instead of ejecting, hitting ESC, or just experimenting with what it can still do, since once I saw the gear was gone I had to take on the challenge.
  25. Wonderful! I'd say that cinches it, above and beyond the artistic responsibility of a sim designer to use the available senses to convey the power of the weapons you're using.
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