Frogisis

I think it's the new "tactical do-si-do" we were promised.

Oh, duh, sorry - I was even thinking I had to post those before I started writing: Win7 64x AMD Phenom II x6 @3.8GHz GTX 570 OC'd to 988/1970 16GB DDR2 @500(ish) Resolution at 1920x1080, MFDs at 256, everything else at maximum except the AA, which was just on 2x, and I was getting about 50~60fps above 2000ft, and about 30~40 below. Mitigating factors: MaxFPS set to 60 in graphics.cfg, episode of The Colbert Report on other monitor, and it's a "custom" machine Ship-of-Theseus'd together from an old HP Pavillion. I might turn off the tree shadows, though, since outside the AA that seems to have the biggest effect on frames and I haven't tested anything really over-the-top yet, though even the CBU-87 impacts are less choppy than they were before (~10fps instead of 2~3). Something about the smoke on the new explosions seems a little toy-like again, though...

Man, I'm sorry to hear people are having all these issues, but put me down as a data point for which everything is improved - I've got smooth framerates with everything but AA set on high now, whereas before I kept having to knock various settings back and still got occasional bouts of slowdown when over a town. One strange thing I noticed, though, is my wingman doesn't seem to want to attack anything anymore - I was so used to seeing his little "M" on my RWR after telling him to go after air defenses I didn't realize it was an SA-9 until I looked back just in time to see that little gray rod whizzing at me.

Awesome, I'm still downloading the "World" core right now but will give it a try in apparently "4h57m"

Even if it hasn't been implemented yet, that "manual" option is great, especially since some of us fly all the different aircraft and it's easy to get something turned around in your memory. I'd love an option to review your key bindings during a mission as well, even if for loading reasons you couldn't change them.

^Just now testing out the muzzle smoke mod I blew up a BMP-1 by skipping an AP round off the ground in front of it. Sweet. I've probably done that plenty of times already but couldn't see it before. I like the thinner smoke, it makes things a lot easier, but I sure wish we had a fiery muzzle flash and smoke puff that just went by quickly, since it's so much fun to watch a ground battle from the air and see the tanks firing at each other. From the external view it now just looks so anemic... I couldn't completely figure out the .lua file but it does look like there's a line where you pick what sprite you want for the blast - If ED doesn't get around to redoing it I'm sure one of us can figure out a more satisfying but still unobtrusive effect.

I am looking forward to using that air superiority fighter to blow up other air superiority fighters. There can be only one.

Thanks for the explanations, I had no idea that was a factor on the real Mavericks. Would definitely like to see that modeled, too, since something about them does seem suspiciously too easy to me as-is. Once you slew it onto a target it's basically a "make this explode" button, and it'd be a nice challenge to add specific maneuvering on top of it. ...You could probably leave the boat switch forward most of the time - I can't think of an instance off the top of my head I wanted to use a Mav on something lighter than the background... A ship, maybe?

Ha, both Sidewinders miss but the Mavericks are right on target... I suppose they wouldn't show up on an RWR until they were launched, either, would they? I know other people's Mavs show up on mine, so is that supposed to be a reaction to the rocket flame, or what? I think I did read somewhere you could engage air targets with Mavs if you really wanted... If they can pick out and lock onto a tank in ground clutter but not a tree or a shed I don't see why a plane would be any different. Slightly OT, but since the sim "knows" what's a target and what isn't, obviously we wouldn't have this problem, but I can't believe real Mavericks wouldn't regularly get stuck on some sufficiently high-contrast spot on the ground, or innocent sharp-edged object like a power transformer or a phone booth if you gave it enough leeway to slew around. Even if it had the resources to try matching everything it passes over against a database, you'd figure there'd be a lot of false positives...

I think this'd be pretty cool for Combined Arms, and drones do seem to be The Future, after all. Remote control does take a little bit of the romance out of things, and since it's a digital environment we have the luxury of putting that ahead of safety, but I suppose there is kind of a futuristic zippiness to using drones that's appealing - Like in a movie or something you'd cut away quickly to one doing recon, to build tension before the confrontation in the third act. I played A-10 online last night for the first time ever, and we (or at least I) really could have used one of these to pick out targets in a town, since we kept talking past each other over what were salient landmarks, and it was too mountainous and far away to get a ground unit in there for one of us to do JTAC. I blithely dropped a CBU-97 on an already-devastated parking lot because all we could do was guess at what part of the crowded valley the other person was describing.

Training ordinance in a simulation: It's like Inception but for bombs. Put me down as also having a lot of trouble, though. Rockets I can do OK - They're basically just funny guns - but when I try to drop a bomb I end up slipping all over and they go wide. I recently got a pair of rudder pedals, though, so I'm fixing to try it again. It's so satisfying when they connect after just eyeballing it.

Me too. I just alt-tab out and back in during the "briefing pause" bit and it's not a problem, but it makes the whole program feel "fragile" and it's really disconcerting.

Presumably the "one year" figure comes from the relevant team members having to work on it in between other assignments. Looking forward to this one - I've really been hankering for some modern A2A. Unless I end up flush with cash, though, I might hold off until I find out what the new jet is. I'd always been hoping it would be the F-1C, and given the total makeover it's gotten here, it's certainly a reasonable suspicion that it's still in the running, and that clickability is being added to that cockpit as we speak. If that's the case, though, I'd expect it wouldn't be announced for a while so as not to steal FC3's thunder, and I'll probably want to get my jet dogfighting fix before then.

I was having this problem and I'm pretty sure it's just because of the minimum range, which is way longer than you'd think - They have to be at least 7~8 miles out or thereabouts. Once I put them past that limit they fired away without issues.

It's a little frivolous compared to some of the other stuff, but like a few others have said in this thread I would love an option for in-flight music. It just makes me believe so much more in whatever I'm doing, like I really am the good guy fighting to restore peace instead of just blowing up some units to complete a mission. When I figured out how to put music in IL-2 it was like a whole new game. Right now I just have an MP3 player open in the background, but it doesn't correspond in any way to the sim unless I pause and Alt-Tab out, and I can't help but blame it for every little hiccup or slowdown.

That would be awesome, I'd love seeing that drifting slowly over the battlefield, tracers and such sweeping across... It'd be a great setpiece for some later missions in a campaign. I had to mute the video and put on "It's Raining Men" though.

I had an idea for setting up units with reloads during a mission - In the editor, instead of adding extra trucks to a squad, there'd simply be a slider with how many full-magazine reloads you wanted that group to have, and trucks would be added automatically to hold it as the "volume" increased. You could then move the trucks where you wanted as normal. Something else that might be useful is for MRLS fire missions to have an option to set how many rockets out of the total you wanted to fire in each attack, instead of having it just fire till it runs out or you click stop, since usually you'll want to go deal with some other part of the battle in the minutes it's setting up, and all of the rockets is usually overkill. I suppose it'd be useful for regular artillery, too - Maybe a little box showing the number of shells remaining, and a slider you can pull back down if you want it to stop after X number of shots.

Huh, that hasn't been my experience with the civilian traffic - Once I was attacking a column of tanks on a road, and a truck decided to drive by right then, and as it was passing right by the tank I wanted to hit, the Maverick seeker locked onto the truck instead and took it out after it had passed in front of the tank column. Another time I was doing CAS over a large engagement and kept locking onto little civilian cars on the road, thinking they were part of an armor column passing by. I ended up turning the civ traffic down to "medium" since I don't think most people would blithely drive through the middle of a raging tank battle, though I get the idea of their being an extra challenge by getting in the way. I'm not specifically trying to target them so this hasn't happened very often, but it did seem to be possible. Maybe they were made "ghostly" in a more recent version.

Hahahaha that's awesome... I can't wait to do that with a, well, everything. I got some rudder pedals last month that I'm totally gonna set up as gas and brake...

I am anticipating this release; the video has given me the impression DCS: Combined Arms will be enjoyable, challenging, and varied. (omg omg omg so awesome)

I've been wondering if something like this might not be possible with transcranial magnetic stimulation. It's certainly possible to alter a person's sense of the direction of gravity with drugs such as salvia, TCM can activate or suppress surprisingly specific things in the brain with no apparent side effects, and there's already headgear that can internally generate sensations in the wearer, so I could see something like a TrackIR headset in reverse, which would give a subtle magnetic push to your vestibular system, so you'd feel a mild sense of motion. It would correspond to the motion on screen and your own inputs through the controls, too, so I doubt you'd be any more likely to get nauseous than with any other system, or that it could be any worse for you than staring at a monitor for that same amount of time. I think the biggest danger is that you might fall out of your chair unconsciously compensating for the sensation of movement, so maybe it should come with seat belts. Right now it's also the kind of thing most people would think is really creepy, but I remember 5-6 years ago reading about the first prototype gadgets that could react to brainwaves, so I can't believe it'll be too many more years before those are more reliable and ubiquitous, and some enterprising grad student builds something that works the other way. Even if it doesn't prove marketable it would still be a lot cheaper and easier to build yourself than a big hydraulic chair. It'd probably suck up a lot of power, be kinda heavy, and be a real pain to calibrate at first like the brain interface devices on the market now, and I suppose powerful magnets are not exactly the kind of thing you'd want too close to your computer, but if you're willing to use a device like this you've probably already committed to some kind of simpit-like space where more sensitive equipment would be protected.

Right now it doesn't feel like there's that much to do, but I could see enjoying the hell out of this once it's got a larger palate of appropriate targets. I'm sure by this time next year the community will have cranked out entire armies for it to fight. In the mean time, though, it's crazy fun to fly. The A-10 feels kinda like a big magic carpet - it just sort of evenly "floats" in the direction you point it, which is great for the cockpit workload - but the P-51 feels like a frisbee with rocket engines. The flight model is great, since you can really "feel" the air around you with every move. It pushes back and makes the whole thing feel kind of "springy." I just did the training missions today, and fighting in it is a real challenge. Man, those machine guns sound great, though. It's pretty hard to conserve ammo with something that makes that kinda noise.

That's great, because I'm starting to run out of HD space and had to uninstall BS2 for the time being. Though when I got the P-51 I also uninstalled IL-2, which had so gotten bloated with mods, anyway, so I'm good for a while. Also great news because even as a beta DCS World just seems to run a lot better for me - I actually had to dial back my video card overclock because it was being kept so busy instead of being allowed to jump in at the last instant and cause microstutter. Even with everything turned all the way up, I only get an FPS slowdown when looking directly at an urban area, while with A-10 I'd always get a half-second pause whenever I went up and then way back down again as it loaded ground detail, which is especially annoying because 80% of the time I'm diving like that it's because I'm lining up a shot. Can't wait to see the hog and the shark imported into a new and better world.

+1 I was thinking about this a while ago when people were talking about finding targets and this seems as appropriate a thread to post it as any: The ability for JTAC to describe targets in relation to features on the landscape. Like, if you couldn't find the target you could radio in and JTAC would say something back like "[300] meters [west] of the [bridge]" or "[On the road] heading [east], [200] meters [north] of the [power lines]." I don't know exactly which objects have an independent existence in the sim world and could be spotted, or how well the engine that places them can talk to the engine that generates radio messages, but it seems like implementing it would be relatively simple, if incredibly tedious. Maybe a bunch of imaginary lines could be drawn in every direction out every object within a certain radius, and between objects of the same kind within that radius, and then their distances vs. relative "weights" assessed to pick a reference point. I suppose there could even be conditions like "if trees dominant through x% of 360 degrees, then 'in the woods,' - if buildings, then 'in the town'" or "if trees dominant in x% of 180 degree arc, then 'at the treeline'" etc. It probably wouldn't be practical to implement conditions that would result in things like "southmost" or other multiply comparative descriptions, but if someone reaaaally had a lot of time on their hands or wanted to punish an intern, some zones like that could be built into the map, like the central points in the instant mission generator. That'd all probably be a ton of busywork, but I think it'd be helpful in spotting targets and make things feel a little more "alive."

Haha, I was wondering how long it would take for a pony skin to appear. I mean, it's a fun and surprisingly savvy and aggressive show, kinda like Futurama with cuteness instead of sci-fi, but tone it down a notch, Internet - If people get too saturated with it it might end before it can finish evolving into an "Adult Swim" show. Psssst make a Derpy one.