Sulman

It's an easy enough assumption to make, based on the DCS concept, but is likely just lazy journalism. When DCS first started out I think most felt it would be modular high-fidelity releases on a common platform. Of course so many changes & improvements have happened between BS & A10 (a pattern likely to continue) that the reality is somewhat less simple.

Ha! I think everyone is hoping it will be, though. I love multiplayer with BS and FC2 mixed-up. I think Sim interconnectivity is everyone's dream, and DCS delivered that possibility on a plate (with so much commonality) but of course, reality is different. It's clear reading about A-10 (I haven't tried it yet, will buy when out of beta) that huge strides - again - have been made in AI and mission structure that made me think it will not be trivial to get this module working with either BS or FC2. The latter also has the problem of really being a legacy product very kindly brought into the DCS world. It is still by far the best multi-platform fast-mover sim out there, for my money, but I did wonder how it fits into the ED strategy, long term. Mainstream media does a shit job with many things. I miss the days of PC Zone of old (and I mean mid-late 90's) when sims got proper treatment.

Actually 64bit Win 7, it's happened a few times in both fc2 and BS. Checked error logs and one suggested Shell32.dll (that's very ambiguous) but another pointed at an Nvidia dll; I have latest drivers but went for a clean reinstall just to see if it helps.

Thanks for a fun game this evening. Had a lot of fun with Legion and Guppy, unfortunately BS crashed when I was on my way back to the newly-taken Kras..Had a lot of fun up up until that point!

I can never find the bloody things. At least not before getting worried by a fighter sniffing around the skies 70km away. Again I suppose this is the fun of coordinating properly so people can focus on specific tasks. I always have a lookdown scan en-route (just out of curiousity. Never found anything) hoping to sniff out a crafty Shark but never got lucky. Playing as the Shark from a FARP near Krasnodar I had one such occasion of feeling very vulnerable. Flat, featureless terrain and a run of about 20-30km in any direction, and some b*stard F-15 driver figuring out this is where the helicopters were...

That's really how I felt. It was very annoying, but fair enough if someone can get there. On the airquake games, I think the only way to avoid it is to have a base very heavily defended by static assets. I have seen this on the 51st open server. A lot of SHORAD about the place. I always try to pay a lot of attention near home base (I was followed home on one server by what I thought was a friendly. Thing is, I think he thought I was friendly too, I wasn't in a hurry) in case this is happening. Playing a fighter it does feel like a totally different map to the KA50, one is really quite detached from what is happening near the ground. When there are enemy fighters about (and they are being proactive) I kind of focus on trying to build SA on them. I'm not surprised a fighter entirely missed you. I found playing the Shark (I am utterly shit in the Helicopter) I did the opposite; I cared little for the air battle.

Well, it was a free-for-all, so that really explains the lack of coordinated defence. I was asking on team chat for *anyone* to come over in an SU25 (Shark FARP was still too far away) and swat the intruder but nothing happened. Think he got bored and left in the end, but by then there were opposing fighters doing an airshow above the base... I think if the base is defended by SHORAD and an attacker makes it through that (especially those damned Tunguska units) then fair enough. Certainly one of those situations that made me consider a squad because I wanted some coordinated play.

I'd really like to see a MiG-29M or SMT, provided ED can get the avionics data. It just feels like the right platform for ED to do, and there may be a market for demoing to potential export customers.

I was playing on the RAF server last night for some fast-jet frolics, and some dude in a KA50 managed to get right on top of Maykop... It wasn't pretty. More or less closed the airfield for the duration of the game. Crucially, this was also the fighter base, so bang went any competition for the opposing interceptors...

What the video emphasises is the respect shown to missile warnings. I find myself evading the first shot without problems, and pressing the second whilst returning my own. Giving up SA is so costly though; I'm terrified of doing it. I don't think I'm alone in this, as my first flights online resulted in a few 1:1 kills once within 20km.

It's extremely hard. Missiles in FC used to be easily defeated using a pull and roll and using the Beryoza as a cheat (it has a precise range countdown), but this doesn't really work anymore. Missiles in FC generally had a hard time in the vertical plane; I'm not sure if this is the case in FC2. In theory, even if you can see the missiles (which for airborne BVR missiles is rightfully staggeringly difficult, unless they are used at close range) it's a tall order to outmaneuver them if they still have lots of energy. When the AI gets the drop on you it's hard to do much but try and stay offensive; they maintain perfect SA and will keep shooting until you are down, so you need to force them defensive as soon as possible. The crank method does work well, but you're still gambling on their active homers missing and you will not have a perfect beam if you've still got them locked up. Essentially if you had precise SA and complete awareness (labels) of enemy missiles, it may be possible to defeat them kinematically, but in theory if you're doing that you're already doing something wrong. I find the American platforms with their active homers particularly trying to defeat in the '29A and SU27, but this is as it should be.

I'd be surprised if the IL2 title - and I Love IL2 - even touches what has been achieved on BOBII, outside of the 3D engine.

It's enlightening to fly flight director or trim held just to understand what the hold channels do. The biggest mistake I made was actually trimming too frequently, or before the cab really settles. Flying just with dampers on makes you realise how long the cab can take to settle out of inertia. Also, it is just downright difficult to fly sometimes.

That's the case with a lot of titles, no? Like a beautiful woman, as you get to know them you start to understand that everything has flaws :) F4 is fantastic, and I think one of that series great strengths was that they really looked at the playing experience in detail, paying attention to visibility and how entities are depicted in the game world, & working carefully around the limitations of a desktop PC. DCS is still interesting though, and once you become accustomed to the mission format it is great fun just to 'be & do' and fly around trying different things - the results can be enlightening. BOBII is an amazing product. Superb 'feel' of flight too.

Well, it makes a nice noise. Best left for soft targets and APC's at close range, but bear in mind you'll be trading medium-calibre rounds with most of them at that point.

No disagreement: That is precisely what I've already written. However, my point still stands that the system that generates those flights is flawed, and therein lies the difficulty; the ATO system isn't sophisticated enough to create flights that correspond with the multitude of variables that present themselves on the the battleground: Threat environment, suitability of the mission, weather, and delivery method. It's a very simple model. There needs to be some understanding that these things are so incredibly complex that is is actually very difficult to abstract them into a model that provides a convincing interpretation of the situation; we're not only talking about pure CPU power here, design of the model itself is a huge body of work. An F4 vet will know this and will work around it, but then you're not left with a dynamic campaign as such, merely a set of a parameters that a human player understands and knows how to game, for best results. DC remains the the holy grail, but I really think it's a much greater task than people understand. Singular missions offer a clear framework within which it is a lot easier to design. F4 and BOBII are two outstanding examples, and yet these products are highly mature, and have had thousands of man hours ploughed into them. Also, they were designed to be dynamic from the word go.

Sorry to drag up and old thread, but this is an interesting mission, that could be great fun but it also shows some of the limitations of the sim & the importance of considering these things in mission design. It is also a mission that is inherently very difficult. A dense, urban area, set in a valley, with limited approaches. Being close enough to search effectively means being exposed to the well-concealed defences. Firstly, the tree issue is well known within DCS, so I won't dwell on it. However, Tkvarcheli has at least two vehicles in this scenario that are literally surrounded by trees. It is extremely difficult to see them, but they are not hindered in the same way, and can engage through the 'cover' without issue. Of course, this works for you in the case of your wingmen. They can also see without problem, but can be over-effective, and where's the fun in that? You do need something left for you to shoot at. The time limit is a neat device, but it is very tight. Tkvarcheli contains a fair few SHORAD items and the town must be approached with great care or you usually get shot-down fairly quickly. You can only get a good look from the northern and southern approaches; the surrounding hills offer concealment but if you crest them every man and his dog in Tkvarcheli will shoot at you. A fun exercise (if you have FC2) is to play through using an SU25. In fact, it's really cool to do this with lots of Black Shark missions that you're familiar with. It really is totally different. You have the same problems here (very hard to see targets) but you can get adventurous and do cowboy stuff, like very low, fast passes trying to spot targets from tracer fire, then bomb them indiscriminately from altitude. For some reason IR sams are a lot less irritating to the Frog. I have no idea why.

Within the context of the simulator, why would you assert that? Any particular advantages? Do you find it smoother? I'd say within the limitations of desktop controllers and the lack of feel, holding the trim and letting the aircraft stabilise works better for me.

It's very immersive. There's no experience quite like Falcon 4. However, the devil is in the details, and on occasion the shortcomings can be infuriating. When you play it, you will immediately notice something: The generated missions are ridiculous. I'm playing through a campaign at the mo and I still laugh, because this system (The Air Tasking Order, or ATO as it is known) from start to finish does some rather funny things. For instance, day 1 of war: SEAD mission on the outskirts of Pyongyang! :(, heavily escorted, package of 4 SEAD aircraft and 2 packages of 4 fighter escorts. Cloud base of 6000ft, hunting flak artillery. Suggested loadout of CBU munitions. Generated mission plan takes you straight through the threat zones, at 20k feet, right into air defense network. You can make changes to horizontal and vertical profile, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that the mission is a bust. It's suicide. You may make it because you have human smarts, but your wingmen will all be picked off by MiGs and SAM's. The cloudbase means PGM's are out, because you do not want to be playing with them at 5000ft, a sweetspot for SAMs. You can blind-radar bomb (actually surprisingly accurate) from 20000ft and live with the SA-2's and 5's, but it's very hard to discriminate buildings even using the enhanced doppler-beam sharpening. You'll probably bomb an orphanage and nunnery building, next to a gun emplacement. So you ingress low level, near downtown Pyongyang and in range of every medium calibre weapon and rifle, pop up and hope you can visually acquire a target. You may hit one gun, then it is time to get the hell out of there, because by this time your wingies are dead, and MiGs have been scrambled. You make it back and have lost 6-7 aircraft and killed one flak gun. It's fun the first couple of times, then you just think..."really? :music_whistling:". There is definitely an argument that a well-designed single mission can do a very good job of putting you in there. A good briefing, well written, with a bit of story, goes a long way. Don't get me wrong, I love F4. But I love DCS too. Apples and Oranges. There's an excellent armour sim called Steel Beasts Pro PE. In the designer notes, there's a comment along the lines of AI seeming to be either very convincing, or utterly stupid, dependent on how well the mission designer has thought out their movement and behaviour using triggers and understanding the AI logic. Generally, the more you ask it to think, the worse it is. This is definitely the case with F4AF. You can take over the ATO I mentioned, but then you're not simming, you're micro-managing (though you can play it this way, if you want).

I'll try and make some at the weekend. The holds work best for me during the low speed regimes. It's at higher speeds I find them a little funny. I was trying some pedal turns last night just to compare, and they're perfectly achievable with the channels on, but I really dislike the 'springy' feeling that the controls have. Being able to follow through on the cyclic (without centreing it after every trim) is a huge advantage for smooth control in FD / Trim held mode. The other thing is, the holds can be a nuisance because they are so inflexible. Again, the lack of feel and actual helo controls is really the problem. I'm sure in the real cab you would notice a lot more through your eyes, controls, and that other great sensor, your backside. In FD mode, the aircraft settles to straight and level much, much faster IMO, it's worth it for this alone, otherwise you really need to fiddle on the trim to the extent it's distracting. I hold the trim in for a little bit when I'm on heading, let the cab settle (even allowing a little weathervaning) and let the trim out. Doing it in short stabs doesn't seem to work for me. I read AlphaOneSix's comments about the hold system in the Mi17, and it seemed a much more sensible arrangement, in that it backs off the moment it detects pilot intervention. I wonder if the KA50's FCS autoflight channels are a little more sophisticated than modelled, outside of a heavy-handed hold system.

I recently changed flying technique to use the 'hold' trim method. To recap, this is the technique of holding the trim button, completing a maneuver, and then releasing when stabilised. For newcomers, holding the button cuts out the roll, yaw and pitch AP channels until it released, whereupon they attempt to maintain the new attitude. The biggest advantages for me have been in the following areas: Rapid, smooth control during aggressive maneuvers such as threat evasion or shoot & scoot. Accuracy in coordinated flight: Turns for me are now much, much smoother. More on this later. No more rubber-banding / hunting in the aircraft handling. Very, very seldom have to reset trim now. This is opposed to the published procedure of dabbing the trim frequently and progressively, whenever stabilised in attitude & configuration, thus updating the AP channels very frequently with updated attitude info. I've been flying the Shark using the old method for ages, but I wanted to try this after being unhappy with a lack of smoothness, for want of a better word. One thing I have observed is, having the channels disengaged (while trim is held down) allows the aircraft to settle more easily, particularly coming out of turns onto a new course. This was my greatest area of difficulty with the standardised trimming method - I simply found coordinating turns very difficult, and flight seemed sloppy and - on some occasions - nearly out of control, with a rogue yaw input being a common culprit. So, very basic anatomy of a turn, with AP channels and conventional trim technique: Beginning, middle, end. Beginning: You have to break AP authority and roll the aircraft, whilst starting to coordinate on the rudder. During: monitor attitude and coordination, trim optional, but it's dynamic and very rarely stable so I usually live with the control forces. Adding trim tends to get me into more trouble than it's worth. End: Roll out gently, manage inevitable sideslip, stabilise on new heading.The aircraft slowly slips back into AP authority, at which point FCS will attempt return to the previously trimmed attitude and heading. This normally happens just before you would trim the new attitude in, so: Rubber-banding. A solution is to 'snatch' the trim at the correct heading, but this isn't particularly elegant; it feels wrong. Now, this got me thinking about the 20% control authority. Before trim'n'hold, when rolling out of a turn, capturing heading could be tricky because the finer my control inputs got, the closer they were to the AP's authority, which I think is where the rubber-banding comes in. The obvious answer is to trim, thus updating the FCS, but then you are trimming in a transient control input, and asking for trouble, as you are compounding the problem. Also, how much of the captured control inputs upon updating trim are from fighting the previous FCS trim? I found (with the old technique) it very hard to avoid trimming in unnecessary rudder, because you have to leave a little in to prevent the AP from pulling it back once you have your desired attitude. By contrast, with the trim held down the aircraft tends to settle on a new heading, and it is perfectly possible to have the controls reasonably centred before releasing the trim. It seems odd (I am careful not to say 'wrong') to me that - upon being practiced at flying the helo - a few maneuvers are easier without the AP channels interfering. For sure, you can skid a little bit more, but counteracting this is intuitive and smooth - try a textbook pedal turn with AP channels babysitting for contrast - so, is it my technique, or is anyone else seeing this? I think it's telling that the Trim tutorials (videos and such) seem to only deal in pitch - which is relatively easy to get the hang of - and very hand, especially at low speed. Turns are a whole different ballgame; coordination requires smooth, gentle input and I never seem to achieve this when having to trim,trim,trim during a turn. I know we lose out a lot not feeling the control forces and being stuck with (in my case) a self-centreing stick, but I do wonder if the AP is a little 'grabbier' than it needs to be? Not complaining at all, just curious what people's experience has been. It's not changed my Shark experience that much, but has certainly made my flying a little more consistent in that I am now totally confident I can perform certain maneuvers quickly.

It's my favourite DCS product. I own Flanker 1.0/1.5, Flanker 2.0/2.5, LOMAC, FC, and FC2. Why? Something about the pacing appeals to me, and the 'intimacy' of the helo's fighting environment, for want of a better word. I like the DCS world, I like seeing the maps from down there, low and slow, and crawling around like a flying artillery piece. You're very vulnerable in the KA-50, and that plodding, methodical approach is very enjoyable (for me) to play. Plus, it's just so much fun simply flying around. I also think it's the perfect platform to simulate for a helicopter, because it is a one-man show, and you've got just the right amount of automated assists to help you out. Criticisms? It can be a little sterile, but it is arguably the most immersive DCS title I've tried so far, because your workload is high, but the pace is relatively slow; you have to think ahead far more than you normally would, bad decisions mean you will typically get shot down, because you will be too slow to get out of trouble. The AI isn't terribly imaginative. The tree thing is annoying, but one has to just live with that, however a great many missions do not accomodate for this and the result is frustration. Plenty do not, though. Between this and F4 I've pretty much got my sim needs fully covered :) James

Thanks! It's a dressed-up smoke pod :)

Some shots from Farnborough this year:

Some things from RIAT