Foul Ole Ron

Every plane had advantages and disadvantages back then and one of the advantages that the Mustang had over the 190 was that it had a lead computing sight. All P51Ds from the 20-NA block on in mid 1944 had this sight fitted as standard which amounts to 5000+ planes. It was also retrofitted to older blocks though I don't have the exact numbers but for example Old Crow which was a 10-NA block was retrofitted by the start of '45. On the other hand there was probably at best 100 FW190s fitted with the ez-42 out of a total of 1800+ D-9s produced. There's very few combat reports about them being used and either due to equipment malfunctions or a lack of pilot training in their use those few planes that did have them often seemed to use them in fixed mode. I don't think it should be the sight modelled just out of fairness or game balance. In my opinion what should be modelled is the most usual representation of what was in the model of the plane so we get to experience the advantages and disadvantages the pilots faced back then.

I'm a little puzzled by the inclusion of the ez-42 sight. I know that they put around 200 into 190s and 262s for field testing but we're looking at something that was in around maybe 5% of the 1800+ 190 D9s produced as it seems like the 262 was given the priority for the installation of the new sights. If ED are modelling a general representation of a 190 I would think that the Revi 16B should be the sight used.

Well I guess I'll spout my right / wrong opinions whenever I like cheers. Feel free to skip on over them chief. Wags said there'll be a KS - presume we'll see all on Sept 1st.

Seems like there's no real difference between the two when it comes to DCS and most other current games. The 3770k overclocks better and gives you a bit more future proofing for once IG comes out next year - especially if the new engine can make use of HT though there's no real word on this. DCS is a CPU heavy game so any extra grunt is useful in my opinion but might not be worth the difference if you're working off a budget you have to stick to. A better GPU would probably give you a better bang for your buck right now.

Of all the things that went wrong with CloD impatience was hardly one of them. When a project is delivered 4+ years late and still full of bugs that's not impatience - that's project scope and management going wrong. RRG are going to be smaller and presumably operating on a more limited budget than MG had available to them. That usually means cutting your cloth appropriately and looking to remove as many of the "unknown unknowns" from the project scope at the start as, from personal experience in PM, they can really kill you. Without a publisher that can put up with delivery dates getting pushed out again and again RRG will have to be focused on getting the product out to market so they start to get a return on investment as soon as possible (while obviously still being a quality product). PTO throws up more of these unknown unknows in my opinion and as an initial project I'd probably avoid it. Western / Eastern fronts would be more familiar to RRG though I suspect that Eastern might be out for legal reasons. Western Front isn't the most original by any means but it seems the path of least resistance to me. Release a period map + 109 / Spit + AI bombers and with the Mustang and 190 already there it's pretty much guaranteed to be a winner. Then build on that success from there would be my plan. Anyway all will be revealed on Sept. 1st :) They might have something way more ambitious in mind. I'll definitely be backing their efforts on KS no matter what they have in mind.

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see the PTO - my point about obscure was related to the post above where they talked about Polish map. There's no doubt that FM data could be found for US planes like the F4U, P47, etc. Getting accurate FM data for the Japanese planes would be a lot harder. All I was speculating that if RRG are looking to bring a fleshed out theatre to market as quick as possible that it's more likely to be western front given that 2 iconic planes would already exist there, detailed town / bases maps already exist having being made for CloD, etc. Ideally though what I'd like to see when EDGE comes out is a large east Asia map stretching from Vietnam to the Philippines as this would allow for WW2, Vietnam and modern combat scenarios in DCS World all in the one geographical map (once modified for the time period).

Yes that and the Aleutian Islands Campaign map might have to be a day 2 release.

I think if you're going to release a WW2 flight theatre you're best off going for something iconic to boost sales which leaves Western Front, Eastern Front or Pacific. For every 1 person that says they want to fly some obscure plane there's 20 that want to fly the 109F, Spit MkXIV, etc. I would guess that Luthier would probably be contractually unable to make a direct Eastern Front competitor to BOS for a number of years? Pretty standard in any kind of severance agreement for somebody in his position though I don't know how amicable / sudden the split was so it might not be present. So if I had to guess I think it's more likely to be either Western Front or Pacific. If going for DCS level fidelity the planes on the Western Front are better documented from a technical standpoint. Proper data on US planes is ok but Japanese planes is pretty hard to come by from what I understand. Also we'll have two Western Front planes with the P51 / FW190 done to DCS level so makes sense to me to add more in there - everybody knows that the 109 and Spit would fly out the door when made to that level.

With Team Fusion working on fixing some of the more egregious bugs it's worth picking up now - you can probably find it for 5-10 euro. They've already released one major patch which addresses some of the flight model issues and are working on another at the moment which will address things like damage modelling, LOD visibility, etc. TF seem to have it tough though as they don't have access to the core files so modding things to fix issues is made a good bit trickier. The flight model isn't up to DCS standards however it does have a period map, multiple planes, pretty decent FM accuracy and can smoothly handle 100+ players being online which can make for some fun fights. For WW2 online fights it's probably the best option out there at the moment. Next year might be a different story though ;)

Ah ok.. I stand corrected then! Maybe I should try taking off fully loaded from one of the shorter runways sometime. Most of the runways are more than long enough for a take-off without flaps even when fully loaded I've found.

Flaps aren't required at all for a take off with only 10 HVARs loaded. The P51 will take off fine without flaps with both HVARs and a couple of bombs loaded - especially if you get up to the full military power. Flaps were mostly just used for minimum run take-offs afaik.

What's the point of making it in SFM though? There's already CloD and the upcoming BOS sounds like the FM won't be very high fidelity. Most people here want to fly WW2 sims with high fidelity similar to the Mustang. DCS is about the only hope that this type of sim will be available for WW2. The whole point is that it should be challenging to fly and fight.

Great news that we should be getting a steady flow of WWII birds next year. I guess my only concern is that CloD, while a fun game - especially online after the TF mod with 100 player fights, had some pretty serious things just plain wrong with the flight models which couldn't really be accepted in a DCS level sim. But this is a fresh start in DCS for these guys and I'll definitely be backing on KS to see what they can produce. If they can deliver P51D fidelity birds this will absolutely be one of the best things to happen to DCS World - there'll be a large influx of new players.

What I would hope that is when IG goes live that they release the Nevada map along with a proper combat theatre map. Just having Nevada as the only playable map wouldn't be a great situation to be in. For anything other than training scenarios it quickly becomes a stretch of the imagination.

An Afghanistan map would be somewhat dull for A10 drivers. Go up, loiter, loiter, loiter some more, drop a JDAM or two, gun strafe, go home. Has the US lost even one A10 due to enemy fire in Afghanistan?

I've not flown up to that altitude much but it seems to kick in automatically a bit past 14k. Not sure what the manual says but it was usually closer to 16k for me I think. I never had a problem with it not starting but around the threshold where it kicks in the Mustang is usually already suffering without it so might be worth kicking it in manually a bit earlier.

And it shall be soundly beaten every time a WW2 german fighter is discussed in any thread in any flight sim forum despite it being the greatest non-issue known to mankind.

Would think this is probably more in ED's hands - until it's hardcoded into the engine by ED and the network instability issues reduced I don't think there's much BST can do to advance this area.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=104140 Page 3 of that thread has the answer

Thanks for pointing this out. Really wish they added this step to the start up tutorial video as it's pretty excruciating having to listen through minutes of that alarm going off - especially as I'm sure most of us went through the tutorial a few times.

+1.. the level of fine control is much better. Twist sticks are ok for take-off and semi-ok for using rudder in the same direction as the turn but really awkward (I found) for trying to use opposite rudder to the direction of the turn being made. I use the Saitek pedals myself - no complaints at all so far.

Prime more probably. I usually give it about 5 seconds priming before attempting to start. I think the in game tutorial might say 3 seconds which seems to be a bit short if you want to keep it going after setting to run.

Yeah the online store doesn't seem to like Chrome for some reason. I have to use IE as well to buy any module. Might be some certificates issue as IE pops up some warnings.

Was hoping to see FW190 in that list of next Eagle Dynamics modules but will continue the candle-lit vigil until the July newsletter :)

The DCS Israel server that xcom setup is well setup to handle different P51 requirements (as well as all other planes). There's a freefly area where P51s spawn with no weapons, a dogfight area for player P51s versus a pair of AI FW190-D9s, a ground attack area and also a PVP for P51 vs P51 match-ups. Server settings seem to be full realism as far as I can see. Don't know what the ping would be like for non-Euro players but I'm in Ireland and it's usually about ~60 ping for me.