bkthunder

Doesn't the refueling probe have a light in it for night-time AAR? I was trying to refuel yesterday in a night mission and (partly because of the tinted canopy and very very dark hud) couldn't see absolutely anything outside, let alone the small basket...

This. lacking a dynamic campaign of sorts, MP is the only way to have variance and unpredictability, the game feels more alive. I find myself playing online even on the free flight or aerobatic servers, I'd rather be there with other people doing s*it around me, than offline. However MP is very buggy, laggy and unstable and I lost count of the hours I literally wasted connecting, freezing, crashing, reconnecting etc. The fact that servers need to restart every couple of hours is already a pain in the neck, add to that the massive lag and CTDs, and you have a very frustrating experience. +1 for MP stability and improvements, we really need it to fully enjoy the possibilities of DCS.

see picture

Well, meaybe it is meant to be used as a piece of art. The FM is so bad you're not really gonna fly it, you can just seat in it and watch it form the outside, pretend you're at the Smithsonian museum or something :megalol:

This is already available, it's called Strat from parking hotspot I think (I'm at work so I can't check).

Lol, well, that would be a good reason to call them Blad Eagles :lol: AAR is not difficult, just takes practice as everything else. I learnt AAR on Falcon 4.0 back in 1998-1999, god knows how many of those poor tankers I shot down in anger before getting the gist of it. Then all of a sudden something clicked, and I was able to refuel smooth as butter. Probably the same with carrier landings ;)

I'm not touching the MiG-21 because the FM is a joke, I don't even get to the part where I start worrying about the canopy. I'm surprised to see so much heat over a texture and som of you are calling this module to be otherwise "superb", lol, with all the FM and weapons system bugs / inaccuracies, this canopy thing should be pretty low on the list of priorities. That said, if people with RL experience say the canopies are quite dirty, I believe that. Then it means every other module in DCS should be made equally realistic and have an equally dirty canopy.

Wind in meters per second is the dumbest thing I ever heard... wish they changed the ATC to be more in line with ICAO standards (another one is the tower giving you the QFE rather than QNH...)

I have noticed this in many airshow videos on a number of different airframes (Eurofighter comes to mind). I think these effects would be a nice little addition.

Cool, thanks for the answers guys. Sounds like IRL you would encounter both situations, so as far as setting the game up, you can go with no wind and carrier speeding at 27-30 kts. I so wish the burble effect was simulated! It would make for a more realistic experience, as well as looking more authentic in videos (you would see a lot more of the typical aileron/elevon rapid adjustments). OT: Speaking of turbulence, wish some turbulence was simulated also when AA refueling...

Well, here's one thing I don't get. some of you seem to set-up the carrier so the wind is straight down the angled deck (and not the BRC). This doesn't make too much sense to me (but again, it could totally be how they do it IRL), because: 1. In a no-wind situation, the carrier travels at 30 kts and those 30kts of wind over deck are straight down the BRC, not the angled deck (unless the carrier can go sideways, which it can't). 2. If the carrier set itself up to have the wind lined up with the angled deck, then it's creating cross-wind problems during the initial, downwind and base turns. E.g. the wind would be pushing the jet towards the ship during downwind, meaning you'd have to fly the reverse of BRC minus X degrees to correct for the wind.

I don't want to come out as rude, but I really don't get this kind of comments when talking about a flight SIMULATOR. Being "fun and a blast to fly" says nothing about how the module is a faithful representation of the real aircraft, which is what a study sim is all about. Actually, it would probably be more fun and more of a blast if it had thrust vectoring and carry 24 AIM-120s...

Beautiful aircraft. Given that DCS is somewhat lacking in simulating a full combat experience (bad missile FM, no DC, basic AI etc.), but it absolutely excels at minutely simulating the flight model and systems of an aircraft, I think this would be a hell of an interesting / quirky airplane to fly around and appreciate the FM. Besides, the MiG-21 and F-5 are also pretty useless in AA without a GCI.

Will do ;)

I've been asking myself the same question...

I see the point you guys are making, that's definitely something I can do (adjust things here and there) and actually can already fly a decent pattern, I'm just bothered by the fact I cannot seem to do it by the real numbers, which means that the sim is not set-up properly in one aspect or another. Could be the FM modeling which is WIP, or most probably the setup of the carrier (speed, wind etc.). Let's say I wish that mission makers and servers would strive to setup the carriers in a realistic way, I know there are bugs now so we probably have to wait, but this brings out another important aspect: not only pilot training is important, but also "skipper" training, meaning the focus should also be on how to realistically setup the carrier so that properly trained pilots can fly realistically. I'd love to hear more from Lex or someone in the know, on the actual carrier speed and wind over deck IRL.

Hey guys, I'm scratching my head here... I watched the videos of the RL F-18 pilot Talionis, and follow those numbers. I am also using VFA-113 mission (the one with the LSO). The problem I have is, if I follow the videos and do a downwind at exactly 1.2nm, start a 30 degree turn when I hear "paddles contact", I end up on the groove at 0.5nm and always end up 0.2nm on the port side (unless I correct durign the base turn and bank less than 30 degrees). I tried different combinations of starting the base turn earlier or later, but I can't find the sweet spot (unless I do the downwind at 1.0nm, then it's spot on..) Any suggestions / ideas?

Every single time I join an MP server, the game freezes in the lobby, then the screen goes black. I check the task manager and the process is running, no apparent problems. I left it there even for one hour, and nothing happens. The only way out is to close the process and re-start the game. The second time I try to join, again it freezes in the lobby, but after a few minutes, it starts to work. Again, this is not sporadic, it happens every single time I join a server or load a mission with more than a few units. DCS is installed on a 1Tb WD Caviar Black mechanical drive (7200 rpm), yes I know it's not an SSD, but this is not a matter of slow loading times (I put up with that), it's basically a CTD without a CTD, and no crashlog is produced apparently. :doh:

I noticed this just yesterday on the Blue Flag server. I was flying very low over the sea, at around 40 ft, the airplane started to get sucked down, I had to pull very hard to keep it from hitting the water. The same thing happened every time I got below ~40 ft. Very strange.

We desperately need the offset button to work, when they're all on top of each other you can't tell what is what...

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=203105 Here was a thread I started a while ago, with some of the same questions asked here. I hope it's just a matter of time and the FM will be ironed out, right now I have many questions about it...

LOL, that's true :megalol:

It's definitely not a feature...

This is good IMO, especially the civilian foto traffic leads directly to animated ground crew at airports. This is the holy grail of flight sim immersion, something that was not possible before, due to lack of computing power. I fully agree there are many outstanding issues and features that have far greater priority than this, but if Wags says it's not taking time off the other stuff, why not? This can be a small effort for ED, but can yield a big impact on immersion.

[ALREADY REPORTED] Sliding on deck with carrier speed above 25 kts Try to taxi around on the carrier, I set mine at 27 kts (a normal speed for flight ops) and the airplane is nearly uncotrollable when it's perpendicular to the wind / ship heading. Either the tyres have too little grip, or the airplane wind vanes too much.