DD_Fenrir

I certainly hope so Raven, but if it were simple it would be done already - best case scenario, it's something ED are working on and we'll see an improvement in the coming weeks or months. Worst case; it's an issue inherent to VR and we won't see the detail until VR headset resolutions increase sufficiently.

Having just run a comparison between 1080p and Oculus Rift-S I can unfortunately attest to the same issue with new clouds being very indistinct in VR when compared to their 2D bretheren. That said, they are still a vast improvement in terms of: non-rotating with head roll synchronisation over multiplayer there is now a landscape in the sky and that this drives tactical and piloting decisions like never before in DCS flying into/out of and within cloud looks far more realistic than ever before Remember chaps, that: 1. this is a Beta - ergo it is not final and subject to tweaking, optimisation and improvement 2. as VR users you have already accepted a slight degradation in crisp resolution imagery in exchange for a more immersive 3D environment; for the moment at least it seems that the crenulations and detail that excited us, hitherto had been displayed to us in 2D format only, (there was no demonstration of it in VR - we only inferred it) and that this maybe the price of VR - for now (refer to point 1).

1. Radar & Radar Jamming Sites 2. Noball sites (aka Ski-sites; the smaller V-1 launch sites consisting of launch ramps and some out-buildings. These were attacked from Dec '43 and identified to the crews as 'construction sites' as they were nor briefed as to what they were for). 3. Rail Marshalling Yards 4. Rail and Road Junctions 5. Bridges 6. HQs - many Chateaux had been requisitioned by the German forces in France and many were targeted (e.g. a mixed force of rocket firing Typhhons and B-25s bombing from medium altitude destroyed Panzer Group Wests HQ in July of 1944)

From my tome of "Guns of the Royal Air Force" by G.F. Wallace ( https://www.google.com/search?q=Guns+of+the+Royal+Air+Force&oq=Guns+of+the+Royal+Air+Force&aqs=chrome..69i57.12063j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) for the 20mm Hispano : Where the HE/I was designed thus: Where the SAP/I (Semi-Armour Piercing/Incendiary) was designed thus:

Channel Map Bases able to support the Mossie... Well there are two airfields that actually hosted Mosquitos that should be on the DCS map... but aren't. 1. Gravesend: 140 Wing (of Amiens prison Raid notoriety) and their FB.VIs were based here from April of 1944. 2. West Malling: Night fighter Mosquitos of varying marks (NF.XII, NF.XIII, NF.XVII, NF.XIX, NF.XX & NF.36) and various units were based here during the late war period. For bases you could actually safely get one on and off the ground in DCS? A stated previously, Manston is a cert (if you can't land and take-off in a Mossie there then the problems not with the airfield or the airframe... ), the upcoming Biggin Hill should be fine too, as well as the ALGs of High Halden and Headcorn (these being P-47 bases). You might struggle at Lympne, Detling or Hawkinge (or the upcoming Eastchurch) but proof of the pudding.... and a couple of the big French fields should easily support Mossie ops. Normandy Map: Again, there are no prototypically accurate bases on the DCS map to imitate actual Mosquito FB.VI ops, though there should be RAF Thorney Island: This airfield hosted 140 Wing (them again!) from June of 1944. No bases on the French side of the DCS map actually hosted any fighter bomber Mossies; the airfields that they moved to in the late autumn being much too far east and beyond the scope of the DCS map. IIRC Tangmere hosted some Night Fighter units, and I think some of these were NF Mossie sqaudrons. Whilst Tangmere is represented on the DCS map, it's a pretty poor reflection of the real airfield. That said, it certainly looks suitable for Mossie ops. Similarly Ford (though whether this airfield saw any Mossies based there I am as yet unsure). Funtingdon and Needs Oar Point on the English side should also be able support the operation of Mosquitos as the runways look long enough. On the French side, some of the British ALGs might struggle, some of the American one's less so, but the larger pre-existing fields (Evreux, Caen & Maupertus) would I suspect comfortably host a Mossie.

Negative. The J models were introduced into the ETO in the late winter of 1943. By the time of D-Day, J-models were the only used on operations. The Normandy variants should not have the dive flaps however, these did not start appearing till late summer of 1944.

If anything it will be simpler as the Merlin 25 has a two-speed single stage supercharger, not the two stage of the Merlin 66 in the Spitfire LF.IX.

Lurker, my hyperbole was meant to give you some pause for thought; I don't truly believe you're a lunatic. I get your excitement for the Mossie and wholly understand your disappointment - and I feel it too - but at the same time, in your excitement, you seemed to have ignored all the caveats, disclaimers and provisos that come with every DCS release. You've been around long enough that this shouldn't come as a surprise. Software development is a far more complicated animal than any other service or product in it's equivalent price bracket and has more in common with a construction project in terms of delays, knock-ons, and coordination issues. You can be individually on (or even ahead) of deadline on the piece of the project your working on yet when all the parts come together all of a sudden, despite the best efforts to avoid them, there's a clash, where two or more elements don't sync. Depending on the why or how, that might oblige you or more contributors to re-work their piece to fit; in the worst cases that could be a ground-up rework. Suddenly a project that looked to be on or even ahead of deadline is now beyond. And being on the fringes of the industry I know software developers tend to give themselves some breathing room - but they can't give themselves too much, a close deadline helps to provide impetus and motivation to build the momentum to complete, whilst two, it can hurt profitability. The upshot is that you cannot judge the industry like you would other services as they do not face the same challenges/issues. Ultimately we know why it was delayed; Nick wasn't happy with the 3D model. He believed it didn't reflect the quality that a DCS model should have. I think that's laudable, whilst also feeling a bit disappointed that I've got to wait a bit longer. But in the end I'd rather have better later, than sub-standard now.

It must be nice living in such polarisation. I mean, borderline delusional, and not in anyway reflective of the vagaries of real-life, but if you wanna get angry when real-life throws a cold bucket of water over your rose-tinted utopian filter of what should be, that's your right I guess.

Yeah, cos F-14 module is, like, totally unplayable right now without it....

Not much is the reasonable conclusion. The aircraft in DCS is competitive, authentic and as close as anyone's ever got to simulating the F-14 in computer game history. There are some tweaks required to get it just so, but whilst the measurable output values of the discrepancies are small, the work involved balancing various drag, thrust, weight and airspeed parameters to get all to synchronise exactly as prototype at a specific condition criteria is huge. Even then, it is very possible to get them spot on at one altitude yet it may not neatly be the correct combination for another. Even then, when you have calculated all that for the F-14B and you think you have it right, you now have to take the relevant common parameters over to the F-14A: however, it might not fit exactly the data set for the F-14, which would indicate that some combination of airframe data needs to be re-calculated at the F-14B. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and... Anyone who thinks this work is simple is delusional. Anyone who thinks that they've "lost a dogfight" because of this is likewise. It's great as is, go out, have fun, and just know that the HB team are striving towards ever greater accuracy even while you're grinning your a$$ off having so much fun it must be illegal someplace.

I have covered this before: But kudos to Phil for making a nice comprehensible vid about the matter. Ultimately we go about it slightly differently but the end goal is the same, to try and give you a physical stick displacement to critical AoA that is analogous to the real thing. The benefit to my method is that you do not lose any of the elevator travel incumbent to reducing Y-saturation and with virtually no curve on the gradient the pull is linear so will feel progressive, but horses for courses.

138 Wing (21 Squadron, 305 Squadron & 613 Squadron) were based at RAF Lasham from 3rd February 1944 until 30th October 1944 when they moved to RAF Hartfordbridge. On the 19th November 1944 they moved to A.75 Cambrai/ Epinoy (France) and were there till the end of hostilities. 140 Wing (107 Squadron, 464 Squadron & 487 Squadron) were based at RAF Gravesend on D-Day proper, then moved to RAF Thorney Island from 18th June 1944. They didn't move to the continent until 6th February 1945, being based at B.87 Rosières-en-Santerre before transferring to B.58 Melsbroek from 17th April 1945, and were based there till the wars end. These were the squadrons of 2nd TAF that used the FB.VI and whose roles we'll most likely be emulating in DCS. During the immediate post D-Day period they were operating at night interdicting German supply runs, sometimes in the company of a 2 Group Mitchell dropping flares. This constituted the majority of their operations. Occasionally they embarked on a daylight raid; some of these raids were to support the SAS Operations Houndsworth & Bulbasket, their aim being to hamper German reinforcements heading towards the Normandy beachheads. 140 Wing assisted these by striking known Gestapo and SS HQ's coordinating the searches for the SAS forces and their French resistance allies. Furthermore: The others were those of the Coastal Command that were providing anti-shipping strikes in the bay of Biscay; these would eventually move North to Scotland and form the Banff Strike Wing attacking shipping in the Norwegian waters. There were other units whose parent organisation I could not tie down; they don't seem to be part of 2nd TAF, but could have been part of ADGB or even Bomber Command's support Wing. 418 Squadron is one of these, they have a record of running Intruders and Rangers during their war operational career.

If the technology allows this, it would be ideal, however to cover such a broad spectrum of history 1940-1990 and the massive changes in infrastructure and expansion in urban areas? The development time/cost alone would render such an enterprise uneconomical. You'd triple the required assets overnight. Profound changes and additions to the road and rail networks. Additional bridges. What were airfields then are housing estates now. The level of research required, let alone the programming work is practically unfeasible. For this map I suspect if such an undertaking were ever done it would be limited to the WW2 period, reflecting changes to airfield format/availability but limited to the Battle of Britain-VE day time period. Lakenheath is far too far north anyway - you'd practically have to double the North South dimension of the map area to include it. It's just not a realistic request in any form.

To quote the late Wing Commander Tom Neil: That seems to about cover it.

Having done it myself, the seat of the pants feedback you get anytime the nose starts to diverge is such a massive feedback device - and one that is woefully lacking in a desktop PC sim, and very difficult to economically replicate. I maintain that the Spitfire in DCS is eminently controllable on the ground given that the brakes are mapped as an axis control, you are mindful of wind direction, you concentrate and you take your time.

Amazing what a 180° FoV will do.

Altitude isn't the key metric; it's slant angle. If you're at 15,000ft and the SAM tracking Radar is only 15 miles away, you still appear to that radar at a slant angle of only 11° above the horizon. You'd have to get down to 3 miles to make that 45°. I think you misunderstand just how large some of the sidelobes are and just how complex a task filtering out their noise can be. That being the case, having been shot down by a great number of SAMs in DCS during the last 11 years, I find SAMs not so easy to notch as you make out, especially when you get close.

1. A fighter Group consisted of three squadrons. As far as I am aware, squadron codes remained consistent throughout the stay in theatre for both 8th and 9th Air Force Units. 8th Air Force Fighter Groups by April of 1944 had a common nose colour for all their squadrons with different colour rudders denoting particular squadrons appearing later in 1944; the 9th Air Force was not so consistent in this aspect, and each Squadron in the same group had a different nose colour but often in the same design. This meant in the 9th that two separate squadrons from two different groups could theoretically have the same nose colour, but a different design pattern. A lot of the 9th Air Force groups seemed to modify their colours in early 1945. Examples: 8th Air Force 353rd Fighter Group - P-47D then P51B/C/D from October 1944 350th Fighter Squadron Code: LH Markings: Early '44 - white nose band; Mid '44 - yellow & black diamond checkerboard; Late '44 - yellow & black striped spinner and deep square checkerboard noseband, yellow rudder 351st Fighter Squadron Code: YJ Markings: Early '44 - white nose band, Mid '44 - yellow & black diamond checkerboard; Late '44 - yellow & black striped spinner and deep square checkerboard noseband, no specific colour on rudder 352nd Fighter Squadron Code: SX Markings: Early '44 - white nose band, Mid '44 - yellow & black diamond checkerboard; Late '44 - yellow & black striped spinner and deep square checkerboard noseband, black rudder 9th Air Force 354th Fighter Group - P51B/C/D, then P-47D from November 1944, then P-51D from mid February 353rd Fighter Squadron Code: FT Markings: Early '44 - white nose band; Mid/late '44 - yellow spinner with yellow and black sawtooth nose band; '45 - yellow spinner & noseband 355th Fighter Squadron Code: GQ Markings: Early '44 - white nose band; Mid/late '44 - blue spinner with blue & white checker panel/noseband; '45 - blue spinner with blue & white checker panel/noseband http://soyuyo.main.jp/p51/p51dg02.jpg 356th Fighter Squadron Code: AJ Markings: Early '44 - white nose band; Mid/late '44 - white spinner & white stars on blue nose band; '45 - red spinner & noseband 2. This was generally only during a transition period. The Squadrons generally tried not to operate mixed flights, but there were occasions where a group would sortie a mixed group, (i.e. 1x squadron P-51, 2x squadrons P-47s). The 352nd FG is a good example of the latter. The method of training varied, particularly during the early introduction of the Mustang, when there were scarce few around, and not enough it seems to equip an entire Group at once. If we take the 4th FG for example, they flew ops with their P-47s and trained on the Pony in between (not for that long apparently!) until their CO Don Blakeslee deemed them combat ready on the P-51, and there were sufficient P-51 airframes to make them operationally viable. This seems to be the pattern followed by later Groups converting to the Mustang; the 20th, 55th, 78th, 339th, 353rd, 355th, 356th, 359th, 361st & 479th FG all follow this pattern, and as the war progresses and more and more pilots and airframes are available at the squadron level, not every pilot is on every mission and it meant type conversions could happen that much more quickly. It even gets to the point towards the end of Autumn of 44 that a single squadron could provide enough manned airframes that instead of one formation of 16 aircraft it could provide 2 formations of 12, allowing a single FG to commit two understrength Groups to combat.

My 3 year old daughter occasionally likes to have a go at flying (crashing) aircraft in DCS (at least for as long as her attention span allows) so I can well understand the OPs request. The only unreasonable part of this discussion are those condescending or disparaging comments by those who are so profoundly ignorant to family life that their opinions are irrelevant.

Funny, lots of other people seem to get on with Jester just fine, even PvP. But it couldn't possibly be your error... Amazing how many blame Jester for the AWG-9 radar's limitations. F-14 crews regularly had to adjust their tactics to make the best of it, seems like too many here just expect it to be an all seeing all tracking wundermachine that turns a RIO into an omniscient battle god. Could Jester jump to P-STT a bit more reliably? Sure, but that doesn't mean he never manages to hold a track on a bandit attempting to notch - many a time I've seen the TID repeater pop black as he's - unrequested - manged to discern the sudden change in closure and switch before the bandit manages to drop into the notch. But maybe that's because I regularly try to engage from a couple of Angels below the bandits altitude so that the radars looking up and doesn't get lost in the ground clutter. If your STT locking from >20 miles, you're always going to have some unreliable STT locks. Ask an F/A-18 guy with his Soild State radar that's 20 years younger than the AWG-9 if he ever drops tracks... Can he get a bit stuck with running IFF routines? Occasionally if there's a complex battle picture, but I find a quick reset to Auto Radar Mode via the Jester wheel tends to give him a nudge and he quickly gets back to what he should be doing. Is Jester perfect? Of course not. But considering the alternative, and the ground breaking attempt to provide a useful way of managing a complex Weapon System with some automated functions, I think he's a damn good and useful feature.

Some wings or squadrons within certain air forces with multi-role types do have a particular specialism they focus on within the air-to-ground purview (IIRC there's a USAF F-16 wing that pays particular attention to the Wild Weasel or SEAD/DEAD role) but that an air to air regime is practiced as regularly as possible to keep pilots current as it is a perishable skill.