WildFire

I second curves of at least 30 in everything. Rudder pedals especially. I think I have mine set to 40 cause I am using those close little ch pedals. Also watched your video Ali, it was good but as my first post outlines your not using the BAI anywhere near as much as you should. When the plane started swerving you reacted quickly and perfectly so obviously you've had enough practice with the rudders to fly by feel, but the BAI gives you swerve information faster than you'll notice the plane start darting off the runway. If used correctly you should be able to stay on the centerline all the way down. But regardless a good takeoff.

Ive been through the Suez on the Vinson. I never would have imagined such a stupid idea. Its the only time I've ever seen a carrier in a position to easily be killed. It was a little scary for a day or two. No more than 50-100 feet of water on each side I could swear. Its probably more but it looked darn close. I thought I could throw a piece of styrofoam and hit the coast. But yeah they'll fit those things wherever the heck they want.

Well I havent watched the track but I'll take a stab. There is a condition where you lift off and for a second or two it looks good. After that second she begins to roll left and basically throws herself into the ground. As she is doing this any type of control has zero effect. I read a flight journal while I was in the navy that talked about props having problems getting off the deck in this way. If your talking about the plane darting off to the left in midair then its pretty simple and the same problem they were having. Basically its a stall. Im sure most people already know that. And its really easy to do with props cause your trying so hard to get it off they ground that you dont give it enough time to get speed. Its a specific type of stall and I'm sure somebody will come around and answer and say what it is. However if your talking about darting on the runway while still wheels down, see my post here; http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=89267 Chances are you aren't controlling the ball properly or your rudder is messed up. I figure the ladder since people are watching the track and citing that. Keep in mind if you dont have rudder pedals this plane is going to be near impossible to take off with take off assist disabled. She's pretty hard with pedals, let alone trying to use a stick or keyboard. Most people cited trim like mine, its pretty much user preference however I would strongly advise a click or two right aileron (roll). When she first takes off if your at low speed the stall condition exists. At this moment the plane will lose lift and the torque of the motor will spin the aircraft left and right into the ground. Remember once this begins, it is already too late. Many pilots have died this way. However setting your trim to roll right will help stop this tendency and it also helps keep the plane stable for that extra second or two that she needs to pick up speed and overcome this potential stall condition. On the other hand you would have to set some pretty severe right roll trim to get her to overcome the torque effect and roll right. Its almost unheard of to have a stall on the opposite side of the torque effect on take off, its always to the torque side. So basically what I am trying to say is that you have more to gain than to lose just by setting some right roll for safety.

The reason you dont like nose down is because your taking off quickly and your having trouble keeping the mains down. Once you get comfortable with keeping the tail up then nose down will be preferable and you'll have to pull a little bit harder to get her in the air. The reason I do it is so she wont take off on her own. I dont like my airplane to do shit that I specifically dont make it do. So shes not going to fly off the runway unless I actually pull her off. Secondly learn to relax the stick as soon as possible because if your focused on speed, BAI, the runway you dont want to be cranking back on this thing and fly off too quickly right into a roll. You have enough on your mind, just try relaxing and using the rudder to roll her down the runway. Yeah the two clicks right aileron should stop the initial roll effect, it works for me, maybe yours is different. There are three separate phases to the takeoff. The first is from complete stop through about 40 mph. During this time the torque is really pulling the aircraft and you'll need a lot of right rudder to compensate. Once she is up to speed she'll begin swaying back and forth and you'll need to go both ways. The second is the tail lift. Again you'll need to dance with it and keep it straight while its coming up. After a bunch of tries you'll begin to notice that its quite predictable. The third is the tail up and accelerating from about 80-120. Since I only use about 2-3 degrees right rudder I have to use a little additional while shes going down the runway. Once I finally pull up she stays level and straight until I start getting up to about 160 and above which of course is a major speed change and trim of course is going to be needed. During the whole process your throttle and rpm should not change, not at all. Any change in throttle or rpm will change the forces your tail is going to experience and getting used to the dance that you have to do with the pedals will change. It needs to be the same every time so you can learn it and get a feel for it. So maybe you like something like 40 or 60 Hg. Well your going to need to trim the aircraft differently for heading down the runway. If shes faster the tail will come up faster and be harder to control. Also if shes fast the initial torque pulling the aircraft from full stop will be much stronger and require even more right rudder. 45-46 already requires a lot. Adjust your curves in your rudder and stick with them so you can be a little more precise. In the absence of physical tangible feedback that you get in real life we need every advantage we can get.

Thanks, hopes this helps the guys really having trouble learning where they should be looking. I had no idea about this until I started paying attention to it. Takeoff went from ridiculous rage quit mode to easy in about half an hour. Yeah I didnt get too in depth with the propwash and velocity stuff, just a basic why the f*#@ it gets all crazy when she lifts up. Good correction though. As for rotation good addition. But its only a matter of time when people realize they need to watch the BAI that theyll notice anytime they make pitch or speed changes there will be rudder use. Lesson 1 is use the BAI, after that I think our v-pilots will improve tenfold, as weve all been flying stuff for the last 20 years where you could get by without using some of the instruments. This brings back real piloting and "hey this plane has this stuff, you need to use it". As opposed to "its a jet, it'll fly itself".

Ok so here is my two bits. Between working and other stuff I get little time to fly but what I've learned so far... This is the single most important instrument you have. Everything you do in this aircraft that comes down to life or death depends on how you control the ball. It matters in takeoff, it matters in landing, it matters immensely in dog-fighting. It affects which way your bombs drop and which direction your bullets fly and careful use lowers the speed at which tight turns turn into flailing stalls. This is why they call it "stick & rudder" With that being said first I'll cover the settings. I enjoy about 2-3 degrees right rudder trim. If your using hats for trim and ailerons (which you should be) set two clicks right roll and two clicks down or nose heavy. No flaps, no tanks, no bombs, full fuel. These settings will be different for a non-clean configuration and you'll have to experiment. Now for the takeoff roll... No brakes, pull the stick back to hold course on start. Advance the throttle to 45-46 manifold Hg. As it crosses about 30 Hg you'll need to add some right rudder to compensate initial torque pull. Dont trim, its all in the hands and feet now. Now you need to have your trackir or view zoomed way out. With your peripheral watch the sides of the runway and verify your roughly centered. Your primary focus will be on that little ball. Keep it centered and use gentle but calculated input, it requires a lot of practice. Once your rolling and your cruising, anything above walking speed you can let go of the stick. If you can manage to keep that ball centered and keep her straight on the runway she'll haul ass. Once the tail comes up around 60 she'll begin to go nuts. At this point keep your focus hat on because this is the part where keeping that ball centered is life or death. It is the very moment the tail comes up that she goes nuts. When the tail is coming up its crossing prop wash and torque and it needs a lot of rudder to overcome, but once the tail is up at the top it will only require little and steady input. Once her tail is up and that ball is centered your walking on sunshine. She'll stay straight and you can keep the wheels on the deck as long as you want. Once its steady you'll be able to focus on speed and chances are you'll already be going fast enough to lift off. I like to hold her down til about 130-150 just for kicks. In conclusion, knowing what the BAI does and how to use it is the difference between life and death in this game. Learn it, use it, love it. You'll find if you can keep her centered at all times that your turns will be much tighter, your control will be more exact and your opponents will be a lil dead'r. Changing your loadout will require you to change your initial trim settings so do a lot of practice clean till you get a feel for what you need heading down the street. Good luck!

Next time your on a commercial flight, wait for about 10-15 minutes after takeoff. You should be anywhere from 7000 feet and usually much higher. Look out the window and look as close to straight down as you can. You'll notice in RL you can see stuff from 10-15 thousand feet pretty easily. Like dogs and kids playing frisbee and even girls in swimming pools. Keep in mind if you are watching a video of someone up at 10-15 thousand that it will give the same interpretation as the game, since the image is first processed through a camcorder. You have to actually fly to see what I'm talking about. Now put a tank in a field in dcs and fly up to 10000. Look straight down with no zoom. Tell me if you can see him at all. See in RL your eyes pick up on vertices and surfaces. Depth perception is insanely important and something that is superbly difficult to replicate in a game, and they do decent in this one. But the lines and 3d type surfaces that your eyes pickup are insanely acute as compared to whats on a computer monitor. This type of ocular ability is why the US has switched to digital camouflage uniforms; they break up all the lines and surfaces, the patterns that the human eye identifies easily. Simply put a computer monitor cannot output a digital image that is beyond the scope of our ocular ability. Technology has far to go to surpass the limits of our eyes, it is one of the most miraculous thing a human body has going for it. Your eyes see in 2 dimensions, but with the space between the eyes, the eyes transfer the data to your brain which reassembles the data to 3d with depth perception. This slight difference in the position of our eyes is what helps to pick up on the surfaces that we see, simply put one eye sees a different surface and angle than the other and they can easily differentiate. A computer monitor puts out one image, with no ability to create depth. So they use artistic ability to give the image depth. It works but its no where near comparable to RL. With this all being said I say yes zoom. Because in RL your eyes are way better than what is processed on this screen, and a fighter/attack pilot in the US armed forces will have perfect vision.

Dont use wav's, compress to ogg. The wave file sizes are huge and a mission can go from a few kb's to 8Mb's pretty quick. Which WILL break the engine.

Also on a side note there are a lot of other things that you can do to optimize a very large mission. However if were talking 500 units or less you shouldnt need to do most of them. If you have problems with sound or getting more than a few people to be able to join, contact me and I'll give you some more in-depth info.

Also it makes a difference how your groups are set up. To explain further... 150 units = 1 group = slight performance hit 50 units per group and 3 groups = more performance hit. We have done major testing with this in the 25th and its verified on 2 very large missions. One has a bit over 700 units total the other has close to a thousand. AI on and off shouldnt cause any major performance hits as far as I know however group activate causes major lag spikes depending on how many units are in the group activated and whether or not its a moving convoy. 8 units = 1 convoy = 30 waypoints = slight hit 2 convoys = 30 waypoints = large hit 3 convoys = 30 waypoints = huge hit 1 convoy = 60 waypoints = huge hit and will cause your mission file size to explode which also leads to problems. DannyV may come along and give a little more insight on this cause he pays far more attention to it than I do, as far as mission creation.

The little circles around the airfield in the mission editor are the range of the airfield. If there are enemy within that range along with your friendly it will be contested and whichever wins will control the airfield. So make sure to leave enemies outside that area.

This cannot be done perpetually. The 25th are currently operating two very large missions and beta-testing a third. Stuka and myself are the people you want to talk to but I can tell you right now there are several factors limiting the possibility of this and we've run into every one. 1)Too many units on map, cause only a few clients to be able to connect. Also loss of sound. 2)Too many moving units on a map same result 3)Heavy dynamic weather cuts down on bandwidth and causes problems with same result. 4)Too many AI GROUPS can cause FPS loss and eventually lead to a heavy limiting of connected clients. 5)Too many AI aircraft, same result. 6)Too large a briefing, causes clients to not be able to connect, have super slow loading times, bog down the server and if extreme crash the server. 7)Too many objects on map, again cause FPS loss and limited clients. 8 )AI engaging each other, has a huge effect on EVERYTHING. Theres probably a few I'm leaving out, its hard to keep track of how many things affect the server and clients, but there's quite a bit. But we still found solutions and work-arounds. Even if a unit is not activated yet, the map still has them in place and there when loading, so even if they arent there as far as the map is concerned they are there. Having all these groups sitting there waiting to be activated will bog down the server heavily. Our maps include anywhere from 500-1000 enemy units and I can tell you, with the optimization's we've made it is completely possible to have a server up for maybe 48 hours and not have the place wiped out as long as your units are difficult to find and you dont give them any help finding them. If you are purposely making it easy then you cant expect much. We've found with our missions we tend to restart the server every 24 hours or shorter depending on the conditions we want, such as night ops, but usually there is never any shortage of targets. We also pretty frequently have anywhere between 4-16 people play on our server everyday at the same time and over the course of one day I wouldnt be surprised to see anywhere from 10 to 20 sorties on our busier days.

Indeed it is at the northern part of the map in the middle up by the coastal shelf areas. Nowhere near where the bullseye is default placed.

Yeah got to play a quick two hour last night with the new version and no drops. Good improvement considering earlier today. Very fast, thank you!

Sent my logs for today. 8 Clients in server and almost but not all had sporadic crashes. Most couldn't tell when they were crashing and the hang would take sometimes upwards of ten minutes to actually crash out. Let me know if you need any other logs, I can have them available. As for your question above option 1 is the case as far as what happened to me.

ATC isnt based off the map, Its a whole separate system. They would have to reprogram the game files to change characteristics of the ATC. So improved ATC isnt even a possibility I dont think. They would also have to add a bunch of triggers that run in the background of every mission to tell whether players crossed within different zones so ATC could use different radio calls. So that also is not map dependent, it would have to be done within the Lua's of the game.

Yeah thats what I figured, thanks. Good idea too.

Wait have you figured out the nodes? I was kind of wondering how to use those and what in the world the use was for...?

I've never seen clouds or fog in the cockpit. And flying through clouds in dynamic weather is pretty freaking beautiful IMO. Don't use the standard weather much, although with the heavy tax of running dynamic on a server I may have no choice in the future.

?? Fog is currently rendered for the WHOLE map. Unless your target is above the fog elevation, your SOL. I'm not quite sure what you are talking about. Grimes is pretty much right on.

To have it pick up multiple time entering and exiting a zone use... Once>>UnitInZone>>FlagOn(1) ++ FlagOn(10) Switched>>TimeSinceFlag(1,20)>> blah blah Once>>UnitOutsideZone ++ FlagTrue(10)>> FlagOn(20) ++ FlagOff(1) Second run.. Once>>UnitInZone ++ FlagIsTrue(20)>> FlagOn(2) ++ FlagOn(11) switched>>TimeSinceFlag(2,20)>>blah blah Once>>UnitOutsideZone ++ FlagTrue(11)>>FlagOn(21) ++ FlagOff(2) and so on. Its important to use separate flags for each run.

I forget who said it, maybe druid but you can just use flag on then message to all, every time you use flag on, it automatically resets the timer, so you dont have to switch it off every time... so.. Switched >> Time since flag (1,xx seconds) >> FlagOn(1) ++ Message to coalition.

Be nice to use dynamic weather along with localized fog so you can start and end a mission perhaps with some local fog, making it mandatory for IFR ops. Bring on ILS! I imagine it would be less taxing on the engine to render only fog in a small area, say 30 miles or less. Probably a pretty ridiculous request though.

You know they may not carry that stuff but they often carry some things that could be quite a surprise.... Herpes, Hepatitis.. I kid, I kid.

Well the computer cant account for the drift the launchers experience once they open their parachutes and fire the rockets for elevation. So yes they are accurate, but once the chutes come out, they drift away. As an effective pilot you should be taking wind speed at ground level into account and dropping your cbu's accordingly. The other day with a 5 knot wind I took out 10 targets in one single cbu pass. So its definitely possible. I'm calling it luck but whatever.