Gooseneck

Hi Fenrir. Correct me if I'm wrong please, preferably without being so verbose, but an 'argument' cannot be 'inaccurate' in this instance, whereas an 'opinion' is wholly valid either way. Both you and the other guy have an opinion, both are equally valid, neither can be 'inaccurate', due to the absence of factual information. Me, I just think of the guys who bought the A-10 beta, who are only now gaining access to another beta which they were promised for free way back when...... Normandy. Maybe one day, hopefully before I have to pawn my mill-workers footwear. That's 'pop my clogs'. That's 'die' for anyone not familiar with English colloquialisms.

When I first bought the P-51, I flew the SP mission to take down a transport a/c and was stunned to see a 1 second burst carve the wing off. As though my six .50 cals were a sidewinder amraam. Then I flew against the Fw190 which was obviously built from six-inch armour plate and my .50cals were hopelessly inadequate. So I see your point. Maybe by the time we get a Normandy map, such anomalies will be resolved to an acceptable level.

Huh?? You mean that and the complete lack of a WW2 theatre to fly in? Don't get me wrong, I'm a patient type, I can wait. Simple truism: DCS will be more popular with the 'WW2 crowd' when there is a WW2 theatre to fly in. That is the 'one thing'.

Harvard for me. Did the Moth in another game. It was a bit under-modelled though. A loop was a real struggle. Even after a full throttle dive..... Yup. Harvard here (that's a Texan, in case America is confused). :)

Australian mods riding scooters only eat Kanga-burgers.

Harvard for me. But also a Chipmunk. Cold War baby yaaaa.

No. But let the guys rant.

For what purpose? To fly bombing missions over the Caucasus?

Thanks Bongo. You betcha. I suppose we can dream of the day.

Before they make a Korean era hat, I'd like a Normandy era hat. The Normandy theatre is officially in the pipeline. :)

Of course it is. Also his escape from a Luftwaffe hospital, if memory serves. I was being a little sarcy (maybe a lot), in the comment I made, but it's evident that his rudder control wouldn't have been 'toe-sensitive' in turns, which my hotas pedals most definitely are. It'd be great if you real life pilots could somehow give us all a clue as to how sensitive they should be though. I remember Yo-yo saying in his Spit thread, 'be careful what you wish for' as far a stick sensitivity is concerned, but does it really matter when we can ruin all his hard work with the axis tune menu, with deadzones, saturation and curvature?

I know. And nor does anyone else. Because of course, if anyone sees one, they will start doing really bad things. I've yet to see the empirical evidence which leads people to believe this, and I expect to wait a long time.....(sigh).......

Umm. The problem with virtual flying, is that the response of the aircraft versus input bears no relation to real life, because it is dependant on your own personal controller setup. A Saitek Cyborg will work and feel differently to a Logitech 3Dpro. With or without twistgrip rudder control. A Thrustmaster Warthog with additional proprietary pedals will work differently to a Logitech G940 Hotas. For instance, my rudder pedals are incredibly sensitive, such that I have to create a 5% deadzone in the 'Axis Tune' menu, followed by an adjustment to the sensitivity curve of 25%. That's with most DCS aircraft. I have no idea whether the rudder response I achieve by this is accurate for any aircraft. The trouble is that we have no way of knowing how our own personal controller/game response relationship matches real life at all, in any computer game or simulation. So how about giving us the benefit of your experience, tell us what controller setup you have, what your deadzone and curvature settings are, and how these relate to your experiences in real life? This would be really helpful.

I have many books about it. I have built many models of it. Lord Frank of Whittle, please forgive me, but this is the only aircraft I would sit in which has swastikas on the tail. That's the only thing I don't like about it. The swastikas.

Yah. Annoying though isn't it? I guess many folk would shoot first rather than wait for the sight to catch up, and slipping to use the sight during the drift would prob result in a miss....... I guess I just prefer a fixed reflector and deflection rings.

Well put. In that case, I'll vote for the nightfighter. Then, when it's released, I'll willingly fly around blindly in the dark for you to come and find me. I guess that would be fun, thinking about it. :thumbup:

Three major players, including BAe and Rolls-Royce, have pulled out of Vulcan XH558 sponsorship. I went along today, to what may well be the last time we see one of these incredible aircraft flying, designed only ten years after the Lancaster by the same guy, Roy Chadwick. If it was up to me, the RAF would buy it back and the BBMF would continue with it. But without BAe and Rolls-Royce, maybe even that isn't possible. Sad day. Hope you guys can get BBC links... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-34495414

Ok, this question is probably more to do with gyroscopic gunsights than it is to do with flying per se, but Crumpp's track got me checking myself today. Here's the thing; if I maintain a perfectly coordinated level turn, the gunsight reflex disappears off of the glass. I need to put in masses of top-rudder and thus induce lots of side-slip in order to get the gunsight reflex back on the glass. I'd expect the reflex to disappear in a steep turn, but these turns were fairly gentle, and the gunsight reflex disappeared off to the side. Lots of top rudder required to bring it back. Can someone explain this please?

Aaah, gotcha. So this is simply about rudder/aileron coordination only? Ok. By the way, there's a useful clickbox in the options menu called 'align controls to HOTAS at mission start' or something like that, so you can trim out your a/c for a given throttle setting, then restart the mission already trimmed out. Helps save time when making demos. :thumbup:

Thanks for the track Crummp. But you were losing up to 4000fpm in those 'coordinated' turns. The slipball was centred, but your roc (variometer) was all over the place. You pulled up initially, but then lost altitude quite alarmingly. Am I missing the point?

No way. Uh-uh. :lol:

I don't see much point for the Nightfighter, as it's unlikely we'll see any night bomber force soon, but I don't see any point for the Destroyer either, because it would be easy meat for all of the proposed allied fighters.

And Pete Brothers, a Battle of Britain vet, always flew with some side-slip, so that his aircraft was pointing in a direction he wasn't going in, to confuse any attackers. :) But of course the experts learned how to do it properly before they learned the tricks of the trade. Earlier posts in this thread have mentioned side-slipping in to land, which as you say, is also a superb avoidance tactic in combat. The I-16 in old IL2 was fantastic for this, because you could wait for the enemy to shoot by, recover from the slip and blast him, even if he was B&Zing and had a huge speed advantage. Those were the days.... :)

Agree. This completely dispels the myth of Douglas Bader being of any use at all. :) Personally, I learned to 'fly' using the PPL course in the 'learning centre' of FSX. I flew r/c in my youth, but it just ain't the same as flying a pc...... But seriously folks, if you can tolerate the boredom and the pathetic jokes, the flying lessons found under 'learning centre' in FSX are pretty good. Particularly with reference to coordinated turns, correct use of trims and throttle settings for climb and descent, use of flaps etc. The whole shebang really. If you don't have the privilege of flying for real in any capacity, don't overlook FSX as being somehow 'old hat'. As for rudders; in wwII a/c, I only consciously use it to counteract torque on take-off, then to keep my sights on target. I constantly trim to centre the slip-ball though. The rest is instinctive, thanks to FSX. Or you could just call me Doug. Or Dougie. Whatever. :thumbup:

There have been a couple of situations where I've had the TAD display half and half, i.e. the right side was black screen with green line waypath, the left half a proper geographical TAD map. No amount of fiddling with DMS zoom in or zoom out would rectify this, it was stuck at half and half. But don't worry. I bet they know far more about these issues than we do. It'll come good.