blkspade

Familiarize yourself with the term 'infrastructure'. Setting aside the fact that the DCS netcode struggles at times with modest player counts, its peer-to-peer multiplayer. MMO servers are data centers with enormous amounts a usable bandwidth built upon server clusters with multiple NICs. The pay-to-play model affords them the capability of building and supporting this infrastructure. The MMO-rpg style of gameplay is also more forgiving of lag than DCS is.

Well if you're only considering DCS level fidelity as an option. A player controlled FC level seems reasonably likely, particularly without any working multi-human aircraft yet.

I wouldn't define it as "a lot". Sure there is some thought involved, but mostly if you intend on landing at a different airfield than you started at. WP 0 will guide you home, and you'll eventually familiarize yourself with the terrain anyway. Particularly if you frequent a multiplayer server where a particular mission is in constant rotation. What ever region of the map its staged in you'll learn in a few hours, if you're paying attention. Making use of the waypoints provided, get an idea of the bearing and range of an intended destination from a given waypoint. It may not be perfectly drawn out for you, but its far less complicated than having to do it in a P-51.

The only way to know is through extrapolation of information provided by making an inbound request to a particular airfield. Once you are provided with a bearing and range, you then have to cycle your waypoints in ILS mode to a point that most closely matches the info given. Its is the only way to do it and works to find all but 2 airfields accurately. Those 2 are Krasnodar Center and Pashkovsky, because they are very close to each other geographically but not in the waypoint cycle. If you aren't close enough to either visually, it is easy to assume you have one selected when you wanted the other.

How is this confusing for ED? Every game (in my experience) that is available on steam accepts the product key from the retail (non-steam) copy. I've later added my older games that showed up on steam as to not have to worry about loosing the booklet with the on it as I've done in the past.

This only happens when the its the ET as its IR and thus no warning, or an ER is fired in an RWR deadzone. The deadzone occurs when the attacking aircraft is at an angle greater than 30 degrees above or below the defending. Being banked greater than 30 degrees induces this RWR blindness.

That works well enough against the inexperienced F-15 pilot. Being at 2 o'clock still means you'll likely be picked up on radar, or you would have temporarily gone radar on to IFF, (unless you like to team kill) thus queuing the F-15 where to look. A 29 on my tews any where gets a low scan first as thats where you'll find them 90% of the time, its the rare high ones that surprise me if they got within 20nm without me noticing. Beyond that I know now (the hard way) that ETs can track head-on at 12nm/22km, where typically I didn't worry about them until 10nm/18km. So I'm popping flares and out of burn against anything Russian within that range whether I've spotted the launch or not, and most of the time I'm looking for it.

That does happen sometime, but I have scan width also mapped on my stick as I manual do narrow scans in RWS from time to time.

With a proper HOTAS you should have all your radar functions mapped. The fastest way to go from TWS to RWS it to just hit your BVR button, or even hitting the radar on/off button twice. A bandit ability to enter the notch is dependent upon them being both lower and slower. So its possible to delay/prevent that ability by giving up either altitude or speed. Since your radar will the display the bandits ground speed as well as your own, you can decrease your speed within reason to maintain your altitude advantage and radar lock. The most obvious advantage here is a bandit trying to notch can't tell how fast you're going, and with tws they can't be absolutely sure that you still have them bugged. An STT lock is somewhat of a give away, but there is a delay in the time the lock registers as broken on the RWR.

The basic steam policy has been that any game in their system which has a product key, can be added from externally purchased sources. I have done it with several other retail boxed games that I have, as a means of backup for if/when I lose the cd key booklet.

I believe the tanker speed was set with the F-15s in mind, more so than the A-10s.

I had this with my Saitek Pedals, all I had to do is reverse the axis in-game options. It has to be done per applicable aircraft.

Which servers are you referring to? The 2 most commonly populated servers are either the 51st (yours), and the 104th. The 104th certainly does have AWACS on most if not all of its missions, but is broken as of 1.2.5 anyway. The one regular mission on the 51st lately intermittently includes AWACS on the blue side, yet there is quite consistently EWR on the RED, which for all intents and purposes provides AWACS functionality. When you mention internal data-link, I'm assuming you'd be referring to fighter to fighter datalink, which sounds much like DCS level feature so that probably won't be showing up anytime soon.

Someone I fly with that flies Russian birds happened to mention that you just have to pay attention to which ones are actually moving on the datalink as the 'ghost' ones are stationary.

The R-27ET is more threatening than the AIM120 realistically, and can be spammed just the same. Even worse when they are spammed post 'death', as the inexperienced will just assume they've killed the bandit and not check to see if they are still launching. There is a chance to defeat the 120 in the same situation because there is a warning even if you fail to spot the launch. The F-15 as well as it is designed to be excellent at BVR, still needs to be in capable hands. I'm personally not interested in flying the Russian jets, but I have mostly the mindset being the best F-15 pilot I can be. And only a little bit of "America, F yeah"...

As far as its ever been stated the only involvement with Ubi is the use of the LockON name. The individual modules are being released in absence of said name, and yet already confirmed to be granted to the current FC3 owners. It stands to reason that then these would be individually accessible to those FC3 owners to install instead of FC3 and thus no require LockOn. Nothing to really transfer as those users previously fulfilled Ubi requirement, and wanted to attempt any sort of claim it could be argued that ED didn't receive additional profit anyhow.

Yeah I found this out last night trying to play with the A-10A. Besides it basically handling like the SFM, none of the controller mappings exists that should go along with it either. I.E. incremental airbrakes, analog wheel brake axis/differential braking.

This is exactly the case. More often than not a Su-27 pilot is either lower, slower, or both than the F-15 they are fighting against. Then they'll launch from what I assume is Rmax (20nm from me) and wonder why the F-15 pilot feels largely un-threatened.

Are you referring to in game or IRL? In game at least IFF is limitless, the NCTR works at roughly 25nm so it doesn't really seem all that broken. What is broken about NCTR is the identification of the A-10C, as it remains unknown at all ranges. Also targets don't get ID'ed via NCTR within range when somewhere beyond 30 degrees off your nose.

I can see how offering a separate civilian flight product based on the DCS engine could be beneficial for ED, and people interested in civil flight. I don't see it at all integrating well with the current DCS combat multiplayer servers. Ground-pounders tend to whine enough as it is when they get shot down, like they are getting picked on. The P-51 might as well be a civilian aircraft in an environment populated with fighter jets. If you want to test out the civilian experience hop on to a MP server with jets and P-51s, and fly around at 30,00 feet and freely ignore the fact that you could be entering enemy airspace. I did this for shits and giggles on the 104th server the other day, fun 30mins before taking a 27ER to the face. I obviously respawned in my usually F-15 after that. Can't blame the guy flying the Mig too much though, lacking NCTR and all. The only time I encountered an enemy P-51 online while in an F-15, I him gave the chance to choose to turn around, he opted for BFM. That lasted until I got bored, handed him some 20mm. Then MP is structured all wrong for this type thing, and is already a slight annoyance for mission design now. It would be better if the mission editor would allow you to just check off that a particular plane exists to players at a given airfield and not have to set a fixed number. Then there would be less issues client side of not having slots left the craft they'd like to fly, and server side of mission edits to accommodate complaints of low slot counts. Then limits can be applied via Warehouse (simulate attrition) and a more general player count limit. Waypoints by user select-able role instead of per slot, would be more efficient for mission creation.

If you actually pick the 332 Fighter Squadon "Red Tailed" P-51s in game, the pilot models are black.

I think the AFM should be worth the wait. Its still possible to land but you really need to touchdown at less than 130 knots, but descent rate plays a factor as well. Its best to flare just prior to touchdown, but too much and you could smack your tail on the ground and need repairs. If you go completely level just above the ground and idle the engines the jet will pitch up on its own as it begins to stall. That is basically the perfect point for landing, though you may need to counter stick forward a little. It works every time and have landed between 90-125 knots this way.

I've seen DCS consume 12+ gigs of RAM online. This is unfortunately due to the occasional memory leak, which results in a crash, but its consuming it... Of all the elements of the sim which could use a separate thread, sound is probably the least intensive. It does still help either way for sure, but the AI being separate would probably help greatly. The eventual move to DX11 has the benefit of multi-threaded rendering.

By zoom, I mean the view point zoom. By leaning into the screen I can see the target aircraft if/when they enter the notch 'WVR', and attempt to keep them locked within the bore scan radius. Since notching works against bore sight, the best thing to is maintain visual within 3-5nm.

The auto acquisition range is more like 7-8nm. There is also a way to engage bore sight along with guns that basically removes the delay, but only helpful if you can actually see your target. Unless you use view zooming, most targets (except SU-33) pretty much impossible to track visually beyond 2nm. I have zoom mapped to my track IR so that I can see bandits attempting to enter the notch within 5nm before they drop off of radar.