bigbear

Hello Miles! I pre-ordered the PointCTRL back on Feb 5, 2021. However, I still haven't received it or any notification that it was sent. I also wasn't assigned any tracking number, so I don't know where I stand in your order list. Do you have a record of my order? David Pratt Chesterbrook, PA Here is my confirmation email I received from you: -----Original Message----- From: PointCTRL <orders@pointctrl.com> To: david.pratt14@verizon.net Sent: Fri, Feb 5, 2021 5:59 pm Subject: Preorder Confirmation Thank you for Preordering PointCTRL. You will receive a PayPal invoice when your order is ready to ship. We are currently starting production for PointCTRL Version 2, and our goal is to have all preorders shipped within 60 days. Thank you again for your support and patience. The PointCTRL Team

I'm assuming that you went through all the various DCS threads here and videos on YouTube regarding graphics optimization. It turns out that I have a separate computer that I use to just run accounting software and my browser that runs dreadfully slow. Took it to my local dealer and he said that my Windows 10 is corrupted and that I need to reinstall it. Since that is something that is too much a pain in the butt because it means reinstalling all the applications, I just let it be (for now). There are YouTube videos on how to do a Windows 10 "repair in-place" without reinstalling apps or user data , but my system is so corrupted that I can't even run their repair utility. But keep in mind that Windows 10 can get corrupted and you may be able to run a repair-in-place.

Other things to consider: Check Task Manager to see if other programs are using significant CPU resources. Make sure any anti-virus programs aren't doing a scan in the background. Make sure any backup programs aren't running a backup in the background. Don't run DCS in windowed mode. Run DCS as administrator.

Also, DCS added a menu option to reduce stutter: Go to Options on your main DCS menu screen. Go to the Controls tab and click the "Disable hot plug" button at the bottom of the screen.

As a first step, make sure your system Settings | Gaming | Game Mode switch is Off. Certain other non-DCS software and upgrades can turn it on without you realizing it.

Lange_666, I see this discussion above regarding adding the following line to a "throttle section" of some Warthog HOTAS file: KeyAxis(&Throttle, THR_FC, 0, AXMAP2(LIST(0,37,42,77,82,100), VR_Zoom_Magnifier, 0, VR_Zoom, 0, PULSE+F1_Cockpit_view)); Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the pathname of the file you are referring to? btw: I am trying to solve the problem where the Zoom slider on my Warthog base isn't working in VR and I need some way to add that capability and I hope that this is what you guys are talking about. If not, if you could steer me in the right direction regarding this problem, I would sure appreciate it!

Just as an aside, be careful that you don't use TrackIR in a room with direct sunlight. The direct sunlight will interfere with the IR and your screen will go nuts causing you to think the TrackIR is defective.

Hi Wartooth. I too was having some major visual stuttering problems, especially with VR, but then found out one of the most important things to prevent it. Do this: Create a file in Notepad and name it autoexec.cfg. Place the following one line in the file: no_device_hotplug = true Place the file in the Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World (or DCS World OpenBeta)\Config folder. Restart DCS and the bulk of the stuttering will be over. Other guys play with adjusting things like shaders and so forth, but I now have excellent resolution and smoothness with Textures set at HIGH and Visibility at EXTREME and some other high settings. On the VR tab on the Settings screen, I set the pixel density at 1.2, though. I expect that the other settings that people recommend may be even better, but this is working great for me now. I can give you some other settings if you want, but I am not really an expert in this regard. I suspect that having lots of memory both on the 2080ti and motherboard makes a difference also, but I'm not really sure. Note that I am just running a 4Ghz machine without overclocking as well! I actually had to disable the overclocking because that was unstable in VR and was crashing my system. Maybe there are ways to overclock without going into "Gaming Mode", but I don't know how to do it. Gaming Mode is a disaster with this game in VR. I am pretty sure, though, having the 2080ti is a key to making this thing run well.

Well FoxxyTrotty, I tried their latest update, DCS World Vers: 2.5.6.45915, and the problem still hasn't been addressed. So I will continue to ignore the A10C module and focus on the WWII planes for now since the canned A10C missions are unplayable until that is fixed. As I mentioned, though, there are TWO problems that need fixing: the bomb accuracy and the bomb blast radius. Unless both are fixed, I can't trust that anything else is working right and I really have better things to do than be a DCS play-tester. For me, this is a real downer because this is the second time I upgraded my machine to play the A10C, only to find that certain software problems keep me from playing.

Nuts. I got the latest update full of fixes yesterday, but still no fix for the GBU38. Bummer.

GuiGon, as I was stating earlier, the GBU-38 is unreliable against soft targets as well. I was lucky enough to place one on the patrol in the second target, but even though it blew a hole in the ground not more than a couple of feet from a couple of soldiers, the soldiers just stood there like they were high on something. I just don't understand how some people can duplicate the problem and others cannot. I have a real problem accepting the idea that it is related to differences in hardware or quirks in system software. But I could be wrong. The fact is, the bomb radius problem was pointed out to E.D. four years ago. A member was able to point out the table in which you could adjust the radius factors (or some sort of factor that pertained to blast effectiveness) for each bomb with your text editor. That was a cop-out because then we had to go and research military bomb specs on-line to attempt to make up realistic numbers. It also meant that you could just go in and cheat with all the numbers to let yourself get through all the missions if you wanted. Regardless, my concern is also that there isn't a different radius based on the type of target, but I don't recall now the table or how it was set up and used. Evidently, E.D. hasn't worked on the issue ever since it began appearing back in World 1.5. I understand the need to keep revenues coming in by releasing more aircraft, but as our parents told us as children, "a job half done isn't done." It is sad because the A-10C was essentially their flagship module for years, and it still isn't right. And these modules aren't exactly cheap. I love what E.D. has done as far as the modeling of the aircraft -- even to the point of purchasing modules that I really didn't expect to play, just to help the company out. I think others have done that as well, even though I expect that most of us aren't part of the wealthy donor class. And sadly we don't get a deduction for our generosity at tax time. We all want E.D. to succeed in a BIG WAY. My concern is that they also have bitten on more than they can chew. I mean, just look at the entire idea of trying to effectively create a ground war campaign. If you really wanted to get any type of realism in that, you would actually need the latest Honeywell supercomputer to act as a server to handle not just the movement and battle results, but the AI as well. It is true that E.D. is seriously lacking in missions and campaigns, however, and I only hope they can find the right balance there. Learning the aircraft is fun (to some degree) and we all appreciate the beauty of it all, but ultimately, I think a whole lot of us find the real play value in the combat. I know that I sure do. I would really have appreciated a whole lot more having a campaign for the Battle of Britain than any ground war game -- using their existing aircraft modules and expanding on other aircraft that took part in that campaign. There are plenty of ground wargaming sims out there. In the meantime, we have serious problems in existing products. And in the case of the GBU-38, it has been outstanding for 4 years. That just isn't right. Not at all. That one thing corrupts the product so badly that I just don't even want to play A10C anymore. And that is a heart-breaker for those of us who invested in fancy hardware for it. That TM HOTAS itself isn't cheap.

No BigNewy. I'm afraid that you are mistaken. They are NOT generally on target. They are generally OFF target about 5/6 of the time or more. If you want, you can have one of your people log into my system and I can prove it. Or maybe I can provide videos of what I am doing if that would help -- which is something I haven't done but am willing to do if it will make the game playable again. You guys put in a lot of great work into this aircraft and to have it all thrown away because of ineffective ordinance calculations isn't good at all and I will gladly assist in helping resolve the issue. And doesn't the fact that the bombs are falling to the left and to the right of the target -- even when the SPI is taken DIRECTLY OVER the target followed by circling around again to perform the bombing suggest that it is NOT an elevation issue? If it was an elevation issue, wouldn't it mean that the bomb would fall BEHIND the target rather than to the left or right? And please also address the fact that the bomb radius calculations are totally screwed up as well for this bomb -- and perhaps others as well. I really hope this problem isn't lost in the process of resolving the accuracy problem. Again, I hope that you guys address the effectiveness of weapons soon. At the moment, I consider the provided A-10C missions unplayable and have moved on to the Spitfire which I hope won't have any of these issues due to the type of ordinance used at that time. The inability to use weapons on the A-10C just ruins the whole experience. Thanks -- and again, I am willing to help if I can.

BIGNEWY, please note that there are TWO issues here: One in which the bomb falls far, far wide of the target (meaning HUNDREDS of feet away to the LEFT or to the RIGHT) -- and that this is when you fly DIRECTLY OVER the target first to place the SPI -- meaning that it is highly unlikely to be an elevation issue, and secondly that the bomb explosion calculations are not making any sense. I mean a foot soldier can't have a 500 lb bomb explode DIRECTLY NEXT to him (and I mean the blast hole is no more than TWO STEPS from him) and not notice it! I have this feeling that there is a third issue where calculations don't account for the effect of a blast upon a soft target vs. a hard target. I remember prior to World vers. 1.5 that I could have placed a single GBU 38 either between the trucks in the first waypoint and destroy them both, or in the middle of the patrol at the next waypoint and destroy the whole patrol. Version 1.5 messed that up and due to the careful restriction of the limited initial loadout of weapons, you couldn't then finish the mission. It was shown by someone in the forums that the blast calculation table had been changed and he showed how to modify the table entry for that. But at least the GBU38 was landing accurately. I did some research on the blast radius of that bomb on the Internet and found that E.D.'s table entry was indeed no way near being realistic. I don't remember whether the table took into account the type of target. Now though, both blast and accuracy are messed up and I have no idea if blast radius is properly modeled for other bombs in the game(s). I know that the developers have a lot to keep them busy, but I genuinely hope that weapon effectiveness is high on the list for the simple reason that if your weapons don't work right, there really is no purpose to fly the missions. For me, it is enough of a downer that I don't even want to bother with the A-10C until E.D. works this out and goes through the missions CAREFULLY to ensure that they can be completed satisfactorily based on the loadouts given.

Thanks, BigNewY. Yes, as I mentioned, it is a problem in 2.5 as well. I hope ED can fix it soon. I really want to be able to play the missions.

Thanks for responding, ac5. Like I say, I am aware of the issue of the angle when trying to make the SPI, so I have even set the SPI by first flying over the target and placing the SPI when I am directly over it, and then circling around to approach the target again to release the bombs. No success. Note that if the problem was related to the wrong angle when taking the SPI, my understanding is that the bomb should have hit at some point beyond the target, not hundreds of yards to the left or the right of it. I need to qualify my results today, however. When I just started the program up again today, I was forced to update the 2.6.5 to the latest subversion. With that, instead of getting hits about 1/25 times, I am able to hit the target about 1/6 of the time. Maybe ED made a slight fix, but it wasn't good enough I'm afraid. I am getting pretty fed up with the A10-C. Maybe I should give this up and go to the Spitfire until they can straighten out their weapons for the A10-C.

Hi guys! I have been away from DCS for the past 4 years and am now excited to get back into it. I started off by revving up the A-10C and fly the East-East Georgia - Spring mission to re-acquaint myself with everything. No problems with CCIP for the bombs in that mission, but I noticed that the GBU 38 just doesn't hit its mark on almost all attempts. I went through a bunch of tutorials, both written and on-line (specifically by Grim Reapers as one example) and I seem to be doing everything they say -- but the GBU 38 falls wide most of the time. This is weird because it is probably the easiest to setup and use. I notice this problem on both World 2.5 and World 2.5.6. Are others experiencing this? This is really too bad because you only get just enough ordinance to finish the mission (even with orders to your buddy-plane) so it makes the entire mission rather unplayable if you desire to actually finish all your objectives. I have tested it by running many, many missions in which I do nothing else except use a GBU 38 to bomb the two trucks at the first steerpoint. (I would normally use just the guns for that if running the mission "for real".) In the past, if I recall correctly, I would have been able to mark a target on the ground between the two trucks and both would have been blown up. Now, it doesn't matter whether a single truck or a spot on the ground is marked as a target, the GBU 38 will fall way off the mark. In fact, it appears that the explosion calculations aren't quite right either, since I even tried a GBU 38 on the patrol at waypoint 3, and it actually fell in the middle of them all, but the explosion left a big hole in the ground right next to a couple of soldiers who seemed to be bored with the whole thing and didn't even bother running for cover. The mission has you flying right from the start with all the necessary systems active. So I just do this to set up the bomb at the first steerpoint: Select the GBU 38 in DSMS Select A-G in TGP and make it SOI Use ChinaHat back long to move the TGP to the steerpoint Use DMS to zoom in to the target Use TMS forward short to stabilize the ground Slew to the target and use TMS forward long to create the SPI Line up the target cue to the ASI in the HUD and keep the aircraft level Wait until the Manual Release light comes on and press the bomb release button I am aware of that stuff about how a bomb can overshoot a target if you don't take into account the angle of your plane to the target when locking in the SPI. But that just isn't happening here. Bombs are falling what appears to be hundreds of feet away to the right or left. I never had problem with the GBU 38 but I just wanted to see if any of you gurus can spot any folly in my ways and help me See the Light.

System crashes in VR potential solution I was able to solve my system crashing problem when starting up (or ending) my VR sessions. It turns out that my CPU overclocking software was setting on the "Gaming Mode" in BIOS when it was doing its overclocking. That needed to be off (and unfortunately, no more overclocking -- at least with that particular software.) I also noticed a Game Mode setting in the Windows System settings, which should also be turned off, if shutting it off in the BIOS doesn't do it. I found on YouTube that someone pointed out that Game Mode has always been a problem with various games and should be removed by Microsoft.

Got the VR working! Well guys, it looks like the main problem was that I hadn't downloaded WMR for Steam. Once I did that, I was able to fly the plane using the long startup approach that you guys were discussing. At the moment, when I just click on DCS, I get page faults that crash my computer, but it did seem to attempt to start the VR automatically. That crashing doesn't really bother me right now because I know I need an updated video card for this game anyway, so I will be getting a 2080ti on Friday. My computer vendor also suggested faster RAM (and doubling it to 32Gb) and then updating the bios. Will do that over the next few days. I suspect all that should take care of the crashes. I can see already that VR is truly the way to go with flight sims. The closest thing to it is either a full-blown simpit or the Helios software a user put together that displayed gauges and enabled input from a touchscreen. But after I couldn't get Helios working 4 years ago on a new machine I assembled expressly for that purpose, I gave up on DCS totally -- until now. I was able to retire a couple years early just last month, so having all this game time available in the years ahead is a dream come true! It is interesting how many new plane modules came out over the past few years. I really wish DCS would now put together some quality AI for more campaigns -- and ones in which the AI is truly acting intelligently. DCS has all this wonderful scenery and vehicles, but no real wargame engine (although admittedly a truly excellent game editor). A wargame AI in itself is a huge, expensive challenge and has never seemed to be in their mindset or budget. I was surprised to find them doing all that WWII work and not even have a Battle of Britain campaign. I see that a user put together something in that regard, but if I understand it right, the planes in the game aren't the same models as in 1940 so there would be a lot of work to do to make that campaign work accurately. It would be nice if they would team up with some of the other software vendors to share ideas and come up with fully integrated product that uses all the gaming intelligence out there to make for some truly interesting campaigns. I have the old, Battle of Britain boardgame they could use as a starting point... hmmm... Thanks guys for your help!

I am still unable to get VR to work. I installed Steam and SteamVR as you advised. I then do the following in the order below: Test #1: Run Steam. Launch SteamVR from the Steam window. SteamVR tells me to plug in my headset. (It was actually already plugged in.) At this point, nothing appears in my headset. I run DCS World from the Desktop and the game appears on my monitor, but nothing in my headset. I choose the Option menu to ensure that VR is selected. I click on the A10 icon and select Instant Action. I select Free Flight from the menu that opens and click FLY from the next screen that opens. The game appears in a window on my Desktop. Nothing at all appears in the headset. The screen is totally black. Test #2: I then tried a new test by running the Mixed Reality Portal as the first step. The hilltop house appears along with a pop-up in the headset that says that input is being directed to the desktop and not the headset. It says that to switch to the headset, I must press Win-Y. Again, I run Steam from the Desktop and launch SteamVr from it. I then go through the menus to run the A10C as described earlier in Test #1. The game starts, but stays on the Desktop. The Mixed Reality Portal hilltop house continues to appear in the headset, but the game remains on the Desktop window. I press Win-Y, but nothing happens. I feel like I am missing a step somewhere. What is peculiar is that my computer crashed a number of times after starting A10C, but as of now, it is running, but nothing appears in the headset.

Hi guys! I have been away from DCS for the past 4 years and now that VR seems workable, I decided to take the splurge and get the Reverb. Before I upgrade all the other hardware, I was trying to see what it takes to get DCS to work at all in VR. I seem to be stuck at ground zero so I would appreciate some help since I can't find a description to start VR elsewhere in the forums here. Essentially, it isn't clear to me what steps I am supposed to take to run the game in VR. I assume that I need to start the Mixed Reality Portal first, which I did, but to then start the game, I have to exit from VR mode to access the Desktop to start DCS World. So, I put the headset down and started DCS World and went into Options where I chose the VR tab and checked the Enable Virtual Reality Headset option along with the Use Mouse option. From there, I clicked OK and clicked the A-10C icon to start the game. Well, all that did was start the game on my desktop. I put the headset back on and The Mixed Reality Portal was saying that I need to use Win-Y to switch back into the VR mode. But that does nothing and the game continues to appear within a window on the Desktop monitor. I know I am missing something really basic here. I see a lot of discussions pertain to using Steam software, but I am not interested in multiplayer at this time so I don't have any Steam software loaded. Can someone help me?

Thanks guys! I had totally forgotten where I had done all the configuration work to get Helios up and running four years ago. Renaming the Saved Games folder did the trick!

I loaded A10C and DCS World years ago, but in 2016 I became discouraged over the lack of support for Helios after I couldn't get it to work on a new machine I set up for the purpose of running it, and haven't done anything with DCS since that time until now. Now, though, I want to try DCS products again even without Helios (although if there is something equivalent, please let me know since that is/was a really cool add-on) and I just downloaded the latest DCS World to give myself a fresh start. I then tried running A10 in the instant action mode, but when I do, the UFC display suddenly will pop up and take over practically the whole screen. It does this every 10 or 15 seconds making the game totally unplayable. Something is screwed up here and I was thinking that perhaps there is a newer version of A-10 that I need to download that is more compatible with the new DCS World version. But I cannot see where that is handled in the DCS World module manager. I tried deactivating the A10 module and reactivating it hoping it would reinstall an updated version, but that didn't work. I have no idea what the latest version of A10C is or where to get it without purchasing it again. I can't even see what version of A10C I am running. In the old days, it seems to me that there was an easy mechanism to download to the latest A10C version, but now I am baffled. Please advise. Thanks.

Thank you so much for your assistance, Snacko! It is late now so I will have to work on this tomorrow or over the next few days, but I sure do appreciate your quick response. I figure there is something very simple I am missing in my knowledge here and I hope what you have is the key. I will let you know.

[ATTACH]141162[/ATTACH] Hi KIVI, Although I am having my own problem of the game not recognizing my touch or mouse input from my touchscreen, I can say that I did solve the problem of getting (3) regular monitors and 1 touchscreen to work off of one GTX 980ti card without any other special software or hardware. The game correctly sends viewport data to my touchscreen and all the other three monitors correctly show the outside view. What I noticed is that there is a bug in the Helios Profile Editor when you click the Reset Monitor button. Maybe something broke with the newer version of Windows. It can make a real mess of things when you use it, so what I did was this: Start with a clean monitor setup by arranging the monitors as is shown in the Windows Display Settings.PNG file contained in the zip attachment here. Adjust the monitor cables and the ports off the card to get that configuration. Make #4 your main display and your touchscreen will be #1. Make sure they are numbered 4-to-1, left-to-right, as I have shown here. This is critical when using my modified version of the Loz hpf file I have also included in the zip attachment. Because the Monitor Reset program within the Helios Profile Editor is broken, I just went and modified the Loz - Single Monitor_6a.hpf manually with Notepad ++. Loz had it configured to handle two monitors so I modified it to handle four. You can take it just as it is here and don't need to modify anything. I never got around to renaming it from "...Single Monitor..." to "...Triple Monitor..." but that doesn't affect anything. Now load the Loz hpf file included here in the zip within the Helios Profile Editor. Verify that the monitors on the Preview screen match what is on your Windows Display Settings screen and that the background instrument panel image is associated with monitor #1. See the attached, Helios monitor configuration.PNG screenshot. Go to the Profile Explorer, choose the DCS A10C option under Interfaces, enter the correct Install Path to your DCS World folder, and then click the Setup key. (Actually, I am no longer sure what clicking the Setup key does anymore. If I recall, it used to create an Export.lau file, but if you download Zeen's latest version of the Export.lua file, maybe that is all that is needed in that regard. Somewhere -- and I don't know where -- the system is writing out the location of the DCS World folder to link it to the game. This may be related to the problem I have in getting my touchscreen to link to the game, but I just don't know. Hopefully, you got that part working.) Getting that hpf file configured right drove me crazy for many hours. The key to it is the <Monitors> section. The order of each <Monitor> node defined within the <Monitors> section is critical. Each monitor defined from the top of the file to the bottom corresponds to the numbers of the monitors in the Windows Display Settings. So, the first monitor listed in the file is monitor #1 (the touchscreen) and continues down until #4 (the leftmost screen) is defined. Note also that there is a <Background> element for each monitor. For the touchscreen, there is an <Image> sub-element defined, FPBackground_1.png, which is your main instrument panel image. The other monitors have no backgrounds defined. Since I am providing you the hpf file for four monitors and don't have to make any of these changes yourself, you can ignore what I am saying here, but if you get into trouble, understanding this may help you fix things easily. If you mess up the ordering of the monitors within this file or reorder the monitors defined in Windows Display Settings, you will get an, "Error loading profile," message when starting the Helios Control Center and may tell you to run the Reset Monitors function in the Helios Profile Editor. If you do, it will likely make a bigger mess out of your hpf file, so be careful if you start moving monitors around and make a backup of what I have included here. Finally, I am including here my modified monitor setup/config file, which I named, 3Benq24in_22inTouch_5760x1080. It still needs a bit of tweaking (in particular, the CDU needs to be moved to the right a few hundred pixels and the RWR text needs to be adjusted a bit), but you will see everything else just fine. Of course, you still need to set up the in-game settings properly. Use this: Resolution: 7680 x 1080 Aspect Ratio: 7.1111111111111 Montors: 3Benq24in_22inTouch_5760x1080 (or whatever you name yours) From here, however, I can't help you with anything more. This is where I am stuck. There is some sort of configuration setting that I am missing somewhere even after making the instrument .init file changes and loading Zeen's Export.lua. When I touch a button on the instrument panel, the game doesn't recognize my input. I expect it is something to do with those files, but I am now going to look more at what some other kind folks here are suggesting to help with that. If and when I finally get everything working again, I will post a complete Helios setup instruction manual, similar to what PeterP did some years ago (assuming that nobody has done it since). There really is no reason to go through hell trying to get this thing to work. And yet, I see that is what happens to many of us. Gosh, it would be so nice if ED took the initiative and made this process simple. In the meantime, you can take what I provide here and can get all the monitors to display viewports from a single card. HeliosSetup.zip

Hi guys, Last week I posted a message asking for help configuring everything so that I could get Helios working again. I looked through previous postings and downloaded the export_display folder that RightStuff provided on this thread where he has examples of his init files. I copied those init.lua files to the proper locations using his batch file (which I modified to work for my configuration). The result was that NONE of my instruments were displayed on my Helios touchscreen, so I replaced my init files to what I had before. This is all so frustrating! I also saw his posting suggesting that all you now have to do is add these line to the init files: dofile(LockOn_Options.common_script_path.."ViewportHandling.lua") try_find_assigned_viewport("your viewport name") So, for the CMSP_init.lua, I have this: dofile(LockOn_Options.common_script_path.."ViewportHandling.lua") try_find_assigned_viewport("ED_A10C_CMSP") ...where ED_A10C_CMSP is the name of my viewport for the CMSP that matches what I have in my monitor setup file. Well, that didn't work either. So, now I am stuck. My viewports are exporting properly from the game to my touchscreen, but nothing I enter into the touchscreen by touch or mouse is being recognized by the game itself. As someone else mentioned, what we badly need is a detailed step-by-step guide to getting Helios to work similar to what PeterP provided some years back. I would like to put this together myself and post it here, building upon what others have done, but I am just stuck at this final point in my setup. If anyone knows of a resource that provides such a guide to getting this configured, please let me know. I know I am missing one little piece of info to make all working again, but after endless hours, I just can't figure it out.