pixelpilot

Can i add custom specular maps to the A10 in this way? how do you know which channel to use. or is the channel defined in the model and the A10 wasn't designed with unique 'per livery' spec maps in mind?

weird coincidence on the names there eh. after all that i cant even be bothered to do any repaints, who'd really want a gold plated A10 anyway. My time would be far better spent learning how to locate and prosecute targets than pimping my ride although i might change my tune when i finally get the mustang.:laugh:

ooh very cryptic, i'm intrigued:) After a little play it seems most of my speculations seem to hold water except for the green channel defining specular colour (it cant do colour, its a greyscale image) i'm now guessing the grey value referances a fresnal ramp texture which defines the colour of the specular highlight differently depending on the viewing angle (this would make flip paint possible). My guesses are based on what i've learnt in the past about repaints in FSX. My next goal is to define a custom sset of spec mays in a livery .lua so i can do a gold plated A10 but without making all other A10s appear reflective. please forgive me for any confusion caused by wild inaccuracies in my guesswork!

When you open the specc dds in photoshop it does indeed look green and a bit garbled too i thought, then i viewed each of the r,g and b channels seperately Each is shown then as a greyscale image representing the value of whichever colour). Each channel was different enough that i suspected that perhaps they contained diferant information, for example red=specular colour, green = specular level and blue = reflectivity. this is mere speculation on my part as i didn't experiment at the time. If some one can point me in the right direction to use a model viewer for a10 i'll do some tests, either that or someone from ED can say I've over imagined the possibilities for the spec textures.

TIR is all about getting the curves right, i have a very slight curve near central position so small head movements dont disturb the view much, this does mean that the view is more shakey at extreme angles, i use a button to toggle TIR to inactive whille i look at any cockpit panels off to the sides. I also have a centre view button so i can relax and re calibrate my view. also have my zaxis (forward and back) and roll axis set very subtle. I prefer to use a zoom function over moving my head closer. you've spent the money now spend the time on setup, its so worthit.

if the reflection texture was made with a variable opacity which was linked to the time of day and wether you had a the cockpit light on (does p51 have a map light) would be cool. What is it like in real life if you have a bright light on inside and its pitch black outside?

Oh why not go the whole hog with a fully 3d animated pilot who's hands moves with the sticks and feet with the pedals and head and upper body move to follow my track ir movements, hell we could even have his hands come off his virtual hotas to flick the switches i just clicked with my mouse! We can dream i guess, perhaps building a full simpit and turning off the VC completly is the way to go, then i can admire my own shapley legs. course i'd then have to buy myself a flightsuit and helmet to complete the look. Sarcasm aside, i guess the problem is that we do have to use the vc to flick switches and with a virtual pilot sat in our lap blocking the view it might be hard. I like driving games where you see the drivers body manipulating all the controls but thats because i dont have to look at the controls myself, i have button/axis for everything.

I beleive that its a no no to transfer a BS1 control profile to BS2, it certainly caused me a bit of grief. I cant see how there would be a problem using the Cougar profile. After i realised my mistake i deleted my control profiles from the BS2 directory and let the game re-create the default ones, then with my Saitek profile running the same as always, just ran through and reassigned every thing within BS2 that i needed to.

i would imagine this is a 'stuck key' error the first stage trigger switch is held down for the whole duration that you are holding the second stage down are you sure the macro is only sending one 'c' during the time you are holding the the trigger? Actually i just checked out my profile and tried to set it up as you said, contrary to what i thought, it is indeed possible. Which suggests to me that you do know what you're doing. might still be worth checking its not sending repeated keystrokes just to rule it out.

that is a strange one. Your config looks exactly like mine. If you clear the assignment can you then reassign it by moving the throttle or do you have to use the drop down list. Is there movement in the axistune window? Just looking i see that the default keyboard keys for collective are numpad plus and minus. If you are running any SST software you havn't got somthing assigned to those keypresses have you? hell its not just a stuck key on the keyboard is it. What axis (if any) is assigned to the collective in ka50 game mode? dunno if you can have conflicts that way but who knows. I know I know clutching at straws here. I never had any problems with my X52 pro since I got wise to having device conflicts and stuck key issues from incorrect use of the SST software.

Thats me just registered on the FSF site and got teamspeak installed. Slowly getting the systems down with the Warthog and Shark but a bit (or a lot) of training will defo help.

Hi all. as my current hard drive is filling up I decided i might put to use an old 150gb WD raptor drive i had sitting around, just to put my flight games on (raptor should be a quick drive). Anyhoo i was about to start the process and couldn't decide wether to unistall dcs black shark and warthog from where they are now (D: before or after installing them to drive E:. Will there be issues with activation/de-activation?, do i even need to uninstal can i just drag the the entire game directory onto my new drive? (worried then about registry issues). Any advice is, as always, greatly appreciated.

A picture can say a 1000 words.

Cant comment on accuracy of iluminating rockets but just thought i'd mention that they are employed differently than an offensive rocket. I'm gonna give it a test to see if there is a much better illuminated area when fired as recommended. doh! GGTharos replied while i was checking the manual. So what he said. Employing illuminating rockets S-8O (OM) The illuminating rockets S-8O (OM) are intended to improve the efficiency of the aviation and other armed forces in night conditions. The warhead includes a parachute system, candle torch, fuse, retarder and igniter. 17 seconds after rocket’s launch the candle’s igniter activates, the torch is separated from the rocket and the parachute system deploys. The burning torch free-falls 35 seconds on a parachute at average descent rate of 8,3 m/s and illuminates the area. The candle torch separates the rocket flies at range of about 7 km, in 17 seconds from launch. This should be taken in consideration during aiming. To achieve optimal illumination over the target is necessary to launch the rocket in such way that the torch should separate exactly over the target at altitude from 500 to 1000 meters. For that is necessary to launch the rockets from the estimated point, 7km range to target, with 15…20 degrees pitch up toward the target. It is recommended to launch the rockets in short burst, on the Weapons control panel the ripple quantity selector must be in LO position. Thus will be launched 2 rockets per salvo.

Thanks matey i'm ganna give this a try. I'm still learning the sim and untill i'm an awsome pilot who fully understands my aircraft systems i do need a little help. It doesn't sit well with me using labels but I generally cant find anything without them and these minimalist labels of yours seem like a great happy medium. Sure when i can fly in my sleep and am being talked onto target by a human JTAC in multiplayer it will be time to ditch labels but till then thanks for your idea.

i agree with mrbobo. plus some extra info for anyone who wonders about it. my original black shark was not on steam. When i upgraded to BS2 (from ED site) the install went to it's own folder and at no point during the installation was i asked for a serial for the original BS (there is probably a registry entry that let my BS2 upgrade know that I have the original BS. I have now uninstalled the original BS and BS2 still works fine. 2nd point is that my DCS A10 was on steam and i have recently downloaded A10 from the ED website and activated it using the serial number from my Steam one. Now i dont need to run steam to play A10. With these 2 points in mind I am sure a BS2 upgrade would recognise that you own BS1 (even if its on Steam) then you could uninstall your steam version of BS1 and succesfully continue using your BS2 without steam.

Devrim. are you saying that you can save each category of controller seperatly and presumably load seperatly. I didn't know that it worked that way I think i may have inadvertantly loaded a joystic profile into my keyboard column. It could definatly be clearer, oddly i've never had a problem in A10 and i'd guess it works exactly the same.

Given that BS2 is available as a full standalone game, presumably hoping to attract some new players as well as old, I find it shocking that it would not come with a full suite of training missions like DCS A10 did. (I assume BS2 has no training, otherwise why would you be making them yourself) I'm struggling to justify an upgrade to BS2 when in all the time i've owned the original i still dont know the proper starup procedure. Its great that you are dedicating you're time to help us newbs out and i'll certainly give your training a go if I get BS2. I spose the upgrade price aint too bad. In short: good work Bigfoot, and ED if you dont wanna provide training missions give Bigfoot the job (paid of course). :)

Since the release of Blackshark2 to bring it into line with Warthog along with the eventual release of DCSMustang, Flaming cliffs3, the Nevada Maps and future releases, what scope is there for merging the installation? It seems excessive to have the entire game engine installed for each seperate aircraft. Would also be good to be able to swap aircraft without quiting one game to load another. On the other hand i do like the fact that when you load up your chosen sim (always warthog for me at the mo) you are loading a detailed study of a single aircraft. Maybe that feeling would be lost with a merged install. How do others feel about it?

I dont think how much we spend on our chosen hobbies has anything to do with thier value to us. If anything the price of a hobby defines how popular it is and therefor how exploited by the people who make money from it, it is. We, with maybe less mainstream hobbies, are probably getting more quality for our cash as the products and services need to be of a higher standard. The fact that your friend mentions playing hockey and watching would make it a fairer comparison if you asked how much you spend on every thing to do with aviation that you do. Someone who went to airshows or flew model aircraft as well as simming could easily spend $1000s a year.

my steam version of A10 is still at 1.1.0.9 so i think i will try the workaround method, i guess i need to back control configs and uninstall from steam directory, then reinstall the ED download, do i need to do any deactivating or anything?

going back to what shagrat said. given that the CDU and UFC keys are mostly already mappend to lctrl+lwindows and lshift+lctrl respectively, if you have a programmable joystick that can be made to latch a button and return key presses you could have a data entry mode which is toggled on and off with a button on your joystick, this is definatly possible with the SSt software on the x52, you just have to be carefull thet no other control (slider set for bands and returning speedbrake key commands for example) is returning any keystroke because if you go into data enty mode and they are the cdu will fill up with undesired inputs. Sorry for the longwinded reply by the way may have just confused matters:)

Fakum, i know joystick buttons can be at a premium and they are all needed for flight/combat commands but is there not one spare you can map to TIR? I tend to centre my quite a lot so find it handy on my stick (i use same button in every game) that said i just checked and am able to map modifiers, shift cntrl and alt all worked, although that is in TIR 4 software.

Hi mate. I have x52 pro. My zoom is set up on one of the thumb mouse axis on the throttle. You have to use the programming software to set the mouse function with 3 bands (middle band unassigned to give a nice big deadzone) then the bands at either extreme assigned to the / and * keys. I just get way to much spikey inputs from my joystick to use any analog input for zoom

cheers Radtop i'll take a look.