Puddlemonkey

Hi, Just experimenting with a mission in DCS World (installed the new release) and it seems like trigger.setUserFlag no longer works? trigger.setUserFlag(1,true) gives an error when running the mission of [string "trigger.setUserFlag(1, true)"]:1: Attempt to call string 'setUserFlag' (a nil value) It's like the function has completely gone! Anyone else having problems? Cheers PM

Save it and click 'fly' - the blue tick in mission editor.

Also, if that doesn't do it, I've had problems where IE corrupts the file and each time I try to download a new copy, it simply replaces the saved file with a cached corrupt copy. :doh: So try deleting the saved file and internet history before retrying your download.

yeah, thanks for that... the only thing more disappointing than this thread is that there isn't a tumbleweed 'smilie' to respond to it with :bored:

Try setting up snap views that show the SHKVAL zoomed to full screen. Attached lua files give an example. They go in the Config / View folder. This post has an example file: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1390844&postcount=17

Yes, I should have mentioned where I read it. In the manual it says: The system allows missiles to be fired singly or in pairs. The missile's supersonic speed (up to 610 m/s) decreases the shooting aircraft's vulnerability during the attack, and it can allow quick sequential attacks against multiple targets. The missile covers its 4 km effective range with a flight time of nine seconds. It does then later state the range as 0.5-8(10). Now I need to go read up about manual firing :-)

Hi everyone, I keep reading that the Vikhr has an effective range of 4km. However, from experience, I have learned to think about firing at 7km and certainly by 6km. They hit almost every time. So why, when they have an effective range of 4km, do I have so much success at almost twice the distance in this sim? Any thoughts? PM

I learned that it is not just a case of spotting but of being able to avoid being spotted until you have seen them. A subtle but important distance. I was constantly flying into deadly situations. A few things I have found help: 1. Map the zoom anologue axis to a slider on your HOTAS. You can easily zoom in and out. On max zoom, you can spot very distant targets. 2. Avoid the temptation to stay low and use terrain masking constantly. You can't spot targets when you are low. When you pop up over terrain, you are suddenly ambushed. Equally, flying high poses the threat of you being easily spotted. 3. Keep moving. Set the heli up in a stable forward flight of 60 - 80 kph. If you are hovering, you are a sitting duck. Autopilot is your friend here. Use the turn on target or other method to adjust your heading without effort. 4. Situational awareness. Know where you have been, where it is safe to turn in an emergency and where you haven't scanned. 5. Learn evasive manouvers. Have the autopilot director handy. Pay attention to your location and direction of flight. When you get lased, note the direction it came from. Director mode on, dive, turn 90 degrees and fly low and fast. Snake around. If you have missiles or bullets coming at you, sideslip but keep up speed. Keep resetting the laser warning until it stays off. Now use terrain masking. Let flares go but not excessively as they give your location away. If the laser warning won't stay off, you are probably being chased by a chopper. Don't worry, you can out-run it if you are above 200kph. If you are cooperating with another player, you have a few more options too: 6. One scans the skies whilst the other scans the ground. The ground scanner is up higher. The skies scanner can stay low and covered. 7. When one is tracking a target or firing, the other scans for threats. 8. Move from safe spot to the next safe spot. When you move out. One goes whilst the other plays overwatch. The front man stores or shoots targets and threats. The overwatcher watches for missiles etc firing. Any firing are locked up and shot. If the front man gets into trouble, he heads back fast and low whilst often the overwatcher can shoot the threat which is absorbed in chasing the front man and hasn't spotted the overwatcher.

... so just wait for the released version and enjoy good old BS2 whilst you do :-)

I'm pretty disappointed to see a post that I made to tell people of something good and thank ED has turned into a further 2 pages of griping and moaning. Be realistic. This is a beta and ED don't have a magic wand. You could even dip your hands in your pockets and pay for the full version; it is very reasonably priced! I assume as you already have a version of BS2, none of you are poor as you must be able to afford decent PCs and joysticks. I bought the full versions of BS1 and BS2 to avoid the hassle of upgrading. For a total of $70, I've had several hundred hours of entertainment. I'd say that's outstanding value and again thanks to ED.

I'm not suggesting it's the way to go but I dropped my input folder from BS2 into the DCS World and all seemed fine...

In case anyone hasn't noticed, you can now download the beta to fly the KA-50 in DCS world. I think this is quite a milestone in flight simming and an outstanding idea and work from ED. Well done chaps, keep up the good work!

Cheers Nate, I did search but didn't turn up anything.

Hi, I'm consistently getting a crash to desktop at the moment when I appeared to have killed an armoured boat. Anyone else seeing this? Miz and crash file attached. Cheers PM DCS-20120514-191758.crash.txt Armed Boat Crash When Shot.miz

Hi All, Does anyone know how to read mission flags with lua? I know that you can use trigger.setUserFlag(flag, value) to set a flag but don't know of an equivalent to read a flag. Any help much appreciated. Thanks PM

Hi, The main problem I had was the fact most commands in BS toggle the switch rather than set its state. I realised though that most switches can easily be set to toggle using info from the clickabledata.lua and devices.lua You then edit the appropriate controls lua file (Saved Games...\config\input\KA-50... Here is an example from mine: {combos = {{key = "JOY_BTN22"}, }, down = 3004, up = 3004, cockpit_device_id = 12, value_down = 0.2, value_up = 0.1, name = "Burst length - long", category = "Ins Weapons Status and Control Panel PUI-800"}, {combos = {{key = "JOY_BTN23"}, }, down = 3004, up = 3004, cockpit_device_id = 12, value_down = 0, value_up = 0.1, name = "Burst length - short", category = "Ins Weapons Status and Control Panel PUI-800"}, You can create this by looking up the control you want in clickabledata.lua and then cross referencing the devices.lua and command_defs.lua files to get the values. This is the appropriate clickabledata line: elements["SR-PTR"] = {class = {class_type.TUMB,class_type.TUMB}, hint = LOCALIZE("Weapon mode switch - Burst Length"), device = devices.WEAP_INTERFACE, action = {device_commands.Button_4,device_commands.Button_4} , stop_action = {}, arg = {400,400}, arg_value = {-direction*0.1,direction*0.1}, arg_lim = {{0.0, 0.2},{0.0, 0.2}}, use_OBB = true, updatable = true} and from devices.lua: devices["WEAP_INTERFACE"] = 12 The final relevant cross referencing is the device)commands.Button_4 being equal to 3004. You don't need to cross ref it every time as it is simply 3000 plus the button number. The relevant info is in command_defs.lua towards the end... start_command = 3000 device_commands = { Button_1 = start_command + 1; Button_2 = start_command + 2; Button_3 = start_command + 3; Button_4 = start_command + 4; .......... Try as I might though, I cannot find a way of setting the AP route mode, I can only toggle it on/off - it isn't in clickable data. This is really annoying me so if anyone knows how to, please enlighten me :-) I haven't tried but I wonder whether you can map a single 'joybtn' to two outputs - the first the cover and the second the switch. The HELIOS software is quite good and can solve the issue of flipping the cover when you move the switch. However, I could not get the states of the switches to sync at the start of the mission so I abandonned it. PM

I would like the ability to create triggered actions in the ME which instruct a unit to broadcast a sound file or synthesised text-speech on a particular radio frequency. This can already be emulated in single player using cockpit args to check a radio is tuned and play the sound file. However, it cannot be realistically done in multiplayer. With this simple feature, you would be able to greatly increase immersion by allowing piltots to tune their ground or other radios to pick up messages from other troups. Messages can be as simple as 'we are hit' and would give a picture of the battlefield and where the other players are. I think the area where DCS is struggling most in terms of realism is the silence of the battlefield.

I scrapped the mode button and set button D on the throttle as a modifier in DCS - kind of a shift button on my joystick. Having done that, every joystick button has two modes which brings it close to that of the SST (which has 3). I found that to be plenty. It is a shame that DCS haven't programmed BS so that joystick modifier buttons are separate to keyboard modifier buttons. You could emulate the SST completely then as you would set each position of the mode knob as a modifier. I tested this and it works but to use it, I would have to edit every single keyboard command to include all permutations of the mode knob.

I watched his vid and it looked like he was trying to start the helicopter up. Seemed to go pretty well from what I could see. Did you press the play button? It's the one that's a triangle shape. Ha ha, you tell 'em :-) I have half decent video editing software and happy to help you edit it if you like.

You might but my girlfriend isn't such a big fan :megalol:

Interesting. We are here playing a simulator which we enjoy because it is so realistic. We praise it for realism of weapons, missions and campaigns which immerses us in the game. We watch and are entertained by films depicting war, even comedies, Black Adder Goes Forth in the UK and MASH in America for example. I watched a series about the second world war recently which brought me to tears several times with its real-life footage. However, Prolixite, I read your post and it made me smile. Fortunately, for the majority of people, the real life horror and the entertainment from media are distinctly different. Being entertained by media does not mean you don't appreciate real life horror. I don't see why people should chastise this guy for having fun with a sim (DCS BS), recreating a hugely popular scene from a film. You don't even know the guy. He could even be a 12 year old kid for all we know (although I think Apocolipse Now is an 18!). Incidentally, in all wars 'died a lot of innocent barefoot people'. Your simulated DCS wars would be no different if real. However you play this sim, you are simulating something which, if real, would be horrific. How do you think it is like to be trapped in a tank burning from the inside from one of those Vickrs? Does the fact the 18 year old inside volunteered during peace time make his torture any more bearable or less tragic? Unless you fly all your missions with no weapons, you are simulating the horrors of real life. It is naive to suppose that 'fighting the regular army' somehow separates your fun in DCS BS from Prolixites. In my opinion, no person who enjoys any war related media which sets out to entertain its audience can criticise Prolixite for enjoying it in his own way.

My recommendation is to ditch SST altogether. It is fiddly, unpredictable and unreliable. If you backup and delete Sai*.pr0 from your windows\system32 folder. Buttons such as the mouse click and wheel become available as joystick buttons. The use of modifiers in DCS makes for more flexible multi-function programming of the buttons - similar to the SAITEK Mode implementation but more flexible. In the controller properties / settings, you can disable clutch mode so that the i button is now available as a normal joystick button. Finally, you can use the Helios software for yet more flexibility. For example, I don't like the fact that all input to the cockpit is toggling. When I assigned the master arm switch to my joystick toggle, I always had to check what positiont he switch is actually in by looking at it. With Helios, you can interface directly with the game and set your toggles to behave like the switch. You can set it so that when you push your jostick toggle up, master arm is set to on, even if it is already; when you push your joystick toggle down, it is set to safe, even if it is already safe. That way, you can set switch positions based on feel, just like the real switches and without looking at them. I have set master arm on my mode switch. When it is red, it's armed, when blue, not armed. http://www.scsimulations.com/content.php?204 I'm planning to crack open the throttle housing of my X52 and insert some more toggle switches. The main problem you will have in this game is not having enough buttons and switches on your stick!

L CTRL + T resets your trim to dead centre. I find this most useful on the ground. In the real KA-50, when you trim, the stick stays in the position where you trimmed so as a pilot, you always have a visual cue. You can see this in the sim too but of course, your actual joystick returns to centre. I find it essential to have the joystick control window open R-CTRL + Return Key. That way, I can centre just the rudder or roll inputs using it as a visual cue without resetting the pitch. If you do L-CTRL + T in flight, you will pitch up heavily - as you have probably already found out :smilewink:

Thanks Effte. It's good to have real-life feedback. My monitor doesn't handle 1920 so I think it's probably time for a trip to PC World:badmood:

I find it easier to 'trim' heading by disengaging and reengaging the heading autopilot channel - I have this mapped to a button on my joystick. That way, you can set a new heading in a hover without messing up the trimming of the pitch/roll.