Puddlemonkey

Interesting. I wonder if the problem is more that the AI sees things that should be obscured by the weather? Who knows.... Thanks for the .miz. Whilst it is useful for checking visibility, I soon got distracted by the great fun to be had gunning down all those KA-50s!

Wow, looks like I sparked quite a debate. I have a 22" monitor and after about 3K, an enemy aircraft is so small that it does not even show as a single pixel on my screen - it is gone. My wingman is not only able to see a KA-50 at 8K, he somehow knows it's an enemy. He's calling bandits at 12 o'clock and I'm starring at the sky thinking what f***ing bandits? Meanwhile, he's also calling bandits at 6 o'clock - now that really is incredible! When I say objects are easier to spot in real life, I mean I'm pretty damned sure I could spot a helicopter at 3K against a blue sky. I see this more as a way of redressing the balance against the AI. Obviously, in multiplayer, everyone is in the same position so it is more balanced. Well that is exept matey who bought himself a 3000 pixel screen. Much as I would love to get one, my girlfriend has these crazy ideas about having space on the dining table to eat. Jees, she's so old-fashioned! Labels are also a good way of learning - you can tweak the numbers to make it progressively harder as you get better. There are a few good features that DCS could incorporate I think. It could use your resolution setting to adjust objects so that they are always shown. For example, making sure a plane never drops below a pixel until it is genuinely out of sight. Hell, be generous and make it 3 pixels. Another useful feature would be to link a zoom feature with TrackIR so you could zoom right in with the sensitivity and range of movement reduced. I find when I zoom right in with the trackIR in use, it magnifies my head movements too much for it to be practical. Anyway, I'm off to shoot some dots in the sky. :pilotfly:

Well Done :thumbup: That was the first mission that I completed too I think. It's quite a good one. It took me about 20 attempts and was where I learned most things about the game. I think we all feel like we need serious work on rockets. I think the general opinion is to unload most of the pod in one go and if you get a kill, you've done ok! :joystick:

It worked fine for me, capturing ShuRugal's moment of indignation very well :) Maybe you're using a different version of BS?

You just needed to power down your batteries to reset I think. I did so and it started up fine after so you're ready to go! :smartass: Power Down After Repair.trk

Hi, I had a play around with the labels because I was finding it impossible to spot objects, especially aircraft. I edited labels.lua so that a black dot is placed over distant objects. This grows with the object as they get closer. I made it black for both sides so you still need to id the objects and work out which ones are the enemy. Bblack doesn't generally show up against the interior of the cockpit so it only helps you to see those objects through the windows. I figured this isn't cheating as it is overcoming the limitations of a simulator - objects are easier to spot in real life. Anyway, here is what I came up with and it has made the sim a lot more playable for me: AirFormat = {} AirFormat[1000] = "" AirFormat[2000] = "o" AirFormat[5000] = "*" AirFormat[15000] = "'" GroundFormat = {} GroundFormat[1000] = "" GroundFormat[2000] = "*" GroundFormat[5000] = "o" GroundFormat[8000] = "'" NavyFormat = {} WeaponFormat = {} WeaponFormat[2000] = "o" -- Colors in {red, green, blue} format, volume from 0 up to 255 ColorAliesSide = {0, 0, 0} ColorEnemiesSide = {0, 0, 0}

You're a few steps ahead of me. That's a really useful thing to know for many missions. I like how you can set a particulare time for them to finish holding. This means I can coordinate my attacks, giving myself a set time to clear up the threats from the air before the ground forces move in. It's a shame you can't set an option for them to hold until you confirm you have cleared up.

Hi, Thanks - that is helpful. I was just puzzling over that mission myself. How are you slowing down the friendly attack? When I click 'mission planner' and try to edit the friendly units, everything is greyed out and can't be edited :-(

[quote=Also, if you leave the slider in the middile, cockpit camera is mostly trembling. And this kills the enjoyment of the game. So... I have no any suggestion. Actually I always use the "wheel" on the Collective for zooming. Using the slider is a rapid/quick tool for max zoom in action. :) You can try setting up a deadzone. I have a curve set so that when it is centred, the zoom is quite far out - and a big deadzone. Now it only trembles when it is not in its central position.

I use a TrackIR and I get a problem where if I use the zoom (num / and num *) and then reset using num enter, the view will no longer zoom out fully. This was a pain because often I want to zoom in more than is possible with the TrackIR and my head. I solved this by mapping the zoom axis command to one of the anologue knobs on my throttle. So I no longer need to use /, * and Enter. Not sure whether this relates to your problem or not but it seems to be in the same ballpark.

Noelene, I gone an broke another of dem whirly birds! :cry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t1UXTn6nSY&feature=youtu.be

The target is locked when you release the lock button. You can place the shkval over a space that it is about to fly into and let go of the lock button as it gets into it. I find it easier to time it this way. Also, map your shkval to a hat which allows you to slew diagonally (on x52, not the silver one). PM

You do need to clear out bindings in DCS for SST to work. SST causes the joystick to emulate the keyboard so for it to work you need: -> joy button mapped to a key in SST -> key mapped to the command in DCS -> joy button not mapped to anything else in DCS Bindings are stored in %userprofile%Saved Games\DCS BlackShark 2\Config\Input I think to clear out all assignments, you select a cell in the X52 column and press 'clear category'. I'm not going to test that though! Personally, I don't use the SST. I find it complicates things and doesn't always work very well (based on other sims). I found repeat rates and behaviour could be different to setting up directly in the game. The only purpose SST serves for me is to use the mouse stick, button and wheel as joystick buttons. It's a shame the driver doesn't offer the ability to do this, keeping things much more simple.

I think maybe I watched too many episodes of The A Team and Airwolf!

It occured to me that the joystick profile only fully works with this snapviews.lua. Without it, the views on the throttle hat aren't correct. SnapViews.lua

I would say this is not strictly true. I think that so long as the aircraft is trimmed to the 5 degrees nose up and level, and you are moving slowly then engaging auto hover is a good way of bringing it to a halt. Call me lazy! :huh: When auto hover is engaged, the AP will apply up to 20% in any direction to try to keep you stable. If you are trimmed well, this will keep the aircraft on the spot with your hands-off the joystick. However, you can also think of this as a '20% dead zone' to any input you apply. Even with auto hover engaged, you can still provide your own input. If you are trimmed roughly to hover attitude and drifting forward at 5kph, you can leave auto hover engaged, pull back slightly on the stick until you are no longer moving, pull back a little more so that you are comfortably within the 20% AP limit, hit trim and you will stay hovering. The point is that you don't have to keep dissengaging hover, perfecting and trimming and then re-engaging hover. This may seem obvious but it took me a long time to click! With auto hover engaged, you will always be closer to a hover than with it dissengaged! Another technique that I use is when auto hover is engaged and I am drifting, I compensate with my own input and then hit and hold trim (so AP stops compensating), I then have to add more input, I get it closer to hovering than it was and then release trim. If this didn't quite do the trick, I do it again until I'm stationary. I have found these techniques become very useful when using auto turn to target mode in windy conditions because as you turn, you have to adjust your trim to remain in a hover. It is really frustrating that as soon as you uncage the SHKVAL, you lose the all important velocity and velocity vector indicators in the HUD. If anyone knows of a way of bringing them back whithout caging the SHKVAL, I'd love to be able to!

I don't think they are. You are looking at the applet which is used to test the joystick and this is deducing you are pushing it diagonally. In DCS, go to the options and try to assign a hat to a command such as slew SHKVAL. Start with the black hat on the stick. If you push it up, the 'Add Assignment Panel' shows 'JOY_BTN20'. Push it right and it shows 'JOY_BTN21' Push it diagonally up/right and you will get either 'JOY_BTN20' or 'JOY_BTN21'. You won't get a unique response for up/right. Now push the silver hat up, you get 'JOY_BTN_POV1_U'. Push the silver hat right and you get 'JOY_BTN_POV1_R'. Now for the magical moment.... Push it diagonally up/right and you will get 'JOY_BTN_POV1_UR', a unique response and showing the joystick registers this action separately. I've attached my joystick config and mapping too in case anyone finds it useful. I've aimed to be able to keep both hands on the stick and throttle whenever engaging offensive or defensive. I've also assigned the fire extinguishers and cutoff valves so that when I am hit, I can keep my hand on the stick. I can deal with the fires, shut off engines and dump my weapons to keep airborne. God knows how the real pilots take care of it all. I reckon they have a little monkey in there to help them press buttons. :detective_2: Joystick Mapping.pdf X52 Pro Buttons.lua

The black hat on the throttle and the black hat on the stick are four-position hats. When you push them diagonally, they send both the up/down and left/right signals. Binding to either of these will work. The silver hat is eight-position. When you push this diagonally, it sends a separate diagonal signal. There aren't SHKVAL up-right, up-left, down-right, down-left commands to bind these signals to so the game ignores them. Hence it will not move diagonally. Bind it to one of the 4 way hats and you are in SHKVAL heaven.

It's worth noting that the reason it won't slew diagonally with the large silver hat on an X52 is that it is an eight position hat. If you push it to the top right, it does not send a 'right' and a 'top' signal, it sends a 'top right' signal. The game doesn't recognise or respond to this because there isn't a SHKVAL 'top right' command for you to attach the hat 'top right' to. If you set the SHKVAL to one of the four position hats, it will slew the SHKVAL diagonally.

I don't know why Mozdok NDBs aren't showing on the ABRIS. In the BS though, it's of little consequence as you can only tune the ADF to the NDB by selecting the channel from the chart on the side of the cockpit. You can see them in the mission editor (see screenshot).

I normally use a pod of rockets and get two kills. The first one is my target. The second one is me! :megalol:

Hi, The ADF is tuned by the ground crew in real life and by a file called ADF.lua in the game. As the pilot, you use the small chart on the wall to your right to select the channel 1-8 depending on which NDB you want to tune to. You can't manually tune it from the cockpit. You can either edit the ARK.lua file inside the Black Shark install directory structure or you can create them individually and insert them into the mission (.miz) files. The first method will affect all missions and the second will affect only the mission you inserted it into. The second method is better because really you want the airport you take off from on channel 1 and the one you land at on channel 2. Not all airfields have an inner and outer beacon. You can see the beacons shown on the maps in BS. This link takes you to an excel workbook that I use. It lets you select up to 8 airports and creates the ARK.lua file for you. Effectively, it emulates the ground crew! https://sites.google.com/site/dcsbla...ems/ark-22-adf PM :pilotfly:

I see. Thanks! No wonder I couldn't work out what keys to press! :doh:

Hi, In BS2, when you have requested engine startup clearance, as well as the standard comms menu, you are left with another menu on the screen. It says '1.Main' and '1. Ready To taxi...' across the top of the screen. I can see this must be a kind of shortcut to using the full menu but I can't work out how to use it or find any reference to the keyboard shortcuts to operate it! Can anyone help? Thanks PM

I've seen a lot of posts about BS2 being more difficult, about the improved graphics and about it being more demanding on your PC. I haven't seen any that link the 3 things together though. I flew BS1 for a while, installed on a PC that was just about able to handle it. When I got into battle situations, it became unplayable but for practicing flying and learning the systems, it was fine - and this is what I needed to do. I got to a point where I was quite good at flying it. A typical frame rate would be about 15-20 FPS. A few weeks ago, I purchased BS2 and really struggled to fly it. I found I was fighting with the controls and autopilot the whole time. Trimming was a nightmare too. After a while, I started to suspect it was more than me being out of practice. I now have BS2 installed on a new PC with a decent processor and graphics card. The difference is incredible - not just in frame rate but in the way it controls too. It is very responsive to my input, very smooth to fly and trimming is really easy. It is a real pleasure to fly. In my experience, the frame rate is not only a reflection of the smoothness of the graphical output but also its response to user input. This may also be true for some other people with older PCs. It could be time for a trip to PC World!