B25Mitch

Some notable improvements: 1.) 3D waves. 2.) Buildings reflected in water. 3.) More realistic and colour-saturated distance haze. 4.) Stronger cloud shadows. Not sure if I'm seeing things, but it also looks like there is a visible horizon in the first shot. I am a little worried that the ship wake effect might not sit well with the 3D waves (clipping issues), and that the ocean looks too reflective in general. But the lighting itself looks great, a huge step up from what we currently have.

There is that one bug where attempting to land in a field makes you suddenly explode, occasionally. That's no longer around in DCS World.

Hi everyone, I am unable to issue waypoints to AI aircraft while playing as Tactical Commander. The command panel does not appear when the A/C is selected, and Shift-clicking doesn't work either. Strangely enough, the panel does appear when I am flying another aircraft and the 'pilot can control vehicles' option is checked. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue in the 1.28 Open Beta?

Hi everyone, I'm sure that there's a really basic answer to this, but googling the phrase gives no results. I'm trying to set up a few AI air units in a mission for the tactical commander to move around, but I get the following message when attempting to issue a waypoint: "Disabled Control for Unit" - I don't recall this happening last time I tried (when the feature was first introduced), so is there a new option to allow CA control of air units? EDIT: This is in the latest update of 1.28 Open Beta.

Yes, I am a big fan of Space Engine. It actually has better terrain resolution than DCS World, and manages to cover the entire universe!

No, you'll need stereo vision, such as Oculus Rift, to get that effect. These screenshots are most impressive because they feature self-shadowing on multiple objects at once, and perhaps dynamic reflections (in the Mi-8 windows). It also looks like there is Ambient Occlusion on the Mi-8, although not on the ground below it.

Yes, that's a separate issue I believe. Most likely a simplification of the reflection shader in order to improve performance, at the cost of accuracy.

This could probably destroy enemy armor formations simply by hovering directly over them.

That haze and horizon colour looks miles better than what we currently have!

This effect isn't even true particles, it's made up of a cluster of sprites locked into pre-animated paths and attached to an invisible object which hangs onto the gun barrel, until it stops firing. Every time you start firing another one of these 'smoke objects' will be spawned. You can tell that the 'particles' have been pre-animated when you slow the time value down to 0.05 or so - the individual frames of the animation will be jarringly noticeable at this speed. So it's no wonder they don't obey physics in the game: they're obeying a predefined path. This is the case for many of ED's older effects, including most of the explosions.

This is not true. Currently you cannot finish of burning vehicles by hitting them with more rounds, no matter what those rounds are. Vehicles will always burn for 10 seconds before cooking off, which is why I am proposing this new system. NeilWillis, Phantom453 and Home Fries, these are all suggestions that do require a lot of additional content creation and coding. The reason I am proposing this system is because it could (or at least should) be able to be done by altering a couple of lines of code.

This isn't strictly Combined Arms, as it's relevant to all DCS ground units, and it's not exactly a wish list item either. It's a suggestion of a very simple way to improve the ground combat experience. I'm proposing a method for vehicle destruction as follows: Note that even while the vehicle is burning, additional hits would continue to lower its hit points. This would be an improvement on the current system because it removes the bland and predictable 10-second cookoff period for all vehicles (they will now explode after a period dependent on the damage they have taken). It would also allow for more interesting action - firing 20 rounds at a vehicle may cause it to catch fire, but 40 rounds might make it explode immediately. I believe this would be a worthwhile and simple system for ED to implement, since it does not involve creating any additional art assets and utilizes the existing "hit points" and "health bar" system.

I think that the real difference is offensive vs. defensive capability. The A-10C has the advantage in an offensive situation due to its advanced targeting pod and RWR, allowing it to simultaneously pick out targets from far away and avoid threats in the area. Fire off 6 mavericks, get 6 guaranteed kills, with possibly more from bombs and GAU-8. However, when it's a defensive situation, like a column of tanks advancing on your base, the Ka-50 wins. You can use the 12 Vikhr missiles to take out that many tanks, and then mop up the medium and light armour with the 30mm cannon, which has excellent accuracy and is effective against anything less than MBT's. And if used against Blue forces (as it should be), the Ka-50's laser warning receiver will give an alert for most types of ground threats if they are targeting you. The Ka-50 can also be cold-started in two minutes, versus five for the A-10C, and obviously doesn't need to taxi to the runway.

From SimHQ today:

False. Nevada will be 129,600 square kilometres.

It doesn't do anything to reduce glare in the Ka-50 pit. Just makes the whole image darker, which is even worse.

They may appear to be particles, but I believe they are locked into a predefined animation as set by a 'parent' object attached to the gun muzzle. Consider the fact that firing 1 shot produces as much smoke as firing 100 rounds, and I'd say it's pretty clear that it's an 'effects object', rather than particles with separate dynamics. This seems to be the case with most of the older 'particle' effects, as you can clearly see by slowing down the simulation speed to 0.05 or so. They move in frame steps, and I suspect that because these particles are having to constantly read predefined animation data, this is causing most of the lag associated with numerous explosions. The new particle effects, mostly introduced since DCS World, don't display this behavior and seem to have much less of an impact on FPS. The sooner we can get all of these old effects modernized, the better.

This is another example of ED using a bizarre and unnecessary approach to effects. Instead of a proper particle effect, it's a strange 'smoke object' that sticks to the barrel and then detaches after firing. Like the water splash effect and the (now removed) 'cylindrical fire', it's an eyesore which could easily be replaced with actual particles. Having coded particle effects myself in the past, I don't believe it would take more than half an hour.

I've also found the Ka-50 to be in pretty good shape compared to some of the other modules. The trimmer issue that you mentioned isn't even a bug, either. That's apparently what happens in the real thing too, annoying as it may be.

Unwrapping should make the textures easier to paint, not harder. I'm not sure about 3dsMax, but Blender has some excellent tools for quick and easy texture unwrapping.

It could be worse...

the elevator platforms to the right of the deck have no collision boundary - you can fly through them. Apart from that though, I believe the deck should be solid and capable of being landed or crashed on.

I expect that, once finished, the Mi-8 will be a superior product to the Huey. One thing worth noting is that the collision model is much more stable in the Mi-8 - you will not sink into the ground when crash landing or rolling over, and there is proper water landing/crashing dynamics. You also won't explode very easily, which is good. On the down side, I believe the model for damage inflicted by weapons is still very much a work in progress. I've taken 4 hits from an Igla and continued flying, and on another occasion witnessed an Mi-8 in an online match continue flying for 10 minutes while completely engulfed in flames.

Without a video, this is just a wild guess, but this would be my theory: It is likely that your speed has not remained constant during the manoeuvre, and you have in fact slowed down to some degree. At lower airspeeds most aircraft will exhibit a tendency to pitch nose down, which may explain why the aircraft doesn't stay pointing where you left it. EDIT: Another possibility is that you are still at a high Angle of Attack (AoA) when you release the stick, and in the absence of elevator input the aircraft snaps back to pointing at its velocity vector. The Su-25 tends to require higher AoA during turns than the other flyable aircraft. This might be the case if the pitch up manoeuvre is performed aggressively - check your AoA indicator in the cockpit.

Seriously though, it's not the controller's fault, ever. I just flew around for an hour using the profile above and had no issues at all. With the Huey it's not about super precision and tiny joystick motions, it's about learning and anticipating how the aircraft is going to react to your inputs. (I like to show this to people who think it's too difficult to fly DCS aircraft without rudder pedals, FFB stick etc.)