B25Mitch

I take it Sleem is the one running this server? I'll send him a PM. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't some setting that was preventing me from joining the game.

Hi everyone, I'm getting this message when I try to join this particular server (Going Ugly) I've been on this server several times before - never teamkilled anyone or done anything ban-worthy, although I may have been ping-kicked a couple of times. Perhaps this is a known issue? It's kind of annoying when this is the only server with more than 2 people in it at the moment and I can't get in.

The DCS Ka-50 begs to differ. Note that I'm not complaining... just a little disappointed that the real avionics (and hence the simulated Black Shark's avionics) fall slightly short of letting us use this interesting loadout to its full potential. :( Good tip though, Flanker0ne - single smoke rockets and a fuel tank would be pretty useful.

That's a shame. The KA-50 can actually handle such a loadout... it just forces me to expend all ordinance on the left-outer pylon before I can fire from the right-outer pylon. So I'd either have to fire all my Vikhrs before gaining access to the Kh-25ml, or load the Kh-25ml on the left outer pylon and use that first. I'd been imagining using this sort of loadout in scenarios with SAM batteries where you could take out the launcher first with the Kh-25ml, then finish off the radar and support vehicles with the Vikhrs at closer range. This is still possible I guess, but it leaves you will little means of self-defence until after you've fired off that Kh-25.

Hi everyone, I've been experimenting with some unusual weapons loadouts such as this: The problem is, when I select outer or inner pylons, I can't specify which weapon to use first, because the loadout is asymmetrical. Is there a way to select the pylons individually rather than just inner/outer?

I think DCS has the best sound I've ever heard in a game.

I don't really buy that argument since I can run DCS A-10 in 10x time compression at 60 FPS, with plenty of AI air and ground units as well. That's on an i7 at 3.8 GHz.

I use the Saitek X52 Pro (better construction and precision than the standard version, but still relatively cheap), and it has three hat switches, four slider axes and a button mouse on the throttle. I still have to double up using a modifier to simulate all of the Warthog's HOTAS switches, but it's comfortable to use and has a twist-rudder which can be disabled. I know you're looking for something that has everything contained in one stick unit, but I can't really think of anything that fits that description, sorry. This might be your best choice.

Thanks EtherealN, that did the trick. Just had a nice online session in the new Shark, good stuff :thumbup:

Hi everyone, I decided to upgrade to BS2 last night, and went to the DCS website. I downloaded the BS2 installation files, assuming that I would be asked to pay at some point (I wasn't), and the program is now installed on my computer, but not activated. I went back to the DCS website to try to pay for this, but when I log in, add the upgrade to my cart, and attempt to pay, I'm confronted by a message telling me to log in, which I've already done. Even though the rest of the site recognizes my login, the payment section doesn't. I'm really stuck as to what to do now.

Inside the cockpit, the Cold HDR setting has by far the best colour gradient - nothing's hard to see and I get a good mix of shadows and highlights. But outside the cockpit, probably Off or Normal gives the best contrast for terrain. I think I'll stick with Cold for now, because I do spend most of my time in the cockpit.

I know you're trying to make the same case as me, Demongornot, but I think some of your arguments and expectations are too far-fetched to be taken seriously(e.g. comparing flight sim graphics directly to first-person shooters). We're talking about modelling an entire country here - not just a small valley. I've tried to reproduce EtherealN's photo in DCS and in Rise of Flight, and compared them so we can learn a bit more about how colours contribute to realism. Notice how in the real-life photo (and in Rise of Flight), the forests have some very dark areas in amongst the trees which appear almost black, and some lighter areas which give the trees their green appearance. In the DCS landscape, there is no black at all. The darkest colour to be found anywhere in DCS's forests is still lighter than the lightest colour in the real-life forest. The horizon haze is also very grey, compared with the medium blue of the real-life example. Note how similar the average colour is between the three images - this tells us that the differences boil down to contrast, not the colours by themselves. It doesn't really matter how your screen is calibrated - nothing's going to change the fact that the DCS landscape has almost zero colour contrast. Now both DCS and Rise of Flight have their graphical strengths and weaknesses, but when it comes to colours, I really think that DCS could learn a thing or two from RoF. The first change I would recommend is to darken both the trees themselves and the terrain under them to give the impression of a more lush, dense forest. Another improvement would be to give the atmospheric haze some extra saturation and that distant bluish hue we see in real life.

Believe it or not, the uppermost screenshot is DCS's portrayal of a clear sky, in spring. I was attempting to replicate the lighting conditions under which the photo was taken, but I just can't get the kind of vibrancy I see in photos (unedited ones!). Having played DCS, if I didn't know better I'd think that the Black Sea region was a dry, desolate wasteland. Where is the green?

I don't think the issue is as bad as some are saying. I think the main problem is the tree colour - right now they are simply too faded and light. Here's something Rise of Flight got right (I'm not saying that their terrain graphics are perfect, or that France looks exactly like Georgia), but their trees look good from a distance. They are dark, and even near the horizon, where the level of detail system fades them out, a dark texture in forested areas tricks us into thinking we see trees there. DCS does actually do this too, but the textures are all so faded and similar that it often goes unnoticed. On a side note (without this being moved to the mods section), does anyone know where the tree textures are stored? I've had trouble finding them in the 'vfstextures' directory, but if I knew I could do up an example and see if people prefer it.

Landscape Colour Correction I think that the DCS world could use some colour work. Darker trees, greener grass (in summer and spring), sky that's actually blue, and more of the purplish atmospheric haze that we see in other sims like Rise of Flight. This would in my opinion improve the visual aspect of DCS without any performance drop, and would be a very easy fix to implement, only involving the modification of existing textures. If I had access to the textures, I would do it myself. Anyone else agree?

I agree with Vincent, and I know you're joking, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're "crash and burn guys"! I believe a lot of what contributes to the feeling of speed and height is the sense of danger - the sense of what's going to happen if you do cut that corner too early, or fail to pull up in time. In some respects, the more detailed and brutal the damage model, the more likely we are to try to preserve the condition of our plane!

I'm mainly concerned that the quality of the effect is disproportionate to its importance. In the second-last screenshot above, we see two types of objects: 1.) Shells (~5000 polygons) 2.) Terrain (~2 polygons) On the CPU side of things: If this is indeed a "negligible bit of processing", why do we not see many physics effects of this quality elsewhere in DCS? What if, for example, this sort of mass-physics simulation was employed in weapon impacts and aircraft crashes? If the game engine(and a computer of the recommended requirements) can handle calculating ballistics/collisions for both falling shells AND realistic explosions, then great. But if I had to choose one, it would certainly be the latter - and I suspect the people making the 'cool videos' agree.

I think the issue is that DCS uses too many resources for things which no-one cares about. Let's take a look at a simple scene, one which may be happening in several places at once in a typical battle: Notice all the spent shell cases falling down? Let's take a closer look: Each of those shells has 48 vertices, and even receives dynamic shadows! The number of shells is enormous - and consider that each of these has not only ballistics calculations, but also dynamic shadows and 48 vertices! And finally, we can see that every one of those spent shells is running collision detection with the ground. Even after falling hundreds of metres, the engine is still keeping track of them. After hitting the ground, the shells sit there for a minute or more before being removed. Would anyone care if DCS used a simple sprite-based system(like in IL-2), without dynamic shading, collision detection or numerous polygons? I certainly wouldn't.

I've been a bit of a lurker here but this topic has brought me out :) First of all, great post Frogisis, those are my thoughts exactly! I do 3D animation as a hobby, and I'm pretty experienced with particle effect(sprite-based) explosions - here's one I made last year: The explosions in DCS are of the 'one size fits all' variety - there are I believe three different explosion effects, which are scalable via the 'volume' parameter in the ME, and are all used interchangeably in everything from small rocket impacts to FAB-1500's. Basically what that means is that the each explosion in a volley of 20 S-8 rockets uses as many particles as an enormous bomb blast - it's just not an efficient system. Aries mentions the performance hit caused by GAU-8 rounds impacting in LOMAC - that's because they also used the same particle dense 'scalable' explosions, rather than a custom effect consisting of far fewer image sprites, which could have looked better anyway. What I'm getting at is that it's not sufficient to use the same effects for all explosions - it looks bad AND runs slow. It's not a choice between visual quality and speed - if ED decides to overhaul the particle system, we should also be getting one that runs faster as well. Take a look at the simple-yet-beautiful explosion effects in Falcon BMS: I'll finish up with a screenshot: How much more visually appealing would this shot be if each of the thousand or so fuzzy sparks in the explosion were changed to a cloud of dust or dirt? You could even get by with half that number of particles, and still have a great looking effect. Anyway, hope this is useful in some way or another! Mitch