Mouse

Whoa whoa whoa. You're telling me those 5 white dots below and to the right of the friction wheel are LEDs? Mine aren't lit up. They've never been lit up... ever... and I've never installed TARGET.

When you push the left pedal forward, which direction are you expecting the aircraft to yaw?

Although I've never made and published a mission, I've fiddled a lot with the mission editor. I've examined some of the best missions people have made to see what they did and how they did it, and I've looked over a lot of documentation for it, including LUA. Unfortunately the DCS mission editor itself is simply not that powerful, and I think this is a much bigger problem than the lack of a dynamic campaign. If the editor was good enough and open enough, it would be easy to create dynamic campaigns. I might point out that Rise of Flight has a 3rd party external dynamic campaign generator which works quite well, but not even that seems possible in DCS. (I have some ideas for LUA scripting and an external dynamic campaign generator, but it would be a potentially engine-breaking nightmare at best.)

Serial #: 10465 Location: Las Vegas, NV Purchased: December 2011

I'm almost offended to hear that all I've been doing in DCS: A-10C is monkey-like button pushing. There's a lot of hard-earned knowledge that goes into pushing those buttons, but that often only becomes obvious when something goes wrong. The necessary learning creates an unfortunately barrier of entry, which I think is what makes it feel "hardcore," but also makes operating the aircraft very satisfying in its own way. All pilots have to learn to manage a high workload. Fewer buttons to push means less work and less knowledge is required to perform the same task. It also means fewer opportunities for things to go wrong, to forget things or make mistakes. There is much less nuance to the simulation here too, which is what I miss the most coming from the A-10C. I don't miss it enough to get out of my new F-15C just yet, however, and I think FC3 is a great introductory package for newbies coming into DCS for the first time. I know people who would be much more likely to enjoy the more "instant action" feeling of DCS: FC3 than anything else offered up until now.

For what it's worth, DCS has no problem seeing my Warthog throttle's microstick in game. I do not have TARGET installed or anything. I just plugged and played.

I don't think rockets are working as they should. They seem to be very undermodelled, so I avoid them except for smoke markers.

I read that this expands the map into east Georgia. How does this work? Is it available yet? Are there screenshots? Will this be available for DCS World in general or is it restricted to owners of FC3? I do not see east Georgia missions ever gaining popularity if the map is not generally available.

Just to double-check: so the new cockpit for the F-15C is not clickable? I knew the others were not but was hoping the new cockpit would be.

I have never played Lock-On or Flaming Cliffs. I see a lot of information about what I can expect for the flight model, ground handling, and model and texture detail, but what can I expect with regards to the avionics of the F-15C in FC3? DCS: A-10C is my only good frame of reference. I can honestly live without an AFM and all that stuff for now if it means I get to fly something resembling the F-15C. What are ultimately important to me are the operational procedures of the aircraft in a combat situation.

I don't see it, not in a tiny niche market like this. Instead of getting two different aircraft, we get only one aircraft and both developers make less money. If sales are poor enough because of the split, it might dissuade future development from one or both companies, or even cause them to fail outright. The company that releases their product first might also get a large advantage in sales even if their product is inferior, which could degrade the quality of both products as both teams rush to take the lead.

Step 1: Forget to turn on the RWR. Step 2: Randomly explode. The really embarrassing part is doing this more than once.

A-10C all the way. I love the P-51D but there's not much to do with it right now, and it's still a beta product. As for the Ka-50, well, there's a reason there were only about 10 Ka-50s ever produced. :music_whistling:

I never needed a significant deadzone on my Logitech, but the stick is inexpensive so mileage may vary. I think TurboHog's recommendation is probably better though. It's just that for me the X52 was a miserable experience all around. I think it's in this grey area where you are now spending lots of money but not actually getting a high quality product. Better to spend more for the best, or stay on a low budget and save your money until you can afford the TM HOTAS. Even though I have the TM HOTAS myself, I learned the basics without it and taught a friend to fly using the keyboard too. I don't think it's the miserable experience some people make it out to be. So if you're not enjoying DCS, get a wingman. It's less expensive. ;)

Just to give an additional opinion here, but I loathe the X52 because it has the worst possible ergonomics you could imagine. I also feel like the stick is way too floppy. I took mine back and got a Warthog. That said, my recommendation for anything that isn't a Warthog is to get instead the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro as your entry stick. Turbohog's recommendation is probably better if it uses Hall sensors. My opinion of the stick you linked is that it's too much stick and not enough buttons. You'll have more buttons handy AND more desk space with something like a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro or Thrustmaster T16000. The keyboard isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

The problem, I believe, is the mission editor. ArmA2 is pretty light-weight as a sim and unforgivably awful as a flight sim, but it's mission editor is much much much more powerful than what we have in DCS. Steel Beasts, which I just demo'd in anticipation of Combined Arms, also has a lot of nice options for unit behavior logic that I'd like to see in DCS. The reason people want a "dynamic campaign" is undoubtedly one part persistence, but I think when it comes down to it, persistence is a distant second to being able to craft dynamic missions. That happens in the mission editor, which could be better. I think Combined Arms has the potential to fix this, so I'm not going to kvetch until I've got my hands on it. Oh, and, uh, Russian planes are good too! (Totally not off topic...)

"In Soviet Russia, helicopter flies you!" Sorry, I couldn't resist. But seriously, the way I fly the Black Shark is to let it do the flying. You're just a backseat driver in that thing. I gave up wrestling with the autopilot and now I just let it cruise along however it wants. Does it look crooked? Fine. Whatever. I guess Black Sharks fly crooked; whatever the stupid thing wants. It doesn't have a flight path marker anyway so hell if I know, right? In other words, I stopped fussing with the controls so much. We get along better now, but we still probably need some marriage counseling. I always keep the control input visualization window open (ctrl+enter) when flying the Black Shark so that I know what it considers neutral trim to be at. This is especially important for keeping tabs on rudder input, and for me negates the feeling that I need a FFB stick to fly it.

Set your bearing to 40 degrees and speed to 280 knots.

Don't say that! He was probably going to post a dozen new screen shots on Tuesday, and now he'll only post one per day for the next two weeks!

The effect is good, but the shadows produced are much, much too strong in those pictures. It's black as night under that F-15E!

If you're spending the vast majority of your sim time with DCS A-10C, then a TM Warthog is more useful than head tracking in my opinion. If you fly other games, especially games with more air-to-air combat, then TIR is indispensable. It's almost mandatory. I would not fly online in Rise of Flight or Aces High for one minute without TIR. But for a dedicated DCS A-10C pilot, I would get the TM Warthog first (and rudder pedals, which you absolutely need with it!) and the TIR later when you can. I should mention that I loathe the X52's ergonomics though. LOATHE!

Yes please!

Once Combined Arms is out ("in two weeks") I think you'll start to see people using DCS World more, unless it's just woefully unstable.

A superclocked GTX 560 Ti is a very good video card situated right in that price-to-performance sweet spot before everything gets exponentially expensive for very modest gains. This is changing now that the 600 series is out, but still, asking if DCS will run well on it could be construed as trolling if you tried REALLY (too) hard. It's probably just ignorance though. In fact, it's what I use, and I fly DCS at maximum (unmodded) detail settings. I wouldn't try triple monitors though...

Ah, I didn't realize those were just clever camera angles. Oh well, I tried.