Mouse

I found this while browsing the Russian sections. I was trolling--no, not in that sense--for screen shots that hadn't been posted here, and I came away pleasantly surprised. There are some glimpses of direct controlling vehicles here, including the INTERIOR of a Hummer.

I spent some time demoing Steel Beasts Pro PE recently. It was really neat, but I'm confident Combined Arms will have one enormous advantage: the AI won't dive straight into a river when I'm not looking. :<

Ah, sorry, I was mistaken then. This is very good to know, though I wonder why they're even doing FC3 if that's the case?

Try this thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=85373

Tell that to http://www.ubi.com/

What single-seat Russian planes should they do? The MiG-29, Su-27, Su-33 are all part of the LOMAC package. From what I can tell, there are probably legal issues with Ubisoft that prevent them from doing those aircraft outside of FC3. The MiG-21bis is of course already being done, and done well from what I can see. We already have an Su-25T in DCS too, and for free. (Ubisoft might have a noose around the neck of that aircraft's non-FC3 commercial development too.) So we've got two Russian aircraft and a third on the way if you ignore FC3, compared to only one US aircraft. (I'm leaving out the P-51D here, of course, but also the L-39.) Sure there are a lot of non-Russian aircraft planned by 3rd parties, but that's all easier said than done. I expect we'll see the MiG-21bis long before anything serious from anyone else, and that will give fans of Russian hardware a fighter, close air support aircraft, and attack helicopter. That's a pretty good mix of stuff. I'd think aircraft newer than those in LOMAC would be hard to get information on. In my mind that leaves the MiG-27 (or -23) and MiG-31 (or -25) as the best choices, and the Su-17 or Su-15 as runners up. On the other hand, I'd like to see more European hardware first, which I think has been neglected for a long, long time by combat flight sims. I'd rather see a Tornado, Mirage 2000 or even a Mirage F1.

There's a lot of planes coming out and I know I can't afford them all, but this one I will afford. That's the best I can do, for what it's worth. I'd love to see more aircraft from the Korea/Vietnam eras. I hope some talented folks take you up on your offer, Hawthorne.

When on the System / LASTE / WIND Sub-Page, why does the CDU refuse to take some inputs for altitude? 27 rounds down to 26. 06 rounds down to 03. 00 and 07 work alright. Other values give an error outright if they don't round to some other number. (It seems to round down always.) The manual suggests that all values from 00 to 99 ought to be acceptable. I've searched for an answer to this and looked it up in the manual (page 206), but I haven't found anything of help anywhere. The question was asked in some of the other threads I searched here, but it was never properly responded to. (To preempt the not-actually-an-answer answer I saw given in other threads: I know the input is supposed to be thousands of feet.)

I think many of the fears expressed lately about DCS are reading too much into too little. Again, based on what little we know, not all products designed for DCS will be allowed to carry the DCS label. It depends on the level of quality. IRIS, for example, expressed interest in being allowed to use the DCS name for one of their aircraft. I forgot which, but it wasn't the F-22. That implies the F-22 will not be allowed to use the DCS name, even if it is a module for DCS World. Is the SU-25T really an exception? Perhaps not. I got the feeling that it was one of the more high-fidelity aircraft out of FC2. I would not be surprised if this plane gets a big overhaul as part of a commercial upgrade, similar in some ways to the Ka-50 going from BS1 to BS2. Ultimately I just don't see how more content can be bad for DCS World. I don't see "survey" quality content replacing EDs work, as they've made it pretty clear that they're interested in doing only the most detailed simulations. I think the best way to understand DCS now is as a combat-oriented counterpart to FSX and X-Plane 10. Third party products may vary in quality, but ultimately ED is most likely going to keep doing what they're doing by developing both the simulation environment and high fidelity aircraft. I welcome the third-party developers. I'm afraid all this nay-saying is going to drive them away, because they will be afraid no one will purchase their content. Is it better to have an IRIS F-22, however realistic they can make it, or absolutely no F-22 at all? I fail to see how not having the option can be a good thing, and fears that F-22s will dominate the skies in multiplayer are just absurd. If they do, it's entirely the community's fault for creating and hosting missions like that. I hope third-party development can fill the gaps that ED, with their limited resources, cannot. If ED never plans to make a Kiowa Warrior, but a third-party developer wants to, they shouldn't be discouraged just because they might not match the quality of A-10C. If it can take a realistic place in the sim and enhance the experience of other pilots flying alongside it, whether or not they're interested in it themselves, then why not?

I'm not sure this is something that can be designed for, ever. If ED could program something that magically enabled instant and easy cooperation between random players who really have no interest in talking to each other, every military in the world would be clobbering them with contract requests. Instead I think there's a very good reason people spend years training to do this kind of stuff in the real world, and there's no easy way around it even in a computer game. If you want to avoid the free-for-all in online play, all you need to do is join a virtual squadron or found your own with some like-minded players.

Understand that this is the way things have done in Windows, Unix, OS X, and Linux for a long while. From a software design standpoint, the correct way to store user-created files in a multi-user environment is in the given user's home folders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_directory You're welcome to kvetch about it, but understand that ED should not abandon good software design principals just because a few users have an atypical configuration. And yes, whether you like it or not, using a solid-state drive as you are is currently an atypical configuration. I elected not to use them when I built my system about 6 months ago for that exact reason. The solution is not for ED to change their system. You should consider alternative software for taking screenshots, which may allow you to save the files in an atypical location outside of your user folder. Alternatively you may search for a way to change the location of user folders so that they are not on the SSD. I cannot say if this is possible but I would guess that it is. (If you can network boot 16 computers from a single master drive kept in the closet, well, why not?) Assuming that it is possible, this would be the "correct" way to configure your system. In summary: it is ED's responsibility to make sure their software is well-behaved, meaning that it stays within the user folder. It is your responsibility to make sure the user folders are located on the physical drive where you want well-behaved software to save files.

Another snippet I missed that suggests you'll get what you want as a mission creator:

The language here suggests the following: 1. Ground Commander role and JTAC role are different, so it should be safe to have player-controlled JTAC at the very least. 2. The Ground Commander role you're concerned about can be limited to a number of players, but not to specific players. There can probably be many ground commanders. 3. "The ability to set ground command roles" could mean, albeit with less certainty, that the Ground Commander roles can be set to have command over specific forces, rather than all ground commanders sharing absolute control over all forces. Worst case scenario: write your mission with no ground commanders allowed, just some JTAC player slots. Seems very unlikely: the ability to lock roles to particular players by ID or password. You can't lock aircraft slots that way, after all. You probably won't want to have public server missions with ground commander slots where those slots have control over a large number of troops or control over mission-critical troops. Instead I would plan, at least for now, to give ground commanders control over platoon-sized forces or smaller. It seems a good idea to make sure those troops are supplementary to the action, rather than integral to it, if you're planning for an open game where players can come and go.

To double check, I just set up a mission with 24 ATGM Strykers set at about 9000 feet (75% of the weapons stated maximum range of about 12,000 feet) from 24 T-55s. I made the the Stykers immortal so they wouldn't all die to HE. Stykers have 14 missiles each, which meant a total of 336 missiles were fired. None of them hit. Can safely say there is a problem here. Here are the .mis and .trk files from this test: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4545571/buggedTOW.miz http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4545571/buggedTOW.trk

In anticipation of CA, I was doing a lot of fiddling today with the map editor and ground units. I wanted to see how they currently behaved in DCS World. Generally I think I had pleasant, educational results, but like any good tests they raised some questions. I noticed that TOWs on both sides had fairly abysmal performance. Some tests with Abrams vs T-80s got me thinking. That thinking and testing lead, ultimately, to a fairly comical scenario. 10 ATGM Strykers vs 1 T-55 at a distance of about 0.5nm on open ground. The results were kind of shocking. 10 burning Strykers and not a single hit the T-55. Prior that test I watched 4 Strykers at range on higher ground get mauled and obliterated by 4 BMP-3 traveling on a road that took 0 losses themselves. Up to that point I had never seen an ATGM Styker strike an enemy unit, and I had used a handful of them in other quick scenes I'd created. That is what finally prompted me to just surround a T-55 with them. Aside from the rather pathetic showing by Strykers, I noticed missiles fired by ground vehicles in DCS were only slightly more effective than tracer rounds. Rather than point the finger at DCS, I'm curious to learn about the effective performance of these kinds of weapons. I was under the impression that they worked quite a lot better than they seem to here. What range should they be used at? Just how reliable are they in the real world? Do we really know? It just seems jarring to me that Mavericks and Hellfires rarely miss in DCS but the BGM-71 TOW (and other weapons) just miss, miss, miss all day long. I recognize that DCS ground units now are not DCS ground units with CA installed, but I can't help but wonder.

Just let me buy it already!

"Fairness" is up to server hosts and mission creators.

I'd say ED definitely deserves some thank you's for keeping their prices below market average.

Table humping!

I thought it would be neat if a 3rd party developer decided to do the Super Tucano. I'd even considered making some P-51D missions and pretending it was a Super Tucano. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano

Even if I'm not that interested in a product--MiG-21bis, for example--I still plan to buy it. I spent over $700 on flight controllers (TIR5, Warthog, Saitek pedals) and double that again on a PC to play these games. So when ED asks for a paltry $30, how can I say no? They deserve my money more than any other business I rely on for flight sims, yet they're asking for the least of it. It feels stingy to me to say no to a software module that costs so little to buy and so much to develop when even the cheapest peripheral on my PC (my mouse) cost $50. This adds so much value to every other module that it seems just impossible to pass up. Even if I don't use it much (I will!) I want to support the work ED does to make DCS a better game, because CA is an upgrade that at the very least benefits everyone who flies online, whether they pay for it or not.

I feel like a 9-year-old who just got a Super Nintendo for Christmas again.

Scenarios only, it seems. I haven't found any campaign missions with the error in DCS World. In the mission editor or planner, clicking on Loadout for an A-10C flight usually greets me with the pop-up window "Mission payload has not been saved. Save mission payload?" If I save this payload and look at it, it always has Mk1 practice rockets loaded on station 2. Even AI A-10C flights will have Mk1 practice rockets. The other weapons are fine, and they vary from mission to mission, but it's always the rockets. And yes, if you fly the mission, you will have practice rockets. That's how I discovered the problem. Going down the list of A-10C single scenarios, it seems like they are all afflicted with this problem, except for CSAR. (I might have fixed that one and forgotten about it though.) Kashuri Gap is a good example. It has several A-10C flights all incorrectly loaded with Mk1 practice rockets. It is not the only example though. Hideout, Defend Camp Yankee, Sunset Sierra and others all have Mk1 practice rockets loaded onto the A-10C flights.

I noticed in DCS A-10C that many combat missions actually have the player's flight loaded with practice rockets rather than M151 rockets. I thought that perhaps this was a glitch I had induced in my own installation with some otherwise innocent LUA adjustments. However I have this same issue too in DCS World. I haven't found anything about this error here, so I thought I'd ask. It's easy to fix, but assuming the problem is not on my end, I'm surprised it's not been fixed in the official release.

It seems I'm not crazy after all. I just watched the track a couple more times. The plane rolls left because you move the stick left. During the roll you end up pointed towards the ground. Rather than pull up, you roll hard to the right, back a bit to the left, and then you crash into the ground. The stick movements appear to be smooth and completely intentional, if heavy-handed sometimes, and your aircraft never banks to either side without you causing it by some appropriate stick movement. As per your original post, I should note that there's nothing here related to trim or autopilot settings. You appear to be, quite frankly, flying your plane into the ground on purpose and there's no evidence of anything else.