PFunk1606688187

Seems very strange to me that the F-22 is the one getting technological hand-me-downs, and from other than the F-35 no less.

Heh, I just use Windows Voice Recognition with the free Voice Recognition Macros utility Microsoft published some 6 years ago or something. Its pretty bare bones compared to this stuff in terms of interface but its got plenty of functionality if you know how to write the code for commands, which is frankly easy with the documentation and tuts on the net. Its free for any person who uses Windows Vista and later. I've been told I'm cheap for not dishing out for one of these progs but since I only use voice activated macros to talk to AWACS and the Tanker I didn't really see the point of parting with cash. Probably would if I were in the least bit interested in commanding an AI wingman though.

Can we just skip the whole "news stories are all lies and never substantiated by truth because they're all lying liars who lie and until someone provides three separate recordings with proof that they've not been tampered with we can only assume its a lying lie told by a liar" thing, please? If it were never said the Air Force would flat out deny it. Denial is the simplest cleanest way to let a story die on the vine. Since they're not denying it outright it basically confirms that there is veracity to the claim.

What he said. ^ Consider all the above then look at the fact that DCS players use that mode to fire at point targets from distances greater than they can in point track mode when point track can already fire regularly at greater ranges than might be practical in real life. Anyone using Force Correlate to snipe SAM systems at 13nm is trollin'.

Yes please. That one is total cheese. EDIT. No, its still targeting a point on a contrast image.

Really? Shouldn't it be simply a matter of having the AI script check to see if its in formation or not? Hell it could even check lead's heading and beyond a given difference from its own ignore clock references in favour of something else.

It makes no sense to me to reference your own aircraft if all aircrafts in your group are facing different directions.

Oh you guys and your targeting pods. You can hit anything with enough practice using nothing but a visual land mark and the Maverick seeker head. Generally though its enough to just have a waypoint on the target area and use the seeker slew to find it and lock. So, set steer to target waypoint. Slave SPI to steer. Ingress. Maverick as SOI. Slave all to SPI. Slew, lock, rifle, GTFO. It helps to imagine that before A-10s got Targeting pods in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century that they'd been employing the Maverick for some decades before with nothing but binoculars, paper maps, and maybe a CDU waypoint that could be extremely unreliable due to INS drift or just bad intel. The threat of flying straight at enemies and becoming a target was the same, so they just learned to be good with the Maverick all by itself. See a target? Roll in and put the wagon wheel where it is via the HUD, space stabilize, then use the seeker to lock. Having a perfectly precise TGP validated SPI is helpful, and easy, but its something that can't always be relied on. Imagine you shift to the Maverick view, see your target start to drive to the right of the screen, are you going to shift the TGP SPI or just slew to lock? If you never ever learned to cope with the seeker head drift from targeting even a stationary target then you're gonna probably mess up, get too close, and find yourself a target. The targeting pod is a great tool but a horrible crutch to people who don't get taught by organizations (like an Air Force) who know how to build up people's skills so that they can put multiple tools to work without being weak when one or many of them fail. The only way to build confidence and skill is to work on things in isolation and then put them together. Start with just Mavericks, targets in an open field, and a single general target waypoint in the middle of them. Focus on using the Seeker to lock anything then move onto locking a specific blob you pick out on the seeker. Next move to coordinating which blob you're picking out on the seeker view with what you're seeing outside the pit, and so on. You could build that scenario up ad infinitum based on your own skill and once it becomes part of a multi-tool focused scenario, using the full capability of the aircraft avionics, you can pretty much never run out of new ways to challenge yourself. You'll be surprised how little the TGP is needed if you have the requisite skill which frankly takes very little time to build up. In general those who learned the TGP only method are alarmed and indecisive without that perfect clear TGP image. I was one of those once. Free yourself and burning wreckage* will follow. *non A-10C wreckage is implied in this George Clinton borrowed turn of phrase. @GGTharos Yes I definitely I overstated the differences when the practical reality is much harsher.

You should only need to open the canopy so that your crew chief can hear your request, or flip to the interphone channel, and he'll refuel you and rearm you and you can keep your engines spinning. They do this in real life too.

Whats all this metric nonsense? You guys do realize that the slant range figures on your HUDs are in nautical miles right? 7km is just over 3.5 nm. At that slant range you're already defensive.

There's no reason you can't fire a Maverick from ~7nm with an IR Maverick, altitude be damned. If the threat circle for a given SAM system is 5nm you can hit it at any altitude from which you can get the seeker to see it, and launch it, and still have time to make a smart about face. And as far as altitude goes, they call it Warthog for a reason. Those engines were built for low level and against sophisticated SAM networks terrain masking is an asset no pilot at Angels 16 can claim much use for. In actuality though many issues with Maverick effectiveness in DCS come from the fact that its a rather crude simulation of the overall system. The seeker head should lock on based on contrast, regardless of actual slant range. A blob is a blob. In DCS the Maverick only locks when its inside a given range which is, given the nature of the seeker head, simply incorrect. This was probably done as a very very simplistic way of facing the fact that DCS doesn't model any of the environmental conditions that dynamically effect Maverick seeker head lock on reliability. Anyways, IR Mavs in DCS can reach out just fine. No issues with flying nap of the earth and popping to get a low level Maverick attack off. You shouldn't fear anything from an SA-19 through an SA-8. You guys should get down off your perches. The air is nice and thick down in the mud and the tactics are far more lively.

I said human AWACS, but the idea is that people infer the incorrect brevity by observing the sim thinking that its correct. That statement was itself posted in response to the notion is that it doesn't matter because its not real life, a notion which I tried to raise my nose at. ;)

Makes me want to make my own home made rocket now.

Well maybe one day DCS will be robust enough to host 50+ guys flying a hardcore Red Flag type event and if they use something like Aries with voice degradation and a human AWACS the thing at stake will be your fun, which is about as important to a digital person as a life ought to be, right? :P

As I understand it, DCS is wrong with respect to the "bulls" call: AFTTP 3-1.1, Change 1, 23 November 2001 ATTACHMENT 1 A1.6.2. (U) Communications Fundamentals.

Steam will have zero effect on the Saitek software. Its possible you either failed to correctly save the profile or you've failed to correctly load the profile in the tray item or when re-opening the profile editor. I'm completely unfamiliar with the effects that steam integrity checks have on DCS files or if its in any way different to how the ED auto updater works.

I just want to mention those tinted sunglasses people use in competitive sports to improve perception of their environment. Seems to me that contrast is more important than colour overall. Colour is familiar but its contrast that lets you identify a silhouette or perceive depth. I like to think about black and white movies. A perfectly lit black and white film is striking and clear. For all I know in the realm of battlefield sensor theory the notion of contrast over colour is a discussion for which there is already a well understood conclusion or at least consensus on whats desirable as a priority.

Did you just answer yourself?

I think thats all down to who we're talking about. Some people enjoy practicing to get better at things and frankly learning with others in a very productive way, especially if you know each other, is a helluva lot more entertaining and gratifying to me than your typical online server environment where teamwork can be frustratingly elusive. I mean really, we're talking about the equivalent to thrashing around by yourself in a big room on an electric guitar with a dozen other people thrashing away to different tunes versus sitting in a room with 2 or 3 other people and learning to jam together. For some reason in gaming, even serious simming, the notion of focused and objective based practice is often viewed as undesirable while in almost anything else, even recreational activities like sports, its automatically viewed as, if not personally gratifying, at least legitimate. I find that interesting. Note this is not a commentary on how everyone is a nub and should lrn2play.

But dat sensor fusion brah!

I once took a nice hour long scanner recording of a military training exercise involving multiple NATO force pilots and replaced my squelch sound effect for the UHF radio with the recording.

Yea I guess some basic breakdown of how the software relates to the overall use of the stick is necessary at this juncture. The axis sections of the Saitek software exist for the purposes of using the axes for something other than its primary purpose. This means that normally you would simply use the in game settings to program the axes, such as pitch, roll, yaw, etc. If you wanted however to use an axis for keystroke emulation for instance you could use this section to use one of the many tools the software offers you. I'd say that the software's options for the axis settings is one of those advanced things you don't really need to bother with at first when you're new. Primarily you should look to the options menu in DCS, find the relevant control, so for HOTAS commands it'll be under the category of HOTAS, and then bind each keystroke for each control to your Saitek software. For the purposes of binding a key you simply click into the field for the given controller button, you press the associated keystroke, then click the green checkmark button. I do not have the X55 but I imagine its not very different from the software for the X52, which I do have. Binding keystrokes is easy. Just remember to save the profile then load it as the active profile in the Saitek tray icon. In my experience changes to a profile need to be reloaded into the active profile to take effect. Beyond that there is the shift state concept. Basically one of the buttons on your stick is a shift state modifier. This means that when you hold it down it will make a joybutton output an alternate keystroke. Its basically the same as using the Shift button on your keyboard to make a capital letter only you can select the shift state keystroke to be anything you fancy. It should also be noted that the software is not limited to individual keystrokes. You can program in a string of them, such as when a command in DCS is bound to Shift+[key] or Ctrl+[key], etc. The software allows you to create complex time based macros but this is again advanced. For 99% of the things you'll want to do to begin with the basic keystroke bindings should do. Come to grips with that first, then move on to more complicated concepts. Really the goal should be to get your controls set up, functional, and then focus on learning the aircraft. Your level of knowledge and proficiency in using the aircraft's systems is what will ultimately inform your later design for your control setup on your HOTAS. Its sensible therefore to minimize the time invested in a control scheme that you will quickly (hopefully) outgrow as your education in the A-10C goes on.

You can program it in many ways. You can program the game to recognize joybuttons, you can program the software in the X55 to emulate keystrokes, you can use the x55 software to create shift states to multiply the number of things a single button can do, you can program the DCS controls to do the same thing from within the game. Its not easy to explain this in general if you don't already understand it. I would probably start by just mapping relevant HOTAS controls to the stick by finding the relevant keystrokes in the options. Use the POV hats to replicate the POV commands. The HOTAS control section of the A-10C manual should be helpful in understanding that. Once you have the essentials mapped, which are basically everything on the actual HOTAS in the real airplane, you can start flying with that and over time as your understanding of the aircraft improves you can start to really customize it. One thing I found is that while someone swears by their set up of controls on a given stick set up, barring the Thrustmaster, its mostly a matter of preference and you can't know your preference til later. So, in short, either map the keystrokes to your stick as best as you can by reading the manual, or take a short cut and use someone else's profile for the X55. Longterm when you have some chops look at reprogramming it to suit your style or ergonomic preferences.

Excuse me JayPee, I do not believe I can hear you. Please speak in a louder font size.

Because you're not in a slip/skid. The wind is blowing you off of the longitudinal heading but your airplane is still coordinated in the airflow. This of course changes when you bank or sideslip to align on the runway.