GreyBadger

I've been subscribed to this channel for ages and can heartily recommend it. The videos are high quality, extremely well put together and engrossing to watch. :pilotfly: Badger

Hi All Posted this in the wrong place initially. But now I have it on good authority that you are the right fellas to see. :) For the most part DCS makes it easy even for a dunce like me to set up peripherals, (though I don't play with those graphs and curves) but setting the throttle on my Saitek X52 Pro for use with the Huey has led me a dance today. Having just run the startup tutorial, I found that moving the throttle actually lowered the rpm, regardless of whether or not I had the axis inverted. But I finally worked out that I'd got it wrong by setting the throttle to...well...throttle and not collective as I should have. Then I had to fight with the slider switch on the throttle, which for some reason had also been allocated to collective. (I didn't do that, that wasn't me!) But in the end (at least for now) I managed to get everything where I "think" I want it. Except........ I have to bring the collective stick up to about half way before the Huey gets light on its skids and while of course I have no real point of reference, this seems a little excessive. Is that the way it's supposed to be? Or am I going to have to revisit the axis tuning and do something in there. Also, which dial am I supposed to be looking at to see a change as I move the collective lever? Because the rpm gauge seemed to stay the same and I didn't notice anything else moving. I realsie that there's not going to be a digital power bar representation or anything like that to help me balance the throttle vs forward movement, but it feels like there should be something at least. Thanks fellas. Badger

Thanks for the quick response Flagrum. :thumbup: Wow, that's buried deep! :lol: Thanks for that, I'll copy this post over there. Apologies here for posting in the wrong place. D'oh! Well I think you've covered it Flagrum. I'll let the question ride on the other side, but only to see if anyone has anything else interesting to add. All the best Badger

Hi All I can't see a specific forum for UH-1H questions. Sorry if I'm just going blind in my old age. :) For the most part DCS makes it easy even for a dunce like me to set up peripherals, (though I don't play with those graphs and curves) but setting the throttle on my Saitek X52 Pro for use with the Huey has led me a dance today. Having just run the startup tutorial, I found that moving the throttle actually lowered the rpm, regardless of whether or not I had the axis inverted. But I finally worked out that I'd got it wrong by setting the throttle to...well...throttle and not collective as I should have. Then I had to fight with the slider switch on the throttle, which for some reason had also been allocated to collective. (I didn't do that, that wasn't me!) But in the end (at least for now) I managed to get everything where I "think" I want it. Except........ I have to bring the collective stick up to about half way before the Huey gets light on its skids and while of course I have no real point of reference, this seems a little excessive. Is that the way it's supposed to be? Or am I going to have to revisit the axis tuning and do something in there. Also, which dial am I supposed to be looking at to see a change as I move the collective lever? Because the rpm gauge seemed to stay the same and I didn't notice anything else moving. I realsie that there's not going to be a digital power bar representation or anything like that to help me balance the throttle vs forward movement, but it feels like there should be something at least. :) Thanks fellas. Badger

Thanks srky, I'm sorted out now (at least with the zoom) though not as we'd discussed. :) I gave up on using the slider as even with your help I just couldn't see a way forward on it. But while I was messing about with it I did see someone mentioning switching to the throttle pov hat as a solution to the slider jitter. Wouldn't you know the axis designation would not accept the throttle pov hat. I'm using both povs on the joystick with no problems, one for trim and the other for moving the tracking reticule for missiles and stuff. So why the throttle pov apparently does not exist is anyones guess. :) Anyway.. I've never really used the X52 Pro to it's full potential, in that I've done very little in programming it's functions. Mostly I've just allocated commands for the HOTAS within DCS and carried on using the ordinary key presses for most everything else. Lack of tech smarts and laziness are both in play, with the blame probably lying more or less in the middle. So I took the bit between my teeth and programmed the throttle pov to simulate num pad "*" and "/" and lo and behold a zoom with no stutter. It's a compromise, but actually it's one which by the look of it is going to turn out better than the original idea. Result! :) Of course I've still got the hud text issue which nobody addressed yet. I suspect that one might be more complicated. Badger

Thanks for the replies fellas. You've made that sound really easy srky, but at the moment I have to admit that I'm only partly able to reconcile your instructions with what I'm actually seeing in the "tune axis" page. Completely down to me being thick I'm sure :) For starters my "axis line" (if I'm looking at the right thing, doesn't go to the top right corner. It's top left to bottom right. Using the sliders to make my axis line go lower than the top corner, so that it matches the normal FOV sounded fantastic.. but at the moment I can't quite work out how to move what to where. LOL. Anyway I'll keep experimenting with it and thanks so much for the input. At least I know I'm in the right area. :) I'm also encountering the slider shake or "jitter" reported by smithcorp, now that I've assigned zoom to that slider. It's annoying having to wiggle the slider about to get to the sweet spot that stops this. But from what I have read it's a known problem, though I've not seen a solution. At any rate I'm inclined to put up with it given that the slider on my throttle feels such a natural placement for the zoom. A really comfortable fit in terms of ease of use. Badger

Hi All I haven't bugged you lot with questions for a while, so I thought it was time to rectify that. :smilewink: Actually it's two questions which are kind of extensions to things I've discussed here before. Once upon a time there was a handsome Badger and he had a problem with his shiny new "TrackIR" system. It had to do with the HUD text running away from him every time he leaned forward in the cockpit and his poor nocturnal based vision was struggling to cope. He rode to the DCS castle for help and the good people in the forums there told him how to switch the zoom function onto his "TrackIR" and then when he leaned forward the HUD text was trapped in place and easy for him to see. Aren't happy endings great? Time has gone by though and the handsome Badger has discovered that his sim needs have changed. To cut a long story short, he now needs to move his head around the cockpit more naturally and to have a zoom function allocated separately for easier tracking down of the bad guys outside. So the normal "TrackIR" functions have been restored, the handsome Badger now has to make sure to wear his glasses to read the HUD and the zoom function is now slaved to the slider on the throttle unit of his X52 Pro HOTAS. This however has left him with two problems which are causing his brow to wrinkle. 1/ The zoom setup on the slider would ideally have normal view at one end of the slide and maximum zoom at the other end. Thus making it easy to look at things outside and then return to normal without even looking at the slider or even having to think much about it. Instead though, the "normal view" sits about half way along the sliders arc. Forward of that things are fine and zoom as expected, but backward of that point and things zoom out further, ending finally in a weird fish eye lens kind of affair. So the problem is that when coming out of zoom, I have to think about where I'm placing the slider and nine times out of ten have to wiggle it back and forth to find that ideal zoom. Logic suggests that it's probably an adjustment that's possible to make, either in the "axis tune" section, or in the sims configuration files. But not being remotely technical I don't have a clue where to begin. 2/ The above reassignments have had an interesting but unfortunate side effect on the HUD. Now when in my ideal seating position, the text on the HUD spills over the sides of the glass plate and to see the whole thing I actually have to lean forward considerably to effectively get the text to resize and fit. I found more than one thread mentioning this, but in each case the threads quickly reached a point where the possible solutions being talked about were getting above my head. So I wonder, has this matter been addressed by now and if not, is there a simple Badger friendly work around? Thanks fellas Badger PS: FYI I was just looking out of our Kitchen window and the Vulcan bomber flew right past! :) Probably getting ready for the Waddington Air Show next week.

I noticed that actually. I wondered if the unit sprang to the facing you set, after you click away from it. (in other words, when you select something else and your Russian unit turns red to show you are finished editing it.) But I forgot to check. Badger

I enjoyed the smashy light bulbs, but actually it might have been best to bring them down yesterday in order to avoid Goblin attack. (Yup...Goblin attack!) I was reading up on the whole "bad luck to leave decorations up after the 12th night" thing and found that the 5th is generally considered to be the day to leave it no later than. All is not lost though. If you still have em up on the 6th, then the thing to do apparently is to leave them up until Feb 2nd. Beware though, if so much as a mince pie crumb is left after that date, there's a risk of Goblins pouring in through your keyhole, turning your milk sour, craking your cups and plates, leaving Gobliny footprints in your butter and you know...generally being utter cads! Nobody likes to see that right? Badger

Edit.... Thank you both for such quick replies by the way. :) But actually I've just fallen into what the problem was. Funny isn't it the way the mind works. I confidently typed this, sure that I'd done nothing which wasn't completely default and as I posted it that sentence was niggling at the back of my mind, so again I went and had another look. How did I try to be clever after all? I changed the country designation. I changed my plane from USA to UK, because...well... I'm a Uk Badger ain't I :lol: Switching it to USA gave me a lit of options a lot longer than three planes and right at the top of it? yup..A-10a. Once I'd made that change I was then able to see "player" on the list. Sorry to bother you with this fellas. But on the plus side someone else reading this might be saved from making the same mistake. :) I've said it before and I'll say it again.. Here at Badger Towers, we ask the stupid questions so that you don't have to. Badger

Hi Eno I've not tried to do anything clever. At the moment this "mission" (if it even deserves to be called that) is just a handful of targets on the map somewhere and my plane (well..two now since I continued experimenting) on a runway somewhere else. I have no idea how to put it up as yet (d'oh!) and don't want to hold you up. It's very nice of you to offer though. I was honestly hoping someone would say "oh well..you're not doing ...(add thing I wasn't doing)" Or hoping that someone wouldn't say.. "oh you can't create missions for "FC3". If that doesn't happen I'll work out how to post it up and it'd be great if you could have a peek when you have the time. All the best Badger

Hello HiJack. Do you mean the serial number for "FC3"? If so than yes that's all sorted. I can't remember now whether the first thing I did was to start up the tutorials, (this was last week) or open a single mission. But regardless I was asked for the serial number right away. Just to be sure I've just started up a single mission and then a campaign and both are happy to let me fly. Just to clarify, when I say above that "A-10a does not seem to be a selectable aircraft", I'm not saying that it's on the list but I can't select it. I'm saying that the list is only about three planes long and the A10a is not on it. Badger

Afternoon all Having now bought "FC3", I'm trying to create a basic navigation and ground attack mission in the dcs mission editor. I thought it might be a good idea to create something I can fly to practice the basic skills, to which I could then add things on an ongoing basis as I learn new weapons systems. I watched a mission editor video tutorial I found and the basics didn't seem beyond my reach, so I fired it up to have a go. Everything was going well, initial targets placed, way points set, but then I found that I couldn't select my plane as player driven. I was using the drop down skill list and "client" was there, but not "player". I couldn't work out what obvious thing I must be doing wrong. I spent ages looking in the forum and typing things into google. But everything I found seemd to confirm that based on what I was doing, "player" should be an option on that list. Suddenly in a flash of inspiration I went back to the editor, selected my flight and looked closely at the details. Right... as I suspected it was an A-10c and not an A-10a as flyable via "FC3". But A-10a does not seem to be a selectable aircraft. I have the DCS A-10c module, but I haven't reinstalled it as yet. At the moment of the four modules I own, I only have "FC3" and "BS2" actually installed. But in any case I'm wanting to spend a little time with the "FC3"'s simpler flight model at the moment. So am I missing the obvious? Or can I not use the full mission editor in conjunction with the "FC3" module. Thanks as ever for your advice. Badger

:) that HAS to be exactly what happened! :) Badger

Ok thanks for the advice guys. You've saved me a fruitless task then. I didn't understand about the files already being zipped up and that makes sense of the problem I was seeing. or at least "thought" I was seeing. I'm not "expecting" HD issues within the next six months. But problems resulting in the HD having to be reformatted by a pc engineer in Nov 2012 and now Dec 2013 a very similar thing, have seen me lose everything on here twice now and twice having to begin again from scratch. it's left me a little sensitive. Sadly my 8meg download speed makes files of this size a real project. Here in the UK we only now seeing fibre optic beginning to be rolled out in selected areas and where I am it even now just a whispered rumour. (Although it has to be said I heard that a man two streets away has a car and the rumour is he also has a television!) That said.. I know at least two people who have DL speeds of only a half meg! compared to them I am on easy street. :) Anyway, thanks for the good advice fellas. All the best Badger

Oh. Sorry to have posted in the wrong place. I didn't scroll down far enough to see that there was a specific forum for pictures. Badger

Morning Pilots No surprise for some of you to read me asking to pick your technical brains, but I need your smarts again if you would. Downloading "DCS World" this time still took ages despite my having a slightly faster connection than the last time around and I'd really rather not have to do it again the next time my HD has to be reformatted for whatever reason. So I decided to do what I expect most of you would have done without thinking and copy the files to a dvd. I used "7zip" and when all the files were zipped up they came to 6.783gig. I don't think I can be doing it right because it seems to me that adding up all the sizes of the unzipped files is already 6.49gig. As you can see I don't know much about zipping things. I was surprised to see that the dvd itself only holds 4.something gig. I just thought they were huge and could hold all the worlds libraries and still have room for some movies and tunes. Perhaps I'm thinking about StarTrek. At any rate I assumed I'd be able to get those "DCS World" files on one dvd. Am I doing something really obvious wrong? Thanks all Badger

I might be wrong... but I don't think this guys house insurance covers this. Badger

Oh? Why's that cichlidfan? Badger

Morning Mr Mojo. Ahhh... yes I think you're right about that. (This might be a D'oh! moment then:lol: ) The training folder was empty but now has some missions. So, not included in the initial download because why... to save time for folks to don't want or need the training perhaps? Also there's the question as to why that link remains active. anyone able to enlighten this Badger? Badger

"DCS World" now installed and "FC3" running beautifully. I've also reinstalled "BS2" and after a brief panic over not having a serial number because mine was lost in the pc wipe, before realising that "DCS World" has stored the information for me, that too is up and running and looking good. :thumbup: Quick follow up question though and it's something which also confused me on my first install, of "DCS World" last year, but which I never got an answer to at the time. Having installed the individual modules, I realised that to get all the missions etc I had to follow that up by doing a further installation labelled "Install (EN)". The two things confusing me about this are firstly why a separate download? Why did the missions not simply install when I downloaded the module and secondly, having installed the "Install(EN)" I notice that the install link for it is once again selectable. Once the content is downloaded should this not be greyed out to avoid confusion? Or is there additional content which requires I use it more than once. Thanks in anticipation Badger

That's great! thanks for the help. "FC3" bought and "DCS World" in the process of being downloaded again. All the best Badger

Evening fellas, thanks for the quick replies. That is very exiting news cichlidfan.. you're sure about that? Badger

Afternoon all It's a while since I posted and so I thought I'd fling a few lines out there while I have some time to kill. :) As PC owners it's probably safe to say that one of the things we have in common is that sooner or later we're going to have some kind of catastrophic system error, which ends up with the HD having to be reformatted. Either by yourself, or if like me you are on the challenged side, by a PC engineer. Hopefully you don't see this happen, but sadly I think that over the years I've had more than my fair share of it. Of course if that ever happens, any gaming progress which wasn't on some sort of cloud, will be lost. Along with whatever applications and other bits and bobs you had on board at the time. For me it's been a bit of a double whammy, because I'm a really slow gamer nad so have been in the position where certain titles ("Far Cry 3" being one example off the top of my head) fall foul of more than one crash and have to be restarted multiple times. I last had this kind of problem about three months ago (Happily my "FC3" saves were safe on the cloud this time and I have now finished it Great game.) and since then I've been slowly reintroducing items I'd had installed, but one of the main ones that I've yet to get around to is my old friend "DCS World". I'm ashamed to admit that it's the thought of the huge time investment to get it all back on again (All those different individual files one at a time etc) which has been....well let's not say "putting me off". Let's say encouraging me to keep putting it on the back burner. I was looking at it again today and I noticed that "Flaming Cliffs 3" is on sale, which is hugely tempting as I've fancied it for a while but always been put off by the high price. But why oh why do you need "Lock On" installed? When I upgraded to the digital version of "Warthog" for example I didn't need to have my boxed copy installed. When I bought "BS2" it didn't require that I had installed my boxed copy of "BS1". Yet with "FC3" it seems I am required to reinstall a fairly old program, to be able to run the brand new one? I have "LockOn Gold" but I've never run it on this machine and to be honest the reason is the "Starforce" thing. Apologies for speaking from a standpoint of technical ignorance, but Starforce, or at least older versions of it, had such a poor reputation, that I've tried my best (successfully so far) not to install it on this machine (couple of years old now) for fear of it breaking something which I then have to go to a shop to fix because I can't do it myself. Yep..scared of my own PC. What a state of affairs eh? :lol: Anyway there you go. I really must get around to putting "DCS World" back on again. I haven't yet had the opportunity to see "Black Shark 2" with the "TrackIR" turned on (Only used it with "Warthog" to date) and I'm sure I'm going to love it. All the best folks Badger

Thanks ophiuchus.