TheHashWeasel

I'm going to preface this by saying I am not a fan of AMD and have not used any of their cards for years. I know quite a few people that do use them, and most of them have experienced issues at one time or another due to drivers or games that simply don't run as well (and sometimes won't run at all on initial release) with Radeon cards. I've stuck with nVidia since the 8800 generation, so I will stick to what I know here... That said, the 660ti will probably do a great job. I'm currently running a 560ti and I am running at all settings on high with the exception of water. Putting water on high seems to slow things down for no good reason. Anti-Aliasing is at 4x, and I have TXAA on as well, running at 1920x1080. I always run DCS World on my primary monitor, and I have a secondary monitor as well running at 1280x1024 showing my mail client, music player and instant messenger. Frame rates hold solid at 60FPS 90% of the time, dipping to the mid-30's in heavy action. The difference in manufacturer has to do primarily with cooling solutions and out-of-the-box clock speeds. For instance, MSI is the brand I've used for my past two video cards and I've been very pleased with their product. Their claim to fame is "military grade components" and "Twin Frozor" cooling solution. I've found their cooling solution works very well and is pretty quiet too. Other brands use different solutions, such as Asus' "DirectCuII" or Gigabyte's "Windforce" cooling. Honestly though, most of it is bluster unless you plan on overclocking your video card, in which case I'd do some research. So due to personal experience I'll go on record and recommend a 660ti. From what manufacturer is really up to you. If overclocking or noisiness or termperatures don't mean a lot to you, you might check out EVGA. If I'm not mistaken they have a lifetime guarantee which is great. Additionally, if you ARE interested in overclocking, HardOCP recently ran an article showing the Galaxy-branded 660ti can keep up with the far more expensive GeForce 670!

Me and some friends were trying to fly under a bridge last night, and one of said friends uses his joystick with about the same subtlety as hitting it with a sledge hammer to turn, so he might as well be using a control pad. The video is pretty amusing! Skip to 2mins. in for the best bit:

In my defense I did know about the load page for re-arming and such! It's just.. y'know, panic tends to set in after a manpad puts a rocket up your... exhaust pipe. :music_whistling:

Besides the obvious "practice practice practice", I found watching videos on Youtube were very helpful (just do a generic search for DCS A10C, and dig in from there, watching things that catch your interest). I had to do this because while repeating lessons over and over again until I could perform a task in my sleep was good for getting better at flying the Hog, it wasn't very good for holding my interest... I also created a very small mission which was super helpful. I spawn on the ground at Batumi, and at a nearby airfield placed a bunch of tanks that just sat there and did dick-all. The airfield was only a few minutes away, so this gave me a chance to learn startup procedures, and then have easy-to-find, non-threatening targets to practice on. Additionally auto-pilot is your best friend (I think it's the 'A' key by default) while you learn the ins and outs of all the switches and knobs and whats-its.

I had no idea this was possible. Having one of my MFCDs go down is pretty common and this changes everything! Have some rep!

Beautiful! I just started getting my friend into DCS World and I've been trying to coach him as we play which has turned out to be a TERRIBLE idea. ("So uh... yea you need to... flick the switch on the uhh... hmm, what was it called again? Hey, you're about to hit the ground... did you press autopilot? Oh.. I forgot to tell you how to do that... sorry!") Thanks for the links, I'm going to be sure to put them to good use!

JTAC is by far the best way. In fact I don't know if there are any other proper ways... Before I learned about JTAC I cheated by looking at the F10 map and then just eyeballing things. Though cheating is probably the wrong term since that was pretty damned hard compared to getting co-ords from JTAC. This video was a big help to me: http://youtu.be/mcJ8mlMF7qg

Serendipity my friends... I was coming back from a somewhat successful mission and made a really poor landing attempt, bouncing my hog like a ****in' racquetball off the runway. The landing gear on the nose was okay, but my rear wheels were locked in a halfway position. Thinking I was smart, I inverted my hog and tried jiggling the landing gear handle. I figure if they won't go down, maybe I can get them to retract and everything would reset and be cool... "MAN, I'M SO SMART!" I thought as my HUD turned off and everything got real quiet and my warning light panel lit up all over the place. I was totally at a loss as to what happened. Seeing this thread, I'm guessing I starved the engines and therefore lost power? In a situation like that, you'd have to use the APU to restart the engines I assume? I was far too low to attempt a windmill start, not that I even know how to do that really. ...man I love this 'game'. I had a good chuckle at the whole situation.

I was going to ask how to practice mid-air refueling as well, so thanks for the answer. Do you know if mission files for A10C v1.1x work in DCS World?

I guess I'm crazy, 'cause I actually like the Profiler software, at least I do now. I did hate it at first! I wonder if my Saitek is a little busted up, because I really don't like the pinky switch (which is why I use the Modes a lot). I have to squeeze the SHIT out of it to make it work. I do use it for a few things in latch mode, but I prefer the different modes otherwise. Mode 1 = most frequent controls Mode 2 = Less frequent controls Mode 3 = take off/landing specific controls. To each their own of course!

You can change it in game if you use the Saitek Profiler software and not the joystick options in DCS. DCS is pretty friendly when it comes to alt+tabbing, and the Saitek Profiler is literally translating joystick commands to keyboard controls. So if you know that the HOTAS Master Mode key is "M" and you want to bind it to Fire button C, you can pause DCS, alt+tab to the Profiler, set that up, and jump back in. Someone recommended going into DCS control options and wiping out all bindings to the joystick other than joystick axis controls, and then purely using the profiler software to emulate the keyboard commands you want. I've found that to work very well for myself. Additionally once you get comfortable with the Profiler software you can do some nice macros. I've got my CMS program start and CMS program end commands set up nicely to use the weapons release button (big dopey button under the plastic cover) in Mode 2. When I press the weapon release button, it emulates pressing '7' once, this starts the CMS program. When I release the button, it emulates pressing '8' once which ends it. So when a SAM launches at me, I switch to mode 2, and press and hold the weapon release button for as long as I want my countermeasures to deploy. It's pretty sweet! It's a lot to take in honestly, and it took me several weeks and a lot of Googling before I started getting comfortable. But it's really been worth it now!

It took me awhile to figure out why my Saitek x52 was such a damned pain in the ass, so I feel your pain Fastfed. It's not the profile itself that is the issue, but the names given to the actions in the profile. The Saitek software will hang/crash whenever the name of the action you are doing goes over (I think) 12 characters. For example, if you have "Fire C" action named "Toggle Master Mode", the Saitek Profile manager is going to luck up. It's a really bizarre and annoying thing. You need to be especially wary that some of the DEFAULT actions will cause this too. I remember that it took me days to figure out that the software profiler would crash whenever I tried to move the mouse with the... thumb nubbin' or whatever you want to call it, because the name of the action associated with it was "move mouse cursor". I renamed it "mouse" and everything was fine. Anyhow, go over all the actions in your profile and rename them something really short! That solves all the issues and now I'm rather impressed with the Saitek x52 I have. Great little joystick, especially for its price! Also as a tip for setting up your joystick as you fly more and more, you'll figure out your own preferences. Use the link Rivvern gave you as a starting point, but I found after awhile it was easier to start my own profile from scratch!