Hyperion35

Basically, with the A-10C you can destroy just about anything on the ground, in almost any quantity, using such a wide variety of ordinance and tactics that it really leaves you feeling like you're the Sorceror's Apprentice and the tanks are brooms.

Draken > Dragons

It might be possible to change the path in the registry, I remember having to do that many many years ago when FC3 first came out and the installer was looking in the wrong folder (that was back when FC3 required LOMAC to have been installed, so not exactly the same situation). However, I am not certain which registry files would have to be changed, and I know that making changes to the registry is something that should be d9ne carefully. However, it sounds as though this may be something that could solve your problem.

Is it possible to put some sort of ground unit on or directly next to the runway, and then set a flag that will be switched on when that unit is damaged or destroyed? What I'm thinking with this is that you could then set the mission so that when that happens, open aircraft slots at that airfield would become unusable (or unusable for a set period of time until "repair"). That's not as fully immersive as destructible airfields, but it might work as a stopgap measure.

With regards to the Normandy Map and WWII Assets Pack, you will need these for several of the campaigns for the P-51 and Spit (Charnwood for the P-51, Epsom and The Big Show for the Spit). My understanding is that these campaigns are supposed to be based on historical missions and events. There was one P-51 campaign for the Caucuses map, but it's not a historically-based campaign, I don't think. As for how the planes handle, I only have the P-51 and Spitfire (no personal interest in German military equipment of that era, except as target practice), but I agree with what's said above about being challenging. Taking off in the Spitfire is harder than landing an F/A-18C on the Stennis! Well, it is for me, at least. There are many WWII flight simulators out there, and they are all very good, but ED really put a lot of effort into simulating all of the many different ways that these old birds will try to kill you, and I've found DCS's warbirds to be far more challenging than any other WWII flight simulator out there. That being said, I do find myself flying fast jets more often than the warbirds, but that's partly because they are so challenging. As with almost every other aircraft in DCS, if you get it, you will constantly be learning new things about it and finding areas where your skills need improvement even after several years.

A quick search turned up at least 3 skins inspired by the 332nd Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen): https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/648876/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/1754071/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/511022/ And anyone who hasn't heard of this group of pilots, or who is wondering why people are so eager to have a red-tailed Mustang or what it means, read on: http://www.tuskegeemuseum.org/who-were-they/ In 200 out of their 205 escort missions, they brought every bomber back to base safely.

There are several Tuskegee Red Tail skins available in the download section.

The F-15C will be great for learning air-to-air combat. As you've noticed, it doesn't have the fully interactive cockpit, the systems will be similar in complexity to the Su-25T, with the similarly simple startup. That being said, that simplicity can be very useful if you're learning air combat for the first time, because it all happens so fast. And of course, even the relatively "simple" systems can require a bit of learning at first, like the different radar modes and pulse rates, etc. And because it's inexpensive, it can be a good companion to the Su-25T, giving you a chance to decide whether you like AA or AG combat better (and letting you switch back and forth depending on your mood). And it gives you a chance to learn a lot of the maneuvering and tactics that can be applied to air-to-air combat in general. And then if you decide that you want a fully-modelled air superiority fighter, the best option would probably be the Mirage 2000C, although the F/A-18C and the upcoming F-14 will also have some serious air superiority capabilities, but they are still very much under development at the moment (I would specifically advise against the F/A-18C for a first module right now because it is still in early access and unfinished). The MiG-21 is also a good option for a fully-modelled air superiority fighter, but it is much more difficult and challenging due to the (faithfully modelled) ah, crude level of the Soviet technology of that era. But yeah, the F-15C would be the best choice to try out air-to-air combat and see how you like it. The three other FC-3 air superiority fighters, the Su-27, Su-33, and MiG-29 are also pretty good, but the F-15C is the best of that bunch in my opinion. Definitely a good first-time air superiority fighter.

PLEASE add this. I am hard of hearing, and so I rely a lot on the subtitles, but those can go away quickly and it's easy to miss something. And yes, I get that it might not be realistic. On the other hand, the idea that I would be eligible for military service, much less flying a plane, is also unrealistic, hence why I am glad for DCS.

I wonder how much of it is a rights issue. Panavia was a limited time consortium between multiple aircraft companies, so there may be some question as to who owns the IP rights. Is it Panavia? Did the rights revert back to all of the subsidiary companies? Does the fact that these are different companies in different countries affect the legalities (although you would think that they'd all be operating under the same IP laws due to the EU)? Hopefully that's not going to be a problem, because otherwise the Tornado would be a perfect fit for DCS, as it's old enough to be close to exiting service, but recent enough to offer some complex systems.

I think that if they do this, and I really like the idea, ED will probably have to put out some general requirements in terms of what has to be included in the .lua file, stuff like that, to avoid a situation where later on something is missing from the .lua file, or a country designation is misspelled or something, and a skin doesn't work. That's my only real concern with this, a quick review of the skin itself, to make sure it looks good and doesn't contain any unacceptable images/words would be simple, but if ED has to double-check the .lua files and who knows what else, that might add more time than it's worth.

Many years ago, I was living out in the Antelope Valley in California, very close to the airfield with Plant 42 (like you could literally look out my bedroom window and see the airfield). One day a B-2 did a touch-and-go landing rehearsal right above our house, like maybe 50-100 feet over our heads while flying parallel to the airfield. If I hadn't already known what a B-2 looked like, I might have thought it was an alien spacecraft (and I can see the resemblance in that triangular shape of the "UFO" that was posted). Also, if I hadn't known that it was on our side, I probably would have soiled my pants. It was like a giant black moth sweeping down from above.

I was wondering something similar with regards to the AIM-7 in the Offensive OCA mission (the final mission) in the F/A-18 mini-campaign. I had initially wondered of the "SHOOT!" cue was being given prematurely, before hitting Rne, as the missiles appeared to be burning out and unable to maneuver about halfway to the target. On the other hand, I was also using Loft mode, so that could be part of it. I also don't think that classified info comes into play here, and not only because the AIM-7 is fairly outdated. Regardless of what the real Rmax and Rne of the AIM-7, presumably DCS has a set of thrust, drag, etc variables, and it simulates the onboard computer's logic for when this implementation of the AIM-7 reaches whatever the Rmax and Rne are for this implementation of the AIM-7, regardless of how that compares to the real version. So the question here has nothing to do with the real AIM-7 (although I would assume that DCS implements it fairly realistically), but rather the question is why the F/A-18 is showing an enemy aircraft as being within Rne, only to have the missile run out of maneuvering range before reaching the target. The problem may be in the behavior of the AIM-7, or it could be in the behavior of the radar, or the DLZ calculations, or probably several other factors that I wouldn't know about (in my experience, the bug is always in the place that is the least intuitively obvious, because computers derive sustenance from the frustrated screams of overworked coders). Or the problem could be entirely in our expectations of how it should work. I do remember someone pointing out, in response to unrealistic expectation of Pk, that "there's a reason why they're called missiles and not hittiles".

(I want to be very clear that I do not and have never worked with ED or on any DCS software, these comments are just genersl observations about software development that may or may not apply to ED) 1. More developers does not necessarily result in faster releases. Different people specialize in different parts of the project, and so sometimes you will have people sitting around waiting on one part to be finished before they can do their part. Additionally, bughunting and testing takes up a surprising amount of the development cycle. I'm not even talking about the sort of bugs that we see as customers, but the really big stuff like a feature not working as planned or not at all, due to some error deep in the code. Hunting down those bugs takes time, and sometimes it's just impossible to estimate how long it will take. More people working on code can actually result in more bugs, not less, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has ever tried to work on someone else's code. 2. Comparisons to Star Citizen are really not appropriate. DCS actually has much shorter development time than SC, which has been in developmemt since I think 2012, with a barely-playable alpha build to show for it. While it has a large budget, it has also clearly suffered from feature creep, and it serves as an excellent example of why software developers like to freeze features in stone at the beginning of the process, because changes during the process can increase delays exponentially. Star Citizen also sells ships that are as of yet unusable and will not be usable for years, compared to DCS waiting until at most 3 months before an aircraft's launch date before it goes on presale. But there is another reason why SC should not be used as a benchmark for software development. While SC acts as though its contributors are "investors", they are not. They are customers and donors, not investors, and there is a massive difference. Investors are entitled to specific reports about a company's finances, sales forecasts, revenues, expenses, and other information. Star Citizen customers are treated as if they are "investors", but RSI and CIG (the development company and publisher) are under no obligation to release this information, or for ensuring the accuracy of any information that they release. The odds that the monetary information released so far is accurate and timely is pretty much nonexistent. Any information that they have released should be understood as a form of advertising, it has not and will not be vetted by any regulatory agency, and they will suffer no penalties if the information that they have released is false. It is not the same as the sort of information released by publicly-held companies, or by privately-held companies to their investors. So this is the problem that Star Citizen poses to the industry: they pretend that their customers are investors, they release selective information to their customers, claiming that it is an accurate representation of sales and revenues, with no guarantees of accuracy, and they do this as a means of pretending to be "honest" to distract from their lack of releases. And this sets an unrealistic expectation that other companies should do the same, when in fact it is the opposite of how a software company should be acting. I am not saying that Star Citizen is necessarily doing anything illegal, but their actions are not those of a software company attempting to sell a product to customers.

It makes sense to post the video on multiple channels. Some people might have subscribed to the DCS channel but not to the Heatblur channel, for example. This ensures that those people will see the video as well. That's a basic aspect of how advertising and marketing works.

I think it's for when you're inverted above a MiG, entering a dive...

I wonder, does DCS simulate the tides?

Since it's a bomber, would it need either multicrew or something similar to Heatblur's Jester AI, or can its main functions be performed by one person (or one person switching seats as needed, like with the Huey)?

I wonder if it might be possible for ED (or someone else) to create a different smoke trigger function with the ability to pass an RGB value as a vector, which would allow for user-created smoke colors. Granted, most people would probably still just use <1.0,0.0,0.0> and <0.0,1.0,0.0>, but this would in theory allow black as <0.0,0.0,0.0> as well as all sorts of wild varieties. That being said, without an understanding of the underlying system, I don't know how easy this would be to implement. Is the current system set up so that the current integer values are just variables that point to hardcoded RGB values under the hood? Or is the actual coding for the smoke particle systems much lower in the system so as to be inaccessible to us? Or for that matter, do each of those color presets link to a much larger set of variables and code such that each color of smoke involves several variables that are different from each other color, thus making it too complicated to just let us set a single color?

I wonder, does this mean that they will be releasing the PFM for all three versions of the MiG-29 at once? I suppose that in theory the A and G variants would have the same external airframe, but doesn't the MiG-29S have some external differences like the dorsal hump?

I should warn you, there is a lot to learn with the A-10C, so it's probably a good idea to get started as soon as possible. Every time I come back to it after a while, I still have to take some time to re-learn the HOTAS commands for each SOI. On the other hand, there's so many different features and functions in that aircraft that it should allow for a lot of creativity with the campaign.

As far as I can remember, the player-flyable aircraft are usually only capable of dropping one type of bomb per pass as well. If you load out an F/A-18 with Mk82s and Mk84s, you can only select one type at a time. Often this is related to the CCRP/CCIP calculations (or in the case of the Mirage, the type of bomb determines which method is used). It might be different in something like the F-5 since all bombing is manual, I haven't used that in A-G missions much. But for most of these aircraft, dropping a single bo,b type on each pass seems to be normal behavior.

I would be wary of applying "common sense" to software development, especially with regards to timelines. When there are multiple systems working together, it's not always obvious which pieces can be implemented in order. It's possible, for example, that they had to work out the pitbull logic before they could do the TWS telemetry.

I would assume that it would be some form of GBUs first, and even the GBU-38 could be done using the existing CCRP designation on the HUD, if necessary, without needing added sensors. I'd then assume that the AGM-65 would come next (and they might not necessarily need TGPs working for that, although the two functions would probably appear together). The AGM-88 and AGM-84 actually strike me as being the last munitions to appear, simple because they aren't currently usable in any other aircraft. I would think that it would be slightly easier to implement munitions that are currently used in other aircraft first, if for no other reason than because they've already solved some of the problems that might come up and they know which potential implementation options won't work.

I think if they're going to do it, they should definitely do it with a proper DCS flavor. Set it up for smuggling missions, gunrunning and the like, evading radar and patrols, landing on grass fields.