Hyperion35

The Chinook helicopters in Mission 2 ("Welcome to Suse") appear to have some sort of bug. I have flown this mission twice, and with similar results: There is the scripted "drama" at Kutaisi which delays the takeoff (and really, why does the C-130 have to take so long?), and then after the takeoff, we do one orbit around the airfield, and then at the prompt, we push on to Suse. As we near Suse, I see two Chinook helicopters (in F2 view) on the ground, rotors turning, obviously powered up, and there is a message that they are ready. Then instead of taking off, they power down, and the guys get out and stand around them. A few Humvees come driving by, one crashes into the second Chinook and explodes. This happens even though I get another briefing from the lead of the ground forces about what will be happening when we get to the AO. Bear in mind that this is after one hour of real-time playing. The first time this happened, I flew on to the AO, thinking that maybe the mission would continue somehow, but still nothing happened. The second time, tonight, I exited after the Chinooks shut down. I exited the mission and took a screenshot of the exit screen, which appears to show that the Chinooks did take off shortly before I did, but then they landed again right around the time that I flew by, when I was getting a message from them asking me to watch their six, and shut down. I have attached the screenshot. I have also saved my track from the mission, but I am unable to upload the .trk file (likely because it is about 12Mb and the listed size limit for .trk files is 5Mb). What the hell is going on with this mission? I know how to go in to the logfile and skip ahead to Mission 3, but this mission sounds like it's a lot of fun, especially with all of those rockets loaded up. What is the expected behavior, what is causing this behavior to occur, and is there anything I can do on my end to change it?

Was that the conflict where the Bunny Fighter was flown, or was that a different conflict somewhere in South Western Africa?

It would be even better if it included a bit of Sweden and maybe parts of the nearby Polish and Lithuanian coastline. This would allow for some good Cold War era missions and campaigns as well, and it would be perfect for the Viggen. For that matter, this could even be used for WWII missions along the Eastern Front. So really, this area could really allow for the entire range of DCS aircraft.

This would be especially nice in the Normandy map, given that Spitfires and other aircraft did extensive photo recon leading up to the landings and the intelligence that was gathered played a significant role in the success of the landings. So if this capability was added in some manner, it would allow for some historically realistic missions.

Perhaps you misunderstand, this thread is not about the gender of the pilot model, especially since the helmet and G-suit would pretty much obscure that anyways. What is being requested are female pilot voices over the radio. There are already many different voices in many different languages and accents depending on the nationality of the pilots involved. And as many people have pointed out that modern and historical air forces have female pilots, it seems reasonable to include those voices in DCS. And it does seem that pilot voices on the radio are considered important and substantial content: many campaigns explicitly advertise that they include custom voice acting, for example.

Also, in terms of historical accuracy, I'll just share this (Hugo Award-winning) essay by Kameron Hurley, about how depictions in movies and books and television tend to reinforce these inaccurate ideas that women rarely participate in combat: http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/ (Emphasis mine) Now, obviously this is about war in general, and not combat aviation specifically, but it goes to the general problems with how our imagination of what would be "historically accurate" is shaped by revisionist (or sometimes just lazy) depictions that simply leave out certain details, and we assume that those details just didn't exist, because we don't see them.

Also, the R-27ET and the IRST won't be affected by jamming...although by the time that you get in range to pick them up on IRST they're probably already at burn-through range. Still, I prefer the R-27ET before the merge because it seems a bit more reliable than the -ER and because it's fire-and-forget, so you can immediately begin to maneuver to avoid AMRAAMs or to anticipate the merge after you fire.

One other aspect of the Typhoon would probably make it incredibly difficult to get access to the relevant information: Eurofighter is a three-nation consortium (UK, Germany, and Italy), and the aircraft is manufactured in all three countries, there are extensive treaties and agreements on this point. So unlike a Rafale or Gripen, it is highly likely that the various systems might involve information that is classified in three different countries. Three different countries with different legal systems, I might add. This is yet another reason why I am skeptical about how much VEAO would legally have been able to include in the publicly released module. But as others have pointed out, if you want Euro-consortium aircraft, the Tornado and the Jaguar are both far more likely to have legally available data. Or if you want something more exotic, maybe someone could try to get enough data together to simulate the Israeli Lavi fighter jet, since it was never brought into service?

For what it's worth, I just ran the updater (for Open Beta) when I got home from work today, and it uodated from 1.5.7.9891 to 1.5.7.10175.378 This is the Open Beta branch, so I do not know whether this represents an update for the stable branch as well. As of yet, there are no update notes posted on the forums.

Didn't the USN use a variant of the F-16 (F-16N) for DACT? I mean, granted, they would have been using the F-16 to mimic MiG-23 and MiG-29 tactics, but still, there would have been a lot of simulated combat between the rwo aircraft.

In terms of attracting people to DCS... I agree that it's the depth and difficulty and realism that gets people to stay, but sometimes it can be little things that get people interested, or that keep them around long enough to get into the sim and far enough along the learning curve. This applies to individual modules, too. I remember when the F-5 was in development, there were a lot of posts from people who were excited about it because they lived in countries where the F-5 had been in service, for some of those countries it was one of the first modern fighter jets that they had acquired. When the module was first released, there was a massive thread where people were requesting and posting skins with the liveries of the various countries where it had served. Obviously, the meticulous attention to detail, the challenge of using its older navigation system, the level of skill required to drop bombs at the specific pitch and altitude and speed to hit the target in the absence of CCIP guidance, these are all major reasons why people are attracted to the F-5 module. But for a lot of people, the simple thrill of "we flew this in my country too!" was a big draw that got them to fly the module in the first place to introduce them to all of those other features. So I wouldn't discount the idea that having female pilot voices in the other planes in your formation might be one of those small things that makes a big difference, especially given that so many other simulators don't do that. Maybe the novelty of hearing someone who sounds like them over the radio, even if it's an AI in another plane, is the sort of refreshing thing that gets someone to stick around longer and get to know the simulator and appreciate all of those other features.

Harriet Hall was one of the USAF's first female flight surgeons, and she wrote a book about her experiences a few years ago titled Women Aren't Supposed to Fly (which is what the guy at ATC told her when she turned in her flight log after her first solo flight). She wrote about an experience that a female civilian flight instructor had one day when she called the tower to request a weather report. The first few responses she got back were variations of "it's a beautiful day, gorgeous, don't worry about it" or "why don't you have your husband call us back", until she finally had to yell at them that she was planning on taking off from a specific hangar in a specific plane on a specific runway, and they had better give her a goddamned weather report. https://www.amazon.com/Women-Arent-Supposed-Harriet-Hall-ebook/dp/B007THLSPI/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1502972207&sr=8-1&keywords=Harriet+Hall+women+aren%27t+supposed+to+fly

I know this is probably a long shot, but would there be any chance to see if Major Kim Campbell might be willing to record some of the voice tracks for an A-10C pilot? In 2003, her A-10 (not sure if it was an A or C) was hit by enemy fire while supporting ground troops over Baghdad. After sustaining damage to her engine, horizontal stabilizer, tail, and losing both primary and backup hydraulics, she managed to fly home and land safely in manual reversion mode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Campbell_(pilot) On the other hand, her Wiki article lists her as still being on active duty, so I don't know whether that would present legal/financial/logistical barriers. Still, that would certainly add realism to the sim.

I would think that it would be module-specific, if anything. I know that the A-10C features GPS navigation as well as a backup inertial navigation system. I can't remember offhand whether the Ka-50 uses GLONASS (motto: now featuring the minimum number of satellites for global coverage...until the next one fails) or if it uses an INS. The Mirage 2000C uses a very detailed INS, as does the Viggen. By contrast, some modules of older aircraft like the MiG-21, MiG-15, and F-5 use radio beacon navigation. Nav systems are going to be specific to a given aircraft, based on what would be realistic for that aircraft. I do remember one of the third-party devs mentioning something about a Garmin GPS for an upcoming module a while back, but I could be mistaken.

Yes, I've taken off with about 60% fuel load and a full set of missiles. But it took several tries to get it right, and even then it was a close thing. I'm not sure if this is because it's a WIP or if this reflects the very real fact that the Su-27 airframe was not originally designed for STOBAR.

Exactly. There are still MiG-21s and F-5s in service in some countries. If you have the airframes, and they are airworthy, then you will upgrade them and use them until you have something better. Even in the USA, the A-6 and A-7 served in both Vietnam and Desert Storm, and the EA-6B variant is still in use. The other thing is, I'm not sure that we're likely to see a lot of combat between air superiority fighters. Air combat is more likely to be along the lines of the recent Hornet shootdown of the Syrian Fitter or the Turkish Falcon shootdown of the Russian Fencer. And when we do see engagements between air superiority fighters, it's likely to be between fighters of different generations, similar to the combat between Israeli Mirage IIIs vs Egytian and Syrian MiG-19s, or Israeli F-15s vs Syrian MiG-21s. Warfare isn't like a sporting event where you test your skills against the best the other side has to offer in an equally-matched setting. As Sun Tzu pointed out millenia before aircraft existed, the objective in warfare is to set the time, place, and circumstances of the battle ahead of time so that victory is assured before you engage the enemy.

Just out of curiousity, when/if the modders add concrete to the runways, will that have any effect on takeoffs and landings and wheel behavior? Or would it only be a cosmetic effect?

This seems to have forced it to torrent the normandy terrain files (4.4 GB), and I assume it will ask me for my key after that. Hopefully the CLI command for the asset pack will work too, I'll try that once the map is done. You almost certainly need to sticky this in the forum, and probably add it to the announcement page on tne website, and you may wish to send out a second newsletter email, because not everyone is going to go digging through forum posts. And presumably (and privately), ED will be having a meeting to discuss how the hell this bug made it through QA. Obviously rushing out a patch at the moment would likely make things worse and mosre confusing, so I get why the CLI is the best way to handle it, but that's not going to be intuitively obvious.

Tried again, now it's torrenting the update files, must have been server load issue

Here's my update log from a moment ago: === Log opened UTC 2017-05-26 16:24:48 INFO : DCS_Updater/2.6.21.16 (Windows NT 10.0.14393; Win64; en-US) INFO : cmdline: "C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World 2 OpenAlpha\bin\DCS_updater.exe" --apply update C:\Users\Noach\AppData\Local\Temp\DCS.openalpha\update_info.json 2.1.0.5677.215 STATUS: Initializing... INFO : basedir: C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World 2 OpenAlpha INFO : sourcetag: nevada INFO : dcs_variant.txt: openalpha INFO : DCS/2.0.5.3889.199 (x86_64; EN; WORLD,NEVADA_terrain,KA-50,A-10C,FC3,UH-1H,MIG-21BIS,CA,MIG-15BIS,P-51D,F15C-REDFLAG_campaign,A10C-REDFLAG_campaign,RAZBAM_M-2000C,F-5E,F-86F,AJS37,SPITFIRE-MKIX) INFO : branch: openalpha INFO : Got reply from http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com STATUS: Verifying cached version info... STATUS: Downloading version info... ERROR: Conection to server 'srv4update.digitalcombatsimulator.com' failed: Timeout was reached ERROR: Servers are unable to complete your request. Please, try again later. === Log closed.

Ok, now the updater offered me the updare to 2.1, but when I clicked yes. I got a message "Servers are unable to complete your request. Please, try again later." As far as I know, this should be srv4

Negative, srv4 is still replying that 2.0.5 is latest version

If you read back a few pages, several of us have already tried that. I even tried using the command prompt with the new version number and it says it isn't available yet. The problem is most likely with certain ED update servers. One possibility is that they've uploaded the new installation, but the PHP update script still points to 2.0.5.3889.199 as the latest version when queried. Another possibility is that someone tried to put on the new version but put 2.0.x.xxxx.xxx instead of 2.1.x.xxxx.xxx

No. Just...no. 2.6 refers to the version of the updater file. As for the Normandy update, you should not need early access, but you do need to have DCS World 2 installed. Today the DCS World 2 installations should update to 2.1 with the Normandy map

Akkkk, I'm glad I backed up that file before deleting it. I stopped the download, returned the file to the folder, and I ran the repair tool