howie87

Great to see some work actually being done! Good stuff.

Yep. Clock speed seems pretty important. I'm running a sandy bridge 2500k at 4GHz which is still fine. Whatever CPU you get, stick a decent cooler on it and OC that sucker. Makes a big difference in unit heavy missions.

Why are you trying to land on a steep surface anyway? The 'pushing the stick in the direction of the hill' thing is quite normal and due to ground affect lifting that side of the heli more than the 'downhill' side.

Was that the official update?

When was this "Valve type update police" statement made by ED?

EDGE is supposed to support SLI. It was also supposed to be released before 2014 and we haven't heard a peep about it since early January. Just another example of everything being 'subject to change'... Sigh.

You know you're addicted when you're reading ED forums over your girlfriend's shoulder...

As far as the internal issues go, I'm as curious as anyone else. After all, who doesn't love a bit of wild speculation. The most important thing though is that the MiG-21 is back on track. If we never find out what really went on, I don't even care as long as we get an awesome product at the end of all this.

Well... somebody had to say it! Thought I'd beat everyone to the punch.

When you HOLD TMS down it will reset your SPI to the Steer Point. Tapping TMS down will perform different functions depending on SOI.

"UNLESS something unforseen by us happens, this bird will hit the DCS skies this very same year" Always read the small print... or in this case the CAPITALISED FOR EMPHASIS :D

Don't we all just want Nevada and a multirole fighter? I couldn't care less about tanks. Kinda tired of DCS going all WW2, watered down FC3 and ground combat on us. I know some guys will be thrilled about this but I'm definitely not one of them.

I've found stabbing the throttle while flipping the mixture lever between idle cutoff and run usually gets her going. If that fails, mixture to idle cutoff straight away, leave it about 15 seconds so you don't burn out the starter motor, prime for a few seconds and try again. Just practice shutting down the engine and getting it up and running a few times on the ground. Oh, and don't flip the mixture to run until she starts to catch. It's a dark art! In a cessna you can just pump the throttle a few times instead of priming if the engine is still warm but this doesn't seem to work in DCS.

You're actually use the TGP to create mark points on your CDU. You should then switch the CDU to mark point mode, select mark point A and press China hat aft long to slave your TGP to the steerpoint. Alternatively you could press TMS down long to set your steerpoint as the SPI and then press China hat forward long to slave all your senors (including TGP and Mavs) to that SPI. Please read my comment above regarding the autolase failure and possible causes.

*Howie's TGP 101* The flashing A means the TGP is in Area track mode but within a few degrees of being masked if I remember correctly. In Point track mode you'll get a flashing P instead. Obviously when it's in inertial track mode (INR) you can't fire the laser because there is no line of sight (it's blocked by the fuselage/stores). This might be the cause of the autolase failure Area mode is for tracking stationary targets, Point will track a moving target. If you get an autolase failure, clear the warning with TMS left then manoeuvre the aircraft until you get a solid P or A and hold the NWS button to fire manually (or set latch on and press to toggle the laser on/off). Also make sure your TGP is set to either BOTH or (L)aser. IR mode will not work. A flashing L symbol means the laser is firing. I think being too low can also generate an autolase failure if the lase time is set to longer than the bombs time of fall.

As of the latest version Jammers DO work in DCS and both pods have different weight and drag profiles, as in real life. Their functionally remains the same however so I always take the 184 due to it being slicker and lighter. Both are self protection jammers so they will only work if you are actually being locked up by a radar. I believe semi auto CMS mode selects the correct program automatically but it must then be activated with the CMS down command. Full auto mode selects AND activates the program. In manual you must select the correct program using the front panel and activate it manually. Activating the jammer will cause the front panel to display ORP (operating). It will then attempt to cause any radars to drop their lock. As soon as this is achieved the jammer will switch itself off again. The programs are as follows: AIR - Program to counter most air-to-air radars. SAM1 - Program to counter older-generation SAM systems like SA-3, SA-6 and SA-8. SAM2 - Program to counter newer-generation SAM systems like 2S6, SA-16, SA-11, SA-10, and SA-15. AAA - Program to counter radar-directed gun systems like ZSU-23-4 and ZU-23.

Short story is you don't. Just look at what the wind is doing and take a guess. I don't mess around with wind settings in the CDU.

Yeah, the AMD card prices do seem a bit high at the moment due the mining craze although they seem to be much more expensive releative to Nvida across the other side of the pond as opposed to here in Europe. I think DCS is at the point now where the game engine is actually the limiting factor. Myself and several of my squadron buddies have recently upgraded from 500 series to 700 series cards and although we have been able to increase graphics settings to maximum, our overall frame rates are largely similar to what they were before. It seems that CPU speed might now be the bottleneck. Hopefully this will change with EDGE and we'll be able to offload more of that work to our GPU's.

Personally I hope more people do buy AMD cards but when I looked, an R9 280X was £240. This was more expensive than my 770 for pretty much the same performance. I was tempted for the extra gig of vram and upcoming Mantle support, but as I've always had Nvidia cards I just didn't want to make the switch. Especially with people saying DCS generally runs better on Nvidia cards. I'd love to see some DCS benchmarks from somebody with a 7970 or 280x though. By the way, this is from a Forbes article which includes oboard GPU's in CPU's (hence why Intel and AMD are actually doing quite well). Here’s how total graphics market share looks for Q4 2013: AMD: 20.7% Nvidia: 16.3% Intel: 62.9%

I realised the other day that I've never bought an AMD card. I've always had Nvidia cards since I bought a Riva TNT 2 off a friend in the early 2000's. The only bad one I ever had was an FX5200 (cheap and rubbish). After that I think they pretty much hit a home run with every series up to the 400 Fermi's which weren't much faster than the 200 series and the 480 ran hot and loud. As they were the first DX11 cards though, they were alright. I have to say that I'm dissapointed in the 700 series though. The 780Ti should have come out instead of the Titan for ~£500 and the regular 780 should have been released soon after for around £320 in my opinion. All Nvidia have done with the 700 series is create a new 'ultra enthusiast' tier and delayed the launch of their regular flagship cards. I remember when the top, fully unlocked card running the fastest clocks cost around £450 and the slightly cut down version was around £300. Now it's £800(Titan) and £550(780Ti). Thanks Nvidia. Because of this I have bought a GTX 770, which is really the last generation flagship 680 with a slight over clock. Still, for £216 I felt the price was reasonable.

Fair enough. I'm always partial to a bit of AAR though so I'd probably leave mine on! When we get this bird and if it's at the same level of detail as the other DCS aircraft, I'll never want to land it!

I'd much rather have something more modern than a variant of the Mustang. Give me a multirole fighter though and you can have whatever you want! Saying that, I can't see it happening. With all the WW2 stuff on it's way already I'm hoping that ED will shift their focus onto the Vietnam era and beyond. We have choppers, we have ground pounders and we'll soon have a decent selection of warbirds. What DCS really needs is new terrain and a nice selection of fast jets (and no, FC3 doesn't count).

Haha. Some great Chinese whispers going on in here!

Definitely the warthog. I've had one for a year now and only just upgraded from a 560Ti to a GTX 770. The warthog was without a doubt the bigger upgrade for DCS. Maybe IF (I've stopped saying when) EDGE comes out things might be different.

Ah well, no bonus for me even though I own everything. On the bright side, I had my discounts in the sales and there's nothing left for me to buy now anyway. WE WANT EDGE! WE WANT NEVADA! WE WANT DCS:F/A-18C!