311Gryphon

Don't they round up (or down) and truncate the last digit for runways though? So if the actual runway is pointed 125° they'll call it runway 13? I could be wrong and it may have no bearing on the actual discussion.

Okay, thanks, Wolf. He's hosting so I'll have him load up the missions in the editor and change the skins. It should be easy enough, there are just a lot of missions to do that for. Thanks again.

I don't know the actual answer to this but sometimes cameras don't catch muzzle flash. I would think that the muzzle flash on a 30mm would be large enough (and it is firing fast enough) that the frame rate of the camera doesn't matter, so I have to assume something else is going on here. However, with typical guns, even fully automatic small arms, the camera often never catches the muzzle flash. I shoot a lot of video of small arms shooting and I'd estimate that when shooting 60 fps we get 1 out of ever 10-15 muzzle flashes caught on video in regular lighting. That rate seems to go up in low light. Still, I have to assume that a wicked fast 30mm cannon would show up more if it were there.

Someone else will have better information than I do about this; but yes I think your wingman is giving information based on either your current position or his (I have always assumed it was his but only because I can't give that information based on my wingman's location and instead have to use my own). The AWACS I think has always given me information based on the bullseye location but that may not be correct. There is a way to set an offset in the CDU. The guide is here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=72101 This is one of the better tutorials I've dealt with. WarriorX does some good stuff.

There was a layered .psd file that I downloaded somewhere (don't recall where and I can't find it) that only had the main texture and the tail texture. Thanks, I see the cover now. That makes sense and I think I have it more or less textured the way I want it now. I've got all my textures listed in the .lua with false and all the ones I'm using stock textures of as true, so that should be fine. But when I go into the mission editor and select my skin, then play the mission it just has the regular Air Cav UH-1 skin. So I'm not sure what's up. I would expect to see missing textures if I messed up a line. I'll keep messing with it. Thanks for your help.

So if a friend and I are flying missions together, the only way we can use our custom skins is to open each mission in the editor and change the skin of the planes, then save the mission? Bummer. I was hoping for a default .lua or .cfg file or something. Thanks.

Awesome! This thread makes me smile! Good group of flyers here!

The P-38 was a disaster early on. The P-51 was a disaster when the recommended powerplant wasn't used. In fact, a great many of the most famous aircraft in the world almost failed completely due to these "disasters". Some that failed were probably very close to being legendary aircraft. It's just how it happens. Too true and thanks for pointing this out.

Thank you, I want to know the answer to that as well. I'm hoping there is some way to set a "default skin" to use. That would be AWESOME!

Good form, FZG_Immel! +Rep!

Can you enter the Mission Editor for a campaign or single mission though? This is the question I have. I can change the skin in the Mission Editor for a mission I've created but can I change the skin for a pre-made mission?

I've dowloaded this because 1) I like cool skins and lots of options and 2) I like to reskin the air frames myself and look to other nice designs to help me learn how. First of all...nice skin and excellent work. Keep it up! Second....mine did not work at all. My first problem stemmed from the PSD file only having 2 texture files in it (the main body and the tail) while the UH-1 model has many more files. Since many of those are the pilot, gunner, and weapon files that's okay. But what is the "cover" file? It looks like control surfaces or stabilizers? What about the first 4 lines of .lua file? Are those damaged files for when the Huey takes damage at different levels? That seems to be the case but I'm just not sure. More importantly, when I did copy my textures into my folder in the "liveries" folder they don't show up in the game. It perplexes me because I also don't get the orange "missing texture" look that I get on the A-10 if I mess up the .lua file or don't save the textures in the proper place. The UH-1 just looks like one of the normal UH-1 skins. It's the dark green Air Cav skin I guess. If I put the names in the .lua incorrectly or put a "true" or a "false" in when it should have been the other, I would get an orange skin, right? That's what confuses me the most. Anyway, thanks for your skin. It has helped me a bit looking at your textures and your .lua file. I have a couple of A-10C skins that worked out so I figured this would be almost the same and either it isn't or I've just messed something up that I can't find.

I use the right throttle and invert the axis. This makes it so you push forward on the right throttle to lower the collective and pull back on the throttle to raise it. I'm wondering if I can map the left throttle to the actual chopper throttle. I'm sure I can but I left it at the Page Up and Page Down buttons last night while playing for the first time.

I'm stoked about it. I know it's a bloated program in real life but that's no reason for me not to enjoy it. Ever since I first saw the pictures of the F-35 I've loved it. I'm an old F-16 fan and even though the F-22 is a sexy beast, something about the F-35 really appeals to me. So anyway, I can't wait to see more on this and this is the first proposed module that I've been ready to fork over money for TODAY. I was talked into A-10C by a friend and I love it, but I wasn't going to buy it without some provocation. THIS I'll buy.

I agree. More airframes is a nice option. Not that I personally want to have a Cessna module or an Airbus module, but it would be nice to have more options for AI craft.

It's tough. I bought it last night and did the cold start tutorial and then (awkwardly) lifted off and flew around a bit. If you can fly any other aircraft in DCS you'll be able to fly the Huey. Landing was my issue but I'm sure I'll learn it. I literally just did the cold start then flew around and tried to land. It was sloppy but it's doable. I should add that I do have the TM Warthog and I set my right throttle to the collective (with reversed axis) so that seems to make it a bit easier to handle the various controls.

NICE! I like touch screens. I use one on a machine at my work and if I use it for long enough I start touching my desktop PC when I get back to my desk as if it's going to help. I've often thought about how great it would be to fly a jet that had a touch screen with an intuitive data flow/operating system. That would be sweet.

No worries and I hope I haven't come across as argumentative. I didn't intend it that way. This dialogue has helped me understand your point and I think I get it now. I can see the multiplayer being very annoying. I don't play multiplayer except with a friend of mine in co-op missions, one because I don't enjoy playing with people I don't know (sometimes it is fine but too often I find myself in servers with people who forgot they were new to the game once too) and because I don't feel qualified enough yet to go fly with other people. But yes, I can see that being a bit annoying especially when you get stepped on every time you try to communicate, or their radio communications are so far removed from being brief and concise and informative that they might as well not say anything (another reason I just use a Ventrillo server and only fly with my friend so far). Also, I have two kids as well and I know what you mean by limited time. That makes it all the more frustrating when what little time you can spend playing isn't as enjoyable as you intended. I've got no problems with people wanting to just jump in and fly. I wish that people would use some consideration and try their best NOT to get in other people's way though. And I can certainly understand the people who are somewhere in between a new flyer and an ace and don't use large portions of the systems (that's me - toward the bottom end of that). I would say that if your knowledge is limited but you can get the plane off the ground without taxiing into someone else, and you can communicate halfway decently with good information in a somewhat concise format, and you can employ guided weapons with any degree of reliability...then you can fly with real people in a server. You don't need to know how to fly a traffic pattern necessarily. You don't need to know how to refuel in mid-air. You don't necessarily need to know how to get the ground crew to rearm you (but it's handy). You really don't even need to know how to mess with the CDU (also handy). So there is a lot that people don't need to know before they can get online and have fun, they just have to realize their knowledge is limited and use it as a good place to learn from other people, and they need to be respectful. I think that may be the solid, "in between" ground. Happy flying man and I'll leave you alone now.

komemiute: I'm not getting into an online pissing contest with you about who's a pilot and who's not. I'm not. I took ground school a decade ago and passed the test but couldn't afford flight lessons (it was an elective in college). I wanted to be in the Air Force but decided against it. I'm not a pilot at all. And I fly it mostly like a game although I try to use the A-10C correctly in so far as I have the knowledge and ability to do so. It's just like my other hobby which happens to be shooting. I love shooting guns and I shoot a lot. Shooting long range doesn't make me a sniper because actual sniping involves a lot of boredom and a lot of discomfort. More than just shooting long range. But if I got on a game forum about Sniper Elite V2 or sniping in ARMA or something like that and started getting elitist about how most of the people doing it don't know how the Coriolis Effect works, don't know the actual trajectory of a 7.62 X 51 bullet, can't make a wind call, don't know how to range a target as a spotter, and don't want to sit around for 3 hours in the game waiting on a target...I'd probably get booted from the forum. The only difference is that those aren't study sims so your point still stands, some. I actually agree with you a bit. People should NOT piss on a project just because they don't like it or it isn't 100% realistic. So I definitely agree with you on that. I also noticed (after my initial response to you) that your point could be taken either way. I don't think I'm the only one who picked the wrong way but that is another reason I hate the internet. It's just hard to see certain perspectives. Anyway, it appears that you're telling people to slow down on judging a module that may not be as realistic as A-10C. That I also agree with. I'd like as much realism as possible even if I never use it. I'll probably never use every bit of realism in A-10C. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I have other things to worry about and in the meantime I'll just learn what I can. I think my main caution is against elitism. It drives people away and kills conversations. That clearly is not your intent and I think most of what I saw as elitism was actually a misunderstanding, but the caution remains. A lot of us see our time in the sim and our money that we spent on controls and we start feeling good about ourselves and that can be a problem. Thanks.

Well, to be fair, if a person is going to go out and buy $621.00 (US) for USED flight controls and TrackIR just to get the most out of a flight simulator then they are going to want to get as much as they can out of those controls. Sure you don't have to buy those controls, but bare minimum I was looking at spending roughly $280.00 for controls just so I could fly the A-10C with some kind of decency. That's a lot of money. Additionally, most gaming software is purchased at once. A one time cost is usually the way those things go, or at worst you'll have to pay for a few expansion packs unless you wait for them to all be bundled. With these modules, you're paying $40 a pop for a single aircraft unless you wait for sales. Most of us have no problem with that because let's face it, the same amount of work (or more) is put into each module to make it as accurate as possible and we don't mind paying for that accuracy. We want to support the developers while also enjoying the simulations that we chose to buy. So my point is this: even if we don't want to file a mission plan we still want as much realism as possible. Because we're spending as much or more money per module than we would for entire games from other developers and most of us have a metric ass load of money invested in controls to make it more enjoyable. So what if we don't access all of the realism. It is there for us to access when we're ready for it, if we so choose. If we do not choose to access it, we still paid for the module so who cares? I would not have spent so much money on controls for a 25% simulator, and I would not at all even consider paying $40, or even $20 for a 25% module unless I was getting an entire game with a lot of different planes and weapons in it. I'm not trying to be rude or argumentative, but I just want to point out that the community is varied and the more people that contribute to the community, the better it will be. We're lucky that we have real life A-10 users who contribute to this community. But we're also lucky to have (almost) average gamers contributing too. You need both for a study sim community and it's awesome that a guy like me can jump in a fairly realistic A-10C and actually do something in it and at the same time someone who knows more about it than I do can jump in theirs and use it more effectively, utilizing more of the systems and components. PEACE.

Right on. Buy it if you wish to, don't buy it if you don't wish to.

I think his point was simply that real world explosions often have fireballs too, not that Hollywood and real life explosions are more or less equal. It is fairly obvious in most movies and TV shows that the method for creating said fireball is completely different than what happens in a real world explosion, so the fireballs in movies definitely don't look right. They usually are much larger than they should be, they usually involve too much fire and not enough smoke, dust, debris, etc (except the obvious debris placed conspicuously for the purpose of being thrown through the air to make it look "cool") as you pointed out, and they usually either have too much force or not enough depending on if the good guys or the bad guys are in the vicinity of the explosion.

WOW, Boris, thanks for sharing that. I've tried to watch that movie before but just couldn't. What's NOT wrong in that clip? It's like they looked at everything that was correct and deliberately did the opposite.

Yeah I usually use the laser when I'm setting up a SPI but I'm not sure if that happened when my flight lead set his SPI or if it would have mattered. We'll play with it a bit. Thanks.

Thanks everyone. This gives me a TON of good information to go play with and see if I can get a little knowledgeable about the systems. Shagrat, the pitot heat is undoubtedly my problem with the stall warning. I usually flip that on as soon as I'm on the runway just before spool up but that time I was a bit frustrated with some issues we had getting started and I forgot. Once I got in the air I never thought about it again. I'll work with area track mode and see if that helps. The only times my SPI has been thrown off like that is in mountainous areas so I have no doubt you're on to something there. Kaiza, good tip. I'll just drop a markpoint from now on. Thanks again to everyone. I suspect that this covers my issues from the last flight!