Mistermann

Straight from Reflected himself ...

Having the same problem. Thanks for documenting the fix! There's still newbs to the Mustang in 2022 running into the same defects as the rest of you did years ago. Couldn't figure out why my HOTAS mapping wouldn't update properly. NOW I understand ... there's different input directories for the different airframes. Not intuitively obvious to this Jet/Heli guy.

It is a game changer. At least it was for me, @Reflected. The cramped feeling I get when in the Mustang cockpit in VR "feels" right. Its almost as though I don't fit. The immersion level, for me, just doesn't compare to 2D. The graphics are not as crisp as 2D, but that's more a function of the headset technology. I run a relatively old headset (Rift-S) and will upgrade when the higher end prices come down a bit. Don't get me wrong, the VR graphics are convincing. So much so that my body got motion sick for a bit the first few times I played in VR. The sensation of movement is real for me. 100% agree. Reflected sets the campaign bar extremely high. If you fly the Huey, I can't recommend Paradise Lost enough. Let's just say this - I am getting into Warbirds and basing my entry on availability of Campaigns from Reflected. ED should take note. I am purchasing Normandy+Assets (bundle) + Mustang+Channel (bundle) just to experience these aircraft through the "eyes" of Reflected. I will also be purchasing the Jug and Spit using the same process.

Thanks for documenting this @Mud - there's always new people to the airframe and this time, I am the one. Most appreciated.

Did this offer end, @Reflected? When I click the download link in the OP, I get this

Thank you, Sir! It never ceases to amaze me, the talent and passion within this community!

Thanks @Ala13_ManOWar - Just downloaded the P-51 on free trial. Appreciate the advice.

I find this discussion fascinating. I have been a Eagle Dynamics customer since the early days of the Flanker series in the mid-90's. I have yet to get into warbirds (yet, I am a fan of the period and love those classic airframes). That being said, I am torn with where to start my Warbird journey. I am leaning towards the Mustang or the Jug. I know these aircraft play very different roles, so I am mentally comparing apples and bananas .... but, this topic has my wheels turning. Do I purchase the most recent creation that's likely benefitted from all the coding come before it (P47) or go with the original creation (P51) that has a bit of a reputation for being abandoned? That's for me to determine, but hearing/reading these debates does add uncertainty that my simulation $$$ goes further with the Jug. Maybe I wait for that $15 sale on the Mustang

Okay -I've got 4 missions under my belt and have some additional feedback/opinions. This is coming from a Huey player's perspective. I just finished Reflected's incredible Huey Campaign last weekend and admit my experience with MAD is impacted by that masterpiece. Subsequent missions also suffer from this limitation. The player is expected to fly to waypoints. There is no navigational assistance here outside of heading and distance. The F10 map shows you where you are, but without WP information on the Map itself finding where you are becomes frustrating. There are some objectives with smoke, but not always. There are also some objectives with ADF capabilities. This is compounded by all the radio chatter and walls of text on the screen. For me, as a VR player, I also don't have the luxury (or desire) to use secondary screens with briefing or nav aides. If I decide to continue this campaign, I may opt to create custom kneeboards for each mission showing whatever images are in the PDF mission writeup. Why are you turning on the battery with your startup script? If I am going to cold start this bird, please let me do it in the proper order. Or maybe explain why we enter the heli and your mission turns this on, please. To this player, the amount of information coming at me is overwhelming. Especially when the bulk of it isn't necessary. Pausing the game and reviewing message history becomes tedious and immersion breaking. Again, in VR I have no way of writing things down, so looking for courses and distances or instructions on what to do is getting me frustrated. There are some missions where you aren't told what to do in the briefing and get instructions in air. Marking the F10 map with a marker showing where to go would make like a LOT easier, I suspect. The wall of text should be corrected, IMHO. There are times when 3 actors are speaking with one another. The entire conversation is displayed at once and often takes up a large portion of the DCS dialog box on screen. Trying to follow visually and audibly while also trying to fly results in this guy losing track of the conversation. Yes, my "western ears" play a role here as some of the dialog is spoken with accents foreign to my listening patterns. I know this is a "me problem". I think this is worth noting however for those not accustomed to Russian accents where the on screen dialog, and how its presented to the player, becomes more important for understanding. It doesn't. At least not with any consistency that I've seen through 4 missions. This factor is compounded when the scripting expects the player to remain on the "happy path". For instance, in mission 3 and 4 Lastly - and this isn't Stone's fault, rather he's a victim of circumstance here. Playing as a Russian mercenary pilot in a world where tactical nukes were deployed feels wrong in the Spring of 2022. For me, it isn't a deal breaker. But, as a factor among the other concerns I've listed, adds to my emotional frustration with the overall campaign. At this point, I am going to put this campaign on the shelf. The problems I've had with the campaign (regardless of setting), overshadow the good that Stone put in here. I KNOW there were months of hard work put into this campaign. Hopefully these observations assist anyone considering a purchase of MAD. Also - if I am missing something key regarding navigation and how the designer intended Huey players to play, I am all open ears here.

The campaign is awesome. See reviews over in the dedicated forum.

Based on what I've read/heard from real Huey Vietnam pilots they never used the wipers. Apparently the wipers scratched the windscreen something terrible.

I'd like to propose additional behavior of the message history option on the pause menu. First off, thanks for creating this behavior. It is a lifesaver for me as a VR user. When I pause the sim, the pause menu appears and I select the Messages History button. Which brings up this screen This is perfect. BUT ... when I press the "CLOSE" button, I am returned to the cockpit with the sim still PAUSED. This means I have to press ESC again, move the mouse to "RESUME" and select it. Might I suggest this quality of life improvement? Add a button to the left of "CLOSE" that reads "RESUME" or "CLOSE & RESUME" or something of the nature. Pressing it, closes the Message History window and returns the player to the cockpit with the sim UNPAUSED. Thanks for considering this change.

Just finished mission one in the campaign. I enjoyed it. Thanks for putting this together, @STONE SKY. Too early for overall feedback holistically, but here are a few thoughts after playing the Huey in mission1. - Are there FM directional beacons on the map (or inserted onto ground vehicles)? It would be nice to use directional homing in the Huey for navigation. Thankfully the f10 map isn't disabled, so I can use dead reckoning to navigate, but I much prefer FM homing for that type of thing if possible. Took me a little fumbling around to find my way back home. Fortunately there's a HUGE lake nearby and a Dam. - I got confused during the startup sequence. At some point you put up a message that says auto-start. It made me think you were starting the helicopter for us. I sat there and once I saw no dials/switches moving I figured it out. Also, your startup sequence must do something with the controls because the low RPM alarm goes off shortly after entering the cockpit. It appears that you're turning on the Battery for some reason? That also added to my confusion that you were auto starting the Huey. - There is a LOT of dialog happening. I wasn't really sure what was flavor text/background and what I absolutely needed to comprehend. Fortunately we now have the message history option, so I could go back and read things a second time to determine what I needed to know (in VR, stopping the game to read message history isn't ideal, but its better than nothing). This is especially important as the Huey doesn't have any waypoint/route features. Not sure how to solve this. Maybe a beep or some audible queue to indicate something important is about to come? I've seen this employed in other campaigns and it worked well (Paradise Lost). - The text of the spoken voiceovers appears all at once, not as each individual speaker is speaking. This means a wall of text shows up and I have to interpret it as its being spoken. It would be nice to delay those text messages until the speaker starts speaking each line. If could also reduce information overload a bit, I suspect. - The voiceovers are great. As a western player, I am not accustomed to the accents, BUT it was fun to hear and be immersed in the story because of it. I am glad you found English speaking "Russian" voice actors. Thank you. - For the first mission, you used flares and smoke very well. Thank you. Given my confusion, it wasn't entirely clear what I was supposed to be doing. Hopefully this continues throughout the campaign. - I rarely, if ever, play on the RED team. It was neat, as a change of pace, to see Warsaw pact equipment on "my side". Flying in formation with the KA-50 was a highlight. - Landing back at base was fun (once I found it). The MI-8 decided to take up the entire LZ. I managed to land okay, but it got a little dicey. Maybe this was your intent? I had a blast swinging in behind that big chopper and setting down behind it as it was descending to land. More to come as I continue playing.

Earlier in this thread - BigNewy himself stated it.

Yet there IS an official solution. Its working as designed. Still waiting for the official screen shots that we were told were coming soon. But the word back from @BIGNEWY seemed clear to me - the positioning is exactly what ED designed.

Amen! There's a ton of work that went into this. I love it. @Grimm, I echo @Baaz here as well.

You can pickup troops that you dropped off (or spawned from APCs) so you don't have to go all the way back to Batumi. I had to get the information from Grimm on his discord as I thought F1. was unloading or "extracting" troops from the Huey. No, it means unload from the Huey or extract from the AO.

Are you saying this campaign continues, but only for those with the JF-17? I haven't purchased this campaign yet. I am considering it, however. Thanks.

Yeah, very impressive what those guys did. A sequel? Nice! Can't wait. BTW, how did you change the huey to behave that way? What ME or LUA magic did you conjure?

Try this thread

I updated the title of this thread to reflect the content a bit better. I changed it to "I loved this campaign - Blown Away" Today I finished the campaign and have to say that the story and experience because of it will stay with me for quite some time. @Reflected has a real gem here and those reading this likely already know that. My initial feelings after experiencing the intro, continued throughout the entire campaign. I remain blown away by this campaign. Experiencing it in VR was the icing on the cake. Bravo Reflected! I few elements of feedback – just this guy’s opinion - Recorded soundtracks (not Voiceovers, but music) sometimes were too soft. I tried replacing the Armed Forces Radio tracks with moderate success, but my replacement was also soft. I suspect this is a DCS “feature”. For instance, I never heard the Flight of the Valkyries in the last mission at all. I caught it in @lankypilot77 replay on YouTube. I fear I might have missed some of the historical audio tracks upon landing as well. - For the record … I absolutely HATED the underpowered Huey’s performance . For several missions, I thought the campaign had over-nerfed the engine. Watching EGT constantly flirt with the redline became a chore. Taking off trading speed for lift seemed overly taxing and really impacted the fun of those missions – to me. Just before mission 11, I found this video from Reflected where he explains the historical facts around the underpowered gunships and actual pilot experiences. Having those historical details outlined in a video like this really helped me mentally “get over” my issues with performance (I wish I had known more about this underpowered Huey when receiving my assignment to Gunships). I was able to takeoff better after watching this video. For future versions of the campaign, I recommend a link to that video in the briefing or special kneeboard page or something. If you already had that somewhere, I missed it. - LankyPilot’s YT channel was a great resource for me. I’d complete the mission and then go over to his channel and check out how he approached it. It was fun to experience the campaign through his eyes, but only after I flew it. I definitely learned a thing or two that way. It was also nice to see him struggle in many of the same places I did. For instance, I had to chuckle while watching his mission 11 replay. It took me a LONG time to find the downed Huey. I’d fly over Dublin on a 270° heading and just look for smoke - probably took me 4 circuits to find it. As players, we were conditioned throughout most of the campaign to look for smoke for most mission objectives. I finally found the Huey when I stopped looking for smoke. Lanky had a similar experience and during his video actually flew by the wreck a couple of times looking for smoke too . Experiencing the campaign this way was very rewarding. I highly recommend it. Lastly Reflected’s research into the period paid off as the player is transported back in time and into an engaging story. I really felt I was living out a portion of "Apocalypse Now", "Platoon" or "Full Metal Jacket" that simply never saw the big screen. I was immersed, I cared about the characters, felt the emotion when reading letters from home, and was holistically drawn into the world Reflected created. Great job, Reflected! Unfortunately, for me, all future campaigns will be judged against this masterpiece. You set the bar unbelievably high. Future campaign creators should all play this to see how its done! I know you’re a warbird guy at heart. Thanks for branching out and creating this Huey campaign for us!

I don't think so. I communicated with him via email and he indicated he played DCS a bit. I just don't know if he's around here. Let me see if I still have address information.

Have you seen this mod for the TWCS? One of the single best modifications I've ever done. Highly recommended. If you greased the rails already, you've already got the battle won - figuring out how to open and manipulate the throttle is the biggest challenge.

Okay .... this is what I would try. I just did a mission on Paradise Lost that resulted in these entries in the logbook [17] = { ["datetime"] = "Fri Apr 1 08:57:37 2022", ["aaKills"] = 0, ["agKills"] = 11, ["stage"] = 10, ["deathsCount"] = 0, ["result"] = 100, ["mission"] = "Paradise Lost - 08.miz", }, -- end of [17] [18] = { ["stage"] = 11, ["mission"] = "Paradise Lost - 09.miz", }, -- end of [18] I'd change your logbook to add the ["result"] line like this. [1] = { ["datetime"] = "Thu Mar 31 10:22:28 2022", ["result"] = 100, ["aaKills"] = 2, ["agKills"] = 0, ["deathsCount"] = 0, ["stage"] = 1, ["result"] = 100, ["mission"] = "Eviction Notice.miz", }, -- end of [1] I THINK that sets the mission to complete. Then add the following entry right after the } with the comment "end of [1]" and before end of ["history"] [2] = { ["stage"] = 2, ["mission"] = "NAME OF THE SECOND MISSION.miz", }, -- end of [2] Remember to backup your logbook before messing with the LUA. Give that a whirl.

Looks great! Thanks!!!