lmp

AFAIK employing ATGMs in the Hind is very much a two person job. The pilots needs to keep the target within a rather tight angle off boresight throughout the flight of the missile. We seem to have a few people here quite knowledgeable about the Hind, feel free to correct me if I'm getting something wrong. Thus I don't think the AI gunner will just "fire at will" - rather that he will wait for a confirmation from the commander that the target is correct and that the commander is ready. I do think that there should be an option to disable the AI crew, but I also do believe that it should be able to work each of the roles to enable us to experience the Hind in SP to the fullest extent possible.

I would say the entire Fast Mission Generator should be greatly expanded. Who knows, maybe with the dynamic campaign engine they'll redo this feature as well, I can see how there's a lot of shared functionality.

If you can be precise enough with the throttle and stick to refuel, you'll be golden. I found that being able to fly warbirds well, particularly the trickier ones like the Spit and 109, is another good indication that you'll be able to fly DCS helicopters with what you have just fine.

How are the pots holding up on all axes? No spiking? If they're good, you should be fine. I flew my first couple dozen hours in the Huey using that stick. Then I ditched it because of pot spiking and got the t.16000m, which has a similar build quality save for using hall sensors instead of pots, and flew a few hundred hours in the Mi-8 and didn't feel like the stick was limiting me much. Do you have a separate throttle? That could possibly be the weakest part of the Logitech and I would be hesitant to recommend the Mi-8 if you're gonna use the one on the stick, but the Mi-24 will perhaps depend less on precise collective control because of the type of flying you will be doing.

I think the problem is less with fragmentation damage simulation and more with the rudimentary ground unit AI. The AI doesn't panic under fire but also doesn't disperse, take cover, fight back effectively. This decreases the effectiveness of area effect weaponry and at the same time increases the effectiveness of PGMs. You can't force an enemy to retreat with rocket attacks, which is bad, but you can park your Kamov a few kms behind the front line and plink away a whole company of tanks with Vikhrs, which is even worse. Sure, a better damage model would perhaps allow for a few mission or mobility kills here and there, but the real strength of tactical aviation is not it's amazing killing potential (particularly against armour the effectiveness of air attacks has been routinely and greatly overestimated) but rather the tactical and psychological effect it has on the troops.

@AvroLanc You focus a lot on the roles the Mi-24 was designed to fulfill, but that's not what it ended up doing and what it became famous for. There was no World War 3 in Europe, but there were numerous local conflicts and counter insurgency operations where the Mi-24 was utilised extensively, often in quite creative ways. We can draw inspiration from these conflicts, especially since our Caucasus and Syria maps recreate the areas where some of them took place. Escorting convoys or Mi-8 flights, free hunts (also at night, using illumination flares), attacks against predetermined targets, supporting ground troops in battles, CSAR... There's variety to be had. Not that Cold War gone hot scenarios wouldn't be fun, but they're not the only good fit for the Hind.

I am aware that each crew member can select which radio to listen to and transmit on in the real machine on his very own panel and that's great, but that's not the point. The Mi-8 has multiple radios because each set provides a different (non overlapping!) frequency range and different capabilities. Not for redundancy or to give each of the pilot's "their" radio set. No it isn't. There's a multitude of reasons why the crew might swap (before or mid flight) the roles of pilot flying and pilot monitoring. They don't have to be crazy edge cases such as the ones you listed above, it may be a simple case of somebody having more experience in certain conditions or being more familiar with a certain airfield or landing area. This is not my idea, this is done all the time and everywhere. And even in extreme cases which would lead the crew to abandon their mission, flying, navigating and communicating are the three key functions needed to get you home and on the ground - and where you want as much redundancy as you can get. You also can't have both pilots flying at the same time yet there are two sets of flight controls. They're there to give both pilots the ability to fly the aircraft and in the same vein they ideally should have the ability to perform other crucial functions such as communicating and navigating. The radio and navigation controls in the Huey are all in one area (cleaner and easier to memorize) and accessible to both pilots (more flexible). In our Mi-8MTV2 Hip yes. In this newer Mi-8MTV5 not so much: https://www.airliners.net/photo/Kazan-Helicopter-Plant/Mil-Mi-17V-5-Mi-8MTV-5/1320605/L Notice how each pilot has his own FMS console? As soon as glass cockpit technology freed up some panel real-estate the designers chose to do exactly what you said "you don't do" - duplicate controls. And you know what? Same is true for the AH-64A and AH-64D. In the latter, a lot more can be accomplished from either cockpit. This high specialization in the earlier versions is a design compromise made because you can only fit so many physical controls within sight and reach of a single person. As soon as glass cockpits alleviated the problem, designers started moving away from this solution. On both sides of the curtain, so to speak. This is true, but this is enforced by procedures and crew resources management not by inflexible cockpit design. It can also compensate for cockpit shortcomings.

Now I believe you're talking about the intercom and I really have no gripe with how it is designed (unless I'm greatly misunderstanding something about the Mi-8 and the real aircraft has two R-863 sets?). What I don't like is the odd splitting of the R-863 controls into two panels. Would it have hurt if all the controls were on the central pedestal, within reach of all three crew members? What if the situation is not normal? This is a rigid distribution of tasks, not a dynamic one. If for whatever reason the pilot-navigator is flying (instrument failure on the commander's side, hand injury...), he will still have to operate the R-828 and Yadro sets and all the navigation equipment alone because nobody else can reach it. In the Huey all radionav controls are on the central pedestal, each of the two pilots can perform pretty much all the radionav related tasks depending on who's pilot flying and who's pilot monitoring. The Huey crew has this flexibility, the Mi-8 crew does not. How's the Huey worse than the Mi-8?

It is messy, at least parts of it are. The radio controls are everywhere, you have some on just about every panel in the cockpit. The R-863 alone has some controls on the commander's overhead, some on the navigator's pedestal. This doesn't make the workload sharing dynamic, in fact it makes it more rigid. Operating a lot of the avionics can only be done from one of the seats. We can argue all we want how the Mi-8 is more complex but the bottom line is, the UH-1H - also a helicopter designed to be operated by a crew rather than a single pilot - has a much more logically organized cockpit.

A very nice summary of the ASP-17V capabilities, thanks

You didn't say it had a rangefinder. I wasn't trying to contradict you, but to expand on what you said. Employing unguided weapons will be easier in the Hind than it is in the Hip but the ability to estimate range which is pretty mandatory in the Hip to be effective will still be needed in the Hind in certain environments. I think this is a relevant bit of information to anyone deciding which of the existing helos to choose to prepare for the Hind release.

Yes and no. The gunsight is able to compute windage and elevation corrections but the helicopter doesn't have a (laser or radio) range finder. The range for the gunsight is provided either as a function of altitude AGL or is entered manually by the pilot commander. The first approach works in flat terrain. In the mountains, you will need to estimate range yourself. It'll still be easier than in the Mi-8 since you won't have to worry about your speed and dive angle, but range estimation will be on you.

Yeah, the pixelated reflections are gone and that makes me very happy :).

There is an "Electrical Power Supply System Scheme" on page 142 of the manual which doesn't tell the whole story but gives some good hints. I'll be the first to admit that my understanding of electric circuits is rather basic, but here's what I've pieced together. The voltage I'm seeing in the battery bus in the game is 25V with just the batteries connected, about 26.5V with the APU generator connected and 27.5V with either DC ground power or generators + rectifiers providing power. The lights seem to actually reflect this somewhat (they get a tiny bit brighter when I connect the APU generator and a whole lot brighter when I connect DC ground power or engine generators + rectifiers. Are they bright enough on just batteries? Probably no, but I'm guessing that's more a problem with the cockpit lighting in the Mi-8 than the electrical simulation. The lighting was never the strong part of this module. The explanation here is that there are in fact two DC buses. There's the battery bus and the rectifier bus. You can think of them as the essentials and non-essentials buses respectively. The two buses are tied by a reverse current relay (which disconnects them when the battery bus voltage is greater than the rectifier bus voltage - you also get a "СЕТЬ ПИТ.ОТ АКК" or "BATTARY IN USE" light on the main instrument panel when that happens). The batteries and APU generator are connected to the battery bus via their respective switches. The APU generator can also be connected to the rectifier bus with the "Equipment test" switch. The rectifiers and DC ground power are connected to the rectifier bus - and of course since they all provide a higher voltage than the batteries do, connecting them ties the buses and charges the batteries. The R-828 is connected to the rectifier bus - so in order to use it you'll need power there. If you want to use it before the engines are running, you can either connect DC ground power or use the APU generator in conjunction with the Equipment test switch. Just be aware that the generator has a rather limited power and in order to not overload it, you shouldn't connect too many systems at once.

The UH-1H is a fairly simple single engine machine from the late 60s. I believe ours has a few systems that were added later, such as the radar altimeter and countermeasures system - which are incidentally perhaps the "messiest" parts of the cockpit layout. The Mi-8MTV2 is a fairly complex twin engine model from the early 90s - compared to the base variants it has been reengined and a lot of the avionics and systems were added or replaced. They aren't really that close in functionality and era. Due to the avionics complexity the Hip was certainly more of a challenge in terms of cockpit layout. The Hip and the Hind are some of the last pure steam gauges machines - with a lot of the complexity of modern aircraft but without the glass cockpits that greatly simplified management of all those systems. So yes, learning the layout and how to use all the cockpit controls effectively will be a challenge, but on the bright side, if you're familiar with the Hip, it should flatten the learning curve significantly.

This is your take on realism and the problem is, if we take the "one module represents only one very specific aircraft configuration" approach too far, it'll be the only take on realism that the sim will support. I like to create realistic, or at least plausible scenarios and having existing DCS aircraft stand in for other (often very similar) aircraft is the unfortunate reality of what I have to work with. The addition of UB-32 pods to the Mi-8's arsenal would give me the option to create more realistic scenarios which involve Mi-8/17s operated by countries other than Russia. For example, if we ever get an Afghanistan map, I would love for our Mi-8 to stand in for Polish Mi-17-1Vs. They are VERY similar airframes in terms of capabilities and equipment, the key difference being, the Polish birds never used the B-20 pods. At this point you could say, create scenarios where the existing modules fit perfectly, but that is pretty much not possible or at least severely limiting. Our selection of modules, maps and assets simply doesn't support that approach well. You could try with WW2 scenarios but pretty much anywhere else you'll be squinting hard. Considering all this, I think being able to use some weapons which are pushing the realism a bit is a good compromise. It would help players focused more on the historical realism/plausibility without really taking away anything from those who focus on the aircraft simulation aspect. Would I rather have a vast roster of perfectly realistic versions of each aircraft which would let me make the most out of the existing and future maps? You bet. But that's not going to happen. So I'd like to have a bit more wiggle room with the weapon loadouts because otherwise I have to figure out how to make a 1990s Russian Mi-8 and Mi-24 and a 2002 US Army Apache Longbow work on a 2009+ Persian Gulf Map or a Syrian Civil War Map without a time machine. I believe the concern that this will lead to further liberties with realism is unfounded as long as the rule that no departure from realism should be forced on players is kept. I don't want a single unrealistic panel, piece of avionics or weapon that cannot be disabled in the Settings/ME. This should be the line in the sand. As for public multiplayer... I think public multiplayer is a bit like watching Star Wars... You have to ignore that there's no sound in space or you won't have any fun. Suspension of disbelief. But I would be fine with a rule that any not perfectly realistic weapon doesn't give an unfair advantage. So, Walleye is good, 4 HARMs on a Viper is not. That should keep the public server randos away from them.

It's distasteful and against the forum rules whether I'm part of the "masses" or not. Again, I see ridicule, I see insults, but what I don't see is arguments that hold any merit against my statement - allowing, but not forcing players to use weapons that were not carried by the particular bort number that is being modeled does not hurt players wanting full realism in any meaningful way. "I don't want other players playing the game wrong" is not a valid argument, it's an obsession with other people's choices. "S-5s on the Mi-8 will lead to TIE fighters" is not a valid argument, it's a continuum fallacy.

This is a continuum fallacy. If you really believe that, you should be protesting the existence of external views, the reload and repair system and any and all helpers that the game has and always had - that are far more TIE fighter like. And don't even get me started on why are Hornets able to fly on the Normany map... wouldn't a Hornet be like a TIE fighter to a 1945 pilot? Come to think of it, was our particular Hornet bort number ever in the Persian Gulf or Syria? Because I don't know if I should be allowed to fly it there... I stand by what I said. I don't see how being able to (but not being forced to - key distinction) mount "unrealistic" weapons on a DCS aircraft hurts the ultimate realism crowd. Unless the knowledge itself that someone, somewhere is playing the game "wrong" bothers you so much. It really shouldn't, get over it. Unless you're playing on public servers, but then the S-5s on the Mi-8 or RS-2US on the MiG-21bis pale in comparison with all the other unrealistic shenanigans going on when people are just trying to rack up kills rather than recreate history. Whether you like it or not, we ALL push realism one way or another. I don't know that you could create a single mission (at least using the modern assets) without something being unrealistic. The particular aircraft bort number we have never flew on that day from that airbase and dropped that particular JDAM variant on that particular T-55 variant. And yes, we are on this level of nitpicking if we're asking ourselves if it's ok to put S-5 pods on a Mi-8MTV2 which is based on a Russian machine that could but never did carry them, if a near identical Polish Mi-17-1V flew with them all the time in Afghanistan. Please don't insult people you're discussing with, this is distasteful and breaks the forum rules.

I find the P-47 to be the easiest by far of all the DCS warbrids to take off and land in. It doesn't want to ground loop or nose over like the others, in fact after my first try I went back into the settings to make sure I didn't have any helpers enabled. Nope. That's how she flies. The only quirk I noticed, if you can even call it that, is that you need a bit more power to arrest the descent if you've gone too low than in the other warbirds. I don't have a special landing technique for each of the warbirds. I come in at maybe 120mph or 200 - 220 km/h, making sure I'm coordinated, flare to a 3 point attitude a few feet above the runway, and once the aircraft settles down on the ground I pull the stick aft and keep it going straight with generous kicks of the rudder. Works for every one of them except maybe the I-16 which I don't own.

I fail to see how giving the Mi-8 S-5s, the Viper extra HARMs or even the MiG-21 all those fantasy loadouts hurts players who want realism. You don't have to use it. I'm against giving aircraft unrealistic features that you can't turn off - if the particular Hind we're getting didn't have an SPO-15, then it shouldn't have it in the game - but in case of weapons, you can just ignore them. Like external views, instant reload and repair and all the other highly unrealistic features that I'm sure all the purists are ignoring already. I never loaded an RS-2US on my MiG, or even the highly popular Grom. However if someone wants to use the MiG-21bis as a stand in for the MF in their historical (or fantasy) scenario, who am I to say he's doing something wrong.

Pilots can't just take "a bunch of munitions" without anybody noticing or caring. It doesn't work like that, not in the US, not in Russia/Soviet Union. Maybe in a banana republic. If you think a little bit beyond "it would be cool to do this", you'll realize how impractical and dangerous this idea is. I struggle to come up with a scenario where this would be the best approach available. Firstly, how likely is it that you will expend all ammunition (that's up to 16 ATGMs) from TWO helicopters (because you're not flying alone if you expect that much fighting) and still have enough fuel to get to a safe location, reload, expend your newly reloaded ammunition and get back home in the first place? Keep in mind that in real life your targets will be much better hidden than in DCS and their reaction to being under fire will be a lot more intelligent. Ok, let's say that's theoretically possible... At this point the problem is solved not on the crew level, but higher. Why not get the supplies to the safe landing location on trucks (together with personnel that's provide security, do the reloading)? If the location is safe, you should be able to get troops there in advance. Otherwise how do you know it's safe? Or just send two "fresh" helicopters to replace you? There's pretty much always a safer, quicker, better way to accomplish what you want with none of the disadvantages.

What in particular would make the Hurricane easier to operate than, say, the Mustang? The Spit and Bf-109 can be tricky with their narrow undercarriage and twitchy controls, but the 190s and especially the two American planes with their trimmers are about as easy as a WW2 fighter can get.

You should be able to fly the thing with just a half decent joystick. Good rudder pedals will help but so will a good throttle/collective. In fact, I'd say if you have just a stick, the lack of a good throttle with a long throw and smooth, precise action will hold you back at least as much as having no pedals. I'd say, if you're worried whether you'll be able to have fun with the kit you have, you'll be fine. If you're thinking what to buy to improve your experience, pedals are great, but so is a separate throttle - and it's more useful if you fly fixed wings. However the most important thing is your stick. Make sure it's precise and needs no deadzones. I've always seen the biggest difference when I upgraded my stick.

Wrong thread, please delete.

You need to be very precise with the dial. Open the in-game kneeboard and verify the frequency is exactly what it should be and not a few kHz off. If you're off by even a little bit, you may get no response or a "silent" one like you experienced.