esb77

Well, if you liked the answer for number one, I guess I'll take a crack at number two as well. If you want to pick a point on the airframe, I suggest lining up on the centerline of a runway and swapping between the pilot's seat and the flight engineer's seat until you find a spot that seems to work. I personally do not use that sort of method though. The way I do it is to pick a landmark near the horizon that is straight ahead, then I just fly however I need to so it doesn't move left or right on the canopy. So I'm using the center of my field of vision as the spot to aim for, I just have to keep in mind that the helicopter is aimed at a spot about one meter to the right of the spot I'm aiming for. As an example, to fly down the center of a runway, after I line up the helicopter I would fly down the runway, but instead of aiming my center view at the center of the far end, I aim it 1 or 2 meters to the left of that (of course if you fly from the copilot's seat you have to offset in the opposite direction). As a note, many missions have random weather, so depending on wind you may be flying a straight ground track even if you are yawing into the wind. If you want the long axis of the helicopter to be aligned with the ground track (for example for gunnery) you will have to roll into the wind about the same amount as you would need to maintain a stationary hover in those wind conditions. In stronger winds the roll needed to do this can also make you start missing targets.

1. Falcon more or less answered this in the 'complicated #3' answer, but I try to state it perhaps a bit more clearly. The 'neutral' rudder pedal position where there is no pilot input sets the tail rotor pitch to produce roughly enough thrust to counter torque in flight at a set speed and pressure altitude. The idea is that in normal cruising flight you should need little to no rudder to fly a straight line. Since takeoff and hover taxi are slower than cruising airspeed (unless you're taking off in a hurricane) you need to apply a bit of reverse rudder to compensate. One thing that I found helped once I had gotten about 5 flight hours, was practicing takeoff, hover, and transitions like hover - forward flight - hover with all of the autopilot channels turned off. It was a bit crazy at first, but it really develops fine control and anticipating what the helicopter will do. It does take a light hand on the stick though, once I got the hang of it my control inputs on my joystick were so small that during normal flight it looked like I was just holding it still.

The Mi-8 really does favor rocket attacks. Takes a lot of practice to start hitting consistently though. I usually set for volleys of four and launch 1-3 ranging shots on each pass be for I seriously try to hit something. It nice that the Hip can carry 120 rockets when you do that. In terms of the guns I really prefer the 12.7 mm and 23mm. Given how low hit probability is, it's nice to have some chance of actually doing damage when you do hit. I also tend not to want to bother with any target smaller than a vehicle. Even if you miss, dumping a full load of rockets in one go can be sort of fun.

O.k. stupid me, I forgot the most basic starting point of engineering and applied mathematics. Come up with a well defined problem statement. In general terms your problem seems to be, "A.I. visual detection of aircraft is too good in some situations." First step is to clearly define what situations, and how much better than it ought to be. Then you can start asking intelligent questions about how it can be fixed. Depending on how serious you are about this one starting step might be to contact Eagle Dynamics and ask what math model they're using for visual detection. That would give you a good starting point for researching what improvements or better models may already exist.

I think you may be underestimating how hard this is going to be to do well. My advice would be to start by trying to set this up as a set of independent modules. Meaning that for factors like: line of sight, haze, cloud cover, aspect, ect. get a working script for each of those before you try to build one for everything lumped together. Firstly it'll get you some of the background you need for the final unified script, and secondly if it's well written it should make troubleshooting the final product a lot easier because it'll be broken down into manageable chunks. A far as calculating probabilities goes, a general model is going to be a nightmare (or a least a real pain) because you're not going to have nice easy to work with distributions, and you're probably going to need different distributions for different scenarios if you don't want you math model to run to many pages before you even start trying code it. My overall advice is this: Choose the scenario where you thing the default model does the worst job, and look up real world data for that situation. Then choose a distribution that at least roughly approximates it. Some sort of exponential decay function for P (not spotted) might be a decent starting place (keeping in mind that it can often be much easier to find the probability of something not happening and then subtracting from p=1 to get an answer). Then use your adjusting factors to come up with inputs for the variables and/or coefficients that go into the probability distribution function to get the curve closer to the real world data. If that doesn't get it close enough, you could come up with equations that further adjust it. What makes a probabilistic model so difficult here is that you have multiple independent variables that influence the outcome. Coming up with a really good model is the sort of thing that could make up a thesis for a graduate degree or Ph.D. in applied mathematics (or statistics). I wouldn't be surprised if there is a thesis sitting in a library somewhere that does pretty much contain the solution, finding it could be a bit of a chore though. Multiple piecewise partial solutions aren't as elegant as a good global model, and at a completed state might take up more pages of script. The thing is, you'll have accomplished something that's an improvement a lot sooner than if you try to do a good global model.

Well if you set it up so that player aircraft groups had zero respawns, and then used a flag, say PlayerGroup_x_State. Set the flag to be true if player plane is alive and false if not. I would use the same flag evaluation to do both the player despawn and the AI spawn. So structurally something like t=0 set PlayerPresentFlag to false t = 300 evaluate the state of the player group, if group is alive set PlayerPresentFlag to true. t = 301 if PlayerPresentFlag = false remove PlayerGroup if PlayerPresentFlag = false spawn AI Group That's not the terminology the mission editor would use, but that sort of logical structure should work, I think.

Well if you're rewriting a manual for a single plane mostly by using copy and paste from a manual for that plane and about 6 other planes, it's easy to miss a few sections. The Su-25T manual is basically the LOMAC 2 manual after severe weight loss, only a few bits are new, such as the expanded section on crosswind landings.

Areas where training would probably really help, Landing, landing, landing, landing ( this is after all the MOST important piloting skill, one of the hardest too). Navigation Planning (probably the second most important piloting skill, and the most underused one in DCS) Radio communications IFR flying Probably issues with overcontrolling, not anticipating, abusing/leaving the flight envelope. So in short, learning to be pilots before trying to become combat pilots.

Well keep in mind that service ceiling really means that the answer to the question, "Can the aircraft safely and reliably perform it's normal workload at this altitude even if multiple things start going wrong in quick succession," is a qualified yes issued by engineers and test pilots. Engineers and test pilots are fairly conservative in issuing recommendations because they have to keep in mind that some of the people who read their recommendations may be incompetent fools who also happen to have no sense of self preservation. So in good conditions it's not surprising if an aircraft can exceed it's official specs by a large margin. The advisable flight envelope is what gets printed in manuals, the possible flight envelope is almost always much bigger, but a lot of the extra is in the category filed under 'really stupid ways to die.' The inability to keep flying after 40 or more fatal crashes in real life may also have something to do with where real manuals draw the line between can do and should do. As does the cost of returning a heap of flaming wreckage to an airworthy state.

Ah, yes IFF. ROE and how you use it makes a big difference there. Russian Army and Ossetians know that IFF is for whimps. That's why they managed to shoot down 3 Russian Air Force Su-25s with Iglas during the 2008 war in Georgia. They obviously won the air defense aspect of the war compared to the Georgians who shot down 0 or 1 Russian Su-25s (depending on what sources you believe). On a slightly more serious note, the MANPADS do have some visual detection modeled at least as far as daylight goes. If you're in a 25T at night and have the LLTV pod on you can sometimes get as close as 500 m without getting a reaction (it helps if you turn off nav lights and don't drop illumination bombs). Not sure if the nav lights really have an effect it just seemed prudent to turn them off, but I do know that the illumination bombs and illumination rockets do. I haven't tested clouds yet, put it doesn't really matter all that much because it they can't see to hit their target you're not going to be able to see to hit your target either.

At one point I had access to a Stinger manual in a public library that was an official government document repository. It is possible that there is some realism in the AI's trouble with high closure rates. U.S.S.R - Afghan war era stingers had this dinky little iron sight for estimating lead angle, and getting lead angle right was mentioned as a problem in the manual. Of course, that should be more of a problem for a crossing target than for a head on approach/receding target. Haven't tested for that in the sim yet though. I sort of suspect that for head on/receding targets it's mostly a matter of the, "when do we launch," algorithm not providing ideal answers in an extreme portion of the envelope.

Lower really requires good intel on enemy positions if you're doing it the proper (realistic) way, and also hilly terrain, buildings, or trees that have a collision model. However, in DCS the MANPADS have trouble dealing with high closure rates when combined very low altitude. Depending on MANPADS skill level you can directly overfly them without using any countermeasures, or have a 100% evasion rate if you use preemptive flares regardless of A.I. skill level, though I should probably test this again in view of AFMs for missiles (can't remember if they've done the SAMs yet or it's just AA right now). For attacking a defended target it's not really very useful because your chances of getting anything on target without fragging yourself is miniscule. If you want to slip past the MANPADS though, it works like a charm ( at least it has for me at max alt 25m AGL and min IAS 900 km/h).

I probably underemphasized mission planning in the previous post. If you don't already know: What's my target Where is my target What are the threats near my target What is my ingress route What is my egress route Locations of all the good terrain masking within 20km of my route and possibly a hundred or so other details, you probably shouldn't even be in the cockpit (if we're emulating real pilots). How often can you recite from memory the altitude, speed, heading, and descriptions of local landmarks at your attack run's IP before you start up your engines? Because that's the sort of level of mission planning that helps you avoid getting shot down. Of course, we don't have the aircraft and munitions performance data that you need to do planning at that level (yeah, yeah, I need to get off my ass and start working on my flight test program again). In short the reason we typically get shot down so much is that we're incompetent pilots flying mission profiles designed by ignorant lunatics. Still, it's just a sim, so as long as we're having fun that's o.k. Oh, and one last thing, in a serious major powers war it would be expected that Su-25 and A-10A units would have pretty high attrition rates if flying in an environment with high numbers of air defense units.

Keep in mind that mission design may not be very realistic. Real mission success is more along the lines of, "We damaged a military vehicle and returned to base," than it is, "I single handedly destroyed the enemy armored division." Typically speed, very high altitude, very low altitude, and terrain masking are your friends. So are good recon and detailed mission planning. My understanding is that normal practice for CAS pilots with unguided munitions is to make a single pass that tries to surprise the target and exit their field of fire before they have time to respond. On a related note, my understanding is that the U.S. Army considered that the time a skilled Warsaw pact pilot would give a stinger crew a chance to fire on them to be, "about 3 seconds." Which is not too out of line with the U.S. Air Force apparently flunking out A-10 pilots that can't line up and execute bombing/rocket/guns attacks in 5 seconds or less. Based on my experience in DCS I'd say send 1-4 Su-25s in either low(scraping treetop low) and fast, or high enough to be at the limit of stinger envelope to bait the stinger crews into firing. At the same time have a pair of Su-25Ts, Ka-50s, Su-33s, or similar advanced ground attack platforms orbiting about 12 km back ready to spot and swat the stingers if they are foolish enough to fire on the Su-25s. I'm perfectly o.k. with using 6 aircraft worth of SEAD package to safely take down one air defense unit because unless they get reinforced once the air defenses are down the rest of the ground targets are totally screwed on subsequent sorties. In general it's best to assume that there will be MANPADS around and to use flares liberally. Usually unless I know there with be radar guided SAMs I fly with a 100% flares countermeasure payload. I'm also not afraid to hop in the mission editor and redefine mission success if I think that the original mission goals are unreasonable, which they often are.

Make sure that your computer is set up to force DCS to use your graphics card rather than the CPU's integrated graphics. A lot of computers have factory defaults that set to the integrated for power saving, but they produce all sorts of interesting graphical bugs if you try to run DCS on them. I had similar graphics issues until I configured my computer to force DCS to run graphics on the Nvidia card. Keep in mind that automatic updates of operating system/drivers or system restores can reset that sort of thing to factory defaults, so even if you're sure DCS should be running on your graphics card it still might pay to check the configuration. You could also be running into effects from your graphics settings in DCS. One of the ways to trade off looks vs. performance is to set the distance at which the engine starts drawing objects, which would include clouds. So if you have graphics set to low settings it could be that you're flying so far above a low cloud deck that the clouds are outside of the radius that the engine is rendering objects. That would explain the 'ghost terrain' as the ground (which is always drawn) looking funny because none of effects that make it look good are being rendered and then as you descend the clouds get within the radius that the engine is displaying and the clouds start to 'magically' appear. As far as mission editor issues go, I have no idea. I use it all the time and it works fine for me. Possibly you have some sort of error in your install and need to update/fix it. The weapons selection and saving interface isn't as intuitive as it could be and I suspect that you're just making some kind of minor error with the interface when you try to change and save the new weapons loads. I'd suggest rereading the mission editor manual, or looking up a youtube video to check and make sure that you're doing the weapons changes and saves correctly.

The Su-25 (and Su-25T) are designed not just as sub-sonic, but really as sub-transsonic aircraft. The result is that they don't behave nicely when you're going at transsonic or supersonic speeds. There are assorted nasty aerodynamic side effects of being very close to the speed of sound, much of which involves drag from shockwaves as different parts of the plane break the sound barrier at different airspeeds. As GGTharos showed with the charts, for the operational envelope of a Su-25 the speed of sound decreases with altitude. The effects are pretty well modeled. External stores, especially high drag ones like Vikhrs, have a large effect on when the shake starts to become noticeable. I'd have to flight test to give exact figures, but the difference between no load and a high drag load can be on the order of 150 to 200 km/h difference in IAS for the start of noticeable vibration. The difference in onset speed decreases as altitude increases. Aside from being really annoying it doesn't affect performance all that much. I've played SEAD missions using ingress at 30m or less altitude and IAS in excess of 950km/h. It's sort of like flying a paint mixer, but the plane does survive the shaking. The only real concern with the Su-25s is that you not start a steep dive from high speed and high altitude. One of the well modeled things is that if you manage to get supersonic the tail looses almost all pitch control, meaning that it can take more than 7000m of altitude to pull out of a supersonic dive. This can happen to planes in real life and was probably first well documented on the North American F-86. It's why most modern fighters have a 'flying tail' where the entire tailplane moves rather than having a stationary horizontal stabilizer followed by a trailing edge elevator. The Su-25T is happiest at altitudes below 1500m MSL and speeds in the 600-700 km/h range. The first flaps setting greatly improves handling if you are below 500 km/h. Still, if you don't care about fuel efficiency or having your virtual teeth rattled out of their sockets the Su-25s are happy to push right up next to the sound barrier if they aren't overloaded.

The stinger com unit provides a visual signature almost identical to the stinger launch unit, thus forcing you to use 2 Vihkrs to be sure that the air defense is suppressed. Iglas seem to be generally more deadly, but they are nice in that the Igla com unit is lying down and taking a nap, and thus is very easy to distinguish from the Igla launching unit who is standing up. So for Iglas you only have to use one guided missile for SEAD. Due to union rules both Igla and Stinger com units refuse to fire, no matter how many unused ready-to-fire MANPADS they have lying around. As pilots, it's probably best if we don't complain about this quirk of AI behavior.

Using the laser substantially improves accuracy for unguided munitions in the Su-25T. Or at least it substantially reduces range estimation related errors. The difference is that in addition to using it whenever you would in a baseline Su-25 you also use it (or in some cases use it much more effectively) for the more advanced laser guided munitions. The actual laser system is the same in both the Su-25 and 25T. It's the electro-optical system and computers that are upgrades in the 25T.

A note on the helicopters as far as ease of flying. Ka-50 is by far the easiest, provided you learn how to work the autopilot/stability control systems. If you don't learn how to use them and fight them for control of the heli it is very difficult to fly. Huey is pretty maneuverable, but plan on crashing a lot while you learn, and be aware that slop in a cheap HOTAS hardware setup can be pretty frustrating in the Huey because it is so sensitive to control inputs. Mi-8 intermediate difficulty to fly, provided you remember to turn on the stability control. Not as maneuverable as a Huey, but that's not surprising since it can carry a payload that weighs almost as much as a Huey. Also the Mi-8 is still more of an early beta version, it WILL change and there are more non-functional systems on it than on the UH-1 or Ka-50.

Well I've done attack runs in more or less that state, including on occasion with landing gear down (gotta get it down before all the fluid leaks out you know). The Su-25s are real beasts when it comes to flying while shot to pieces. VapoR, lemmings are reasonably adaptable and I imagine they can fly fighters and rotorcraft about as well as they can attack planes.:smilewink: I could think about a more combined air wing sort of patch, though it might have to be a bit generic because it's hard to say for sure which aircraft might show up in future mods. One option would be a mascot with no aircraft, another might be a sort of generic one with recognizable attack, fighter, attack chopper, chopper, bomber?, transport? icons. That would be a bit dicey at smaller resolutions though, or at least a bit harder to make it look good. If lemmings turn out not to be adaptable in all air war roles I may be able to try my hand at other mascots.

314 patch design possibilities. Featuring if not a fighting lemming at least something Microtidae-ish. Original 512 pixel vers Original shrunk to 256 px. Proportions and background color changed for small scale. 256 px 128 px. Attached as .jpg files

Default trigger areas are radii around a point I think and therefore circular. You could do an inelegant solution with many small trigger areas in a line, but I suspect that someone has coded and published a script that can make rectangular trigger areas. And there is a post about how to customize how labels appear, complete with example code and where to put it. Search the DCS World forum section for the keywords, "target, find, labels" and you should probably get a results list that includes the post containing that info.

No Mi-8 DCS/Belsimtek manual yet as far as I know, though if you cut and paste the chapter on basic helicopter flight dynamics is the same for all of them. In the Docs folder in the Mi-8 folder there is a REAL Mi-8/Mi-17 manual. It assumes that you are already an experienced medium/large turbine powered helicopter pilot and that you have been checked out on where controls are located either from other documentation or from being trained by an experienced Mi-8 operator. The translation from Russian can be a bit ambiguous as well especially for some of the technical terms used for labeling some of the charts/graphs. It's filled with good information, but much of it is not really very relevant for what a flight sim player needs to know, especially when first starting out on the Mi-8

Frontal Aviation flight patch design featuring a Su-25 and a Lemming now in design phase. May take a week or two to get it scanned in, cleaned up, and converted into useable formats. Master copy will probably show up as TIFF and PDF but I'll include a small format small file size version too, maybe a 128 pixel square jpeg or something. If there's a decision on unit numbers I can fill them in, but for now I'll just leave any unit # and motto banners blank.

Anti-radiation missiles have their radio receivers and software optimized for known high value threats, meaning radar guided SAMs. For the most part they aren't meant to be used against AAA. The phantasmagoria pod is large, and so it can pack in enough hardware to deal with a wider range of radio frequencies, so it can pick up AAA guidance radar at very long ranges. In general if faced with AAA or IR/EO short range SAMs your toolkit is going to be some mix of Kh-25 ML, Kh-29T, Vhikr, and Kh-29L. Bombs, rockets and guns are also potentially an option if you have excellent skills, a very precise HOTAS input device, and are slightly crazy. If labels are turned off and you've got phantasmagoria pod on it can be very useful for helping spot groups of units defended by radar guided AAA. I sometime leave Vulcans alone so that I can use them as a marker so I can easily find and destroy the units that they are supposed to be defending. For the most part AAA isn't that dangerous unless there are enough to saturate an area. Tungaska and Gepard are the only ones you have to exercise some real caution around. The 35mm cannons have a substantially longer reach than 23mm ones do, and a burst can easily be as damaging as a SAM hit. I find they're a hazard out to as much as 4 km, the small caliber stuff you can typically get inside of 2 km and still be ok as long as you maneuver.