Flying Penguin

I see a cease and desist in his future.... Possibly, but then why does he use footage from another game? Right now it's "here is a ripped video of a flight sim, please give me some money" According to his (apparently verified) profile, the bloke's name is Callum Jones and he's from the UK. That makes the description hilarious. And I've never tried Python or Ruby, but I could do "Hello World" in several other languages, does that count? :doh:

The tungsten penetrators used by L2 operators will still be pretty hot after coming through the armour, friction heating will see to that. The DU used in American and British rounds will combust when it penetrates, and that will increase the damage they do, but in the context of helicopters, neither round is likely to get that hot, if simply because there isn't enough armour thickness to work on, making the distinction somewhat academic in this discussion. It is absolutely true that the damage model could be more detailed (and things like glitching through should be fixed asap), but an improved model will not necessarily turn tank rounds into guaranteed one-hit kills.

It's not a case of just being realistic or not, the models are pretty good but not perfect. Most run of the mill scenarios are handled pretty well (bearing in mind that you would have build a sim of greater complexity than the whole of DCS to get close to realistic for every edge state). There may be some issues around the handling of large calibre tank rounds, but given the discussion above, the edge cases don't seem so far out of the range of possibilities as to be completely broken. It's not as simple as "SABOT hits helicopter, helicopter becomes a collection of loosely organised pieces, each smaller than a dinner plate". Until DCS gets a full materials and structure simulation engine to process each round impact in turn, there will be a certain level of abstraction, which means there will always be corner cases. The discussion then is whether the results for those corner cases are in the right ballpark (including % chance of no effect), and then fixing them if they are unreasonable. In summary, good but room for improvement.

There's two things to take into consideration here, firstly most military helicopters aren't that well sealed, at least against overpressure from inside, even if they aren't outright drafty.... We aren't talking about airliners sealed for 35,000ft comfort. Secondly if significant overpressure does occur, the first thing to go will be whatever the weakest pressure-load bearing component, in the case of overpressure in the troop compartment this is probably the door hinges or windows, meaning that a complete disintegration (which would require destruction of load bearing structural elements) is unlikely in the absence of a hit (by round or fragments) on something like the fuel tank. The reason that overpressure works so well in tanks is that they are extremely strong and mostly NBC sealed, meaning there is no easy release for the pressure. Correct, they are the only compartments designed with blow out panels. They work because they allow exploding ammunition to direct force away from the crew compartment, which is separated by blast doors. If the blast door is open or the ammo in the turret (e.g. the round currently being loaded) explodes, the crew are simply screwed. If there is overpressure sufficient to pop the hatches (which are not designed to function as blow out panels), the crew are probably already dead from the pressure. Never mind the other after-armour effects like the hail of high velocity burning DU shards that have probably already shredded them.

Depending on the area it hit and the design. Bear in mind that most (but not all) of the after-armour effects from a SABOT are fragments of armour and round shredding everything inside the tank, as well as the pyrophoric combustion of those fragments due to friction heating during the penetration, not simply overpressure (and of particular relevance to this discussion, overpressure works best when there is a fully sealed vessel to act on that can contain it). Blow out panels are not primarily for dealing with overpressure, they are designed to minimise the effects of ammunition explosions. If there is little to no resistance from armour, it is quite possible for the projectile to fly straight through relatively unscathed as it is the friction and splintering that causes most of the lethal effects. Imagine shooting an arrow through a sheet of paper and you'll have a good idea of what I mean. In a lithe attack bird like the K-50, getting off scot free *should* be unusual (although you can probably identify specific points it could pass through without causing catastrophic damage, the canopy being the most obvious), but on something big and fat like a Hind, there are large areas of empty space that a round could pass through with little to no impedance. Sucks to be the soldier who gets a SABOT round through the face whilst sat in a chopper, but it is perfectly possible to find routes through such a machine which won't cause catastrophic damage.

Hawk. With my skills I need as modern an ejector seat as possible!

Thanks for the suggestion, i saw them but ruled them out as being on the wrong side of the Atlantic if I have a warranty claim at any point... I've gone for an MSI dominator pro now as I found a great deal on a slightly upgraded version. Thanks all... EDIT (14/05/14): Just in case anyone reads the thread with the same problem, my MSI GT70 2PC arrived yesterday (specs below), 45FPS constant with absolutely everything turned up to the max. Perfect mobile DCS machine :) Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ 16GB DDR3 RAM NvidiaGTX 870M 6GB

Which would be the sensible option if there was anywhere to put it. It is either GAMING LAPTOP (;)) or no DCS..... Yes I may be part of a small niche in the user base, but a desktop isn't any good for me at all, no matter how small or how cheap.

Thanks for the suggestions, I think the GT70 20D is a bit above what I can reasonably spend without having my balls removed with garden shears (they retail about £1900 over here), but the 2PE should fit the bill and can be had for £1300ish. I'm leaning now towards the MSI, bar the default RAM, better specced than the equivalent cost ASUS. Back to the benchmarks... Thanks again, Jamie

Hey all, I'm looking to replace my croaky, barely DCS capable, 17" laptop with something with a bit more grunt and I was hoping that the collective great and the good might be able to make some recommendations? I'm UK based and the budget is around £1500. Current front runners are the MSI GT70 2PC-1282UK and ASUS ROG G750JS, with the ASUS slightly in front. Any other suggestions as to ones to consider or rule out? TIA, Jamie Obviously the standard response to gaming laptops is "why don't you buy a desktop instead?", so I might as well head that off :) : I'm aware that the price/performance ratio is better for desktops I'm expecting to spend substantial amounts of time away from home but with the laptop My croaky laptop is a 17" Dell Studio, so I'm aware of the size and weight of desktop replacement laptops No, I really don't have space for a desktop, even a small form factor one. My office is now a nursery with two screaming occupants, my spare room has in-laws staying long term (i.e. years) and my living room is filled with so much medical equipment and supplies that there really is nowhere for a desktop to go :thumbup:

For those that are interested, the first update to V3 has arrived, V3.011. Main changes are improved lighting effects and some multiplayer updates, as well as a long list of bug fixes, though the complete changelog should appear shortly. It is available here: http://www.esimgames.com/?p=1623 A (slightly over enthusiastic :) ) player has already put together a brief fly through to showcase the improved lighting effects. HE8rwL9zO5k Cheers, Jamie

Glad to hear you are back on track, looking forward to getting my hands on it. Hope you are able to clear any remaining back-room issues without too much hassle :) Cheers, Jamie

Wow! I would have never suspected DCS: Malibu Beach Bar was that far along in development! :pilotfly:

But, to my mind, the freebie should put best foot forwards whilst not giving the whole thing for free, it's not just a gift, it's an advert. As it stands it's plenty good enough to demonstrate the air simulation, where it falls down is showing off the ground simulation to best effect.

Yay! Now fingers crossed for some M1 flavoured goodness :)

No, the Georgia map is unusable for armour, at least if you want something approximating a sim experience. Bowling green plains are not generally found outside salt flats, this means that most fights end up as a target range: The terrain mesh that just can't deal with gradient changes in a way that allows good hull down positions: These are simply consequences of the map being originally designed for flight sims, not ground sims. No biggie, we are asking more of it than was probably ever in the design requirements. Quite frankly, if you want to go drive tanks, you are better off in (now bargain bucket) ARMA 2 than CA in Georgia right now, never mind SB. Irrespective of the level of simulation of the vehicles, the terrain in Georgia isn't detailed enough to use normal tank tactics effectively (even if we ignore the whole seeing and shooting through trees thing), which makes it unusable in a high quality tank sim.

If you are going to sell a tank sim (if indeed that's where this is going), with nothing more than a small training area (the free Georgia map being basically unusable, Nevada being of unknown detail), it's gonna get old pretty quickly. Realistically, unless we expect to start to see a slew of community made maps either before or at the same time as release, it's going to be a case of making the big maps just detailed enough to work for armour, without borking it for everyone else. Unlike air combat tactics, which for the most part are somewhat terrain independent, terrain drives ground tactics and without a good variety of quality terrain, the tank sim will die on it's arse for lack of things to do in it. The last announcement I remember said they weren't giving all the terrain tools, just enough that you could build it and they could compile it into a usable format, has that changed?

Georgia may be ok for "messing around in tanks", but it would be woefully inadequate for even relatively basic armoured warfare in most places, lacking the mesh resolution necessary to represent the small rises and falls in the ground that represent the difference between hull down and getting to see the working end of a SABOT round.... Whether even Nevada goes far enough in this regard, I'm not yet convinced. By way of comparison, SB Pro PE limits maps to ~22x22km, so maps of that size would give enough room for decent tank battles, but anything fixed wing would feel pretty cramped. Cheers, Jamie

Well colour me intrigued.... I'm looking forward to see where they are going with this, although as I've said a number of times, there's more to competing directly with Steel Beasts than just the tank models themselves. Here's hoping for great things :) @SyntaxError - It's a mixture of access and experience. There are top tier aircraft on their way, the Cortex Superbug and the VEAO Typhoon are two that spring to mind, they are just not their first aircraft as they (VEAO at least) want to cut their DCS teeth on something simpler first. Also people are building what they have access to, VEAO are working with BAe on other projects, Beczl Studios (or whatever they are now...) have easy access to MiG-21 knowledge. You can't make a decent top-tier aircraft with just Google and making those relationships from a standing start is hard... Those with the detailed knowledge required to make current model the current iteration/block/tranche of frontline fighters are probably too busy flying/maintaining them to have second jobs building virtual ones :) And that's before you even start to think about classified capabilities, Jamie

Welll, Cobra, Beczl, (if you are reading this thread) I sincerely hope you can get this sorted, I'll be here to thrust some of my hard earned into your hands when you do.... :thumbup:

It seems that it's an updater change. After clicking OK a few times it asked me again to go from 1.2.6.99999.3 to 1.2.7.something. All good :)

Thanks for the confirmation. Now I can stop protecting my lock on CD like the crown jewels...

Yay! Very smart move... I'm assuming, as the title has not changed, it's not going to require re-purchase for existing owners but it would be nice to get official confirmation.

But only three fins. Inbreeding is a terrible thing....

Mig-21 Merry Christmas :) Jamie