Raven Morpheus

Yeah I think Route Mode (and also a little bad trim) might be the culprit for me. I turned off Route Mode whilst targeting the MBT Leopards whilst on a re-run of the mission once I got to the target area and lo and behold I had better aiming with the Shkval. Guess I just never noticed it before. Found another annoying problem though - the way target lock/unlock functions - I seem to recall (in BS1?) I just had to press the lock target button to unlock the target and then I could move the Shkval reticule freely, but now it seems I have to hold that button and move the Shkval reticule off the current target to get it to move freely? It's a little inconvenient that way because my target lock button is on Fire A, and my Shkval slew is on the silver POV switch on the X52, so obviously I can't quite do both at the same time as I don't have 2 thumbs on one hand - I need to remap slightly my controls I think...

Hello I went back to flying the Ka-50 the other day (after having tried and failed miserably to get to grips with the A-10C) and whilst I was playing the tutorial mission I've got (called How to takeoff and blow stuff up, I downloaded it from somewhere but can't recall where or who it was by) I noticed some behaviour with the Ka-50 I'd like to find a solution to. Basically in that mission you end up hovering above a ridge line and looking through the monitor to line up Shkval for a shot or 3 with the Vhkrs missiles at 3 Leopard tanks. Now, what I was finding was that with auto-hover on it was difficult to move the Shkval target reticule because either the Shkval itself was moving in a direction I didn't want it to, as though it was on auto-search, or the heli itself was turning/drifting/rotating thus giving the same effect on targeting. It seems to do this after the 1st target, because lining up the reticule on the 1st target is as it should be - nice and easy with no unwanted movement. To lock the target I'm pressing on Fire A on my X52 pro which is set via SST to press the lock target keypress. I then press the button again to unlock target to allow me to move the Shkval reticule and that's when I get the problem. I think, that before when I was doing it I could press the lock target button, fire, then press the lock target button to unlock from the target and move to another target with no problem such as the Shkval going to auto-search or the heli turning/rotating/drifting. I've tried pressing the trim button to set a new heading, obviously directly forward of where I am but that doesn't seem to fix the issue. I've checked my controls to make sure they're not causing it, and they're not. I also don't have the "turn to target" button switched on - I'm well aware of that possibly being a cause. Anyone have any ideas on what I'm doing wrong, or what is causing this?

I don't see why people say the trim and autopilot in the Ka-50 can be a problem. The Ka-50 was the first helicopter I tried in DCS, the other being the UH-1H, and once I had read a short page on how the trim/autopilot system works I can fly the Ka-50 quite easily. The trick is to press the trim button, steer, release the trim button, and remember the autopilot will now have a new heading and will turn back to it if you change direction without re-trimming. Altitude hold works in a similar way, but I've not noticed the autopilot returning to an altitude if you change altitude without holding the collective brake button whilst doing so. The only thing that annoys me about the Ka-50, and it may be autopilot related, is that when on auto-hover searching for targets and/or lining up Shkval for a shot the Ka-50 does tend to drift/rotate/turn rather annoyingly at times thus making it awkward to move the Shkval sight from one target to the next. I find the Ka-50 far easier to fly than the UH-1 though, but (apart from the weapons hard-points being incorrect for US UH-1's (which most of the skins available are), it's a Vietnam era RAAF Bushranger configuration!) I find the UH-1 the most fun to fly and a welcome change from the fly to point A, switch on auto-hover, find target(s), shoot, fly to point B, repeat and rinse, nature of the Ka-50. Although combat in the UH-1 is a pita for me and I still find hovering/landing difficult at times (read most of the time). So, in summary, not having flown the Mi-8, if you want old school chopper action stick on some Wagner, Rolling Stones, or CCR and go with the Huey.

Double post, sorry.

Thanks guys. I'll revisit it in due course, I just got rather confused today whilst going through the GAU-8 tutorial and felt like giving up. I can takeoff, I can fly around, I can land, I can even get the gun to fire. Don't have a clue when it comes to the targeting stuff though, and I got confused with steerpoints/waypoints as I couldn't figure out that I either need to use the rocker on the UCS (?) panel when TAD is SOI or set the hud as SOI (Coolie up I think that was?) and use the up/down keys that are set to my POV 2 hat (either DMS or TMS can't recall if I have to press my pinkie shift switch or not). When it comes to X52 profiles I'm currently using the one by Smoothie available on the ED site in the user files section. Seems to be quite logical, and doesn't require changing modes all the time (the one thing I find annoying about the Ka-50 - I'm always in nav mode moving switches I don't want to be when I should be in combat mode selecting weapons and firing them!!) I don't get the references to the pinkie switch in the tutorials though - Smoothies profile has that set to X52 Pro slider, and I had to assign it in the game (none of the controls would import as per Smoothie instructs in his readme), so I have set that to pinke aft, pinkie forward and pinkie centre. The CMS Push button he's listed also has me slightly confused, so I set that to CMS Z axis...

Hello I recently got gifted A-10C, well the money for it whilst it was on sale, so I thought I'll give it a go, can't be more complicated than the Ka-50, right? Wrong!! Apart from the slightly difficult nature of actually flying it (especially when landing) the UH-1H is a breeze, flick a few switches, hold a button, move a throttle slider, and you're pretty much ready for takeoff! Easy compared to the Ka-50 and A-10, and the A-10 seems orders of magnitude more difficult than the Ka-50! With the help of a tutorial mission (how to takeoff and blow stuff up I believe it's called, can't recall who it's by) and an associated pdf guide I managed to learn the Ka-50 systems required to fly and engage targets fairly easily, all I need to do I think is refresh my memory on my X52 profile setup. However I've been doing a few of the tutorial missions for the A10 to work out nav and combat and it just seems so complicated that I feel that because I don't play flight sims 24/7 I'll be forever doing "refresher courses" each time I play with the A-10! Anyone else get that feeling? Anyone got a way around it?

Just out of interest how do you wire up 2 potentiometers in series?

I'd love to see a south east asia map, if only for the UH-1H...

This is roughly what I was going to suggest. Although I wouldn't go the whole hog (no pun intended) and make a stick extension as you are suggesting. You could stick a piece of plywood under your legs, and screw the X52 stick to it (that's what the two holes at 2 of the corners are for, I used bolts, think they were M4 or M5 size). Pad it a little, one of those gel keyboard hand rests cut up to size would probably work well, and it shouldn't be uncomfortable and it wouldn't move around because you're sitting on it. Don't go spending $/£ on crap like wheelstandpro and playseat when you could build something roughly the same or even better as it'll be bespoke for a fraction of the cost.

EDIT - Just a thought but you say you have throttle set to full, but you instantly lose speed and altitude - are you setting your throttle before the mission starts? If so you may need to reset your throttle (just move it down then back up again to where you want it) once you have control of the plane. I've noticed with the UH-1H (the only module I fly regularly now in DCS) if I start a mission already airborne the collective isn't set to where I've got my X52 Pro throttle at, and obviously this causes me to start dropping out of the sky if I don't move my throttle to correct it!! Or if there's an option for the P-51 (I know there is for the UH-1H) in the options menu check the option called something like "synchronise controls with HOTAS" and see if that works. If that's not the case read on - I used to have the issues keeping up with AI wingmen in IL2 1946, I would imagine DCS has the same things affecting your speed as IL2 1946 does. I overcame the issue by learning to trim my plane for level flight and remove side slip by adding rudder trim or just using my pedals (as OutOnTheOp said you're "ball" should be centered) and now I generally end up having to circle around to lose speed as my AI wingmen can't keep up with me. And mostly when cruising now I fly just using trim inputs. Aside from the aforementioned prop pitch is also a factor, or so I've read. Personally I've never understood prop pitch all that well, but in IL2 1946 I do kind of grasp the idea that you want a lower prop pitch when climbing/cruising, if only to avoid overheating the engine(s). The way I've read and understood the theory of prop pitch is that it's like changing gears in a car, 100% is pretty much 1st gear. As an example, again I know it's not DCS but IL2 1946, in the F4U Corsair your cruise RPM is supposed to be about 7600, you can manage this by reducing the prop pitch until your RPM drops. I generally fly the F4U in IL2 1946 at 60%-75% throttle with 90% prop pitch when cruising. Try similar things in the Mustang in DCS, I'd bet you'll be flying quicker than the AI wingmen (unless they are actually programmed to be way faster than it's actually possible for anyone to fly!!).

@Abburo - use multi turn potentiometers, you get finer control than a single turn potentiometer. I have 3 of them (for use on all axis, elevator, rudder, and aileron), each 10 turns, attached to a Leo Bodnar BU0836A and they work great. Only complaint I have is when playing IL2 1946 (I only use DCS so far for Helicopters) I have to turn a lot before I get any response, but that's the plane itself, not my controller because as soon as I move the potentiometer the dial/wheels in-game move. Never flown the TF-51 in DCS enough to use them though, but I know they work the same because I checked them in the controls options menu.

I had a terrible time with the exact same issue, it's not related to any particular plane though. After a lot of fiddling I worked out how to solve it. Assuming your camera is picking up the LED's properly, put a deadzone of about 5 degrees (or more if you wish) into your curves by grabbing the first little dot on the curves diagram and move it down to the bottom of the scale and back (or forwards) to about 5 (or further if you want more of a deadzone). Also if you are not using point tracking but the face tracking part of FTNoIR make sure your room is brightly lit (or there is a bright light behind you) so that the camera can see you properly. I tried FTNoIR with the face tracking to begin with (and subsequently shelved it until recently I made a 3 point IR LED clip) and quickly found out it doesn't like dim or dark rooms. Which renders it's face tracking useless for gaming in my opinion. Oh that and every time I took a drink, or wiped my nose or something else it'd shift the view in-game. Lol.

If you buy a PS3 Eye cam (about $11), you only need to make a filter out of the red/cyan panels in a pair of paper 3d glasses (about $3), just put them together over each other and secure it over the PS3 Eye cam lens. Obviously you will also require the PS3 Eye Windows driver, available here - http://codelaboratories.com/products/eye/driver/ That's what I did with my PS3 Eye cam and it works fine. Some people disassemble the PS3 Eye and remove the IR filter, but I read that it's not necessary and mine works just fine without removing the IR filter, I just had to adjust the brightness/contrast in the little app for the camera, and also the threshold in FTNoIR. Depending on which version of the PS3 Eye cam you get you may have a problem though, but don't quote me on this because mine worked fine. Apparently there are 2 versions, one with a good lens configuration and one with a bad one, see here for details - http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/5189/

Don't know if I've said this, but I think I've commented in this thread before. I'd like to see some semi-non-combat helicopters. Such as a HH-3 Jolly Green Giant or HH-53C Super Jolly Green Giant with CASEVAC based missions/campaign or a H-34, with again CASEVAC or transport oriented missions/campaign. They'd go really well with the UH-1H, especially if other maps are made, like perhaps a S.E.A. map...

I currently use FTNoIR that way and it works but has a couple of issues I find. 1. The rotation in game (DCS) on the yaw axis doesn't stop where it should. I have the yaw axis set to 90 degrees output with about 20 degree input, and then after that the line is flat at 90 degrees. Now in IL2 1946 I move my head the required 20 degrees or so and it stops at 90 degree, which is what I would expect it to do. Doesn't seem to work like that in DCS though, it goes all the way to what seems like about my 7 o'clock or 5 o'clock, depending on to which side I move. And for some reason I have to invert the yaw axis. 2. I can't seem to hold a steady zoomed in rotated view. So for example in the UH-1H if I rotate the view to look at the top center panel and zoom in on it by moving my head forward the view gets all jittery. It's not so bad on doing the same for the center console by looking down and moving my head forward but still not ideal. Other than those, yes FTNoIR, a PS3 Eye, and a home made 3 point IR LED clip are well worth the tiny investment (less than £20) compared to the cost of TrackIR. EDIT - Just tried Open Track (after spending an age trying to work out how to decompress a .tar.xz file) and that seems to me to be no better than FTNoIR. I still have to invert the yaw axis and in the DCS UH-1H it still can't quite hold a good steady zoomed in view of the center consoles top/bottom.

I'd go with what sithspawn said. I've skinned cars in some racing sims, so I know that making a spec layer with differing levels of brightness results in certain parts being more shiny than others (I mostly use it to make decals matte), the lighter the colour the spec map is the shinier an object will be. It's likely the F86 in EDGE (and probably the release version) just uses a blank or single tone spec map. If there are templates released and/or tools for opening up the existing skins (I've not looked into skinning for DCS) that's an easy/quick fix by darkening the non-metallic areas on the spec map. But hopefully that'll be fixed by Belsimtek themselves...

Given that War Thunder, for the brief 5 minutes I tried it, and Rise of Flight seemed work well on my PC that is at least 5 years old in terms of tech (AMD Phenom X4 955 BE + ATI 5870 1GB), and by that I mean good framerates, that's what I would like from Edge. Bug fixing can come later. At the moment I find it difficult at times playing with the UH-1H module with about 9-15 fps at some FARPS/airports... Whether that is what EDGE will give me I don't know, and I err on the side of "it won't", but hopefully it will.

Dogfighting? Never really learned it. I can just about fly and take down some enemies in IL2 1946 though, which is what I play for my fixed wing enjoyment. Obviously bombers are easy, as long as you can keep up and don't get shot. I have taken down a few Japanese Ki's and Zero's though in F4U-1D/Hurricane campaigns. I've never really learned any particular ACM though, I just do what ever I can to get behind an AI fighter and press on my fire button when I can get a shot I think is on-target. I actually don't do too badly but I suspect that if I went online I'd be massacred. BTW I think it's a bit acnachonistic as to my knowledge they weren't used until 1958 but a 1954 F86F-40 in IL2 1946 (added by the Jet Era mods) comes with AIM 9B Sidewinders, I did a QMB mission the other day out of Berlin against 1 Mig 15 - the Mig didn't stand a chance... Would be interesting to see if the DCS variant has the same systems...

Personally, if I were to buy a new module, I'd buy the P-51. But then I'm a sucker for American planes (my favourite based on my experience in IL2 1946 being the F4U-1D). I don't know how the Germans flew most of their planes - most of them seem to lack axis trim from my knowledge of them in IL2 1946!! But as others have said it might be best to wait a while (months? A year?), especially if there is a WWII map coming. I know a Spitfire IX is planned, along with another WWII bird. Seen it mentioned in another thread around here (my thread about the recent Dora patch). I certainly am waiting because of framerate issues I have with DCS World in general, but specifically when flying the KA-50/UH-1H (they're all I currently use DCS for really), I'm not buying more modules until either I can upgrade my PC or they get resolved by the game itself. But yeah go for the P-51, I did try the TF-51D the other day in a blank Mission Editor mission out of Batumi because I was a bit bored but didn't fancy getting in the UH-1H or KA-50, and once I'd seen a youtube video on how to take off properly (I kept crashing) and done it myself I was quite "excited".

Hello all Just been messing around with my facetracknoir + PS3 Eye + DIY 3 point clip setup and it got me wondering... Currently I have FTNoIR set so that on yaw and pitch it only goes 90 degrees to one side, although in DCS it actually rotates more than that. That works quite well but I was wondering, what is a realistic amount of degrees to have? For example in real life I can only turn my head (without turning my shoulders) 90 degrees (maybe I have a dodgy neck?). But in a helicopter or fighter plane I assume you aren't strapped down as tight as an F1 driver and you'd be able to shift yourself about a bit to see more behind you by turning your shoulders and body? Also, does anyone know how to put a stop point in FTNoIR? I'd rather it went to whatever degrees I've set (90 currently) and then stopped, but currently the way I've set it doesn't appear to do that, it gets to 90 degrees but still seems to rotate further after that. Thanks in advance.

Wow yeah those VKB pedals would be perfect for me. I wonder if they will be able to incorporate toe brakes.

I also think they're too wide apart for me (hence the "giving birth" position remarks). The Saitek combat rudder pedals would also be the same I think. Looking around I think I might have been better off getting a set of CH rudder pedals, because the pedals are only 5" apart as opposed to 8 or so on the Saitek rudder pedals. I think I'll stick mine on ebay if putting them at an incline doesn't work.

No, it's not. As I've said - Imagine it as though you are sitting on a plank of wood with the pedals bolted flat to one end of the plank and you are sitting on the other end of the plank. That's how I sit. There is no chair involved.

Well lets put it this way, if I actually put my feet onto the pedals like you're supposed to I can't push the pedals because I don't have enough of a bend in my legs to do so. Currently I have the pedals positioned so that I push them from the front of the pedal with my toes/ball of my feet area. My toes are where the heel of a persons foot should go on the pedal. If I push the pedals back away from me any more then my feet won't reach the pedals. If I move them more towards me I'm in even more of a "giving birth" position. I've been considering inclining them, but as I said I'm not sure it would help because It'd make it harder to push them as I'm pushing more upwards than just back and forth. In general I think that particular set of pedals is a bad design for my needs. My Logitech DFGT pedals (car racing pedals) I have positioned fairly well, albeit with a slight bend in my legs, but they are smaller and my legs aren't as bent as when I use my rudder pedals, in fact with a bolster cushion under my knees it's fairly comfortable. I also don't have to push them with the whole of my leg to use them. That's how I'd like to get my rudder pedals setup, but I don't think that's possible with the Saitek Pro Flight rudder pedals, I'd have been better off I think with the combat pedals, but even then thinking about it I guess I'd still have to have my legs very bent in order to push them.

No. It's not really a seat. It's a couple of planks of wood that I sit on one end of. I built it that way because primarily I do my gaming in front of my monitor and my monitor is alongside my bed, so I needed something I could sit on top of on my bed.