Vedexent

If you do some online research you can find some good information on NDB navigation - for example it is possible to determine how far you are from a beacon, but it takes some maneuvering, some flight time off of course, and some math (put the beacon on your 3/9 line, time how long it takes to displace X degrees at speed Y, do the trigonometry). Also be aware that there appears to be a bug in the NDB radio which I don't think is fixed yet: multiple overlapping Morse code beacons are playing on each channel, so it's almost impossible to use Morse beacon identifiers. One can use the map and your radio compass to tune in the right beacon: I'm in Kutaisi, I know that Kobuleti is roughly at a bearing of 215, I change the radio compass card to my actual heading, dial in about where the Kobuleti beacon is, and check that the radio compass settles on the roughly right bearing. It's not perfect, and it's hard to do if you're not on the ground, but it works for now.

I don't think we need to keep checking here that closely. The forum is going to pretty much explode with threads when it finally hits the store, and YouTube is going to see a wave of "Mig-21 first flight" videos. It will be hard NOT to notice when this thing hits :)

It's not that no one can see them. I understand that for everyone to see it they need to have it installed. But it seems to be working like this: I have the skin installed. You have the skin installed. I change the skins of a squadron in the mission editor, and start multi-player. You get in a reskinned plane. I get in a reskinned plane. I can see my plane with the new skin. You can see your plane with the new skin. I don't see the new skin on your plane. You don't see the new skin on my plane. Is this how it is supposed to work?

I'm running a server/mission where I've added custom liveries on different squadrons. I appreciate that unless a player connecting to the server has also downloaded the skins I'm using, they can't see it. However, it appears that even those of us that have the skin pack installed can't see them on other players' planes, even though we can see them on our our own. Am I missing something in the setup?

Yeah ... so learning to dogfight for the first time with her really isn't a good option until the flight model gets upgraded - although I'll pick the Hawk up regardless.

I know about the Hawk, and I'm absolutely looking forward to flying it. However, for this purpose, isn't she releasing with the AFM at first, and the PFM/EFM isn't coming out until later?

So - I know I'm absolutely getting the MiG-21: I love the Russian design approach, and I love complex system modelling. Do you think this is a viable plane to learn dogfighting for the first time? I don't care if I have to put in extra time or effort - just whether or not learning on this particular plane will make dogfighting in other platforms harder to pick up.

There's always finding "practice partners" for this on Multiplayer. If all you're looking for is multi-person acrobatic flying practice the server is usually pretty full.

My understanding was that the Su-27 now has the Advanced Flight Model - is this not the case? ------ EDIT: OK - did some digging, and apparently Su-27 has Advanced Flight model, but not the Professional flight model that the F-15 now does. In fact, there appear to be no Russian fighters with PFM - although I believe the MiG-21 will be the first. Damn. I'm not sure that the MiG-21bis, with it's delta wing and it's limited angle-of-attack is a good "first time dogfighter".

Thanks, I'll try learning BFM on more modern jets first, then. Given that I prefer Russian planes, I might invert your suggestion and try Su-27 vs. Sabre, C-130, and F-15, though ;)

I've got a public Sabre map/server up, with AWACs. You can't call AWACs, but AWACs will make BRA calls to you if you're tuned into the correct frequency.

That book, I don't need - I'm a natural talent at that ;)

Thank you all for your great feedback. Cichlidfan, thanks, I think I'll pick that up. Vampyre, I watched that the other day, and I agree, it's good for getting some basic concepts in my head. 159th_Viper and Wraith - yes, I had been contemplating that exactly: working through basic acrobatic maneuvers, and then BFM, using tacview to critique and improve. As a side note, if you use Tacview, do you see any advantage over the Professional level of it? Again, thanks for the great response, all :)

Oh, and not to skimp on thanks: Leatherneck, the more I see of this module, the more jaw-droppingly amazed and impressed I am. I know it's been a long process, with its bumps, problems, and I'm sure it doesn't help that we're all impatient and wanted this released a week ago - But Cobra, et. al. - it looks like the results are amazing.

Awesome stuff Bunyap. I only discovered your channel recently, but you make excellent DCS videos, and the MiG-21 vids are no exception. Thank you :)

I've been using DCS just over a year. In that time, however, I've pretty much been only flying ground-pounders and helos. With the Sabre, I'm taking my first stab - no pun intended - at the complex world of air-to-air dogfighting. I'm curious how the hell people learn this stuff? Just get up and play with it, see what works? Find a group/squadron to teach you? Read the "Big Book on how to Kill Other People with Fighter Aircraft" (and where do I get a copy)?

The question/danger in my mind is where's "the line" between systemically enforcing reasonable policies and enforcing petty preferences of the server operator? But I think enforcing the taxiway takeoff policy is perfectly reasonable (other people get damaged/killed)

Yeah, I'm not sure that it is possible. With regular weather, where the wind direction doesn't change, it might be possible, but with dynamic weather the active can change during a mission it would be even harder, unless there's some API call that allows you to extract the active. I can dream, however ;)

This is amazing :) Now ... if it would be possible to do something similar for taking off from the non-active runway (say, within such-and-such a distance of the wrong end of the runway, at ground level, moving in the wrong direction between these speeds ... might need to pre-define runway end coordinates for all known runways) :)

I'm with you here! I'm a ground pounder by experience. This is a great plane - very agile, and a lot of power. Too much power really as is can get away from you very quickly (oh hey! I'm doing 550 knots, how did that happen?). The A4 gun sight is really making me appreciate how much laser ranging has helped me in A2G before though! The manual everything in bombing and rocketry is almost Russian ;) I like it - but at this level of inexperience I consider it a win if I manage to hit the ground with A2G ordnance, much less what I was aiming for :p

As many people have pointed out, it will come with time and experience. You have to track the battle in your head - that's "situational awareness" - and that takes practice and some inborn talent. Don't feel that you're "not getting it" (yet; you'll get there). Identifying Friend or Foe in a battle is a very hard problem. Professional soldiers get it wrong; I think it's understandable that we do. It would be nice if IFF systems were modeled in DCS.

Since DCS World need a Windows environment (someone please tell me if I'm wrong and it will run under WINE!), a cloud based VPS is likely to be noticeably more expensive. One of the ones my work uses for virtual infrastructure is ProfitBricks - sadly I don't think they have a European data center - primarily because they're at a sweet spot of high performance and price, but even they would run about $US70/month for the kind of "machine" that you'd need. Of course, if it's not up 24/7, but only for events, that's quite a bit cheaper, as pricing tends to be "per second". ----- EDIT: Baltic Servers - has GPU based dedicated servers (I mention this because millmax mentioned in his attempts that large groups of players seem to need a GPU, even in a VM), but it's very expensive (to my mind), with the kind of system you'd need being about $US 120/month.

If the OP had asked it as a simple question, I'm sure a simple answer would have been given.

Frankly, we don't control planes with keyboards and mice; we don't control cars with keyboards and mice - there are reasons for that. How do we know that 99.9% of people playing DCS use joysticks? Because you can't use anything else. Not everything needs to be made 100% accessible; you can't democratize everything. The developers of DCS made their design decisions. They are not obligated to accommodate you - or me, or anyone else. If we don't like that, we are perfectly free to go make our own flight simulator. You personally want to use a mouse mod with DCS? Fine. Make one. Don't know how? Learn. It took me about 5 minutes with Google to find some example source code in Python/Tkinter which is "mouse aware" and could probably be the basis for a mouse-position-to-keyboard-event translator. Want someone to develop it for you? Well, then acting like you're the only one who "gets it", accusing everyone else of elitism, and calling people that don't agree with you "shitbrains", probably wasn't a bright move then, was it?

Nope - it's the fidelity that I like - both system and flight model. I'd prefer few high fidelity planes over many mediocre ones, and I love it if DCS could bring the system modelling of the current FC3 planes up to DCS level. I doubt that will happen, but few things would make me happier than to get a modernized variant of the SU-25 (the SM?) modeled to DCS level