Vedexent

First - remember that countermeasures are an aid; they are not a magic "missile go away" cure. I find that with flares the automatic countermeasure program is somewhat lacking. Instead, I pop them off in tight little triplets of three; the flare button is right under my thumb on my HOTAS. Also, try and think of what you and the flares look like from the missile's perspective. If the missile is behind you, and the flares pop upwards, and you're flying level, then the flares will just arc up, and fall behind you, which just makes you and your flares together a brighter IR target. If - on the other hand, you're doing a high-G banking turn, or an Immelman, then you and your flares will be different (and hopefully confusing) bright spots in the sky. You can also use the Sun to your advantage as well. If the Sun is somewhere next to you and behind you with regards to the missile this can - believe it or not - confuse the seeker. Also - don't just use countermeasures when you see a missile; use them when you're vulnerable and you think it's possible there might be a missile: When doing an air to ground strike, I'm always jinking, maneuvering hard , and popping off chaff/flare triplets as soon as "dumb" or self-guiding weapons are free, and as soon as plane guided weapons impact. I'd rather waste countermeasures, than be unprepared for an infantry manpad. Don't forget to use terrain masking. If you can steer a missile into a hill, or the side of a valley, do it. Diving behind hills, mountains, or into valleys can break radar locks, and line of sight to gunners to prevent new launches. Take a friend - having someone observing the target zone while you do a ground strike, or scanning the region of space you're in, and calling out when there's an IR missile launch is invaluable. Learn to defeat missiles, not just pump out flares. If you do a youtube search for "dcs missile avoidance" and "bms missile avoidance" you'll find a dozen examples. And remember - even the best pilots get shot down by heavy SAM defenses. Hope you find some of this helpful.

It's possible that there is still activity on the squadron forums (see below in signature) - and that some members are still flying as wing-men on other public servers. However - given that we had next to no participation (some regular non-squadron members would pop by), I think the squadron is on "hiatus". I finally threw in the towel, shut the dedicated server down, and have been away from DCS flying entirely for the last few weeks. If there was a sudden groundswell of interest, there might be a possibility to fire things up again, but currently I have no plans to re-activate the server.

Wise words indeed :)

We've been trying some objective based squadron missions using the Mi-8: it's not about kill scores but accomplishing a specific objective. For example: We've been trying a civilian rescue scenario from a "hot zone". The idea is to get the Mi-8 onto the landing zone long enough to get all the civilians aboard (and back to base) - while a brace of Ka-50s is flying combat escort (and of course there are enemy infantry units in the town as well), and there is a fixed wing running as observer/CAS. In theory we could throw in some enemy CAP and a fighter strike as well, but we haven't tried that, yet. The Mi-8 isn't really a combat element, but it's the centerpiece of the mission, and the Mi-8 pilot does have to thread through the combat zone without getting pasted (with Ka-50 help, of course), and of course the landing zone itself is tricky landing and under morter fire, just to make things fun for the Hip pilot :)

I can see any group wanting the "encourage" the use of TS, because it's so realistic to have to type to people to communicate while flying a combat aircraft. I really don't understand why there's such a resistance to using TS on the servers.

Will do, thanks :)

So, anyone tried this - and/or the black cockpit mod - with 1.2.8? I'm guessing there would be issues as there are controls in this version not in 1.2.7.

This has to do with the "special" way that games are saved. DCS doesn't record state and position of every object and aircraft. Instead -AFAIK - it records the system inputs you put into the game (and presumably the seeds of any and all random number generators?). When you replay a track it essentially re-flies the entire mission, using your recorded command input as a giant mission long macro. If you play back at a higher speed, you can introduce rounding and calculation errors, so that the results of your inputs are different. Suddenly your "replay self" is reacting to a situation which isn't occurring, and weird things can happen.

Not.

*shrugs* If you need photo-realism to be able to immerse yourself in the scene, then IMO that says more about your ability to visualize situations than anything about simulations in general.

I don't think we're going to agree here. I think that the basic way that Human psychology processes the environment leads to us not needing, processing, or remembering, 100% of the visual cues around us. In short, we don't need photo-realism to understand the situation, so if your purpose is primarily simulation over gaming, you tend to sacrifice the graphics - or put limited resources and time into perfecting the simulation rather than the graphics. I sort of agree that if we can have photo-realistic graphics without losing accuracy, lets do it. I like eye-candy as much as the next guy - but I have no illusions that the candy is the steak. If I can have both, great. If I have to give up one of those, I'll sacrifice the pretty graphics before the accuracy, because to me, the simulation is the point, not the pictures. That's just me. People like me, seem to be in the minority. That doesn't make me - or people like me - "better" or "more hardcore", just different and in the minority. I still stick by my guns though that if you are willing to sacrifice the accuracy for the pictures - the steak for the candy - then you're more interested in a game, not a simulation. Again, that's just people's tastes - but we have military themed games up the wazoo, and done with better production values that ED seems to be willing or capable of bringing to the table. Fire up DCS and then play some Crysis 3, and you'll see what I mean. DCS as a high quality graphics game, rather than a medium level graphics simulator probably wouldn't survive against War Thunder, or World of Planes, simply because it doesn't have the financial power of a major gaming publisher behind it. DCS's cachet in the gaming/Sim world is its complexity, and its fidelity. Lose that, and you probably lose the thing that makes it stand out in the Gaming/Sim world - only to see it vanish.

So ... your answer is to go back to expecting pretty looking and sounding games loosely based on military systems, and forget wanting to simulate the actual hardware, systems, and military scenarios. In your point list, you enumerate solutions to get your eye and ear candy, and chuck the fidelity of the simulator: stop expecting simulation perfection; find ways to do graphics better; find ways to ease the user into object sound, and graphics libraries. If you want all the cinematic bells and whistles at the cost of the technical simulation accuracy, it's a game not a Sim. If I want games, I'll go back to games. I don't; I have an unused copy of War Thunder installed on my system. Somewhere. I think. I agree with you that the graphics don't have to be photo-realistic; look at real military training Sims, used by militaries, to train future soldiers: they're not. I roll my eyes a bit at the crowd who has to stuff every single possible graphical fidelity mod into DCS, and then bitches that they don't get 60 FPS - go have a look at Steel Beasts to see what acceptable graphics are for real military training. The game market is doing quite well thanks: War Thunder, World of Tanks, Call of Duty, Battlefield 4, etc. Eagle Dynamics just doesn't have the power to compete in that AAA market; they'd get eaten by EA and DCS would vanish, or warp into something unrecognizable. I realize I'm in a tiny tiny minority of gamers, and a tiny minority of those that want to play DCS, in that I want: the full blown system simulation; as realistic a military scenario as possible; teammates who want enough fidelity in the game play to do things not because they are necessarily needed in the simulation, but they're part of the real life activity; and, I don't really care if the graphics stretch beyond the basics of what I need for immersion and to understand what's going on around me. The community is not "withering". The hard core MilSim community has never been large. Eagle Dynamics isn't EA - their main business is doing actual military simulators for pilot training. DCS World wasn't meant to be Microsoft Flight Simulator - and some people are just now figuring that out (Steam). There's not many of us. I accept that. But we have DCS, and maybe a handful of others like Steel Beasts. You have a veritable horde of "military" console twitch games like Halo, and Battlefield 4 Leave mine alone. Don't tell me that I need to adopt your style of play, your game values, and that my playground needs to be just like yours. ---- On the flip side, I agree 100% with the idea of adopting the Microsoft FSX developer model. However, I think this is already happening. DCS seems to be concentrating on the EDGE engine, the Map SDK, the Nevada environment, and cleaning up aspects to support 3rd party modules like changing up aspects of the AFM flight models. Actual aircraft development recently appears to be all 3rd party: The Mi-8, Huey, Hawk, L-39, MiG-21bis, etc.

If they've gotten close enough to positively identify the unit, and have confirmed they've made the kill, that's realistic too. What I'm trying to avoid is situations where you're doing long range barrages, at a unit, knowing that one of those is an Avenger, and a couple are just Hummers, and then being told if/when you got the right kill.

Thank you very much :)

I'm wondering if there's a way to set the server - or in a mission file - so that the multiplayer server announcements - such as "PilotX has killed a Hummer with a Kh-25M"? In missions that are trying to be as realistic as possible, this represents information you wouldn't normally have: did I get him. did I get the right one, what was he? I don't want to disable the scoring system - although I'm not adverse to that if that's the way to do it - so I guess you could still keep peeking at your score to see if you got him, but I'd like to take out the announcments.

With the "not working issue": I've seen this happen quite a bit - especially when loading large, complex, multiplayer games. DCS is just gets really busy, doesn't check in with Windows - and Windows isn't sure if the program is still working, or not. It is - and it comes back eventually (99% of the time). The alt-tab issue is related to whether or not DCS really has the Window's focus. Even though it might be full screen (or it could be full screen sized without "officially" being full screen), this isn't always the case. Clicking on the screen with the mouse also focuses DCS. In short, they both are just harmless "features" of DCS.

Oh no - that wasn't meant at a dig at you at all. You guys provide a very good server, for people who obviously want to fly acrobatics. It's not like you're luring people to the dark side, with cookies - they already want to be there :) But you sum up the attitude that's I'm trying to point out: most people don't want to fly MilSim. Most people want to "peel off and throw it around for half hour". People who want to learn the systems, learn the tactics, learn squadron tactics, learn integrated operations: It's a very small market. That doesn't make the hard core MilSim crowd better - it just makes it different, and small. The OP was asking what happened to the Market; my thesis is that it has never been that large; even within DCS - one of the few detailed MilSim "games" - there's a large portion of the population that thinks "combat in DCS can be abit of a chore". That's their - and your - choice. I'm not saying that such people are bad.

I don't think there ever has been a large Military Sim market. Games based around Military combat, sure. Today, World of Tanks, and War Thunder are doing quite well. I would argue that the products part of the "MilSim heyday" that you are recalling, fall in that category. Non combat civilian flight sims like FSX are still around, despite being 10 years old + DCS and Steel Beasts Pro - which are consumer level products based off actual military training simulators - not as much. Even within the DCS community, look how many people are playing Digital Acrobatics Flight Simulator rather than Digital Combat Simulator: The "free flight", "no weapons" multiplayer servers always have the most people on them.

If you read some of the documentation on the Su-25 cockpit controls, you get a real feel for how much more detailed this aircraft's model could be. Lots of little "why didn't they..." problems get answered "They did. It's just not modeled at this level". I think that if someone put the time/effort/energy/investments into making it though, they might go for an Su-25SM, which would be very cool - even though I'm a huge fan of the manual do-it-yourself aspect of the original Su-25.

Or - to sum it all up: You want a DCS: Su-25 module. Which is what most of us Su-25 pilots are hoping for, especially if - like me - you go back and forth between the Ka-50 and the Su-25 (and are awaiting the DCS: MiG-21bis module, anxiously).

The lack of an RWR is a real problem with the Ka-50. I've been flying CAS in a full battle front simulation, and been happily picking off tanks, when *BAM* the helicopter explodes. I just didn't have any warning of the Blue Mirage CAP locking on me and picking me off (although, it's possible it was using IR air-to-air, in which case an RWR would not have helped).

Agreed - but I'd also say that if you want to pick up helos, the Ka-50 is a good starting point. It's designed to be simple enough to fly that the pilot has the time and attention to also be the gunner. Jumping from flying the Ka-50 into the Mi-8 - a platform I like a lot, but am still the greenest of n00bs with - really made me appreciate the simplicity of flying the Ka-50.

The Su-25 - with it's lack of targeting systems - forces you use the plane and brain, not the game. I wouldn't use mods, labels, or the map. To me that's a "cheat" - but that's my take on it: YMMV. Reading your briefing, studying your map ahead of the mission, noting landscape features when you fly, marking with smoke rockets, flying with a wingman who can be doing any and all of these as well and calling locations: all are good and much more "true to life" solutions.

I think that it's important to support the Mig-21bis on the principle that we want 3rd party developers to succeed at creating content for DCS World. If we had half a dozen dev teams publishing an airframe once every 2-3 years, that's 2-3 new quality planes every year. I'd love that. From what I've seen, the MiG-21bis quality is kick-ass, and it's a plane I really want to fly; but even if it wasn't, I'd support it on the above grounds.

Possibly way off topic - but ... I really like the Mig-21bis idea, for the same reason you list: "operating complicated systems is what makes it fun for me". I like Russian aircraft for the same reason I like a manual transmission in a vehicle: I like to be the one making the decisions. There's just enough technology and automation in Russian aircraft to allow a skilled pilot to get the job done. He may have to keep track of a lot in his/her head, and use the Mark I eyeball a lot (that's the sole targeting computer in the Su-25, after all), but it's the challenge of dealing with the complexity that makes it fun for me. Maybe not operating complicated systems, but being in the middle of complicated systems :) But everyone has different preferences, and none of them are wrong :) Also - the Mig-21 is old! 1955 vs. 1977 for the A-10C and 1986 for the F-15E.