Vedexent

Cool! Most of our members are in the U.S. and Canada, so it's neat to see a "sister squadron" with a love of the Su-25 in the European timezones. Despite the post saying they couldn't get to our server, our server is pretty much up 98%+ of the time. You, or any of your squad, are welcome to drop by anytime; our server is always open for public "drop ins". We have several missions where joint actions by multiple squadrons works - or we can even go head-to-head for a little friendly competition :D

The server was up overnight. It was running when I went to bed, and running when I got up - and somewhere in there, was when you posted. Still, I restarted the program this morning, and reloaded the mission, so even if it had "silently" disconnected from the master server, it should have re-connected at that point. It's running the 1.2.7 beta - I don't know if that's relevant.

This might be less a development of FC3, and more a move to migrating FC3 aircraft out into stand-alone modules. Perhaps even - hopefully - into DCS level modules. Although I agree, getting more Steam players onto FC3 is a very good marketing move.

a) I'm not sure the F-15 will never have a clickable cockpit. b) Probably not, as there are 3rd party designers almost in the game now. Maybe some will have it, and some will not. Look at the Hawk - it's supposed to have it, but it can be turned off for those who want to use keyboard.

Thanks Mad Jack! I originally thought that was a Huey only script, but reading closer it looks like it designates Medivac units by unit name, so it could - in theory - be any unit: Mi-8, Huey - even nonsensical units like an Su-27 :D One of our mission authors has played around with that script. You have to make the pop-up casualty units invisible to enemy units, or they just get mowed down as well. I think this could be a very interesting type of mission, especially for the unarmed Mi-8 pilot who is hoping like hell his/her partner(s) can keep the enemy units held off for the pickup :)

Or ... never mind ... it looks like the only change is that FC3 no longer requires Lock-On, which is a good change - but not as sweeping as it first seemed.

I agree that the MiG-21bis is very critical - or at least has become very critical - for the DCS community. I, for one, am still planning on buying it, should I have the opportunity - and I think that's true of most of the people I fly with. If there was another way to support the project, I would. But beyond that, I'm not sure what else we can do to support. The team is pretty quiet right now - quite understandably - and it is being "officially discouraged" by the moderators not to "speculate" in the forums. Which means that the project is falling out of the public eye. Hell, look how much this thread has slowed. The development team understood they had to keep interest and conversation current it's why they kept posting updates, images, and video - to keep the idea fresh and alive How many weeks or months of silence will it take before the project is replaced as a "hot topic", and eventually becomes - like the yak-130 mentioned a half-dozen posts back - a half-remembered "was a wip a time ago".

Does anyone know of any published Mi-8 mission where the Mi-8 plays a medivac or CSAR role? I can find Huey medivac, and a Ka-50 mission where the player escorts the AI Mi-8 - but anyone know of something where players could fly both combat escort and the Mi-8 rescue chopper? If not, I may have to look into making one - but was wondering if this existed already.

I don't suppose the Mi-8s are client flyable, are they, given that this was published before the Mi-8 came out? Any interest in editing it so that it's possible for Ka-50/Mi-8 multiplayer flight? :)

Anyone had problems with this with the most recent updates? I've just picked up the Mi-8, and even following the above steps, I can't get the ATC to respond to me. However, once I fire up the engines without clearance, I can hear ATC giving me "retroactive permission", so it seems the radio is on and working. It just seems that they cannot hear me - despite the fact that both the pilot/captain and navigator radio controls are set to radio. Anyone else having this issue? Any idea what I might be doing wrong here?

Despite this thread being raised from the dead, the answer is absolutely. I love the design philosophy of the Frogfoot, and enjoy the challenge of the Su-25 and "doing it my own damn self!" :) A full blown DCS: Su-25 variant with 6DOF (I realize the original Su-25 already has that) and clickable cockpit would be a day one buy for me. If they want to throw in more variants like the Su-25SM - which appears to be the "official" RuAF upgrade of the Su-25 airframe - I'd buy that too! :)

Are you sure that guide is for Black Shark 2? I looked it up quickly on Google, and it looks like it's for the original Black Shark. For the countermeasures panel to come on, you need to turn on the UV-26 covered switch over your right shoulder. As for the nosewheel: the only time I've had that happen is damaging the landing gear taxing. As for the missiles, do you have both your weapon system switch on (lower row, covered switch, near ejector switches) and the master arm switch on the front weapons panel? You did get the ground crew to load missiles, right? :D You selected the appropriate hardpoint (I or Y)?

+1 on this mod! I really like the authentic cockpit, so once I've got the start-up procedures learned, I'll probably go back to Russian, but this is a very well done mod - and makes start-up 100x easier.

We're still here - don't worry about that. If this seems to be a public storm, just remember that people don't get worked up over things they don't care about. If people act, or sound hurt or angry, it's because they support the project and want it to come about, and are bitterly disappointed. The MiG-21 project is something very much needed in the DCS community, and it looks like such an amazingly high quality additions, and suddenly - at the 11th hour - it sounded like that it was not going to happen. That seems a less likely catastrophe now. It's a weird, screwed up - and very human - sort of bizarre "tribute" to how much you've captured the attention and hopes of the community. It also means that a large portion of the furor goes away with the issues getting resolved and the project getting back on track, and it completely vanishes with a release.

There are some hardware options which don't hit your game performance, as all the heavy lifting of the encoding is done by hardware. The drawback is they're around the $200 range. I've had good luck with AVerMedia Live Gamer HD.

I built a gaming system around the new Haswell i5, and I've been very happy with the level of performance.

I would concur with the immersion factor - it's why I put "are the graphics good enough to not be distracting" aspect in my point #6. But, I just don't see the kind of frame drops and radical changes to the flight model that seem to be affecting you - and my system is similar to yours except I don't have an i7 (i5 Haswell), and I don't have an SSD. Something to consider: are you running any mods, or are you running a stock-only DCS? I can't blame ED totally, if I'm running mods which they never designed for, which hit my game performance. That said, I'm no great fan of some of the software shortcomings, and can agree with you on those points. Working with software, I'm both frustrated by some of the shortcomings that shouldn't be in any modern program (poor multi-core utilization in this day and age?); and I'm understanding of them - given the history of the software, I can see exactly how/why these issues crept in: DCS is a decade old project, which is really a cluster of smaller projects that are retro-fitted and "glued together". The issues are just going to happen with a setup like that, and the only long term cure is a complete redesign/rebuild from the ground up. Anyone got $20 million to donate to ED? All in all, I agree that DCS is not the greatest software design in the history of the world, nor does it perform like a well oiled machine. It's not super-sexy performance, hyper-polished like a AAA video game title, and its graphics are not Crysis. But I think it works "well enough" as a flight simulator, I'll continue to use and support it, and given what the fundamental causes of some of the issues are (or at least, so I believe) I don't think they're going away soon.

I really have to wonder about the fetishism of the "holy frame rate". I'm willing to bet that if you took the frame-rate measurement tools away from a people, a lot of them wouldn't even notice if/when their frame rate dropped (so long as it's not something like 10). In my never-to-be-humble-opinion this is a combat flight simulator, not an 3D IMAX theater. To me - and you may totally disagree, and that's fine - the important bits are (not necessarily in order of importance): Is it a good flight model? Is it a good systems model? Is it a good airframe design? (I love my Frogfoot, even though it's a simpler system model than my Ka-50, just because I love the design philosophy of the plane) Is the world and the AI good enough to provide an acceptable overall experience? Are the graphics good enough to make it immerse enough? Are the graphics good enough that I'm not getting distracting graphics artifacts? Is the muti-player good enough that I can simulate larger military operations than 1 plane? You might argue that DCS World is shakey on #4 and #7 right now, but I don't see the need for 4K imagery, or photorealistic landscapes, or super-high-realism particle smoke systems. Do I like them? Do I appreciate them if they're there? Hell, yes! I like eye-candy as much as the next guy. But I'll take simulator "steak" over eye "candy" any day of the week. Just my $0.02

Interesting! This might explain those odd times when I suddenly can't hit with the Karen to save my life, and then suddenly I can again.

Laser guided weapons on the Su-25 are tricky - sometimes I have definitely "off days" with Karens - but they're definitely useful. It does help if you have the graphics set high enough that the aiming cross on the gun-sight is semitransparent; then you can put it right over the little black dot; don't maneuver much, and - regardless of how the aiming reticule seems to shift off the black dot - don't move the targeting laser while the missile is in flight. Let the lasing system track on its own.

Is this because it invalidates any 1.2.7 bug reports (which is the point of the open beta) because it's not possible to tell which is a 1.2.7 issues, which is a mod issue, and which is a core<->mod interaction issue - or is there a reason beyond that?

It might not be - could be some exhibitor is just sticking munitions on the outside for show :D

It's hard to see what the load out is on these planes - the video quality isn't great - but near the end there's a pretty shot up Su-25 rolling into base with a pair of fuel tanks and a quad of what look like empty S-25 tubes. That doesn't mean that there couldn't have been other munitions on the hard points further out when she left base.

+1 on this. I was reluctant to get on MP for just this reason when I started (a whole 6 months ago :P ). I learned 100x more about the simulator and airframes with MP than I ever did with tutorials and SP. There are a lot of good people out there willing to help out new people.

a) Because servers tend to crash when they get a certain load of players. b) People have different preferences to missions, aircraft, style, etc. - If I like flying A-10Cs, do I really want to crowd on a server with a mission designed for Russian aircraft, or vice versa? c) Many people like setting up their own "fiefdoms" online. Or they like flying with just their friends. d) Large integrated public missions don't really work well right now, even on the large "popular" servers. If I go on the 51st, or 104th, and try and fly CAS, odds are that no one on my side is flying CAP, and player controlled F-15Cs from the opposing faction will swat me out of the air. To get balanced set of player controlled aircraft, you pretty much need to set up an event, and now you might as well launch a server for that event. e) Large "popular" servers tend to attract a lot of the "yahoo" crowd; you know, the type who think it's hilarious to crash into each other, or shoot up the airbase, or generally be an ass. That's not the fault of the large server maintainers, at all; that's just an unfortunate side effect of them attracting a lot of people, and "Sturgeon's Law". It's a small community, and even within that community there are definitely lots of little groups, each with their own particular likes and preferences. There's no way "one size fits all" here.