Vedexent

Awesome news, thank you very much. That I can install on my VM Lab box :) Edit: Pepec9124 how big is the VM image? I'm wondering if I can carve off enough system RAM to hold the VM image in memory. Say ... 8Gb "ramdisk" image, and 8Gb for the system to operate? That's half my system memory, but I might be able to swing it.

Yeah ... you did notice the part where I described the box I was planning on putting the DCS Server on is my virtualization lab? Guess not. True, I haven't work with VMWare products before, much preferring open source solutions like KVM, or - if I'm virtualizing Linux guests on a Linux hosts, OpenVZ containers (and in a pinch VirtualBox), but I work with VMs, and more than half of the "systems" in my home network are single-purpose VMs. But thanks for not merely correcting my mistaken impression with "no, I meant the bare metal hypervisor version", and explaining the very basics of virtualization to me without overloading my poor little head.

Thanks for the data. My "target box" in an quad-core i7 (precise model number escapes me - about a year old) with 32Gb of RAM, so the core/RAM info is very helpful. I don't mind if I need to dedicate cores or RAM to the DCS server: most of my other linux VMs are pretty light single-purpose servers or micro-installations used to string together for virtual networking simulations. If it will work in KVM, I don't need a lot of graphics support - I'll be disabling 3D rendering anyways, and tapping into the server externally from a gaming PC, I just need the server aspect. However, if VSphere is an absolute must have, then there's an AUR package for it, so installing it to the Arch Linux system shouldn't be too much problem. Appreciate the hard data.

I appreciate it :) For me the ideal "working" virtualizer would be KVM - but VMWare is an installable package on my Linux lab box. I'd be trying this out myself - but I'm still at work.

Yep - I do: what's your virtualization platform (VMWare, KVM, Virtualbox, Other, etc...), and what version of DCS World did you install (clean "current" install vs. an older install that's been upgraded with the system patches, over time)? Can you duplicate it with a clean VM and the current version of DCS World? Since Pepec9124's attempt to setup a new install of DCS World on a clean Windows 7 x64 Pro under Virtualbox seems to have failed. What might you and Pepec9124 be doing differently?

So once again DRM trumps usability in software, hmm? Limiting software to one functioning instance per valid software key - and having a requirement for the program to "touch base" with the authentication server every X days - would suffice to stop someone installing paid modules into a VM instance and then cloning the VM to bypass DRM. EDIT: that's not meant as a dig against ED - so far as I know they bought a "turnkey" anti-piracy solution in StarForce and didn't realize the implications for the squadron/server community. It is meant as a dig against the creators of StarForce who took the lazy solution and broke a perfectly legitimate use case for software.

Can anyone confirm or deny - through example - whether DCS World will run in a fully virtualized windows machine - one running under a hypervisor layer such as VMWare, VirtualBox, or (ideally for me) KVM? I would like to migrate our server off of my personal machine onto a VM on my lab box which is running Arch Linux with the KVM kernel mod. I recognize that I may have to dedicate two cores solely to the VM to get the performance needed, but that's OK. I'm just seeing conflicting information as whether or not this is even possible. If no one knows, I'll try it and report - but I'm wondering if anyone has actually done it.

Was wondering why we hadn't seen you the last few days :)

Server Update OK, the 314-я сад server has now been updated with Servman 3. Missions are on a 3 hour rotation. Mission voting is ON, so you can select missions. Currently we only have VapoR's 4 Su-25 missions in rotation, but mission suggestions for the "Library" are more than welcome. I'm somewhat concerned that rotating missions when the server had been launched by starting single player, then jumping to multiplayer, then rotating the mission caused the server to crash - so if the server goes down, please message me. Next is to look into that auto-restart script. EDIT: Looks pretty stable - ran all day, swapping out missions every 3 hours - no crashes. Knock on wood :)

And we're back.

Very cool - we were discussing the rate of automatic flare dispensing on server the other night, and had talked about creating a macro; this does exactly that, complete with software suggestions, and script examples - thanks! :) One interesting thing to note - since this is merely emitting keyboard events - and that's the exact strategy used by the Saitek X52 Pro profiles software, you could use this to control much more than chaff and flares. I doubt you could program flight maneuvers, or anything like that, as the program can't "sense" the environment - but it opens up some interesting possibilities like "power up my Su-25, load my favorite weapons, set my running lights correctly, start up the engines, and contact the tower to taxi." :D That is - if there's keybinding to select weapon load outs - I just use mouse.

OK - the server is currently down, and will likely be down until this around 18:00 EDT (GMT -05:00). This is due to the fact that I tried to restart the server this morning, and it's downloading the latest patch. It won't be done before I have to leave for work, so it will have to wait until I get home again. Sorry about that. This really stresses the need for me to put some of the server mods in like Teamviewer and Serveman.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if the rate of time passing in the game is faster, so far as meteorology is concerned? I queued up a mission on the server last night which is set early summer morning. I went to bed, and 8 hours later, it's not mid-afternoon in the game, it's in the middle of the night. Upon reflection, it seems that sunset comes on awfully fast in one our late afternoon missions as well. I guess missions don't often persist that long, so it doesn't really matter a whole lot - but I was wondering if anyone else had noticed time passing faster?

It's up now. I'm leaving it up all the time. If it's down ... there's something wrong with my system and it has reset, or some such - but if everything is working, it's up.

I saw an example of this last night on our server spectating someone doing an "out of fuel road landing". Just at the end of the landing, the wheels retracted into the fuselage, but the Su-25 happily stayed at the same height, Star Wars land-speeder style.

I think I edited it to that about the same time as you posted this :) I found this: http://www.ww2.dk/new/air%20force/division/iad/131sad.htm As I'm pretty much blind here - not speaking any Russian at all - I'm open to corrections.

Awesome! Thank you very much Auger :)

OK - the server has been re-branded as 314-я caд - Su-25 Squadron in the public server list, for the 314-я смешанная авиационная дивизия or 314th - Mixed Aviation Division (if the Russian is inaccurate, please let us know - machine translation is iffy). Further ramifications of the name change will be forthcoming from VapoR.

Sorry - didn't see this until now. The server is now up semi-permanently (permanent unless there are system reset issues). You are welcome any time - there's people on there pretty much any night. We were even full up tonight for a bit.

OK - I dont know if the server is up or not. I think it is - but for some reason my copy of DCS won't retrieve the server list. Let me know if you do, or do not, see the server, please. EDIT: It looks like disconnecting the server and going "back", without shutting down the program, allowed my installation to retrieve the list. Maybe it is just timing out initially? In any case, it LOOKS like everything is OK again, although no one is on the server, so I'm not 100% sure.

Actually, I ran into someone that may have showed me an approach which solves the underlying navigational issue (but not the equipment issue): don't turn in the X-Z plane at all - just do an Immelmann turn in the X-Y plane. This has a couple of advantages: You can attack from a high altitude, which keeps you out of the reach of low-altitude SAMS except for your actual attack run. You don't need to keep track of where your target bearing is after your attack, just fold backwards on your own flight path. You don't actually lose energy, it just goes from potential to kinetic and back again. In working in the concept of SAM defense - since you are vulnerable to low-level SAMs during the attack dive it'self - you'd want to dive fairly close to the ground/target to run any SAMs tracking you during the dive into the ground, and do a banking climb in the Immelmann to drag any SAMs on the way up. So I guess this becomes a series of high yo-yo maneuvers, over the surface of a paraboloid, with the apex placed on, or above, your target. I've practiced the back and forth "bent figure 8" of the straight Immelman, and it's not that hard; I still haven't tried the "walking yo-yo" approach. If it all works out, then you don't need to use the HSI to keep track of the target point.

Like everyone else, mine broke quite quickly. I switched to the metal hat brim-clip, and I don't notice it working any less well - save if there's a lot of bright natural light in the room, which just means drawing the blinds. Don't think I'd go back to the Pro, nor would I advise anyone to buy it.

From the chat, it looked like anyone else who entered the server was also thusly affected. I ended up restarting the server, and it worked OK. Not sure what happened.

I don't know if this is a bug, or just my ignorance with hosting a server - but I just got locked out of my own server :) A cluster of people logged into my system, and I took a plane, then suddenly I was looking at a map - no units listed, just the bare map. None of the view keys (F1,F2 ... F10) would change it. I could go back to spectators, a select a new plane - and this would all be announced in the mission chat - but the map never changed. As there were a number of people already flying, I didn't want to reboot the server, but I find it frustrating to be locked out of my own mission :( Any ideas? Is this a glitch, or did I just do something that I'm unaware of, and don't know how to undo?

I've been using that - at your suggestion I believe - but that's not as effective in thunderstorms, which the mission I was trying was set in. You can manually reset the navigation system as you're egressing a target area, but I was wondering if there was a way to just lock the system.