Cykyrios

Another easy way to test ground effect is to hover right next to a building, while out of ground effect: when the rotor starts overlapping the roof of the building, you will see the helicopter literally jump. Ground effect in the Gazelle definitely feels different from the Huey, but it's there all right.

After 3-4 low speed tries, my first high-ish speed try went much better than I ever hoped it would...

Being French, but without the whole context (I haven't checked the position of all those labels), here's what I can say: 3. LEU = leurre (countermeasure) 4. P.A. is indeed AP, AMORT. is short for "amortissement" (damping) I believe 5. I assume this indicates an issue with the navigation system? (it's navigation in French as well) 7. SERVO is a way to shortern "asservissement", probably the auto-pilot slaving options 8. tir autorisé (launch authorized) and missile prêt (missile ready) The others I'm not sure/don't know the exact context, but others will most likely have some answers.

When flying backwards, the piece of string points the wrong way. It seems to be limited to a 180° arc.

As I said however, in the situation I tested, I had very little speed (oscillating between positive and negative, and well below ETL speed), and managed to stop the descent by simply pulling collective - this should be a recipe for VRS, but that was enough to recover. There have been other situations where I did encounter VRS, mostly when coming for an approach. More testing is required, I guess.

I just tried a quick flight over Groom Lake, starting at 2000 m and 200 km/h. I came to a stop and tried to get into VRS... much to my surprise, I didn't notice VRS at all: the rotor didn't overspeed, and I was falling at about 70 km/h. When I got close to the ground, I simply pulled the collective and stopped the descent. The only way I got the rotor to somewhat overspeed was to autorotate, but even then the alarm only sounds a second or 2 at a time, while my collective is at zero and I try my best descending vertically.

I haven't flown the Gazelle that much yet (will do more flying today), but one thing I quickly noticed (other than that I was really bad) is the ground effect, which seems to behave differently from the Huey (at this point, at least): in the Huey, once you pull just enough collective to get off the ground, you'll stay at a foot or 2, and will basically stay there without touching the collective, as long as you don't maneuver too hard. In the Gazelle though, pulling the collective slowly makes her want to go forward, so I have to pull aft cyclic. Before I even get off the ground, I'm either going 20+ km/h forward and/or scraping the tail. Once I'm a few meters above the ground, she will go several meters up and down without touching the collective, and even coming to a stop can make her touch the ground instead of "sitting" on the air cushion. Is that just a trait of the Gazelle, which requires pilots to constantly adjust collective even while hovering in ground effect? I also noticed that the torque from the tail rotor affects lift quite a bit, so that might play a role as well.

Who said the copilot had a scary face? Well now he's from a horror movie...

The difference in blur depending on the helicopters is inconsistent, and that blur should only depend on rotor RPM and camera settings/human eye. Some cameras have very little motion blur, which results in sharp-looking rotor blades, and sometimes the blades look as if they were turning really slow (depends on the framerate). On the other hand, some cameras have a lot of motion blur, and they will display a blurred disc, which I believe is what the human eye perceives from outside a helicopter. Now, a game will generally behave as the former type of cameras, unless motion blur is simulated, and shadows are another difficult part. In DCS though, blur is purely "artistic" and depends only on the devs, as the turning rotor is a completely separate 3D model from the slow rotor one. If anything, I'd rather say the Shark's rotor blades are NOT blurry enough, but at this point, it is just a matter of preference.

As a pilot/passenger in a helicopter, you won't see the flickering shadow because your eyes aren't "fast" enough, while a camera (or video game) can display non-blurred pictures of the shadow, which your eyes can then see, and that is the flickering we notice.

A snap roll is actually caused by a wing stalling before the other one does. I do believe though, that torque from the engine makes it easier to roll one way (to the left IIRC). I also think the effect is noticeable at higher speeds, where your snap roll will be faster to the left than it will be to the right (again, IIRC).

I don't know what helicopters you fly in Arma, but unless you're using the advanced flight model, Arma's helicopters are pretty unrealistic, with collective acting as an altitude control rather than actually controlling the collective pitch of the rotor blades. Helicopters can require substantial collective adjustments for some maneuvers, and this is especially true when you slow down to get in a hover: you can easily reach 80% collective when out of ground effect. A simple way to check this in Arma is to simply pitch up slightly to slow down, and you will stop with no issues after some time, without even using the collective (unless that has changed, I haven't played Arma in a while). You basically cannot have the collective in DCS act as it does in Arma, and the only way to emulate that would be to constantly adjust collective to get similar behavior. If you haven't already, try Arma's advanced flight model, as it should be closer to what DCS does.

Since the latest 2.0.1 update brought dynamic lighting for objects back, here's a quick pic with flares and nose illumination.

I don't think there's a way to "undo" the lighting the same way pressing L illuminates everything. However, the controls for cockpit lighting are the 5 right-most knobs in the cockpit; pressing L merely turns them all to almost max brightness. If you already knew this and simply wanted a way to turn everything off, I can't really help you, though, but your best bet would probably be to add a modifier key, so you'd have to press shift+L or ctrl+L (making sure those aren't used by something else).

If you're talking about AI aircraft, then things are different, but a player-controlled Mustang will probably not last long if it starts producing black smoke. White "smoke" can come from leaking fuel, but whenever you start releasing black smoke, you're pretty much toast in a few seconds/minutes. Of course, the AI doesn't care about damage at all, unless they lose a wing. Sometimes they simply abandon the fight, turn their lights on and start heading home, others they keep fighting as if the plane was in perfect condition. As for the actual amount of smoke, however, I cannot say, but you should be able to find some WW2 footage here and there to check that. It does seem to me that the amount is the same for every aircraft, even jets (in DCS, I mean, not in the real world).

The usual answer would be "when they're ready". More seriously though, they still seem to have a few performance issues (I had to change the default theme in the main menu, because my FPS were dropping below 10, and some other people reported the same), but you can try them out by editing a .lua file somewhere - don't remember which one exactly, but you can probably find it easily by searching around (or maybe someone with the answer will drop by).

There are plenty of anime that don't simply objectify people or use obvious stereotypes, and even a couple of them that actually draw characters in a realistic way! These will often fall in the "seinen" category - more mature anime, so to speak. An recent example would be Subete ga F ni Naru, pretty interesting. There are different anime for different audiences, nothing wrong with liking some and disliking others, nothing wrong with hating anime either, as long as it doesn't derive towards hating people who do like anime.

Polychop stated that they will implement multicrew as soon as they can, so there's a good chance that it will.

I hope the number is not X52, X being a random digit :p Anyway, let's try this: 526! Thanks a lot for the giveaway, my Saitek Cyborg Evo has served me well for the past 5-6 years, but its deadzone is getting so large I'm starting to have trouble flying. Plus it's not a HOTAS, so here's hoping. Good luck to everyone else entering!

Just open Tacview, click on the recording icon in the top toolbar, check "Record DCS World flights". That's it! A DCS logo icon should appear in the bottom-right corner (along with a popup), telling you DCS flights will be recorded. From that point, you can close Tacview entirely, your flights will be automatically recorded (they should be saved in your documents\Tacview by default). Just open the .txt.acmi files in Tacview, and you can save them to the .acmi format to save space (a 2 hour mission with only a couple of aircraft can generate over 25 MB of data, but the acmi format brings that down to about 5 MB).

Well that's the point: if GA modules were to be developed, they wouldn't be FSX quality, but DCS quality. This in itself makes quite the difference, as the vast majority of FSX aircraft is of poor quality, with only a handful payware ones that would approach DCS standards. And then again, you can't ruin a sim by adding more optional content, whether or not someone would be able to fly around with their 172 would be up to the mission maker/server admin. Expecting a combat sim to have combat-only content is perfectly understandable, but if the DCS quality standards can be achieved in general aviation modules, then why not use this as an opportunity to attract more customers? I'm sure there are people on these forums who would buy at least one such module (and it would also be an opportunity to have proper ATC).

The heat haze from the engines does not actually produce a blur, only a distortion. What makes it look blurry is the extreme turbulence of the air pushed out of the exhaust and mixing with the air around. In this regard, the 1.5/2.0 implementation is much more realistic than what we had in 1.2. The only issue I could see is that it can be somewhat too subtle, but if you take off in an A-10 and pause the game, then watch from the side, you can see the haze for several tens of meters behind the aircraft. Making it somewhat more pronounced closer to the exhaust could help with the effect, but I think it is otherwise pretty well done. I'm also pretty sure adding blur would actually ruin the effect, it would be like looking through frost glass, instead of a heat haze.

Many points made already, but I will state my opinion as well: I'm all for civilian aircraft, but am honestly not sure they would sell as much as military aircraft (especially if they cost the same). However, I would gladly pay for a DCS PFM- and ASM-level helicopter (even an R22, though my favorite helicopter is the H135 from Airbus - and it even has a militarized version). Pure civilian aircraft would have serious problems with the current state of DCS:World: lacking ATC, not enough places to fly, and more. I'm sure that enough attention would make ED consider improving those areas further, though. Some people around here say those of us who want to fly civilian aircraft should play FSX/P3D/X-plane, but even payware aircraft don't compare to the DCS standards (not that I have looked into them that much). I've only flown a freeware EC135 in the X-Plane demo, and it clearly had somme FM issues. Plus, I love seeing the damage to the aircraft after a hard landing, when those sims will generally just stop the flight for a slighty heavy landing. In the end, combat will be the main center of interest in DCS, but a few civilian aircraft can probably get in there for a good experience.

Here's another track with the Huey, this time I shut the engine down while flying under the bridge (not between the arch and the road). A wild guess would be that it has to do with the collision model of concave objects, or with flying below objects when everything is supposed to be flying over objects. Hoover_Dam_Huey.trk

I'm in! Thanks for doing this, and I also should thank all the other people who did so as well. Someone will be happy to have an L-39 as an extra Christmas present!