TripRodriguez

I will add that I do find the Gazelle fun to fly after taking some time to start getting used to it. That is not to say it doesn't need to be fixed if it is as incorrect as people are saying.

Truly impressive work.

I've never considered FC3 or any FC3 aircraft because of the simplified aircraft but this campaign is making me consider the F-15. How is the F-15 flight model, and do you think I should buy it? On the other hand a simplified aircraft would be good for friends who want to fly on my sim but aren't prepared for hours of learning the basics. I'm not much interested in any of the other FC3 aircraft, so if I get the F-15 standalone how tough would it be for a new player to dive into this campaign in the F-15?

If I get the Albatross for both my accounts I could also take people for passenger rides in 6DOF Motion VR like I do with the Gazelle. It wouldn't be ideal since the cockpit is side by side but it would work. Money is super tight though, I'm trying to squeeze every penny I can out of the budget this month to get a few aircraft during the sale and a second L-39 isn't going to get priority over the others I want. I'm going to sell my TrackIR5 on ebay so I can buy DCS modules during this sale! I want to get: Spitfire, because apparently it's going to be required for the first WWII campaign which I'm super excited about. L-39, mostly because it sounds like a great plane for me to have dad fly around in but also sounds like I'll enjoy too. F-86, because apparently the "Museum Relics" campaign is excellent and I've loved the look of the F-86 for as long as I can remember. Mi-8MTV2, because it's the only DCS helicopter I don't have yet and there are two campaigns for it. I really want the Viggen too, but since it's not on sale there's no temptation to buy it right now. I'll probably get it at the end of year holiday sale.

I think @Slap Chop hit the nail on the head. I think entertainment media and equipment should be evaluated at cost per hour of enjoyment. Some people in the DCS community buy all the modules not because they plan to spend a significant amount of time flying them but to continue supporting DCS. I think this is an excellent practice (except for any sub-par modules) for those who can afford to do it. Also Slap Chop, thanks for the kind words. A shame you are so far away.

Those instruments are beautiful. Maybe when it's done I can visit family I never met in Spain and it will be a shorter swim!

Nice! I think I will have to cough up the money for the L-39 this sale. This much positive feeling for a module can't be ignored! @Spectrum Legacy My dad was a mechanic just after WWII and worked largely on P-47's, so even though he never flew one* I look forward to the Jug making it into the sim for him to check it out! *This is TECHNICALLY not true! =P As I said he was a mechanic, and as part of his duties he often had to taxi aircraft from one place to another on the field which he of course loved. Dad was a licensed pilot, but he was enlisted so not allowed to fly military aircraft. These were taildraggers, so taxiing normally is a pain. For convenience (and I'm sure also for fun) the guys would get up enough speed to "fly the tail" so they could taxi straight instead of zig-zagging all the way across the field. Well one day, to his own horror for reasons I'll explain in a minute, Dad got a little carried away and suddenly the wheels stopped rumbling LOL. He said he damned near had a heart attack at 20 something years old and got it back on the ground as fast as he could. If any of the brass had seen an enlisted man leave the ground he'd never touch a military aircraft again. The man has stories aplenty, in his teens he was one of only two survivors who bailed out of a burning B-17 stateside, got flipped upside down on a fence in a C-47, nearly got stranded on a small lake as flight engineer on a PBY Catalina (where the engineer operates the engines from a seat in the middle of the wing, titanic style), and the highlight of his Military career got to be flight engineer in a B-25 for a good stretch. Since it was peacetime and stateside he actually served as co-pilot and though he wasn't allowed to take off or land except in an extreme emergency because he was enlisted (which never happened) he got plenty of hours flying it.

I'm going to have to try wiping the saved games folders out. My performance has been bad for a while, especially in 1.5

Check the sticky post by BigNewy, it explains what's going on (albeit vaguely). Supposedly they are still working on it a bit but we won't get any forum posts (or probably updates to the module) until some "legal issues" are resolved. Speculation on the forums seems to point to a battle over "intellectual property" rights on another project a now ex-PolyChop dev was working on but again, that is unconfirmed. Why this means PolyChop can't talk to us customers about the Gazelle is beyond me.

I hope we can keep this thread civil, as the other(s?) got out of hand. I think all we need is confirmation from PolyChop that they acknowledge the problem and that it will be dealt with eventually. Apparently, based on @Bignewy 's post on their behalf, PolyChop can't communicate with us on the forums until their legal issues are resolved. That doesn't make sense to me, but legal stuff often doesn't make sense. As for anyone inclined to argue that the Gazelle flight model is fine as is, I make the same argument about it that I make about the F-35. There aren't long threads on most or all DCS modules complaining about the flight models so this isn't a matter of complete realism being unattainable. Pilots are satisfied with most of the DCS FM's but this is one that stirs up much controversy. This much controversy is indicative of a problem, regardless of whether or not the specific criticisms and evaluations are accurate I'm sure that the flight model is in fact less than satisfactory by DCS standards. To my knowledge none of the other three DCS helicopters get this much criticism of FM, so there is every reason to believe that this one is comparatively poor. I'm building a full Gazelle cockpit, I'm doing this largely because of the multi-crew support (thanks for giving us that PolyChop!) and because I like the role of the helicopter. I really, really hope that PolyChop solves the flight model problems so my multi-crew cockpit experiences can be trasnformed from a game to a proper realistic simulation as it should be in DCS. @BigNewy I have read your post on PC's behalf, but I'm sure you understand our frustration with the lack of communication from PC when there is no end date for this comms blackout.

On the left side of the HOT missile panel there is basically an on/off switch that is a key. Key like a car key LOL.

Damn, good work man! Keep the updates coming.

Hey guys! I'm trying to decide which aircraft to buy during this Easter sale and remembered reading some folks saying that the Albatros is their favorite plane to just fly around in. Based entirely on this statement I'm considering purchasing the L-39 for my 90 y/o father to fly as he isn't really interested in combat but purely the joy of flight (he hasn't flown a real plane in over 20 years). So what is it that makes the DCS Albatros a joy to fly? How are the stall behaviors etc.? He may not be interested in combat but he is interested in performing various aerobatic maneuvers that believe it or not were REQUIRED to get a pilots license when he earned his in the early 1940's! He likes the Warbirds but finds the P-51 difficult to takeoff/land/fly mostly due to the torque. I'm anxious to see if he gets along better with the Spitfire which I'm pretty sure I'm getting during this sale. In the meantime I plan to have him fly the A-10C as it's pretty easy to handle. Thanks for any input. Trip

So those of you who were here when I was somewhat harshly criticizing the NTTR map in this thread, it seems some of my criticism was based on a partially broken build! I just found in another thread comparison images, and I only started flying NTTR after the 2.05 patch that seems to have broken these textures and meshes: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=177641&page=5 I think the most telling comparison shots are the last ones posted in that thread. So I 75% retract my complaints pending seeing NTTR after it's working properly again. =P

Extremely well said @Slap_Chop ! I too live in fear that there might not be enough paying customers to keep truly hardcore simulation a relevant market. It's up to us to try to help the right people find their way to DCS and keep the dream alive. Do you fly in VR @Slap_Chop? If you ever come on down my way you are invited to try out the VR motion sim. I'm about 2 hours drive west of New York City.

Hmm.. I posted here already but apparently it didn't take (mobile connection) so let me do an abbreviated post. I've been called the "joystick guru" in the SC community. =) Stick/HOTAS: There are no perfect options. Logitech has terrible potentiometers leading to serious inaccuracy, Saitek's stuff has been very unreliable since the Mad Catz thing years ago, I loved my X-52 Pro but it went bad on me less than two years old and this is pretty common. Thrustmaster T16000M is super accurate but doesn't feel nice and doesn't have enough buttons. CH Fighterstick and Throttle is pretty expensive but good quality stuff. A lot of people don't like the feel of their dual barrel gimbal design and though CH feels better than most in your hand it still feels like a toy to some extent. The Thrustmaster Warthog will put a big smile on your face. It weighs a ton, the metal grip feels more realistic than the real thing in your hand, and the buttons also feel light years ahead of every other stick I've had my hand on. If you are willing to spend the money it's well worth it. Most broken Warthog gimbals are the result of using stick extensions without enough caution. "Stiction" is pretty easy to fix. check youtube tutorials, especially mine titled "greasing the 'hog". VKB has a fantastic gimbal but the grip feels like a toy and the WWII grip doesn't have enough buttons for modern aircraft. The ideal solution is a VKB with the Warthog adapter and Warthog grip, but that is expensive as hell and to tell the truth I've got one and haven't bothered building a new mount for it yet because I'm satisfied enough with the Warthog gimbal (after "greasing the hog" that I've continued to procrastinate. In fact I'm a little bit tempted to sell my VKB Gladiator Pro with Warthog grip as I could really use the money, but I fear I might regret it later. Pedals: MFG Crosswind all the way, unless you want to pay significantly more for the equally good but much sexier Slaw pedals. Saitek pedals are sloppy and wear out pretty quick. Feel is pretty bad. Thrustmaster T-flight pedals I haven't tried, might be good but they are really close together. If you aren't wanting to spend a lot on pedals best bet is often to ebay some used CH pedals as they can often be had cheap. Excellent quality and good accuracy, but again they are close together. Make sure you are buying the USB version and not an old gameport set! Helicopters: If you are a helicopter pilot much more than airplane, check out MicroHelis.de , their heli specific controls are not cheap but they are excellent for a super small company. Any other questions please ask, I like this topic but right now my wife is telling me to hurry up because it's way past bedtime! EDIT: PS- My understanding was that Logitech bought out the Saitek sim controllers division, but that Mad Catz/Saitek is still in business just no longer in that market segment. Now that Logitech and Saitek's sim division are the same entity we don't know whether to expect the best Saitek and Logitech traits to be merged or the worst of them. We could wind up with very inaccurate controllers that are still unreliable instead of Saitek's gaining Logitech reliability. So far it seems the current models are just continuing production so no reason to think anything has changed yet.

I'll have to try these tricks too. +1 for what to set in game setting for Pixel Density?

All the ones I own, especially looking forward to the helicopters since this map looks fairly good at low altitude. As for WWII, I'm mostly after immersive experiences which means campaigns are a big deal to me, seems I have to buy the Spitfire for the first WWII campaign. Really wish I could fly it in the Mustang, that circle stick grip thing is just strange! Also, on the topic of choosing sides I too am one of those who "do". I'll always be in the allied aircraft, I'm always in an RP mindset and it's easier for me to feel "immersed" this way. I've already made an exception for the KA-50 but only because there is no other attack helicopter and the KA-50 apparently has good content. I really do want an official Cobra module!

I'm in! Looking forward to a new helicopter campaign!

I'll be happy to help however I can, but I too am only able to do this stuff with LOTS of help from the internet! It's an amazing age we live in. As far as the spherical projection, just like with my project there are other people a lot smarter than me who've done it first so we've got a good chance of learning from them! Trip

@kadda I personally would be interested in "before" pictures as well, how it looked when you first got it, especially inside. What are you planning to use for your DCS display? Projector setup? Trip

Great read, and of particular interest because I had my very first DCS KA-50 flight just 24 hours ago! My first impression of the DCS module was really positive. The sound of the helicopter, and the feel of my motion sim (running my Gazelle profile for the first flight) and SimShaker vibration combined gave me about the most enjoyable first flight of any DCS aircraft so far. If I hadn't already committed big time to a Gazelle cockpit build I'd probably do the KA-50. Even so, I think a KA-50 cockpit might happen next winter, depending on how beneficial I find having a full sim cockpit when in VR and blind to the real world. The Gazelle cockpit is my test bed to determine whether or not more full cockpits are in my future.

Depends on whether or not you are a risk taker. X52 Pro is much sexier. I really liked this setup when I had it, but it died as Saitek setups are prone to do and so I moved on. T16000M is super accurate and fairly reliable but looks and feels a lot less sexy. I think I'd go for this option but it depends on what's important to you. Mortgage your soul for a Warthog HOTAS. =D I did and never regretted it. The only complaint about it is the stick gimbal but it's really not bad at all if you do a little work on it and the grip and switches feel amazing.

@yogi I wish I wasn't half a world away, I'd come lend a hand!

Wow that is an incredible bargain, now even more jealous! Where are you located, I suspect it's a very long swim from where I am to where you are. :doh: I would love to see many more pics of that sim, especially looking down into the cockpit.