piipu

I took the madman route and bound my entire keyboard to the apache keyboard as the pilot. It's pretty handy, and as pilot, you don't really need the keyboard for controls, HOTAS is enough.

I think it's partly due to the low terrain detail in DCS. In the video there's a lot of small bush etc. that we're used to seeing in real life, so the sense of scale is a lot better than in DCS, where we have just low-detail trees, and fairly low-poly terrain with a mostly featureless texture on it. I doubt DCS is actually scaled incorrectly, it just feels like that because of the lack of scale cues.

I was playing a multiseat game with a friend, and got blasted by a surprise Shilka. I noticed the radar track warning showing "A" on the MFD, which I assume would be the Shilka's radar. But there was no search or track audio warnings from Betty. This seems like a bug to me, at least I assume that it should play the notification sounds too. The same thing happened in the following session too, so it seems somewhat repeatable in multiplayer at least.

Could be the same as this bug. With us, it works fine as long as LMC is not used. This means you can't realistically shoot from anything but a hover, but at least you can make decent use of the hellfires.

this sounds like a potential solution to this issue

the laser issue sounds like this one I reported. Here's a fix that worked for us:

Noticed a nasty bug related to a client CPG using LMC (ground stabilization) on his TADS. When LMC is enabled, on the gunner's view the TADS keeps painting the selected ground spot perfectly. But on the host (pilot) end, the TADS heading is not synchronized perfectly. It jitters constantly and accumulates error on the painted position over time. This means that a missile launched at a target with LMC enabled, will miss, as the missile homes on the pilot's opinion of the TADS paint. Here's a youtube vid showing the error: The poor framerate was caused by the recording software so ignore that. During the entire flight of the missile, on the gunner's view, the t-90 is painter perfectly. The error happens only on the pilot's end.

tested this with my friend just now, it does indeed solve the issue, at least mostly. At one point I as the pilot couldn't see that the CPG was lasing, but that did not stop missiles from working, so it is not as big of a dealbreaker.

looks promising, let's hope that fixes this

The low speed has its benefits, I have traumatic experiences of the Ka-50 propeller flying off every time I twist my stick a bit too much.

sounds like it, I didn't have this problem. It feels a bit more wobbly than the Ka-50, but still flyable just fine.

Unfortunately it seems to be unplayable in multiseat due to desync issues. Will have to wait for a patch or two to see again.

I tried playing multiseat with a friend, me as host in the pilot seat, my friend as CPG in the same helo. Whenever my friend lased, he did not see effects of his own lase on the TADS, but I as pilot did. On my screen, the diagonal X appeared over the TADS crosshair, and the lased range updated. On his end, neither happened. This makes targeting quite hard. We were able to get a few hellfires to hit, but CPG had to fire them "blind" without seeing the lase taking place at any point. Once the missile is in air, both players see the big box showing the missile is tracking the lase.

All right, thanks for the quick reply. I might want to hold back for a little while then, those desync issues sound pretty annoying.

I'm a bit confused on the Gazelle having functional online multiplayer multicrew. Some people said they do it but the feature list says it doesn't work yet. I'd like clarification before I go and buy the thing. Can you have two players on one Gazelle, one operating the missiles and the other piloting? If yes, do both players need to own the Gazelle or just one?

That would be rad. Same for Kh-25L I guess. It'd be a bit easier to maintain the lase from a hovering platform, at least I have a hard time acquiring targets before I get too close in the Su-25.

Are you running it through steam? Mine stopped working if you start the game through steam, I have to run the exe directly.

Are you referring to the Huey and Mi-8? Because those are completely useless without any sort of defensive systems. We need helicopters like the Mi-28, Apache and modern Cobras that can actually have a chance of surviving a Stinger or Igla missile fired at them. In the Akula you are dead 100% of the time unless the missile happens to come from right in front of you in an angle that is not obstructed by your cockpit, and even then only if you weren't so busy with the Skhval and all the other systems you need to worry about. Sure, even a Huey is useful if your enemies are only infantry with AKs and RPGs but that is really atrociously boring. We need proper combat helicopters, not those useless choppers from the early 70's.

I find it a bit odd that the AI is so passive in this game. Strela-10M's just let me sit in my Akula at 4 km range and shoot them with Vikhrs all day long. If I miss one, it gets scared for a bit but instead of trying to return fire, it just scoots forward ten meters and just sits still waiting to get shot. They don't seem to even know you're there unless you go within 3km, then the missiles start flying. I think this is highly silly, seeing how the maximum engagement range for them should be 5 kilometers. Even Tunguskas seem to do this. A Tunguska should have a maximum firing range of 12km but it seems even they want to give me a chance to kill them with my Vikhrs, as the don't do anything until I'm at 7.5 kilometers, when they suddenly see me and start shooting. This lets me kill an excellent skill Tunguska 100% of the time before they have a chance to retaliate, as Vikhrs hit reliably even at 8 kilometers range. Even if I try to tell them I'm there by shooting a Vikrh right behind them, they just do that same scooting maneuver and continue sitting still. I tried to increase the detection ranges in the Scripts/AI/detection.lua but that doesn't seem to do anything either. Is that an obsolete file that does nothing any more, or is there something that I'm missing? It seems a bit weird that the Akula with its relatively short range missiles should be the king of the battlefield, being able to just kill anything with no chance of dying as long as you're careful with your recon. I'd like to increase the AI detection range to fix this, but I haven't found anything on my own. Is there some way to do this or is AI behaviour hardcoded?

That sounds pretty disgusting. There's no way a helicopter should survive that. ED needs to get working on the damage model of these things, that's not the sort of thing that should happen in a hardcore flight simulator. I could understand if this was Battlefield 2, but it seems even that game has a better damage model for helicopters, at least they get destroyed from a tank gun hit.

It was coming from head on though, it should've gone through the whole helicopter. That should be enough to at least stop the engines running.

Well this wasn't an ATGM, it was a 120mm AP round. It shouldn't just kill the pilot and leave all the other systems intact, that's just silly for a game claiming to be a simulator.

Around a week ago I was flying the CAS - medium mission from the SU-25T module converted to support two KA-50s with my friend, and the weirdest thing happened! I got lazy with my dodging and got hit by an AP round from one of the Leopards on the ground, killing my pilot. The funny thing is, my helicopter didn't seem to take any other damage from the hit. From my experience, the chopper should have been turned into a cloud of fine powder and some mangled pieces of steel, but instead it just continued flying. Not even the engines failed. It's a bit weird that a flight simulator would do that when it's clearly capable of modeling damage realistically. I think it's a bug that needs fixing, I didn't find anything related in the new patch notes either. Is this a known bug or some sort of engine limitation? It seemed extremely silly for the chopper to stay in the air with a 120mm hole right through the center of it, where all the engines and other important electronics are located. If the round wouldn't have hit the pilot right in the face, I would've been perfectly capable of just continuing my flight like nothing happened, and that seems wrong to me.

There aren't any two-seater planes or helicopters currently in DCS. I think those would help bring a whole new level of co-operation to the game, as it would require both the pilot and the gunner to work together in unison. Right now DCS seems to support only these solo fighter ace types, where is the co-operation that there would be in real-life military missions? It would be great fun to play a Cobra, a SU-34 or whatever multi-seater aircraft together with a friend, but currently this just isn't possible, and that's a shame.