Art-J

I kept original centering spring which turned out to be just way too soft for about 30'ish cm extension I used, making the stick floppy and making it pretty impossible to find and "feel" the center position. Quite an issue when trimming any aircraft in DCS, especially my Mi-8 in "move joystick to center" trimming mode. Without the gasket there's more distinctive "clunk" I feel when going neutral and the stick is more likely to stay upright. Your mileage may vary, though, as some users prefer not to feel the center position at all (I didn't like it when my Warthog was full stock short in the old days) Apart from that, from mechanical point of view of how pressure plate and centering spring operate, gasket doesn't change anything.

I don't own Viper and Apache, but by default, yes, all training missions for DCS aircraft use Caucasus map.

It's meant to be glued to internal flange of this pressure plate thingy sliding up and down on four pegs. Take a look here: As a side note, from my own experience, superglue might not be the best one to use for reinstalling the gasket back in place. Mine stayed there for a few year afterwards but fell apart to pieces eventually. Either this particular type of rubber didn't like cyanoacrylates, or it couldn't flex enough after hefty superglue application around all the circumference, or maybe it just deteriorated because of age. In either case, I use joystick extension so getting rid of the gasket completely turned out to be better solution actually.

Yes, keep in mind repair and cleanup processes check only root game folder but not Saved Games one, so if there's anything hidden somewhere there that causes problems, repair and cleanup won't help, unfortunately.

Talking about pot calling the kettle back... The point is Nealius' understanding of terms was invalid indeed (absolutely can't blame him!) and Graf's answers were technically correct, albeit he, as a non-native speaker, does come off blunt quite often, I'll give you that. Nevertheless, you have to be kidding if you say "the terms are widely understood" with a straight face. Amongst whom? Real life veteran pilots and maintenance technicians, maybe. If they were amongst other people, however, this thread, and many older like it, wouldn't exist. The aforementioned incorrect terms interchangeability in wartime manuals does cause confusion for any avation entusiast who tries to learn more about CSPs for the first time and reads these. Not to mention that as Nealius noted, DCS manual for Thunderbolt is blatantly wrong in this particular paragraph no matter how you look at it, as it specifically addresses prop blade pitch.

Do the usual DCS troubleshooting then: make sure there are no active mods not only in game root folder, but also in Saved Games location, then run repair command, preferrably the "slow" one. What you see is just some texture files missing, if there are no mods interfering with the game, repair will download and reinstall these.

Prop thingy is strictly DCS ST related, so no amount of driver tinkering will help in this case. One just has to play in MT mode to solve it for now and that's that. I would, however, investigate that game startup time issue now, 'cause ST will be discontinued sooner rather than later and we'll all be left with MT for better or worse. Search around "performance bugs" section for hints, tips and tricks. Game and mission loading times should not be all THAT different compared to ST mode.

^ It's all very interesting in its own right from technology development point of view (and I do mean it), but also getting quite irrelevant to topic originally discussed. Moreover it's certainly not a valid reason for this D-waving contest of who allegedly worked in IT on what and for how many years. What's the use of these 40 years if they result in superiority complex mixed with being stuck with single obsession while conveniently ignoring any different aspects and opinions? "Enjoying the chance to educate people"? Yeah.... rrrrright. Could you just please just not look at it from IT geek/nerd perspective for a moment and look at it from average flight simmer perspective for a change? At least if you don't mind getting off that high horse of yours. For average DCS player framerate IS be-all/end-all performance indicator, followed by stuttering or lack thereof and ending with mission load times maybe. Mind you, by "average player" I mean anyone who just fires up DCS client on his machine to do some short SP or MP flying, WITHOUT runnig dedicated server in the background, or live-streaming, or video processing, or crypto mining, or whatever else that would make storage solution (and the rest of his PC for that matter) more busy than usual. I know from my own experience that switching from two separate system & DCS drives to a single one didn't affect performance understood as above in any practical way. Framerate didn't change obviously, but neither did the other two factors, at least I couldn't see it. Who knows, maybe even got "improved" (so to speak) performance on average as that single SSD of a different brand I bought was theoretically somewhat faster than two smaller ones? I didn't know and didn't care, 'cause I didn't notice stuttering and/or load time changes one way or the other, and thus I never bothered to do any benchmarking. Not to say there were no changes - I suspect there probably was something out there, but anything single-digit-percentage is not worth attention. For the same reason buying two new bigger SSDs just to separate DCS from the system didn't make any sense either. It doesn't really matter if a disk costs 50 bucks or 50 cents, why should I throw money away? I tend to choose and buy my PC components as tools for the basic job, trimming off unnecessary glitter and gimmicks. Look, I understand that your're super passionate about storage solutions but whatever you mean by "technically superior" solution and performance, even if very important in previous professional applications you have experience with, here in DCS doesn't matter all that much and thus - well, nobody cares. Unless the person is in a small group of experts and enthusiasts who are crazy about minute details. It's almost like GPU geeks arguing over which new card is better when one card pulls 140 fps and the other pulls 150. C'mon, really? I get it, for them it must be life-or-death confrontation, but normal user is going to be like "Ummm... Yeah, whatever, I need 60". For average guy and not a tech nerd, alternative storage solution must be "practically" superior, not just "technically". Like in real gaming application, not in benchmarks or professional non-gaming applications. Like in not-so-old days of switching from HDD to SSD when even folks who knew nothing about PC/console internals noticed THAT performance increase immediately. Switching from combined OS/game SSD to two separate ones is just not comparable magnitude of change. In either case, OP specifically wrote in his first post that he does have his system and root DCS folder on separate drives, just like you strongly recommend, so what is this storm in a teacup about anyway?

As razo+r hinted, open Normandy map in full mission editor, choose the airplane icon, move your mouse while observing cursor coordinates being displayed on the info bar, scroll and put the airplane where Stonehenge coordinates are (haven't checked how close the ones provided above by Markom are, but I suppose they're good enough?), change the airplane properties to make it flyable by you (airstart will suffice I presume?), launch the mission and there you are - roughly over the landmark. Would create the mission myself but my gaming rig is inop.

C'mon, Pete, "an airshow P-51" is quite a bit of an exaggeration. This pilot model issue is cosmetic only and doesn't affect combat cababilities of the module in any way. Low-tier cosmetic even, I'd say, compared to some of the official skins not being fully converted to PBR standard for example. I suspect that's also the reason why not many folks are vocal about it and why it's a low-priority development item.

You lucky SOB . I've moved to different flat recently and still won't have access to my gaming rig for two weeks at least, ain't got controller either. It's difficult to stay patient when so many goodies are getting released for both DCS and Il-2GB

Wooden lining on windscreen frame was fixed (removed) relatively quickly, in Dec 2014. Cockpit retexturing happened together with Mustang and Kurfy in 2018. Infamous "bar" reduction happened shortly after Anton got it, so what, approx. two years ago? There were no Dora-specific audio or visual updates otherwise (apart from recent "global" DCS ones like prop animation, muzzle effects, gun sounds etc.), this is the first one in a looong time. Combined with Doughguy's custom skins it certainly makes Doora more fun to fly again.

^ Oxygen system works allright. It's just the pilot model that's missing the mask.

Yup, others stumbled upon variations of the same issue. It's been discussed here:

Keep in mind that by definition tracks in DCS have never been backwards-compatible, especially if an update is a big one and contains many changes to this or that module. I don't think the replay system improvements introduced in 2.9 were meant to change that, they were supposed to increase replay accuracy but within the same version number. If some of the older tracks still work after an update or two, it's an exception rather than the rule. Expect them to become broken eventually.

I'd say it makes ALL the difference about "how much or little it happens". I used to have DCS on a moderate-size, separate SSD to the system one (and moving it there from a HDD was indeed a revolution). Ran out of space there eventually. Bought much bigger SSD and now system and DCS sit and work on it together because that's the only place where I can put them. But the point is - this switch made no noticeable performance difference whatsoever. Thus, even though I know it's not an "optimal" setup, and in a perfect world the game should be on a separate drive, buying yet another DCS-dedicated SSD just to get an extra single FPS here or there (if any), or a handful of stutters less, makes no sense, especially when drives big enough for modded DCS are anything but "increadibly cheap". Diminishing returns and all that. My old'ish CPU and 3070 are much bigger performance limiters than my SSD nowadays.

Game flight mode ON used to have similar symptoms back in the day. Maybe some of your game options got reset during the update? Might be worth renaming Saved Games \ DCS temporarily as well. Repair command affects only root DCS folder, so doesn't seem to be enough in your case.

"Airscrew" term seems to be the norm in your manuals, docs and videos from '30s and '40s. You chaps don't use it anymore in "modern" times? Just curious.

If anyone wants to cheat by "mulitplying" himself, he can do it on external site without much hassle by using his PC, PC at work and his phone, for example. 3 different IPs. There's no registration required on strawpoll, is it? Seems like a poll here would be more "secure" then.

A shot in the dark, do these intermittent engine failures happen more often when playing in MT or in ST mode? Maybe it's similar issue to scripted campaign flags and triggers randomly failing in MT while working OK in ST?

Even Dave Hadfield in his latest cool Spitfire onboard vid posted on his YT channel calls the prop lever a "pitch" one, even though I'm sure he knows how CSPs work in warbirds he flies . I suppose for RL pilots this thing is so basic and "obvious" that they don't give a funk about nomenclature, 'cause they know what they mean anyway. It can, however, cause confusion amongst less experienced enthusiasts who want to learn about it. Game manuals should describe it correct though, that's for sure.

Bingo. It's used in real life CSP planes to slow down on approach as well. It used to work in DCS Mustang too, last time I tested with a stopwatch, but it was a year ago at least. Max RPM vs min RPM deceleration and glide distance difference was noticeable. Unless ED messed up something in the meatime, should still work in current version like Graf says, but I ain't got access to my gaming rig to repeat the test.

To add to what Gunfreak said, I'd just like to remind that this May we'll be celebrating 7th anniversary of WWII Asset Pack release and out of 10 AI planes planned for Normandy 44 back then, throughout these 7 years we got 4 (and even these are still not quite fully finished yet). Granted, noticeably more planned ground and naval units were added, so at least there's something to place on the terrains down below. Moreover, out of 21 official 3rd parties making content for DCS currently, only 2 work or plan to work on anything WWII related. To sum it up, I suspect we may get an early Spit or Hurri, even flyable ones at some point in the future (Mr Grey indeed mentioned BoB planes a few times and he does treat DCS as a bit of a MSFS-style but-more-detailed warbird collection). However, If anyone here expects anything remotely close to half - fleshed out BoB experience to ever come to DCS in next 2 decades, he's delusional. WWII stuff has always been a bit of a "sidequest" for ED and it will most likely remain so. Mr Grey might be an avid warbird enthusiast, but he's first and foremost not a business - idiot. He can fly them in real life because he's knows a thing or two about making money. He knows who majority of DCS customers are (modern combat aircraft fans), what sells best on this platform (modern combat aircraft) and he'll not change it.

Off my gaming rig for two weeks so can't test now, but shortly before I did create a simple solo sling loading mission in current Open Beta, for a quick refresher just like you, and it worked allright. When I was bringing up the R863 radio menu (are you sure you're using that one? I think neither intercom menu nor general comms menu will do the job) and flew close to the cargo, the F6 sub-menu did show up, with all subsequent selection commands. I was using hovering auto-hook method, though. Not sure if connecting from ground level method still works, I just didn't check that one.

^ "Can be cargo" window in cargo's properties is ticked by default whenever the cargo is placed on the map in current DCS versions so I'd think he's got that set up correctly. I'd double check if cargo belongs to the same coalition, though. That's easier mistake to make.