Art-J

^ What he said. I tend to place liveries in Bazar rather than Saved Games, but It doesn't matter. I can confirm, however, that "mi-8mt" folder name works OK for me.

Not a Steam user myself. IIRC Steam keys can be transferred to Standalone account (but not the other way around): Yes, I suggested installing barebones standalone (without any modules) just to see if it runs at all. You can still do it if support doesn't answer immediately (it's weekend after all), or you can wait a bit for their answer.

Sounds like a good idea. Just remember that neither repair nor cleanup nor even full game reinstall do anything in Saved Games folder. So/but if there's something in that one that causes problems, it will still cause problems afterwards. That's why it's so important to remove/rename the possibly corrupted Saved Games when troubleshooting, otherwise you can keep repairing the main game folder / reinstalling till your eyes bleed and it won't help a thing.

I'd download and install standalone, non-Steam version, temporarily, just to see if that one launches at all. It might help to narrow down if it's strictly a DCS problem or Steam related one.

All training missions are by default located in game folder only (mods/aircraft etc.), never in Saved Games location, and in the game they should all be accessible via Training Missions menu. Something's amiss in your installation then but I wonder why long repair hasn't fixed it. BTW, what happens if you temporarily rename the whole Saved Games/DCS.openbeta folder and launch the game?

@impreza If changing filenames manually as Rudel suggested gets confusing, have you tried importing your backup diff.luas using "Load profile" button on controls screen? One by one, of course. It's an alternative method and I used it successfully when I was in similar situation like you.

There are three options: a) Some diplicated control assignment interferes with your intended input (there's a ton of duplicated default assignments whenever you install any new DCS module and the very first thing you should do when setting up your controls is to remove duplicates ASAP); I assume, however, that it would make any flying impossible, so maybe that's not a source of your problem; b) You left control assists / helpers in "Special Options" tab turned ON and they interfere with your inputs. But then, I guess auto-rudder assist should help you in turns rather than make things harder (?); c) You actually pull harder than you think, harder than "shlightest". A-8 has vicious stall characteristics - drops a wing after only a bit buffet warning, it has great instantaneous turn rate only for a while when flying fast but doesn't like sustained maneuvers at all. Your description doesn't really tell much, but if you saved a replay track of yours doing some basic turns and attached it here, we could take a look and see what's going on.

@SalakauHeadman Repair command only reverts all original files in DCS core folder to their stock form. If these custom liveries you mention did not overwrite any original ones but where some extra content instead, repair won't even touch them. Key phrase - "in DCS core folder". Repair doesn't affect Saved Games folder on your system drive, so IF the Echo9 mod placed any stuff over there (I don't know this particular mod so can't confirm), then repair won't help unfortunately and you'll have to try to find and remove offending files manually by trial and error method.

^ Hear hear! I don't own a 4k screen, but do read with some interest what performance people are getting on higher demands side if the spectrum (VR or 4k) with their hardware. Reading that 90fps @4k criterion was an eyebrow rising experience. That's a an ambituous goal in DCS. It just doesn't belong in the same sentence together with "500$ card" and "future proof" I'm afraid, unless one reduces gfx settings considerably, or flies only over fps-friendly maps ie. Caucasus or Nevada. Granted, we all wait and hope for the "second coming of Jesus" in form of mythical Vulkan implementation in DCS, but nobody knows when it's going to happen and how much it'll really improve GPU performance. I'd say go for that 600-800$ stretch right away but with clear understanding that it will still require some gfx settings compromises to maintain that 90'ish fps level.

All post release control problems reported in Mudhen forum were caused by old flyable F-15E mods (or some leftovers of theirs) being present on affected players' PCs. If both Eagles share the same problem on yours, that's what I'd look into first.

I think the main issue is these obsolete specs are listed as "recommended" for high gfx preset and VR. Everywhere else In normal gaming world the "recommended requirements" phrase means hardware capable of running the game with all bells and whistles cranked up to 11 (or 9 at least), for these customers who can afford such hardware. I don't think even the most radical DCS fanboyz can say with a straight face that an i5 + GTX 1080 combo fits that description. Multithreading at its current phase doesn't change that and comes with its own issues anyway (I, for example, after initial MT honeymoon period and dealing with increased stuttering on my good old i7 9700k, switched back to ST for simply much smoother rendering all around. Extra framerate in MT was just not worth it when paired with choppiness). It's all moot anyway. As mentioned, free DCSW plus free module trials (the best idea ED had in recent years) should be enough for any newcomer to check out how his hardware really performs in 2.8.

I remember downloading Mosquito skins, which were updated a few times by their author within the same user files entry. File replacement must be possible then, although I haven't done it myself. I don't know about deletion though.

Same happened to me when I was in the same learning phase years ago and just forgot to raise flaps from full down position after cold start. It's difficult to say, however, from description only what might be going on during your attempts. When you exit the mission hit Save Track button and post it replay file here so that we can take a look and advise.

Nah, Input folder (with subsequent sub-folders and .diff.lua files) gets created whenever you make any single change to any default control assignments table of any chosen aircraft. Nothing to do with mods. But, as Rudel said, to be on the safe side, just make a backup of the whole Saved games folder and you'll be good. You might want to dump the unnecessary trash from there like temporary shader files (in fxo and metashaders folders), old screenshots and tracks, old logs etc. but keep the rest.

I think radar and mirror are out of question. The former turned out to be a liability rather than asset (especially in ETO), so I don't think they were rushing to retrofit the thing to all airframes. The latter was optional item and thus belongs in "wishlist" section rather than "bugs and problems" one. Gunsight and headrest requests, on the other hand, are valid. They've been brought up numerous times, however, since module release 3 years ago - without devs response, unfortunately, so don't hold your breath.

I'd hazard a guess it's because modern aircraft and asset modules have always been and will always be THE core of ED business (and of majority of 3rd parties who flooded the last months newsletters with their jets and tuboprops announcements). Big modern module sale figures allow them to add modern ground and naval assets to the coregame free of charge. DCS WWII playerbase is and will likely remain small in comparison, so we pay extra for being a niche segment. Economy of scale 101, simple as that. And I say it as warbird player for the most part. Even if a bit more attention might be given to WWII content by ED in the near future (as per Wags' statements in recent podcast), I still expect it to remain a side-project of their whole business. As mentioned, 3rd parties are popping up all over the place to support DCS, but apart from two, they don't seem to be in hurry to make WWII content for this platform. There's just much more money to be made in modern combat offerings and it applies not only to DCS or flight sims but just PC video games in general. The only thing which could make more warbird players from other platforms switch to DCS would be a complete flop of upcoming/unannounced 1C project, or cancellation of Combat Pilot project, or flop of next CloD/TF project. First two are very unlikely in my opinion.

As mentioned many times up to that point, the feature kind-of works in muliplayer. It also mostly works for me in my short and simple warbird missions (maybe modern aircraft modules are more susceptible to playback issues? I don't own any of them them so can't comment). Last but not least, track file contains mission file, which was sufficient for me a couple of times in the past when troubleshooting someone else's bug reports. So it does clearly have a purpose for a part of the playerbase here. True, not for all of us, but certainly for a number higher than zero. Sharpe, seriously, have you ever considered admitting once that you might actually be wrong about somethng? That applies to your general activity on these forums...

You can't get a refund if you bought the plane in ED store. Not sure about Steam and their two-hours-refund policy (?). It doesn't matter, however, because all trims and levers on throttle quadrant of DCS Thunderbolt work correctly as long as you DON'T use: a) game flight mode; b) auto-rudder and takeoff assist; c) duplicated control assignments. Make sure none of above applies to you and you will be fine.

I recall in clean config It's about on-par with DCS A-8 at SL (a tiny little bit slower or tiny little bit faster depending on whether Anton has a bomb rack on or not), but I suppose not many guys use Anton on MP servers?

As an update to my April post above, I'm happy to report that whatever was causing DCS crash with that mod back then, seems to have been fixed sometime later, because the mod appears to be working OK with the latest Open Beta.

I don't own any modern DCS planes, so can't check the replay track. After watching that short hoggit clip though, I think the problem is possibly related to the infamous auto-exposure adjustment introduced with DCS 2.8, messing up internal-vs-external lighting when looking / zoomming around cockpits of all modules in the game nowadays. Many threads on the subject have been posted. It's "only" pretty annoying during sunny day missions, but might be gamebraking during night ones if other factors align "the wrong way" (cloud coverage, moon phase etc.). I don't fly night missions so haven't noticed such extreme example, but that's my guess at the moment. The bad thing is - the exposure "feature" can't be disabled, nor does it seem to be considered a bug by ED. Have you tested other aircraft and cloud and moon conditions?

Ah, we all missed it because I recall it was implemented without a single word in patchnotes (as ED does sometimes) and this forum section suddenly had multiple posts with people asking why the hell the cannon wasn't working anymore . Fun times. P.S. - I think it has a sound, but it's so faint it's difficult to hear over engine at high power setting? Might be wrong, though.

This feature was implemented 3 or so years ago. Previously we didn't need to do it. I don't remember default name for it but you should be able to find it in stick commands category.

For the record, apparently it was, at least once. In some B-category crap flick (don't recall the title) that was mentioned by Wags in recent Mover and Gonky podcast. Unauthorized usage, as one might expect from such productions .

Keep in mind ED keeps only a few recent version builds on their servers and after some time removes the very old ones for good. Version 2.7.14 was published in May 2022, so it might just not be available to revert to anymore and even tech support won't be able to help (I'm just guessing, haven't checked myself).