vicx

You can make 'easy' stuff easily. The other night I tried to make a laser guided artillery round or a laser guided rocket round. Why? - I watched video from fifteen years ago showing these weapons in use. They use the technology used in LGBs - it is not science fiction. Still it is not possible to re-use DCS LGB code for this purpose. I found some tricks but they fall short of working example. So this is an example which cannot be made. Also I challenge any one of you to make a working torpedo. Show me the easy method. :)

Tomtekopf, that video you posted looks like a self-shadowing effect is being turned off as the target aircraft flies away from you. IMO this not as serious of a problem as a broken LOD object but it is still worth looking at. It would be interesting to know how the logic of when to apply self-shadowing works. Is it connected to LODS or is it a hard coded. I first noticed self-shadowing on ground objects turning off at very short distances ~50m away which frankly looks terrible. On aircraft it looks like self-shadowing is tuned to be active at greater distances.

I think you will have to learn more about the modelviewer environment. I am not a coder but I would suspect that the first step to learn more about the modelviewer environment would be to dump _G by writing it to a file. Search these forums for "_G" to find the technique.

Anything that isn't a plane or heli doesn't have a proper livery system. You can't adjust custom_args or define custom liveries. It probably isn't a deficiency in the engine but more of a resource specialisation of the engine. I think it could be reviewed. I edited the LUA for the Mission editor to allow choosing custom skins for ALL types of units but even when the right [livery_id] is added to a MIZ file, it doesn't work. The country of the unit and season of the mission overrides the [livery_id] value defined for a unit in the MIZ file; at mission runtime. I was looking into this so that I could add statics that weren't all identical in appearance. It is however an engine issue. It would be great to have a livery system for ALL units that recognises textures and custom_args.

Harnis, I've been looking into this exact thing but it really does look like anything that isn't a plane or heli doesn't have a proper livery system. It's a deficiency (or resource specialisation) of the engine. I edited the LUA for the Mission editor to allow choosing custom skins for ALL types of units but didn't get the results I needed. I was looking into this so that I could add statics that weren't all identical in appearance. It would be great to have a livery system for ALL units that recognises textures and custom_args.

You bunch of goddamned hipsters. ED forums is the last place I expected to see a "Your favourite aircraft sucks' thread. Put me down for anything made after 1965. Now get your computer simulating a flight computer off my lawn.

I don't dogfight so I don't care about this issue specifically. However I REALLY do not like seeing POOR technical arguments on this forum. I made this point in another thread ... but only in passing. Consider the arc minutes your monitor/display takes up in your view and if it is larger than the arc minutes being covered virtually you are effectively zoomed in even if zoom is not activated in the game. The higher the resolution you have the greater the benefit of the zoom depending on the size of the objects you want to see. A person playing with a standard 24" 1080P display and a person playing with a 50" 4K display are not playing the same game at all. The difference is night and day. If I truly wanted to win the argument I'd make an app that asks you to enter your screen size and resolution and then scale a sample image to show an arc minute normalised view of the sample image. The app would show 'on your monitor' what other guys see on theirs and you would be able to cycle through various configurations to see what advantage/disadvantage you might have compared to others. Guys on resolutions lower than 4K screens will have to imagine the benefits of having 4x better eyeballs (imagine that) BUT they should at least be able to perceive the benefits of a bigger screen. This has nothing to do with what you can see IRL. This is about what one guy sees on his monitor compared to what another guy sees on his. It is that simple.

Thanks Etcher. That way really is foolproof.

Yeah one thing I would like to do, is to be able to specify arg values so that Ships and also Ground Units can be added in poses. Scripted sequences anyone?

Yeah this would be such a killer option for mission designers. *Grimes below is correct* this would be a killer option for mods.

Both fine points but what I really wanted to do was to steer people towards that great thread on defence.pk that actually attempts to match up aircraft by capability into GENERATIONS. I think the list is really cool and someone posts an awesome diagram that shows LEAD and LAG in technological development between the US, Soviet, UK, EU countries over the last fifty years. The 2nd Generation seems like a unique time where all the countries were at parity with their combat aircraft development. Late Korean War and Early Vietnam War Era. I agree that it is a good choice. The question is what should be it's adversary.

Well maybe the real 'ACES' of Vietnam were SAM sites (probably bagged more kills than any airframe). While you are googling that one let me just post a link to a thread I enjoyed reading which attempts to place the most well known airframes and their variants into generations. Fighter generations via defence.pk forums. It was all that talk earlier in the thread about what aircraft to put together as adversaries that made me back track through me browsing history to find that link.

Arcto, I have had more experience with this stuff from the scripting side of things. I know that when you turn off a ground unit's radar that any AI aircraft with an RWR still track the LAST KNOWN location of the radar source. Maybe someone can tell me with a simple test if the RWR display in human piloted aircraft keep the LAST KNOWN location of radars that have gone cold.

razo+r, The I switch is for putting the radar into a low emissions mode not for turning the dish rotation off. They are two totally separate functions. In DCS you probably only want to turn off the dish to move the vehicle and this is done automatically in the game which is not ideal (realism whatevs). Turning off the engine and the system power would save fuel, but fuel isn't modeled for ground vehicles. You may have other reasons for wanting to control the animations of this and other units. I am working on a hack to do this and some other things.

I might be changing my mind about this. I see a lot of hard coded references to RED and BLUE in ME code but that doesn't mean that the engine isn't ready to support more "colors". Another thing I might have a look at.

I agree that the countries, factions side structure could be much better. From a modding perspective having a more modular system might even allow for some AI tweaks. Still the amount of time required to write and test a large software change like this is ... I don't wanna think about it. I wonder if that is the position of the devs too. It would have to be changed as part of big frozen update. If a new countries, factions side structure isn't in DCS 2.0 you will have to wait until DCS 3.0.

I am trying to put skins/livery onto naval elements. If anyone has already tried this and has some knowledge to share I would love to hear/read about it. If it is impossible then I'll have to try customised statics which is my 'B' option or custom units as which is my 'C' option.

Stopped working a few versions ago. I'd love to know more but I'm still looking into it.

Well you could have stayed in Georgian Air Space but you just had to go and poke the Bear and now ... RED DAWN.

Holton, Post your code I'm looking at this right now and this would be a cool way to test.

Exactly my position. And I decided to spend a little time reading about datums and projections and geodetic formats. Still over my head but ... I know little more of the language. This is what I looked at and I wondered if the geo-location data you get in the A-10C cockpit is different to the geo-location data returned by the LUA scripting system. So I googled that and ED forums wins again. It's an interesting thread but this post sums up the issue. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=896859&postcount=149 If igormk is right about the difference in projections then his tip of adding 0.11 minutes to the longitude will be a fix. This is a great tool for testing geo-locations with different projections -> http://www.tool-online.com/en/index.php

I'm pretty sure jamming already works for aircraft with jamming pods. I think there is a burn through for SAM missiles that use radar to get a track. Still if you wanna play ... data for missiles is in this file. "C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Config\Weapons\missiles_data.lua"

Pepto. X55 has rumoured problems with stability which is exacerbated by win8 over zealous power saving. I will post this link to an Arma thread for x55 which explores some solutions. Arma is very sensitive to controlelr issues. In Arma you don't just get phantom presses you lose the entire controller and have to restart the game. This is why Arma has a solid thread on x55 issues and solutions. I have no problems now that I use a quality powered HUB AND I disable power saving for USB hub chain to my controller and then I leave the controller plugged in all the time. If you unplug the controller Win8 resets UBB power saving settings on the USB chain. Back to having problems again. Link x55 problem thread This is just my experience. Good Luck.

Please post a Tacview recording. I am not joking about that. I am curious.