nervousenergy

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!! (can't find the Futurama graphic right this second...) I'd be so in for any of these panels, but I'm wondering if you'll make a simpler set without the cockpit sidewalls in the renders. Like the prototypes you've got displayed here... the housing and switches only. I fly in a Obutto Rev, and I don't want to mount entire sidewalls or front instrument cluster around the chair, but could easily mount switch boxes like what you've already made. Even 'generic' switch panels not based on any particular aircraft of that quality would be very desirable. I use a Warthog right now but never fly the A-10, so I 'make up' what all the switches on the 'hog do for my WWII aircraft and am used to adapting what I've got available for whatever I'm flying.

Based on Wags post just 2 pages back, you're asking the wrong person.

Heck, just re-skin one of the AI modern transports that's in the game already and fix it's speed to a prop bomber. Not optimal, sure, but really easy.

+++ The maps and modules are excellent, even in the current beta states. Just amazing what we've got. A better online experience from the server end would really help bring it together. Hopefully the 'networking improvements' from the latest update are leading in that direction.

We need allied medium or heavy bombers to do much else right now. The focus on almost all of these planes were either defending or attacking the bomber stream. The spit was obvioulsy more of an air superiority dogfighter, but i'm not sure what role it had in '44. The P-47 will have a lot of fun attacking ground targets. I enjoy reading these technical discussions, but I'm most interested in when I can buy it. :)

I agree... even a proper SFM would be a vast improvement. The AI model appears to be much, much simpler than even SFM right now, since they do things that are impossible under SFM rules. I'd love to see ED spin AI off to it's own threaded app. Being able to load up a 16 core host server with most of those cores hosting AI bots at full EFM with a large repertoire of flight maneuvers would be a titanic improvement. I recall the old mid-90's days with Quake 2 and the problems we had with players cheating with client side bots, and think how great it would be if client side bots could help us in DCS. s

"Unable to run the application due to integrity fault of the Activation Key. Re-enter a valid Activation Key or re-activate the application. " I've attempted to run the license key registry cleaner, but it has no effect on the problem. I've checked the license and it shows good and 11 of 15 activations left. Not sure what to do at this point, except completely uninstall and re-install, but that's a huge pain.

IMHO, this is where the perfect is an insurmountable enemy of the good. That kind of work would indeed be a huge task, and require a massive amount of rework to the base DCS engine and multiplayer code base, all for a feature set that wouldn't be more than a curiosity for most buyers of the module. Building a B-17 with a fully-realized cockpit with both pilot stations shouldn't be a ton more work graphically than any of the 2-station helicopters, and the avionics systems aren't even in the same league in complexity as the Mig-21 or Mirage. Add in a fixed (but accurate) representation of the bombardier sight (take a page from what IL2 has done for 15 years here), and you've got a module that would satisfy the vast majority of buyers and finally bring us the allied heavy bomber most late war scenarios really need. The flight model complexity of 4 prop engines would be harder to model than a single, of course, but I'm still guessing the lack of advanced flight systems to model balances that out compared to modern modules. Yes, I'd love to run back and jump in a turret or take up the tail gun, but not at the expense of not getting the module, and judging from the uptake of that position in other sims that offer it I'm guessing it offers only passing entertainment to most. Don't let the ultimate dream of a 100% internally modeled, 10-crew station B-17 destroy what's achievable.

I'll buy one if I can get a generic WWII plane box. Fuses, magnetos, flywheel, those kinds of labels.

If you've dropped $400+ on the 'hog already (I have and I'd buy it again in a heartbeat if it died, and I don't fly the A10), then I'll continue to advocate a solution that's worked well for me to get more sliders: pick up a CH throttle quadrant and mount it next to the Hog. Mine gives me access to all of the trim, mix, pitch, and radiator controls on the WWII birds, while all the switches on the Hog get to act like switches. I got one used on ebay for $75.

So, so wrong. So, so right. Though all the way to 144hz (to me) isn't necessary... I stop seeing the screen door blur right around 100hz. You can obviously get by with a 60hz monitor, but if you haven't used a high refresh rate screen when flying WWII birds online (no labels, no radar) then you have no idea what you're missing, or what kind of an advantage you're giving up to those who do have it. Tracking a tiny dot against a busy landscape while performing hard BFM (violently slewing the world viewport all about, with TIR snap glancing everywhere) is a MUCH, MUCH more challenging visual exercise than tracking enemy players in BF4 or CoD, and much more adversely affected by blur. Until you try it, these are just words. After you try it, there's no going back. Motion clarity is just one of those topics that doesn't translate well, at all, to descriptive text. And never think flight sim players don't need high motion clarity... perhaps it's a luxury for jet drivers that are flying to a radar point or HUD symbols, but the benefit can't be understated for tracking in WWII birds.

In addition to hat BitMaster stated, you can also run the updater manually to change your alpha/beta version to the release version if you wish, and vice/versa. It's quite flexible. Right now the test versions would still be in a directory structure labeled beta if you installed them that way, however. I converted my 1.2 release installation to the Beta branch when 1.5 came out, and installed 2.0 as a separate installation (since that's the only way you can get it right now.) I knew I wouldn't be going back to 1.2. Since my original 1.2 was in the 'normal' path for DCS I converted it back to the release branch with the updater once 1.5 was 'official' a few weeks ago. It should update normally to 2.0 when it's out, and I'll delete the 2.0 Alpha. It only gets confusing because ED was almost too generous with the flexibility, but I love that they've given us those tools. :-) EDIT: Ha... right after posting this I notice that SkateZilla has updated the sticky on how to do this at the top of this form, and it also looks like he's putting together a rather slick GUI for it. Awesome!

The best triple monitor solution isn't. It's one large 4K curved TV/monitor in the 55-60" range.

One of each, please. :-)

Anxiously waiting for the Gunfighter. Thought about jumping in on the Mamba mkIII just to get my hands on that glorious gimbal, but the buttons on the base would be a total waste for me. The new metal, cam-based gimbal is a work of art.

I didn't think the Mirage 2K was even available in 1.5... I've updated my beta 1.5 (witch was updated from release 1.2 when the 1.5 beta started) to release 1.52, but have no interest in actually launching it. Screaming down the strip in the Mirage is just too much fun. Any news on progress with the unified 2.0?

Open a command prompt, navigate to the \bin folder under your main DCS installation path, and run "dcs_updater.exe update @release". There's a sticky here on the forums somewhere by Sith that gives a MUCH more detailed explanation of this, along with screenshots and examples of all of the options you can give the updater. Search the forum for dcs_updater.exe and it should be one of the top results. Running that right now won't do anything, except report that you're running the latest version, as there's no difference at the moment between them. I'd hoped that it would at least acknowledge switching from beta to release branches for future patch rollouts, and perhaps it did, but you don't get any indication of that from the updater. Edit: c0ff beat me to it, and even provided a bonus explanation of which branch your on and the pitfalls of it. Thanks!

Hit up ebay for a used CH Throttle Quad to supplement your Warthog. That's the only real complaint I have about the 'hog... a dearth of sliders. Mounting a CH quadrant next to it gives sliders for trim, prop pitch, mixture, rads, and gun sight range.

I don't think RAZBAM or any other third party can do anything about the damage model, other than provide the textures and graphics for what the damage looks like. Pretty sure we've got to keep pestering ED. The damage effects throughout the sim need a lot of work, especially in AI. Modern jets simply aren't designed to take a hit, with the notable exception of the A-10. Especially a 30mm hit. The relatively smaller shells of the Mirage will result in somewhat less kinetic energy than A-10 or Su-27, but this is a silly distinction in the context of what it takes to knock one down. Even a .50 cal hole just about anywhere on a modern jet will damage something important. The dinner plate+ sized hole one 30mm round will inflict would be instantly catastrophic. The gun camera footage in the OP provides good evidence of this. A burst on target didn't result in the plane being 'unable to fight', or crash landing, or trailing smoke while trying to get away... it resulted in the aircraft instantly turning into a fireball.

How about this one: last line of the log: ERROR: Unknown module RAZBAM_M-2000C This is in the 2.0 alpha. I'm assuming the module is ready before the game engine update is?

Anything directly related to the core engine, sure, but I think this overlooks a big potential gain: AI aircraft. We already take a big fidelity hit with AI aircraft using a simplified flight and damage model to save on processor time, but the multiplayer architecture seems to offer a way to branch them off. The game engine obviously supports external inputs to how the models fly... you see that every time you play against other humans. I'm not a coder, and I'm sure there's likely reasons this won't work in DCS, but absent knowing those reasons it seams not that difficult to write the AI routines as completely separate bots that interact with the game engine exactly like human players do now. You could have as many high-fidelity opponents as you had spare cores, either on the same hardware or other machines. One issue could be that AI bots were well known as tools of cheating, going all the way back to Quake, but that seems less than likely in our small community.

It's another $100 on top of what you've already spent, but if you extend it 10cm or so (simpit sells 8cm to 15cm extensions) you'll love it even more, especially if you fly the WWII birds.

First time I loaded up the map I jumped in a K4 for the Free Flight over Hoover Dam. Flew under the suspension bridge and barely made it over... such a rush. Then I yelled out to my wife in the living room: "Hey! From Hoover Dam witch way do you go to get to Vegas??" She was... nonplussed. But a quick look at Google Maps later she yelled back 'looks like straight west... why??' My reply: 'It's time to buzz Luxor!!' She had to come investigate at that point and was properly amazed at the level of detail. She also immediately asked where the High Roller Ferris wheel was, since we'd just rode it 5 months ago. Had to explain that ED spent long enough on this map as is, and they couldn't keep track of every new real estate project. :-)

It's simple but very tedious and time consuming. Each module has it's own licensing app you have to run to deactivate it. It's in the \bin directory of the module's installation path, and it's usually called (module name)_protect.exe. For the Mig-15, for example, it's \Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Mods\aircraft\MiG-15bis\bin\mig15_protect.exe. Run this, and it will give you the option to activate or deactivate the module. Of course, the game engine handles activation natively... it's just the deactivation part you have to do manually outside of the game UI. If you own most or all DCS modules, that's a lot of screwing around with licensing maintenance tasks just for a PC rebuild. I have no idea what it 'suggests', sir. It's almost like you're alluding to NTFS being some sort of black art, subject to arcane influence from the ghosts of data past. Really quite bizarre. NTFS (or the various flavors of FAT, or EXT4, etc...) isn't mysterious in the slightest.

Purchased. Just did my first flight over Vegas, and couldn't resist.