nervousenergy

Put up the pre-order page. Watch the money roll in.

How would this be different than the random systems failure option that's already in the game?

Korean peninsula would be the best choice, as you could knock out two campaigns with one mapping stone. Get all the terrain down, then populate it with 1950s assets for our Mig 15 vs Saber duels, and modern assets for the 80's onward. We've already got most of the aircraft... just need some terrain to fight over, some bridges to bomb and some armor to strafe. Heck, on the North Korean side you don't even hardly need to change anything between '55 and '95.

Exactly... and what he's asking for (and what would completely solve the problem) is simply putting in a modifier option in the current control setup GUI to have the game perform an action if the selected button is in or moved to the OFF STATE. Really... that's all he's asking for. You can do it right now by modifying the Lua files that define the input scheme, but that's a very tall order for a non-coder. It's a bit like telling someone unhappy with their steering wheel position to disassemble the control column and put in some different mounting bolts, vs. giving a simple adjustment lever.

I don't necessarily want it re-written, just re-created. ;) This beauty, the upcoming Spit and P-47 (I hope...), and the new maps should allow some great period set-pieces. Somebody needs to step up to the plate and make a bomber, though. '17, '25... I don't care. I don't even like to fly bombers and I'll pre-order, just like I'll pre-order every WWII bird ED or partners put up for sale. Two totally different airframes. The P-51 and Spitfire come to mind as a comparison. They're both air-to-air fighters with some limited ATG capability, but they approach combat quite a bit differently. The Dora was faster at altitude, the K4 could climb and turn better. The Dora against allied planes tends to be limited to boom and zoom only (they could dogfight a P-47, but not much else), whereas the 109 could turn with anything other than a Spit. Axis players are going to love the 109... but many, many planes are going to be broken on the runway when they try and land.

Normally I'd be fairly bummed I didn't get to get started on my K4 skills over the long Thanksgiving holiday, but I bought the Huey on last weekends sale just to give a basic helicopter a spin. Thought I'd jump in and tool around in it for giggles... I've got literally thousands of sim hours in prop planes over the last 15 years, how hard could it be? ...yeah. :inv: By the time the Kurf comes out I *may* have learned to hover. :joystick:

Why would you turn off hibernate and/or sleep? Those settings won't have any affect on performance. They're different types of shutdown options that allow for fast resume. Disabling drive shutdown is (IMHO) a good idea for system stability (drive spin-up on demand has occasionally crashed the app that caused the resumption), but once again won't have any effect on performance. I guarantee you your hard drives will be accessed fairly often while playing DCS... certainly enough to not get anywhere near the inactivity timer for spin-down.

I'm hopeful in the future that more complex, interactive missions/campaigns can be brought to us by third party groups just like aircraft modules are today. There's just not enough meat there right now for it, but it's coming. The Straights map will be a huge boon to modern mission designers, and of course everyone and everything is waiting on EDGE and the all-important standalone server. I'm more of a WWII simulation enthusiast, and the two planes we have are well-matched against each other and absolutely breathtaking to fly. With EDGE, the upcoming K4 and Spit, and proper period maps and ground assets, we're likely to see it explode. There is no modern competition for '44-'45 sim gaming (WT isn't a sim, and IL2:1946 is a far cry from Modern), though we do have a couple of options for 40-42 in Stalingrad and CloD:TF. Many WWII enthusiasts have a lot of hope pinned on 44 DCS. With the maps and added planes, the server mission scene will be there, but what I'd really love to see to bring in the single-player crowd would be someone like Disastersoft bring a compelling single-player campaign add-on module. It's more money out of your pocket, of course, especially after buying the planes and maps, but what they did with CloD was excellent (especially given what they had to work with at the time, well before TF.) At some point a discounted set of the WWII planes, maps, and campaign could be a big seller. This kind of thing is (IMHO) a lot easier in the WWII setting and perhaps Korea, as there was a lot more room for different skill levels and 'heroics'. Modern combat pilots don't take modern jets into combat without already being a master of its functions, as they're bundles of complex systems. You'll never have a Boyington or Marseille or Hartmann in modern combat, and re-creating the campaigns of the real pilots and real battles is very, very compelling to us in the WWII sim arena. We'll pay for that add on, in droves. The OP has it nailed... the bones of this sim is like nothing else we've ever had in the genre. More meat on those bones will lead to more sales, and more content to fly and people to fly against.

This is a silly high standard to impose on folks that just want to play a flight sim. I only do PC forensic and litigation discovery work these days, but I used to do a lot of switch programming (FC SANs mainly) and Cisco configuration work, so I can parse my way through Lua if I had to, but even with my background that's the last thing I want to do to play a game. I know many dedicated flight sim folks that are also PC enthusiasts that don't code at all, and the thought of them doing anything other than going into full eye-glaze when presented with a block of Lua code is ludicrous. Just because I can do more with the Cisco command line than the GUI doesn't mean I want to. On the flip side, I've got friends that are completely baffled by why I pay other people to work on my car, since it's so 'obvious and easy' how to replace a simple engine component (I'd walk through broken glass before taking a wrench to my car's engine.) Nobody is seriously advocating the ED provides detailed default mappings for every stick out there, or anything close to it. If they simply provided the option in the mapping GUI to activate a control if a certain DX switch was either detected in the off position or moved to the off position, it would completely solve the problem.

Oh god now I can't stop mentally tinkering with lyrics... Oh lord, don't you give me, a P-39 My friends all fly Mustangs, I'll just stall and die! That flat spin's a killer, I'll tumble out of the sky Oh lord, don't you give me, a P-39.... Sorry, Janice...

I'm not sure what options exist (if any) for Saitek or CH sticks, but if you've got a Warthog the best thing you can do to increase your control is extend it. I put a simpit 8cm extension on mine, and it's hard to overstate just how much of a game changer that is. The real sticks in these planes had a ton of throw. You're not going to get a 3' floor mounted stick unless you drop mid-4 figures on custom gear, but an extended 'hog gets you most of the way there, at least from a feel perspective. You won't need or want curves, and the control at the extremes is amazing.

++++ Visual improvements are important and needed, but the near invulnerability of the control surfaces to even sustained rear attack should be addressed. There are many accounts of aircraft surviving a ton of dead-six fire, but not with intact surfaces. I've had several head to head off-angle passes where I was able to put a burst into the front cowling of my opponent (both player and AI), and the planes lit up instantly, or at least the engine immediately stopped functioning. I've also had plenty of catastrophic hits with very few rounds in high-angle shots against the roof or belly. It's the dead six that needs the most work.

Incredible hitting power, but I wonder why that 109 wasn't ripped to shreds by the tailgunner. Not like he was doing any kind of defensive maneuvering... he just came in really steady and slow to firing position. Should have been easy pickings for the tail.

Having owned the Slaw Device 109 pedals for a good 6 months, I can say you won't find a finer built piece of sim equipment in the world. They're almost objects of art. If you fly jet sims, nothing will beat these.

My wish list would be a bit more generic... I almost don't care what period that do (though my favorite is the late war that they're already well under way with), but I want enough planes, maps, and ground objects to fly real missions. I'd love to fly an A6M5, for example, or a Frank, but without Hellcats and Corsairs on the other side and a Pacific map to fly over it just doesn't hold much interest.

I wouldn't be surprised at some point after several more aircraft and at least the Normandy map are available that a 'package deal' wasn't put together. The aircraft modules go on sale often enough that a $60 or $70 package of 3-4 planes plus the map plus a campaign would be about what you'd spend anyway during a sale. I'd love to see them bring in someone like Disastersoft to write a good campaign... their add-on sets for CloD were excellent. We've got to get a B-17 or 25 eventually for any late-war campaign to make any sense, or at least an AI only version, but I'm certain one will find it's way to the sim eventually. The audience for it is certainly there to buy it.

Throughout the years of spending lots of time (and money) flying the various iterations of IL2 online (and Warbirds before that), my wife enjoys reminding me that I've fought in the virtual skies of WWII for several times longer than the real war lasted. :smilewink: So it's never too late to try and win that conflict! It only just stays won until the map rotates. :thumbup:

+++++ Now, I'm not sure I agree completely with how harshly the Dora leaves control without just a bit of rudder when the wheels leave the ground, as it seems wildly out of proportion to how much control input is needed. It's also incredibly difficult to get her to bleed energy on final, but that's been modeled in every sim version of the Dora I've flown, so I suppose it's accurate. In terms of how both the Dora and 'Stang 'float' when you flare on final, though, then settle down, DCS feels light years more accurate than BoS. I can tell instantly when I've gotten it right or wrong, and can feel how to correct. In BoS, it's always somewhat of a surprise when the wheels touch down, as the sim seems to give me very little feel about what the plane is doing as it flares, or even how high I am above the runway. Ground handling is no contest. DCS feels like guiding a powerful, prop driven plane around a tarmac with limited and somewhat crude input abilities. BoS feels like driving a car. I'm not sure though why everyone says these planes are so difficult to take off and easy to land, though. Neither is particularly hard, but TO is dead simple as long as you remember the extreme response on the Dora to not having a bit of rudder, and to lock the tailwheel till you get some speed. Landing the 51 IS extremely forgiving, as it bleeds energy so well that you can make almost any approach angle work. The Dora requires a lot tighter approach if you're not going to use a lot of runway on the flare to bleed off speed. Granted, we've GOT a lot of runway, but when we eventually get period maps we certainly won't.

Good video. I really, really want my K.

I just don't see how this is a reasonable position to take. Your system is 4 years old... this is an insurmountable problem when trying to play a modern flight sim. Yes, they should update the minimum and recommended specs, as even though the base engine is still the now ancient, poorly optimized first release it's had a lot of modern, demanding stuff added to it. But expecting a game that played well 4 years ago to play just as well after 4 years of enhancement isn't reasonable. EDGE might help some, but your CPU is simply too old and slow to do much with DCS. If you can get it over 4Ghz you'd probably see a significant improvement given how single-threaded everything is, but I'm not sure how far you can stretch that old chip. On a similar note, one thing that just mystifies me is how little of the engine has been multi-threaded, particularly AI. Almost 20 years ago (when I had more time and my reflexes were way better) I played in the upper levels of the Q2 DM and CTF competitive scene. A huge problem we had to deal with was players cheating with Bots. If you never played the old Id FPS games, these were hacked together game clients that could play the game for you, completely emulating a real person to the game server. It was a constant arms race between the bot writers and the developer / server admins. Why hasn't the AI for DCS been written as it's own routine? This shouldn't be hard, and would allow AIs to run on extra cores or even completely separate boxes / VMs. If I understand correctly, AI is a major resources hog in the current engine, and it's not possible to have AIs use the PFM. Yes, you'd also bring back the potential cheating angle, but I'm having a hard time seeing that as a problem with the flight sim community.

Shut up and take my money, folks. JUST TAKE IT ALREADY. ...but don't forget to work on a Korean map.

While I agree that the multiplayer performance of 1.2.10 is one of its weakest links, I'm thinking you should hold off on criticizing the graphical direction ED has gone until we see EDGE 2 in motion, hopefully sometime in the next 3 months. I'm personally trying to avoid too much over-anticipation, but the main thrust of EDGE according to the devs and test teams working on it is optimization - delivering better visuals than 1.x while consuming fewer compute resources. Let's see how well they do before you break out the pitchforks, as right now we're running cutting-edge models on a 3 (4?) year old graphics engine. And even on that engine, I'm really not getting consistent performance drops just because several planes are in the air near me... it's actually quite a bit more random than that. I can have 4-5 planes swirling around me with flak bursting randomly (note that I only play WWII multi, not jets, though I'll be happy to fly Korean multi when we get a flyable Mig-15) and it's smooth as silk, then get 1 FPS for a few seconds while flying away from it. I'm hoping EDGE optimization will correct much of that. If you ran 2013 models without much issue but are having problems with newer ones on the same hardware, then I'm afraid the issue is simple: DCS isn't going to stand still in the PC hardware arena. If you want to run the latest models with the latest terrain, it's likely even EDGE 2 will require more horsepower than a 2-3 year old PC can provide. What kind of machines are your Chinese compatriots running?

If you want to add a small couple of pieces of hardware to your control setup, you can significantly improve your control and (IMHO) fun with DCS prop planes by: 1- extending your Warthog. The Simpit extension is awesome and you can select between 8cm and 15cm. I went with the 8 and it's the biggest change in flying you can imagine since buying the Hog. I'm tempted to buy a 15 as well, but the 8 is just perfect. You'll find yourself stalling out the sky much, much less often with more stick throw. 2- Get a CH Quadrant on eBay. I snagged one for $70 right after I got the 'hog when I realized it needs more sliders. Put your pitch and roll trim, mix and pitch, manual rads, and range to target axis on the 6 sliders and mount next to your hog throttle. You've already been bitten by that wonderful flight model. It's only a matter of time before your 'pit starts consuming your money...

I'd nominate POLARIS1. Not sure if he's even interested, but his .LUA file mods for the Warthog flaps and throttle to work with the 190 were really appreciated.

There's a checkbox in the settings page for random systems failures. That's a bit too realistic for me... I leave it unchecked. It's easy to fry the Dora engine if you stall it in a vertical climb and don't back off on the throttle. The AI, for example, in the P-51 loves to pull up into a hammerhead when you get behind him and stall fight. If you follow him up to get the shot and stay too long in the vertical and start to stall out with low airspeed, you've got to back off the throttle immediately or watch the temps spike and the engine blow.