nervousenergy

I enjoy the heck out of my slaw device pedals. Top notch construction and action if you like a well defined center.

It's easy to break it dogfighting if you're constantly stalling it out. Dora relies (probably like every prop fighter) on a lot of air moving past the radiator, and if you're hanging there with little velocity it'll fry. Keep the throttle wide open, and pull into a vertical stall, hanging on your prop till she starts to slide back, and watch the temp gauge. You'll be surprised how fast she spikes up once the plane stops moving. Keep that in mind if you're doing a hammerhead, or chasing a P-51 up into a vertical stall fight... drop the throttle as you lose those last bits of airspeed or you'll melt the engine.

P-38 all the way. I'd pay a lot to fly that beautiful plane with a two engine PFM simulation. IIRC, the old IL2 engine didn't do true multi engine flight dynamics at all.

Yes, but your opinion is BAD, and you should FEEL BAD having it. :P J/K, of course, I can see the appeal of getting as close as possible to flying a $50M instrument of technological terror as possible without joining the AF. I don't understand it, but I can see it. ;) Modern combat and flying modern jets is all about superior systems management. I'm with Barrett_g... WWII was the pinnacle of skill-based combat aviation, IMHO, and I'm hoping it truly is on the cusp of a new wave of interest. I'd love to see the days like we had over a decade ago, where Hyperlobby was filled with several dozen servers, all packed, running scenarios from Dunkirk to pacific carrier ops to the defense of the Reich. I'm a gold backer of IL2:BoS, but since the Dora has arrived and I've spent a lot of time on the DoW server it's hard to go back and fly it. The multiplayer engine is far better optimized, but those dated cockpits are just hard to take. If Edge delivers the promise of a better optimized engine and we get several warbirds on each side along with a period map or two that looks as good as the Crimea looks now, my wife is going to kill me 'cause she may never see me again. :) We've fought WWII now virtually for far longer than the real thing lasted, but I hope it continues a lot longer. ED and their 3rd party devs will keep getting my money for every plane if they're up to the quality of the Pony and the Dora, and I'll smile while I pay them. I don't know how successful it would be, but I'd certainly back a Kickstarter raising money for more WWII period maps. I also consider the Korean air war to be an extension of WWII combat in many ways, since the planes basically took prop systems and stuck a jet engine in it. I'd certainly back a Korean map, and will be lining up to get the Mig-15 the minute it's for sale.

I don't think anyone would assert that AI isn't beatable... the only time I've lost against him is when I screw up and ram him when he hammerheads. Even when I make a mistake and overshoot him he never gets a shot off, as he doesn't seem willing to compromise his perfect aerodynamic stance to get guns on target. A human will yaw out of coordination or risk a stall if he sees a good opportunity to get hits, and it seems the AI never wants to do this. The issue is squarely with the damage model. I concede that the AI literally can't play by complex damage rules given the simplified flight model, but the overall survivability of a gun pass should be reduced dramatically for both human and AI planes. There are precious few places on a P-51 where a 20mm can blow a fist-sized hole through it and the plane not suffer catastrophic damage to one or more systems. The Dora could likely take quite a few more 50 caliber holes, but still not nearly as many as it can take now, and those 6 guns put out one heck of a lot more bullets. Not sure how the AI side can improved, though, without simply lowering the hit point threshholds. In a perfect world the AI would use the PFM (and I'd like to see that as an option in the future if you have the processing capability to spare, especially for a one-on-one), and suffer degradation of flight ability as damage was applied. Perhaps the simple flight model can be tweaked for damage without increasing computing complexity a lot. Limit the AI's ability to incur Gs if the wings are holed, for example. Visual damage indications, more dramatic flight model effects, and enhanced gun lethality would all be on my wish list. Note that these criticisms in no way indicate any terminal dissatisfaction with DCS. The flight model, overall feel of flight, and graphics engine (even on the current old one) are so good I look forward every day to getting to play. It's just that when you've got it good, you can't help but want it better. :thumbup:

They're going to kill my wallet. The only real disappointment here is having to wait well into next year for a period map with period assets. I'm an online flyer only except for practice, but I wonder if a company like Desastersoft could be persuaded to build a single player campaign?

I'm pretty sure you normally use both magnetos to start.

I don't know.. I like the randomness of flak. It should be dangerous enough to discourage loitering at high altitude, and the odds of getting a flak shell right through the fuselage (and vaporizing) should be pretty low unless you stay there a while. More likely should be a slow degradation of your plane as close explosions put shrapnel holes in various parts. This is one thing that I thought the old IL2 did really well in the online servers I spent way, way too many hours on. Base flak was harassing but rarely deadly unless you spent a ton of time in it or got really unlucky, and it provided an 'early warning and spotting system' for anyone running base CAP. If you actually tried vulching with a gun pass, though, the short-range AA (can't remember what the weapons were called) was very deadly. You could survive one pass 'most' of the time, but any sort of turning engagement within range of them almost always resulted in your plane getting blown away. This made airfield hits high risk / high reward endeavors. I really enjoyed this mechanism. Flying CAP could get boring but could also result in some satisfying kills, particularly for newer players. On the vulching side, it provided an incentive to spend the extra time to swing around the base and come at it from an unexpected direction, treetop level, at high speed if you wanted a chance at landing any points you might get. Hopefully the coming '40's maps with period assets will let this kind of setup live again.

I support both titles (BoS Founder), but after getting back into DCS with the Dora release and catching up on what I missed with the Mustang, it IS hard to get back into BoS. The flight model and pits give an incredible sense of realism. Of course, BoS has bigger numbers on MP to have fun with and a better spotting model... In my perfect world, the folks at 777/1c would convert the planes and map into a DCS Edge module as their next project. A man can dream... I'd love for more people to buy both, frankly.

I don't find the visibility to be an issue and takeoff is cake, but landing can be a trick. If you want to do it with no flaps, though, you're going to have to set it up well as it's realllllly hard to get her to shed energy on final without the flaps. You can crab it in, of course, but without any way to switch to manual prop pitch to help bleed airspeed it's tough to get her to slow down without using a ton of runway. Of course, we HAVE plenty of runway, but still... I doubt we'll have jet-length runways whenever we get a real '44 map. I like the power of the Dora and LOVE the model (visual, flight, all of it...), but you really need both it and the P-51. :)

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3801659/1 - Slaw's thread. http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3977757/Slaw_VS._Milan_the_battle_of_t#Post3977757http:// - Head to head comparison of the Crosswinds vs Slaw Device The Crosswinds win out in the above comparison due to the cam, but I personally prefer the dead stop center in the Slaw, and valued the somewhat heavier construction. If I flew helo sims, though, I'd have gone with the Crosswind. You can't go wrong with either, and they cost about the same (Slaw's was a bit more shipping due to being heavier.) You sure won't go back to Saitek. You might try checking an external view while your rolling down the runway, if you can. I've never used one, but I'd imagine you could see if the tailwheel was rotating. I just did three quick takeoff and landings, and with the tailwheel locked the rudder doesn't have all that much authority... I have to touch the left toe brake a time or two, but that's it. I don't get any rudder authority till I let up on the stick. We're both using Hogs, so that can't be it.

My apologies, Rocky, but I wasn't referring to your hardware or settings. Locking the tail wheel is an operational move (stick back), not an equipment setting. Not locking it up, for me, causes exactly what's being described... very sensitive rudder effects at mid-speed, and great difficulty keeping the plane going straight. With it locked takeoff is trivial. The only thing the 'takeoff assist' thing does for me is cause the plane to be a lot less stable for one or two seconds right after takeoff. Can't tell that it does much of anything while rolling, but it's certainly not helpful right after. I use no assists and no curves, except for the TIR5 (can't actually do an Exorcist move and spin my head 180). I retired my Saitek Combat pedals back in April in favor of a Slaw Device set. The Saitek pedals weren't spiking or overtly malfunctioning, but even straight out of the box they were... sticky. Difficult to make very small, precise corrections with them. The Slaw pedals (or Crosswind, depending on whether you like the cam or not) are unbelievable improvements, but I'd be surprised if the Saiteks, assuming they're not spiking, would make it that tough just to get off the runway.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of direct study research from WWII that I can find on relative effectiveness of various weapons/ammo configs, but quite a bit that came afterward (but of course was based on speculation and mathematical recreation.) Everything I can find quickly states that the Luftwaffe considered 20 20mm cannon shells sufficient, on average, to bring down a B-17, and that 3-4 20mm hits would bring down a single-engine fighter. Looking at the battle damage of planes that survived a 20mm hit from period photographs, this seems reasonable. There are precious few places on a WWII fighter that you can blow a fist-sized hole through it and not take out something fairly important. Once we get a more detailed damage model, hopefully this issue goes away. Pairing the CloD damage model with DCS flight model would be a dream. Even if the AI always flies a simplified flight model, it should be possible to cause a lot more performance effect than we get now due to destroyed control surfaces and drag.

To everyone with problems getting down the runway / excessive rudder authority: are you locking the tail wheel? You HAVE to have the stick pulled back to lock the tail wheel if you want to the plane to even think about going straight down the runway, then slowly go back to neutral once you go past 80 KM/h or so to keep the plane from hitting too high of an AOA on liftoff. Same thing with landing. You've got to lock the tail wheel as soon as the plane settles down or be a better rudder jockey than I. Now, figuring out how to survive the furball mission on hard with half a dozen P-51s swarming me... I can easily handle 1 and sometimes 2 if my gunnery is good (though landing over 30 20mm rounds without the pony slowing down a bit is rather dismaying), but I don't see how you do that one.