Oldguy

Seems like Ed has been making the FC3 aircraft more realistic all along; with the better graphics model and PFM, those are moves in the right direction. They make an interesting plane-set; people who like the "study" modules only get to do that: study. There's nothing else to do with them.

There is a major difference between the two in that the Track IR view and your eyes are moving in opposite directions, while in VR, your eyes and your view move in the same direction. For example, to move your point of view in TIR to the lower right cockpit panel, you have to turn your head that way, i.e. down and to the right. In the meantime, your monitor, which you are using to see the lower right cockpit panel, remains where it was, but is now being seen through your left, upper peripheral vision. If the movement required to see an on-screen TIR object is relatively small, then it will not be much of a strain. If you wear glasses, the TIR problem is exacerbated, because glasses don't particularly work well when you look through the edges of their lenses. I can tell you this: TIR is a pointing device, like a joystick button. In VR, conversely, you look where you turn your head to. However, VR is also a stunningly transformational device. These two devices aren't even close in terms of impact on the flight simulator experience. Once you taste good VR, and it is a very expensive taste, you cannot go back. Sadly, the issue with VR is expense. Lots of expense. To be able to read small text, like gauges, text strings, etc. clearly, you will likely need higher resolution than the original VR HMDs offered. So you will have to buy the better HMDs with higher resolution panels. I tossed my TIR once I discovered VR. I use progressive lenses and the TIR made the turn-head-right-look-left-at-monitor experience unworkable. At first, I tried the original Vive, but after the initial euphoria of experiencing VR flight for the first time, I realized that I couldn't read gauges, see small aircraft or read text strings, like the written communication with ATC, etc. That was sooo disappointing. VR in DCS without legible text is simply not usable. I moved to the Vive Pro, and it was just enough better, just that wee bit higher in resolution, that on-screen text finally became clear and usable. For me, the Pro's resolution is the lowest that can do so. I'll buy the higher resolution Cosmos next, as soon as my piggy bank refills. In VR, the value of HMD Panel Resolution is everything. With a high resolution HMD comes the need for a really strong PC, which is also expensive. My 1080ti works for now, and my CPU is up to the task, too, but they have very little room for a good margin of error. I do not believe that they will be able to push the Cosmos I'll be buying the Steam Index controllers, hoping that DCS will support the fingers for the touch cockpits (I am NOT holding my breath for that) and converting the Cosmos to station tracking. See if you can find someone who will let you try their VR before you buy into that hardware eco-system. The industry is evolving rapidly, and you have to spend, and keep spending, relatively big money to keep up. The original Vive, which is still good, set me back about $1200. The Pro added another $700. The Cosmos and Index will cost another $900. I will keep upgrading hardware, because the Cosmos will probably break my 1080ti. I will likely just convert my PC to a game one, with a 9700K CPU and OC it and the 2080ti (or RTX Titan) to stay up. The Titan is the better card, simply because it has so much VRAM, which VR can use. Too, it's base clock is as high as most overclocked 2080tis. That's another $5k easily. However, once you sit in the surprisingly small cockpit of your favorite aircraft and feel those cockpit sides squeezing your shoulders tightly as the plane jiggles and wobbles down the runway for your first VR takeoff, banking hard and looking down over your virtual shoulder and being thrilled at the vertigo-inducing sight of treetops rushing by just mere virtual feet away, you'll find the money. Yep, you'll find the money. To me, it's simply worth every single penny. Your mileage may vary.

Truthfully, there is nothing more realistic about clicking a mouse on a monitor than typing the same commands on a keyboard, except the monitor is a longer reach and a little more awkward. When VR has finger haptics to actually "touch" the virtual 3D cockpit switches and controls, that will be a move forward. The MiG-21 module tried that, but the incredibly large, clumsy "gloves" in lieu of controllers spoil the effect. In the interim, a HOTAS is what most real-world aviators use, and so mouse clicks spoil that immersion as much as a keyboard. Mouse versus keyboard? Neither are in a real airplane. Well, maybe there are some residual, small keyboard inputs in a modern cockpit. It is much ado over very little; what matters is when one software bird flies in the same virtual skies as another, that their interaction is as close to what would happen in reality as possible. That is "full fidelity". A mouse or a keyboard adds nothing to that.

been there for many years.../sigh

Yes, that is possible, I suppose. I would think it would only affect ToW, so I deliberately kept speed high, so the little guy wouldn't drop out of the sky, as it had done on earlier runs, when the AP made sharp turns and power was in the 80% range. Watching your track, it does indeed advance correctly, so I will experiment with speed, and try to hit 3 at a lower velocity. Thanks for your continued patience. Post script: In fact, that seemed to help, although I saw AP turns above 700 knots; I do not know what Max speed + Max angle limits are. The sharpness of turn and distance to WP are definitely a factor. In any case, the mission designer had a real sense of humor, with altitude set at 2000 meters in the highest mountains. Made it to Nalchik, nonetheless. I'll just have to play around with the AP and find out what the combination limits are. Thanks again for your help!

EDIT: OK, ran it again, and in an excess of zeal, waited probably 4 1/2 minutes after power-on, before selecting navigation mode at hardstand, then taxiing for takeoff, selecting AP after climb-out and reaching WP 1 altitude. Once again, it did not increment up to WP 4 after overrunning WP three. Track is attached. Many thanks for your patience and sharing your experience. I'm going to run your track while I wait on this reply. autopilot test 2.zip

Okay, I'm going to give the three minute drill a shot, and see if that prevents the AP from overrunning the WPs repeatedly; I had to manually advance them once the AP overshot. This time, I will simply watch the run. Thanks for the tip; much appreciated.

Here you go. I do not know what camera the track file uses, but of course, it does not match the PoV of my HMD while in-game, so I can only say that what I saw was remarkably smoother and more stable when I made the track. The best way to try to decipher this is to watch the way-point number in the HUD, and the distance counter just to its left. If the aircraft passes the way-point, and the distance-to counter starts to rise, then I manually shift to the next WP. The AP begins to act a bit wonky beginning with WP 3, which I went past by quite a bit before I manually shifted. Thereafter, it will occasionally increment up to the next WP automatically, but that is the exception, not the rule. The view in the mirrors is funny, just as an aside: you get a nice look down into the bowels of the A/C, with the spinning disc representing the intake fan blades. On the occasion when it appears that I will run aground, I take manual control and try to stay close to path until it is safe to shift back to AP. Otherwise, this track is pretty indicative of every trial I have made with this canned mission. Any ideas? :joystick: autopilot test.zip

I'm just running a simple, canned mission for the T model, to allow the plane to fly itself while I play around with control settings and the like, for my VR setup. It comes with the free version of DCS and involves a simple take-off, follow multiple way-points, and land. I've got plenty of fuel, and time-over-wp is not important, so I take-off and keep the power high in navigation mode. I settle on a course close to what the FP requires, and I turn the AP on. I just want the plane to follow the mission (as written by someone on the DCS team), so I can screw around with other settings and enjoy the VR view. Thing is, I thought the plane was supposed to follow the plan's way-points, including altitude. I can see the plan altitude and speed values in the HUD, but the plane rarely matches either. It does not even seem to try to climb to match the planned WP's altitude. The distance-to-next-waypoint counter, at the bottom of the HUD, sometimes increments up, and occasionally down. The AP cycles thru the WPs correctly, by number, but the course the plane flies from one to the next seems very unpredictable. Since this mission crosses some very high mountain peaks, it seems important that the autopilot try to keep the plotted altitude, or at least somewhat close to it. So, in a round-about way, I'm asking if the DCSW autopilot is functioning normally, or is this unpredictable behavior the result of buggy behavior?

surprise Thanks for the light-smashing "Easter Egg"!!

Same here; mirrors can be turned forward and back, but show no images. This is new behavior. The engines start-up bug is still present.

Track IR and progressive eyeglass lenses don't play well together; so I give up on trying to use this hardware. I've enclosed a picture of what is included in this offer to sell. The buyer will have to obtain the software; it is not included. The price is f.o.b. my residence, which means you pay the shipping to wherever, however you choose to send it. Once we agree to the sale, I will get quotes for shipping costs, if I can comply with your requested shipping method, and I will add them to the price. I suggest that you insure your package; once it ships, it's yours. It is sold without warranty of any kind, express or implied. I verified that it was working order, then I packaged it. The price reflects the used condition of the hardware, which is very light, since I cannot use it effectively with my prescription lenses. The risk of purchasing these used goods lies with the buyer, so caveat emptor! Method of payment is negotiable and will reflect consensus.

Thanks for the many helpful replies; just what I was looking for!

Many thanks; my French is practically non-existant, so some of that is lost on me, but where I could follow along, it was very impressive; many thanks!

Did you even read my post?

Caucasus remains the only map that I will be using for the foreseeable future, so I am hoping for a good outcome here. This is simply a couple of questions to help clear up what I don't quite get about this just yet. I pose these questions mostly to Starway, because he is the master of the fate of this project. As I understand DCS, the mesh for Caucasus will eventually changed. That will occur because the 1.5 version and the 2.0 will eventually be merged. So the move from what Starway is calling the T3 texture set will happen eventually (in a world two to three weeks from now...), so that his T3 texture will be outmoded unless the player freezes their DCS installation at the T3 texture level, and refuses the upgrade to T4. In any case, it means that, in order for his texture set to be usable, for the long-term, it will have to be the T4 variant, right? Consequently, he wants $3K, in cumulative donations, for that set. What will happen to my donation if $2K level is not met? Similarly, what will happen to my donation if he never realizes the $3K level? t seems like the mod will no longer be usable after 1.5 and 2.0 merge, if he does not update it. I really like his mod, and I realize that it is a result of a lot of his hard work. $10 is not too much, to me personally, for this effort, and I am not averse to paying him for his work product; the market will decide the value of his creation. There is a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability here, which I would simply like to try to clear up for my own curiosity's sake. Starway, I hope you succeed in this, and I hope your enthusiasm has not been dealt too harsh a blow by so much negativity surrounding your efforts to realize income from so much work.

Can anyone link me to videos that demonstrate DCS 12+ multiplayer cooperative videos, OTHER THAN the ones showing the canned multiplayer Red Flag (and the like) commercial events? By that I mean replays of the commercial DLC. I'm just looking for things like squadron videos that run at least an hour or more, showing multiplayer cooperative missions. I'd like to see large-scale DCS multiplayer communications and tactics/strategy in action. I would rather see just the human-versus-AI kinds of events, not PvP.

Most aircraft-specific manuals are found in the Docs folder for the aircraft under the Mods folder; there is an SU-25T manual there in my base installation of the free version of DCS World. All of DCS is a work-in-progress, in a manner of speaking, so changes come as they evolve, but the Toad is pretty old, and I doubt aircraft manual corrections for it are likely to appear anytime soon. So, it seems fairly safe to print. However, there are some other ways to have the book open while you fly the virtual skies: the following are just a couple of examples: If you have a second monitor (I use an old VGA monster in 1920 x 1024 resolution), then you can open the current manual on that screen and fly DCS full-screen on your main monitor. That is how I do it, but I am running out of desk-space, so sometimes I use a laptop instead.

GTX 1080 The best thing about the 1080 is the downward pressure on older Maxwell GPUs; time to work on my next card at a significantly lower price point (I'm hoping!).

It's a nice aircraft, but there are, in my thinking, many other vehicles who could see the light of digital day before it.

After one of my usual terrible landings in the SU-25T at Beslan, the aircraft slid off the runway and onto the grass about 100 feet from the runway. The game graciously made me wait three minutes before I could get repairs, which I thought was a clever way to simulate the repair vehicles having to clamber all the way out to where I had mucked up, literally. The repair completed normally, but a bit slowly. Thereafter, I was able, under full power, to swing the nose around to point back at the runway and taxi onto the firmer surface, thence back to the taxi stand. That fancy mudguard on the front tire is there for a reason. All in all, despite my execrable landing skills, I was quite satisfied with the way the results played out. Seemed like a real escapade into poor piloting resulted in a fairly nice outcome. p.s. From my readings about the MiG-21, it seems the small tires of the F model were exchanged with the much larger tires of the PF (or somewhere in that model range) to enable soft/rough field work. Thus the small blisters in the upper fuselage to accommodate the larger tire diameter with its lower psi weight-bearing effect.

Two quick questions: fps load? Activation restrictions? Because it's so good-looking, I can tolerate a little fps slow-down, but I am utterly tired of dealing with the antiquated Starforce 'stuff'.

You could try the free version of Tacview to see what is happening to you and him.

Try a registry repair utility, after uninstalling, to clean-up the residual clutter. I am very satisfied with the free version of CCleaner.

I searched for this anomaly on the forums, to see if it was already mentioned, but I did not see it. In the U.S., typical highway markings for two-way streets call for white paint along right-side of the usable road surface. The driver-side lane markings vary, depending on the local circumstances. However, for one-way traffic lanes, the passenger side lane marking remains white, and the driver-side lane marking is painted yellow. In this way, the driver can easily tell whether the road being driven on is a one-way or two-way street. See, for example, page thirty of [ame]http://www.dmvnv.com/pdfforms/dlbook.pdf[/ame], which is the Nevada Driver Handbook. This is easily confirmed by looking at a Google Map aerial view of any section of a US Interstate highway, such as I15, which passes through Las Vegas. Likewise, the US highway 95, also in Las Vegas, is similarly marked. In the NTTR map, I frequently see the passenger side lane of one-way streets painted yellow. This is not correct. Since these roads are probably textured by repeating tiles, it should be relatively simple to change this.