PitbullVicious

Oh bollocks. I completely missed this.

Oh, and @philstyle, one more request: Would it be possible to get a sound notification (ping or something) associated with the radar contact report. I've noticed that they are easy to miss while on VR and looking for contacts, as they are not centred on the screen.

@philstyle Thanks for checking! I think it could be the mission file (as this seems to be possible according to the discussion linked above). Today in a different mission the TO assistance seemed to be off. Yesterday it was the June 10 Afternoon mission where I noticed this, so that might help to narrow it down a bit.

Hey @philstyle, Is the take-off assistance on (by accident, perhaps) the (excellent) SoW server? I can see my Dora shifting its pedals during take-off without any input, and this doesn't happen during SP (and double checked before joining the server that the TO assistance is off in my game settings). According to this thread, it can be enabled / forced via server settings: Cheers!

Anyone found a solution for this one. Still struggling with it in end of 2020

Missing the fun helicopter action :) Any plans for another one coming up in the near future, @Alpenwolf ?

"That pays for two educational scholarships for children of fallen service members." That is the best news and the only thing that matters! And I was very much enjoying the only fight that I had against Winglet (and was glad to see him go all the way to quarter-finals!) and the streams after that. I felt that the enthusiasm and the spirits were really high on Discord, when we were waiting for things to kick off last weekend. Thank you for organising this Mover and Moltar (and all the other staff involved), and thanks for getting the panel of your colleagues to join and comment today's fights, Mover. I know some of us simmers can be pig headed, but there is also a huge silent majority who are soaking in your stories, anecdotes and knowledge to try to get more immersion and fun out of our little game. Please. don't be discouraged by a few forum posts, but keep interacting with this rather fanatic (in good as in bad) gaming community :)

Just a quick update, the above didn't work completely. Still getting crashes / freeze. Rider said he's looking into it (but the bug might be difficult to pinpoint...)

After help from Rider, I removed the VRK hooks from DCS (delete / rename VrkGameGui.lua at <Windows install drive>:\Users\<UserName>\Saved Games\DCS\Scripts\Hooks\). At least so far this seems to have fixed the crashes. I'll keep testing.

@AMVI_Rider Absolutely love VRK. But unfortunately it seems to cause crashes with DCS when I'm playing Syria Blue Flag online (haven't had any problems with any other map or mission so far, but haven't done extensive testing). I'm using VRK with Intuos S. I know this might be nigh impossible thing to track down, but if there's any information I could provide to possibly help fixing, let me know.

Just a humble observation, but could we stop this petty argument about the tournament rules? Here we have a person who's done what each of us dreams about, when we are sitting in front of our monitors or with our headsets on. And he's taken enough liking to our small online gaming community to organise this opportunity. We actually have a chance to save a life without having to pull the paddle switch in Hornet or yanking the stick to over G our Tomcats by signing up or donating and offer a chance of education to someone who's lost a loved one or have them become disabled. Can't see things getting any realer than that.

Registered. My main mission is to have fun for a good cause and offer target practice for someone :)

@Alpenwolf, are we going ahead with this?

I know this isn't probably what the OP wants to hear, but for me the solution was an upgrade from TMWH base to Virpil T50CM2 base. Made AAR almost easy. I was surprised how much of a difference it made in the end.

A shameless plug: A compilation of Blue Flag Persian Gulf A2A missions with the Hornet. 5 kills in one day (Sun 28th of June), with some nice ad hoc cooperation with CardinalPoint. Includes commentary and Tacview overlay. The aspect ratio gets better around 4 minutes. I'm relatively new to video editing, and not that good of a pilot, so feedback is very welcome.

PitbullVicious - Gazelle Mistral

Yes, but they didn't unilaterally just change things. I'd expect that those simulations were used as basis to discuss with Deka, rather than come with an ultimatum and most likely Deka even agreed with them. Again, anything else would be detrimental to the relationship between Deka and ED, and I can't see it would be a feasible way for ED to interact with their partners. Chizh also said explicitly that ED didn't change the battery time (which I interpret that Deka themselves did): https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4348756&postcount=111

This makes no sense. First of all, at least ED have said that it was Deka themselves that have changed the missile ("nerfed" is a rather loaded word.. it could also be "fixed"). It would be nice if Deka either acknowledged or denied this to clarify the situation. I can understand that there are discussions between ED and any 3rd party to find a consensus on what is the actual real world performance. This is exactly how it should be as both parties surely have some talented people who can learn from each other, and because without common baselines the relative performance of the missiles might be completely off. Secondly, this idea that ED is sabotaging their third party developers seems completely absurd. ED is more likely to be more dependent on good 3rd party developers than the 3rd party developers are on ED. They add so much content and potential to the simulation, not to mention sales, which of ED is of course receiving their percentage. The idea that ED would do anything to anger their 3rd party developers would be incredibly poor business. To be blunt, it seems that you are just disappointed that you don't have an overhand with SD-10 that you used to have earlier, without even trying to establish if the initial overhand was due to potential errors or bad relative performance of the SD-10 compared to the AIM-120. Have you even done any testing on how they relatively perform currently (I have, and I can't see the SD-10 being in that terrible state)? What I do grand though is, that other ED missiles and the API (in case of AIM-54, for example, if I've understood correctly) do need further development. But one has to start the development from somewhere, with the other missiles coming next. I just don't see that this currently applies to SD-10.

Of course the numbers I gave are very arbitrary, and ED would need to adjust the prices so that this approach would be sensible for them. And finding the right stage granularity would most likely require quite a bit of fine tuning. But I would suspect that good strategy of "divide and conquer" might work here. Yes, as you wrote, unfortunately one can never get rid of complaints. I must say that ED has become much more professional in handling them and in their response. Some people will also hold a grudge and seem to pick on ED on any minor delay or mishap, which is pretty petty in my opinion. Some people even make their own reality (e.g. "released for next update" becomes a fixed date in their mind, even if a date isn't provided), and then get angry when that reality isn't fulfilled. This is just the downside of interacting with customers. This is why I wrote that it would be better if people (customers) accepted some facts I think also that there is a reason for ED to take criticism seriously (and I'm sure they do). I can also see the frustration when people expect something and get hyped about it and then get disappointed often. Long standing bugs, unlisted updates, seemingly weird coupling between modules which by updating one shows up as bugs in another. It definitely looks like there are some systematical problems with ED's approach to version control and bug handling (e.g. recurring old bugs. One would expect that a good policy would be to refactor the code so that one could capture these bugs with automated tests), that cannot be excused only by the complexity of the product. And what is more discerning is that these problems seem to have been going on for a long time without addressing. But it is of course difficult to say what's actually happening behind the curtains. This impression of nothing happening could be somewhat alleviated by listing these concerns and communicating what is being planned to do about them in more concrete manner. To quote my favourite comic: "There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, but one should always make new ones. Repeating mistakes is a hallmark of dim consciousness." (let's see if anyone is nerdy enough to recognise that quote :) ) Anyways, I like to be on the soap box, but I feel I may be rambling a bit. I'll stop here for now.

As everyone is chiming in, I'd like to give my insignificant contribution to the discussion also. From the point of view of what I'd like to see as a customer. This is an edited post to another public forum. While I think it's fair to critisise ED for trying to redefine EA it's also good to just accept the facts, in my opinion. No amount of complaining is going to change the fact that DCS would be unsustainable without EA and user based testing. And this has been true in the industry for a long time for non-triple A developers, or in more niche genres. PC hardware is just so diverse and programs so complex that it's impossible to test them exhaustively without a huge investment. Another fact is that ED is developing on top of obsolete code from time when best practices were not at their best stage. It is unfortunate, but it's what we've got and again no amount of complaining or threats is going to change this. Rewriting everything is really not a feasible option, I believe. I'm just hoping that on parallel to development they're refactoring the code and making its components less coupled and easier to write automated tests for (from unit to integration level), as these are the current best practices. The third fact is that development won't get any faster with complaining. Complex (admittedly overly complex due to the above fact) things take time and no amount of shouting will make things faster. Also when developing novel things, time estimates are very difficult to make. Therefore I think it would be safer for ED, even against all demands to sustain from them. I think the whole discussion makes more sense once one accepts these facts, and the reality that they won't change anytime soon. The question is then, that does one feel that one gets enough of worth for the amount of money one has invested. If not, it's better to forget DCS and move on to something else, or wait for a few years and then buy the module in a more compete state. I think that the above is a very subjective thing, and everyone has to decide for themselves if they want to buy EA or not. I, for one, don't really like people tell me how to spend or not to spend my money. I make the judgment based on how much money I have to invest, and what I feel I get in return for that investment. I personally, think that I've got my money's worth with the Hornet EA and am happy I got it right from the start. It is prefectly flyable, playable and enjoyable in its current state, and has been throughout its development. I don't mind reporting bugs and participating in the testing, as I can do it when I feel like it, without obligation. I can also understand that others might feel differently. What I would criticise ED for, is what in my opinion constitutes a terrible blunder in communication and management this time. By promising that the Hornet will be out of EA this year, without first defining what it means, they have really painted themselves into a corner. I'd respect them more if they just came out and apologised rather than try to spin it. There's no way that their definition of early access is acceptable in this case, or even consistent with the history. So, if facts are facts, what could be a solution? I like that ED have now accepted that they can't sell EA with full price. I think this is a good start and compromise. But the problem here is glaring. By redefining very loosely what early access means, the whole thing loses its meaning. Unless it is clearly communicated beforehand what features the customs are paying for in EA, it is impossible for users to decide whether they want to participate into the EA or not. I'd rather see a clear road map with stages, and without time estimates, with a clear feature list for each stage. Let's say that if one buys module as soon as it's in its early stages, one pays 50% of the full price, and once a set feature list is ready, the price goes up to 70% until the next feature list is completed. This way each customer could decide when to join the EA and have easier time estimating what is missing and how long until all the desired features are there. Yes, I admit that this is a bit complex, but maybe we just need some compromises at this stage. As a concrete example, but without thinking to much about the actual granularity and features of the stages: In case of Hornet, the initial release would've been the basic functionality with startup sequence, Aim-7 and older Aim-9 missiles, dumb bombs in CCIP and with functional TWS radar. Once these are tested in beta, they would roll into stable and stable would be frozen for the Hornet. Development would then concentrate on the next feature list, with support of public EA on beta. Let's say IR mavericks, and INS initialisation. Again these would be finished in beta and then rolled onto stable once ready. Then EA price would go up a step. On top of that I would like to see better version control and release process and discipline with the stable release. Have another clear road map for the stable release, and make sure that features are added to it only in complete and tested stages, even if it takes time (let's say that stable Hornet is updated only after TWS for it is fully working and tested to be bug free in the beta). This would, however, require much better version control, but should be doable with modern tools. I've ported a few projects from SVN to Git back in the days, and it was quite trivial to do. With this it would be easier for a user to make decisions on whether they want to be part of beta or stick with the stable release. Now the decision is impossible to make, as in the current model, stable doesn't mean a thing, as it's full of experimental features that are honestly saying broken. I do love DCS, and I think that ED is trying their best, despite of their short comings and problems. I also want them to succeed; not just being able to make it, but to make a good profit out of this, and increase their user base, as that will make the genre more interesting for potential competitors also (there not being any is also and tell tale sign of how difficult it is to be successful in niche genre like this). I've had hours after hours of fun, challenging times in DCS and there's no end to the enjoyment of learning new things every time I start DCS. It is truly a wonderful product. But it is also frustrating at times, and I've had breaks from flying due to bugs that make things impossible to bear.

Just a quick hint as this happened to me: Check that you haven't set that button to any of the VR functions in the "UI Layer" bindings. Those seem to override the module bindings. EDIT: Ah, sorry, just a quick correction. I didn't notice that the button does work for NWS. As in that case this can't be the problem.

I disagree with this. I'd expect any developer to be as accurate with the control deflection and harmonisation as they possibly can, I think this is part of simulation experience. I personally always try to bind my controls as close to the aircraft as possible (yes, I need to make a lot of compromises), to also understand the cognitive load of different cockpit solutions and to get different feel of each airframe (I'm not claiming this is necessarily always accurate, but at least it is more immersive). I understand that not all people want, or can do things the same way, but that's what the curve adjustments are there for. Yes, learning to control the Gazelle in the beginning was challenging, but it is definitely doable. I'm flying it with no curves what-so-ever and am quite comfortable with it (I started without any extension, but am currently using 11cm one with the TM Warthog base).

Fair enough. Just that smoke rockets wouldn't be that deadly :) Could be used otherways, though, so it's understandable.

@Alpenwolf Would the new WP rockets be allowed for the Gazelle. Just for the fun of it :)

Alpenwulf, Will the mission be available beforehand to "recon"? :)