Aluminum Donkey

I'm usually drunk too and haven't noticed it. If anything, the performance on my end actually seems a bit better now. If anything, you might have turned on MSAA, or increased it to 4x from 2x. It looks nice, but it's a *severe* performance hog. AD

It's the airborne version of a Miata with a 454 V8 :) AD

I'm still clueless, and I used to be really into this stuff a third of a century ago :) AD

I don't see why there should be any problem. When the engine is running at the higher end of its normal (continuous) temperature range, the radiator should be open all the way. At the lower end of the normal range, it should close fully. AD

Might have played with it once or twice. No reason to use it on anything except auto, since you're busy flying the plane and have other things to concern yourself with :) The auto radiator control is a type of thermostat. If the engine runs a bit warm, it opens the door allowing more cooling air through. When the engine cools down a little, it closes the door. So, the engine temperature is regulated. No need to muck around with it. AD

Well, I guess it didn't work very well, because that was 2018 and it's almost 2020 now, and we're all still using DX11 :) AD

Certainly. The real deal has a reputation for being of very stout construction; the one we get in DCS is made of styrofoam and tissue paper :) AD

What, no mention of a Russian fighter? They built some great ones. Yakovlev Yak-3? AD

Dmitri, what CPU clock speed are you running at? (You should post all your system specs in your sig.) Reason I ask is that clouds and mirrors may be heavily dependent on CPU clock speed, not so much on graphics card performance. I've only ever noticed about a 5% drop in framerates when turning mirrors on, so it's not supposed to be anywhere near as bad as some people are getting. You have a pretty good graphics card, so the problem might be CPU speed dependent. As a general rule, for DCS World, you want to run your CPU as fast as you can reasonably get away with--and that means you want to have a K-type CPU, not necessarily the most expensive one, but a K-type nonetheless (for example, i3-9350K is a great one for DCS.) AD

Yep, speedbrake won't open with centerline tank in place, or gear down. It also won't open fully if you're going really fast. AD

Greetings everyone, If you're running Windows 10 1903, and find the performance sucks and graphics are stuttery, update your graphics driver to version 436.48. It now runs nice and smooth with no crashing and no BS! :) Just thought I'd put that out there since my machine sucked for gaming since the Win10 1903 update... A lot of people have been using it for quite some time with mixed results, but the latest Nvidia driver seems to have helped a lot. Peace and happy warfare AD

Don't bother. DCS World doesn't use RTX, which is the expensive part. You already own a GTX 1080 Ti--an excellent choice for DCS. Buy another identical one, and use them in SLI. You'll have much better performance for the amount of cash you parted with. 2080 Ti is only around 20% faster than the 1080 Ti for non-raytraced graphics--not worth the huge bump in price. AD

RTX 2060 is about on-par with a GTX 1070. It's a pretty good card, but the "big thing" about it is RTX Raytracing, which DCS doesn't use. So, consider it to perform roughly on-par with a 1070, but with less graphics memory. It's possible that DCS World uses all of your 6GB graphics memory, and is using system memory for graphics assets when you have clouds and mirrors on, which would give lousy performance. As Twistking said, delete fxo and metashaders2 folders, and also use DDU to completely un-install your graphics card drivers. Install the latest ones for your card. If your graphics settings are all cranked all the way up, especially if you're also using MSAA, performance will be marginal. AD

Thanks, but how do I save it? I've just been pressing Esc and quitting, and then saving the mission when I'm back in the mission editor. When I re-load the mission from the editor, it has had no effect. Do I have to load it from the Mission option in the main menu for it to work? AD

Jets don't have reaction torque or P-factor, and they all have tricycle landing gear, so yes, they're easier to fly. If you want to try out some fantastic flight models, get Flaming Cliffs 3--get the whole thing, which includes the F-15C, Su-27 and -33, and MiG-29. The flight models kick ass and are very convincing. It also has the A-10A and an earlier, mass-produced version of the SU-25. On the other hand, FC3 modules don't have clickable cockpits, so if you liked that about the TF-51, then FC3 modules won't have that. If you end up getting the F/A-18C, then it's a *major* handful to learn because of its huge variety of complex systems. Nothing at all like a WW2 fighter, it has a manual with more pages than a Shanghai phone book and tons of little details that you have to sort out before firing a weapon at something. If that's what you dig, go for it, but to fly great-performing fighters, get FC3... or just get 'em both :) AD

Gotcha, so I guess it's almost useless then :) Thanks anyway. I was hoping there was a way to set things up the way I wanted so it would be like that whenever I started a mission, but I guess not. AD

Greetings everyone, Question is as per title. I'm cobbling together a Su-27 Furball/Fighter Sweep type of mission, and I'm starting on the runway. I want to have my cockpit lights, Nav lights and landing gear lights all on when I start. But, I don't know how to save it all. I start Prepare Mission in the ME, and when I set everything up and exit, then save the mission, it doesn't do squat when I restart the mission! What am I doing wrong? Thanx AD

Make sure you get a very fast (but not very expensive) CPU and at least 16 GB of RAM, and a whopping fast graphics card. For the CPU, I'd recommend either the Core i3-9350K, or i5-9600K. Make sure there's a K on the end--you'll need it for overclocking. Don't bother with insanely expensive i7 or i9 ones, they cost a lot more and won't perform any better. The two I mentioned will give excellent performance. You need a suitable motherboard of course, for the 9th gen CPU. Z370 or Z390 chipset. Graphics card--get the fastest one you can afford. GTX 1080 Ti is a great one, if you can find it used for a good price. Otherwise, get an RTX 2080, or even 2080 Ti if you don't mind blowing the bread. Both will give stellar performance. Get an SSD for DCS World. A smallish (~250GB) SATA 3 one is fine. Whatever you do, don't get an ultra-expensive CPU and motherboard, with tons of expensive RAM, and a cheap/slow graphics card! For gaming in general, you want the mightiest graphics card you can afford, and make do with everything else :) AD

It's very marginal. The basic version of DCS World (2 free planes and Caucasus map) is free, so just download it and try it out. :) AD

Wow, lots of pages of jibba-jabba over something that's been really obvious for a third of a century. An airplane, any airplane at all, is a big ol' chunk of lead, and part of the weight of that brick of lead is its engines. Here's how shit goes: The F/A-18 has more engine power than the F-16. LOTS more. It's a heavy airplane with two massively powerful engines. The F/A-18 Hornet (CF-18 for you/us Canucks) is a well-designed, superb-handling, modern fighter jet that's just a little too damn big and heavy for it's engine power. But, it has LOTS of engine power. Think of an enormous 5000-pound car, but with gargantuan 454-cubic-inch V8 engines--TWO of them!! One for the rear wheels, one for the front. That helps a bunch. But, the F-16 has a far higher thrust-to-weight ratio. It's a tiny little plane with only one engine, that happens to have whopping high thrust compared to the size and weight of the aircraft. So, when both are lightly loaded (same percentage of total fuel load and external weapons), the F-16 will effortlessly out-perform the F/A-18 in terms of acceleration, climb rate, and maximum continuous G in a tight turning fight, due to the F-16's very high thrust to weight ratio. In a nutshell, any version of the F-16 kicks complete and utter ass compared to anything else the Western world has to offer in terms of flight performance when lightly loaded, except, perhaps, for the F-22 Raptor--which can't be accurately simulated at the Consumer (i.e. Video Game) level for the next 50 years or so, because it's all classified out the wazoo. And, that's all there is to it kids :) AD

By the looks of your computer, you may as well just grab all of 'em since you can easily afford it :) They're all great modules. Picking one is purely a matter of personal taste. Make sure you have rudder pedals, which are a *must* for all the helis, except maybe the Ka-50 (but still a good idea.) AD

Sales roll around every few months, often with half price. Flaming Cliffs 3 is a great addition to DCS when you're getting into it, get the whole thing and not just one aircraft. The MiG-29 is pretty kickass, you'll love it! AD

Dang, I knew I shouldn't have spent all my dough on a used GTX 1080 Ti!! AD

I'm pretty sure you can use JoyToKey to generate different keystrokes from a single axis depending on which direction you deflect the stick. So, one for speedbrake and one for wheel brakes. Give'r a try! AD

What does that mean? AD