Roosterfeet

About time! How do you open that?

Just did some testing and the 54C is still pretty effective against Mig-23s when fired head-on at Mach 1, inside 35 miles at 30,000 feet. At 40+ miles and below 20,000 feet, not so good. I have no idea whether the FM adjustments make it more or less realistic but in the current build it's still an effective missile if you make sure it has enough energy to get where it's going. I think the bigger problem is still the inability of the AI to reliably fire the the Phoenix within effective parameters and support it until it goes active. There could also be an issue with AI reacting too soon to TWS launches and reducing effective range, not sure about that one though.

Having seen this happen many, many times before with all manner of software products, not just DCS. I appreciate the way ED does this now. The ideal for me is: Give a best estimate of release Announce delays as soon they are determined with a new estimate that is realistic Don't shove something out the door that's not ready just to meet a self imposed deadline I think that's what ED has done here. So, sure, it's disappointing but, in my opinion, good on them for doing it right. As an aside, I much prefer ED's current method to the flight sim developer who was famous for saying, "Two weeks." every two weeks for years or the space game that's taken nearly a decade but can't get past a barely playable alpha state with no end in sight.

Looking at it again, I agree that it's likely a falling dead animation rather than a dive for cover. They do appear to run when engaged though, which I don't recall ever seeing before. Maybe I'll do some tests later.

So the video essentially announced a delay but it also featured some fantastic looking FLIR video and infantry running and diving!? - in a realistic way that I don't recall seeing in DCS before. Are those infantry animations new? Any chance we might see those updates to the FLIR system and animations before the Apache hits early access?

Damn you, homophones! :Shakes fist angrily at sky:

In the free view, LCtrl+F11, you can use WSAD to move forward, backward, and laterally, standard FPS controls. The camera moves way to fast to look at aircraft up-close though unless you use LCtrl+WSAD instead. Anyone know how to rebind these controls for the free camera? I can't find them in the regular control bindings.

In mission 9 the IP states that the correct Mask Zone for the A-10 is M1 but the Mask Zone in the mission is M4. As far as I can tell, It's always M4 in DCS and there is no way to change it. I suspect that this causes some issues with the pod thinking it's masked when it's not which puts it in INR mode meaning that you can't point-track or lase targets that you can clearly see until the pod decides it's not masked. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Quick Review: This training campaign goes very deep into the A-10C's systems. I had about 100 hours between both A-10C modules going into Iron Flag so I had some basic proficiency already but I still learned something new in every single mission. I've taken things away from this campaign that will improve the way I fly the A-10 immensely. There was very little weapons employment but the flying itself was fun and immersive. I know Baltic Dragon is a 3rd party developer but ED should include a campaign like this with every module, the value would be immense.

A while back I upgraded from a twist stick with a button bound to wheel breaks to a set of rudder pedals with toe breaks. I assume breaking after touchdown is pretty much the same for any jet aircraft with nose-gear. My question is, what's the proper method to apply toe breaks on landing? Do I want to slam on both breaks as soon as I touch down or should I gradually apply break pressure? And if it's gradual, do I slowly increase to full break pressure or just eyeball enough break to stop like I would in a car? I've noticed it's a little hard to stay straight on the runway when I've got a break on both sides to deal with. Thanks for any advice.

I wonder how viable it would even be to implement a damage model for bombs? Would various AA weapons even penetrate the steel casing and would they detonate the bomb if they did? Info might be pretty scarce on that topic.

That's great news about AI flight model and behavior improvements coming next year but I have a humble request. In the future, before undertaking multiyear projects to set new standards for realism and fidelity, please, please, please make what exists work as intended and make a commitment to avoid implementing new features until they won't break old ones. We've gone years with AI that uses afterburner needlessly until it flames out, won't consistently attack targets, has questionable ground collision avoidance, and has suicidal tendencies toward anti-aircraft defences. It's very frustrating to design and fly missions with unreliable AI behavior and constant changes to that behavior between versions.

I've been plagued with partial black screen flickering since, I believe, 2.5. I finally found an example that's severe enough for me to easily document and post. It occurred in mission 2 of Reflected's Fear the Bones Campaign. You may want to merge this with a similar thread. Blackscreen.trk dcs.log

Really interested in trying this. Is the Civil Aircraft Mod essential? What will happen if you don't install the mod?

I know, know, I saw a bunch of AI AMRAAM shots trashed by the weird oscillating behavior while flying Liberation missions last night but I can't reproduce it. I did a bunch of co-altitude, head-on tests with various aircraft vs F-14 and Mig-29 and AIM-120C is hitting between 2 of 3 and 3 of 4 shots. To me, the misses in my tracks look like legitimately defeated missiles. F-16 vs F-14 AMRAAM AI.trk F-15 vs F-14 AMRAAM AI.trk F-15 vs MIG-29 AMRAAM AI.trk F-18 vs F-14 AMRAAM AI.trk F-18 vs MIG 29 AMRAAM AI.trk

The Tomcat was the first premium module I bought, followed by the Hornet. The Tomcat is my favorite aircraft in DCS by a wide margin and there is a lot of really cool Tomcat related stuff going on right now you've got retired RIO Ward Carroll on youtube producing a lot of content as well as the re-release of his trilogy of books. Retired RIO Dave Baranek and pilot Craig Snyder have their own F-14 Tomcast. Dave "Bio" Baranek also contributed to Zone 5 which is a very good "Topgun" campaign. I think the available campaigns are better for the Tomcat, in general, both stock and premium. Having said all that though, in the last year and a half, i've got 166 hour in the Tomcat and 222 hours in the Hornet in my DCS logbook. The F-18 is just a more flexible aircraft in terms of mission types and I've been playing a lot of dynamic content like the https://github.com/dcs-liberation/dcs_liberation campaign and Surrexen's dynamic missions, which are good for any aircraft but perfect for a multirole fighter. TLDR version - You're going to buy them both eventually. If you're like me you will love the F-14 more but spend more time flying the F-18.

I would go with one of the newer models (circular D-pad and 3 buttons in the middle). I had the shoulder buttons break on the old model and that is apparently a common problem. I've also seen some stands out there that might be pretty handy for a HOTAS for flight / Gamepad for TADS setup.

Nice screenshots. Can you post your graphics settings?

The track reconstructs the mission based on recorded player inputs and the mission file. Changes to things like flight model and weapons modeling can have drastic effects on the outcome of the replay. Track files are frequently only good for the DCS version in which they were recorded. I like Tacview for mission replay. https://www.tacview.net/product/about/en/ It can cause a small performance hit though.

It doesn't look like the skeets are tracking targets any more either. They behave like a CBU-87 now. Edit: CBU-97 doesn't work any better. Yesterday they were doomsday devices, today they're good for one APC in a group.

I transferred my Steam licenses to ED a long time ago and have been running the ED standalone version. I assume the problem must be on ED's end but who knows. I just hope it gets resolved soon.

Just had same problem. Several of my modules show up as unauthorized and I cannot access them. Current open beta and they appear to be modules that I purchased on Steam and then transferred over a year ago.

Speaking of the impending Jester upgrade... Can anyone clue us in on how this is going to work? I'm really curious to know how ground target acquisition is implemented with Jester.

I played 19 missions which is fine. It just felt like the strike on Gunava and Kakulia's convoy was intended to be last mission before the end of the campaign. I was told that would be the next mission in my debrief message but I also happened to reach the victory condition so never got to strike the convoy. As for feedback, I think Pontus makes very cleaver use of DCS' campaign system and I enjoyed it. If I could make one suggestion, it would be to add a scripted final mission, much like the first mission, to tie a bow on the whole thing and give a more satisfying conclusion. I realize though that this would probably take additional voice work to do properly and might have to wait for the next project. Thanks for the great campaign. I hope there are more like this in the future.

**Campaign ending spoilers ahead** I think my campaign may have ended a mission early. I got the "your next task is to attack the convoy" and the "mission complete we're going home" messages at the same time. There was no code for a next mission and, indeed the next mission was the KC-135 end scene. The last code I received was F-G-B-A-L-B