miguez

Several aircraft have ice detection systems, and some of those, like the Embraer 145 and 170 family, have the anti-icing system kick on automatically when icing is detected. In the Ka-50 we have an ice detection system, although it appears not to be functioning. i am talking about the Ice Detected light on the Auxiliary Panel. The EKRAN warning, as far as I know (can someone confirm/disprove this?), is based solely on OAT.

Hey manbird, Awesome find, I was wondering that myself! Now i wonder if the fact you don't get the HUD lit up by lightning is an unwanted consequence of the game engine, or a feature, as I believe the filter is really there for direct sunlight. Meaning I believe in real life the filter wouldn't kill all flash effect from lighting through it, perhaps just make it better..? Devs?

I have to agree. Having flown both airplanes and a little bit of helicopters in real life, and a lot of Level D simulators, the "feel" of the flight model is phenomenal. I am sure it is mainly a result of such detailed modeling, like individual rotor blade physics, etc., but it is the best flight model I have ever flown on a PC, and much better than a lot of Level D simulator flight models I have flown. Congratulations guys,

Hello Frederf, These are all assumptions, since I have no real-world Kamov information, but based on every other aircraft I have worked with/on, the magnetic variation input affects the HSI and its needles, and the HUD, as well as everything else that shows heading or track, such as the ABRIS, with the exception, of course, of the magnetic compass, as that is always isolated from other systems, basically a "pure" indication of the local magnetic field.

Hi Suvv, Were you navigating to the first waypoint in the PVI-800?

Like a small animal, it's trying to make itself look bigger, right before it's predator strikes... ;)

Well, he definitely , you can even see the suspension compressing. I would bet that in his early version of Black Shark (he mentions he recorded this in 2006) trains didn't stop when you touched them. Thanks,

Hey Slayer, You can just go to the nVidia Control Panel (normally installed with nVidia ForceWare drivers) and turn it off. I do that in Vista all the time.

Hey aledmb, Here.

Hi Alex, That is great news, that this is possible without breaking localization. I have some questions and sent you a PM. Thanks,

ROFLMAO. Some people might not get this, guess I am getting old...

Can you tell I have not tried the in-game failures yet? :). That's too bad, one thing I'd really like to see in BS is extensive failure modeling, where you could program each individual instrument for failure, if needed/wanted/required. That would add a lot of realism, having to finish off combat without an ABRIS, or navigate in poor weather on the standby ADI due to main ADI failure, etc. Maybe crossing our fingers will make ED add it to future updates? AlphaOneSix, thanks for the explanation, great stuff.

Keyboard shorcuts added to cockpit tooltips. See here.

Hi geogob, A better way to practice would be to create your own mission with both engines set to fail in between 5 and 10 minutes, for example. that would give you enough time to get in the air, start moving somewhere, but not know exactly when the engines would fail. It creates a little more realism for this scenario.

That is only true if you have the game set to the same resolution as your Windows screen resolution.

The post is in the Mods section, see here.

They have been released. See here.

Hello ladies and gents, I have added all default keyboard shortcuts to the cockpit tooltips. The file can be found here. Since a lot of people might skip the readme file in there, I am posting it here too. Enjoy! WARNING: This was only tested with the English release of DCS: BS, version 1.0, with the option COCKPIT LANGUAGE set to English. I cannot guarantee it will work with the Russian release, or that it will work with the English release with COCKPIT LANGUAGE set to Russian. OVERVIEW ------------------------------------------------------------------- This readme is organized in the following fashion: - INTRODUCTION - HOW TO MODIFY TOOLTIPS YOURSELF - EXISTING ISSUES - INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS - CONTACT INTRODUCTION ------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello and welcome to the world of tooltips! The files in this download were created to add the default keyboard shortcuts to the in-cockpit tooltips that DCS: Black Shark is capable of showing. The reason I decided to do this was simple. I do not own a HOTAS setup (or at least, not yet), and am therefore forced to either use the mouse to click through the cockpit, which I like quite a bit, or to use keyboard shortcuts. For the vast majority of the time I spend in the cockpit, I use my mouse pointer to click on things, but I find that sometimes, especially in the heat of battle, I do not have the time to look around for a switch, never mind move the pointer over it and click it. For these moments, I wanted to learn some of the existing keyboard commands. In reading through the DCS: Black Shark forums (http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=72) I bumped onto a message where someone suggested it would be great if keyboard shortcuts were added to tooltips, so i set out to see if it was possible, and the rest is, as they say, history. Here we are. When I polled the members at that forum to see if anyone else would be interested, I got some very positive feedback, and so decided to make this public. At the same time, though, some people brought up really good points and ideas. One of the good points was basically "Well, if the tooltip only shows when your mouse button is over a switch or knob, then what good would this be? Just click on it already!". That's very very true. The intention of this package is not to move your cursor over a switch, read the keyboard shortcut, then use that. It is to help memorize what that shortcut is, so that after several usages of the same switch, by seeing the key combo repeatedly, you will recall it from memory. So, I guess you could see this as a study guide. HOW TO MODIFY TOOLTIPS YOURSELF ------------------------------------------------------------------- I do not intend for this to be a closed effort, and welcome help and questions at any time. I am also showing everyone how they can customize their own tooltips for the benefit of the community. Black Shark itself has a very open architecture, and so in that same spirit, here's how to do this editing. All cockpit tooltips live in a file called clickabledata.lua. This is a text file, written in the lua scripting language (http://www.lua.org). If you are not familiar with editing lua files you should proceed with caution. Information and tips on editing lua files can be found on the above referenced forum in threads such as this: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=35627&highlight=editing+lua First things first: Make a backup of your original file. Copy it to anywhere in your computer you will remember, or keep it in the same directory under a different name. Either way, you need a backup copy because it is not hard to change things by accident and break some or all functionality of DCS: Black Shark. I use Notepad++ to edit them, as the default Windows Notepad will corrupt such files when saving them. Using a proper text editor program, open up clickabledata.lua, which is located at ....\Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\Scripts\Aircrafts\Ka-50\Cockpit. The first 13 lines or so are default information. The data we are interested in starts at around line 15. In my file, lines 14 and 15 are: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- CPT MECH This is a section header used to organize this lua file into chunks. Each tooltip is on a line of its own. Look right after these two lines, on line 16, and you'll find our first tooltip, in the following format: elements["GEAR-PTR"] = {class = {class_type.TUMB,class_type.TUMB}, hint = LOCALIZE("Gear lever (G)"), device = devices.CPT_MECH, action = {device_commands.Button_1,device_commands.Button_1}, arg = {65,65}, arg_value = {direction*1.0,-direction*1.0}, arg_lim = {{0.0, 1.0},{0.0, 1.0}}, updatable = true, use_OBB = true} As you can tell, this file does more than identify tooltips, but we're not interested in the extra info, all we are looking for is the text inside the quotes, right after the "LOCALIZE" tag. In the above case, it is the following: "Gear lever (G)" The text within these quotes, also referred to as a string, is what will show in the tooltips in the simulation. You can write pretty much anything you want, although some characters are treated differently by lua. For example, if you wanted to print a percent sign, %, you cannot simply add that sign, as lua will recognize it as an operator. What you have to do here is to "escape" that character. This is a programming technique that consists of simply prefixing the special character with an "escape" command. In lua, that escape command is the backslash, \, so in our previous example, if you wanted to add a percent sign to the tooltip right after the word "Gear" you'd simply write it like this: "Gear \% lever (G)" lua has a list of special characters that would need this escaping technique when used in a string. Here they are: " ' [ ] % \ You may be thinking "Wait a second, one of those special characters is the backslash itself!". Yep, that's right. Why? Well, easy enough, what if you wanted to print a backslash into a string? Simple. Like all other special characters above, just preface it with a blackslash. So, if we wanted to add a backslash in between the words "Gear" and "lever", we'd do the following: "Gear \\ lever (G)" If all of this is not making sense, take a look at the lua website I mentioned above, and read around in the forum. Let's continue. If you are looking for a specific tooltip, you can search this lua file with your editor's search function for some keywords, or scroll down through it looking for the proper section. Once you have located it, change the text inside the quotes right after LOCALIZE, save the file, and you're ready to go. EXISTING ISSUES ------------------------------------------------------------------- I ran into a couple of decisions during this effort, as well as some limitations. They are/were as follows: 1 - To avoid confusion I did not use "-" or "=" in between key presses, such as "LShift + G", since sometimes keyboard commands involve the signs "+" or "-". Key presses are simply separated by a space, so the previous example would be "LShift G". 2 - Brackets (either [ or ]) seem to be a problem. In lua, you can "escape" a bracket inside a string or, in other words, tell lua the bracket is not part of opening or closing an array, and is just to be printed as text, by prefixing it with a backslash (see HOW TO MODIFY TOOLTIPS YOURSELF above). I have tried this and still get what looks to be just the upper part of a bracket once in the tooltip. It could be due to my resolution, video card, video drivers, BS itself, or all of the above. If you can resolve this issue, or if you don't have issues at all, please let me know. In my testing, it seems that prefacing a bracket with a backslash did not make any difference, they printed the same way on screen with or without backslashes. Just in case, every bracket I used in tooltips has been prefixed by a backslash. 3 - I could not find keyboard shortcuts for the following, some due to the fact they are "No Function" switches and probably do not have shortcuts. If you know them, please contact me. WALL PANEL - Radio equipment datalink SA-TLF power switch - 1st fire warning sensors group BIT - 2nd fire warning sensors group BIT - 3rd fire warning sensors group BIT - Reducing gear box oil pressure indication selector - Sling load Auto/Manual - Latitude selection rotaty (it is misspelled as "rotaty") - North/South latitude selection FORWARD PANEL - SHKVAL Optics adjustment AUXILIARY PANEL - ATGM Temperature selector - Unguided rocket and gun pods ballistics data settings selector - Systems BIT selector - Control computers BIT switch - Self test system push-button - Emergency INU alignment switch - Stabilisation and indication of hanger cable switch - Video Tape Recorder switch OVERHEAD PANEL - Windshield washer fluid switch - Brightness 4 - For rotating knobs that had two different keyboard shortcuts, one to rotate clockwise, the other to rotate counterclockwise, yet only one tooltip, I added both commands to the same tooltip. I prefaced the clockwise rotation shortcut with the letters "CW", and the counterclockwise one with the letters "CCW", or "DECR" and "INCR" for knobs that decreased or increased settings such as brightness, or "DOWN" and "UP" for rotaries with such motion. 5 - I did not have time to test all keyboard shortcuts. If you find any mistakes, please contact me. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 - Backup (or move to another directory) your original clickabledata.lua, located at ....\Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\Scripts\Aircrafts\Ka-50\Cockpit 2 - Replace it with the clickabledata.lua file from this package 3 - Make sure that in DCS: Black Shark, under OPTIONS | GAMEPLAY you have TOOL TIPS checked on CONTACT ------------------------------------------------------------------- You can contact me at fabiomiguez@gmail.com Enjoy learning these keyboard shorcuts! Best regards, Fabio Miguez

It might also help to go into the TrackIR software, View | Tracking, and see if there are any other spots being detected by your IR camera. The only green areas should be the reflectors in your hat/headset reflector.

Hey DW, :megalol: That's great sense of humor!!

Hi Boulund, That was my first though, but believe it or not, my work (where I am right now) block the Google translation engine. Thanks though,

Wow, I am in the presence of giants! greenhut, my hat's off to you and the team at Microprose. F-19 and F117 were fantastic simulations, I spent many many hours flying at right angle to SAM ground stations. Thank you,

Hi DW, What is this link about? Is this similar to the Flight Standards Board in the US, where you can find data on all certified aircraft? Also, is there an option for English at that website? Thanks,

Hi Frederf, I do not know if the mag var affects the sim. I am sure it works in the real Kamov, but suspect they may do a lot of flying in True due to their relative proximity to magnetic North, which might induce some pretty large differences between airports/waypoints. I agree with you, the track needle (white) in the HSI does not know what to do before waypoint 1. This seems wrong. In real life you'd think the system would have some workaround for this. Thanks for helping track this down!

OK guys, Working on it, expect something later on today.