Sandman1330

OK, thinking aloud a bit here... I used to play RPG games (WOW, mostly). I haven't for a very long time, but I remember for some of the instances that required a large number of different roles to cooperate, there was an in-game system set up to help put together the group and the various different roles necessary (tank, healer, DPS, etc.) I've gotten back into Liberation recently, and I got to thinking. Putting together a strike package is not all that different. You need different roles - Strike, CAP, SEAD. Relying on AI to do this is... less than ideal. What if there was an in-game UI to help you find those roles, part of the multiplayer UI. I envision it working something like this: 1. Server host starts the server, and in doing so, checks off any roles and airframes that he may need (2 x F14 CAP, 2 x F/A-18 SEAD, etc.). Of course, it doesn't have to be a liberation mission. It could be anything from a simple mission where he just wants one live wingman (like an Op BACTRIA), to a massive liberation campaign requiring many roles. 2. Player logs on and wants to find something to do. He can go to the LFG UI and check off which airframes or roles he's willing to do. 3. That player would then be matched with server missions waiting on those roles. He should have the chance to read the briefing, where the server host could put things like SRS IP, skill levels requested, of course mission brief, etc. On reading that, the player could choose to accept that role or not, depending on whether he feels it would be a good fit for him. 4. Once the server host has filled up all (or enough) of his roles, he can unpause or start his mission and game on. 5. If there are no servers waiting, perhaps there could be a list of how many players in what airframe / role are currently waiting, so a possible server hoster could host a mission targeted at what's in highest demand. My one fear is the DCS multiplayer community may not be large enough for this to be effective, given the huge number of airframes and roles there are to choose. Only ED would have the data to parse and determine if enough DCS players are active in multiplayer for this to work. However, an easy LFG mechanism like this may encourage more to go MP as well. I know that I personally want to do more MP, but I haven't yet found one of the virtual squadrons that has events and requirements that fit my schedule and style. The ability to simply jump in and find a group quickly could encourage more participation. I'm open to others' thoughts on how feasible this may be, or ways to improve the implementation.

That's fair. I'm just trying to dissuade the attitude that anyone who hot / auto starts somehow isn't a serious DCS player, or is less skilled than someone who can cold start from memory. This is a case of "correlation doesn't imply causation." For some of us, cold starting is boring - every RL pilot I know who plays DCS skips the start! Cold starts may be effective in discouraging the taxiway takeoff type individual from joining that server, true. But as others have said, disabling auto starts wouldn't significantly improve that situation, as those players are probably already dissuaded due to the time necessary on a cold / auto start. It might also dissuade perfectly legitimate folks from joining too. I'm afraid the only real motivation for disabling auto starts is to further propagate the elitist attitude that one must cold start in order to be a serious player.

There's also the real life pilots who realize the ability to cold start an aircraft in a game doesn't make you a DCS god. I fly milsim. I also hot / auto start all my aircraft because I cold start them for a living and can't be bothered to make my leisure time feel like my work time.

Some have mentioned engine power due to speed, this is a factor but minor. What you are seeing is a result of the graph above. At lower airspeeds, to maintain altitude, you need higher angle of attack. This leads to more induced drag. As you get into high AOA regimes, induced drag spikes. Conversely, as you go faster, AOA reduces (therefore less induced drag), but parasite drag (drag from air resistance on the airframe) increases exponentially. The dip at the bottom, where the sum of the two drags is least, is called L/D max (lift/drag maximum). This is your most efficient airspeed. If you get slower than this without increasing power, you'll keep slowing down as induced drag will continue to increase. If you get faster than this then set the same power setting, eventually your aircraft will find the same equilibrium where your power equals your drag, except it'll be on the right hand (faster) side of the curve. If you're closer to L/D max when this happens, you'll actually observe that you accelerate until the parasite drag increases enough to equal your thrust.

So, we all know the pathing for taxi is.... challenging. One of the greatest causes of AI collisions while taxiing seems to be that your AI wingmen will follow you when you start taxiing, without hesitation, without regard for other traffic. Normally, this can be avoided by only starting your taxi when the deck is relatively clear. However, today I ran into one where my 4 ship was sited in such a way that, any other aircraft notwithstanding, as soon as I start taxiing my loyal wingmen start moving, and run directly into each other. This seems caused specifically by the fact that as soon as I move, they start moving. If I wait, AI traffic flow seems to be reasonably deconflicted. As soon as I move, the rest of my flight starts moving, with no regard whatsoever for other traffic, including the rest of my flight. liberation_nextturn-20220823-151710.trk Track attached.

I've been playing DCS for... jeez, at least 10 years. I've invested a lot of money. I have most modules, most maps. And I'm getting so frustrated lately I'm considering walking away from it all. What good are phenomenal modules like the Hornet, Viper, Apache, Tomcat.... Just about every module, just phenomenal work - what good are they when the base engine is a dinosaur? High end PCs can't make this game work well in VR, and crashes like this... I just lost another Liberation mission due to this crash. At 50 miles, check in for Case III approach, and crash. No other game I play requires so much work just to get it running smoothly, or crashes so frequently. I'm just finding more frustration than enjoyment lately. I truly, truly hope they are close to the engine revamp they are promising. Because all of the wonderful work on the modules is for naught when you can't use them to their potential. I want to help in any way I can, I really do, but aside from reporting bugs that often go unacknowledged, I don't know what else to do.

Following up on my issue, I removed the rain from the mission and flew the exact same profile again. The only difference was no rain (no "wet deck".) And the game did NOT crash. Seems like a separate issue for me. Edit: Spoke too soon. This time, clear weather, approaching the boat for a Case I. About to call see you at 10, so right around 10NM from the boat. Same style crash, just a freeze. This time I have this in the log: So, the wet deck may have been a red herring. In both cases, it seems to be an error loading textures of some type. Tomcat, perhaps? dcs2.log

I may be a victim of this as well. Twice it happened to me, crashed in the same location each time: Flying F18C, Night time, gray and rainy, Persian Gulf map, flying from Al Minhad out to the boat to practice Case III. Inside of 10NM from the boat (once it happened 4 or 5 miles, the second time around 9 or 10), DCS freezes. This was on a multiplayer server. I'm not sure if it's related to the Tomcat bug. There are AI Tomcats flying in the mission, and static Tomcats on the boat. Though there were also static tomcats sitting next to me when I departed Al Minhad, so it wasn't the first time those textures were loaded. Unfortunately no track as it hard crashed. I did do a few successful Case III where I departed off the boat and returned to the boat. The crash only happened when I departed Al Minhad for the boat. This could be due to the length of time, as it took longer departing from Minhad, or due to something else. There is also this line in my log: 2022-08-10 21:28:35.648 ERROR_ONCE DX11BACKEND: texture 'wet_map_map' not found. Asked from '' Makes me wonder if it was something to do with the Carrier's wet deck, but I've had no issues loading directly onto the carrier... dcs.log

As per title. Messed up on the first mission (F16 TGP.... infuriating), so to fly it again I went skip to push time. It just ends the mission. Edit: Strange. I tried F2 (request lowdown) instead to see if it was just misplaced flags. It gave me lowdown, but then skip to push time worked. Edit2: Even stranger, it now seems to work as intended... The difference may have been that the first time I did it, I did it from a "fly again" rather than a clean start. I tried using "fly again" a second time and had the same problem.

Yeah about 1 in 10 times it would work, the rest of the time was a mix of strobing and black screen. I just gave up and reverted back to the main driver.

Chalk up another fail. WMR portal just leaves me with black screens in the headset - it's on (you can tell the backlight of the screen is on), but just black in the headset. I did do an upgrade vice clean install, so now I guess I'll try clean...

George has GREATLY improved in the last open beta patch. He tracks moving targets very well now, and he actually uses the FOV on the TADS, so you can see what he’s doing. This also allows you to assess when you have LOS for a shot, so have him slave, and move the aircraft until you can be sure you have a clear shot before giving him consent. This for me solved 90% of the frustrations people have identified in this thread. I had a great session yesterday using him as CPG, attacking targets in dense urban areas. I’d just move the aircraft and watch the TADS until the street was lined up just right, then roll out and give him consent. Challenging but very doable.

Maybe this is it then. How do I access the steamvr overlay? (nvm, think I found it) Edit: Yes, thank you, I have it working. On first glace the VR toolkit seems to have a nice effect out of the box. I'm honestly starting to get burnt out on chasing the holy grail of picture quality / performance. OpenXR was a bust due to stutters, now I'm trying to go back to reshade (had v4 working well). Why can't it all just work out of the box!!

Tried reshade 5.1 via the installer, the menu comes up and everything but none of the effects make any difference...

Where do I place this file? I'm getting the unhandled exception (over quota). I'm assuming this is the file it's attempting to download? Where do I put it to bypass the download requirement? I've placed it in /bin but still get the unhandled exception. Edit: I think I fixed it. It goes in /bin for the main DCS folder, then no need to use the opencomposite exe to switch to OpenXR. Correct? Edit2: Working, but as with the previous version, I can't remedy microstuttering issues. It looks soooo much better, but the stuttering is unacceptable... I can only make it playable by lowering all settings to VR preset, then it just looks worse than with SteamVR.

I haven't done night ops in awhile.... But I recall that turning on your lights is supposed to be the signal to launch (in lieu of salute). It doesn't seem to work now, I have to salute anyway. Is this correct?

As I’m still on X370 even with my 3900X, I wasn’t able to enable SAM until recently when AMD released the new beta BIOS to allow 5000 series on X370. I now have the beta BIOS and have enabled SAM, and it seems to me to have increased smoothness. My FPS is relatively unchanged I think, but I’ve just noticed a general increase in smoothness and reduced CPU usage.

Yes, this is interesting. Now that X370 boards are able to accept Zen 3 chips, I’m in a bit of a dilemma whether to upgrade to the 5800X3D and wait another year+ for a new system, or just pop in a 5900X (which are on great sales right now) and jump to AM5 this fall…

I guess the case where it would be useful would be a situation where you “lose” the TADS. You are searching the area ahead, and want to correlate the area it is looking with your view outside. Maybe you see something outside, so you set C-HMD as Acq, slave to it and get the tads into the right area, but once you unslave and start moving the tads around, you may need to fine tune where it’s looking onto the exact spot you want to investigate. Or you go too far one way and want to get back without having to change Acq back to HMD. It would be easier to walk the cross into the right area by looking outside, then transition to looking inside. I just still find it very strange that the pilot can get the cross where the tads is looking, but CPG cannot.

Perhaps I’m missing something then. In the CPG seat, when I have TADS selected as sight, I do not have the option to select TADS as acquisition source, which I need to do in order to see it in my HMD. The pilot has that option and can do this, but the TADS is not in the list for me in the CPG seat when TADS is the selected sight.

I’m no expert either, but that is what I tend to do. It also allows me to “reset” to a known point when needed. But it’s a poor workaround for not being able to see where it’s pointed in the HMD, which is strange since the pilot can.

Thanks for the prompt reply!

@NineLine I know you may not have come back to this one as it's marked missing info, but there's now a couple of tracks provided. If there's still info required, can you advise what is needed? Can we confirm if this is a bug being investigated? If it's not, clearly we're all doing something wrong that we'd like to rectify. Thanks!

He's absolutely terrible at hitting moving targets... Like others have said, very difficult to post a track as it's prevalent on multiplayer servers, but the hellfire always hits behind the target. I have seen it on single player in the CPG seat with stationary targets too, sometimes it seems as if the laser is passing through the target (not sure, maybe this is unrelated?) Here's one that should be fairly short to sit through (~10 mins probably to get to the point) https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ascm8Kmu7NR0hIA27M1bvx_bYjw43A?e=7GPPgg edit: what I’m seeing may be related to this… https://forum.dcs.world/topic/297462-george-doesnt-aim-correctly/

I’m trying to figure this myself. So, as pilot, I can set my ACQ to TADS and see where the CPG is looking with the TADS. However, in the CPG seat, I can’t have TADS set as both sight and ACQ. The reason I want to do this is so I also get the dashed cross on my HMD where the TADS is currently looking, it would help to identify visually something I’m looking at with the TADS. Am I correct reading above that the only way I could do this would be to deselect TADS as sight, so that I can select it as ACQ? I feel like there should be a more streamlined way for me to quickly look outside the cockpit and know where my TADS is looking…?