Northstar98

Yeah I would love this as well - I really like how it’s done in the Mirage 2000C where not only is there a model and animation for placing/removing the data cartridge, but you can also use the scroll wheel to select different data cartridges on the same map.

Unfortunately this bridge isn't present and the river is in the wrong place, reported here:

I mean, they're cool for peacetime stuff, but are less at home in DCS. We already have air racing pylons in static objects, allowing us to make our own courses should anyone wish to do so. If it were me I'd remove them and include the pylons as a static object, that way I can more easily choose whether or not I want air racing courses. Definitely agree and yes, you can use the scenery remove objects action in the triggers menu. This will delete scenery objects within an area (defined by trigger zones).

I think Ugra are far from being anywhere remotely "lazy". However, accuracy is something that's quite important to me and it's something most DCS maps fail quite badly on, especially when it comes to sites I will be interacting with and sites that either influence air combat or are significant targets. Do I care about getting every building correct, absolutely not - I personally couldn't care less that some building in some village or town isn't 1:1 with the real place, so long as the layout of the place is accurate and the buildings are roughly the right size, I don't really care if it's copied and pasted throughout the map. Of course some variety would be nice, but I'm perfectly happy if villages and towns had purely generic, copied and pasted buildings. The only exceptions I'd make are prominent buildings and landmarks, especially those clearly distinguishable from the air, though Ugra has already done a pretty fantastic job of that already. Airbases though? I'm expecting those to be as 1:1 as possible, even if assets are repeated where they make sense. Gütersloh for instance has the wrong shelters, there's no ramparts/revetments in parking areas near shelters, the Ems is in the wrong place etc. Then there's fields like Beinenfarm, which looks almost nothing like how it really does. I am not a fan of the dug up look airbases have though and no it doesn't look like dry grass, especially when you compare to the surrounding green grass. The Germany map also has the same issue when it comes to airbase warehouses, with ammunition particularly being quite bad - with warehouses assigned to seemingly random objects instead of the actual WSAs present (and modelled, at least in some cases). Similarly for other military installations, these I'm expecting to be as 1:1 as possible, especially air defence sites (with exceptions where it makes sense - SA-2 sites for instance follow a very similar layout for each site - there it makes perfect sense for them to be copied and pasted). Ugra seems to have done well (SA-3 site for instance looks pretty much perfect for that particularly layout, it would be nice to get another but more than happy with it as-is), much better than most maps (apart from Sinai and a tad of Syria, the bar is on the floor though) - but there's still loads missing, the HAWK and SA-5 sites are inaccurate and in some cases fictional tank ranges have been placed, while real military sites in the vicinity are omitted (ironically what should be a forest has one of the tank ranges in it, meanwhile 2 SA-3 sites and an EWR site in the vicinity are omitted and replaced by trees). I so far haven't seen major tank ranges like the Altmark range just north of Magdeburg and Grafenwöhr - the current tank range objects look like neither and it'll be disappointing if they're just placed where those 2 ranges are, especially given how prominent these sites are. For static aircraft, tanks etc and other similar scenery objects - those I'd rather be actual assets I can interact with, they'd be much more useful as functional units, than they would as static scenery objects, which are only good for eye-candy alone. The Aist we saw for instance is armed and would go well into fleshing out Soviet amphibious units, alongside the Ropucha.

There should be a prepared SA-6 position south of Erfut. Clearly visible in historical satellite imagery. There should be another likely one here (though SAMSiteOverview has this as a prepared SA-8 site).

Cheers, those 2 were some I remember not having information on (and in general the same is true whenever you see anything with a question mark).

Fuel still transfers regardless of the lights in my testing, it's only when I disconnect does fuel transfer actually stop.

That is a T-62M and no it isn't in-game yet. Unfortunately, the T-62M isn't accurate for the GSFG or the NVA. It's more appropriate for Soviet forces on the Afghanistan map. At the moment, we sadly don't have any GSFG tanks for the timeframe (missing the T-62 Obr 1972, T-64A/B/BV and T-80B/BV), the NVA have the T-55A and PT-76B, but are missing the KPz T-72/T-72M/M1. The British have the Cheiftain not a Mark 3 (but lack European & BOAR camouflage schemes), they're missing later Chieftain Marks like the 10 and the Challenger 1. The West Germans fare the best, with the Leopard 1A3 and 2A4, though we could do with some early Leopard 2 variants and the Leopard 1A1A4. The US only has the M60A3 - we're missing the M1, M1IP and M1A1. Of course this is just tanks, IFVs for the Warsaw Pact are fairly well covered (though we're missing the BMP-1P). There's a few APCs that are missing (though one was also in the trailer), namely the BTR-60PB/SPW-60PB, BTR-70, FV103 Spartan (as well as the rest of the CVRT series) and FV432.

Have to agree, ideally they should be tied to the civil traffic setting.

Just had a look and yes, you're absolutely right. One slight correction though - it's at least a GR.7, the GR.5 has a different nose.

It would also be good to have sea states that go beyond 4.

Beats me, I did report it at the time, but nobody has paid attention to it. It isn't the only example of something named incorrectly in DCS.

AFAIK drogues only allow fuel transfer when extended within a certain range (hose & drogue cannot be pushed in too far, nor can it be extended too far). This would mean that we would need markings on the hose where applicable. Boom-drogue adapter kit ("Iron Maiden")

Agreed with all the above, though personally, I'd put more focus towards missing air defence equipment (Cold War-era MANPADS and radars). One thing though: The Chieftain Mk 3 in DCS isn't a Mk 3 - it has the ranging gun deleted, it has a laser rangefinder, MRS, an upgraded engine and the new NBC pack. If it was intended to be based on the Mk 3, that would make it a Mk. 7/L at least.

I could, but there's a couple of issues with this method: It often causes collateral damage, deleting other objects that I didn't intend to delete. In cases where radomes are mounted on towers it will also delete the tower, meaning I can't have my radar at the right height. Having a tower/pedestal/base whatever without the radome allows me to place functional radars where they should be. If there was a radome static object, it would also look the part too. Essentially, the ideal solution is to have EWR sites that act the part and look the part instead of just doing the latter.

I wholeheartedly agree, especially when some of these areas are completely fictional and aren't in the right place, while missing real air defence sites in close-proximity - sites that should have far more influence on what we do in DCS. I personally don't see the utility in modelling details that aren't really relevant to air combat, when sites that are relevant to air combat are either not present or inaccurate. I agree with MBot that its expected that there are some locations where a copied and pasted generic template is expected (I even advocated for this myself with air defence sites - most after all have fairly similar layouts). But in some cases the templates are wrong in fairly significant ways (the SA-5 sites for instance have 3 launch battalions, when every site in Germany should only have 2). However, there are some examples where their locations are entirely fictional. For example, one of the copied and pasted tank ranges is in an area which should just be a forest. Worse, it's on an approach path to an airbase (Damgarten), so it's not exactly easy to miss (and was even pointed out in a livestream by Wags). Meanwhile, the 2 SA-3 sites (one of which on the airbase itself) aren't present, nor is the the EWR site - ironically being replaced by forests and trees. Well, that price is only for early access, the full thing is 70 USD, which is as much as entire other flight simulators. However, that's not what I want to focus on - what I do want to argue is that the map would've arguably been better and more usable had the effort that went into more irrelevant details (such as combine harvester, the inside of factories, balloons, air racing courses that we already had the ability to make ourselves etc) was instead directed into making military installations more accurate or including more of them. I'm not saying that the inclusion of the former is necessarily a bad thing, but if it's one choice or the other, I'm picking the latter. The fact that this criticism is true of other maps doesn't render this criticism invalid. I'm struggling to see what your point is.

With radomes, where they are protecting radars I'd rather they not be present as scenery objects, but rather hollow, static objects. Having radomes as scenery objects prevents these sites from being usable as anything other than eye candy. Having the radomes be static objects will allow for functional radar units to be occupy these sites, meaning they're usable for their intended purpose, not just for eye-candy.

You can place it just about anywhere - DCS has a file browser that will allow you to navigate to it. However, the best place to put it is your saved games/DCS/Missions/Single Missions

Check reaction to threat settings (make sure they’re not set to allow abort, which is the default) and make sure override attack avoidance is set.

From 1985: Looks like the same shelters.

Yeah, western side of the airbase has larger hardened shelters to accommodate the A-10. The eastern side has smaller HASs, more appropriate to F-16-sized aircraft.

Just in case anyone wants to have some of these items (and for ED to take a look), I've attached a folder containing the 2 sets of loadouts. There are some items missing (namely combinations of CBU-99 and Mk 20 Rockeye IIs, Mk 82 and Mk 82 Snake Eye. The pre ASW deconfiguration set is what's actually accurate for "S-3B", given that the Maverick Plus upgrade (which added AGM-65E/F and AGM-84E/H/K compatibility) only applied post ASW deconfiguration - the configuration depicted by "S-3B Tanker". However, given that buddy stores aren't implemented, this can be used as a stop-gap. To install, simply choose the folder you wish to install and drag and drop the contents into your main DCS directory, this will break IC so keep a copy of your original. S-3B.zip

Just as an addendum to this, I've attached an updated Arleigh_Burke_IIa.lua which fixes this issue. Though there are a few other things I'd personally change: Arleigh_Burke_IIa.lua

There should be an SA-3 site to the north-west of Allstedt (about 1 km to the north of Allstedt itself), but the nearest SA-5 site IRL is ~40 km to the south (adjacent to Eckolstädt). See here for real-life satellite imagery of the former and here for real-life satellite imagery of the latter.

Yeah, looking at satellite imagery, what's depicted here doesn't bear much resemblance to the real place.