Horns

Shows how much I've played recently, thanks for the info

This is somewhat peripheral, but I suggest OP takes advantage of the Fly for Free offers to install FF modules and see if the 'game mode' options on given modules that interest them. As far as the core suggestion, I have no objection to DCS including more LF modules, but no appetite for them either. If we were in a crowded market where a dev wanted an 'angle' so that they weren't just targeting the same audience segment as every other dev (something like what Ubisoft did for tactical shooters) I wouldn't see a negative to it. However, as things stand we have a limited number of modules made, and where possible I think it's preferable to see them made to the highest level of detail possible. The LF modules really aren't just FF modules with simplified interaction and flight characteristics. When ED talk about 'Advanced Systems Modeling', the core attribute that defines FF from LF, they are talking about things as central to the gameplay as available radar modes. Much of the radar operation for LF aircraft like the F-15C is made up or inferred. Sure, the flight model and aerodynamics might be tuned with input from Subject Matter Experts like ex-pilots, but that's really a small part of the cockpit experience that wouldn't provide the same window we might get to the aircraft's limitations or effectiveness. Personally, I'd be disappointed if a dev went to the trouble of making a new module and limited their scope to "it looked like this, flew like this and fired this", but if they did I wouldn't be hostile to its inclusion in DCS either.

It would be great if customers could look in one place and know that all major news for a given module - such as a product reaching a different point in its life cycle, or updates to the timetable for that happening - would be covered there. As it stands, news from devs can come from any one of several disparate sources (eg Official News, other posts in this forum, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Discord etc), so there is no way of staying reliably informed regarding a module a user has purchased (or intends to). Even major events (like the announcement of delays of preorders hitting Early Access) with modules aren't always reported in the Official News - which is understandable, since it's mainly a promotional newsletter - so it's tough to know where else to turn. Situations like the delay of the F-15E reaching EA being announced in the closing moments of a video are understandable, but nevertheless a source of frustration for customers who try to stay informed but feel like it winds up being a matter of guesswork (eg thinking to check the devs' YouTube at the right time). A further aspect of the existing problem is that it can affect exercising consumer rights like claiming refunds and complicate a developer's calculation of future liabilities. For instance, some time ago a module was moved out of EA to 'release' state with no announcement in the Official News. A developer has a right to expect that refund claims due to missing features from customers who bought in prior to release would be submitted fairly promptly when this happened, since this is the point in the product lifecycle at which a user could make a purchase and receive the module as described in the product description immediately (save for features labeled otherwise). If a user is unaware that the module in question has reached release state, they can't know that the time to make such claims has arrived, leading to long delays in refunds being claimed and complicating the bookkeeping for that module. The relative merits of the example aren't important, and one can argue about what a DCS EA module consumer is entitled to, given that we buy in knowing everything is subject to change. The point is that important events like the product reaching a different point in its life cycle need to be announced in a consistent way that allows a consumer to stay reliably informed for a variety of reasons. Since we already have the Weekly News, the easy answer might be to include all major news, good and bad, in each edition. However, if EA would prefer to keep the Weekly News free of negativity to avoid stealing the oxygen from new module announcements and such, maybe a Module News could be established for all announcements related to modules entering preorder or later in their lifecycle, even if some articles end up being a cut and paste from one to the other. Alternatively, each developer could nominate a particular source for people to watch, if they are inclined to combine news with other content (eg blog posts or promo videos). Maybe developers could even go further and suggest that their chosen source is the best for interacting with their staff, (possibly) allowing staff time spent addressing queries to be optimized. For the record, I am only suggesting that the *sources* of news for customers be consolidated, with a view to major news (like the examples given) being consistently provided in a nominated way. I'm not asking for a commitment to report events that aren't usually reported at present. This shouldn't mean a large difference in dev time spent on such announcements (since these are generally made already), and it means people who make "but what's the current state of this module?" posts can be easily referred to the source of current and future news, rather than getting a third party rendition of the current situation. I'll leave it to the rest of you to judge the value of this.

I think I found the original post from Hollywood here. To quote: "- AIRIO and the menu wheel are mutually exclusive for technical reasons. The AIRIO extension provides dynamic on-screen feedback using the hint functions and kneeboards are available to familiarize with the keywords while learning to use. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3871629&postcount=2203..." He subsequently made some reference to the wheel possibly coming back at some point, so maybe there is a way...

Thanks for digging that up for me Ramsay.

Could someone please tell me when this moved out of Early Access? Is the HOTAS logic rework complete, and are there other systems still to be completed? Most importantly, when can we expect the complete manual? I know BD was brought in late to write the manual so this isn't a shot at him, and I don't want to be that guy, but a module being sold as complete without having a full manual seems incongruous. That said, Razbam have obviously done a lot of work on this module over the last couple of years despite the pandemic, so credit to them for perseverance. Here's hoping they get a smoother run with the F-15E.

Might there be any scope for including inert 'nuclear' training rounds at some point? It would avoid having to model the effects (mathematically or graphically) and allow squadrons to *train* for nuclear strikes, as some IRL pilots did during the Cold War. If a campaign creator was bold enough to ask their audience to use their imaginations a bit, they could allow a faux nuclear strike as the culmination of a campaign, with success coming once the pilot reached launch conditions, dropped and successfully exfilled before the weapon (would have) detonated. No WMD introduced, no resources consumed modelling effects of a single weapon type, plenty of new training possibilities.

Guys be reasonable, they don't have any workers right now. That's why they call it the *Strike* Eagle.

As long as she's not the Mirage kind of girl. Y'know, the type who prefer dual DEFA 554s...

That is interesting. Any idea how they went?

I don’t speak for the people working on Vaicom, but I think when it shifted to community maintenance the main focus was to keep it working as it was with the modules it already worked with. I believe they have stated they’d like to expand the scope of Vaicom, but when or in what form this might happen is still to be determined and I don’t believe there are any stated timeframes. I’d suggest you just keep an eye on Github as you have been, when the team is working on something I’m sure they’ll share. Alternatively, you could ask in the Discord - you can often speak directly to someone working on Vaicom there.

This seems to me to be a decent place to start. Many worthwhile posts follow.

That does sound like plenty of work for one day. When/if you start working on it again, something I’m half-remembering (so this might not be accurate)… I think some people had to say “page” as part of the command to switch (eg “AWACS page”), and I think there was a setting that governed whether the word “page” was required… Anyhow, if you haven’t tried that it might be worth a shot, if it works please reply and I’ll try to find the switch to abbreviate the command. Re the sensitivity of speech recognition, sadly Microsoft is to blame for that, so I’m skeptical about the prospects of that improving much in the short term. I’m a native English speaker with a somewhat unusual accent, and despite training the speech engine it often either doesn’t understand a word or mistakes it for another word.

Thanks for that info. I'm afraid this is beyond my ken. as it seems to be related to the way Vaicom functions and interacts with DCS. It's probably best if you speak directly to the guys who maintain and update the Community Edition of Vaicom Pro, you can contact them via their Discord. Sorry I couldn't figure this out for you.

What is your version number (bottom of the ‘About’ tab)? When you are in-game, does the ‘PTT’ tab.show the module you’re currently flying?

Glad you got the tabs working, although it sounds like you had to do more than you should have. It sounds like possibly the 'Finish' process, as one does it after each update, need to be repeated; that should give you all the keywords (including 'kneeboard') without having to add any manually. If you're unsure of the process, p38 (it's acually 39 in my PDF reader) of the manual covers it. Page 45 (46 in my PDF reader) deals with the interactive kneeboard as well.

Bones covers it pretty well in this post from earlier in this thread.

It is part of the free community releases. To get it to show, the voice command is the word “kneeboard”. It may not have been incorporated in the very first community release, so I suggest you make sure your running the latest one to be safe.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the era of the rise of the term 'multirole' and the term 'asymmetric' has been concurrent. I think most countries write a requirement for an aircraft that will have an air-to-air and a ground attack capability, so multirole aircraft aren't really competing against specialized airframes. The expectation is that an aircraft can be good enough air-to-air to defeat the anticipated threat, even if they leave air-to-air capability on the table in favor of multirole ability. When the F/A-18 beat the F-15 for the RAAF buy, I believe it was because we needed a ground attack capability (if I'm wrong and the only requirement was air-to-air then it supports your point), so we would have needed to acquire more airframes overall if we'd gone with the F-15. I don't think even the USN thinks the F/A-18 could match the F-15 air-to-air. I think Au expects the US to do the lion's share of air-to-air in any war we enter, so in a sense we get to have our cake and eat it too. I think phasing plays a part as well. The expectation since Desert Storm has been that air supremacy will be attained quickly (or the remaining challenge to air ops is Ground Based Air Defenses). Once that happens the number of air-to-air aircraft needed diminishes with it, so it's useful to be able to rotate some of those airframes used to attain air supremacy through the ground attack role. Carrier-based aircraft need to be all-rounders because of the premium on on-board space, so air-to-air specialists need not apply. That said, the F/A-18 is one example where I would agree with you: advances in electronics allowed a single type to incorporate avionics for both roles with no significant tradeoffs, as opposed to the original plan of having the common airframe fitted with avionics specific to the air-to-air or air-to-ground mission. Now that we're back in the era of near-peer competition, it will be interesting to see if multirole aircraft continue to proliferate or we see a return to types that strive for the best achievable performance in a single mission. The J-20 could be argued to be the first type in quite a while that was designed with air superiority as the sole emphasis: it can carry the LS-6 and the AS-17 Krypton, but the former was really designed to suit the airframe rather than the other way around, and the latter can only be carried externally as a result of the uncompromising air-to-air emphasis...

The people who maintain Vaicom Pro now would be the peeps to ask, they are available via the Discord here.

Apologies for the delay getting back to you. I'm afraid I don't have any answers, as you've already worked out Vaicom must be working in general, there is just a problem communicating with that unit. The Vaicom Pro Discord is where the peeps maintaining Vaicom Pro nowadays hang out. You can visit here or, if you'd rather not deal with Discord, I can go ask and get back to you. It is quicker and more direct if you do it, but I get that some people don't want to get an account just to ask a question, so it's up to you. Sorry I couldn't sort the problem out for you

That would suck, I'll try to help or at least point you in the right direction. So, first question: is your module being hooked (ie in the Vaicom config menu, when you're in-game, does the name of the module show in the window on the PTT page)?

I believe this is usually tackled with a .lua reset. If you go into Voice Attack, open the Vaicom Pro config window (ctrl + alt + c by default), go to the Reset tab (last tab) and *only* tick "Lua code", then click "MASTER ZERO". You'll receive a dialog window asking you to confirm, and then another telling you to restart Voice Attack. Do so, then run DCS (mt DCS is fine) and, hopefully, you won't get a blinking comms menu after that.

Others know more about this, but I believe that’s a common problem after an update, so it may not be to do with mt per se. Have you tried it without mt since the update?

This is the second F-15 module we'll get in DCS. If anyone knows how to puck up a sequel, it's Electronic Arts - remember Medal of Honor Warfighter