Roblex

Brilliant news. I am not a fan of airquake servers. I would much rather work towards a team goal. In an ideal world I would fly nothing but pre-arranged scenarios eg your bombers will take 45 minutes to reach the target area and will need escorting there and back and the server will open at 8pm on Sunday and shut down at 10pm. Obviously we still need something 24/7 for the rest of the week which is where something like your proposed server can provide a less formal alternative to suicidal deathmatch servers.

Umm... 1920x1080 *is* 16:9 That gives me the worst result as the stereo is so far out that I am not capable of crossing my eyes that far. It seems to me that if you have a phone that displays 16x9 then in order to fit in two images side by side then the images need to be half the width ie 8x9 or 4:3 which is what I have seen recommended elsewhere. Unfortunately that does not fully solve the problem as it is also to do with how far the game offsets each image and thus how far your eyes need to converge to make the images line up. Perhaps I will just have to drop the more efficient Moonlight and try either Trinus or Intugame but they cost money to use for more than 10 minutes and I don't think flying DCS in a GearVR is more than a novelty so not worth investing money in.

I tried using my GearVR & Moonlight with DCS set to 'Stereo' and it does work but the stereo is not comfortable as I need to really focus hard to get both images to align. When I do, the cockpit looks great but then the outside view is not working properly and I have to re-focus to see that which makes the cockpit misaligned again. I don't think I could do it for long before I got eyestrain from forcing my eyes to converge unnaturally. I suspect it is related to the resolution and screen ratio. I normally use 1920x1050 on a single screen and have tried changing resolutions to get 4:3 or 5:4 but it does not cure the problem. If anyone does not have that problem with the GearVR & Moonlight can they tell me what resolutions and aspect ratios they are using or whatever else they think solves it? I don't want to use Intugame because Moonlight runs faster.

You can write your own to do whatever you want but I am guessing you would not want to learn how. Most of the 'Instant' offline missions will be dogfighting but I know there is a whole Campaign available that will only cost you $10 and includes ground support & ground attack as well as dogfighting. Look here https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/campaigns/

I do fly the Normandy maps several times per day and the Burning Skies server usually has 30-40 players on it during European peak times but I admit the others are mostly empty. The big problems I see are:- 1) The boring missions due to lack of assets ie B17s that shoot back, AAA, varied ground targets. This might be at least partially fixed in todays patch. 2) Many people that like to write interesting missions object to having to buy two copies of the map and assets. This will never be fixed. 3) Performance is already marginal for most people so a map that is too 'interesting' may bog down completely. Too many assets, flak bursts & interesting weather all reduce the frame rates further. I am not sure the performance issues alone are stopping people flying . Most people that were regularly flying WW2 fighters in 1.5 and have paid for the Normandy map and assets will want to use the new map even if it means turning everything to Low but if the missions are boring as well then it is hard to stay interested. When I flew in Cliffs Of Dover I got very bored of flying just to dogfight but there was one server run by SoW that made it all much more interesting by having a 24/7 objective, squadrons allocated permanent bases and limited supplies of aircraft with replacement rates that could be reduced by enemy action. There was no suicidal flying and no despawning just to get home quickly. If you got damaged you tried your damndest to limp back to your own base and get it down safely or at least in a repairable state (it also had repair delays) so your squadron would not lose one of its limited number of aircraft. The people who made that server are now in DCS and trying to see what they can achieve here but are currently hampered by the performance & assets problems. Once they get a good server up & running the main issue is going to be DCS inability to host enough pilots in one server.

Of all the maps I have been playing on recently, this one is the one that needs Simple Radio the most. With people constantly spawning at both ends of Biniville then trying to take off in opposite directions on the single runway it would be much better if we could simply select the tower on channel 1 and let people know we are lining up to take off N or S. Same goes for trying to land when people are constantly taking off in both directions without checking if anyone is on finals. After that we just select Channel 2 for the mission comms or another channel for squad comms. Any chance of adding Simple Radio Standalone? From what I have seen, it is very easy to set up a server and I think it runs on the same PC as the IP for the radio is always the same as the game servers IP.

The usual stated reason for not allowing everyone to decide what skin they want to wear is that if there are 40 players in the server and each player has a personal skin then every player will need to download 40 skins when they enter the server. I like the idea of putting in a logic test to say 'If Player X has a skin that is not on my hard drive then just display the default skin for this server.' This way a squadron can have their own skins so they can all recognise each other and that just need to ensure that everyone in the squadron has downloaded the skins. The same can be done if another squadron that yours often flies with also has its own skins. One issue that has not been addressed yet though is squadron codes. In your own missions it is possible to set a squadron code that will appear on the fuselage, eg 56 RAF squadron uses 'US' followed by another letter, and have that letter automatically incremented for subsequent aircraft so if the first is 'US A' then the second is 'US B' etc but as far as I am aware, the squadron codes are set by the mission designer and an online player will not be able to alter that. We can get round this by having a custom skin with 'US A' written on the base skin and another with 'US B' etc but then the codes shown in the lobby would not match the codes on the aircraft(eg the list of aircraft I can jump into might show a spitfire 'AK J' is available but if I then change the skin to one showing 'US R' then anyone seeing US R will not know who is in the plane because the list will not show any planes with a US R code. Is there a more elegant way?

Can anyone tell me what the SH-F10 vis mod does in this server? Normally I can look for a distant dot and try SH-F10 to see if it makes it darker or adds an icon etc. but in this game I cannot see what effect it is having. Does it do something subtle at closer range?

I think your confusion is because you expect the F10 map to be a map of 'What I should see from my cockpit' but it is actually a map of 'What HQ has been told is there and what targets other units on the ground or in the air have seen.' On this basis, something hard for you to spot from the air may still be shown on your map because friendly forces on the ground can see them and have called the coordinates in so you can help attack them. Conversely your example of targets being on your map but not showing everything in that same location may be because another aircraft passing over just caught a glimpse of enemy units but did not come back to take a detailed look, he just radio'd in what he noticed and missed some out.

If you had asked this a month ago you would have been told there were many WW2 servers but when Normandy was released anyone running a WW2 server predictably wanted to do it with a more suitable terrain. I am not sure what you want from a 'noob friendly server' There are servers set up just to practice or fly acrobatics with no combat but you want combat which means people will want to kill you and wont know (or care) that you are not skilled as they are :-) I think there may still be a few servers left using WW2 fighters on the old map but they wont be gentle on you. Like the rest of us, you will just have to die repeatedly until you get good enough to kill them first. They should be friendly though if you find a server where everyone uses the same Teamspeak. Ask politely and they will answer. The nice thing about games like this is that we don't get the loud brats out to impress people with how gangsta they are. Swearing every other word for the sake of it and taunting people is rare and likely to get you ignored, blocked or banned. In terms of alternatives, if you just want to fly around making things go boom and not caring if you die because there is always a furball within 1 minute of taking off again then Warthunder is popular. If you want more immersion and realism then Cliffs Of Dover is very cheap to buy and despite a shakey start is now vastly improved and very good. It is mostly based in the Battle Of Britain so no P51s. Just Spits, Hurricanes, 109s and bombers. It is about to get a new map set in North Africa so expect to also see P39s or P40s but this upgrade will be a paid one. The other alternative is a set of games now collectively known as BoX because it embraces 'Battle Of Moscow (BoM), Battle Of Stalingrad (BoS) we expect 'Battle Of Pacific' in the future. Many people like it. It is quite realistic and quite popular. They all have things they do better than the others and things that others beat them on, and that includes DCS which is the most realistic in terms of flight models and cockpit switches, engine management requirements etc but not really that good on multiplayer gameplay and scenarios and limited in aircraft. Cliffs Of Dover is not quite so good on flight models and not so detailed in engine management but has a better damage model, more aircraft (and no need to pay to use any) and servers with up 80 players in one place as well as regular recreations or replays of famous battles or events & detailed offline campaigns. I don't know BoX that well but it is supposed to be a credible alternative to DCS & CLoD. I will certainly be taking a look if they get the Pacific map going as nobody is doing that any more (technically IL2 still has Pacific servers but, groundbreaking as it once was, it is now a bit dated) One idea for getting better in DCS is to try the offline combat missions. They will at least show you what your aircraft does well and what things will get you killed. Be warned though that even if you become the boss of all the offline AI enemies, and they can be pretty skilled, you will still get a shock when you come back online and try a human opponent as we humans are a lot more unpredictable :-) On the other hand there *must* be enemies with less skill than you out there. Even with decades of online combat flying under my belt I am crap and you might kill easily kill me :-) NOTE: I see a precious answer referring to IL2 and actually meaning what I called 'BoX' so I will explain that. The granddaddy of realistic multiplayer flightsims was a game called IL2. It truly was groundbreaking in its realism and graphics at the time and I believe it still has a large following despite being quite old now and looking a bit dated. It has about 100 different aircraft and many different places to fight eg The Eastern Front, New Guinea, Carriers in the Pacific, Europe of course. The people who wrote that then wrote Cliffs Of Dover but the marketing guys forced them to release it too early and it was very buggy and slow and unfinished. They then got bought up by another company who abandoned Cliffs and started what was to be the BoX games which are technically called IL2 Battle Of Stalingrad' etc. Meanwhile, a group of talented Cliffs Of Dover players decided to see if they could fix the problems with the abandoned game and despite not having access to the source code managed to fix it and make it twice as good as the original product would have been had it been finished; all in their spare time! That team has now been hired by the BoX owners to develop it further with access to the source code and money and resources but that means future updates and modules will be sold rather than given away for love. To summarise we have the original IL2, IL2 BoX etc and IL2 Cliffs Of Dover plus DCS which is nothing to do with IL2.

The P51 is not totally B&Z, it is quite a good all rounder. It does turn well but bleeds E under heavy G so just keep the turns fast and dont pull back too hard. Same goes for B& Z. Don't pull too hard when pulling out and it should climb again fast. It does roll quite fast but not as good as the 190. The Fw190 bleeds E badly in a sustained turn but what it does do well is roll so scissors are your friend, both vertical & horizontal, just don't ever hold a turn when travelling fast as you will soon be travelling slow :-) If someone is on your tail whip it over onto one wing and pull *gently* through about 30 degrees then while the following aircraft is still rolling to follow, you can quickly roll through 180 degrees and pull in the opposite direction. By the time he has started rolling the opposite way to follow, you are already coming back again and he is crossing your nose for a snapshot or maybe to get on his tail. Just don't stay on his tail if he decides to keep turning; pull up maybe and use your fast roll to invert and come down on him again. The 109 is best used as B&Z. It is very fast in a dive and has an incredible climb rate so your victim can often be left floundering around unable to get his guns on you while you are climbing away out of range ready to come back down on him at your leisure. Being the victim of a good 109 pilot is like being an egg stealer being attacked by mama eagle :-) Even flying level at high speed the 109 climbs likes a rocket but let it get slow and you are dead because you will no longer have that climb. It actually turns very well at just above the stall but if you don't stay in that turn and win it you are helpless. Also stay high. I mentioned earlier that the 109 dives fast so if a spit has climbed up to you and B&Z is no longer an option and the Spit will probably beat you in a turnfight then just dive away. The spit cannot follow and if he tries he will lose more E than you and maybe break up. If he does stay with you then you simply change your speed back into altitude and the spit will not be able to climb as fast or as high so you can then start the B&Z. (the P51 will do better than the spit in dive & climb but still not as good as the 109) If you find yourself low and slow you may as well just bail out :-)

I find the important part is use of rudder. Here is something to try. Enter a left turn using just the ailerons and watch how fast it turns. The nose is probably tracking a bit above the horizontal. Now apply left rudder to get the nose down tracking the horizon and you should see the turn rate visibly increase. Note: Best turn speed is pretty much the same as best climb speed and up to 15000ft the spit climbs best at about 160. It is still a good idea to try to keep the speed nearer 200 because it gives you more options in a fight, eg the ability to climb or chase the enemy once you get behind him, but if you really get stuck in a tight turn fight just remember that 160-180 will allow you to turn a little faster.

Thanks for this server which is currently the most popular Normandy server but I have two questions:- 1) What exactly is the view mod doing? Toggling it while looking at a distant dot does not show any difference. 2) Is there a reason why the Red airfields are so very far from the target? Don't get me wrong, I hate fly-die-fly-die servers where people are continually launching to join a furball 2 minutes away, but it seems a little biased towards the Blue...and I only fly Blue. The result is that we cap the docks but cannot stop someone coming in very high or very low and dropping a bomb before we can catch him then simply despawning because it is too far home. It makes capping the docks a very boring task as we rarely get to engage the enemy. It is not helped by the time wasted on checking every dot when 95% of them are friendlies :-) In an ideal world the return journey would not be so far and there would be some incentive to fly home rather than just despawn and instantly respawn at home. Perhaps a death being counted for anyone leaving his plane or parachute in mid-air as many people feel self conscious about their kill/death ratio. Yes I know people lose connections by accident but more do it on purpose. Maybe showing number of mid air despawns in the stats. Maybe putting 'X despawned mid-air near Y' in the chat so it is obvious who the repeat offenders are (that includes people who despawn to avoid giving someone the kill) Perhaps a message in chat saying 'X has landed after dropping a bomb near Y' Maybe 'X dropped a bomb near Y' but only after two minutes and only if they are still in the plane (or parachute or alive next to parachute or crash landed aircraft. People do like a little recognition :-)

You need to be sure there will not be a problem with a players friends jumping into his enemys cockpit to let him know what they are doing eg "He is above you and starting his attack run. Jink right when I tell you. Good! he has lost sight of you"? This is the reason most PvP servers do not allow F2. I would like this but I think this needs a box to pop up asking for permission so you have to explicitly allow someone to join you. In other combat flight sims with larger game areas we often did squadron missions deep into enemy territory and it was frustrating to be shot down and have to wait 20 minutes while your squad RTB'd and not be able to be with them. If I remember right, think IL2 allowed you to follow them in an F2 type mode but CloD did not. In IL2 if your squad were in blenheims and you were lucky, it was possible to quickly jump into a gun position of a nearby blenheim before he got too far away. At least then you could share in the journey home (no I am not advocating that in DCS, just reminiscing :-) )

I have been playing DCS several times per day since Normandy was released and have yet to see it use over 8Gb. I have been monitoring it because I am testing different configs to get best Performance/Graphic balance. That is in the Spit so if others are seeing 16Gb maybe it depends on the aircraft and the map?

Answered elsewhere. It seems that what you do is type in the three letter squadron code followed by the serial number EG. USRMH101 This puts US R around the roundel and the serial MH101 by the tail.

Thanks. That is perfect.

Agree with the Tempest. It was my mount of choice back in IL2 all those years ago and I was sorry to lose it when I moved to CLoD. It was very effective against the Fw190s as well as ground attack. When I heard DCS would get Normandy I was happy I would get the Tempest back or at least a Typhoon, that was a given, but it got left out! WTF? It is *the* plane you first think of when you think of the push inwards from the beaches. The plane that ended the Battle Of The Bulge as soon as the clouds cleared. The plane that decimated the German armour at Falaise.

No it is not hard coded. Add three planes and type 100 into the box and you will get planes with 100, 101, 102 on the side. You can put text in the box but I have not checked to see if USL becomes USL, USM, USN.

What it seems to be doing is taking whatever is in the 'Tail #' field in Mission Editor and using the letters in 'Sky Codes.DDS' to write that on the fuselage. That would be fine if you wanted to have the code 'US L' around the roundels to show a 56 squadron plane but the problem is that it also adds that code to the tail serial number using 'Night Serial.DDS' eg 'MHUSL' I suspect it should be taking the serial number from somewhere else or maybe taking the squadron Code from somewhere else but I cannot see where as there is only one box in Mission Editor. Perhaps One is supposed to be hard coded on the skin and only one generated from the contents of that box?

I am not up top speed on DCS skinning. How do I adjust this skin to give particular squadrons Letters and numbers? It seems that whatever I put in the 'Tail #' section in the Mission Editor gets put on the side as squadron letters but also as the aircraft serial number. So I can put in 'USR' for 56sqn and it will look great in white either side of the roundel but it will also say 'MHUSR' in black as the serial number.

I don't want to do anything complicated. I just want to take a blank Spitfire skin and put a particular squadrons markings on it (NOT for repackaging under my name. Just for a picture) I downloaded a skin with an unmarked camouflaged spit and after a bit of amateur bodging managed to put the markings on but when I look at it, it has had different markings added over the top of mine. Included with the skin was a file consisting of just images of letters of the alphabet on an invisible background and I am assuming that something in description.lua is specifying what letters to put on the fuselage but I can't see how just by looking at it. Is there a guide describing how it works? Here is what is in 'description.lua' and the letters are in 'Sky Codes' (white) & 'Night Serials' (black)

I have found that *clicking* on the mike button works and pressing a JS button to do the same does not. I can work with that. You are right about using the same button but I did not realise you were using the cockpit button to open the menu. All good now. Thanks.

Actually I did have the radio on TR + G, I always do, and I did try pressing the key I had programmed to activate the Mike button on the throttle (it also sends to SRS). I am still a bit confused though as 1) The \ key works while you are on the ground warming up etc. and works when you land 2) Does using the in-cockpit mike button to bring up the menu mean it would vanish again when I release the button? That might explain why I did not notice it doing anything. If on the other hand pressing the key toggles the menu open and it stays open until I press it again then I must have something set wrongly somewhere. Is there a problem with me setting a button on my joystick to operate the key in the cockpit and allow me to talk on SRS? At least I have an idea now of how it *should* work so I can investigate that. Thanks.

Cannot get Comms to workonce in the air. Sorry Seaquark, I have tried to get the solution myself and I have tried asking others but... Why does my comms key "" stop working as soon as I take off (only tried Recon mission so far) ? It works fine on the ground but as soon as I leave the airfield it stops doing anything and does nothing until I land again. I asked in my squad and others said they had the same problem in your server. One said he had managed to do the Recon mission but had to tune the radio to 10 (263). I have just tried that but it did nothing for me. I thought maybe I have to be in the target area but still no joy. I tried Ch1 & Ch2 while near the target; Still nothing. What am I missing?