slug88

Itkovian, check the first thread I linked in my previous post; it describes all the wingman bugs in 1.01/1.02 (as far as I know). Basically you're missing out on commanding the AI via datalink. You can still give them individual targets via "Attack My Target", and as you noted "Attack Ground Targets" and similar functions still work well. In fact, in most cases I've found the wingman AI can care of A/D targets by themselves as well, but with this one you have to be a but more attentive to make sure they're using their Vikhrs from stand-off range. Also, I strongly, strongly recommend that you upgrade to 1.02, even if you don't plan on touching multiplayer. The new sound engine alone is easily worth the effort, and I'm sure many others on these forums will agree. Furthermore you'll be missing out on graphics upgrades, and various other minor improvements if you don't upgrade to 1.02.

Itkovian, the wingman AI is no worse in 1.02 than it was in any version of 1.01. In fact, it was the 1.01 patch that introduced bugs to the wingman AI: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=54035 So if you want the best wingman AI, you need to go all the way back to v1.00. Personally, I do a lot of singeplayer flying, and even though some of the AI functions are bugged in v1.02/v1.01 (as per the thread linked above), they're still very useful if managed carefully. Here I've posted a track of a difficult v1.02 singleplayer mission, in which I relied on the assistance of an AI wingman to pull it off: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=956670&postcount=4

Basically it's all about studying the briefing, memorizing where the enemy will be, memorizing where friendlies will be, and keep track of where you are.

Exactly. You can either fly wings horizontal while slipping, or you can fly straight and without slipping but at a constant bank angle to the right. The necessary bank angle to avoid slippage increase with forward airspeed. Ultimately it's due to the fact that the coaxial rotor system can't be perfectly symmetric: the upper rotor is farther from the CG, and so it has more leverage. There are much more detailed explanations with force diagrams and everything in this forum, shouldn't be too difficult to find with a search. So, just to be as clear as possible: flying with a bank/slippage has nothing to due with the INU alignment.

Ah yes, that track was just full of bonus features wasn't it :D. Good to hear that your issue was resolved.

Ok, I've recorded a short track, which I believe shows that everything's working exactly as it should (also features two bonus VRS escapes in the first minute! :D) So as you watch the track, you'll see me enter into a hover with the assist of autohover. Then, I will turn off the altitude hold, and you will notice that within a second or two I will be drifting downwards at a little less than 1m/s. I will then make the smallest collective input I can muster, increasing the blade pitch angle by about 0.5 degrees. You will then notice that, within a second or two, the slow descent will have turned into a 1m/s climb. I then lower the blade pitch by about half a degree, and again you'll see that in a second or two I'll be descending again. Then, to finish off, I'll re-enable the altitude hold while still descending, and you'll see the blade pitch increase automatically (no collective input from me), and I will be holding a constant altitude. altHoldDemo.trk

Ok, from watching the track, the answer is pretty obviously inertia. You're yanking the collective from one end to the other multiple times a second, the helicopter is simply far too heavy to noticeably respond to your inputs. I was surprised to find however that the rotor RPM stay pretty constant throughout, so it seems I underestimated the response time of the throttle in my post above. In a bit I'll post again with my own track, in which I'll attempt to show that there's a clear difference between hover hold on and off.

Haven't watched your track yet, but if you're seeing an immediate response in the blade angle indicator, then I believe that proves that the AI isn't fighting you. As per the pilot's manual, the rotor pitch indicator shows the actual current pitch of the rotor blades, it is not showing the "commanded" blade pitch as you imply in the post above. If the VSI isn't immediately responding to the pitch change, it's probably because the auto throttle isn't able to adjust quickly enough to maintain the nominal RPM. And then of course there's the inertia of the helicopter itself; 10 metric tons of helicopter will need a bit of time to accelerate in any direction.

Here's a track of me flying through one of the missions in IgorMK's excellent singleplayer campagn Georgian Havoc. This was shot a month or two ago when my flying skills were still a wee bit rusty due to a long hiatus, so never mind the constant sideslipping :D. But imho it's a pretty exciting mission with lots of stuff going on. The track shows ATGM, rocket, and cannon employment, as well as some wingman management. The first half is sped up, but you can adjust the playback speed back to normal (or speed it up even more) with Shift Z, Ctrl Z, and Alt Z. Note that you need the latest version of BS, v1.02. Edit: Ok, the track is about 3x the max allowed filesize for attachments, so I'll have to find somewhere to host it a bit later. Edit2: Here's the track: http://www.sendspace.com/file/jhk12e

Man these forums been weird for the past two days

These spambots are getting good...

Hmm, well now that you're in this thread yourself, my indirect references seem a bit superfluous :). Hope you don't mind, and hope it didn't read too much like I was speaking on your behalf or putting words in your mouth. And also hope that I remembered right regarding some of your previous posts!

As mentioned by Ethereal and others, you're definitely not the only RL pilot on these boards, nor are you the only one who knows people in the AH field. In fact, speaking of Apache experts, a certain famous British pilot had quite a few nice things to say about this sim. If you're not familiar with Ed Macy, a google search will inform you that he is a highly accomplished British Apache pilot, and after a forum search you'll find some of the positive things he's had to say on this very forum. Furthermore it seems Mr. Macy was impressed enough with the sim to lend his knowledge and talents to the Leading Edge Training project for DCS: Black Shark. Along those lines, a current active duty Mi-24 pilot has also had very positive things to say about the sim, and is easily one of the most prolific and valued 3rd party contributors to the English DCS community. Now, I bet not a single person in this thread will claim that this sim is 100% perfect. In fact I recall the posts of another subject matter expert, an Mi-17 crew chief who I believe is currently flying missions in Afghanistan, who has criticized some of the finer details of the sim's autopilot implementation. And guess what, there was not a single inflamed response to his criticisms, not a single accusation of "troll" or "noob." There are three reasons for this difference, in order of ascending importance: 1. Being an Mi-17 crew chief, he is intimately familiar with many of the components that are on the Ka-50 (the engines, for example, are very similiar between the BS and Mi-17). 2. Unlike you, he has quite a bit of stick time behind the DCS: Ka-50, and is familiar enough with the sim to be able to tell the difference between a bug or incorrect implementation, and user error. (See my last post explaining how AFAIK noone with reasonable stick time has any problems whatsoever with autohover.) 3. Despite the fact that he's easily one of the most qualified subject matter experts on this board, not once did he display the arrogant know-it-all attitude that infects your every post. This is an extremely detailed and complicated sim, and yet after less than a week of flying in realism mode (as can be deduced from your post history), you've got it in your mind that you know better than everyone else in this thread, and that you're competent enough to know with absolute certainty that your piloting skills are not at fault for the erroneous behaviors you describe. Basically, you started on a low point by naming this thread what you did, and amazingly each post has been going further downhill. If you want to redeem yourself (and from what I've seen this community truly believes in forgiveness, and will embrace you as soon as you learn a bit of humility), your first step should be to stop asserting your opinions as facts and acknowledge, at least for now, that they may be uninformed opinions. The second step from there will be to post more tracks showing the perceived issues in the sim. From there, we can proceed on a constructive discussion and get to the bottom of your issues. Either you're doing something wrong, in which case we'll be very happy to offer assistance, or there truly is a problem in the sim, in which case we can present the issue to the developers. If you decide on this course of action, I would recommend to let this thread die, and to start a new one with tracks attached and with a better thread title.

You must be running on either a very old, or a very ill-maintained system. I'm playing on a rig I bought over 4 years ago: Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 3.2GhZ 4GB DDR800 Nvidia 8800GTS 320mb Windows 7 64bit I play with most settings on high (shadows - all planar, water - normal, view distance - medium), 1680x1050 resolution, and I generally get 40-60FPS. In very densely populated missions, especially in urban areas, my FPS will sometimes dip into the low 20's. I strongly believe that you're wrong. I've been spending about 5-15hrs a week on this sim for the past 2 months (and have been playing it on and off since it's English release in '08 ), and there has not been a single moment were I've found the autohover to be working incorrectly. Ask anyone else with some experience in this game, and I bet you they'll corroborate my experience. Post some another track showing any one of these issues, and I guarantee that we will find the cause to be pilot error. After all, in your last track you were seen to be manipulating the throttle in flight, rather than the collective. Frankly that's a very novice mistake, and it's unlikely that in such a short time you could've gotten from that point to the sufficient mastery of the AP system that is necessary to discover bugs in its implementation. You misinterpreted that poster's meaning. These forums are indeed full of people asking (not complaining) about difficulties and perceived problems in the sim, and in the vast majority of cases the issue is ultimately found to be pilot error, rather than bugs the sim.

There are many different AP modes, and different behaviors across aircraft. Which aircraft are you flying?

In what way is it unplayable? I haven't heard of this issue before.

Quite a few people have made them, which you can find by using the forum's search function. Also, the extended Pilot's Manual, which can be downloaded from the main DCS page, has a chapter devoted to startup and shutdown checklists.

You should share the solution in case anyone else experiences this problem.

Perhaps this could be tied into the current so called "natural head movement"? Right now it aligns your view such that the horizon is level, but instead it could be made to follow the direction of the net force. In other words, the view would roll to the left or to the right in uncoordinated turns, and stay aligned with the cockpit when in a balanced turn.

As I said, distant clouds are badly clipped. Basically, instead of smoothly fading into view, they pop in harshly. Search for "NoCloudShadows" mod. It fixes the issue for both FC2 and BS, at the expense of removing cloud shadows (duh :)).

As I recall this fix screwed up a few other things, namely distant clouds would appear badly clipped. I tried it out and decided that dealing with a white line on the ground for 2 minutes is preferable to dealing with messed up clouds for the entire flight.

In the interest of spreading knowledge about this product and funding further iterations, I've included a clickable link to this thread in my sigpic :). If that sounds like a good idea to anyone else, here's the code you need in your sig: (Replace < and > with [ and ] respectively) <URL="http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=56239"><SIGPIC></SIGPIC></URL>

Huh? What serious problems??

You need to give it about 5 minutes or so while it's backing up the files. How long did you wait?

Are you familiar with an invention called Google? Here you go. :) BTW I also recommend Notepad++ for config file editing.