slug88

Practice. Running the game at the native res of your monitor helps as well.

Do you have a profile loaded in your Saitek profiler when you attempt to assign commands? If so, your joystick may be outputting keyboard commands, rather than joystick commands, depending on how you've designed the profile, in which case nothing will show up in the x52pro slot in DCS.

You will get higher FPS if you're in full screen mode. Possibly substantially higher. Waldo_II is correct that you'll only see it windowed if the resolution is smaller than your monitor's native res.

Big congratulations to both teams, and a big thanks to providing us with quality campaigns! Thanks also to Wags and ED for holding the contest!

To answer your question, the airframe and ballistics simulation in DCS is far more advanced than the one in FC, so yes it does calculate a lot more, and for that reason alone it's never going to run quite as fast as FC did on any given machine.

On the main page, http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ Click Files on the left hand side, and then click Manuals. You may have to be logged in to access that area. If you don't have a login name, registration is free. Edit: beaten to a bloody pulp

Had a little bit of time to get back into it tonight, and I made my first try on mission 5.1 - Supplies Cut Off. Spoilers Ahead Wow, the fog in this one is really crazy! I quickly climbed to 700m to escape the fog, but the minute or two of zero visibility was quite interesting! It was the first time I've flown the Ka-50 on instruments alone, and I liked the experience! So after climbing to 700m, my wingman and I had an uneventful, though very scenic, flight to the target zone. One thing that I noticed, is that the sun shade for the HUD is very useful in this mission; I could barely make out the info on the HUD against the bright white fog, but with the sun shade it was perfect. Using the sun shade was another first for me in this sim, and so even more points to this mission for me :D. When we got to the target area, my plan was for my wingmate and I to engage the air defenses simultaneously (use the element of surprise to overwhelm them before they could respond, I know that the AI doesn't care but it's fun to roleplay sometimes :)), which we accomplished. We then circled around for another pass. As I turned away from the targets I told my wingman to rejoin, and something happened which was very strange, funny, and sad at the same time. As he was turning around, my wingman descended into the fog for some reason, and shortly after he crashed right into the side of the mountain. I've never seen the AI fly directly into the ground like that before, so I guess that ED modeled the effects of poor visibility on collision avoidance for the AI aircraft! Of course it was silly of him to descend back into the fog in the first place, since I was comfortably above it the whole time. So at this point it was solely up to me to finish off the ground targets. I used up all my Vikhrs, and then got complacent and went for a short range strafing attack with cannon. I should have known that Igor would punish me for my complacency :D. I got shot down by the SA-8 hidden in the fog, which was perfectly positioned to hit anyone that decided to overfly the target area. So for those of you who haven't played the mission yet but decided to read the spoilers anyway, shame on you! Now you know of that little trap :D. So, overall impression of the mission is that I like it, it's a very unique BS experience (with the extreme fog levels), and I appreciate that the player is punished for being lazy and breaking SOP by overflying the target area. A weakness of the mission is, like the previous few missions, there's a complete lack of the radio chatter or friendly traffic that made the initial missions so engaging. Of course, I did read the briefing and I realize that radio silence and empty air space are intentional in this one, due to the fog, but still it would be nice to see something else in the mission besides static ground targets waiting for you to blow them up. Maybe some Flankers on CAP at 5km, or a Tu-22M doing recon from high altitude, or anything at all really. Though it's possible that something appears once I destroy the ground targets, and if that's the case I'll withdraw the comment :).

Ubisoft has nothing to do with FC, FC2.0, DCS: Ka-50, or any current or upcoming Eagle Dynamics release. Ubi's involvement with ED ended with the release of LOMAC.

No it can not.

Until you provide a track demonstrating it, no one will believe that you've actually spotted a bug. (Hint hint)

Are you sure about that? I recall reading that pitot icing is modelled and that you'll lose IAS and baro alt readings if you don't turn the heaters on in cold weather. Edit: This post by Yo-yo seems to suggest that pitot icing is indeed modelled. I would think this implies that the pitot heaters are also modelled. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=503737&postcount=378

I assume you mean custom missions? Though it's possible to make custom maps for DCS, it's an extremely intensive process and afaik only 2-3 are being worked on, with none yet released.

In principle, the dl id# should be completely irrelevent, and further it should be completely irrelevant whether you're transmitting a message to the tower, or to a wingman, or to outer space. The only thing that matters is that you're broadcasting radiowaves at the frequency that the RMI is tuned to. Since, as takamba found, talking with the tower doesn't affect the RMI, I'm guessing that the radio transmissions of fellow Ka-50 pilots are not transmitted over multiplayer. Makes sense, since you can't hear other people talking to ground control even when they're on the same frequency. I'm guessing this was cut in order to save bandwidth for more critical data...

1. The face that you even have a messagedurationtable.lua to delete means that you're running an unpatched version of the game. I very highly recommend patching to 1.01. 2. There is a mod on Lockonfiles.com that converts all the accented english chatter into russian.

I think X-Plane is much better suited to this type of thing.

Tanks loaded on trains are non-threats, and in fact are probably spawned randomly (the mission designer didn't put them in there, they were generated because you have 'civilian traffic' enabled). If you think about it, IRL they probably wouldn't be rail transporting tanks with their crews and ammunition inside...

gumball, do whatever works for you. Many pilots, including myself, have found that smoother flight is achieved with the hold-and-trim method. However, that's not necessarily the "right" way to do it. Try out both methods and stick to whichever gives you the best result :).

Ah, perfect, thanks for drafting the bug report :). BTW I should clarify I'm using W7 x64. I wouldn't be surprised if this is related to Creative's 64-bit drivers.

Alchemy badly screws up the sound in DCS for me. Basically, it seems like it completely removes the dynamic range of most sound effects, so that things far away sound exactly as loud as things very close. For example, I can hear the impact of every single cannon round as if it were right next to me, even if the shells are landing 1km away. Also, the engine whistling of helicopters is exactly as loud from 1km away as it is from 5m away. If I move my view past about 1km, then the noise cuts off abruptly. However, it does fix the loud noise bug that you normally have to toggle outside views or open/close the cockpit door to fix. I am running Windows 7, with an X-Fi XtremeGamer with the latest Creative drivers. The result has been the same with the just released version of Alchemy, and the previous version. I have ensured that SVM if off in my Creative control panel. In fact, I have tried turning every single setting in the Creative control panel on and off, to no effect.

Spoiler Below Specnas Rescue 1. i really like how there's communication with the flight you're relieving. Knowing the overall quality of this campaign so far, I wasn't surprised by the brief but very atmospheric communications :) 2. The dialogue when you're first tasked could use revision I think. The controller doesn't sound very urgent, in fact he spends a lot of time telling you how urgent the task is, without giving you the coordinates. I think he should give the basic task and coordinates first, and then fill in the back story later as you're on the way to the extraction point. 3. it would be useful if the controller repeated the coordinates one more time, in case the pilot forgot his pen & paper :) 4. I think the enemies spawn too close to the factory roof. In my first playthrough, I saw the little specnas trooper die right away, and my wingman (who was performing overwatch from 1.5km) also died right away. I died about 3 seconds after lift off :). Btw, it was the two 23mm urals that killed us all. Maybe you could remove one of them, and replace them with 5 or so AKM troopers? That way you get all the scary tracers, without the rapid dying. 5. good voice acting by the specnas actor, he sounded tired and worn down, as he should have 6. more to come...

Sorry mate, but I disagree with just about all your points :). Are you talking about hover, or forward flight? Forward flight indeed requires constant right rudder pressure due to the somewhat asymmetric nature of the rotor assembly (the upper disk has better leverage at rolling the helicopter due to being further from the center of mass, and the lower disk is sucking in turbulent airflow from the upper disk). In a hover, though, this is completely false. If you're experiencing uncommanded yaw in a hover, it's almost certainly due to the AP. Learn how the AP works and why it does what it does, and it will make flying 1000% easier and more predictable. The low yaw rate is, again, almost certainly due to misuse of and/or misunderstanding of how the AP works. A very high yaw rate is achievable in this helicopter. Read the newbie faq on this forum regarding how the trim works. The most important thing to realize is that the trimmer controls not only the neutral state of the cyclic stick, but also serves as an input to the AP. Understanding how this works is absolutely critical to controlled and stable flight. Once you master the Ka-50's trim and AP systems, however, she becomes very responsive, very predictable, and overall very easy to fly. By "disengaging trim" I assume you mean hitting the Trim Reset button. IMHO, and many/most here would agree with me, this button should never be pressed in flight, and in fact the real life Ka-50 doesn't even have such a function. It's expected and normal that it would cause a dramatic pitch up if you engage it during flight. That's why you don't engage it during flight. Regarding the two types of trimmer implementations, I actually applaud ED for giving us a choice, and I believe most here would agree that it works well once you get the hang of it. Furthermore, for users without a FFB stick, there really isn't any better way of implementing trim as it exists on the Ka-50. If you disagree, I'm sure ED would be very happy to hear your idea of how to do it better. Regarding the poor documentation of the two trimmer methods, I agree, I can see how new users might be confused about the option. I agree that it is rather easy to settle with power. Not sure if it's overmodelled or not, so I won't comment on that. I will say, however, that in my early days with this sim I got lots of practice in recovering, and by now I can even when it begins at very low altitudes. I won't give an exact figure, since it's been a while and I'm usually not writing down my altitude when it's happening, but I'd estimate that I can easily recover at 50m AGL, and can probably do so consistently at ~30m AGL. Well, the engines can only produce so much power. Of course there will be many situations in which you lose RPM, ranging from thin air, to very hard banks at high speed, and, importantly, this is especially true when carrying a full combat payload. Not sure why you'd expect the EEG to maintain rotor RPM through all regimes. Haven't experienced RPM loss from flying backwards, however I admit that I very rarely do so, and almost never at >20-30kmh. Depends very much on your weight, altitude, ambient air temp & pressure, and perhaps other factors I'm missing. However, in multi player games where flight times are short and fuel is abundant, I regularly cruise at 280kmh+ IAS, and can usually break 300kmh without getting a Vne warning. This is at altitudes usually below 500m ASL. Here is where I very strongly disagree. I am using an X-52 PRo, and have always found it wonderfully smooth and precise. What problems have you had with the stick?

Depends on which nvidia video card it is. Could you be more specific please? Btw, this is the wrong forum. This is the DCS: Black Shark forum, Lock On has a separate forum.

This sounds good, I'll soon try it out and give you my feedback! Thanks for your effort.

Alright, I'm finally had some more time with this campaign. I've completed 'Secret Mission' and 'Anti Arty'. Here are more notes: SPOILERS BELOW Secret Mission 1. I managed to destroy the Inguri on two seperate attempts, and both times I immediately received the message that fighters are inbound and I should abort the mission. It's very possible that for a split second or two I rose above 20m, due to the sudden weight reduction from firing both missiles, but I must have quickly settled back down to below 20m because as soon as I checked my altitude again I was fine. So, I wonder if it's possible that the destruction of the Inguri is incorrectly triggering the 'abort mission' message. 2. It seems that if the player gets detected, he still receives the 'abort mission' message even after the inguri's already been sunk, so i think there should be a different message about the fighters if the mission's already been completed. 3. One of the times I got detected right after launching the missiles (which successfully sunk the Inguri), I began flying at maximum speed towards home base, and I had actually made it about 1 km inland before I was shot down. Two issues with this: I was flying well below 20m the entire time, so it seems odd that they were able to track me for tens of kilometers on the way back, if they couldn't see me at all on the way to the target. Though maybe it would be easier to detect me in real life if they knew for sure I was there, so perhaps this is fine. The bigger issue is that friendly forces never moved to protect me. I believe I was within Russian lines when I was shot down. Therefore I think the Kuz should scramble some Su-33 to intercept, which should cause the F-16's to break off and RTB before they get too close to Russian lines. Otherwise there's no way to survive once you're detected, except to get the Turkish F-16's shot down by the Kuz, and I think starting a war with Turkey is probably a bit out of the scope of this campaign :D. 4. There should be a mission success message once the Inguri is sunk. 5. There should be more instruction about what to do after the Inguri is sunk (do they want me to fly directly back to base? Fly back to the naval group, and then back to base? I'd imagine a real life pilot, especially on a covert mission, would have very specific orders for extraction upon mission completion). 6. As I mentioned in a previous post about this mission, I think code names would spice it up and make it feel unique from the other missions (especially identifying the Inguri by name over the radio seems a little suspicious). Anti Arty 1. As mentioned before, the player starts in mid air, instead of the FARP. 2. The position of the enemy arty is already loaded into the player's ABRIS & PVI800 at the start of the mission. According to the briefing, it should be unknown at first. 3. The home airbase is completely dead, in contrast to the first few missions of the campaign. It would be nice to see other aircraft returning home from CAS sorties, taking off for other missions, etc. This also applies to the previous couple of missions. 4. The warning in the breifing about SAMs is rather vague. Am I expecting radar guided SAMs, or IR, or both? If radar guided sams are expected, their last known positions should be known. The player has instructions to flank the grad battery, but has no indication where it's safe to do so, and I'd imagine that in real life a pilot would have much more guidance in this respect. Is it safe to fly over the sea near the coastline, or would I expose myself to radar guided missiles? Presumably, flanking north over land would be much more dangerous due to IR sams (I haven't tried flanking north, but since it involves flying directly over enemy controlled territory, there should be at least some threat of IR sams, perhaps randomly spawned by triggers). Also, is it safe to fly high, or do I have to fly low? This is another reason why we need better info re enemy radar sam coverage. In fact, it might be a good idea to provide some recon of this type in the breifing for each mission. 5. The grad bombardment seems a little too accurate, or the friendly ground units are doing too little to avoid total destruction. I think it would be more realistic if the Russian units tried to relocate after each bombardment, or better yet if the strikes weren't directly on target. When I first flew by the friendly units at WP1, I was impressed by the cinematic destruction, but then I was put off by the fact that I just witnessed more than half the friendly units get destroyed by a single bombardment, which isn't very believable. EDIT: yeah, the Georgian arty should definitely be toned down a bit I think. There was only 1 friendly vehicle alive after I came back from the sortie. 6. This is more of a regular comment than a bug report or complaint, but wow the fog makes this really difficult! I had to get within 3km of the grad launchers before I could see them at all, and by that time 4-5 sams were shot at me! Unfortunately, I got careless with the flare program, and stopped dispensing as soon as I killed the tracked strela launcher. I should have known there would be manpads as well :(. Oh well, time for attempt #2! :D 7. I noticed that the infantry units around the GRAD battery would start running away as soon as I started shooting. I'm not sure if I imagined this, or if you actually implemented this with triggers. If it's the latter, then bravo! I like this effect a lot! In fact, I recommend that you add a lot more little men, rather than the one or two per grad launcher that I saw. It's too bad that this mission is so foggy that you can barely see them, though. 8. It's so foggy that it's very hard to tell when you've killed all the launchers. I had to fly directly over the target area multiple times to see all of them. I think the fog should be toned down a bit. 9. I've attached a track to illustrate what I mean about the fog. I don't know if it's just my computer, or if it looks the same to you, but ground vehicles are completely invisible until you're within 2-3km in this mission! Is anyone else seeing the abrupt popping in of buildings and vegetation that I'm getting? I have all settings on high, btw, with an nvidia 8800GTS. Track link (10mb): http://rapidshare.com/files/330691177/slug88_antiarty.trk.html

Trying the single mission called Shooting Range. It's exactly what you're looking for.