slug88

Hah, point taken. I made a point of reading over each briefing very carefully ever since that Ltc reminded me that flying an attack helicopter is serious business :D. Glad to know that my caution was warranted. You know, that mission gave me an idea, it would be interesting to fly a whole campaign in the role of wingman. I can imagine that it would be difficult to get an ai Ka50 to carry out some of the complex actions that the flight lead would have to carry out in a typical mission, though. To be honest, I also surprised myself with how far I got in a single sitting. It's a testament to the quality of the campaign that it kept me engaged to the point where I didn't want to quit, even after several hours of flying. Let's just say that last night I made a bargain with myself, and traded a few hours of sleep for a few extra missions :D.

No bug reports or in depth critiques from me yet, however I'd like to say that so far this campaign has been an absolute blast! I believe I'm 50% or 60% done, and each mission has been very immersive, very fun and challenging, and overall just very impressive. I can already say that this is my favorite BS campaign to date, and to me it has proven that we don't need a dynamic campaign engine to get a high level of immersion. That alone is quite a feat. SPOILERS BELOW Right now I'm at the mission where we've just taken the Georgian air field, and we're defending the Georgian counter attack with 2x Ka50's, 4x Mi24's, and 2x Su25T's. My only complaint so far is that I haven't heard from that mean old Lt. Col (I think he was a Lt. Col? I'm at work right now and can't check..) from mission 2. I must positively commend whoever did the voice acting for him, I actually felt quite intimidated! I was hoping to see a lot more of him throughout the campaign. Besides him, I have nothing but praise for all the other voice acting in the campaign. Well now that I've written this much, i might as well go ahead and give an actual critique. There is one thing about the later missions that left me longing a bit for the style of the first few missions, which is the overall believability level. Basically the first few missions felt completely plausible, I felt like my experience was not too far off from what a real Ka-50 pilot would face in a war with Georgia. However, the further I went into the campaign, the less I felt this way. For example, I could never imagine that in real life a helicopter formation would go and single handedly capture an enemy airfield, and then land there immediately after capturing it. I don't have a problem with destroying the airfield's AD and then letting ground troops roll in while I RTB, but landing at a hostile airfield before it's been thoroughly swept and secured by ground forces just seems totally unrealistic.And then, on the mission I'm on now (which I'm having to refly), I was taken out of it when my wingmate and I were single handedly taking out 2+ mechanized company's worth of Georgian troops, with no real threat to ourselves. Don't get me wrong, the missions are still very enjoyable and very well done, but those two in particular lack the high level of (admittedly percieved) authenticity of the earlier missions. END SPOILER Well, so much for no in-depth critiques! Got a little bit carried away there. Again, awesome campaign, my favorite so far, and I highly highly recommend everyone to try this one out. This is the first time I've had fun in single player with this game in about 6 months. Congratulations on a job very well done, and I hope you and your team have more in store for us in the future!

Igormk, the second file worked. I just played the first mission, and I'm very very impressed. It's the most immersive mission I've flown in BS. If the rest of the campaign lives up to the potential I just witnessed, then anyone else who submits a campaign for this contest is going to be facing some very tough competition! Well done.

Also, I'm not sure if this is still an issue, but if you're running Vista or W7 it's best *not* to install the game in the Program Files directory; rather, you should put it somewhere like 'C:\Games\DCS'.

Yes, you need to include each miz file along with the cmp file. Hoping that you do this soon, because I am very excited to try your campaign! The few details you've offered already sound excellent.

You've got that backwards. Both methods set the Vikhr to proximity detonate, but the AAHO setting sets it to detonate early. AAHO has no effect on the cannon.

I just tuned in. This is excellent!

This is the key point. The ADF can be slaved to the R800 as the manual states, but that doesn't mean that you can tune in to NDB's using the R800 (since, as you discovered, NDB's lie outside of the R800's frequency range). So, what's the point of slaving the ADF to the R800? Well, any time someone communicates with you over the R800, the ADF will point in their direction. So this is useful for keeping track of wingmen (or, potentially, any other aircraft or any object transmitting over the selected frequency). It's quite neat to see this in action while in a flight of 4 Ka-50's; slave the ADF to the R800, and then order the flight to do something. Then, as each wingman replies to your command, the ADF needle will point in the direction of each helicopter in turn. Or, in case of emergency, you can get the direction of a FARP or airport simply by speaking to the tower.

Ingress points only work in combination with a datalink target. IE, send your wingy a ground attack point, then send him an ingress point, and then tell him to attack data link target. He will then fly to the ingress point and begin his attack. If you simply want them to go to a point and hover, you don't need to send an ingress point; just lase a point on the ground as you would when creating an ingress point, and then just click #2 (or whichever wingman you desire) and click send, followed by the "Go to datalink point" command. Note that as of 1.01 the wingmen have seemingly lost the ability to hover in place, so until this bug is resolved sending them to hover at datalink points is rather useless. However, datalink ingress points still seem to work most of the time in my experience. Note that this is all in the manual.

No, that's completely incorrect. Flaming Cliffs 2.0 is an update to LO:FC, and is an entirely separate product from the DCS series. Have you read the FC2.0 announcement? http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=47143 EDIT: Ah, that's what I get for leaving the reply window open for so long. I replied to your unedited post, and now I see that my reply is superfluous.

Didn't see that one coming! Hopefully this gets patched into DCS:Ka-50 as well! http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=47144

dnnzed, it's quite simple: you will *never* lose an activation as long as you deactivate first. So, no, you won't lose any activations with the procedure you described.

Recording a track is quite easy; after you've ended a flight and are presented with the debriefing screen, there will be a button near the bottom labeled "save track". Simply click that, and post it here. You can post by uploading the track as an attachment (click on the advanced button below submit reply, and look below the main text box for the attachment manager.) So, record a short flight demonstrating the AP issue, and we'll have a look. The behavior you're describing about automatic turn to airfield is very bizarre. You don't have Automatic Turn to Target enabled while looking at the airfield with the Shkval, do you?

What you're describing is completely unlike anything I've experienced in game. Could you post a track demonstrating this rogue autopilot? BTW, you're playing in sim mode, correct?

I manage to get them to launch Vikhr's from stationary standoff points all the time, via datalink ingress points. Getting them to hover at set locations was trivial before the patch (simply lase a spot on the ground, and send it to the wingman, no need to even store it in your own computer), but I agree that something's up since the patch, and they're reluctant to hover. Something definitely went wrong somewhere.

Where did you find this info? Everything I've seen and read (including Wag's Producers Note feature on utilizing dumb bombs in the KA-50) indicates that there is no setting the ballistic computer for bombs, and that the KA-50 is not capable of calculating an impact point for bombs. In fact, I just checked the updated pilot's manual, and it concurs: "The helicopter‟s weapon system does not have impact or release point calculation release modes. You must calculate the release point manually. The switches on the Weapon Status and Control panel do not affect bomb release." (pg 401/11-13) In the Producer's Note on bombs, Wags demonstrates their employment by switching on the backup HUD projection and estimating the release point manually, as you would do in a WW2 fighter. In fact, he states that the procedure is essentially the same as it was in WW2 fighters. Clearly the KA-50 wasn't designed with bombing in mind. EDIT: Here is the relevant Producer's Note: Skip to 7:40.

I don't think what you're describing is a bug, it's just a disadvantage of ED's solution to efficiently displaying a very large cloud layer. If you fly quite high above the clouds, maybe 1km or more, then they look rather nice, with soft, rolling depth and shading. However, I agree they look odd when you're very close up. The effect is very similar to how forests are displayed in the Il-2 flight simulator; they appear to have a lot of depth and complex geometry from far up above with amazingly little performance impact; however, if you get close to the forests it's apparent that they're made of just a few stacks of large flat planes. It's hard to describe the effect very well, but anyone who's played Il-2 will know what I'm talking about. I imagine that if ED attempted to make the clouds out of actual polygons rather than stacked texture planes, that the performance hit from looking at an overcast layer from above would be exponentially greater.

That sounds like a fairly reasonable explanation, and fits with some recent observations I've made. Fine, this actually sounds reasonable to me, I think perhaps my main issue is with the following: A16 says yes, and I believe it would make far more sense if it was yes. However: I get the same. Trimming with turn-to-target is just one example of the issue; it seems that each time you trim at a new attitude, the aircraft over-corrects. This seems to indicate that the FCS does not give up it's 20% authority when it detects pilot input, and so each time you trim, your controls are deflected 20% more than they should be for the new attitude, and hence the overcorrection. This, of course, is remedied by holding down the trimmer while making large attitude adjustments, but apparently this is not the real life procedure. Therefore I still wonder if this particular aspect of trimming is implemented correctly.

I don't experience the same, however I suspect that turning down shadow quality might help.

There is most definitely a ceiling. I've flown above the clouds many times.

Just download and install 1.01c. No hotfixes necessary if it's a clean install.

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I've been flying BS regularly since the release of the Russian version, and I've been reading these forums regularly for at least twice as long, and I still haven't figured out the answer to this question. Why is it that the current behavior with the 3 standard AP channels ON, flight director OFF, route switch OFF seems to exactly follow the "route without task" description in the manual? Why is it that I *have* to retrim once I've banked, or once I've turned to a new heading, to prevent the AP from returning me to the previous trim point? Why do I have to hit the trimmer to update the heading caret when I change my heading? Again, I understand completely why I would have to trim in these instances if I had Route mode engaged without a navigation task selected, as described on page 365, 10-29, of the extended flight manual. As AlphaOneSix stated on page 3 of this thread, I believe that when route mode is not engaged, any control inputs should update the AP with new hold parameters. Currently this is not the case; you have to hit trim to update the desired attitude and heading parameters. For what it's worth, I currently fly with FD off and 3/4 AP channels selected at all times. I hold down the trimmer while making large adjustments to flight profile, and incrementally tap the trimmer when making small adjustments. I can fly the BS very precisely, and am quite proficient at maneuvering, engaging with rockets, etc. But I'm still not absolutely convinced that the behavior we have in game is the same as in the real helicopter. Once again, my primary question is, in game and in real life, what is the difference between flying in Route Without Task mode, and flying with route mode disengaged, but the 3 standard AP channels activated?

Haven't watched the track either, but just to make sure, you did remember to turn on your AC generators, correct?

It should be configured to use the mouse by default. Are you saying you have to use the arrow keys and the joystick to look around the cockpit?

I think there's a very good chance that it is the SLI. There have been several issues reported with SLI and this game (and many other games, for that matter). In fact, afaik this game doesn't have the ability to take advantage of SLI anyway (again, like many other current games). I've even heard of people getting better framerates when disabling SLI.