Schwarzfeld

Just wanted to point out to anyone flying tailwheels in DCS: Your flying in DCS will improve IMMENSELY (the other acft too) if you go get checked out in a tailwheel with a good CFI, such as a Piper Cub or Cub Clone. It took about 9hrs with a CFI to get the cub more or less dialed in and ready to solo - I'd had training in tricycles a long time ago. If you spend the time and money on a few hours with a CFI to learn a REAL taildragger, when you climb back into DCS you will de-program yourself of bad habits you've learned in the simulator (trust me, you will have) and you will now know how to properly use the simulator to your benefit, and it will be MUCH more rewarding to fly DCS, taildraggers especially. If you can learn to fly a Piper Cub, you can learn to fly the Bf-109 in DCS. If you can learn to fly the DCS 109, you can learn to fly probably... just about anything. My two pence.

Whomever just said "you don't need a slip indicator/ball to fly" up there is either on drugs or hasn't learned to fly in a real airplane with a good instructor. Keeping the ball in the middle with your feet is by far one of the most important things you must do as a pilot, all the time, period, forever and now until the end of time, UNLESS you are landing or taking off :)

unrelated: which terrain mod is that, Coxy? Mustang's or Bartheks?

Absolutely agree. I was trained to fly tailwheel in a Piper Cub by a crusty old racing pilot with a grass field earlier this year - and I feel like I'm a pretty decent stick with the taildraggers in DCS (because they are so well made they really do feel as real as it gets) HOWEVER when I climbed into my DCS Spit on Friday, I bent up or wrecked two aircraft just trying to get off the ground, do a pattern and land safely. See my third try below, but you can see how ridiculously difficult the shopping cart tail wheel is making life - there's no way real pilots ever agreed to fly a plane multiple times a day (and in combat) with a tailwheel like this, its just not possible lol. I've never logged time in anything close to a Spitfire and I'm no expert on it but I agree with these guys above, the tailwheel free castering physics are COMPLETELY WRONG, I can hold the stick back all day and it still spins around LoL [YOUTUBE]Gcb2qlk2UM[/YOUTUBE]

Can't install, I keep getting an invalid module error in the output log, see attached... any ideas?

RE: my monitor setup - I have a 34UM57P, an ultra-wide LG. As mentioned above, snap views can be customized and saved. I run 2560x1080, no DSR. I've honestly never used snapviews other than to save default head position, just look down at the CDU and do your thing, maybe thats just me...

I don't think Proper Neck mod has been reworked for 1.5.4/2.0.2+ compatibility but its worth a shot

I use an LG 35" single monitor and frankly I find it to be, well... very nearly a substitute for VR, its really great. I use it with Trackir, and I never use snap views (other than to save my head position where I want it in the cockpit), I look where I need to look. Not sure why the CDU is useless for you exactly, I think you're getting at the ultrawide format being difficult as the CDU is down in the low-low-low-left corner, which obviously is not right there in the bottom right corner in an ultrawide. You might try adjusting your head position a bit, zooming out a tad, maybe using an A-10C specific TrackIR profile (I do), also consider using a gamepad such as a Logitech G13 (which I do, I have profiles on it that I can hotswap to allow it to serve as push-button MFD left/right and also as the CDU) to allow more rapid use of those three displays (there's one for the UFC as well on that gamepad). Make sure you're set at the highest native resolution for the monitor, and potentially consider using Nvidia DSR (downsample resolution) to run at a slightly higher than native resolution and get a little more into the picture so to speak, just don't DSR up so high that you can't read the text :)

If former President George Bush Jr. could qualify in this aircraft, flying it for the US TX Air National Guard... ... do you really envision it being challenging/engaging/interesting enough for YOU, as an person of intelligence and academic aptitude to fly....? Honest question lol

Yeah I played with the LUAs a bit trying to get climb behavior and cruise speed behavior to match, but as you say, when you tweak the math in the LUA, the acft doesn't necessarily abide by what you just typed in lol. My kingdom for programmers who leave proper documentation!!!

Well, here's hoping further work can be done (I'll try and figure it out on my end if possible on the PBY and B-29 if possible, their climb rates are ridiculous) as I've spent time volunteering at flight museums in Texas that house and/or service one of the only B-29s still flying and housed a PBY-5A - trust me, it won't exceed 125mph no matter what you do to it, lol

Gentlemen - I've been trying to do some LUA editing on the PBY, B-17, DC-3, B-29 and He-111 mods as I genuinely enjoy flying formation with classic birds in the taildraggers; thing is, the cruise speeds and climb rates are COMPLETELY wrong for all of these. I'm not super skilled at LUA editing, but I know my way around. For example; my grandfather flew PBYs in the Marshall islands during WWII - he said they rarely cruised above 100kias, and the acfts VNE was 125mph, tops. I genuinely appreciate and admire the work that has obviously gone into Markindel and Stonehouse's combined efforts to mod these acft into DCS, however I literally broke a Bf-109's engine attempting to chase a PBY-5A from 1500ft to 12,000ft, it left me like I was tied to a tree and it exceeded 170kias in a climb - I got into the LUA and edited the cruise and max speeds (they are in meters per second in the LUA if I recall) but it made no difference. Anyone have any input or suggestions on this? I'd like to see these mods built up properly and fly right, I doubt Eagle Dynamics will ever really add decent AI PBYs or B-17s etc into the game for years to come, and would like to see Markindel's/Stonehouse's efforts furnished fully... let me know if any of you have advice on how to properly tweak the LUAs for airspeeds, but for example: I setup a mission with a PBY-5A set to fly 1500ft MSL from waypoint A, to B, then land at C. At waypoint B, despite being set to fly to and from that waypoint at 1500ft MSL, it climbed to 12,000ft MSL - and it climbed at 170kias. LoL. Little lost here... how can I help? :)

Turns out that C-130 is big and fat, but still pretty fast! Very pleased with my landing at Nalchik despite a nasty variable tailwind (they only let you land one way at Nalchik, those cretins...!)

whoops lol

Still kind of a n00b to DCS, I've never flown a real jet, just prop jobs IRL, but just for kicks... I tried to play follow the leader with a C-130 in an F-86 and man that wasn't easy lol... airbrakes out!

Every pilot interprets things their own way, and flies each acft their own way. I recently wrapped up learning how to fly a taildragger locally with a CFI, in a Piper Cub. This sounds pretty damn hokey, so I'll brace for impact, but honestly the most realistic simulation I've flown of the Cub was Dovetail Flight Simulator's Super Cub flight model - I bought the game for my son and tried it out. Next to that, the DCS taildraggers, fundamentally, do handle and fly like the real thing, but the Cub I flew in with my CFI weighed 700lbs and generated nowhere near the horsepower or torque of any of the three tailwheel prop jobs in DCS - however the core fundamentals are there in DCS and they ARE realistic. I was ready to solo that cub in less than nine flight hours, and I'm willing to bet my time on the stick & pedals here at home with DCS didn't hurt, and may have helped. With this thing RE: the Huey max airspeed - as I am a student pilot myself and have been around pilots and raised by one my entire life - pilots, like car guys, will say ALL KINDS of stuff that makes sense to them, but makes NO sense to you, and easily is misinterpreted, because you weren't there, and you're not a pilot, or aren't one that was checked out in what they flew, when they flew it. Also, we pilots are NOTORIOUS for tall tales - more so than fishermen, especially in combat. Pilots remember things differently as time passes ;) Now, as far as exceeding VNE in a chopper, I grew up as a kid next to MCAS El Toro, and we had a CH-46 pilot at my church, growing up. He said sure, you can exceed VNE for a minute or two here and there, and we did - he said "I used to stick my hand out the cockpit window and cover the pitot so we could override the cyclic interlock mechanism that prevented the CH-46's rotors from colliding at high speed when we were in a seriously dire rush, and we just felt it out." Pilots can find ways to make acft to all kinds of things they shouldn't be doing in the acft, and sure, maybe this guy put his UH-1H in a seriously steep dive, had just about no fuel onboard, no cargo/weps or load, and had a monstrous tailwind. Maybe... but it's pretty unlikely. And as a general rule, yes, simulation flight models, especially DCS, tend to err on the side of being overly fragile and overly difficult to handle, because frankly its a non-movement sim (your butt is static in the chair) so that makes choppers VERY difficult, as you must anticipate torque literally through your butt in the seat, and in the sim you can't do that. As far as combat acft systems and procedures being inaccurate, bear in mind ED and the devs are limited by age of the acft they study and also classified gear. For example, the A-10C in DCS is on Suite 3 software/avionics, and some classified items are not there. more recent A-10Cs fly with Suite 8 software & avionics - the one ED studied for their simulation was meant as a desktop training aid to transition A-10A pilots to the new bird, so it was doubtless a very early C model. Take the simulator as always with a grain of salt, and also bear in mind you're not going to get anything genuinely useful out of DCS as a flight simulator if you nitpick it for specific numbers, speeds, or roll rates - its usefulness as a simulator is only something you can cash in on if you pay attention to the raw, hardcore fundamentals of the FLYING, the flight model - FLY the plane. If you do that, you can no joke take those stick & rudder skills you've built in DCS, hop in a real aircraft, and you'll be a leg up on your training vs. the other guy, I promise you. But if you sit there and pick apart all the "He-said/she-said" stuff about specific top speeds or what it could do/how high it could fly, you will have blown so much money on such fantastic simulator modules that are so fundamentally realistic to fly, that it brings a tear to my eye lol

I'll post some screens in a bit from inside the cockpit (thats where the difference with SweetFX really shines) but here's a shot from a hop over Sochi in the 51 using the JSGME ready SFX settings I attached on page one: I took the F-86 for a spin over vegas this morning and I was supremely impressed with how much improved the SFX contrast tweaks make the picture look from inside the cockpit.