twistking

Friday's newsletter mentioned improved (night) lighting of Viper/Hornet in the current OB. The patch changelog didn't have anything about aircraft lighting though. What did change concerning lighting? Has anyone on Open Beta discovered any improvments to aircraft lighting? Maybe (hopefully) light visibility distance finally improved? I'm on stable, so can't test myself.

I see. It just feels like a weak excuse: Many of the issues reported here could be considered "engine limitations" until they are remedied... Well, i might make this an wishlist item then...

The changelog didn't have anything about (night) lighting of Viper/Hornet. What did change concerning lighting? Has anyone on Open Beta discovered any improvments to aircraft lighting? Maybe (hopefully) light visibility distance finally improved?

a bug that made me smile

Not entirely convinced. It's a question of when to toggle the environment light. There is no need to have sun and moon as shadowcasting lights at the same time. Ambient light (not shadowcasting) could also be used to substitute either of the two environment lights. There are many older titles that don't support multiple shadowcasting lights, that still pull off believable day/night transitions.

There surely is some poetic beauty in the night being the darkest before sunrise, but it would still be nice if that bug could get adressed eventually. This bug exists for ages now: About an hour before sunrise and about an hour after sunset, the moon does not contribute neither to terrain lighting, nor to object lighting. It does however contribute to cloud lighting. The effect is that both the landscape and vehicles are pitch black during that time, even if a full moon is up. It looks bad, it is obviously unrealistic and it limits moonlit night flying without NODs to only a specific timeslot. The new clouds make the issue even more obvious, since the clouds are correctly lit and therefore only emphasize the strange and terrifying blackness of the incorrectly shaded world laying beneath... ED, please fix!

mhm... maybe this should have been posted the general wishlist section. can a mo maybe move this there? @BIGNEWY thanks.

There were already some wishlist threads about having VoIP on the proper radio buttosn seperated from the radio menu by short press vs hold. this is an obviously good idea, but maybe ED could take it one step further and add duration modifiers to the keybinds, where you can assign a key to a function and then specify if any duration would trigger (default) or if the key only registers on short press, on long press, or only when holding. This could be used for VoIP, but for so many other functions. For example you could use it to prevent accidenticaly trigger a critical function by assigning it to "long" press. Useful for "Gear down" and similar bindings. Or save real estate to assign a two-way function to only one button seperated with short/long: NV Goggles On: N (long), NV Goggles Off: N (short).

I deliberately did not post this as a bug (yet), because i'm not super confident that i completely understand the intended usage and function of the Offset Aimpoint. I think the OA was broken from first implementation some years ago and the corresponding Matt Wagner video was very vague about the OA, probably because of that. From my understanding the OA is used if the target is f.e. obscured by weather, to have a different point at known relative location to point the TGP or FCR to in order to either confirm the original target, or to have a fix from an onboard sensor in case of INS drift (probably more important pre GPS). However... whatever i do in game, the ordnamce will always drop on the TGP's pointed location, even if the TGP is pointed at the OA. Proper target is in TGP: Check! Switch to OA1, OA position is in TGP: Check! Drop ordnance: Hit on OA position instead of target proper. Also i have trouble designating two different OAs. OA1 will overwrite OA2 and vice versa. I strongly suspect this is just utterly broken and nonfunctional, but since this seems to be roughly the state in which the feature launched some years ago, i want to unironically ask, if it's maybe just me not knowing how to do it properly and not knowing how to get any use out of this feature. Thanks.

AAA groups containing a SON-9 search/track radar ignore the "alarm state GREEN" option. The SON-9 will continue to actively search / emit.

looks great! quick question though: is there a way to have pages only show for certain terrain/maps, similar to how you can do it with aircraft modules? thx

big thanks to all, special thanks to @Frederf: that answered some question that i did not know i had before. thx!

Hello, sweet and short little question: Does the ILS course in the viper expect Magnetic or True heading? Bonus question: What's the easiest way to get precise runway heading in DCS? I know that on Caucasus the airport map kneepad pages have all the info, but on other maps i just use the ruler tool on the F10 map. Feels archaic. Simpler ways to do it?

I agree, but i suspect that ED would need to provide the technical groundwork first to even allow Ugra to implement this... I remember reading that ED was investigating tech for allowing such changes to maps at some point, but i haven't heard anything about it since...

yes, disabling airfields would be helpful indeed.

thanks for the reply! where would i find those lua files by the way? a while ago i did a lot of testing with the "dog ear" EWR and it's associated units (strelas, zu-23-2 if i remember correctly), but i could not find any beneficial working relationship between them. would like to check if some aa units have the "dog ear" in said lua...

yeah, but i'm explicitly interested in getting the lights to work, that are already on the map. if you haven't yet, you should absolutely try setting the date to soemthing post war and start cold and dark in a hangar somewhere. the lighting is really well done... also some airfields have runway lights, that look really nice... unfortunately during wartime all lights are off...

Hello, the SON-9 that came with the 100mm KS-19 was/is in reality also paired with light and medium guns. Has anyone tested yet, if and how the zu-23-2, 57mm S-60 and zsu-57-2 (SPAAG) benefit from the SON-9? I vaguely remember that there is an digit in the units lua that shows if the units can use radar "support". Does this lua entry actually mean soemthing neccessarily?

I put down a ship group consisting of an LS Ropucha Class and Corvette Molniya, in the unit options i set ROE to defend only and i set Alarm State to "Green". In mission it works as expected: Radar is off and ships do not engage by themselfes. However, if i make the group activate by trigger with "late activation" option, the group will ignore both settings. For testing i also remade those options as planned/scripted actions and fired both via "ai push task" a few seconds after the activation trigger. Still the group ignores both the alarm state and ROE options.

Is there a way to have lights in aircraft hangars and illuminated runways in missions set between 39 and 45? i have not tested much yet, but it seems that airfield lighting is not available during wartime, which is odd. i do get the concept of blackout, but it's too restrictive imho... have others found a way to have hangars / runways lit up by script or some workaround?

Hello, i'm a bit overwhelmed by the differetn ice halo settings. Will "auto" always produce a realistic result? How much are ice halos dependant on temperature? When i'm flying in Persian Gulf in summer, should i put them to off, or auto? Can Ice Halos even show in warmer regions/during warmer time of year? The upper atmosphere should be cold enough still to allow the forming of ice crystals, yet ice halos are very much associated with winter and snow... Thanks.

seems solved now!

Just letting you know, that the stable version on STEAM does not have the MT launch option when starting through STEAM. Starting from the bin-MT folder still works. Might be confusing for some, since the FAQ has the picture of the STEAM "play mt preview" launch prompt...

no, because it's set in 1944. there are a lot of promising modern map in development and i could not think of any reason to prefer normandy over them if you're not interested in the warbirds...

@NineLine the steam store page does not mention that open beta is required to run Normandy 2.0. I already expected that and only bought now already to not miss out the upgrade discount, but other players who are less involved in DCS will not understand why it's not downloading after purchasing... on the topic of beta: do you guys realize that stable version hasn't had an update for ages?! it is also stuck in a very bad place with the dreaded terrain shadow bug... honestly no current build could possibly be worse than current stable branch....