-Skipper-

True, too, but the thing is, the most hardware-demanding games usually don't have the option to change settings ingame - or you won't see all changes until at least the mission is restarted.

Considering the new campaign-structure, with missions depending on the outcome of previous missions, I guess the campaign uses a lot more features to connect certain contents between each other. So the singlemission-editor is probably much simpler in this regard than the campaign-editor.

And do we have an animation of the rubber being exchanged when refueling?

I like the new GUI very much. It looks rather neutral, but offers quick access to all options. I also like the style of how menues and background fit on the main menu and the small icon-button. Two thumbs up from me: :thumbsup:

I guess he's asking if this is a remake of other movies or a new one. I think it's just a mix of older videos. Mein Herz and the other one with the greyish style show the scenes in the movie more or less.

No, but I know how to use the search function on this forum. :smartass:

Mission-Editor Weapon-Loadout

Excellent post & great pictures to explain our ideas! :thumbup: The method is similar to the communications-menu. Another way to implement this and how my original idea was: Taking your starting point - we choose panel 5. Now the cursor hops to the upper left button or switch on Panel 5: Now I push cursor down 3x and Cursor right 1x and the cursor hops to this switch: Now I click toggle and the switch moves to the next position. Once I memorized the keycombination Panel 5, 3 down, 1 right, click, I can actuate the switch with just 3 keys in a matter of milliseconds, without even having to look down. It's much more like letting your fingers fly over the controls rather than having to stare down at the switches. And this macro can also easily be mapped to any HOTAS-button for more common switches.

I think the problem still does exist, Legolasindar. :( Your description is the basis of my idea. But the problem with TrackIR is, that the mouse only has a relative position. If you point it at the middle when looking forward down, it obviously points at different switches as if you look left and right. The other way around, if you want to use a small switch, you have to compensate with the mouse for the movements of your head, g-forces and effects, etc. Now, think about flying a flying at NOE between buildings, turbulences shake the pilots-view, maybe the rotor is damaged and shakes you even more and you realize you have forgotten to activate that ejection-seat. And now have fun to hit that small switch on the right-backward panel of your cockpit. :crash:

I think that largely depends on how fast you can use the button-cursor-keys. And then it's the question what takes you longer: looking down, leaving throttle or stick to grab your mouse, not move your head, aim and click or tapping 2 or 3 buttons a number of times. At least the later has the option to get used to it. As I posted before, after a few flights you know that 3 times right 2 times down + click means you have switched from hi to low rate of fire, without you having even to look down.

No problem. Arma was not the best example. :doh: Exactly. You can mix it with mouse-control and you can use it simply with a few keys or even your HOTAS, it's working independently of where you are looking and it can easily be automated.

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread. But then, aren't we talking about Vista vs XP vs alternatives for 11 pages now?

I think you didn't get what I actually wrote. I didn't write you can select every switch from a list - that would be a hell of a long list! As an old Falconer, I'm all for a clickable cockpit for a complex simulation. But e.g. in Falcon, you have like 8 so called "consoles" from A to H, each with a bunch of buttons on different panels. Now imagine you can select the console with the mouse-wheel from a list, the selector jumps to that console and you can hop from switch to switch with the selector, independend from where you are actually looking. Example: You are using the navigations-panel and want to switch to high-ROF. So you choose the forward middle console from the list, the cursor hops to the upper left switch on the front-panel. You then use keys to move the cursor vertical and horizontal, hopping over the buttons until you selected the ROF-switch. You click another button and actually flip the switch. I think it was Oleg Maddox who once said, that clickable cockpits are only immersive to simmers. In real life, a pilot does not look at every single switch he uses and he surely does not have to concentrate on not moving his head when chosing a button to push. He just knows where the switch is located and uses it, if need, even without leaving the target out of sight. With my suggestion you could do exactly that, because after a while, you know that for example left forward panel, 2 steps down, 4 steps right toggles the auto-scan speed for the SHKVAL sensors (just as an example). Infact if you have shortcuts for the consoles, you could even program them to a HOTAS. :smilewink: The parallel to ArmA is not the clickability, but the fact that you use a similar system. You chose the basic actions from a list, like swapping to rifle, but you still have to reload, aim, switch firing modes and actuate attachments. Not the best example, I know.

Well, the alternative would be that you don't move the mouse or better: The cursor. You highlight the switch you have chosen, then use the mouse or cursor keys to jump to other switches, maybe even with shortcuts to make it hop to the different panels or even better: You can list the panels and choose them with your mousewheel (of course you can modify the list for your personal preferences). No confusion and you can use it with the hotas very precisely and I think the most common switches would also be at hand easily. Thinking about it, it's similar to Operation Flashpoint or ArmA, just with a menu and the cursor switching to the chosen panel after your selection. Just an idea, though.

Ah, cool. Yeah, I can imagine it adds a lot to immersion and it is indeed much cheaper as a 22" Touchscreen :D Thanks for the info and thanks for all those great informations on your website. Hope your project comes along nicely - surely gonna be your customer, as soon as you're ready to go. :thumbup:

Q1: He does? Didn't realize. Q2: Touchscreens simulate the mouse. Where you touch with your finger, the mouse-pointer moves. So if the cockpit is clickable, there is no need for Touchscreen-support as such, as far as I understand it. (IIRC I read in some other forum that the Monitor was a 22" (?) and costs about 1000 Euros.)

Cool! Thanks for the heads up. Guess I should have accepted both offers :doh: - apparently both resellers were not informed about this either!

That is not correct - at least not in Europe. You can downgrade any version. A few month ago, I bought a new Notebook with Home Basic installed and I had the option to downgrade. So I doubt it's limited to the more expensive versions. 2 weeks ago, I bought another one for a friend with Home Premium, and I was notified after bying, that I have the choice to downgrade to XP. True. It's a common slogan that software sells hardware. And you don't even need to point at Microsoft. I doubt you will be able to play the upcoming DCS-engine with the same hardware and the same detail-level you can run current LockOn-Versions with. That's why I think hoping for Win7 is okay, but saying that it will be better and faster than Vista is wishful thinking at best. @some1: That's brings me to finally ask a question about this: Does the new campaign-system load all missions at once in a campaign? What's the idea behind that? I know the outcome of one mission will have an impact on the next, but that doesn't explain it to me, why there's got to be such a big file needed to be handled?

Actually, Rattler, the preinstalled Vistas are not a hard argument any longer, as M$ offers an upgrade and downgrade option for the preinstalled system. This means, you can get an XP-Full-Version for the preinstalled Vista, if you like to. They do. This minority is called flightsimmers and of all the geeks out there, we are the guys who spend the most money on hardware, input devices, monitors and programs. As a result of this, as you can see in this thread, Vista-users are not rare here Vista costs 10 bucks more than XP. The basic version without the optic effecs is available for less than 65 Euros here. That's always easy to say. You can say it runs well on XP because you can test it and you can say it probably will run with Windows 7, but I'd like to remind you, that Vista is based on XP and Windows 7 is based on Vista. If you've seen the review of the Alpha, you can see that pretty well. Surely they will implement some improvements in performance, but what sort of hardware you will need to benefit from that, you won't know until it's been released and tested. I honestly doubt that the new windows will be less resource-hungry, better optimized to run with outdated hardware or games. Which version of windows or any OS ever did? What makes you so convinced Win7 will, that you beat the drums for it, 2 years before it's released? As I posted before, there are many games that run a lot better with Vista than the run with my parallel installed XP and with more eyecandy that is. WorldInConflict is surely one of the best examples I know. DCS may not run as well, but I won't dare to judge on this until I tested this myself - including that "XP"-campaign. :smilewink:

That's correct. Motion-Blur and shockwave-effects are no DX10 features. They may work better with DX10 in some games, but that's not what DX does. DX is a routine that "translates" between software and hardware. It makes it easier to program effects, to ease programming and makes it possible to use effects with less programming effort. DX10 is an optimized version of DX9, but it does not invent DX new. It speeds up many processes known from DX9, adds a few and supports new graphics-cards better, but it also drops some features from older DX versions and featueres supported on older hardware. Technically there is no reason why DX10 should not be able to run with any other Windows version.

Considering we're getting much closer to the release and people come here more often, I doubt locking all these threads will lower their impatience. Well, after all it's also a good sign, that BS will sell like hotcakes. :thumbup:

I understand your concerns, but maybe you should understand Grooves point, too. These questions for a releasedate get spammed here and on the UBI-forums for more than 2 years, now. And even though the developers and the betatesters, as well as Glowing Amraam with his movies and hints, keep a very close contact to the community, have come a long way to build a great FAQ and information-section, stickies with regular updates and a thread for posting progress information and reacting to feedback, people still don't accept the fact that a release is still scheduled for 2008 and no further details on the release-date will be published, until ED knows themselves. They have no reasons for hiding this date and they're not really renown for spoiling the fun for their customers, so the constant bashing and demanding release-dates, showing more and less signs of good manners, is really getting to the point, where it sounds like a self-running thing, rather than the actual interest in a date. And remember, that there are no people wanting this game to be released more than the devs themselves. So lets act like adults, have patience and wait these few more weeks left, because you won't be able to shorten time or push the release forward anyway. They said it will be 2008, the said it's very close. So let's all look forward to it and have fun.

AFAIK the Sniper-Pod is not capable of tracking multiple targets, as well as the AH-64A's sensors aren't. Of course you can OBSERVE multiple targets, by just keeping them in your FOV, but you'd need to lase them intermittendly to really track them and the sensors would have to automatically track the targets and switch between other known targets. As you have just a single optical sensor, that's one hell of a show, e.g. if you are the gunner as in the Apache A you have to rely on that sensor, which keeps hopping all over the place. It may work for a small area with modern sensors, servos and processing power, but the question is: Is this really reasonable!? :huh: The modern doctrine has an AWACS and a JSTARS circling above, giving air- and ground-targets to the fighting units. So the most important thing for a fighting unit is not to observe multiple targets, but to identify a target as precise as possible from the maximum distance possible, to engage it while providing maximum safety for the guy at the trigger. That's also supported by the mystical Sniper XR ATP. You can only track a single target at once. With an incredible precision from 50,000ft and 3 times the range of the LANTIRN, with the capability to use the GPS-position to directly feed JDAMS or transmit them to other units, but still just for a single target as small as possible, giving it the nickname "Sniper". :smilewink: IMHO LockOn doesn't display this part very good, probably giving a false picture here. You have the freedom to go where you want and whatever you want to attack. Targets are only in your target area, so you just circle around as you want it and decide what to attack and how. In real live, you're rather part of an orchestra, with a precise schedule, that is ordered and organized to work with hundreds of other units and you're just one gear of the machinery. You have your orders, you attack primary or secondary targets, even get inflight instructions to attack other targets, you do your job and RTB if allowed to. IMHO that is the most important advantage of the Falcon series, as you get a pretty good picture that, rather than engaging your few targets in an otherwise empty environment. :noexpression: I hope that with the current focus on the groundwar, we will have units that call for assistance without manual set triggers and a C3 that will update on enemy positions as the AWACS did in LO.

Well, I wish I could share your optimism. Vista is based on XP with a few additional features to optimize workflow and increased userfriendlyness (e.g. the undo function for basically anything, including saving, deleting or overwriting stuff), etc. Win7 will most likely bring a new fileformat, a new memory and process-handling, a new DirectX and an integrated rights media player, together with a bunch of other hardware- and software features. IMHO it's a bit early to think that these all new features will make the next windows safer, more compatible or usable for the general gamer. Especially since DirectSound is more or less abandoned and you won't have full EAX-support in Windows7 either. :noexpression:

Of course! Everybody has to make up his own mind and there are a couple of valid reasons for either choice. I think -sulan- just showed, that you can post your own experiences without starting a fanboy-war. He states his experiences, but doesn't put it as the definite wisdom or general rule.