smallberries

Yeah, DCS has pretty much never crashed for me but I keep crashing in single player in the F-14 in a practice mission I have probably flown close to 100 times. I usually get about 10-15 mins in and then a sudden crash with no warning, it's not just after an explosion for instance or anything that normally challenges a game like a sudden graphical or sound load. Just poof, and no report generated afaik. In Alerax's Case 1 mission I don't think the F-14 has crashed for me though. P.S. I don't see the post-crash pop-up for submitting the generated report, is this something we have to suss manually now?

Yeah, having Jester punch out on his own could have been just about the very last thing Heatblur added in an attempt to make Jester's AI mimic a real human. As it is, it is decidedly unhelpful for the game, and the kind of thing that, poorly done, is infintely worse than not done at all. Please remove this feature, it will not be missed.

Thanks. I guess this is the kind of knowledge you get when you dive deeper and read the NATOPS?

Why do you switch your air to L.Eng?

Just checked again and on approach, nose right on the ship, on the nav display the tacan caret was about 2 degrees port of the ship. Usually it coincides with the HSI arrow but for some reason my HSI arrow was pointing behind me on approach. Oh well, it's a seat of the pants experience anyways.

It's no big deal, but am I the only one who is finding the Tacan from the Stennis is being emitted from about 1nm off the port side, when seen from my F-14? Not sure if this is a specific F-14 bug or a Stennis bug, or something that is somehow particular to the Alerax .miz (although I doubt that)?

Yeah, if you're only flying helos I can see getting one of those fancy helo cyclics and collectives, assuming you can afford one. But what are you going to do if you also fly planes? Personally, I don't want to have to swap out my peripherals each time I swap modules, which I usually do several times during a night of DCS. The DCS trimmer options are a pain, I getting a nice coordinated flight, trimming out and then getting all wobbly when I recenter my stick (something the Mi-8 is much kinder about than the UH-1), but it's what I have to live with if I want to just click a few buttons and practice my CASE 1s.

It varies from cockpit to cockpit, unfortunately, but what I aim for is to make a curve so that if I look at a switch in the cockpit, it feels natural, as if I am looking at the switch and not looking too far to either side of it, for the TrackIR to settle down. It's no good if you have to crane your neck to one side and then look out of the corner of your eye to get your view to center on something. You will just have to play with adjusting the curve, as your personal preference as well as the physical reality of your situation (like how far you are from your monitor and where the TrackIR camera are) means that nobody else's curves are going to be right for you. The good news is you can edit on the fly, and it's very easy to do.

Yeah, it's finicky. My WH lights stay off until I have a power outage, and then I have to re-run the GUI. There's no setting saved to the throttle and apparently no setting file that persists after a hard re-boot. On the plus side, I always know if the power has gone out :P

The wheel needs a redesign for consistency. Depending on the situation, certain commands change their position on the wheel. I also think the sensitivity governing how far we have to look in a certain direction to indicate an option (with TrackIR) should be adjustable, I find I have to look too far for my preference. As far as something more resembling a bug, the option to drop tanks should always be there. I have had empty tanks and no option to drop them. I have dropped them myself from the ACM panel, and heard them and visually confirmed their seperation, and Jester has, only afterwards, had the option to drop them.

I'm not Sandman, but speaking for in-game only, it gets a little tiring holding your stick at a certain deflection for longer periods, and you lose a bit of finesse as well, as any micro-adjustments you make are done against the backdrop of some spring tension. Part of the reason I like my VKB base is that I have very minimal centering action, so after I trim and return my stick to center, any minor adjustments I make to my cyclic are against minimal spring tension. FWIW, assuming VKB still offers the stand-alone base and adapter, you could happily go with the WH Hotas for now, try re-greasing and polishing the ball, and perhaps even getting an extension and going the spring mod. Later on, you could upgrade as I did and put the WH grip on top of a VKB base, if and when you decide you can afford and you think it will improve your game. I am a bit fussy, others fly better than me with cheaper gear ;)

Although you seem to have decided, while I like my WH throttle just fine, I definitely recommend VKB for your stick. The adjustment range is helpful, the smoothness far superior to the WH, even with an extension. I had an extension on the WH and when I got my VKB base I chucked the WH out and never thought twice about it. I don't even have an extension on my VKB and my helo flying improved instantly over the extension WH.

Thanks for that. Maybe when I start flying underweight I'll see what you mean ;)

Thanks to everyone for the advice, I learned something about max weight today xD. But part of my original question lingers, and Nealius brings it up, does anyone know why it's procedure to fly with the airbrake out (well I'm sure Victory does)? Why not ease back on the power and stow the speedbrake to land? The only thing I can think of is that it helps to arrest the cat when you trap, but is it that much?

TonyG, 10 degrees nose up =/= 10 degrees AoA. Victory is who referenced the (roughly) 10 degrees nose up, for the record. 14000 lbs of fuel, clean, is just how that mission starts, and it seemed to me that, while it's a lot of fuel, since the plane is otherwise completely clean, it wasn't too heavy but maybe you are right on that. P.S. I was surprised to find that 14000 lbs. of fuel alone does put the cat over its maximum landing weight. Dry weight is 41800 in DCS.

All 3 are great planes, Mirage, F-5E and the F-14B. If you don't mind the deep dive, I'd recommend the F-14 the most as it has more capability and a flight model that will require you to learn a lot. The F-5E is more pure in terms of making you rely on learning to fly a jet well. It can be a good WVR dogfighter, but only if you fly it right. It's otherwise very simple and satisfying. The Mirage is a real treat to fly and has FBW, so it's fairly easy to run around in. It doesn't require the same level of piloting as the older 2, and has fairly capable A2A functionality. But in terms of flavour, it isn't as much of a departure from the F-18 as the other two. How much challenge and variety are you looking for?

Yeah, they're on auto below 300 kts. If you forget to sweep them forward you'll need more than mil power and a prayer to keep aloft below 300 kts.

Yeah, the only reason I'm using DLC before the groove is because I am trying not to end up in the drink turning final.

So I'm practicing Case 1 using the Alerax mission, 14,000 lbs of fuel otherwise the plane is clean. My trimming out needs work ofc, but following Victory's tips as best I can I aim for on-speed at about 10 degrees nose up, which gives me roughly a speed of 150 knots. Good enough, but to stay at that 150 knots on-speed I am not much short of full mil power with the speedbrake full, flaps full, properly dirtied up, DLC on. Which means when I turn at the 180 I have to pretty much go full mil and I am finding it nearly impossible to turn sharply enough to not be long in the groove, without sinking too fast. As it is, I'm often using DLC through a lot of the turn just to manage my decent rate because if I try adding enough power to do it I'm bound to hit full mil, and have the DLC and speedbrake retract. Which makes me have to ask, why is it necessary to keep the speedbrakes out? Why not just use the engines to moderate your speed on the downwind? I'm trying to learn to do things the proper way but I guess it seems like it would be easier to let the speedbrake in so I had enough available power to manage my decent rate. Of course, I know what Maverick would do, but I'm trying really hard to do the right thing :P P.S.

He punched out on me in the middle of a fight. I finished the fight and flew home, sans canopy. You get into a furball with multiple bandits and the callouts are non-stop, you can't tell if he's tracking one plane or just rattling off the locations of everyting within 10 nm. And when he finds a moment to breathe, he tries to distract you by letting you know how excited or scared he is. He is basically worse than useless. Maybe that's why the fight went so well after he punched out.

I had fun doing a voiceover for someone else, I'll take a look at it this week.

FWIW I mapped auto/bomb/fwd/back to the hat next to my slew so I could keep comms on the comm hat (and also Jester on the comms hat, up for menu, down for "check"), assuming you are using a WH.

I just assumed the instruments in DCS are somewhat flawed, like how you can be sinking/climbing and your VVI will show the opposite on the Mi-8 (lagging by a couple of seconds), off the top of my head.

Since we're on the topic, what would you consider to be the best AV?