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Vertigo72

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  1. Out of curiosity I tried my google-fu and found the A4E flight manual, which Im sure the developers have seen and studied extensively, and it more or less confirms the benign nature of the A4 stall. It even says wing drops, if any, can easily be compensated with rudder, which is exactly what it does in the module. (and exactly what I would never do IRL, shows what I know I guess) But it does also say the nose drops, which in game can easily be countered by holding up elevator.. That still doesnt feel right to me.
  2. You do lose speed and roll authority, but with full power and adding in some rudder, it doesnt prevent you from just keep flying it with your nose way up and at walking pace. something I doubt would be possible IRL. Its certainly a trick I would have thought the blue angels would have performed (did they?) Another "issue"; the roll rate is insane but apparently accurate. Its also "instant" with very little inertia. But when you recenter the stick it only slowly stops rolling (comparatively speaking) as if its a much heavier plane with modest roll authority. Doesnt feel right to me, but again, what do I know.
  3. Just downloaded this today, it looks awesome and seems like a fun plane. Thanks a ton! Im a little surprised by the stall characteristics, but I have no idea if this is "work in progress" or if it actually flew like that? You can fly all day long with the stick in your belly, and it will shake, but will not depart, even if you add in some roll or rudder, and you can even maintain altitude and have some roll authority. Somehow that doesnt feel right to me, or?
  4. As a fellow newbie who still ends up shooting the tanker out of frustration, if you struggle getting close to refueling, I would advice you to let it go for now and practice formation flying. I made a few simple missions with an AI tomcat flying over gorgeous maps with smokewinders, and I just practice flying finger tip formation with that. Its much more enjoyable, less frustrating and excellent practice. Its a shame you apparently cant make missions where you are the wingman and following an AI lead, but using 2 flights you can achieve the same. I think this would be a good idea to include by default, some formation flying training/instant action mission.
  5. Tutorial told me to move flaps lever, this is what I see: Text has gone, I cant progress in the tutorial without moving the invisible lever. No mention that you can hide the pilot or how to hide the pilot. And thats after having followed the cockpit familiarization with gems like: And you dont see a problem or any way this could possibly be made better. Like mentioning the keybind to hide the pilot? Are you telling me that wouldnt make it better? Ignoring all the much more important things Ive mentioned THIS is the hill you want to die on ? You win, I give up. BTW, I believe they added the pilot body later, so this may be a "bug". But the fact you cant even acknowledge it says it all.
  6. Right. Someone relatively new to the game is in no position to have an opinion about what its like as a new player or have an opinion on how his experience could have been improved. Sound logic there. Maybe we should ask devs what its like as a new player? Its less than ideal. It might actually be better than the onboarding experience with a tomcat. Indeed. Especially when there are no Tf51 tutorials that will teach you anything relevant to more advanced modules. I just tried the very first TF-51 training mission, the engine start procedure, and the first thing it tells me is raising the flap lever. A lever I can not even see because its outside my view without trackir. A lever I can not see with track ir or after if I figured out how to pan the view, because the pilot body hides it. Does it teach me how to pan the view ? No. How to hide the pilot body, or how to adjust my view laterally? No. And by the time I realized I cant see it, the text which contained a keyboard short cut alternative has disappeared. Im already stuck. 20 seconds after starting the first tutorial in the simplest plane I may have to use google. Brilliant. Thats certainly not going to deter any potential F18 buyers. How frigging hard do you think it is to improve this? What radical changes does it require to the game engine to make this better? Why do you people insist on repeating over and over that improving the onboarding experience is both unnecessary and somehow impossible when it so blatantly isnt? But because the existing TF51 tutorials are so completely useless to aspiring jet pilots, people like me buy the F14 and jump in that and have an even worse onboarding experience, as HB understandably dont see it as their job to teach new players common DCS concepts, let alone combat basics and do it over and over again with every module they release. It shouldnt have to be like this. Flawed as the TF51 might be as a common trainer, it can still be used to teach anything from using and configuring controls, to radio comms, F10 maps, kneeboards, exploring features like autostart, time acceleration, ie basic game orientation. It could even be used as a "less than ideal" acro / formation /BFM trainer. Would BFM training be awkward without even a gunsight? Yup. But its better than having no such training missions at all. Similarly the Su25, while far from ideal, can be used to train some modern warfare basics that no other module is going to teach you. Lastly, and most importantly, there are better solutions. And some are pretty obvious once you stop yelling newbies dont understand and DCS training is how it is, must be and always will be because reasons. There are appropriate trainers in the DCS universe, and they arent even put to good use as trainers. Its not rocket science. You can supply a new player with an F5 or L-39 and provide basic tutorials based on those planes. There isnt even a law that says you cant charge money for that, or bundle them with more advanced modules or provide them for free but limit their access to only training missions with only simulated weapons or no weapons at all. Buy a tomcat or F16 or F18 or Mirage, and included is a few dozen basic tutorials and training mission based on the F5 or C-101, teaching new players common things every DCS player has to know or learn. Buy a P47 or Spitfire or mustang or 109 or 190 and included are a few dozen basic tutorials based on the Yak-52 or TF-51. Tutorials you can skip if you dont need them, or if you prefer learning from manuals and youtube, but that are there for everyone else. Ah yes, MAC will solve it all. I highly doubt it will if its the same "solution" as enabling game mode. The challenge is not making DCS easier or less realistic, its giving people better tools to learn it. And if MAC becomes an independent stand alone game, far from being a feeder, it may sifon away the majority of new users and keep them locked in a separate universe where they dont get challenged or have the ability to progress to DCS. If ED do this wrong, MAC may end up killing DCS. No. You still have a complete view of what its like when you dont have the P47, which is probably 98% of newbies. If only ED spent that same effort on a plane or module that everyone has access to, or at least one that newbies are likely to buy.
  7. Military training programs are not designed to attract and motivate people or keep paying customers entertained. Quite the opposite, they are selection programs, designed to separate the chaff from the wheat and deter anyone but the best. DCS training ought to have the exact opposite goal. Rather than selecting only the "best and brightest" and ensuring only the most motivated customer persist, it ought to attract and retain as many as possible. As someone else put it, the training is an integral part of the experience and should be a big part of the attraction rather than a deterrent. It could be a huge selling point. It certainly worked for ms sims. But plenty of posters here seem to have a different opinion and appear to relish the fact that DCS' often unnecessarily steep learning curve and "DYOR, use google and RTFM" approach to training self selects and greatly contributes to it being far more niche than it would otherwise be. I dont know, its almost as if they think having mastered DCS gives them some status, and making DCS similarly accessible as other games would take that away from them. I heard that several times, I dont have the harrier, but Ill believe it. Just a shame similar training isnt available to the majority of new players who decided a harrier may not be the best trainer plane. Even more a shame that more basic training of concepts and skills that every DCS pilot has to master, isnt available to anyone.
  8. Nice find :). Though Im not sure a 3 minute expose will have taught many to fly. If they had no knowledge of flying at all, I think trial and error will have taught them instead. Because they are sensible? Because you probably want to learn on a slow, forgiving, tricycle airplane with no more complicated controls and instruments than needed? Because other sims do have built in lessons? Compare your F18 expose with this lesson: Which is almost as old as that F18 sim. But fully interactive, voice over, with partial instructor control... Its really good actually. Can you replicate that in DCS 20 years later? Yeah, but its not going to be trivial, its much more than just creating a mission, and it requires an appropriate plane and Im unconvinced there is a big audience for it. Because on a training jet you can learn how to fly faster jets, navigate/ILS, and get introduced to combat? That is what they are used for IRL. Airforce pilots first learn to fly in single engine piston planes, they dont learn about coordinated turns or how to fly a pattern in a L-39 or T-38. By the time they even get to fly those, they are already better pilots than most pilots I know. Completely agree. Its not a plane to learn to fly in. But you could use the TF51 for BFM. It would actually be harder than in the F5, but its better than not being taught. You need to be taught basic concepts. You dont need to be taught golden rules. You could say the same for anything, like landing. You can teach someone how to land, but one tutorial wont give him a "golden rule" how to land a heavy plane with heavy crosswind on a runway that has a crater in it. Ot doesnt teach you to do a dead stick landing or landing with a missing wingtip. So why bother, just let them figure out how to land by themselves ? Having BFM training misions and intro's in to defensive flying and sams etc wont make them an ace. It wont prepare them for every eventuality. It will give them a basis. In a way that is more efficient and more fun than getting shot down 400x and figuring everything out by trial and error. Or reading books. So flying a mission 400x before they teach themselves that just pulling on the stick as hard as possible or pulling max Gs isnt always the best way to get a firing solution ? To notice a pattern that its better to dive than to climb when under long range missile attack. That some sams can be overflown at high altitude and for other sams that is suicide? That flying at a 90 degree angle to the missile sometimes helps for some reason. That chaff doesnt help much against IR guided missiles and using afterburner even less. I mean sure, eventually they will figure it out. That is if they have not long rage-quit in frustration. Actually, no, thats not even where I think it could be useful. Where it might be useful is in using plane systems and game control interactions (cold start, comms, catapult,). And that would not be all that hard to implement, in fact, you might even do much of that that with the existing mission editor tools already if there are triggers for detecting the status of plane systems. But lets shelve that for now, I shouldnt have brought it up, my point was trying to show the things I would have liked to be taught, not so much suggesting HOW it should be taught. If its achieved with training missions that works for me too. If its in a logical user manual, thats still better than it is now. Agreed. And thats why i think making an interactive basic flight training for non pilots like the one I linked, with a suitable beginner plane just doesnt strike me as good balance of effort/result compared to providing boatloads more of generic combat training missions that teach basic concepts that are unfamiliar to anyone coming from civilian or ww2 sims. The ASYM limiter switch can be explained in a bubble text. And frankly, you dont really need to know about it. How the hydraulics work isnt something you really need to know either. You could become a DCS ace and have no clue how either works. So you dont "need" the manual for that. Im not saying one shouldnt be supplied or its not worth reading. But I would try to minimize the need to delve in to the manual just to advance to the point where you can complete missions.
  9. You can not know that as long as you havent: 1) identified or even acknowledged the problems 2) proposed solutions 3) evaluated the required effort to implement those solutions. But people in this thread keep being stuck at step 1. Again please, if you have nothing to contribute, then dont, Im so sick of hearing we dont need it, RTFM. We heard you the first 124 times. But many of the things being suggested so far require no development time AT ALL. Literally. You dont even need developers to implement training missions. Those tools exist. The missions themselves could be community sourced. All ED need to do is make a list and ask and select the best training missions and include them. They would be wise to supply an appropriate plane but those also already exist. And if they wanted to, they could package it as an actual training module and sell it. And to do it right that may need a little bit of dev time, but I find it very hard to see how that would be a worse use of their time than improving submarine warfare.
  10. Agreed. If one day DCS can also cater for those with no flight experience, then so much the better, but no one learns to fly in a fast twin engine jet (or a tail dragging war bird) and quite frankly, there are much better sims to teach you the basics of how to fly. Id start by catering for the (my guess) >95% of people coming in to DCS who have enough prior stick experience. If you can keep them onboard, then sure, why not try to cater for those remaining 5%, but I think its a lot harder to interactively learn someone the basics of flying than the other things we have discussed. If someone cant fly, you cant just make a mission that will teach him, you may need to "grab the stick" or take control of the rudder on take off, so he doesnt crash all the time, and for instance teach him to control pitch and speed without having to worry about maintaining wings level. It wouldnt even make sense to provide that sort of basic training, if you are going to then throw them in the deep end of the pool let them figure out dogfighting or evading sams with no further guidance. Why is that too difficult? Why cant you have a mission with a sam site and be taught how to use terrain masking to get from A to B without dying. Why cant you have a mission where you get shot at from long range and you learn and can practice how to evade/dodge/notch and use counter measures? You can even do these easily with the current mission editor. Again the only real issue is doing that for every module by every third party, which doesnt make sense and isnt going to happen. ED needs to take care of that with a set of common training missions. I suppose you could even do it with Su25 if need be. Certainly when it comes to avoiding or evading sams, its less than ideal to teach BFM. Okay if that is what you mean by "learning to fly". I dont think many cessna citation pilots know much about energy management or how to maximize sustained turn rate. But I wouldnt say they cant fly. There are two things here: the concepts, which are fairly universal and can be taught on any plane; and how it applies to a specific plane/module. Maintaining optimal turn rate or energy management in a tomcat is different from an I-16. I think they should both be taught, but if you where taught the concepts in a generic common trainer, adapting that to a new module should be quick and easy, and just an intro in to the flight characteristics of the plane is probably enough. And that is something I do think is more than reasonable to demand module developers supply. Ideally you wouldnt even need the manual. Until then, sure. And like I said earlier, you should have a more interactive ingame help function. If I ctrl+click that AFCS panel, I should be able to get a little popup reminding me what those switches do, what if any controls are bound to them, and/or providing a link to the section of the manual explaining it in detail. But even better than that would be the option to jump to a training mission that actually teaches it.
  11. Stop derailing this thread. If you are not interested in discussing how DCS could be improved for new users then DONT. Why do you keep posting? If you think its unnecessary or impossible, you made that point, I do not care. If you only want to question our motivation, our abilities or post ad homs, 20 pages of BS is enough. Unsubscribe from this thread and take it elsewhere. The main issue with control bindings is knowing what you have to bind. As you learn things, you constantly have to rethink and change your control bindings and unlearn the muscle memory you only just started learning. If you dont know what PAL or uncaging is, you cant know you better reserve a button for that. A very simple solution is providing a top 10 or 20 bindings you are most likely to want to bind, ideally grouped in a way that is suitable to use with modifiers, particularly for those with joystick with limited buttons. This is pie in the sky. As long as experienced (sim) pilots struggle learning the game, catering for people with no flight experience seems a bit pointless. What would be useful and simple to implement is one training mission for every module that gives an intro in to that module's performance and flight model. A quick overview of things like best turning speeds, best climb speeds (/AoA), stall and spin recovery,... and go over some of its peculiarities, for instance in the tomcat how to handle adverse yaw at low speeds and roll reversal. Including videos would be a massive improvement. But still missing the best part of having a simulator where you can simulate and learn by doing. Very simple example, the most basic thing of dogfighting: flying the correct speed/AoA. How hard would it be to have a mission to teach a pilot about the effects of speed on turning radius and turn rate and the difference between them. Have some flying boxes arranged in a tight turn and challenge the pilot to fly though them and thus maintain a certain turn radius, or showing on screen turn rate and challenging them to achieve and maintain a certain high turn rate and letting him experience the effect of speed and AoA while doing it. give the pilot a score or measure the time it takes to fly through a box twice, so he can train to get better and have a little mini game thats both fun and instructional. Or take yoyo's, its one thing to read about a high yoyo, most people totally unfamiliar with ACM will not understand. Looking at a 2D picture tells them nothing. If you see it done in a video, you will get a better idea. But imagine a training mission where you have a target, and you are guided through flying boxes. A first time just pulling a high G turn and overshooting the target, and a second time with identical starting positions you are guided through a high or low yoyo, and THEN you will understand. How to do it, and why to do it. That is so much more effective than either books or video's, its so much more interactive and rewarding and really not that hard to implement. And its not just BFM. WW2 veterans will need little help with that, but they will want to learn about radar, how to defeat missiles and sams, and all these things can be taught in training missions. The only problem is that every module will be different and would require its own training missions even for BFM, which makes no sense. Thats why its a good idea to include an appropriate trainer, like the F5. Even if that trainer is only made available for those missions and no where else, or if its a training version with no real ammo, only simulated weapons.
  12. Thats exactly the problem. If they make a new module that lets you control submarines and have a (really poor) silent hunter competitor, they can charge money for it. If they develop a dynamic campaign engine or volumetric clouds or a new 3D engine that triples your VR framerates, they get nothing. If you where CEO, what would you devote more developers to? .
  13. Its not very complicated. I did not post this asking for help for me; I provided my experience hoping it could spark a meaningful discussion on how to improve DCS for every newbie especially those with a similar background - which I reckon is the vast majority of DCS noobs. Maybe Im unique in my inability to learn based on the tools I was offered, or but I kinda doubt that.
  14. What are you confused about? You can only buy new content. New maps, new planes, new campaigns, fancier carriers. You cant pay for new graphics engines, better VR performance, better atmospheric modelling, dynamic campaigns or anything in the free DCSW.
  15. Didnt I already meet that burden by stating they where inadequate for me? As well as for everyone I know that has tried DCS? As well as apparently for 14 year veterans that may really be noobs? Fair point. There is no good definition that distinguishes one from another, but lets see her get to the point where she could complete any downloadable campaign or achieve anything on any MP server.
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