Hippo

In reply to OP: I've just spent a few hours with the ka-50, after not having used it for many years. I've been refamiliarising myself using the "Gauntlet" mission which is one I'm particularly familiar with, and I'm having all sorts of problems that I don't remember were there before (e.g. IIRC the AI wingmen used to be helpful in this mission, whereas they appear to be hopeless now). I can't help getting the feeling that the main DCS engine / missions / etc have moved on but the ka-50 has not kept up with changes. I realise it is rather unfair of me to comment in this way after just a few hours hands-on, but with the investment in time needed to get back into this module, I'm afraid that I'm just going to put it to one side and forget it. Maybe try again if there's ever a BS3. Sad really, as this is a module that back in the day gave me so many of hours of pleasure.

Thanks I'll give that a go. Sorry for being so lazy and just posting without trying this, but it's been such a long time since I've used the ka-50 that I can't remember the steps to shut down (or to start back up again).

In the "Gauntlet" mission I inevitably take damage and so return to the FARP, but when asking for repair receive the response "unable to comply" from the ground crew. Any idea why this might be? I am able to rearm and refuel.

After many years away, I thought I'd give the ka-50 a go. A few observations / requests. The ka-50 specific options for trim are not explained in the manual, they really should be. When I use the trim switch (default option), there is always motion of the controls as the physical joystick recentres. Would it be possible to have an option where: push trim button - sets trimmed controls position. keep holding trim button whilst allowing (physical) joystick to recentre - joystick inputs are ignored. release trim button after (physical) joystick recentre - joystick input is read again. (I can't believe I'm posting about trim all these years later). Please could you provide the option to turn off the window and (especially) the shkval reflections? The shkval tracking gate is now almost impossible to see, and the shkval display itself is very washed out (in a Quest 2). This is all made worse by the faux-reflections. In VR, the shadows from the rotors do not play well with ASW. Is there a way to turn them off whilst keeping the "normal" cockpit shadows? I am using the "Gauntlet" mission for testing and am seeing unexpected(?) wingman behaviour: When I take off they remain on their pads, and do not respond to radio commands. I fly off and eventually (but not always) they rejoin. This is not as I remember, where they would always take off with me. Has something changed?

I have a whole series of missions I've created where I was setting the altimeter at mission start with the X: COCKPIT PERFORM CLICKABLE ACTION trigger. This appears to have changed so the altimeter is now set incorrectly in all the missions. This is mildly irritating.

After having a particularly frustrating interaction with the ME last night (described here), might I humbly suggest that the mechanism for picking / moving units / groups could do with some improvement? Where there are many unit icons (and possibly waypoints) in close proximity that overlap: One click (and specifically release) of the mouse button switches between the primary unit only of each group, and marks the entire group as selected. Clicking and dragging (no release) will then move the selected entire group and will never move a subunit individually. If the intention is to select a waypoint it may be worth considering the use of a combination key for selection, to differentiate these actions. If the user's intention is to work with individual units, then this can be achieved by zooming in so that units no longer overlap. At this point selection of a unit should move only that unit, and never the entire group. This is coming off the cuff, so apologies if I've overlooked some detail that makes the above impossible / impractical. But as stated I find the current mechanism somewhat suboptimal. P.S. Also, it would be nice if in drop downs like the trigger actions it could be possible to use the keyboard to type the letters of the required action to get to it more quickly (as opposed to only being able to get there with the scroll bar).

Thank you for your curious little recommendations. I think at this point I'll be sticking with option number one.

I have found that this usually works if, say, there are a number of aircraft waypoints close to each other. However, in the situation I describe, I have seven ships (in one group) in close proximity, and a number of aircraft taking off and/or landing from the carrier. At no point was I able to click so that the carrier was selected. I would cycle through planes and some ships but never the carrier. Furthermore, my suggestion that zooming in could be a solution did not work either. I later zoomed in so that the ships separated and clicking on the individual carrier icon selected an aircraft nearby instead. So my remaning option is to go through the list of around 70 units and hide them until I can get to the ships. Then unhide again as I carry on with the mission. Hardly optimal. How many here have experienced the delight of painstakingly placing a number of units just so, only to later go and unintentionally move one because the picking system behaves in an inconsistent manner. And then? No undo. Reload the mission. Hopefully you remembered to save recently. This. Is. A. Joke. I am astonished at the number of replies that deem this acceptable and blithely write it off as something that should just be lived with. This would be ok if we were talking about some obscure rarely-used feature. But the basic essential funtionality of selecting units being a frustrating battle with an inconsistent system? Come on. No undo? This is 2021. And it's been like this for years. The mission editor is not some in-house, not for release, optional unsupported tool. It is an integral part of the product. I have over the years come to the mission editor with the intention of building some missions that others might like, but it always ends in frustration as I have to battle with bafffling interface design choices that seem to differ from all established conventions. It is in everybody's interest that the ME makes mission creation as efficient as possible, and not a fight against an interface with features designed by someone with a deranged sense of humour. I have been working around these issues for the past few months, but last night my patience just reached its limits, as I spent 15 minutes trying to click on an icon. And further time I'll never get back searching forums for solutions and an answer to the question: I must be doing something wrong, it can't possibly be this awful? The thing is, much of the ME is actually very good, but when ED doesn't seem to be bothered to fix the most basic of basic necessities, it makes the whole thing look a bit of a joke. Here's another one. When you have a drop down list with tens of items (e.g. trigger options) - how about letting the user type in the one they want, so they don't have to waste time scrolling through the list to find it. I'm not in the builder now, but iirc, pressing a key whilst in a drop down takes you out of it! What is so blood-boilingly irritating is that I shouldn't have to post about any of this. It is obvious. It is basic, expected, functionality, and has been standard interface design for decades. So, if by some miracle, someone from ED is reading this. Respecfully, could you please do something about this before the end of the decade? </rant>

I'm using the mission editor and have a carrier group, planes etc very close to each other so that I just see a bunch of icons very close together. There is one simple thing I want to do: move the carrier group. I click on it, but no, some other unit is selected. If I'm not very careful, I'll move a carefully-placed unit that I didn't intend to move. Ooops, no problem Ctrl-Z to undo. Only, no, there is no undo function!!! arrrgh. Ok. Let's try bringing up the list and selecting the main unit from there. Surely that should do it. I select the carrier (unit 1) in the list, then click on its icon. Arrrgh, I'm now moving ship no 7. Nooo. Back to the undo function (i.e. reload the mission). How do people put up with these "quirks"? It's just awful. Sorry for the rant, but I needed to let off some steam. Being more productive, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can select the entire group, quickly and easily? BTW, hiding all other objects using the list, or zooming in near enough so that the units separate is not "quickly and easily" imho.

What does it do? What is it for? Thanks.

Thank you so much for the recent improvements to this very important feature. Please could you consider adding some default markers(bookmarks) so that it is possible to quickly jump to: The player's kneeboard folders (in saved games/dcs.openbeta/<aircraft>). The default auto generated maps for each mission. Any kneeboard pages included in the mission file. The default aerodrome charts,etc, for the region. (in DCS World OpenBeta\Mods\terrains\<region>\Kneeboard) These could either be new tabs (e.g. along the top), or four of the markers that are already implemented that would just appear by default. This is just a suggestion, the point is that at the moment the player often has to click through many tens of pages to get to what he needs.

So, in what way is it different to, say, the search then engage enroute task? Also, when using AWACS, is it necessary to set the Radar Using option (to USE FOR CONTINUOUS SEARCH)? If not, does it make any difference?

Thanks for replying, interesting. However... The mission is part of the campaign supplied with the F-18 and I am playing it as is - it should not be necessary to be editing advanced actions. You are right that there are F-14s in the mission, but they are not part of the package, and they are too far out to engage. Further the briefing states: Isn't it then a bit peculiar that the wingman is set to not attack air targets? I don't know if you've tried flying the mission, for me it plays out something like this: Take off, I am soon made aware that there are threats near the target at angels 20. I get to the target area at around the same time as the SEAD package which does do its job. I can (sometimes) then go down fast and low and bomb the target and GTFO, outrunning the Mig29s. This allows me to achieve the objective, BUT then the Mig29s get the wingman who is faffing about in the area. Maybe I'm being too much of a perfectionist, but I would like the wingman and myself to drop our bombs and get home. Alternatively I go in at 20,000ft and try to engage the Migs first. They are pretty tough, beam my missiles, and I am unable to beat both, often I'm unable to kill even one - which is why I need the wingman to help out, and he is utterly useless. All of this happens away from the F-14 engagement zone, so they don't do anything. I take all of your points onboard but it seems to me that the mission designer might need to take another look.

If I do that he attacks ground targets (air defences). I want him to attack the Migs. Is there anyone out there who's actually flown this mission and has not had issues with the wingman?

Well, I'm just flying the mission as designed with the loadouts provided, and he does have 2 x AIM 7 and 2 X AIM 9.

I really would appreciate a suggestion here. On arriving at the target area, there are two Mig-29s. However, when I ask my wingman to engage (bandits or my target) he refuses, giving a reply "unable" or similar. Also, asking him to "engage mission and rejoin", although he replies that he will, he doesn't seem to attack the mission target. This is turning what should be a fun pastime into an exercise in frustration. P.S. The new forums are awful.

The new forums are awful. Please put them back to how they were. The old forums were excellent and didn't need changing. It beggars belief that a supposedly professional organisation can take such an imbecilic decision. (imho)

Suggestion: it it ain't broke, don't fix it. The forums were very good, afaict they're now worse.

Hi, many thanks for that. Obvs, it's not a major issue, but for such a polished product it does grate when the behaviour does not agree with the normal proc checklists.

I'm minus a VR headset at the moment, and have adjusted FOV as I always used to: "%userprofile%\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\View\SnapViews.lua" and changed the "13" entry for whichever aircraft, currently I'm mostly flying the FA-18C SnapViews["FA-18C_hornet"] = { . . . [13] = {--default view viewAngle = 56.000000,--FOV However, I find that when going into the mission, I have to press KPENT for this setting to take effect? Is this normal now? I seem to recall that previously, the zoom would change by itself when entering a mission. Anyway, seems to work ok.

So. Who's tried out a certain just-released civil sim? On first impressions two things stand out. At 4k on my 50" TV*, this thing is a huge step closer to photorealism - quite amazing. All my cores were being utilised with a nicely balanced load nowhere near to 100%. My 1080 ti, though, was going flat out to hit around 30 fps with HIGH settings. I suspect that it is starting to be time for ED to stop beating the dead horse that is ancient, stutter-prone, one-core DCS, and start shifting resources to restart from scratch with DCS 3.0. The much-hoped for Vulkan update, I suspect, is going to have minimal impact. * Well, I sold my Rift S, and have pre-ordered a Reverb G2, so I'm back to pancake temporarily (w/o head tracking - jeez!). Sure - laugh in my 1080ti's face. Have to wait and see what nVidia's new ($1500 - arrrgh) cards can do.

I was beginning to get excited after reading that... Unfortunately, for me, doing my usual simple test mission, performance is unchanged at best, and quite possibly worse. FWIW, in other news... For the F-18 Hornet 1989 CAS mission which I've been playing around with lately, it really is very disappointing to get frequent drops to below 40fps, which I presume are down to the AI battles going on. I run at very low settings. I've posted several screenshots on this post before. Can't be bothered doing that any more.

VR optimized? In DCS? Oxymoron.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=274040 Can this thread possibly be moved here, as it seems to be being completely ignored in its current hiding place?

Thank you for that pearl of wisdom. I am, however, unsure as to how it relates to this thread. It is not a tweak being discussed, it is an option in the game settings recently added by the developer. If users are finding that it doesn't work as expected, then it seems perfectly reasonable to raise it. And still no response or acknowledgement from ED...