FlashPan

Thanks Draconus - I had no idea we could do this

Aye - I'm just after a way to browse offline user made missions and campaigns within DCS itself. It would save trawling through forums and would create a lot more exposure for the mission creators hard work. Plus it removes the common issue of their being 'nothing to do', as there would literally be hundreds of missions to pick from

Howdy, One complaint you often see is people complaining about things to do. This could be mitigated by having the DCS UI present user created missions within DCS. This would greatly expand the available missions and thus give the players more to do! RobP

Howdy! The reason for this request is that I have two shortcuts - one for VR when I'm flying and one for flatscreen when I'm using the editor. It would be great if I can set two separate resolutions for both. Right now my flatscreen version is using the VR settings which is too low to properly use the editor. I guess the coolest way of implementing this (and also the hardest) is to have settings under profile names. Then a profile name could be invoked from the command line / shortcut. RobP

Thanks Phantom Mark That's all I need to know! Purchasing now!

Howdy Folks, I remember this beast from back in the Microprose days and then Janes. Really interested in buying but I fly in VR only and there needs to be a certain level of performance. To give you an idea of my system, the FA18, F16, F14, AV8 modules all work great in VR. The AH64 however, runs like a dog. Not its fault, more an issue with my rig. Where does the F15 fall in terms of VR performance? I'm guessing F14 ish? Thanks RobP

Not sure if this has been mentioned before or not, but on my system the fuel gauages are always reading the fuel state even when turned off. I can remember with the older Blackshark versions one would turn them on and the two needles would zip around the dial. Now turning them on makes no difference because they already seem to be on!

One thing I have noticed though, the only mission I have been playing so far is the target range one - which happens at sunset. Your screenshots look like sunset is going on too... I wonder what will happen if I tweak the mission start time so that it starts mid-day?

+1 I get exactly the same issue on my system. It normally occurs around 15 to 20 minutes into a flight, which given how long it takes me to start the helo up isn't much flying time! :) I'm running Windows 7 Professional on an I7 Processor with 16Gb of RAM. My graphics card is a Radeon HD 5870 with 1 Gb of onboard RAM. I'm using Catalyst 12.10 version drivers on a single display at 1920x1200x32bit resolution. Hopefully someone else has seen this and knows how to resolve it. I'm suspecting maybe an issue with HDR? Will certainly try disabling it to find out. Also, now that I have bought A10, I might give that a spin to see if the same issue occurs there too.

Those images are famous now. What I like about FSX is that it says on the front of my box 'Works great on Windows XP - Works even better on the upcoming Windows Vista' I suspect I could sue Microsoft and win here. On my system the difference in performance between XP and Vista is the difference between night and day - in XP's favour! Vista is a dud. My worry is that Windows 7 might follow the same route too.... RobP

I'm not sure what's going on with Tom's hardware, but I had Vista 32bit Premiun until very recently and the difference between game FPS on Vista vs XP was huge! Large enough that on XP I could max out settings and still get better performance than Vista. I know of at least two other people that have had the same experience. All my drivers were up to date and I have a pretty standard system: Intel DUO 6400, 4Gb RAM, nVidia 8800 GTX 768Mb Ram and Creative Xi-Fi Fatality Pro sound card. It's these personal experiences that have made me view these 'hardware review sites' with great cynicism. To have them reporting 'similiar' results, whilst me and my friends are getting very large differences seems to indicate a problem. That said I do know of someone that has the 64bit version of Vista and swears by it, though he has never tested his machine with Xp... At the end of the day if you play Black Shark, you should stick with XP as many of the Campaign missions recomend XP over Vista due to Vista's memory management problems. RobP

I always found F4's dynamic campaigns very interesting, esprcially with regard to seeing the battle unfold. You also feel more part of the battle as the day-night cycles occur and see how your previous missions have affected things. One feature in the F4 campaign which not too many people know, is that one can order the ground units around like a wargame. So at its best you are playing a wargame, which you can enter in at any time and fight in the F16 - For me at least totally awesome. Where scripted campaigns can shine, is when a strong story is scripted in. This is something that a dymamic campaign cannot reproduce, but other than this, I'd much prefer to be in a dynamic campaign than the script based ones. Its the flying into the unknown, never totally clued up as to how the mission will pan out. In scripted missions its a case of, 0700 there will be two migs coming in from the West, at 0715, an enemy formation will be crossing the river.... All very predictatible. RobP

After around 5 days of training I entered my first battle! Wow! What can I say! The amount of action going on around me was phenominal and reminded me of a very old heli game called Apache by Digital Integrations. This was the scenario called 'Battle'.At the start the battle was fairly easy, but after a few runs of evasive action the battle started getting confusing and I was trying to make sure I was shooting at the right side.Towards the end of my involvement in the battle I was getting quite concerned whether I was shooting at the right side, as the vehicles looked kind of flat looking with no major turrets. I was thinking Stryker or BMP....In the end I figured they looked more like a stryker and let them have it.Returned to base with what has to be one of my best landings ever. My only real pickup was the time it took me to land - I guess I'm a little paranoid of entering a vortex ring.Debrief came up and I held my breath. Luckily I had shot up all blue! lolTotal tally was 3 x Abrams (wish my missiles were a little more effective here) and 5 x Strykers.Woot! Home for Tea and Medals :)Flashpan

This is the best aerial sim I have played, no questions asked. Not just in its detail, but the way it just sucks you in - something the Lock On series failed to do for me. The flight model is such a joy that I can spend hours just flying. I extend my deepest thanks to DCS for delivery of BlackShark and doing it in an environment where sims seem to be so 'yesterday' as the majority clamber for instant gratification. Hopefully this sim marks the return of simulations to the PC market place. A tradition started with Falcon 3.0 back in the early ninetees. With many large corporate publishers abandoning the PC, we may well get back to an early ninetees situation where the PC is primarily a simulations platform. FlashPan

Don't know what happened, but all the flights I have had today have gone smoothly(!) It no longer feels like I'm fighting the helo. I think I now understand what people mean when they say this bird almost flies itself. Its as if I have suddenly become one with the autopilot. The only thing I need to do now is practice coming out of turns more smoothly, but even these are coming along. Whilst the ride is now smooth, I'm not sure that I'm in a position to fly NOE yet. Next things to learn are the cannon - forgot how to arm it. Everything else is now falling into place. I have to say this is the best simulator of perhaps any kind that I have tried in a long while. Whilst I haven't done any combat, except the firing range, there is something that keeps drawing me back to this one. Great job DCS! Flashpan

I have tried this mode on occasion but have never had too much luck with it. I will take the helicopter over a lot of test flights over the next few days to see if I can understand its electronic pilot better. Flashpan

That's exactly what I have been getting. Stays in a perfect hover for minutes then goes absolutley wild - normally in yaw, which then ends in my untimely demise. Maybe we are supposed to trim continually throughout the hover? But if this is the case, I'd be too afraid to look down at the shkval for fear of seeing what the helicopter is getting up to next... Flashpan

Hi All, Although I'm really enjoying this sim, it seems that this helicopter can really bite! Most of my deaths have been caused by the helicopter doing weird things in a hover. It seems that I can hover it, target and shoot. Which is good. But after a few mins the Helicopter wants to rotate to some other bearing (wind?), so I'm having to try to fight the helicopter to point at the target. This occurs both with and without the stabalisation modes, with auto hover either on or off. More often than not, I lose these 'fights' and the helicopter goes off in an uncontrollable spin into the ground. I'm beginning to think that half of this is down to the stabalisation modes and the auto-pilot. I trim often and return the joystick to neutral, so its not a trimming issue (my trim button is under my small finger on the joystick). Anyone got any tips for preventing these 'fights' with the helicopter? I could be wrong, but I'm sure the autopilot is trying to kill me! :joystick: Flashpan

Hi Jaxterass, Found exactly the same thing here. Either zoom with wheel and no mouse control or mouse control with no zooming of the wheel. Love to know what settings the developers used on their training missions to get the best of both worlds. FlashPan

Hi All, Bought the English version yesterday and can't stop flying it! Haven't figured out the weapons or navigation systems yet, but I can start her up and shut her down now. The only issue I have, which is self inflicted, is that I somehow unmapped the mouse wheel from its old cockpit zoom function and can't figure out how to remap it. Any advice on this would be great! Flashpan PS: I have a 1680x1050 monitor with a 1280x1024 monitor, is this config compatible with the multimonitor setup? I heard that if the displays have different aspect ratios like mine, there will be a downgrade in graphics quality?