Headspace

You're right, I don't know why I put "middle" when I meant to put outer. Even though this is the internet, I am out of novel excuses to make. O-M-I... Since we're being pedants in this thread, yes, FAF would be non-precision and the final approach point would be represented by the little lightning bolt symbol where you intercept the GS. FAF for non-precision approaches is defined by a geographic fix whereas the final approach point would be identified as the point at which glideslope intercept occurs when established...not necessarily coincident but usually close to one another if there are both, and nearly always in the vicinity of the outer marker if one exists (in the USA, anyhow). I felt that the instrument written was like a slightly harder version of the private exam with more flight planning thrown in. The electrical engineering part of radio nav is fascinating but almost entirely irrelevant to the procedural tasks of instrument flying.

In addition to what others have been saying, not all ILS approaches have three marker beacons. Many only have two and some have less--Batumi has a runway right off of the ocean, for instance, so there is no place for a middle or outer marker. (EDIT) The outer marker (usually at the final approach fix) is generally in the vicinity of where you should intercept the glideslope after being established on the localizer.

No problem, thank you for being patient. I think you'll like what we have planned for Combined Arms.

Soon. There will be a testable A-10C, KA-50, and generic (fixed frequency--for now). The code for World has to be vetted before I start adding control-panel configurable frequencies for other vehicles. We are currently LAN testing it with the A-10C and Su-25T.

Not with WAAS. I wonder if there is a military equivalent. It seems unlikely due to the ground station requirement. Since WAAS is so new it seems unlikely that the vintage of A-10 as modeled in DCS would have had anything like it.

Why not just park over the touchdown zone and then use something like TacView to compute TDZE?

Not until they make DCS: PA-28.

Does X-Plane have a built in PA-28?

We have a lot of the issues ironed out, I'm going to be hitting it hard this weekend. What we're going to be doing in the future is having publicly accessible beta releases that may break, but that the public can test, and then whatever latest "stable" release. That will allow all of you to stay in the loop and enjoy more TARS.

Here's my perspective, coming from my experience working for the developer providing content for the actual game. I would like to think I'm more familiar than the average player with regard to how the game syncs in multiplayer and various other aspects of its engine. Based on what I know, my opinion is that you guys are vastly underestimating the amount of work it would take to go from the flight sim/vehicle scale to the infantry scale. The amount of money you'd need to invest into mocap alone would be significant. If going from tanks->infantry were that easy, don't you think that Steel Beasts would have effortlessly taken VBS2's place? It just isn't what I would call feasible or economical. Especially for people who think that ArmA's MP capabilities, which offers an enormous unsharded map to run around in (that is nonetheless very, very tiny from a flight sim perspective) are "crap."

Really. I've been playing this game nearly ever weekend (lately it's every other weekend due to my schedule) since it came out, and ArmA 1 with the same frequency before that. While there's certainly some warping in vehicles on high playercount servers, it's never as severe as you suggest.

Unlikely to be directly related to the core ArmaA 2 game. The issue with the DayZ mod is that it connects to a server that the creators set up specifically to persist information about the players, so that players could log off and have their stuff saved. It adds a layer of complication. I played DayZ for a few days on servers of varying levels of population and there was no lag that wasn't present on similarly populated vanilla servers.

I'm not sure how anyone could suggest that ArmA 2 is taking an "arcade style" approach to anything. The game serves a niche market which is interested in more of a deliberate, realism-focused approach to gaming which most of the FPS market lacks. Yes, damage was reduced on a handful of weapons in a patch, mostly pistols (which tracks very well with the idea that in modern combat, people are usually wearing body armor). Furthermore, the people who make DayZ could have easily edited those values without a patch, so it seems irrelevant to suggest it's "because" of DayZ. There are two definitions of "sim" that I use. Sim in terms of computer simulation, in which case almost all games today have some elements (since there's a physics model) and sim as in terms of a tool used to train for real life, in which case if some governing authority (such as the FAA) says you can log sim time in it towards something, it's a sim. Using both of these definitions, you can see why I feel like the "is it a sim?" debate is pointless and non-productive.

I'm going to have to try to get a flight in one of these now that I've read about your experience. I need to get tailwheel endorsed at some point, anyway.

Yes and no. They use different aspects of the API and have different issues than we end up having with TARS.

The airplane is going to want to weathervane into the wind, but my money is on torque if it's going to the left.

TARS should be back in August. TS3 is throwing somewhat of a curveball now on top of everything else. I don't want to do anything major without assuring compatibility with CA and other driveable/flyable stuff.

The EAD ones are good, but don't reflect the positioning of navaids and as such are fictitious for DCS purposes. The Jabog32 ones are good but are for visual approaches (apparently). If someone made IAPs for the DCS stuff, with associated navaids, it would be really neat. So far I've been flying the instrument approaches for my local airport into runways that have ILS in DCS with the A-10C, and it works fine.

Someone needs to make some instrument approach plates for the various DCS airfields in the game; I would if I had time. Unless people already have done it.

Is this going to be set up as a fly-in where participants could fly GA aircraft in and then taxi up to the ramp and participate?

Well, if there's a radio to hook in via the export environment you can do it in the "traditional" way (I'll probably have some sort of API to do it when the third party aircrafts become more prevalent). Alternatively you can just assume there's a radio (in the code) and act accordingly. What's taking the longest right now is moving TARS into a state where it doesn't necessarily assume an aircraft and can switch between aircraft/vehicles in a single execution cycle.

I'm planning on having frequencies configurable in the TARS control panel for vehicles or airplanes that don't have configurable radios in the game.

Much appreciated!

Still alive, still working. Stay tuned.

No airplane is going to fly straight and level on its own. You need to use the trim.