Headspace

Given the topic of this discussion and the fact that TARS has come up, let me share an anecdote: When I had the idea for TARS I thought to myself that it would be ready--in its current form--by the first week of December. Then my 10 years of software development experience (both as a programmer and someone who manages programmers) threw up a warning flag in my head, and I decided to give you guys the "Q1 2011" estimate for the first beta, because with these sorts of things, you know it's going to take a lot longer than everyone (including you) thinks. The psychology is interesting but largely irrelevant--the bottom line is this, even comparatively small projects are temptingly easy to underestimate when it comes to time. You really can't hold it against many developers if they're making good faith attempts to release on time and have sound project management. This stuff is very, very complicated. It's pretty obvious that ED is putting a lot of work into this. Let's all be patient.

I'm sure there's a way to get it. The key is getting it in the best, most compatible (with the game) fashion as possible and then carrying that over to both games. Why? Because originally, I planned to have TARS support both A-10 and Black Shark in the same multiplayer game. At the same time. If the two games were MP-compatible now, you'd be able to use TARS in a game with both A-10 and Black Shark.

Actually, I had a user on here (speed) PM me with a way to do it using existing commands. The issue was that some of the commands might not be officially supported and I am concerned that there could be a performance hit associated with the calculations. Most of the mathematical calculations are done on the Teamspeak 3 plugin side (it's a DLL in your plugins folder), which is in unmanaged code written in C++ and runs in its own thread (i.e., very fast) whereas Lua is a script and anything you do inside there comes at a cost. Sorry for the technojargon there, but that's the reason. LOS based on terrain was never a planned feature of TARS, but if enough people want it, I can add it to the list of features for future release.

Network settings are client side only. They accept LAN IP addresses and are for cases where you want to run the Teamspeak 3 client on another computer (for instance, a laptop) and play DCS on a different PC. It has nothing to do with the server you connect Teamspeak to. In most cases you will never need to touch those; that's why they're documented in the Advanced section.

Guys, there is already a thread for TARS here.

Part of this has to do with the fact that TS3's sound system is changing and that puts a big unknown on how the radio effects are going to happen in newer versions of Teamspeak 3. As a result, I put a very minimal amount of time into messing with those aspects of it. Radio Horizon is accurate, but voice quality will need to be tuned once the TS3 issue resolves itself. Did you install TARS manually? It may be that the tarscore_ka50.luac file is in your TARS directory and not the A-10 file. Needless to say, that is not a supported config. Make sure that in your program file for A-10 there's a folder called TARS and only the following: tarscore_a10.luac tarsexporter.luac are in there. If necessary go into your control panel, make sure it says Black shark doesn't have TARS installed, and then point A-10 (not blackshark) to your proper A-10 folder and make sure it installs there. That will ensure that you are running in the configuration for A-10.

It's in there, some factors (such as for lower frequencies) just need to be adjusted.

You were beyond radio horizon. TARS doesn't do LOS for terrain, just for the horizon of the Earth. LOS in mountains and so on would be another can of worms since there's no native (correct me if I'm wrong) command hooked to get that. You'd have to do it through scripting (one person already send me a way to do that) but unfortunately the performance hit from this would scale pretty badly as you increased player count. See above. It will, but it cuts out quicker depending on how far away you get. Path loss numbers are different for lower frequencies. Ejecting got tested pretty thoroughly before I released this. How far away were you? There's an issue with line of sight and client location that's proven a bit difficult to get around (technical limitations of the DCS netcode). The pilot object doesn't appear to be synced across clients, so other clients using TARS have to rely on where your plane last was when you ejected--that means if you are near the edge of the radio horizon then you may end up hearing but not being able to be heard after eject. If you can get this to reproduce consistently, write a set of repro steps and submit it through the debug form. Make sure to include the logs that TARS made of when it happened in a .zip and I'll get on that. :thumbup: Known issue. Disconnect from the Teamspeak server before you turn off TARS.

Awesome Froggi, looks like you are all set. Keep in mind that the downloader on the page will not allow hotlinking directly to the download URL, but will instead redirect anyone who follows that link you put there to the D/L page. This is to ensure that everyone is presented with the latest version of TARS.

Stretch: During testing I kept those two separate. If you want, you can bind them to the same key and it will work, but if you want to talk to teammates you'll end up seeing the radio menu. If you have a joystick profile that can send keys, I'd send the control key (or whatever key you want) 0.2 seconds or so before the PTT key. That should be enough time for TARS to update what radio you're using. You can experiment--that's what the beta is for. I'd be interested in seeing what works (and doesn't work) for everyone so that the next release can be improved. Keep in mind that it's unlikely-particularly in a smaller game-that all three radios are going to be on and in use with TARS constantly. So chances are you're not going to be using all six of those keys. You're welcome. Just don't come after me when you end up trapped in your burning plane and no one can hear you because your radios are disabled. That happened to me last night. :pilotfly:

ArmA 2's flight model (it is a rudimentary one AFAICT) is just good enough to make it so helicopters and other flying things can support the infantry game. It's not a flight simulator so it's difficult to make that comparison. The ballistics physics model is about an order of magnitude more realistic than a game like Cryisis--it is capable of modeling ballistic projectiles with air resistance. I am not sure how it stacks up against DCS', but once you have that as a factor it really doesn't matter from the average gamer's standpoint.

TARS 1 Beta Released Attention! Please read the TARS manual and associated online documentation before testing the beta! The TARS website is now live, and houses all of the relevant documentation. You also get a manual (PDF) installed alongside the TARS control panel. I hope everyone enjoys this mod. Once again, it's beta 1 so there's sure to be bugs that the community finds. There's a handy bug reporting form that I set up to make life easier for all of us. Finally, there will be a mirror in the file exchange once it gets moderator approval. Enjoy the mod!

Well, you're welcome but I haven't given you anything yet! Let's keep in mind, guys, we're still in beta--in fact, this week we are transitioning right out of alpha and it will be v1.0.0 beta 1 that the community will get. So, there will undoubtedly be bugs and other issues to fix that can only be discovered through wider use. I'm going to do my best to get it to all of you by tomorrow. We're planning on doing a final shakedown of the Beta candidate tonight. And as an extra reminder, download beta 36 of the Teamspeak 3 client because you will need it.

If TARS core (which is the component that uses Export.lua) were integrated into the final product, you wouldn't need Export.lua. But, it makes more sense to have TARS seperate because not everyone is going to want to use TARS and shouldn't be forced to. Plus, TARS will be updated far more frequently. Nope, this is a free mod/plugin that is distinct from the games it works with and it ought to stay that way.

Nothing needs to be done on the server side. We had someone join us from the ED community here at our last DCS session at Folk, and it took him about 5 minutes to get set up. Out of the box, no special network configuration needs to take place. To use TARS, you need to be running either DCS Black Shark or DCS A-10, and be in the same game as the other players. As long as that's the case, you can make any radio channel configuration that you want in order to set up comms. I'm not familiar with LoATC (I have had precious little multiplayer experience with Lomac), so hopefully that answers your question.

Let it be known, the first Beta of TARS will be released to the public this week. :pilotfly: I would advise that you guys download the current Teamspeak 3 build now, (Beta 36) because that's what TARS will run on when it comes out. If you don't have it already, the 64 bit or 32 bit version will work (either one). Just get it in case a new beta appears in the near future.

Unfortunately now they need to be keyboard binds, and those are not push-to-talks, they're selectors. There's a few different reasons behind why it has to be that way, but the two main ones are 1) It would've required additional development time to use XInput to support joysticks and such and that wasn't in the realm of initial scope for this project. That doesn't mean it can't happen in the future. 2) There are technical limitations that preclude the easy use of push-to-talk as opposed to using a selector. In order for PTT to work, not only does Teamspeak need to know what radio you're using, everyone connected to the game has to know as well. I know that on my (very old) Saitek X45 profile software I'm able to have it send a keystroke (or two) in succession. I would recommend that if people want to bind different PTT buttons to this, that you have your joystick profile send the radio select button followed by the Teamspeak PTT key.

Update: Fixed a bunch of issues this week. The Alpha is currently being tested internally at the Folk session. We're testing internally because it provides a much more controlled environment at the public space at this stage of development. I'll be releasing the first beta for public testing one we kill some of the current bugs that are still known. I'm looking forward to seeing the community provide additional testing. People interested in playing in our session should get in touch, but don't worry, you will have access to the TARS beta very soon regardless! Ironically--given that this was originally an A-10 project, a lot of the testing is currently being done on Black Shark since not all of the people who play with us have A-10 (and A-10's a little rough around the edges). Edit: Figured that I should at least give you *something* to look at. Here's the finished TARS control panel. It'll do its best to detect where you have everything installed and then do all the script installation and editing for you.

Nope, I'm going to release a beta once I'm comfortable with the status of the mod. As new versions of A-10 come out I'll QA the mod with those and then update it accordingly.

TARS and for that matter many mods usually require that you put files in places and edit scripts. Since this project supports two different games and Teamspeak (and needs to be version locked on all of those!) I made a control panel that will install/uninstall the proper components for you, so you don't have to edit anything--rather, you can install or uninstall TARS from your games in a single click: The TARS control panel will be an integrated feature of TARS. You can use it if you want, otherwise you can do a manual install of components (if you fancy yourself hardcore). Doing that won't hurt anything and the control panel will play nice with you if you do. It verifies that it's installing against the correct A-10, Black Shark, and Teamspeak 3 using MD5 hashes. It will also make sure to install the correct version of TARS for your runtime environment (win32/x64). Hopefully this tool will help eliminate version confusion for users. We still have future Teamspeak 3 betas on the horizon, plus A-10 isn't done...you get the idea.

Why not set a scheduled task to clear out track files on a regular basis so your HD doesn't fill up?

Folk Folk isn't really a squad, it's a session. Right now we're working on getting some regular A-10, Black Shark or FC2 (in any combination--it's a participatory thing) going. We welcome mature gamers who want to get their A-10 on but also be chillaxing. There's no mil-sim stuff going on here, but we're plenty capable of being organized when the need arises. We also play ArmA 2/AO on a weekly and ad-hoc basis. We'll also be doing some TARS testing pretty soon, once we go into early Beta. You don't really "join" folk so much as introduce yourself. Check it out here. (Hint: Green dots are clickable!)

I have posted about this at least twice in the thread, including within two of my last posts above the one you made. TARS will not need to be rewritten; just the component that does sound effects. It's a small part of the whole package.

Update: TARS is now up and running with Black Shark. So, when we go into beta, it will contain Black Shark support and you'll be able to play it with Black Shark. Volume control for the R828 is included, and the SPU-9 switch controls what radio gets used for Teamspeak 3 "transmission," as it were.

Unfortunately, they're still working on it, and they are currently redoing their sound system. That means that additional work is guaranteed to have to be done on the TARS end of things since TARS utilizes some aspects of their sound system. However, until TS3 releases their next build, I have no way of knowing what that will involve or the extent of work that will be required. But, that's what happens when you write middleware. I wouldn't worry too much about it--there are always ways to deal with these kinds of things.