beers

SSD prices are still steep. I recently got a new rig and I have a 40GB SSD that is big enough to comfortably fit Windows, a few not-very-big items and DCS (Wart Hog & Black Shark) with 18 GB to spare. The rest of my games, data, user profiles, etc, are on a different drive (and a spare 1T drive for backups). It was surprisingly easy to move from an old machine to a new machine with this arrangement. The SSD I got is not the fastest, it's even just a SATA II, and DCS runs stutter-free. My previous rig, the drive where DCS was installed was a 7200 SATA II, and I did get stutters that I suspected were HDD related. The coolest thing about SSD is the boot-up time of Windows; incredible!

It struck me as more-awesome-than-expected that the green friendly indicators showed on the TGP. So, that's not how it works IRL? Bummer. I am not known for being good at identifying friend vs foe on the battlefield :( that helped a huge bit.

OUCH! :cry:

Being someone who has a 2600K + 560gtx shipping to me this very moment, I am very curious what "almost entirely maxed out" looks like specifically... what is not maxed out, what did you find took FPS away from you, are there settings you could drop that would keep you over 60?

Thank you Professor EtherealN!! You are an excellent nerd, wonderfully related information!

Thanks for the advice EtherealN. Guess it's time to save up for a new rig.

I'm wondering the same... I've got a Core2 e8500 @ 3.6 GHz, 8 gig of DDR2 memory @ 758 MHz, conventional hard drive. The CPU seems to hover around 80-90%. The hard drive seems to cook along just fine (a few spikes but not maxing out), memory never gets above 40%. I am starting to think my GTX 260 is the bottleneck. My monitor has a refresh rate of 60. When looking out at an empty ocean with the hud-only view I get 60, but when I turn the cockpit on, it drops to low 40's. In areas with cities but no military units, with cockpit on, I get between 40 and 20. In heavily populated areas, with cockpit on, when lots of shots are fired, missiles in the air and whatnot it drops to mid-teens. I'm considering a whole new rig; i7, GTX 560, SSD's, but if the GTX 260 is the bottleneck, that would be a much cheaper upgrade!

seems every discussion eventually spins up to "what is the next DCS?" If you think about it, since we're mostly guys here, that is almost surprising... most male centered chatter eventually boils down to farts, so this probably illustrates that we are a very intellectual gang.

I'd guess that, being a Russian company, some of the ED staff might have experienced a bit of life under communism. I have found that few people born into capitalism have the drive and passion for capitalism that is found in someone who was born in a country without it.

ROFL ! Shaazam!

ok, maybe not the most spectacular, but it was difficult to fly home and land. It seemed like a great touch down at first :huh: I had not noticed the lack of wheels on the rear gear until she came to a sudden hault. I guess I left a nice set of gashes in the runway? Probably would have felt 10x what a carrier landing is like, so not so sure I could say the pilot would have walked away from that landing.

I felt fairly certain that there were no random system failures, that aside from possible beta-bugs, she works like the well-oiled machine her designers dreamed of without that pesky real-world (dust, squirrel nest on the APU, etc...) getting in the way. everything I thought was a system failure was explained to me as user mistakes and I've not had a 'random' system failure in the last ... 20, 30 hours of flight, since learning from my mistakes. Anyone know for sure if system failures "just happen"?

bet you forgot to turn on pitot heater

not a 'world of trouble' when flaps are stuck, unless the emergency retract doesn't work. I forgot that the aerodynamics would push the flaps up, so in order to be stuck down it has to be mechanically stuck and not just flapping-in-the-wind. And if the system's "full" setting is 20^... now i'm going to stay awake at night wondering what condition would make that last 10^ on the flap indicator come into play.

I wonder what would happen if the flaps mechanics were damaged, if th flaps extended due to gravity rather than being set to full, if they might display in that 30^ area?

dead cat.

Warhawks has frequent action. They have started building training, have a TS server and a great crew of folks.

I agree, SSD really ought not matter except for RAM issues. And it's not so much about 'critically short' but that an average speed harddrive can't keep up with DCS. I've got Win7 64 with 8gig RAM and in the 32bit Hog I had micro-stutters (i.e. not the pre-render pauses). SSD ought to reduce micro-stutters, but it seems 64bit DCS took care of that problem for me anyway. And if Intel's got new chips, then the i-series might drop in price pretty quick. I'd trade my maybe-30-fps E8500 for 40-60 with an i5 if it were cheaper.

GGTharos, you are so very right and I am so much more a believer in the details worked into DCS! I did some experimenting, back and forth on the same runway without taking off, different loadouts, totally works like you explained. Leans in one direction when accelerating, the other when decelerating. Guess the twist Z axis on my X52 might not cut it much longer, real rudder might be in order.

If this were a quirk of the real A-10c then i would hope they would have figured out how to shim up the rudder to compensate. If they can compensate for that crazy cannon, they should be able to overcome a consistent .5 degree nose wheel deviation.

I think i have the same complaint. I pull to the right during taxi, take-off and flight. Ckean airframe or loaded, no wind, (or with wind but the 'drift' is not effected by the wind direction). About 5 clicks to the left with the trim is enough to counteract it in the air, but that only goes so far, since I expect the center is off for X, Y and Z axis and it's the rudder/nose wheel steering that really ticks me off. It's very annoying to have to apply just a hint of left rudder while trying to take off. I'm using a X52, and there is no re-center function... I would like to take this opportunity to ask the good people at ED to provide some interface within DCS to mark center for each axis (like they used to have in Falcon). it would be really nice if we could also mark the detent position (and maybe the engine % at said detent) ???

You're at the edge of functional angels in TIR. You can 1) readjust your clip/hat so that it is pointed a few degrees more upward and re-center. This way when you are looking down, the angles on TIR aren't so oblique (and you really ought not have to spend much time looking straight up anyway). 2) when you center TIR lean forward an inch or two. When you sit back after centering you will find your virtual ass a few inches back in the seat and it makes it easier to see the radios. 3) reposition your TIR camera, maybe on your desk instead of on top of the monitor.

most times alt-tab'ing back into a 3-d application you've got to run through any other open app. I know I always have 3 programs open so I do a 4x alt-tab and i'm good. You might want to experiment with shift-alt-tab, that might get you right back in.

not surprising, and you are not contradicting conventional wisdom yet. 1) shadows on/off is probably CPU related, but once the shadows are on at whatever level they probably effect the CPU about the same and it's the card's job from there. 2) Water seemed pretty much the same thing, on/off made a big difference but once turned on, regardless of the level, CPU was pretty much unchanged. (I looked for the water setting and it seems to have moved, anyone have a clue how to set water=0?) 3) HDR & AA weren't part of previous DCS, but if you played with nHancer you would have seen the same behavior; those settings won't effect the CPU much and will work better on a higher-end-card. so, i'm saying believe what people tell you, you need a fast CPU to pull off good FPS and also, in this new DCS, you will benefit from a better GPU. unfortunately i cannot pull off HDR and functional FPS at the same time, but i've seen it and it's pretty!

This is design, not a flaw. Civilian traffic doesn't get in the way of game-units. You can blow them up, but they do not physically interact with the a-10 or ground veh's. I imagine it would be a mini-nightmare of traffic jams, ya know, the tank column stuck on a bridge with a delivery truck going the other way, and the AI is too polite to smoosh the civi's. This was something i noticed in BlackShark, same behavior here.