Chizzy101

Thanks for the reply igormk, I'll give mission 4 a miss and try my hand at the rest of the campaign. The beer fridge is full and the Ka-50 is prepped, so it should be a good night for flying. Good to hear that a part two is on the horizon!

***SPOILER*** I have to say I'm finding mission 4 extremely difficult. Every time I've flown it, the air defence around the base gets one hind if I'm lucky, leaving me to tackle 3-4 hinds gunning for me. I'm doing a manual start, so I'm not sue if that's an issue, maybe I'm not getting airborn fast enough? This has happened every time for me so far...apart from the first time when I ran from the airbase and failed the mission due to all vehicles being destroyed. I've attached a track to see if it helps, but I just can't take out that many helo's from a cold start. Any help is appreciated! Up to mission 4, I've found the campaign very good, keep up the good work! LastMissionTrack.trk

Haha, great series of photos there Viper! A couple of things I do when scouting out an area in addition to what's been mentioned... 1. If you have a wingman, send him in for a recce. That way, if he does take fire, you can usually spot it and take it out 2. Gain a bit of altitude. Obviously this depends on the threats around, but if it's safe, I find it easier to spot targets if I'm flying high. I used to get taken out by MBT main gun rounds quite a bit, now I keep my distance and don't have so many problems. Also, if you fly so that you present the tank with a tracking target, you'll be less likely to get hit if a tank does fire at you.

Hi all, I thought I'd share some of the photos from a recent trip to the RAAF museum at Bull Creek in Perth, Western Australia. There isn't a lot of modern stuff there (I've told them to start pestering the air force for an F-111, due for retirement soon!), but there are quite a few nice vintage airframes, along with a lot of other material. For me, the highlight was the Arvo Lancaster, along with the Catalina. If you are ever in Perth, it's well worth taking a look. Photos can be found here: The museum's site is here: http://www.raafawa.org.au/ Hope you enjoy!

Great video! Nice editing, some neat camera angles and shots, as well as a good soundtrack! Even the terrain was a good choice :thumbup: P.S. I like the skin for the Ka-50

Done and done, easily the best. Good luck ED :thumbup:

I wasn't able to replicate your airspeed bug. For me, the HUD and ABRIS both display your ground speed, while the cockpit gauge and the shkval show my indicated air speed. At sea level they are the same, but when I climb the IAS drops off compared to the ground speed values (just as you would expect). Perhaps there is an option in the realism/difficulty menu that may be affecting it? If not then it sounds like something is bugged, but I am not able to replicate it.

Top notch video mate, thanks for sharing! :thumbup:

It may also be your antivirus software. I have Norton AV on my laptop, which doesn't let me view YouTube videos. It gives the same error message you're encountering, so you might have a similar problem. Try and access it with your AV turned off if you can't get it working (don't forget to switch it back on!:)).

Having read a few reviews about Nvidia's new 3D set-up, I'm extremely temped to head down this path. Everyone that uses them is impressed with the immersion it adds. This could be the next big thing for flight sims in general, and particularly Black Shark where so much time is spent at low altitudes. I hope that the problem with the HUD is fixable.

Thanks for the heads-up. These are a good read, especially for people new to the sim and are well written in easy to understand terms. Looking forward to the next couple of articles.

Really nice job on the trainer, very well done!

Damn, AlphaOne Six, you are a goldmine! Always interesting to read your posts. In my experience, there is no INU drift in the current sim and updating seems to make no difference. It is 100% accurate no matter how far you fly or what you do. I still perform updates just to increase the immersion, and I hope that INU drift is implemented in a patch.

Thanks mate, looks very nice with only a very small performance hit. Good stuff :thumbup:

When a Hind is lining you up, you'll usually get a laser warning as he'll paint you to get your range so watch your laser warning receiver. If you have a laser warning in your upper hemisphere or even level, good chance it's a helo painting you. Your best chance to spot them is to stay very low and watch the horizon, as they're easier to spot against the sky than the ground. The first few times I got downed by Hinds I saw the laser warning going off, but I was scanning the ground think "Gee, it looks clear...", before getting smashed by the Hind because I didn't check the sky...:doh:. Listen to your wingman calls too, if they call out a bandit send them to attack it. If you are in guns range for a Hind then he's probably got the jump on you and you are in a bad position and your best bet is to go guns (HE shells) against him, Vikhrs aren't good at close range. I find lots of side slip helps, use the helmet mounted sight with the Skhval at low mag. to pick him up. If you can spot him early, best to go at him with Vikhrs. I find the easiest way to take on helo's with Vikhrs is to auto turn-to-target and set your missles for A-to-A, with head-on fusing if appropriate, then send a few down range. Auto-hover is handy too if you are in a position that's safe. The best advice I got for engaging helo's was on the 159th server, the guys there were very helpful. It might be an idea to set up a mission in the editor where you practice engaging enemy helo's for practice. Something nice and big like Chinooks are a good start.

You might also consider using a voice command program like Shoot! or VAC. Personally I only use them for radio commands, as using it for switches ruins the immersion for me. There is an example of using it for various cockpit functions here

Looking at the A-10 pic, if I close my good eye, take off my glasses and squint a bit, I think I can see an AH-64 hiding behind a tree on the left....is that a hint about the next module? :)

Thanks ED! Patch installation was very smooth for me. I was a little concerned about the new trimmer implementation, but the new system is a big improvement. Much more intuitive for non-FFB sticks and should be easier for newer pilots to come to terms with :thumbup:

I've got a Q6600 and an 8800 and I did some benchmarking while messing around with cpu overclocking in Black Shark using fraps and a mission track (which had a lot going on). Running on Vista using the affinity trick at 1680 x 1050 I found no difference at all in frame rate between the stock cpu speed of 2.4 up to 3.0, so like Arclight, I'd say I'm limited by my graphics card. I'm just thinking that with the res you're pumping out, you might be better off going with a MB upgrade and getting another card and running in SLI?

I think the AI in one seat would be a massive problem to overcome for any two seater design in a sim to the standard of black shark and I really can't see any two seaters being brought into DCS soon. As for multiplayer, it would be a blast playing with friends or people of similar skill, but being paired with someone who is of a very different skill level (i.e. ace pilot with a gunner who doesn't know where the master arm switch is) would be a problem too, just take a look at the range of skill levels on some of the DCS: Black Shark servers. There seems to be a lot of speculation about the Apache, but unless I've missed it, I've never seen any anouncements from ED regarding what will be coming after the A-10. Although there were some nice screenshots of an Apache cockpit model..... Kamov had some input in the Black Shark sim, and ED were contracted to produce an A-10 sim for the US military, so they have access to a lot of info for these aircraft. I'm not sure if they'd have the same kind of info available for the Apache, or a lot of other aircraft for that matter. As for advanced systems, if we see an Apache, I'm pretty sure it won't be the AH-64D Longbow, as a lot of the bells and whistles on it would be classified. ED have said they aren't keen on making guesses when modelling the systems of the aircraft. If we ever see an Apache I reckon it'll be the less advanced AH-64 A version.

Hi Timm, sounds like you are doing things correctly. Maybe check that the yaw autopilot channel is enabled. I know some people prefer to fly with it off, but if it's off then the helo won't turn to the target. Also maybe check your rudder is trim/input is pretty close to neutral so the AP doesn't have to try and turn against it. It might be wind too, if it's very windy the shark might not turn itself. Hope that helps!

I have a bad habit of forgetting to switch off the APU after start-up, but I usually catch on after a minute or two in the air. Also leaving the cockpit light on and wondering why my NVG's are so crap...:music_whistling: During one of my first campaign missions I see a juicy line of bmp's and tanks, I'm in a great position and I let them have it. After using up all my vikhrs and feeling very pleased with myself, I ended the mission expecting a medal or promotion, only to find out I had wasted the column I was supposed to support...I now pay a bit more attention to mission briefs.

There's a couple of vids on youtube of people flying the funnel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt1_5W6SO6o and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVMc8yZH9K0. My understanding is that you fly with a lot of side slip and pitch the nose down, keeping you weapons on the target in front of you. The side slip helps make you a hard target for small arms fire, but allows you to fire continuously. I haven't found it much use as I think it's better to range the target and hit it from afar, but it gets a 9/10 for the cool factor. Apparently this move isn't as effective in a conventional tail rotor helo, as they can't side slip as quickly. Not sure if that's the case though, someone here will know more about it than me. Edit: EtherealN beat me to it!

DCS Max can be found at http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=39261. Launching Black Shark using DCS Max will set the program to run on what cores you specify (go for as many cores as your cpu has), along with a few other useful functions. It gives a nice little performance boost for vista machines, but doesn't do much if you're running xp. If you don't want to use DCS Max (although I like it a lot!), you can alt-tab out and set the core affinities manually in task manager. As for the campaign, I've been playing it on a vista machine with lower specs than yours, and it's fine. It's a nice set of missions, I can recommend it :thumbup: Edit: Another 3rd party piece of software that I highly recommend is TacView. It's an ACMI tool that allows you to review your flight, really good for learning from your mistakes. Take a look here http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=36883.

Just received my copy today! Was securely packaged and delivery was prompt. Looks really good! Edit: Ok, just had to say I'm really impressed with the printed manual. The quality is very good and there's quite a bit more in here than the pdf that comes bundled with the game. Well worth splashing out for it if you can afford it.