VC

Yes, DCS settings, Special tab, F-14. There's a drop-down for PTT behaviour. Pick the second option.

Not if you change the behaviour from the "Special" tab to "Open menu: radio menu followed by PTT... "

You know what, I have never played the game outside of VR. I had VR before I got into DCS. I've booted it a few times 2D to set up controls, test things, but my graphics settings are tuned to VR and it's not even full screen, never flown an actual mission in 2D. EDIT: I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I did a quick test flying the same test mission on screen, just changed resolution to my full screen (2560 x 1440) without changing any other settings. The pixel for the enemy aircraft renders at about 8-9 nm with no zoom, but due to the high resolution of the display the pixel is tiny, so the target is not clearly visible until about 7nm anyway. Tried again in 1920 x 1080, same result. So you're right, it's DCS not VR. I feel a lot better now! Still, there are people saying they can see a lot further than that. I wonder how...

Thanks for the replies, a variety of sometimes contradictory experience, to be expected. Well, I guess in a merge you know roughly where to look but not exactly, and even with the VR zoom the FoV is too restrictive to find someone unless they're already locked. I'd like to be able to just look and see but if Zoom is the answer then I'll practice with that a bit more. Do you mean seeing a fighter at 7nm is realistic? I would tend to agree, but it still feels like I can't see other people who seem to see me fine. Might be lack of practice. Definitely had a flight with a squadmate where he could see the enemy and I couldn't despite him giving very exact calls for where I should look. Maybe screen spotting is unrealistically good? Wow, OK that's scary. Is that without zoom though? No VR zoom. Yeah sure you can zoom but as I said above you don't always know where they are exactly enough for that to work. I have exactly the same thing with targets visible zoomed but disappearing zoomed out, but to me normal view is more important because you need to scan a lot of sky fast sometimes and you lose perspective and SA when zoomed in.

I got a new PC recently, i5-9600k, rtx 2080, 32GB RAM, SSD. My headset is the Vive. I was looking to spend a lot more time in DCS, especially MP (previous rig was holding me back and the latter was almost unplayable). I flew out on BuddySpike Caucasus last night and I felt basically blind when it came to going from BVR to WVR. I know this is a topic that has been discussed a lot but for me, not to a satisfactory conclusion, especially not for MP where the mod that helps fails IC. And a lot of the threads are old and info may be outdated. I've read the threads, watched the YouTube videos and optimised my settings as best I can, but I still want to reopen the discussion. Anyway, I did some testing, and it turns out I basically can't see a fighter sized target beyond 7 nautical miles regardless of settings. Not I as the human can't see it, it physically doesn't render. PD anywhere from 1.0 to 1.6, knowing exactly where to look (target radar locked), clear sky behind the target, staring at the diamond... and the dot in the middle doesn't appear until 7 miles away at best, 4 miles away at worst. Despite everything I've read, PD 1.0 was actually far worse than PD 1.5 for spotting. So I want to ask, is this normal? Is this what other VR users simply get used to and try to work around? How far away can you spot a fighter in VR? How big a disadvantage are you actually at compared to someone on a screen?

Doesn't he just do that by default without being told to?

Yeah I noticed I have one of these dupe issues, not in the F-14 but in the Su-33. I repaired (for a different reason) but it's still broken. Fortunately it's a minor function I don't really care about, but it's worrying. Hope it gets patched.

If you use Auto for chaff then Jester isn't chaffing, the RWR is initiating the program automatically based on some parameters (presumably hard lock). Of course that's a perfectly valid way to use it, but doesn't really answer the question of whether Jester uses Chaff when it's set to "MAN".

Training video also says something about staying below 500 feet until 7 miles clear of the boat. Doesn't a full AB climb off the shoot kind of fly in the face of that? I usually have the opposite problem, after the initial jolt and pull-up to not end up in the sea, I have to keep the nose down otherwise I'm at 1,000 feet before I've finished clicking the landing gear handle. Without AB.

Not implemented yet, you need to bind something on your HOTAS to do it.

Ah, good to know. So 60/0 is standard for the ALE-39 rack because there are chaff elsewhere. That makes sense now, I thought default load was no chaff! Still, I'm not sure I've actually seen chaff being dispensed when I press the DLC. Need to test more, maybe the wing pylons aren't chaff capable in some missions?

If you give him control of flares, then the pilot CM release button should default to chaff without you doing anything else. Do you actually have chaff loaded on the plane? Most missions it seems have default loadout 60 flare 0 chaff.

I'm also pretty sure I'm not ham-fistedly snappig the stick back. I usually get wing snap when I'm gently tightening a pull-out from a dive. Yes I'm going fast, but I'm putting the G on gradually and not blacking out, then suddenly lose a wing without warning. I'll try to do some actual testing and look at the G-meter when it happens.

If it's purely G based then it's really inconsistent. Why sometimes can I black out but the wings stay on, while other times wings snap long before blackout? There has to be more to it than that because right now I have no confidence regarding how hard I can pull the stick. Also I feel wings snap much more when swept, which feels backwards, surely that's when the moment arm to snap them is smallest!

So they implemented the blink? I asked about it not long after release and was told it wasn't there yet, and I didn't see it in the patch notes.

I've been messing around using existing mods to get a clean ASP leather pad (not the default piece of paper stuck to it). I also tried my own hand at modifying the texture file to make the leather pad brown instead of black. Unfortunately, it seems once on the plane it comes out really dark, near-black, no matter what I do to it. Any ideas why this might be and how to work around it?

I'm happy in that case, waiting to see what they tweak. Would be nice for the tone to be gradual not sudden.

I get the larger scan area but it comes at the price of potentially missing a lock if e.g. the target just passes through the top of the scan area but the seeker is at the bottom at that moment. If you use boresight, point ADL at target, tone, uncage, won't the seeker also follow the target then?

Which is what I do anyway since it makes a lot of sense. When and why would you use SEAM alone then? Honestly if my radar was down I'd rather switch to boresight than play the "scan lottery" that SEAM feels like.

How do you use this mode? Even when you could see the pattern, I found it very hard to get a lock because it moved so slowly I couldn't keep the enemy still in my sights long enough for the cursor to find him. Now I don't even have a visual guide, am I supposed to just point my nose in the general direction of the enemy and sit on his 6 until I get a tone with twitch-reaction on the ucage button to lock him up?

I had this issue a while ago but then it stopped happening. I only use Auto-start, after that I flick all the weapon switches, then ASP net and pipper come on fine. Maybe you're breaking it by turning the engine on with ASP already on?

OK that makes sense now. I've mapped it as per the pictures, but haven't tried it "live" yet. My only concern now is that I need to re-map SRS whenever I swtich to/from the F-14, because the HAT on the throttle that has all the F-14 PTTs does completely different things on my other planes. Does this not work then if you don't map the functions to radios in SRS? I thought the point of the integration was to not have to do that.

I got it all worked out now :) Did a thorough review of the files using the defaults (now I know where they are) and found a few that I renamed wrong. That fixed the rectangles! I also found and disabled the file that was causing the instrument lights to look weird. It seems to be a collection of needles for the dials but they don't look bad without it so... meh. Good idea, I've sent the relevant permission messages! Thanks again for your help! I've learned a lot and got a taste for it. Might download GIMP and see if I can do more.

Not sure I follow the SRS setup. SRS can't map separate PTT for Radio 1 and Radio 2, there's just one PTT button and buttons to change radios. Do you mean map those?

Yes it is 124 in the ME but I'm pretty sure I tried that because I tried using both radios and the RIO radio is on 124 by default, and that also didn't work (will try again in case I'm remembering wrong). Also, that's kind of annoying that you have to go to ME before you fly a mission to check what frequency your wingmen are on.