VC

Just checked and the manual doesn't have a detailed description of the Mach indicator. Why does it have two needles, one narrower than the other? Which one should I be reading in what situations?

Do you use AB on take-off? I find with the Mig-29 there's a very narrow window where you need to rotate quite quickly at 250km/h otherwise you accelerate so fast you blow the tyres. So I stopped using AB to give me more time to rotate and lift off, but maybe I'm doing something else wrong.

Wohoo, this is fun :) I'm not sure what actual AoA I achieved, but the fuselage was definitely at 90 degrees to the horizon. It's all more sudden than the Su-33, and it recovers much quicker and without input, rather than "hanging" for a bit at the extreme AoA. Just a note, Damper off doesn't seem to be required to cobra. Only stick deflection limiter override. Having said that, it's also a hoot to fly with Damper off! The other thing I notice about this plane is that the rudder authority is something else. You can almost sideslip-cobra!

Thank you! I thought it might be something like that but good to get the details of the procedure. I don't mind watching the engine spool up then pressing another button, not like I'm doing anything else at that point in time. So then the Su-25T and Su-33 (only other planes I've flown) must have 2 APUs to allow simultaneous engine start up?

Silly question, but is it a realistic feature of the Mig-29 that you can't start the second engine until the first has completely finished starting up? Doesn't matter if I start left or right first, the button to start the other won't do anything until first one is idling. On the Su-33 you can start the second engine at any time during the start up of the first, or fire up both at the same time.

Are you sure you're disabling the right stuff? I haven't tried it yet because I only recently read about it myself, but as well as the damper there is a stick deflection limiter. This isn't a toggle, you need to hold a button down (default Y) for as long as you want it disabled. That might let you do what you're trying to do.

This is fine, but I release the stick and the nose doesn't pitch up. I know there's another post much more recently in that thread about trim taking up the available travel of the stabiliser, but as far as I'm aware I wasn't trimmed or on autopilot. Edit: looks like yo-yo was talking about low altitude, I wasn't low. Edit 2: re-read and got the explanation on page 15 of the main FM thread.

Is the pitch "kicker" the cause of the nose bouncing around a turn? E.g. if I hold the stick hard back I get a very fast instantaneous turn, followed by a pause, then hard turn resumes, repeat. Also, are either of these functions restricting pitching down? It seems once you go above ~1,000 km/h IAS you can hold the stick all the way forward and the plane barely reacts, you can just about get it into a slow dive after holding the stick forward for a dozen seconds. I assume this is a feature but I want to understand better what's going on.

I think it's called "starting brake" in game and is a max pressure brake (2x what you get from full normal wheel brake I believe). It should be able to hold the plane from rolling even on full AB. I assume it's for short take-off. I haven't mapped it on the Mig-29 because I don't see the point, but I use it all the time on the Su-33 for carrier take-off.

So I messed with my page file and managed to get rid of most of the lag :) looking forward to playing more on this server. I know not all aircraft are available on the Caucasus map, but how come blue side don't get a MiG-29G? There are already few other types available to both sides, it would be nice to include it.

I set a new "record", radar altimeter didn't go below 20m during the take-off in this mission. Definitely do-able, definitely not broken. :thumbup: I have done a lot of reading and improved my radar handling. I've now graduated from being blasted by AMRAAMs to being blasted by Sidewinders because it's dark by the time we merge and I have 0 chance of seeing them. As for lock, when they're closing set the radar to High PRF and pester the AWACS for "picture" to tune your settings to pick them up. I fly in about 7000m, that puts me usually 2000m above them, radar 2km down at 50km expected range. Usually I pick them up about here, which is well outside missile range and gives me plenty of time to order my wingman to do a pincer and attack their lead while I go the opposite direction and focus on the second. ECM on also helps. From there, I can reliably get 2x 27ERs in the air and beam them to not get hit by any 120s. Unfortunately though they dodge the 27s easily and eventually we merge and I get taken out, because it's pitch black!!! Oh well, more practice required.:joystick:

Sorry for double post, but just wanted to say thanks Mustang for the advice! It worked, with 32GB on the pagefile I managed to fly a decent length sortie on BuddySpike. I got taken out quite easily, but one step at a time. Still a little bit of stutter here and there, especially when opening the map, but never more than a minor nuisance.

That makes sense and is precisely why I would want to own it: to be able to fly on typical NATO/western coalitions without having to own an actual western built plane, as none of those modules tempt me at the moment, but the Mig-29 does.

I haven't bought it yet, I'm asking to inform my potential purchase decision :) but I will take that as a yes.

Silly additional question, 29G included in the pack as well? (Forgot about that one earlier)

Ooh,very nice!

Does it include the A model, S model, or both?

I assume I need to first move DCS onto the SSD for this to work? Edit: sorry, was being thick. Did some reading about page files and how to set them up, will give this a go. Thanks for the tip!

So then it seems I can't play these popular servers with large MP missions without a pretty major system upgrade :( Is this likely to be better on smaller public servers? As I said I get it when playing with friends on their server but it goes away after everyone joined and mission is set up. Guess it only happens when someone connects and/Or a new unit spawns, am I right?

Right, so basically I can't play this server without a pretty major system upgrade :(

If DCS does that though, why does it run fine all the time in SP, even quite big missions, but siezes up intermittently in MP only? I'm not sure upgrading existing storage is an option for me at the moment. I have a pre-built "slim case" PC so I have no idea what's inside or to what extent there is room to upgrade, probably very little and it would be a pain and a risk to take apart. I might just be able to squeeze DCS onto the SSD with the OS, if I spend some time uninstalling and/or moving other clutter on there. Might not be worth the hassle though. External SSD is an interesting option, but then won't that be bottlenecked by USB speed?

Yup, just worked out via another thread that this is an issue. I have an SSD but it's small and only runs my OS, not enough spare space for DCS. My main storage for personal files and games is HDD. It's still weird though, that I have no issues in SP, even quite big missions, but something about MP kills it. I can understand the game is demanding, but then it should run badly all the time. If there's a specific MP process that triggers this kind of overload, to me that says that process is badly implemented or at least poorly optimised.

Intel i7-4790 3.6 GHz nVidia GTX 970 12 GB RAM Usually the bottleneck for games is either processor or graphics card, but as I said I have no problem with frame rates normally in SP or in MP between these blips.

12GB RAM and I don't have an SSD. Well, I do, but it's a small one that just runs my OS, separate HDD for everything else. Is there a point in trying to increase the pagefile anyway?

I feel I've reached a level of confidence with DCS where I want to dip my toes into PvP, but so far the experience is bordering on unplayable. At various times I've tried connecting to 104th and BuddySpike but the result is often a game crash before I even get to select a plane. Once I waited 5+ minutes and made sure not to do anything while waiting, and managed to get into BuddySpike. Now, I wouldn't mind the load times that much, but once in game I get regular drops to 1 to 2 FPS for 30s to a minute at a time. Completely random, completely smooth in between. This happens also when I play with friends on a small private server and they say it's when someone connects. Now, with half a dozen of us, once we're all in it's smooth, but on a public server there are people randomly joining all the time. Can anyone confirm the reason for these intermittent frame rate drops and if there's anything I can do about them from my end?