VC

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?

You learn something new every day, thanks for the quick replies guys! :) Now, there's still this lag issue. I don't mind taking 5 to 10 minutes to connect and be able to spawn, but dropping to 1 FPS every couple of minutes for a minute or more is not fun. I gather this is a general MP problem, not specific to this server, but is there anything I can do to improve the situation?

Hi, I joined the server last night for the first time, apologies if I annoyed anyone by starting up, taxiing and exiting on the taxiway but it took me ages to even connect and then I was getting unplayable lag spikes (whole other issue). Anyway, that's not why I'm posting. I noticed when I spawned an announcement about banned weapons. Now, I agree with this, and I agree the "E" versions of the R-27 should also be banned if AMRAAM is, as they would outclass the AIM-7. But, I only own the Su-33, and there are no loadouts for it (other than ground attack) that don't use banned weapons. All the air superiority loadouts have 6* R-27ER. Is there a way to swap them for basic "R"s? If not, how am I supposed to load this aircraft to comply with the rules? Thanks!

Just wanted to revisit this as I played the mission a couple more times last night. I think the biggest mistake to make in a heavy loaded carrier take-off is to let the nose drop because you're afraid to stall. You won't, the flight computer won't let you. Trust the thrust, you have tons of it. Stick back slightly as you go up the ramp, hold the nose above the horizon after you come off, stick all the way back as it tries to drop and the speed warning comes on, hold it through the shake... And you're off! As I said, did it a couple of times again, radar altimeter didn't even drop into single figures.

Take-off can be tricky, this is the first time I ended up in the sea but that was on my 3rd try as I was being sloppy. Proper procedure you take-off fine, although the darkness is disorienting and quite scary! I have a different problem with this mission. I can't seem to get those damned F-16s on my radar. I can see them in datalink and use "bogey dope" to get range and relative altitude to set up my radar beam right on them, but often I can't get them on scope and even when I do, I fire a few 27ERs that don't do anything, and then I lose the lock (or die). If I lead the attack, I get taken out by a 120. If I order my wingman in, he takes some of them down but eventually goes, leaving me 1v2 against the second wave and again, I'm flying around desperately trying to get a radar lock on them. Once merged it's hopeless. WVR in those light conditions against AI that knows where you are... yeah. Any tips?

Hmm, my inlet grilles are always deployed by default and I have to remember to get rid of them. Flaps I'm pretty sure have 3 settings, although "half" might be the wrong terminology. There are definitely separate key bindings for "down" and "landing", what I meant by half is don't use the landing setting. They seem to be mostly automatic though so maybe I'm wrong on that. I assume then that the Sea Dragon campaign missions have the ship travelling faster and/or into more wind. As I said, I can take-off fine in campaign with full external stores and 80% fuel, from the No.1 short ramp. It's a bit scary as you dip way below the deck and skim the sea, but if you just hold the attitude she soars eventually. I did a landing last night where I think I got snagged on the cable as described. Initially couldn't taxi straight ahead without being pulled back, but a bit of max nosewheel right wiggled me out of it. The only issue I have with landings is that after I stop, the wire pulls my tail down and I end up sitting on the tailboom for a bit, nosewheel in the air. Doesn't seem to cause any damage though.

The normal "W" wheel brakes won't hold the plane while you build up the thrust required for take-off. You need LShift + W for "Wheel brake start" which is a binary on/off max pressure brake, higher than what you can achieve via your pedals. Inlet grids is indeed LAlt + I. Indicator for them is on the flaps/gear status panel. They are the lights ABOVE the wings. You want them off. You can also see them move up and down across your air intakes in external view. They're there to prevent foreign object ingestion to the engines, but they eat about 10% of available take-off power which is obviously unacceptable on a CV take-off. Emergency afterburner is LShift + E. You can only activate this after the normal afterburners are already on (full throttle), and you get an additional green light displaying under the engine temperature gauges to show this is on. The Instant Actions "take-off" mission has you spawn in an unarmed plane about 30% fuel. Practice there first then build up the load. That state you should be able to do even without emergency burners. As for the arrestor wire, hopefully someone else will chime in as I'm stumped. I'm hoping to learn too, in case this happens to me!

How do you know the wire is attached, external view? What happens if you move with the wire "attached"? I'm thinking it might be visual only, unless you've tried to move and got snagged? When I land, I usually end up rolling backwards slightly due to the force of being stopped. Maybe I've just always got lucky and this has made the wire fall off the hook.

I don't think you need to manually disconnect the wire. I've definitely taxied around deck after landing, hook still down, and nothing bad happened. For launch, it's all thrust and it is enough, but you need the ship to be moving (it is in the instant action and campaign missions), and you need to follow a set procedure: - retract engine inlet grilles, they eat power - flaps half - hold the starting brake (it's a separate control to your normal wheel brake) - throttle to full RPM no afterburner, hold it there on the brakes a couple of seconds to let the engines spool up - full throttle/afterburner, brakes won't hold so be quick for next steps - release brakes - activate emergency afterburner (separate button) - as soon as you clear the ramp, gear up ASAP - hold the nose HIGH, same angle as you left the ramp, maybe a bit higher. You will sink, but all being well, you'll get enough airspeed to keep flying before your tail hits the sea. All that works full missile load 80% fuel. Good luck!

I thought about that, I use the small throttle rotary for MFD display range, and the joystick base slider for expected target range. In the end I compromised and put radar elevation and side slew on a HAT switch. Also not ideal as each press increases elevation by 1 click, and I have to press multiple times rather than just holding to increased releasing when I get the desired value. I might swap them around if it turns out I use one more than the other though. It's quite annoying that there is a hidden layer that controls and limits how these axes can be assigned. It might not be realistic from one aircraft to another, but wouldn't it be better to give the user full control over this to make each axis behave how they want? The "axis tune" panel is very limited.

Sorry, no UH-1 here, just a Su-33 at the moment! I think you misunderstood my question. I'm not confusing what TDC does with radar antenna position. I only mention TDC because it works differently. I'm just asking why axis assign for TDC makes the axis work incrementally, while for radar vertical it's absolute, and whether I can change that to make radar vertical work incrementally too.

I must admit I didn't try leaving it static and just looking at buttons directly, mostly because it sounded quite un-natural. It's something I could try. I'm sure I could get used to it, as one can get used to most things. But at the moment I don't have to. I only own a FC3 level module. The reason this topic came up is because I was trying the free Hornet and this was off-putting enough that it counted as a serious point against me buying it, or any other full module for that matter. That's why I asked if it's something that might be developed in the future.

I recently got a Thrustmaster TWCS and was looking forward to getting as much out of it as possible, but I've hit a snag with mappings. I have the mini-stick on the front of the throttle set up to control the TDC. So far so good, this works exactly as I expect. Push stick, TDC moves in the specified direction; release stick, TDC stops moving. Now I want to control the radar vertical too. I notice this also has an axis, so I assign it to one of the directions on the same mini-stick (with a modifier). I go for a test flight, push the axis, radar goes to max elevation; release the stick, radar elevation resets to zero. Hmm... that's basically unusable! :cry: Am I doing something wrong? Is it possible to make this axis behave in a relative input way the same as the TDC does? Thanks!

Hi all, first post but been playing the game for a little while now, and flight sims generally for much longer. Since I fly in VR with an HTC Vive, I figured click-cockpits would be a very natural fit. However, something about the implementation is lacking and it's a real shame because at the moment I feel it makes clicking not viable for me. I don't know if this is a Vive specific issue or all headsets. Anyway, the issue is with the cursor tracking the head. Yes, I have ticked "use mouse" and I can use my mouse to move the cursor independently to where my head is pointing. BUT, the cursor position is still relative to my point of view. That means it wiggles constantly, because my head is not perfectly still, and if I slightly glance one way, I need to use the mouse to "fight" the cursor to keep it on the same button. It tracks the mouse, but it still tracks my head in addition to the mouse. Really, what I expected is that the cursor would be fixed relative to the cockpit and completely independent of my head movements. I've had a search and as far as I can tell there is no way around this. Is this something that is being worked on and ever likely to get implemented in a better way? Thanks!