wowbagger

The black screen behind the briefing window is a new DCS thing, not F-14 specific.

The manual is not so bad if you follow the flow around the cockpit. Granted it's better for reading a lot at one sitting than it is for looking up a single item as a reference. I really like the greyed out surrounding backgrounds to help focus attention on the dial/gauge/button in question - similar to some of the tutorial videos.

Yes, this was my impression of the manual too. It's extremely well produced with great photos and diagrams and is brilliant for explaining how the aircraft is designed and functions, but quite noticeably lacking in actual user procedures .."and here are the steps to do X". This absolute beauty of a module deserves to eventually get an equally great manual so we can all make the most of it.

Yep. I completely agree. It isn't just the Tomcat, several other modules suffer from this - information overload and strange pacing. Some screens say virtually nothing and then tell you to "press space to continue". And then it gives you far too much information to digest and too many tasks to understand in a wall of text ... "press space to continue". It wouldn't be such a problem except for DCS 's inability to keep the text onscreen for more than 6 minutes (or 8 minutes, or whatever it is). It makes it impossible to consult the manual and find your bearings while doing the tutorials. Small, individually pieced tasks along with a clear instruction as to what this button does and why it is important .... "press space to continue", would make the learning process more enjoyable and more efficient. Also the big throbbing orange indicator often blocks the labels making it impossible to see what you are actually clicking. It needs some more alpha or a different design.

I've noticed the missing canopy when using the F2 view as well.

The cockpit is fantastic. I keep wanting to clean my monitor only to realize the smudges are in game. :doh:

Yep, I feel for you man. I've lived in places where that would have been an unheard of fast connection speed. It was painful.:cry: Just lucky to have decent internet for a few years at the moment. Don't worry, the game is rubbish anyway...;). No it's really really not!

It's happened!

woohoo!

You are only seeing this from your own online, multiplayer point of view. Many more people never play online at all. I agree that servers should have a balanced playing field. But I don't agree that the options available for the module itself need to cater to those requirements. That's what server settings are for. You play it your way, they play it their way. You never have to know about how they play.

This is exactly the point. If you can make the game as accessible to as many people as possible using lots of options - such as instant alignment, hot starts, auto starts, etc - then you keep people playing. And more importantly you keep them buying. I hear people saying that game options should be removed, that instant alignment shouldn't be allowed (because it ruins the online gameplay), that auto-start shouldn't exist. But I also hear 'maps should be free for online players, only single players should have to purchase them.' There is a problem with that logic. Lots of single players stay offline because they only have little chunks of time to play in, they must be able to press pause to deal with real life, or simply want to play the game the way they enjoy it. If you (I don't mean you personally Eldur) want to force everyone to play the way you do, be prepared to support the developers by yourself. Since servers can control these options anyway, I never understand the people who rail against the 'game aspects' of this video game. The more people who play, the better it can become. If you want to pretend in your own mind to be some kind of elitist, hardcore desktop ace, that's fine, but don't try to prevent others from playing a different way. If you want to ignore the folks who play for 30 minutes at a sitting, who hit pause 45 times during a single mission, and who don't go full bore hard-core every time they boot up, say goodbye to their wallets too. If I had to guess, I would bet there are far more casual (and quiet) folks playing DCS than hard-core vocal ones. This is why there is an options page and why there are server settings. Let everyone enjoy the game the way they like without trying to belittle or condescend. It's just a video game after all. /rant off Now bring on the Tomcat! And it's auto-start, quick alignment, AI-Rio, photon torpedoes, pause button, and beer holder. ;)

Spoken like someone without children ... or at least my children. :cry_2: :D

I'm in exactly the same position. DCS is fun but learning a new module takes long enough and comes with enough frustrations that, for me, it doesn't seem worth spending an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours trying to do something only to eventually learn that it isn't modeled correctly yet. Perhaps if there is a precise, regularly updated list of what works, and what doesn't I would be more inclined to dive into learning the Harrier. But in the current situation there are better ways to spend my limited DCS time. I'm looking forwards to the time when this one is polished and working well - the little time I have spent messing about with it was very fun.

Great, thank you. PM sent. To clarify, I believe rrohde was suggesting that the engineering lads were, at the time, neck deep in getting the next batch of Gunfighters ready to ship while simultaneously finishing up the Kosmosima. This was the reason to expect a bit of a wait. Also I have been using the older model Black Box which came with my pedals and seems to work with the Gunfighter + MCG P (just the lights don't behave as they should according to the manual). So it's not like haven't been able to use my Gunfighter this whole time.

I checked the North America store, once a day, almost every weekday, for about 5 months. I finally had success on the morning before Christmas. I knew that by the time the mailing list email arrived in my inbox, they would be have sold out again. Surprisingly, however, there was stock available in that store for quite few more hours/days than I expected after I submitted my order.

What's the best email to use? The black box that came with my Gunfighter Pro was faulty when I received it. I have support ticket which is almost two months old but hasn't seen any reply. I was warned by rrohde that the engineers can take a very long time to reply to such things. I would love to get this sorted before moving (to a different continent) this summer after which matters of support might become more complicated. Cheers

Thanks, I'm looking forward to it now. I've always been put off it by what is likely a misconception that you spend most of your time trundling around in great, slow circles, head down staring at computer screens, like some kind of heavily armed, hi-tech, overweight vulture. I'm not really into the button pressing aspect of DCS. But I like BD's mirage campaign so much that I've already bought EW3 as well as Piercing Fury.. and I think even the Red Flag campaign - hoping that owning these campaigns would spur me on to learn how to use the damn thing. Last week I started mapping my controls and messing about a little bit. But with this confirmation that the first half of Operation Iron Flag is still happening and the teased model updates I think I will wait it out until one or both of those are ready to go. 'Sides ... 8 days till the Tomcat :music_whistling: which should keep us occupied until Iron Flag is ready to go. (Is it still going to be called Operation Iron Flag, by the way?)

Awesome. This will be what finally (after years of owning it) gets me to bother learning the A-10C.

Excellent. Can't wait for tutorial videos to start popping up all over. On that note, would it be possible to have a stickied thread just for listing official and unofficial F-14 tutorial videos (maybe ask people to refrain from comments and questions in that thread)? Or perhaps one for official HB sponsored videos and another in which anyone can post links to tutorials? It would be lovely to a one-stop reference source. Cheers

Thanks Andre. My apologies - we had a big wind storm here yesterday and my internet connection was not working for the last day. I will send you a private message to arrange this order. Thanks for all your help.

Thanks Andre, that sounds great! Do you mean hairy for the velco to attach to the seat cover? It's quite smooth, velcro will hold things in place, but weakly. The Jetseat straps could easily wrap behind the seat cushion and velcro strongly to the actually seat under the cushion. It's difficult to describe, but I don't think holding the Jetseat in place will be a problem at all.

Thanks Chic. rge75, you are correct, it's only when I'm in copilot and have the gunsight down. Your post made me realize the best way is to just use my autopilot button to toggle control when using the copilot gunsight. It's only one more button press and works well enough to toggle control on/off from that position too. Thanks much for your help. By the way, I really enjoy your helo videos - I watch them all the time. The cinematic ones are brilliant. cheers

Is there a way to prevent the autopilot from taking control when switching to the left side position other than disabling autopilot altogether? When I move to the left seat, my flight controls no longer affect the huey. If I switch back to the ride side pilot seat to make flight adjustments, and then switch again back to the left side, the AI has stowed the gunsight and I have to flip it down again everytime. I know I must be missing something here. Cheers

Hi, I'm looking for a little advice. I'd like to get one of Andre's Jetseats, however my seat is a bit small. I use the same rig for flightsims and race sims and both get about equal play time. So I am wondering which version would be best, both for fitting my seat, but also for maximizing the best tactile feedback for both game types; the JetSeat Race or the JetSeat FSE. my setup: It seems like the JetSeat Race would likely fit better. But how difficult would it be to make a notch for the centered joystick? It already just touches the seat at maximum backward deflection. Also would the JetSeat Race still provide accurate and appropriate feedback for flightsims? Thanks for any suggestions or guidance from anyone. Cheers