Moa

Actually, here's a list of helmets you can buy (if you have the cash) - although this list may be a little out of date now: http://www.stereo3d.com/hmd.htm

ralfidude, thanks for clarifying. However, my advice still stands. Instead of complaining why not create a server for others to use in your part of the world. With regards to taking something personally, what would you think if some random person came on a forum (with few other posts) and started complaining about your clan's server? Actually I didn't take it personally, I've never seen you on these forums before and you have few posts so its to be expected if you don't understand how many A-10C servers are set up - especially as I (correctly, it seems) guessed you were used to US-centric twitch-gaming (where people complain about pings over 20 ms). If one of the regulars had some disparaging remarks to say about the open servers then I might have been worried and defensive. So my response wasn't personal, but I do feel I have some right to defend my (and the Chinese) server from a disparaging remark made about them. My response was to point out that perhaps that post was looking at things the wrong way (from the [free] client perspective while forgetting about the server's perspective), and that there were at least two very simple things that could have been done rather than complain in a community you have just joined: * contribute by hosting yourself, or * join Teamspeak as everyone else does (and is explained numerous times earlier in this and related threads).

[quote=ralfidude;1321014 PS: At some point Im forced to join stallturn or the Chinese server... Ugh... 350 ping and above... :( And im playing in NYC. Though it doesnt seem to affect the gameplay much or at all. Just dont fly in formation with anyone... it wont end well. I run the stallturn servers (theres an FC2 one and an A-10C one too, besides the 104th+community pilot statistics), and they are located in New Zealand. Too bad no-one in NYC has made a server available to you (NYC is not the center of the universe dontcha know). Be grateful this is made available to you at all - it costs me a non-negligible amount of money to run each year. My low ping to the server is affected by the high pings and crappy connections of some people joining - but I don't complain about it, I let everyone join (apart from the serial teamkillers, who get banned) - even those in remote corners of the globe like NYC that are too backward to have their own servers (lurlz). 'Bad' ping is a relative thing, and from the server's point of view you are the bad client with the high ping, although a friend in VNAO from NYC never seems to have an issue. The high ping matters less than you'd think. Mostly what matters is the 'jitter', which is the variance in the ping. Plenty of people are able to join from all around the world and use the server ok if the connection at their end is also low and as reliable as stallturns. For formation flying the server ping has some impact but more important is the jitter in your connection and the guy you are flying next too - even if the server's connection is good if you have someone on lowly DSL/wireless/or worse next to you then you always have to be careful. If you don't like the ping why don't you purchase a server box and pay for the server bandwidth yourself (about 1 GB/day). That way you'll have low ping and be able to share with others so they all get low ping. Oh yeah, and you'll also be able to quit complaining about the servers that others provide to you for free because they don't meet your expectations. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you turn your nose up at the servers that people actually make available to you and think that the server is the problem when from the server's point of view it is your connection that is high. If you took the very simple step of joining Teamspeak you'd find many of the other closer password-protected servers would be made accessible to you.

Thanks for letting us know Chizh. As you well know, PNG can be much better than JPG for preserving image quality (at the expense of space, but who cares, hard drives are cheap).

Excellent work Speed.

I did notice the opposite thing on one BS2 mission. In Courier (fantastic mission by the way, I really enjoyed it) the mission event speech at start-up is Russian - although thank goodness the mission text is English. The Russian voice should probably be changed to English voice with Russian accent.

Interesting. Tk and his Strike Fighters series was able to make a common engine and add aircraft to it in a modular fashion, same with X-Plane etc. It ought to be possible, even though those sims are (mostly) far below the level of sophistication of the ED sims. Also do note that Strike Fighters 2 was not a free upgrade, although all the versions within series 1 were free upgrades. The Black Shark 2 situation has a similar level of change to the leap from Strike Fighters 1 to SF2. People paid for that and most were happy (although losing multiplayer sucked). If ED do have modular as a design goal then that work has to start in earnest *now*, it can't be retrofitted later (pain threshold will be too high). At the moment there are aspects of the sim that are not particularly modular (at least to the modders).

I think your problem is of "expectation". ED would like to be able to release these things as patches but the reality is that software development is so hard and they got so many new features in this *upgrade* that the development costs simply cannot be swallowed. How do I know this? besides being a software developer during the day I've also released a few mods for LockOn (and have a nice moving map for Flaming Cliffs 2 just about to go into beta testing with the 104th, before its public release; but this mod took much longer and was much harder than I first envisioned - it's usually like that with software and I'm sure ED also face the same thing when doing their enhancements too). Personally, I'm glad that ED are giving me the choice whether to enjoy Black Shark as it is (still perfectly functional) or pay a small amount and get an optional upgrade that vastly improves the experience. The glass is half full bro. Enjoy the fact you have some disposable income and disposable time (how many Somalis or Bengalis can afford to get these toys?). If you keep things in perspective you will feel lucky at having a choice to get this upgrade or not (and benefit from all the labour of the small ED team and associates) - I certainly do.

Thanks ED team and testers for the hard work. Also a big thanks to 159th_Viper, EtherealN, and Nate--IRL-- for your patience in answering all the questions (again and again) and working past all the gripes. One thing I'd like to say is please don't discount Alper22's criticicms. He and his 141st buddys have been working hard to try and mod a full F-16 into this sim and it's just frustration you are hearing. I've felt the same thing and nearly given up modding for this sim too, but have stayed with it. While DCS is far more community moddable than Falcon 4 BMS there are still plenty of improvements that could be done to improve the life of modders (and if you have been paying attention, or ask I'm sure you'll get a big list of *small* things that would make things a *lot* easier for us). I myself decided to get the full BlackShark 2 rather than just an upgrade. I hope some of the testers get a beer or two out of the extra money :) Another thing, without any forewarning of this product it is hard for some to plan purchases. Surely a little bit of marketing ahead of time would help sales (although a hint for the forum denizens: you would have notices the forums were offline for a little period some time ago, this always happens before a big release).

Sorry rattler, did not see your post until now. I dunno about sinking the carrier to the runway. Turns out the F-16 also has an arrestor cable for emergency landings too (and things like the A-4 had them too). Most ships cannot be placed on land (although you can place some right on the shoreline so that it looks like they're beached). I dunno if the ability to simulate this would compensate for the lost of the ability to use an actual carrier though.

Great stuff rattler. The VNAO mod renames the KAB-500Kr to GBU-12 and then the bomb works (although Russian aircraft are then toting GBU-12 instead of KAB-500Kr, but the bulk of VNAO doesn't even notice). SVK_Sniper added a (unreleased) mod to the VNAO mod for the AGM-88 HARM. Since the Hornet can fire the AGM-84A he replaced the AGM-84A with the AGM-88E. I then made an adjustment of the missile parameters so that it had the speed and warhead of the AGM-88E rather than the Harpoon. Several caveats, in order to fire the AGM-88E using this mod you need to make a lock using a TV weapon (eg. AGM-65K), then switch the radar on and the missile will guide. That means the HARM is limited to Maverick lock-on range (around 6-7 nm under good conditions), which is 10% of the HARM's real engagement range (plus the HARM can automatically lock and launch instead of the pilot doing it). Also, the AGM-88E replaces the AGM-84A, so you gain something but lose something else. Initially I also changed the seeker of the HARM to be anti-radiation only, which would mean the 'radar' lock would only hold on emitters. I found this to be too hard to use given the buggered lock range of the Maverick, the need to do target identification and the Hornet's high speed on attack. In the end I just let the HARM attack anything. I've made and tested the changes in the (as yet, unreleased) VNAO 2.0.1 mod. I was hoping to release this week but I've been working on a moving map for FC2 and Battlefield 3 has distracted me too. I hope to release this mod next week (basically I just need to make sure the Hornet rearm loadouts are all adjusted to have a HARM option). Meanwhile you can look at the existing VNAO mod for the GBU modification: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/en/VNAO_mods Hope this helps.

Flaming Cliffs 2 has the flexibility that any aircraft can have an arrestor hook modeled for landing (even if it is not shown on the model mesh). To do this you need to add entries to the aircraft's LUA in Scripts/Database/planes/<aircraft.lua> In particular you need to add one of two entries depending on whether you'd like to take-off and land from either a ski-ramp carrier like the Kuznetsov (or Ark Royal etc) or an arresting cable carrier like the Carl Vison. The ski-ramp entry is: TakeOffRWCategories = { [1] = { CLSID = "{498729D7-0504-43f4-9585-F906CFE3B508}", Name = "AircraftCarrier With Tramplin", }, -- end of [1] }, -- end of TakeOffRWCategories The arrestor-wire entry is: TakeOffRWCategories = { [1] = { CLSID = "{A899CB38-FECC-46ef-9F85-165779669F56}", Name = "AircraftCarrier With Catapult", }, -- end of [1] }, -- end of TakeOffRWCategories For some aircraft you can just use the VNAO mod. I'll digress from the arrestor cable topic here to describe this mod, as it may help you since it covers much of the same ground: The VNAO mod 2.0.0 has the following: * F/A-18F model with MiG-29G cockpit. This was selected because it has air-to-air and air-to-ground capability and displays in NATO units (feet, pounds, nautical miles) which means the carrier manuals can be followed for numbers (VNAO has a retired naval flight instructor and a guy currently transitioning to the F/A-18 at Miramar, so the numbers work for them). * F-14D. This uses the F-15C cockpit since air-to-air is the primary mission. However, you can drop dumb bombs with a basic fall line (check out the video JAR made of his Operation Geronimo mission, which we flew two weeks after the real thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXxXsLefn6Q; in that video the Tomcats give the smack-down to SAMs using tactics JAR gleaned from real-life Tomcat pilots and RAAF F-111 pilots). * MiG-29K. This uses the MiG-29S cockpit. Integrated into VNAO by 104th_Presing and based on the MiG-29K mod by Tomcatz and others (sorry, I can't remember off-hand all the contributors so can't credit them here). Soon to be released (hopefully within the next week or two): * EF-18G (replaces stock F/A-18A) with MiG-29G cockpit. Basically the VNAO Hornet F but tweaked so that it carries AGM-88 HARMS instead of AGM-84A Harpoons. There is a fudge in getting the HARMS to lock, but once they're away they scream away around Mach 4 like the real thing. Based on launch work by SVK_Sniper with tweaks to missile model (warhead and speed works like a fast, small-warhead HARM and not a slow, large-warhead Harpoon). The VNAO mod also integrates some of the excellent models being produced by Becszl and others (SA-3, Scud, plus this 3GO Flanker, improved F-15, A-10A etc). The intent is for a single "ubermod" to make it easy for everyone to share the sublime work still being done on FC2 by the community. You can download and examine the mod yourself. The following is a link to the VNAO mods, but on that page are mediafire links which are much faster to download than from stallturn itself: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/en/VNAO_mods FYI: The next version of the VNAO mod after that will be some time away as we hope to integrate the EFA (Extra Flyable Aircraft) mod with the VNAO mod.

Nice find hassata.

Lol. Nice one ED. Will now have to look for the CLSID of "Tusks" in db_weapons ..

I heard of an estimate of the expected jet losses by NATO in the Central Front on first week of WWIII. They figure made public was around 600 NATO jets to get splashed. Naturally no-one was happy about it but they had to plan around the very prolific Soviet mobile air defences (which is also why they bought around four thousand F-16s I guess). Mind you, sometimes these figures are also released to scare more money out of the US Congress (as was done recently with 'leaked' 6x F-22 battle results against a regiment of Chinese Flankers). My point was, even if there are SAMs about there are some situations where you don't get to lounge around the Officer's Club until they are taken out. Newer wars have a luxury (of waiting until F-117 and now F-22/F-35 have done their jobs) that was not possible in The Big One.

From what I have read the Russian Air Force consider their own performance to be sub-par. Hence there is a renewed push for modernisation (for example, sending out bombers to do recon because the UAV you have were not in the area you were preparing to invade? hardly going to inspire shock and awe in your enemies; then there was the poorly implemented bombing raids with dumb munitions on airfields and factories, like it was the 70s). Against Georgia (with zero fighters) they should have lost 0 aircraft in combat and a few in landing/mechanical accidents. Hence almost everyone considers it a poor showing (apart from the fans).

I thought "slmod" stood for "sharks n' lazers mod" :) Sure, this RWR mod doesn't model the stock Ka-50 but has no-one ever hear or seen "jury rigged" field modifications before? I'm sure such a thing would be well within the ingenuity of Soviet engineers/maintenance crews. Sure, it would take a while to get a efficient RWR into a production line, but a field modification might not take so long (days or weeks). This is because such a field mod would not be developing a technology for series production (takes a long time) but would be *integrating* existing technology in whatever way was just good enough (even if not optimal or reliable). On a chopper it might be hard to find the room for the supporting electronics but in the case of fixed wing aircraft they seem to have more and more room as their electronics have become increasingly miniaturized (eg radar upgrades seem to introduce space in the racks since solid state electronics can be so small, eg. F-15 from what I have read). With regard to the comment that aircraft would never operate with SAMS present. I believe that to be true for every situation except a NATO vs Warsaw Pact Central Front scenario. There's just too many SAMs about for everyone to sit on their hands until all the SAMS are gone. This is why the Cold War pilots *all* learned to fly low low low (eg the crazy sight of low B-52s). No war since the Cold War has had the same threat (why you see high NATO jets in recent operarations), but it is easy to forget that just because modern operations have the luxury of scheduling missions until the SAMs are down doesn't mean that would also be possible in hypothetical NATO vs Warsaw Pact engagement. So that's why I don't think the mod to as implausible as some have written.

The only relation "Flight" has to "Flight Simulator" is in the name. Flight is being designed by a different bunch of developers (the FSX developers were laid off => hence I used the word "abandoned") and is for a more "casual" audience than Flight Simulator. I don't know exactly how "casual" this is (details on Flight are rare), but for sure it will not be as good at the simulation aspect as FSX or X-Plane (or DCS). Conclusion, FSX is abandoned. I would also consider FSX 'more abandoned' than Falcon, since the latter benefited immensely from a code leak - which has allowed it to live on and improve. Perhaps Lockheed Martin might make FSX++ commercial available, perhaps not. Until then it is all vapourware and FSX stands abandoned by the rights-holder (although still heavily used and modded). Just as well ED (and X-Plane) are keeping the torch alive for the high realism crowd.

50 feet is too high. There is an exploit in the game where radar guided missiles cannot track you below 10 meters (below 33 feet). You need to limbo looooooweeeer. In general, the mission designer either doesn't want you in the area guarded by the SAM or should put in a Wild Weasel F-16 or F-18 to sort it out for you (there are plenty of aircraft out there in real-life trained and tasked with that purpose).

Enough with the FSX cheerleading please, it's off topic. (and IMHO X-Plane is much better and has X-Plane 10 in development, whereas FSX has been abandoned - so please no more hyping up FSX, since many of us that use both disagree ... and are here to fight as well as fly!).

Whatever we get it'll be something that air forces use *now* since that is where ED/TFC get the bulk of their development money from military sources. F-16 is a great market for training (used by lots of air forces world-wide), so is F-15. F/A-18 is less of a market (but the US Department of the Navy is a big enough customer to be worth it all by itself, with 1000+ Hornets of various flavours). The F-14 is only currently used by Iran. That's no market. (plus, apart from fuel range, it is junk IMHO compared to modern fighters, just let your antiquated Top Gun fantasies go fellas - try the VNAO mod and you'll quickly see the AIM-54C is only good against lumbering targets not fighters). The other alternative is that the next DCS could be a US trainer aircraft (T-34, T-6) if there was sufficient money in it for ED. This would be disappointing for the majority of us, but most of us would stlll fly anyway :) As Wags' signature says, "EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE".

Basically these turkeys want systems reduced to a button they can press and a target gets destroyed - and then call themselves virtual pilots. If you reduce their request down that's what it comes to. I'd suggest Wings of Prey or Air Conflicts : Secret Wars are excellent programmes that will suit their tastes. TFC/ED have chosen a different course with DCS. They have decided to model the systems and battlefield within the limits of current computing power, development manpower, and economics of this niche (basically subsidising us hobbyists with base products paid for by military clients). Those within the niche are pretty much satistifed with their choices and development direction (although it may not always sound like it). If ED wanted to make the most popular and possibly most commercially successful simulations then following your suggestion and dumbing things down so that you don't have to do much work to kill lots of stuff would meet the requirements of the people who can't be bothered mastering DCS. However, to me it seems the ED team and associates are driven by something else, the desire to make the best high-fidelity sims they can, even if that reduces the potential market. For that I and many others are truly grateful. So you make a valid point for a company that wants to make the most money (eg EA, Ubisoft - who will shaft customers and their own dev teams alike). While ED seems well aware it needs to be profitable to survive (eg. not go the way of Microprose, Spectrum Holobyte etc) it is a good thing they make the high-fidelity sims they do (plus, as an earlier poster pointed out, they do have a 'game' mode in all DCS products that is actually easier to use than FC2).

Wow, the shots look fantastic. Nice work guys. Curious about the white flakes in clear blue skies in picture 3. Radioactive ash from nuclear winter?

6 foot under is right, but you don't have to be dead :) There is no SAM built that can go through earth. So, you *must* use terrain to sneak past an SA-10. If the missile battery is on flat terrain, or ship mounted, then you're buggered. If there are ridges or mountains nearby then the SAM becomes far lethal. If the SAM has terrain nearby you can use that to hide you. Look for valleys or folds in the ground where you will have some distance AGL but the line of sight from the missile puts you 'below ground'. Eg. if you fly in a valley you can be quite high from the valley floor but well below the ridgeline. Much of Georgia is mountainous so this can be very effective. For example, in real life there is a SA-10 in Abkhazia (the Russians publically annouced it in 2008, although it had been installed for some time [with questionable international legality]). Just about everywhere in Abkhazia is close to mountains so you can easily sneak past the missile battery provided you are at low (below 2000 feet) altitude. Note I said 'sneak past'. Without anti-radiation missiles it is a much harder task to destroy an SA-10 site (although not impossible in the DCS game where you get to try more than once).

The mission editor does currently have a feature to generate a mission for you (presumably using randomized elements).