Moa

Those roads look so much better. Thanks Mustang.

Have an excellent Birthday Case. Enough pictures of your momma! Here are some prettier 'birds'.

Boy, I'm slow and retarded today :(

Here is the link to the post, enjoy: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=990699&postcount=2

Not for undergraduate flight training (well, not in the New Zealand Air Force at least). You simply cannot absorb what is needed and practice needs to be interspersed with theory (anyone can learn either, but people who can master both at the same time are rare). Military flight training is also to a rate and required precision that is not matched in civilian flight training - so flights are interspersed with lessons. For "operational conversion" you are expected to be up to speed a lot sooner. By then you have a few hundred flight hours and a year of service. This means you're learning the specifics of the aircraft; since flying, navigating, communicating, and military acronyms are already known.

Not so. The Islamic World was far ahead of the West for a time where insightful questions were allowed to be asked in a tradition called 'ijtihad' IIRC. Once these questions became uncomfortable for the Caliph in Baghdad this questioning was suppressed and has been in that culture ever since. I'm not saying this is 'bad', but instead pointing out that the adoption of a particular culture can stifle or promote large-scale innovation (in contrast, the relative chaos of Western culture promotes individuality ahead of some social cohesion, which leads to many whacky ideas being tested and eventually accepted). While doing my PhD I experienced first hand the cultural phenomenon where a senior Japanese scientist made an error discussing a point (we all do from time to time) and his student clearly knew the mistake but could not correct the senior as this would result in a 'loss of face'. In contrast I would immediately, although diplomatically, state a correction if my own superior was astray. This kind of thing (eg. face-saving, but it could be corruption in a culture of cheating etc) introduces a time-inefficiency in getting things done or arriving at results - although it may be good for their society as a whole. I believe the situation may be relatively similar in China (people will smile and lie to you rather than lose face - and this is perfectly acceptable to them). My point is that different cultures trade off efficiency for harmony, which results in a similar spectrum of smart people being either more innovative (eg. Germans in the early twentieth century) or less (eg. China in the early twentieth century). Clearly this is also a function of industrial base and the integral of reseach funding over time. I disagree with your statement that the Germans weren't remarkable (and I say this living in a British descended Commonwealth country). It was long before the Second World War as well. Simply consider such giants as Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrodinger, Einstein in physics, and a similar horde in chemistry and engineering. There were clever people all over the world, but a great concentration was in Germany at that time. I don't fully understand why, but objectively there is no denying that the Germans were able to come up with a large number of scientific and technological innovations that the rest of the world could match or surpass as an aggregate, but not as individual countries. Again, World War II only used and refined the technologies that German science had been building for decades beforehand. Clearly, in an analogous fashion, the center of the scientific world has moved for the last few decades (post-WWII) to the USA. It may be people from all over the world doing the research, but it is in the USA where this occurs. That is not to say there aren't smart people and cool things done elsewhere, but the barycenter is firmly in the US.

Their scientists were very good. Perhaps there was something cultural with thoroughness and discipline, yet open questions were permitted (unlike some other cultures). They had good universities and good funding (especially for projects with military applications), and a concentration of scientists that could easily interact with each other and nearby industry (chemistry, metallurgy, weaponry, quantum physics, etc). Much of the innovations in transport and technology came from (or were made practicle by) German researchers in the first half of the twentieth century (the tank [although the Germans failed to exploit it in WWI], cruise missile [V1], ballistic missile [v2], jet fighters and bombers, flying wing, dirigible, armed aircraft with weapon synchronization, guided missile, rocket fighters, early programmable computer).

Radar predates WWII, although it wasn't until 1940 that the term 'radar' was coined. It was just the UK used it effectively (from 1939 onwards), although many countries were working on it (eg. New Zealand's Ernest Marsden was an early leader and added radar to the HMS Achilles [nominally Royal Navy but pretty much a NZ vessel]). The US also had radar operating at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack (end of 1941) but the contacts were misidentified as friendlies.

Yes. I hope copy unit gets added in, it is a pain to create missions without it (noticed this morning when serving up test multiplayer mission on stallturn).

There is still a little bit of time before A-10C is released. There are quite a few incomplete features (eg. switching Mk-20AIR fuzing etc) and more than a few issues that people are experiencing. I'm pointing this out in the hope that people might have a more realistic view on when A-10C will be complete and how much effort there still appears to be to go (so help ED as much as you can by buying the beta and giving good bug reports). But you are correct, people are harping on about "what's next" instead of being happy with the A-10C. I guess that some people are just dead set on wanting a fighter, just as some people preferred fixed-wing to rotary wing. The polls won't change what (and when) ED makes something next (as this depends on what military contract they next get) but at least it saves on marketing surveys - there is no shortage of players pointing out what they would like.

DCS A-10C is player-flyable A-10C only with high-fideltity simulation. DCS Ka-50 is player-flyable Ka-50 only with high-fideltity simulation. No other flyables in DCS series until new (unannounced) DCS module comes out (after A-10C, and A-10C is still currently in progress). LockOn FC2 has medium-fidelity aircraft and is unlikely to be compatible with DCS once A-10C is completed. FC2 won't be compatible with Ka-50 once the Ka-50 has been patched to be compatible with A-10C. I say FC2 is "unlikely" to be compatibile as a patch for LockOn FC2 will not be decided until A-10C is complete, so may happen, but probably won't. There is no need to ask again about FC2 compatibility until A-10C has been released, since no-one knows (not even ED) at this stage. Thanks.

Just as long as the DCS Harrier doesn't look like this: [RAF crash at Khandahar May 2009]

Apologies, my server was down for a bit while I was mucking around testing my stats collection scripts with A-10C beta. Should be back up permanently. Crunch, many thanks for helping Chicki (and others) out. Can't give you any more rep otherwise I would.

Thanks for the tip.

Note, while 64-bit gives a larger address space and allows larger textures, data sets, larger atomic integer operations etc there are some caveats: * data is often 'word-aligned' on a 64-bit boundary rather than a 32-bit boundary. This can make the same program use twice as much memory for the same data. Fortunately not all data is treated this way, eg. pixel/textel data. This means unless you have 4 GB RAM or more you don't want a 64-bit O/S (really, the benefit of 64-bit is mostly marginal unless you have 8 GB or more of RAM). * if 64-bit data types are used in lieu of 32-bit types there can be a slowdown as twice as many bits have to be sent across the bus (which is *physically* only 48-bits on the most modern consumer boards). This means extra clock cycles may be needed to transfer the data. Fortunately most 64-bit C/C++ programs only differ in-memory by the size of the pointer and long types (both increasing from 32-bit to 64-bit). The other data types are unchanged (int is still 32-bits etc with current compilers). With regard to multi-threading. Someone asked if "a thread could be spread amongst cores". This should be avoided where possible (moving the thread around the cores - a single thread can't run simultaneously on more than one core). To use multiple cores you either need multiple processes or multiple threads (not a single thread). DCS & FC2 use two threads: one for sound and one for everything else. A dual-core chip works well. A quad-core chip has limited benefit, although the cores unused for the game can be used to run Windows etc, provided that threads are not swapped among cores so much that the context-switching defeats the benefit of the off-loaded cores (which is what the CPU affinity setting helps with).

Does multiiplayer over the interwebs work with the A-10C Beta? I though that was a work in progress and it was on the list of "not yet working"? (Alpha state code at present for that - don't get me started). Hence no (public) A-10C server for 104th at the moment. You should see "Operation Moonshield" for H.A.W.X. Was hard for Crunch and MoGas to get the igloos in but now they're next to the dual runways at Krasnodar-Pashkovskii Airbase they look C.H.O.I.C.E. Anyone know how to map Maverick slew commands to the X and triangle buttons? :)

I have the exact same issue. I have a Radeon HD 5970. Perhaps this only affects ATI cards, as we have that in common?

Did not mean to derail thread - merely meant to clarify (which is why some people are getting confused that features are still in development, but as I also said, this should not be a problem). With regard to definitions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta "Beta" is the software development phase following alpha, named after the Greek letter beta. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. [Moa: "feature complete" means complete, not 'mostly finished', or done apart from textures or polish etc. - i have to remind myself of this when reporting my own software development progress, that "feature complete" means it should pass all functional tests/requirements but not 'non-functionals' (optimisations) or exotic bugs]. Hence when some users hear "beta" they think "feature complete apart from full bug testing" as this is how the big companies in industry use that word. ED can use whatever word they like, I'm just trying to put out there that the use of this specific word has connotations that are confusing some users. It may be helpful to ED and associates to re-consider when this specific word is used - mostly it may help the very busy testers, developers, and Wags from having to endlessly explain to confused users that features are not actually implemented in the "beta" (which is perfectly fine, just contra to common industry usage). A phrase like "end-of-development testing" might help to head off some of the questions that people think they're "beta" testing instead. If this is not helpful then cool, that's all I'm trying to be, but please be aware that the choice of word may be some factor in the "open beta" testers misjudging the scope of what is ready for reporting on. Cheers.

Just being a pedant here (sorry about this) - but a piece of software that is still having features implemented is technically in the "alpha" stage (still in development). This is the definition pretty much the rest of the industry uses (I know of no exceptions to this - these are the names the big developers seem to use, including giants like Symantec who I'm currently doing contract development for, but some other player [aside from ED] may re-define these in a "non-standard" way). Once all features have been *fully completed* and initial bug testing performed the software leaves "alpha" and becomes "beta". A few more obscure bugs are expected at this stage. After "beta" bugs have been fixed and checked for regression the software becomes a "release candidate". No bugs are expected, but sometimes very obscure bugs are found at this stage. Once the release candidate has its bugs removed (and checked for regression) the software version is "release" or "general availability". So, from a general "software industry" point-of-view the A-10C is currently actually in "feature-frozen Alpha" stage development. Calling it "beta" at this time is actually confusing for people who are used to something a bit different. I have no problem with this, the Alpha-stage availability, and neither should anyone else who chooses to participate in this bug-hunting programme - since it is great to have it available at this stage and help contribute to finding issues and the state of the product has been telegraphed clearly before purchase. So, I hope that clears up some of the terminology for software development for those who weren't aware of it.

Unfortunately you get to see that more than you like. Looks cool though, like the A-10C has a JATO rocket pack (who needs a Space Shuttle?).

Not training mission but this seems the most appropriate thread (apologies if I missed the correct thread). 1) Chose quick mission builder. Chose Nevada. Expected map for Nevada but got map for Black Sea instead. When I re-chose Nevada from the options I then got the correct map. 2) Chose quick mission builder. Chose Nevada region. Got a mission briefing in Russian+Cyrillic. Expected English briefing. 3) Chose quick mission builder and started in Nevada terrain. Went to F10 view and saw nothing. Altered zoom (a lot) until I saw something. It appears that the default F10 scale for Nevada missions should be set differently than for Black Sea missions or it looks like there is no map.

I've posted this before but the A4 was known to be able to roll around 720 degrees/second and most modern fighters at 360/second (something that FC2 finally improved upon, after being and entire factor of 2 out for years [which possibly passed the same FM team?]). The A-10 is noted for being agile and its roll rate in-game does not appear to match the roll rate shown in videos for similar conditions. The flight model is pretty awesome (apart from no pre-stall buffet, unless I missed it) but the roll rate clean does seem awfully sluggish compared to what you see the real things doing. The FM team could possibly have overlooked some factor (eg. load on outboard stations have high inertia) that would lead to a roll rate that doesn't match the apparent roll rate ... and the apparent roll rate should be taken as a 'point of truth'. nb. the moment of inertia is mass x lever-arm distance squared IIRC the fuel in the fuselage or on the inner wing has to be very heavy to match the effect of a rocket pod on the outer wing. Without stuff on the outer wing the MoI would decrease dramatically - but of course the FM team will be all over that.

Please re-read Nate's post: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=990699&postcount=2

That pilot model is far superior to anything we've seen before in any sim (and better even than in some 'games').

"Let us hope that ED do well with sales so they can continue this great series." ... with a multirole fighter-bomber. There, fixed it for ya :)