liotczik

Disclaimer: this post is for informative purposes only and it's goal is NOT to be a trigger for flame-war or attacking anyone personally :music_whistling: As for being offtopic, it still circles around BK117 (and it's "natural habitat"), so I hope it will be enough for not being removed ;) Wrong. Dodosim's flight dynamics are more or less equal to X-Plane. While the later lacks only LTE (yet), it's stock flight model takes into account all of the other helo-specific phenomenas and effects, that are artifically modelled (=scripted) by the first (I've been very cautious about VRS long before Black Shark...). Dodosim is heavily plugin enhanced (=modded) to get close to that. What Dodosim has better (or equal - I'll be able to tell only after I try BK117), is its systems modelling, especially the engine. For example, you can get your engine fried, because you've attempted a start up with too strong tailwind! Of course it could be also implemented into X-Plane, with a help of a dedicated plugin (it was done before and works fantastic -> An-2). Wrong, all indeed is modelled, as was said above. But to tell the truth, X-Plane doesn't model components aging, like in Dodosim (and few other addons from other developers), although you can set mean time between failures for almost every component of your a/c (as well as a separate general settings for the whole a/c and random failures). Last time I had to autorotate, because some little gizmo responsible for letting air into fuel tank, to compensate for 'missing' fuel, suddenly and unexpectedly failed. Fuel got stuck in the tank and engine went silent. But remember, that 'components aging' is only another plugin enchancement, which means it could be implemented into X-Plane and doesn't say anything about, which sim is better - it says only, that Dodosim's work is fantastic. "Behind scenes" X-Plane is superior to even the best plugin for FS9/FSX. Take a look here: http://x-plane.com/pg_Inside_X-Plane.html To make long story short, while making a/c for FS you basically tell the simulation engine, how it should behave and the engine executes what was "told" to execute (FS is more like a railway simulator). In X-Plane you input any raw real (or made up) technical data into the simulation and then the engine calculates in real time all the forces and coefficients working on aircraft in flight, for given conditions, and the result of these heavy-math is what you see on the screen (X-Plane is true flight simulator). Try FSX' Extra 300 and X-Plane's Extra 300 or Su-26, attempt some vicious and autorotative maneuvers and you'll feel the difference between the two. I'm currently working on a certain plane, which in RL achieved max. speed of 216km/h. I've gathered a solid database on it (even original polars for wing airfoils, have you ever seen a polar in FS world?), entered all of it into X-Plane and you know what? During the first flight I was unable to accelerate in a level flight more, than to... 216km/h. Other significant flight characteristics I've tested are also within known real parameters of the original a/c. That really made me think... Of course, the more amount and more valid data you can find, the better the results (trash in - trash out), but you have to agree, that generating 3D propeller shape, entering engine power and fuselage drag coefficients and so on, is a more advanced way of determinig max airspeed, than writing down the desired speed value itself. True. Currently only a small fraction of X-Plane's real capabilities are utilised by desktop aviators and that's why for most of the people it appears only as a "little brother" of FS. But in fact it's closer to a professional engineering software, than a computer game (the opposite is true for FS). The truth is, some recent born companies, have found really clever ways of modding VERY raw "simulation" engine of MSFS by adding to it "postproduction" effects, that enchance gameplay into something being closer to accurate simulation. That's more like it :D Wrong. All depends of specific a/c in question; some great planes for FS are way better than some not so great planes for X-Plane - that is correct. But the simulation engine, which is driving them, would be always better in X-Plane, because of its principles and philosophy. That is absolutely true for every sim and I have greatest respect for every talented modder, who dedicates his time and talent to create real jewels like Dodosim and BK117. No matter what sim they fly in, high quality is an universal value.

For me, all answers are true: - I don't fly online. From my experiences, it's either empty skies or free for all, neither of which suits me particulary well. And unfortunately currently I can't dedicate myself to a serious virtual squadron nor virtual airline. - I will fly in Black Shark only servers. Because it would be cool to co-op with other human players using datalink and various clever RL 2-ship and 4-ship tactics. - I want my target area to be safe from Air to Air threats. As above, with addtion of: "without being harrassed by merciless enemy fast movers". - I want to be on the front lines in the thick of it. It would be even better, if enemy merciless fast movers were on mercy of our top-cover working with us as a team :D Two different yet linked with themselves battles on one battlefield. Perfect! - I want to work closely with other A2G aircraft. Let Su-25's take out long range SAMs and weaken a bit SHORAD/MANPADs, then let us finish the rest off, while A-10 FAC(A) controls the whole ordeal and top-cover chases away enemy merciless fast movers and ground pounders threatening our FARP, while we rearm to get the second wave of advancing enemy troops and armour, when suddenly our AWACS picks up a massive... That would be at the same time insane and fantastic.

X-Plane has both rain effects on cockpit glass, as well as moving windshield wipers. Although said effects do not interact between themselves, like in Enemy Engaged (and in reality too). BK 117 is definitely on my list to get! Outstanding visual details and a lot of hard work to make all the systems and flight dynamics. It's a job that simply has to be appreciated. Once for its scope and quality and twice for its rarity. There are very few really good addons (when I think good, I mean mainly flight dynamics, replication of aircraft systems and operation; graphics are important, but still on the second place) and among them helicopters are true 'white crows'. That being said, I can think of 3 good and nice helos for X-Plane and 2 for FS9. Not THAT much of detail as in Bk 117, yet still a lot of dedicated work and a lot of happy hours with them. As for FSX, currently there are no means for converting aircraft between it and X-Plane. It's a very popular topic, but the differencies between ways how aircraft for both sims are built and their file structure are way too big to even think of a reasonable method of cloning planes from FSX to X-Plane and the other way. You want Bk 117 for FSX - you have to build it from scratch, flight dynamics, visual representation, systems, gauges... everything. Maybe only sounds could be reused. As a side note, sceneries from FS9 and FSX can be imported into X-Plane relatively easy. Not point-and-click, but you don't have to have a degree in computer science to achieve that ;) Another question is: why on Earth would you like to try this beautiful helo in FSX, while you can have it in X-Plane? Helicopter dynamics (or rather lack of them) was one of the main reasons, I've never bought FSX and definitely switched from FS9 to X-Plane. And before you accuse me of being an X-Plane fanatic, know that I can see its various flaws and quirks and the first days/flights with it were a little daunting and discouraging. But after that first impressions I've come to a conclusion, that it has much more good features than flaws and since then it's one of my favourite pieces of software. And with frequent updates it's going to be only better! And building your own flying machines for X-Plane is just fantastic, it hooked me in no time. Microsoft sims have their own merits, they are not that totally bad - I used to have hundreds of hours in FS9. But after some time my interest shifted from just "happy-simming" to more serious approach to flying simulation, that is simulating flight itself and its dynamic nature, rather than giving me only a feeling of simulation, built over simplified flight model with use of additional features like ATC, traffic, dynamic weather, addons and visuals. These are nice, right, but the most important is flight itself. Even now, with Black Shark, most of my time I just cruise around and take pleasure from this beautiful and especially dear to me helo (a long story...) instead of busting tanks and evading SAMs (and my favourite mission being 'Courier' so far...) ;) One word about missions. My point of view is that missions are, before anything else, in your head. Think of an adventure and fly it, the rest is imagination, which by the way would be helpful anyway - afterall our computer flights are only simulated... Want some inspiration? Here you go: - rent a Cessna 172 and fly to visit your friend in a city 300km away. Unfortunately GPS is busted and you have to fly VFR/VOR/NDB. - as a pilot in heli charter company, you have to deliver mountain expedition to a high altitude LZ (remember to take max payload and minimum fuel needed ...). - follow one of great pioneer's flights, like Lindbergh, Hughes, Skarzynski, Orlinski, Bleriot, Mermoz in a plane from their time, or at least in something modern, yet challenging. Can you manage a flight of 5000km with a plane no faster than 100kts? Or in a helo? (Not in one take, but still...) - make a closed triangular track, with your airfield in one of the corners. Then calculate the headings and tracks for each of legs and how long would it take to complete it. Can you fly precisely according to the plan, without other nav aids, than stopwatch, magnetic compass and airspeed indicator? With wind and turbulence? In a fog?? :D - you are airliner's captain with bad luck: autopilot is out and you have to fly 10 "laps" in a holding pattern because of some emergency in airport or some VIP traffic. Can you do it and keep "laps" similar to each other? Remember: one "lap" has to be flown at a specific altitude with small tolerance and within 4-6 minutes. Tune the story to your needs, mood and off you go :) There is really no true need for scripted adventures, just a bit of imagination and invention.

I seriously fly sim helicopters since 2004. When I was learning to land on helipads, I've been advised to first learn how to perform rolling landings on standard runway (Ka-50's gear with wheels is perfect for this). Only after you've mastered this maneuver, you may try rolling landings with less and less forward velocity. Your ultimate goal should be to be able to reduce forward speed to zero at the exact moment when wheels touch the runway, because it's easier to coordinate helicopter even in a slow forward flight, than in a hover (also, the landing spot is always before you, instead under, which makes things easier to look after and keep under control). Then try to land on a specific point on runway. With some practice (to be honest, with a great amount of hours of practice...) and a proper management of speed/altitude you should be able to land anywhere, where you could fit your helo into. Learning to hover (without any 'helpers') is another thing, you should learn, and learn it well. It's really hard, especially on a desktop simulator, but once you get it, it'll always be with you. The only similar experience is a2a refueling. The key to landings and hovering (and refueling too, to some degree) is that, you should make a habit of moving stick by a very tiny amount at a time, while making a lot of moves (even a couple of moves per second). Avoid at all cost huge and long controls deflections! To make things a little bit easier, try to turn ON AP channels (at least pitch, bank and yaw) AND turn ON Flight Director. Learning to land and hover with hover autopilot will get you nowhere, for various reasons. Try not to overcontrol. For example, when you want helo to move sideways, tilt it a little, just enough to get it moving, then center controls and keep it moving with small "pushing" inputs. But when you want to stop the movement, use no more than half of the stick deflection, that you have used to begin the move in the first place. That way it's really easier to stop at the desired point, instead of moving in opposite way. Learning to control Ka-50 without any of the "blue buttons" (aside from being totally unrealistic) will be a lot, alot harder, but you'll learn a couple of things about it's dynamics (and generally about helicopter's dynamics), learn how to manage in a case of failure/battle damage and learn how to be a better sim-pilot (in terms of skills). That being said, co-axials are still easier to control than tail-rotored ;) I'll second to that, you have to look dead ahead and maintain control over a helo before anything else, because looking down in search for a helipad will get you crashed, until you'll proficient at what you're doing. TrackIR helps here a lot, a quick glance is all that is needed to keep reference on helipad. Both for landing and hovering, pick a distant characteristic feature of the landscape and remember it's spatial orientation regarding landing spot and your helicopter (exatly you helicopter's cockpit canopy frame - it's RL practice and at least for fixed-wings it's called 'projection of engine's cowling over a horizon'). Try to hold that feature at a constant point "over" the canopy frame and maneuver with as little rudder and collective use as possible. Also always hover and land with your nose pointed into the wind, the helo will stabilise itself thanks to weathervane effect. You'll get also a litle bit of additional lift, to make engines work less and further stabilise helo. In fact it's easier to learn those maneuvers with a small wind, than without wind at all. That's a couple of short instant-advices from me, just to help you tame the Black Beast :) But if you want to learn something about helicopters in general as well, I have some helo related training resources for you: http://www.dynamicflight.com/flight_maneuvers/ http://www.copters.com/pilot/maneuvers.html http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/poh/ http://www.hovercontrol.com/ Read and practice, there is no other way ;) Also, you may want to at least try X-Plane demo with freeware MD-500 (by Brett Sumpter, Alex Gifford and by Ben Russell) or FS9 with freeware Bell 412 (by Jordan Moore). Good sims, fantastic birds and a lot of fun on its own, if you're really into helicopters. Also don't forget, that real pilots learn to fly in something cheap and easy, before they are allowed to try heavy and expensive military machines ;) Ka-50 is rather heavy for its size and, thanks to ED's outstanding work, you can really feel that mass under your controls. While in some cases this inertia is helpful, in others can make pilot's life harder.

I was used to (simulated) civilian helos without any autopilot, trim or stabilisation systems, with tailrotor (steering cross-coupling) and I've learned flying them the hard way. Learn to hover default FS9 or XP9 JetRanger on a gusty day or fly it manually for 5 straight hours in turbulence and only then try to complain how much Ka-50 is "unfriendly aircraft" :D At first I was shocked how Ka-50 was at the same time pefectly stable and easy to hold in one place, while a real pain to maneuver. But after some time I've "adjusted" myself to its characteristics, exactly as was advised by many sources, only to find it is a very agile and pleasant aircraft to fly. It's easier to control than Cessna 172 :) The key to success is to understand how the machine works and to work along with her. It's all about flying the way the helicopter does want to, instead of making the helicopter fly as we want it to do. To the point. I fly with all 4 AP buttons, for the most of the time without FD. When I want to change speed, heading or flightpath, I simply press the dreaded trim button, then manually stabilise helo on new attitude, and release trim button when I'm happy with the results. Simple and effective way of combining easy cruising with high combat/aerobatic agility. For the most of the time it works really good and (now) intuitive. Often I find cruising well-trimmed helo more useful, than enroute AP, because I'm not limited to only 6 INS waypoints. For that few occasions I can't constantly hold trim, I engage FD and throw the crate all over the sky with ease. For everyone tired of pressing one button, I have the following thoughts. First, when flying correctly, with a plan in your head, you barely need to perform dramatic maneuvers, so there is no real need to hold the trimmer all the time. When attacking, set up carefully and the rest is easy. When dodging that MANPAD, you really need only two buttons: trim and flares, and since you have two hands, you've got all you need in such situation (it can be performed even on a simple stick with at least two buttons, no need for HOTAS right away, just a little bit of imagination when configuring the buttons). Second, my real-life aviation manual says about proper flight technique: stabilise attitude and speed and always trim - then re-trim and re-trim and re-trim to maintain that attitude. After major change in flight conditions, like shift from climb to cruise, stabilise in new attitude, trim and re-trim and re-trim and re-trim to maintain that new attitude. And so on. Trim even on traffic pattern and approach. Trim while holding. Always trim - it's a kind of mantra. The point is that you need only quick press to stabilise/correct aircraft attitude and then you release and let the helo fly itself. Again, no need to hold it for a long time. Want to perform aerobatics -> turn FD on. Third. Come on, you've bought a serious simulation (not a weekend game!) with a manual of over 500 pages and now you complain about pressing one button? Maybe PacMan would be a better choice - no buttons to press at all :P Or try arcade mode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember, there is a similar "panic button" on F-16. It's a pinkie switch, which works as a temporary AP disable, to correct maintained attitude, as well as a mean to save the aircraft, if AP tries to do something weird while flying at low level in terrain following mode. I recall no one complaining about it - instead of keeping it pressed, you disengage AP and fly manually. It's that simple. Fourth, like was said earlier, most of the helicopters with force trim work like that. Press to change attitude and release to maintain it or use a "chinese hat" - it depends on which system was installed on a particular helo. ED made a fantastic job of simulating power timming method on desktop josticks. Beat it - Ka-50 (and any other helo) is very different from any jetfighter. Old tricks doesn't work here, you need to learn completely new set of skills, but in the end that's exactly, what flying various sims is about. To learn and better understand. Of course no one will get mad, if you fly it whatever way you like, instead of trying new things.:joystick: I've tried flying without even touching trim button, without any and all of 4 AP channels and so on and I have to say, that it's simply a no-go. Unrealistic, tiring and dangerous for your virtual-self ;)

I have X-52 Pro on Windows XP Pro 32 bit and SST driver 5.7.0.22 and SST software 4.3.4.17, so my experience may differ. Now it works perfectly, however I've tried the latest drivers and all went fubar, so I've switched back to original older drivers, I've got on CD with the stick. I understand, that you want to play on Realistic. It's important, because there may be differencies between Real and Arcade sets of keyboard commands. Run Black Shark and go to Options -> Controls tab. Ensure, that you have selected "Ka-50 Real" profile in a drop-down list in the upper left corner of menu. Do not change any of the key assignments! Then move to Gameplay tab and UNCHECK options "game flight mode" and "game avionics mode" (the rest settings in this tab are up to you). After that CHECK "use this options for all missions" and press [OK]. Take note as to what keys or combinations of keys on your keyboard are needed to perform tasks you want to assign to X-52 and make sure that you have correctly assigned them onto proper joystick buttons. Also check if Windows "see" the buttons at all (SST -> Control Panel -> red lights should lit on after a button is pressed). You may also try my profile :) Black Shark.zip

Voted and asked all of my friends to vote also 8)

All was written from memory :P As I'm a sort of camouflage junkie :D But I have to confess, that I've checked 3 times with the dictionary for missing words, because English isn't my native language. New Russian Air Force patterns are very interesting: http://altair.com.pl/files/news/2009/12/i-i09-12-034pak-fa.jpg http://altair.com.pl/files/news/2009/12/i-i09-12-017skm.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WE1irOIooUQ/RyYKc4YG8mI/AAAAAAAAAxA/rtOpOSRgo-g/s400/Sukhoi+T-50+PAK+FA+pakfa_india.jpg

Honestly, I don't have any information, if it was designed specifically to fool NVG equipment. There were experiments with camouflage patterns designed to make user literally invisible while observed through night vision, one of the most famous was the US Desert Night Camo http://www.factsurplus.co.uk/images/10247_orig.jpg Supposedly it worked real miracles, but only with I and maybe II Gen devices, more modern goggles had higher resolution and negated the whole effect, so the pattern was dropped from the army. Another thing is that, there are slightly different considerations for the pattern to be effective in visual light or in infrared light. For the first, you need the right colour and shape. For the latter you need the right materials, like paint and fabric. I remember one instance, when during the '50s or '60s there was an infantry uniform reinforced with some flame retardant fabric, like asbestos. A good idea, apart from the fact that asbestos is toxic and causes cancer, but the real surprise was that, the new uniform glowed like headlights of a truck in infrared light :D The new uniforms were quickly dropped in favor of the old design. However, there are some notable differencies between camouflage rules for land forces and aircraft. As for infantry and vehicles, you may be surprised, but studies have shown, that the best night camo is the same as worn during daylight, in terms of masking user in visible light. All the blue, black and grey patterns are for Hollywood, because they actually make you more visible during night, than standard day patterns. And the day pattern depends on the surroundings: green for temperate, yellow for desert and white for snow (in general, as there are some variations and additional considerations to this simplified division). As for the aircraft, the matter is more complicated, because you have to take into account not only the surrounding (like time of year or land/sea), but also the altitude it will be operating on. There are different patterns for low level attack planes and different for hi-alt bombers and fighters. One interesting example showing an effort to combine both effects in one pattern, were camo schemes of Bf-109's. Upper surfaces were painted in splitter camo, to conceal plane while on the ground and in low level flight, where most likely it would be observed by the enemy from above. At he same time, side and lower surfaces were painted in light blue-grey, to help blend aircraft with the sky at high altitudes, because there it was reasonable to suppose, that the enemy will see them there from aside or from below. Another really interesting story are camo schemes for night bombers and night fighters. At first they were painted all black, but it was soon dropped, because black upper surfaces were fantastically visible while put against clouds. That's while upper wings and fuselage were started to be painted in various lighter camo patterns. As for the black paint, it was really good in hiding planes under black night sky. Over a certain altitude you were totally invisible, no matter how strong would be the search lights on the ground (although that didn't applied so well to enemy night fighters, because they always could close the distance to a point, that they could see black silhouette against dark navy-blue sky). It's a really really long story when it comes to aircraft camouflage, with all the countershadowing, blending vs. fooling, special schemes (like white anti-flash) and quick ID marks and more like that. As for the pixel camo, it was mainly designed to overcome a certain property of traditional camo patterns, which makes them effective only at a specific distance. Patterns with small elements are good in close quarters, but stand out at longer distances. Patterns with large elements do the opposite. But pixel patterns (and flecktarn German pattern before it) have the quality to combine both effects. At close you see chaotic pixels, but at long distance the single pixels become organised in larger patern, that still works well. It works just like fractals or modern computer graphics do: no matter what zoom you'll set, the image always looks good.

Yes, it's from Radom 2009. One from a collection of photos, I can't fully enjoy... :(

http://skyraider.org/hook/ToC.htm After reading these memoirs of Vietnam A-1 Skyraider pilot, I believe that prop aircraft are the only one reasonable choice for CAS missions, besides helicopters of course. Leave jets for air superiority, pinpoint strikes and maybe interdiction missions. As far as I know, Viper pilots are forbidden to strafe enemy forces after a series of CFIT accidents in such situations. And dropping iron bombs from a fast jet in a vincinity of friendly ground personnel is a risky proposition. Dropping LGBs on the other hand is economically unjustified. A-10 may be an exception to the first paragraph of this note, just because it's characteristics of flight envelope makes it to remind more of a turboprop than a classic jet.

That B-17 with small circles all over it, it isn't actual camo paint. Instead it's the exact oppposite. It was a marshalling plane, used to assemble huge formations before bombing raids. It was used as a flying point of orientation for the subsequent crews to join and form a specific air armada consisted of combat boxes. A kind of "conductor", like in orchestra. After the raid was all set up, the "marshal" returned to the airfield and did not take part in the actual bombing. Recently I've seen Slovakian Mi-8/17 in green pixel camo, which was really cool. On one photos I've taken, it's against tree line and it blends in surprisingly well.

The greatest disadvantage of such an aircraft is its width, making it harder or even impossible to vertically land/take off into/from small confined areas. Traditional rotor is much better in this case. Another thing is that helicopters with two lateral rotors are harder to control than with rotors mounted centrally. If you necessarily have to build such a machine with covered rotors, I think it would be a better idea to have small multibladed propellers turning with high speed, more like a tiltable ducted fan, than classic rotors. Something like GDI Orca: http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/10/9011/Orca1.1.png As for the movie, I have to admit, that they look just fantastic and that was the point od "designing" them ;) Compare to UDL Cheyenne dropship from Cameron's earlier movie, "Aliens". Totally un-aerodynamic, all lift generated by vectored thrust nozzles (thus inefficient), with this strange, enormous tail. http://sftdb.com/images/aa19860718dropship.jpg Still, it looked cool and I always wanted to take her for a spin :)

I can only speculate, that lightening the aircraft by two crewmembers and two seats, as well as shift in the center of gravity to the tail was the cause of plane's recovery. It could have been a totally different story, if they hadn't ejected. As for the sims, I eject/bail out in the following cases: - any fire that can't be quickly extinguished by any means and I suspect that the crate can/will explode sooner or later - severe loss of control that makes impossible to stay in the air - imminent and unavoidable impact into terrain If aircraft is damaged to the point, that it can bring me home, but it can't guarantee safe landing, I prefer ejecting near my own airbase/carrier than risking landing. That means also, that I wouldn't be taking my chances trying stunts like, for example, carrier landing in zero visibility on rough seas. In short - if it can't bring me down to a full stop, while still in one piece - eject. And I think it's pretty much the same for RL.

vyper, you might also check the Saitek Cyborg Evo stick, in its simplest form (non FF, non wireless). It's fairly cheap (at least where I live; X52 is 4 times more expensive) yet very solid and precise piece of hardware. With 12 buttons (two of them may be used as 'shift'), 1 hat, Z-axis and throttle lever, it's enough to master even demanding sims like Falcon 4 (many functions) or X-plane (need for smooth controls). I've used it for five years and I loved it (actually it still is 'airworthy'). One note though - remove the centering spring and you'll rule the skies. Actually flying without the spring was like having a sort of fly-by-wire in every sim (no need to trim, very light input needed to fully control a/c). I know, I know - unrealistic :P But it worked well and for that money I couldn't really expect more. As for the TrackIR or similar products, I think, that a good joystick is more important, because with some practise and a good setup, you can efficiently look around with the help of mouslook or snap views. At the same time, you can't fly very well with headtracking gear and poor joystick. The lack of control precision and/or uncomfortable stick means jerky flight and a constant struggle with the a/c instead of having a joy of flight (that is especially true when flying helos!). Additionaly, mastering the mouselook will teach you how to orient yourself in 3D space while controlling the aircraft at the same time and make transition to TrackIR a smooth and painless experience. But of course, headtracking gear should be your next priority, it's even more important than rudder pedals (3rd on the list) or separate throttle control (a really helpful thing, but the last to buy IMHO).

Whoa, I've been so busy with reading, learning and flying the Ka-50, that I've completely missed the new patch! :D Indeed, the new trim method is great. Much more intuitive and fluid. I wish it would always be like I think of new feature only to find it already implemented ;) One note though: after trimming, you have to center both the stick AND the rudder to be back in control. If you forget about rudder, you'll end up wondering, why all of sudden all joystick input has ceased, even after returning stick to center position.

After some time in Ka-50 pilot's seat, I've come to a conclusion, that trimming representation is somehow counter-intuitive for me. It's because of the necessity to quickly move the stick to center, or the trim setting will add to joy input and helo will go crazy. So I fly either without trimming (bad idea in long term and unrealistic way to do things) or I make frantic moves with the stick in order to avoid dangerous maneuvers (which is also rather different from real helo controlling techniques, where yanking on the stick is a no go). I fly on spring centered, non-FF stick (previously it was non-spring, non-FF and that removed the necessity of trimming at all ;)). I'm also aware how the trimming is performed in real helicopters. So I've come up with the following method to reproduce trimming in Ka-50 in a different way: 1) Begin with a helicopter with either no trim, or some trim, let's call it Trim A. Joystick is centered and helicopter is flown manually with flight control and stability system ON. 2) Then you want to accelerate, for the simplicity of the example. So you push the stick forward from the center and have to hold it there to maintain new, higher airspeed. Helicopter is still flown manually. 3) While holding the stick in "forward position" you press and hold trim button. The flight control system is locked at the current attitude and maintain helicopter there to the best of its ability, while joystick position is totally ignored, as long as you hold the trim button. Helicopter is now trimmed in new trim position, Trim B. 4) You center the stick. You can do it slow or fast or whatever, because helicopter is fully controlled by FCS/autopilot. It will maintain current attitude, regardless of stick position as long, as the trim button is pressed and hold. Virtual stick is hold by trimmer in front position, when it was at the moment, when the trimmer was pressed. 5) When stick is centered, and you're happy with that, you release the trim button. Trim B holds the virtual stick in forward position and maintains the new attitude. The joystick already is centered, when you release the trim button, so there is no danger of adding joystick input to the new trim setting, neither you have to be as quick as wild west gunfighter when centering the stick after trimming. 6) Now we have the helicopter flown manually, with the help of Trim B and the FCS. From this moment you fly as you would do it in the current version of Ka-50 and we are back to step 1), the only difference being that now the Trim B is in use, instead of Trim A/no trim. So that's my idea. I know, that I can change the amount of time, that I have for the stick centering procedure after trimming, but I've left it at default because it would cause troubles with replays. Also I would prefer in the heat of the battle something more flexible in place of a fixed time limit. You may ask: "OK hotshot, but what about manually flying the helo with trim button pressed, as it is now?" For me it's simple: there should be separate simulation command for trimming, as I've presented it above, and separate command for flying "with trim pressed". You could then assign it as command and shift+command, for example T for Trim as above, Shift+T for "fly with trim pressed" and Ctrl+T fot "trim reset/center" feature. So one joystick button/hat could reproduce it all. It's really not that many commands, compared to some fixed wing aircraft, when you need 9 commands for trimming. Aside from the trimming method, I'm just amazed how great this sim is. I'm sure I'll get the following DCS addons without any questions, no matter what aircraft or else :)

Rise Of Flight has the variable depth of view feature. You either see clear gauges and blurry outside or clear outside of the cockpit and blurry gauges. It depends on the position of virtual pilot's head. To be honest, I had to quickly turn it off, because it does more harm than good, because you never know, when the system will switch. For the most of the time it had the curious habit of focusing in-cokpit, when I was just going to nail that Fokker... As for the DCS Black Shark, NVG are fantastic and they somehow do support looking on the gauges "under the goggles", because only a part of the computer screen is "amplified". Also I've never had any trouble with unreadable gauges, ABRIS or darkness outside. It's only a matter of experimenting with brightness settings. In complete darkness I fly with the following setup: - NVG - max brightness - ABRIS - lowest possible brightness, just one click from total dark/OFF - HUD - night mode (yellow) with lowest possible brightness, 1 or 2 clicks from total dark/OFF - cockpit lights - all off - exterior lights - all off; except when in airfield controlled airspace, then dimmed, depending on weather conditions - Shkval - for the most part, at night it's of no use, so I turn it off. When it's applicable, I set it just like ABRIS - I can read it, but it doesn't blind NVG. When it's not completely dark, as at the dawn/dusk, I set everything somewhere between the day-total darkness setups, depending on light conditions. As for the using NVG and shooting firearms, I was told by a veteran, that it is possible to look with the right eye through red dot sight and with the left eye through mono NVG. The images from both eyes would get superimposed on each other, but it requires a bit of adaptation and is tiring after a longer period of time. But it's just like AH-64 IHADSS.