Bozon

I sacrificed a goat to Ba’al. It put up a hell of a struggle but I managed. The goat did, not Ba’al.

This is generally true for all safety covers - example: fire extinguishers, drop tank jettison, the latches on the undercarriage and flaps levers. These are nice when operating the clickable cockpit with the mouse/VR hand, but for keyboard/hotas bindings they are just a great nuisance. A Keyboard/hotas bind should represent an intended operation such as “activate extinguisher on port engine”, or “move flaps lever down”. Instead, what they currently represent is a physical action of “press on location of button” or “apply downward force on lever” and if something is in the way the intended operation will fail. The “physical” approach does not work and contributes nothing towards immersion because my keyboard and stick buttons look and operate nothing like the latches and covers in the sim world - the covers and latches are just more buttons and key combinations to memorize.

LOL some planes have bad ergonomics - the Mosquito has gone beyond that and crossed into the "comical" category. Seriously, someone had to invest some thought into making it so senseless. Look at the rockets example - the 3 switches are all over the place: arming switch in a tiny hidden nook aft of the throttles detent, the trigger is burried inside the starboard's engine throttle knob, and the salvo selector on the dashboard Or the levers - someone decided to place the bay door lever, the undercarriage lever, and the flaps lever right next to each other in simiar size levers. I wonder how many pilots opened the bay doors instead of lowering the gears... So they had to add safety latches to the undercarraige and flaps and make them different latches to prevent accidental blind operation of the lever. But it does not end there - they placed the trio of levers to the right of the pilot so he has to switch hands and fly with his left in order to operate flaps and gears - try to do that during an engine cutoff at takeoff... There's more - the levers pop back to neutral position after operation has ended - automation! must be a good thing no? NO, because unlike in every other plane, the levers position does not indicate the intended state of the bay doors / undercarriage / flaps and you need separate indicators for that . As a final touch, the levers are ordered such that the bay doors lever is the left-most of the three, far from the bomb arming panel and on the opposite side from the navigator/observer that may be incharge of operating it. I mean why put the bomb bay door lever and the bomb arming panel next to each other, when you can stuff 2 irrelevant levers between them? And lets not get into the locations of the trimmers

Thanks @bartfor taking this to discord - I don't normally visit there, and than thanks to NineLine for responding.

The early frenchy fighters are missing from the list (numbers by wikipedia): 0.57 M.D.450 Ouragan 0.41 M.D.452 Mystere IV 0.18 Super Mystere B2

@Brigg It does not matter what you or I think. Potential players do not come to DCS WWII and they often mention the number of required modules and total costs as one of the reasons - justified or not, it is a barrier. People left DCS following the SOW server closure - whether their complaints were in the right or in the wrong makes little difference to the fact that the server owners left and took a few players with them. Multiplayer games require a critical population size. Right now it seems (to me) that we are just barely above it. What to do about it is a good question for which I don’t have a good answer, but it sure requires some action from ED side beyond just adding 1 module ever year and a half. Maybe DCS was not meant for WWII multiplayer - this is a legitimate (though disappointing) choice that ED may make (made already?).

You have the wrong “people” - most people here have bought the maps the assets and more than 1 module. The “high entry price” is what I get from people who play other games when I suggest they move to DCS. This is a simple observation - not an opinion, neither a demand. The original question was “where did all the WWII people go” - this I believe refers to players who were already in DCS and left. They already paid the entry fee, so costs was not the issue. I know some complained about the glacial pace of fixing some standing issues with existing modules, in particular on the axis side. I think they were exaggerating, but what they thought is what mattered because they left. This is what killed SOW server as far as I understand. Beyond that I think that some players felt that DCS WWII was going nowhere - this is me guessing, I don’t have any solid info, or talked to people who left. Compared to the jets, WWII modules come out very far in between, and EA status drags on forever with minimal additions. Some modules still don’t have a native campaign, or lack things that prevent the 3rd party devs from release campaigns for them. There isn’t any clear vision or a roadmap of what is coming to get players hyped - not just player modules, this also refers to AI units, AI for crew (mosquito navigator?), maps, weapon options, etc.

Ground speed is TAS when there is no wind.

Absolutely. If the map has active radio beacons, you can do some cool blind navigation using the DF ring above your head. The way I use it is to put the R1155 in ‘visual’ mode, which activates the DF needles in the dial above the bombs arming panel. Put the sensitivity in R1155 to ‘high’ and dial in the frequency of the beacon. Now the DF needles will show you when you point at the beacon or when you have your tail pointed at the beacon - this is useful for “riding” a radial line to/from the beacon. However, lets say that you don’t fly on a radial and the beacon is far off to your right/left. You can use the DF to tell you when you arrived at a certain position along your nav leg: On F10 use the ruler to mark your leg. Note the heading. From the point of interest along your leg use the ruler again to find the heading to the beacon. Find the azimuth difference between the heading to the beacon from #2 to the nav leg heading #1. Now release the catch of the DF ring and rotate it by this many degrees to the side of the beacon relative to the flight path (if the beacon is to the port side, rotate that way), the notches on the base of the ring will show the angle. Now the DF needles show where is the beacon relative to the direction of the rotated DF ring - not the nose. You can now fly “dead reckoning” along your leg - when the DF needles converge on the center line it means you have reached your point of interest. For accuracy, check the needles only when you are pointed at the correct leg’s heading. If the beacon is roughly 45-135 quarter off your nose you can get pretty nice accuracy this way. It is much more efficient than the audio DF method. I use it during low altitude dead reckoning to make sure I do not miss a turning point - significantly more accurate than relying on the clock alone (mobile phone chronometer analog style since we don’t have one in the plane…).

I am sorry to bump this up again, but I did a new more careful test and compared it to the Mosquito HX.809 test flight at Boscombe Down from January 1944: http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mosquito/hx809.pdf I ran almost the exact same setup: 20,400 lbs total weight, with 50 galons drop tanks, radiators closed, +18 boost, 3000 RPM. The "almost" is important because HX.809 had a diffrent exhausts configuration - see below. Setup standard atmosphere (29.92 pressure, 20 deg). The plane was flown at 100 feet and 5000 feet, well trimmed, so hardly any control inputs, for 4 minutes for the speed to stablize around max value. Active paused and the speed was read from the F10 map, where it is displayed in knots (TAS I believe). Results: Altitude HX.809 DCS DCS no DT 100' 332 mph 285 kts = 329.5 mph 287 kts = 332 mph 5000' 353 mph 302 kts = 349 mph 303 kts = 350 mph So, we see that DCS speeds though a bit on the low side are pretty close to the HX.809 numbers - that should not be! HX.809 was tested while fitted with saxophone exhausts covered with flame dumping shrouds, while DCS FB.VI is modeled with stub exhausts without shrouds. The different configurations should have a significant effect on the speed as explicitly stated within the report. This is not a small effect - on other models tested at only +9 boost the difference was around 15 mph at sea level. That is a lot. ED pretty please with sugar on top, please check that our FB.VI performance is not tuned to a model with saxophones and shrouds, and also not tuned to the earlier tests of HJ.697 that was under-performing as concluded in the later HX.809 report cited here.

I can’t comment about the expected total oxygen time in the FB.VI, but this model rarely flew above 10,000 feet - it was entirely optimized for low altitude performance. The Mosquitoes that were flying to Berlin at high altitudes were the bomber (or PR) variants. They also had more internal fuel and engines tuned for high altitude performance.

As quoted above by @razo+r ED insist that the delay is correct and they explain it as an issue with electric part rather then the pneumatic of the electro-pneumatic system (said solenoid). This thread is not about that - it is about the guns not starting to fire all at the same moment. I don’t think there was any syncing device between the guns - what I expected was that all guns/mg will trigger at the same time. This is not what is happening in the game and the initial triggering of the cannons/mg is staggered - this requires a mechanism that introduces a varying delay for the triggering of each gun. If correct, this means that DH intentionally introduced additional delays to the guns on top of the supposed base delay due to the solenoid.

@RodBorza Planes with wing mounted guns fire together left and right symmetrically to reduced swing due to recoil. I dont know about multiple barrels per wing if they fire together or in sequence. Firing in sequence at a high rate introduces crosstalk between vibrations caused by each gun, which may be an issue if they resonate - if so then that’s another reason to, as the song goes “fire all of your guns at once and explode into space”. If I recall correctly, in the Mustang the inner gun on each wing has a longer ammo belts than the two outer guns.

And how will you aim the cannons, rockets or even bombs without it? Unless you intend to fly it as a civilian aircraft? Just curious.

The only way to learn is to dive right in and die. A lot. Just like the WWII pilots did. Hmm... on second thought, I checked and that last statement may not be entirely accurate.

Dude, you don't need to explain this to me - I am in DCS not IL2, obviously... I even own Kuban and Moscow or something like that - the reason I don't remember is that I only played a couple of hours in that game and stopped. It's not bad, but I don't have time for 2 games and I made my choice. DCS won mostly on account of releasing the Mosquito before IL2 did, and after clicking all the things in the cockpit giggling like a 12 year old girl, and fiddling with the R1155+DF, I can't go back to IL2 cockpits. The two most popular WWII servers require Normandy+Assets. These account for 80+% of the WWII servers popupation at almost any given time than I am on (too little, I admit). Most of the lesser popular but still (sometimes) not empty servers still require Normandy/Channel+assets. If you want WWII multiplayer on Caucasus without assets, then you have a lot of empty servers to choose from.

It is a psychological barrier - WWII modules are cheap compared to modern jet modules, but require the 1-time investment of the assets pack and usually at least one map. Lets say you are interested in online play: Normandy+assets are offered bundled for $60. Planes are $50. This makes it an entry fee of 3 shop items and ~$110 total (normal rates, not during special sales). On the other hand, the premium jets are $80 and you can get away without a map. So in comparison this is just 1 item and is cheaper than your first WWII modules. Of course if you want multiple modules, the WWII ones are cheaper, so the totals start to even out after a couple of plane modules that you buy - but this is farther down the road. The entry which is 3 items and about 1/3 more expensive total, turn away potential WWII players. Just for reference, for $80 ($90 expected at full release state) one can get the “competitors” Normandy map plus 8 flyable planes. Different game different thing I know, but if you are on the market for a WWII western-front sim, this is the reference.

ED WWII crew tend to be quite silent regarding what they work on or plan ahead. We have no idea when the skin template comes out (campaign designers such as Reflected need this to release their Mosquito campaign), we don’t know anything about navigator AI if there will be one at all, will the Very pistol will work, will the IFF do anything, and such. Can’t do much about it except be patient and hope for the best.

Something I missed in the quoted post, C.7 has 2 more hard points and is cleared for a higher takeoff weight, a slightly different variant of the J-79 engine, and improved HOTAS setup. There are also the export models which are more advanced and include a radar, air refueling capability, and targeting/ecm pods. The designations start from C.10. Columbia and Sri Lanka have those. According to this article from last year Sri Lanka will have their Kfirs upgraded to generation 4+ standards, and these Kfirs will be offered on the market for other countries under the name KNG (Kfir Next Generation): https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/50649

Kfir C1 was pretty bad. It had a stronger engine than the Mirage III but also higher weight. Kfir C2 introduced the canards, small winglets on the nose, and saw-tooth wing leading edges. These were a significant improvement over the C1 in air combat maneuvering. Kfir C7 was similar to C2 with further improved of avionics. The Kfirs were used mainly as fast attack aircraft using non guided munitions but with excellent computer assisted aiming via the HUD. It was supposed to be able to conduct strikes without the need for escorts and disengage at high speed. With GP bombs it achieved higher accuracy than the F-4E Phantoms of its era. GBUs were still not a big thing in the late 70s, especially not in strategic strikes or attacks on enemy airfields. I expect it to be performance wise somewhat similar to the Mirage F1, without radar, but with a range finder for a HUD cannon sight, and good CCIP/CCRP capabilities.

You are welcome, I think I put it even lower, but I also have a shorter stick… no pun. I don’t like the way DCS maps the game stick to the sim stick at default, but at least they give the tools to deal with it. At 100% saturation too much of the movement range of pulling the game-stick is way deep in the stall so you don’t use it. Much of the range in the push is useless too, especially in the mosquito where it chokes your engines.

Y saturation. Lots and lots of saturation.

I am not sure how the real thing was supposed to work, but here is what happens in the sim: It seems that of each set (cannos/MGs) the guns fire one at a time on a sequence starting from the port-side pair of each 4. First "problem" with this is that it significantly reduces lethality versus firing all 4 cannons simultaneously - in the latter case, with the tight clustered guns it means that if you hit, you'll likely hit with all 4 cannons for a devastating effect. When firing in sequence you just speard the fire more for reduced lethality. Second problem is that if you fire in many short bursts, the port cannons/MG run empty before the starboard cannons/MGs do, and you are left with the last couple of seconds of fire shooting from only 2 guns respectively. This is more pronounced on the MGs since they have a longer total firing time. I am just reporting an observation since I have no information whether this is correct or not. If this is correct then this combined with the cannons firing delay it makes this gun package a hell of a wasted potential.

Yes makes no difference. "Bomb containers and wing drop tanks jettison" button does not seem to do anything. The other jettison button - on the port-side wall above the throttles detent, does jettison drop tanks (I did not try wing bombs).

Man, have you tried to pronounce AEW&C phonetically out loud? Don’t do it in public, someone may panic and give you a Heimlich maneuver. AWACS just rolls off the tongue.