RealDCSpilot

Times are changing: https://mozaracing.com/flight

Oh man, please stay realistic. Is it the most accessible helicopter FM, easy for beginners? Yes. But that's only because it's the Fiat Panda of DCS's helicopters. It clearly got it's DNA from a civilian machine. Power, weight, materials... Atm the Kiowa FM also has issues. I have a random problem with ground effect, slowly gliding in to a landing spot leads to a strange bouncing off effect sometimes. As if the aircraft dropped a ton of weight all of a sudden. Retreating blade stall seems also very undefined, it simply switches to "hey, i'm a stone now" in a split second.

Textures, especially the normal maps are only at 30% where they should be in 2024. The whole 3D model looks more like something that would be used as an AI object in a game. The Apache is simply state-of-the-art. It demonstrates up-to-date texturing artist craftmanship.

I was able to see it with NVS in daylight. It's very very dim. Just check against a higher contrast background.

This only comes from a technical limited perspective. Imaging being a deaf person in the middle of the crowd on a dance floor, but everybody is wearing headphones. You simply hear and feel nothing. The track just entered a break section and everybody calms down. And then the DJ let the next beat kick in. All you can do is wondering why everybody is going crazy. That seems to be how most people experience VRS in DCS. No wonder, because the most people sit in front of a monitor, only with a spring-centered joystick or maybe a HOTAS. But DCS does much more, it exports real-time telemetry output. Feeding that into a motion seat or into a haptic seatpad via Simshaker opens up much more information your aircraft is telling you all the time. Hull vibrations, turbulences... everything is there. VRS, retreating blade stalls etc. announce themselves long before it happens. A simple seatpad with Simshaker already does the trick to make you feel what the aircraft is telling you. It doesn't matter if you have thousands of hours in the real thing. A SME, equipped only with a small monitor and spring-centering stick, is not able to tell you much about how good a flight model truly is. He is missing out on a lot of information. You'll need at least a VR headset for all the three-dimensional references of the world around you, the much larger field of view that simply gives you all the information on movement of everything around you. And on top of that a haptic solution for telemetry output. To let your body feel what is going on. It's up to you how much you want to dive into DCS. But don't judge stuff by just looking through a small cellar window that makes you miss the most of what is going on under the hood.

Everytime i read "but it's fun" in here i get the old Gazelle FM vibes. With the old FM it flew like ass and people claimed "but it's so fun to fly". It took 7 years to be fixed! Fun is something i actually expect from every module i'm interested in. It's out of the question, why bring it up here. Overall quality of a product is what concerns me as a customer (and DCS module collector). And your faith as a DCS customer is really tested these days. So now we have the OH-58D, released without EA and without release day cut-off price. There was a lot of bragging about that it won't be an early access product. What we got is still an EA product, with stuff that doesn't work right or is in substandard condition and needs to be fixed, like the usual DCS stuff. No big difference to an EA release. I found a lot of bugs within the first hours myself. What did the testers do? The amount of money is also quite high for the given complexity of the module. We just had the release of the F-4E, 100 times more complex module... Put that into perspective.

It's not only that. It only renders about 50m far.

@some1 As far as i remember, the global communication menu won't work if the server has easy comm disabled. You need to have dedicated PTT buttons to bind in a DCS module. Both current PTT binds work only for VOIP radios.

@Kinkkujuustovoileipä To prevent misunderstandings, can you please give us bindings for: Trigger 1st detent (ICS not only VOIP) Trigger 2nd detent (Radio not only VOIP) Weapon Release 1st detent Weapon Release 2nd detent

Sadly certain fundamental bindings are wrong and missing. It's even wrong in the manual. The trigger on the cyclic with two detents should be for radio (ICS and chosen radio). There is currently no other way than using the global communications menu. To fire the weapons we actually need an extra button (the thumb button on the real cyclic) and also a binding for the button cover. The 2nd detent on the trigger should not be for weapon release. Another problem is the IZLID laser button. If you want to use it, it will only work after you clicked with your mouse on the real button on the collective. Otherwise your bound button won't work. Check the page from the real manual...

AI Pilot Off does nothing. AI Pilot On does work like a toggle.

Is there any data about retreating blade stall conditions? Where is the threshold? What are does and don'ts? Had to quick dive a couple of times to dodge missiles and ended up falling from the sky like a stone. It seems to switch very quickly and there is no way to get controls back. Sadly there is no update to Simshaker out yet, normally i get the haptic feedback long before it happens. Another thing: ground effect. It kinda kicks in like with a delay and a bit to much?? I'm used to the soft cushion of air in the other helicopters in DCS, but in the OH-58 it kinda works bit like a trampoline (?)

I hope OP get's it that there is no magic button. Calling it "auto hover" is misleading. The button on the real stick does nothing more than helping with main rotor stabilization by taking away parts of control authority and shifting them to roll and pitch attitude sensors with the help of dampers. The current hard kick-in is clearly a game software helper taking control. A real auto hover feature would need extra hard and software with more precise positional data input and integrated actuators for full control.

@Kinkkujuustovoileipä Found a bug in the on/off logic. I can bring up the display without the NVS enabled. It happens if i switch between pilot and co-pilot and also switch NVS and ODU on and off several times. It's state should be dependent on if the NVS is currently on or off.

Inspected it in the modelviewer and would recommend to double the resolution of the textures and not choose that hard texture compression. There are very visible color compression artifacts everywhere on the hull. Didn't expect this in 2024.

I'm also surprised and disappointed of the 3D model quality and textures in 2024. This is max. 40-50 bucks territory. Also when it comes to system complexity and weapon variety. It's not that much. Premium price makes me expect premium quality. When i look down, out the window in VR and see the texture resolution of the skids... It shows.

VPforce Rhino here and it works as expected. You can even switch off force trim with the cockpit switch and the spring forces get disabled.

Yeah, needing to revert the force setting for Y axis on certain modules is something i remember from my old G940 back in the days...

@KomandorAdam Are all settings correct? F-4E special options -> the first two checkboxes need to be unchecked! (stick deflection limit and stick force blending). These are for spring-centered sticks to mimic the real behaviour. Globally in DCS Force Feedback must be checked of course. Works perfectly well on my end. The Phantom has one of the best FFB implementations for planes in DCS. And i read the team is getting hands on a Rhino soon, makes it even more interesting what will come out of this later.

Oh, i'm only talking about DT delivering mode and Pave Spike operation. Air to Air radar is another problem... Getting locks is like playing a lottery. There is still a lot of work to do for HB.

@JNelson I tried to replicate the problem with unticking the full screen setting, without success. The erratic behaviour seems to be gone for good on my end. That's not really good news i guess. All i can tell is the conditions before and after i ticked the full screen option. I've been playing VR since more than 6 years now. Never used full screen mode, so this option was unused since years or at least since my latest re-install of DCS on this machine 1.5 years ago. I was testing the DT mode and Pave Spike since release of the F-4 and actually gave up on it until i found this thread. And i really tried hundreds of variations delivering bombs in those modes in the past days seeing all kinds of strange reactions of the radar ground lock, jester callouts and failed automatic release timings. I even tried to manipulate the pattern table to force a huge release advance to prevent the overshoot of the bombs. With the Pave Spike it only worked with a good amount of lead in front of the target and manually moving the crosshair back on the target once the bombs are in the air. I can only conclude that something deep in the bowels of DCS got triggered by switching to full screen in the system options. I hope you can find cause.

This also greatly improves the handling and tracking of the Pave Spike and dropping GBU with laser targeting. The bombs are released at the right moment now. Just had a 100% hit rate with dropping all sorts of GBU.

@FusRoPotato @JNelson FusRo... you need to get nominated for the Nobel Price for finding that DCS bug deep in it's bowels with out-of-the-box thinking! You actually only need to set this. In VR my desktop mirror is still a small window, but all of a sudden my bombs hit exactly where i want them and i can also pull the stick before the drop to make a toss release!

On my end, testing GBU with the Pave Spike seems to have the same problem. The calculated automatic release is always a bit to late. The bomb overshoots and can't catch the laser. My workaround is to aim with the Pave Spike something like hundred meters in front of the target, let the WRCS do the drop and manually move the Pave Spike slowly onto the actual target after that. Then the bomb catches the laser guidance and hits.

It's not recorded in VR, this is the 2D IHADSS used with TrackIR. The IHADSS in VR is rendered differently. In 2D it's just a simple overlay.