drhow

Browsing around I found this little video of some ugly old plane. The year is 1988, a hog is flying a demo, and this is the hud cam and voice recorder. http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational_and_howto/watch/v19242364kbmYcW37

Well this isn't a screenshot, but it could be one. I was reading old articles on Warthog News when I saw this and all I could think was "FlamingCliffs.jpg". This is from training exercises done one year ago in Bulgaria. High-res link available on the blog.

I'd be careful with this idea. Remember that is this a desktop simulation so there are probably many simplifications programmed into the physics model. Sometimes that requires that values have to be tweaked and adjusted in order to get correct-looking physical behaviour at the end of the day. Just plugging in real values could cause weirdness.

I'm glad to know people are enjoying this, thank you for the kind words! If you really don't like the "pula" model, there is also a "kinetic_type1" model, I believe it is some kind of sabot flechette sort of round. A bit smaller than "pula", but stranger looking imho. Aside from that and several different colours of tracer we don't seem to have any other options. Havoc, here's what I think for these values. Really, this will take a large amount of trial and error to figure out. Ideally it would be great if someone who wrote this code could show us one well commented gun table entry. It would be very much appreciated and we'd have a much better idea of how to go about this. Please... Pretty please! :)

This thread got me thinking, and well I think it's pretty easy to get the effect that you are looking for. I really have no idea about modding lomac, but as far as I can tell this works, though may not be "kosher". I dont know. After following the trail through a couple .lua files, I went into config\weapons\shell_table.lua and at the very end there in an entry for the a-10 guns. I also noticed that HE rounds exist, technically. Anyway, I removed the tracer effect on the gun, and added some explosive to it and I find that this is pretty nice. Perhaps someone with more experience could add to this, or package it up for modman. shell("GAU8_30_AP", _("GAU8_30_AP"), { model_name = "pula", v0 = 950.0, Dv0 = 0.0060, Da0 = 0.0017, Da1 = 0.0, mass = 0.360, explosive = 0.0750, life_time = 31, caliber = 30.0, AP_cap_caliber = 15.0, s = 0.0, j = 0.0, l = 0.0, charTime = 0, cx = {0.5,0.80,0.90,0.080,2.15}, k1 = 5.7e-09, tracer_off = 4, scale_tracer = 0, name = "30mm AP", }); The only changes are to model_name, explosive, and scale_tracer. I don't know how this would work for multi...anyway, it's a start.

And if despite the fact that your hydraulics are toast, you have no gear, no brakes, no flaps, your hud is out, you're leaking fuel like a sieve and your A-10 is more hole than plane, if despite all this you manage to limp back to base and pull off a breathtakingly perfect belly landing, it will not repair you no matter how long you wait. Because you have no landing gear. :cry:

What I mean is that past a certain range (couple miles or so) and/or altitude, no matter how many times I hit enter to lock, it won't lock. If this is modeled that way, what is the max range is supposed to be. I understand there are different targeting systems, I'm just curious as I can ground stabilize the mavericks no problem while still miles from the target, but not so with the CCRP pip.

I was playing around with cluster bombs on the A-10 in an effort to achieve large spreads. This led me to fly at greater altitudes, and I ran into some trouble. Is there a max range that the CCRP targeting pipper can lock on to the ground? Past about 9000ft or so I found that the only way I could ever get the CCRP pip to lock was by diving towards the target.

First, thank you to the dev team for another great release. Your work is very appreciated. I didn't want to start a new thread and I'm not sure if this is a bug per se, but I do not seem to have any training missions included in the game. I see only a link that brings me to the training videos hosted online.

Now this may be following a tangent and I don't know how much of this is modeled in DCS, but theoretically firing rockets from a hover adds a large margin of error. Take a look at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/1-140/CH4.HTM#3 "Firing rockets at a forward airspeed above ETL provides a favorable relative wind, which helps to counteract thrust misalignment. When a rocket is fired from a hovering helicopter, the favorable relative wind is replaced by an unfavorable and turbulent wind caused by rotor downwash. This unfavorable relative wind results in a maximum thrust misalignment and a larger dispersion of rockets." Anyone know if these effects are present in the game?

Doesn't AA and AA/HO only affect the detonation range of the Vikhrs?

As far as I understand, without the laser you wont be able to get any range information on the target, so your shark will not have enough data to compute an accurate firing solution.

As a recent purchaser of TrackIR, I cannot endorse this enough. I always thought it looked a bit gimmicky and awkward to use. I was completely surprised by its ease of use when I first tried it. After a hour or two of use and a bit of profile tweaking it felt completely natural, and the utility it adds is immeasurable. It is worth every penny. I've even caught myself trying to "look around" in youtube videos. :doh:

I was flying above the clouds just the other day, thick overcast and rain, sunny up top. Now that's not saying everything was sunny (ha ha). The clouds looked very strange from above, almost as if there was an interlacing problem. I guess it was like an endless pattern of high frequency, high amplitude sine waves were warping all through clouds. There was also a flicker all along where the clouds met the edge of the mountains. I found it to be quite rough on the eyes, definitely headache inducing stuff. I'm going to assume this is another cloud lighting bug that has no solution.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the de-icing setting has this switch in the up position, down is only dust protection.

I was reading that rotor downwash affects the angle of rockets as they are fired because of the air pushing on the fins. From a low hover, the rockets would get pushed first down, then up from the air pad you are creating. Firing from altitude with forward motion would create the most favorable launch conditions for accuracy. Are these effects modeled in DCS? edit: Link to source

I may have dramatized the events for added thrills. Who wants to read about an internet helicopter running out of computer fuel. :D

I didn't think about dropping the pods until quite late, makes sense that they would be modeled to cause drag and have weight even while empty. Also that one engine trick is good to know. @Falcon1906 Thanks for the game last night, it was alot of fun and learned some new things too. Shame we had to lose you in that mountain stream. @GGTharos Never heard those guys before, some hilarious songs. - JDAM Blues - I'm a Pilot

I've been playing Black Shark for two weeks now. Basically new to sims, though somewhat familiar with aviation. So I'm still trying to get the hang of all the systems, and the piloting. And the systems while the piloting. Last night I played a mission online that still has me all excited. I don't remember the name, something about The Other Side, I believe. Mission was to fly through the mountains into Georgia and attack an outpost or some such. We started with 3 on the server, set out our loads and took off. As I had never done this, climbing through the mountains was amazing. Trying to get to optimum lift speed, struggling to cross the peaks with a heavy load of weaponry, pushing the chopper to the limit. I was having a blast, but danger lurked! Along the way we lost one wingman due to a badly set de-icing switch and subsequent engine failure (Dust protection was on). The remainder eventually made it to the ingress point and began the attack on the compound. We eased into position and fired away from our safety. I took my time, eventually wingman left to reload, while I loitered around cleaning up the remains of the base. It was then that I noticed my fuel guage was much lower than when I had last checked it. Oops, seems I was hypnotized by the target. In fact, I had somewhere between 500-600Kg of fuel, I don't exactly remember. This was going to be close. I turned for home immediately, stressing out all along as I pushed the chopper back into the mountains. Don't go fast, fly efficient I kept telling myself. I was getting more worried as the flight progressed. By the time I hit the apex of the mountain climb I was looking at around 200Kg of juice. I had altitude, which was good, as the airfield was much lower. So I continued on, keeping the collective as low as I possibly could, with a small descent rate and constant speed of 140. I was transfixed by the small dot of an airfield that was crawling so agonizingly slowly towards my little airplane on the ABRIS. I was a madman. The closer I got, the faster I let myself descend, the lower the collective. Within a few kilometers of the airfield I had less than 40kg fuel, only in one tank, now being cross-fed. I lowered throttle to idle. The cockpit warnings beeped away steadily as I descended while maintaining close to 80% rpm. I was on a great slope. When about 50m up, and at the airfield, I put the power back up to full and went to land on the ramp. As I tried to stabilize hover just before setting down, the RPM began to drop. I panicked and set her down with a bit of a thud, but no damage. I was back, I had made it. I don't think there was more than 10Kg of fuel left in the tank. What a rush! As for the Ed Macy moment title, those of you who haven't read the book "Apache", he has a similar low fuel return, albeit, in much different circumstances. It's good read. I tried to watch the track of this mission to get some more accurate figures, but in the replay I seem to shoot all my vikhrs into the dirt, and then swerve my helicopter into the mountain wall. I didn't remember doing that yesterday, I thought I had flown back...but....wait, can I see dead people? In reality, I think the replay errors in this case come from the fact that I use TrackIR and the HMD with turn-to-target. My guess is the positioning is slightly askew even when I never switch views during the playback. I've not yet tried to play it out completely at normal speed, as it was a long mission. Oh well. Now, I ask, does anyone else have any wonderful DCS moments they'd like to share?