Gorn557

Man, people sure love to complain. It looks like a great map. I bought the map. Done!

There's no legal requirement that you have to guarantee that another company (Microsoft) will continue to make their software compatible with your hardware indefinitely. What would be a reasonable time frame for such a guarantee? A year? Two years? Five? Ten? Does Microsoft pay for it or HP? It would get very messy very quickly. As pointed out above, in US law at least, caveat emptor almost always rules. If the hardware works within the warranty period (and in this context, "works" basically means "it powers on", not that it's compatible with X or Y version of Windows), then HP is free of liability. Do I like this? No, of course not, I absolutely hate it- but legally speaking HP has no obligations and will do nothing.

Unfortunately they have discontinued it. They're just trying to clear out stock. The Reverb subreddit is rife with HP employees who used to support Reverb (you can check their posting history) who will quite openly tell you HP has pulled the plug on VR and has zero people and dollars working on it. The chance that they're going to spend money to create new software to supplant a Windows function for a 3.5-year old product they're desperately trying to clear their stock of is nil. And I'm not happy about this; I own two Reverb G2s. It's just the reality.

I've been looking desperately, but not that I've seen. I hope one day someone does some conversions (there have been DCS conversions for the Jane's F-15 and USNF campaigns, for example).

It's all in your hardware setup- I get rock solid 90 fps with maxed out settings, though admittedly I have a 4090.

This! Heh, internet being what it is, on whatever the equivalent of forums is in 20 years, people will be typing via their neural interfaces to complain that the snow doesn't feel cold enough on their holodeck version of the Apache

It's definitely doable, though of course not ideal (same thing I say to people who want to fly without VR )

It's so easy here to get wrapped up in all the little details that can be improved or preferences we might have, so I just wanted to say how much I love the Apache and how much fun I'm having flying it. I've been flying virtual Apaches since Jane's Longbow almost 30 years ago (!!! - we're getting old) so I had very high expectations and hopes coming in, and they've been met and surpassed in spades. The joy and immersion I get out of flying the Apache and learning its systems is second to none. I find diving through the MFD pages to learn all the depth to which the subsystems have been simulated to be a joy. The feeling of being hunched over the TEDAC, lasing an enemy tank as George hides us behind a tree, hoping I nail the tank before it spots us and hits us with an AT-11 yields an immersion factor I've felt in no other video game - especially in VR. Sometimes I spawn myself on an aircraft carrier in the rain, in VR, and just watch flight operations as I sit in the cockpit ready for takeoff. It's pure bliss! So a lot of us get very "passionate" here about certain aspects of the game, but I just wanted to remind everyone what an amazing module we have here and how very far we've come from the pioneering flight sims of the late 1990s. The Apache has given me video gaming and simming enjoyment at a totally different level than I've ever before experienced. Now if I can just figure out how to consistently get myself lined up with that I-beam...

Thanks! That is helpful to give me a quick start.

Like I said, I am going to out my money where my mouth is and try it myself. Though I'm going to start small, maybe one mission first

Yeah, those tools exist and are fantastic- RotorOps, Briefing Room, Liberation. But still, it'll never quite reproduce a hand-crafted scripted mission. They have different strengths. And in any case, people are always going to be making scripted missions- I'm just suggesting creators push the envelope for variety and creativity.

Hello everyone: Just a thought on Apache missions and campaigns. There are so many wonderful user-created ones, but (anecdotally) 95% of the missions out there that I see always seem to be some variant of "fight insurgents with technicals in the desert or in a camp or town in Syria." So this is my little plea for creativity/variety in Apache missions. While the Apache has certainly been used in this way almsot exclusively for two decades- can't deny that- remember its original mission was to stop the advancing Soviet army rolling thousands of tanks through the Fulda gap. Where are my peer-on-peer conflicts? The desperate attempt to stop a brigade of T-72s before they can smash through the undermanned and unprepared NATO defenses on the first night of the invasion of West Germany (yes, I know we don't have a Fulda map, it would have to be a stand in). Combating the Iraqi army's hundreds of tanks on the road to Kuwait on the first night of the first Gulf War? Mounting a desperate struggle in the Pacific flying under IADS and trying to hit the landing craft as a peer adversary attempts to invade US territory with modern naval and air support? (And yes, I know there are a few like this, I'm not saying there are zero). Heck, even a conversion of the old Jane's Longbow campaigns. And yes, I'm going to try to put my money where my mouth is and make a few missions to this effect myself (though they'll be my first real foray into mission-making so they won't be any good), but I just wanted to put this thought out there in the community. The Apache was designed for a much different and higher intensity battlefield than most of the places it actually has operated in recent yyears-we should use DCS to stretch our creative muscles and explore some of those situations!

What GPU and settings?

Or if you're chugging along with a 4090 at 20 fps with comparable settings to what gets you a solid 90 fps in the G2 at the same resolution.

It's amazing how almost 3 years later no one has released anything that is definitively superior to the G2, which wasn't some sort of flagship premium product, and which HP has totally abandoned.

I unsubscribed from him for exactly this reason, endless videos breathlessly proclaiming "PIMAX IS TEH FUTURE" until you find out he's using special beta software given to him by the company and he never shows his settings or does any kind of meaningful, systematic benchmarking.

I guess his Pimax sponsorship deal ran out He's been shilling for the Crystal for months!

I've been very frustrated with the lack of showing any settings for all these YouTubers showing the Crystal. As far as I'm concerned any statements about performance are worthless in the absence of: 1) DCS settings 2) Whether it's the multithreaded version 3) Hardware specs And yet no one so far that I've seen has shown all three of these things.

Hello all: Tactical question for you. Apologies if this has been discussed a hundred times before as I'm sure it has. Basically it comes down to this: at what altitude should I be flying intercept missions- high or low? What did real pilots do? The source of the question is that I've been trying to get as high as possible, 25-30k feet, to give myself as long a horizon as I can for LOS to targets. But I'm finding I often don't see targets on the AWG-9 until they're right on top of me (this is over water), and I know the AWG-9 struggled a bit with clutter. So what this really boils down to is: I know the AWG-9 is 60s analog electronics, etc., highly susceptible to ECM, etc.- will I get better detection performance down at lower level because I'm losing targets in the clutter, or is the radar really "that bad" (and I mean in an historical sense, not criticizing the simulation of it). TL;DR: what's the best altitude for long-range detection and engagement of targets over water? High or low?

You don't have to want them. Actually if you read it I was very thorough about the status of each, which have mods, which we might get, etc. But this is the internet, so people tell you you're wrong even to wish you had something...

Gotta love internet culture... I leave a post of pure gratitude and joy and people immediately start telling you why you're wrong

Yeah, like I said, I think we'll get an F-111 eventually.

Hello everyone: There’s a bunch of crazy aircraft I’d love to see in DCS. I own almost every plane already and I realize that realistically even if they never released another starting tomorrow, I’d never learn in depth even half the planes I already own over the rest of my lifetime because of the amazing depth and quality of the modules that already exist. I've also heard Wags on some interviews saying essentially we'd love to do everything, it always comes down to just available resources and time. As a real-life program manager myself, I resonate with that. But... because this is the internet, I want a whole bunch of other stuff anyway! I realize a lot of these will almost definitely never happen, at least not for a long, long time, but I figured I’d throw some ideas out there. Heck, maybe I’ll inspire someone to at least make a mod one day (and I know some of these are mods in the sense that there’s an external model you can fly, but I’m talking at least "unique cockpit" fidelity). I’d love nothing more than to come back here in 2030 and find I was wrong and a bunch of these are in the game! So, without further ado, my list: 1) The aircraft: B-1B, B-52, and B-2 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: There has not, as far as I can tell, been a post-WW2 multicrew bomber sim since the 1990 game Megafortress. There either isn’t much demand for it, or it’s just been deemed “less cool” than fighters. Also, since these are still in service and carries nuclear weapons, probably classification issues. And of course, multicrew makes it more complex, though this is certainly a solvable problem with multiplayer/AI. Why I want it anyway: The flip side of there never having been a real post-WW2 bomber sim is that there is an enormous class of missions that has never been simulated. Imagine flying low over the pole at low level, at night, at supersonic speed, screaming in to deliver a nuclear payload… flying transatlantic to strike Iraq with AGM-86 CALCMs…. carpet bombing the Vietcong or Taliban as you drop hundreds and hundreds of Mk 82s on them… there’s an entirely new type of aerial warfare that we’ve never really had access to as flight simmers. I liken it to the situation with WW2 first person shooters – how many times have we stormed the beaches of Normandy, while meanwhile most of the geographical scope of the conflict is totally ignored – the troops slogging through the Aleutians or the Burma Road, the intense fights at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Tinian, the desperate struggles of the Norwegians to keep the Germans from overrunning their peninsula, etc. I love my F-15s as much as the next guy, but there are so many more aircraft to fly than that! 2) The aircraft: Tu-160, Tu-95 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: All the same reasons, plus the difficulties of doing REDFOR aircraft right now. It’s a shame; as recently as 1990 the US Defense Secretary (Frank Carlucci) was invited to tour a Tu-160 from the inside; obviously world events have changed. Why I want it anyway: Same reason as for 1) – totally different kind of mission from anything that has ever been simulated before, plus all the maritime variants of the Bear mean you’re basically getting a P-3 Orion of sorts included as well. 3) The aircraft: Tu-22M Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: REDFOR again. Why I want it anyway: Similarly to the above, we have a supersonic attack bomber, though in this case I could squint and imagine one – it’s just a two-seater. Its mission was much like that of the F-111 – low-level supersonic swing-wing ground attack. Most importantly for me on this one, though, is that we’ve been flying the “F-14 defends the fleet from Backfires” mission on PCs since the 1980s. It’s high time we get to fly this mission from the other side! Plus there’s just something unique about this aircraft- sleek, high speed, variable geometry, heavy attack load, defined US carrier defenses for a generation – there’s no other aircraft quite like it. 4) The aircraft: Su-24 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: Same as above, unfortunately. Why I want it anyway: Also pretty similar reasoning as to the Tu-22. The Su-24, on the other hand, being “more tactical” and more of a 1:1 comparison to the F-111, I could also see fitting more readily into the gameplay pattern of DCS as it currently stands. On the other hand, this makes it less interesting to me as it isn’t quite as unique a mission, and we have e.g. a Tornado coming which is similar in profile. I know there was a mod in development for this which looked amazing, but it seems to have been abandoned. 5) The aircraft: Su-34 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: Same as above- front-line, high-end REDFOR aircraft. Why I want it anyway: All of the above plus cutting-edge armament and glass cockpit? Count me in! 6) The aircraft: F-111 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: I do actually think we’ll get this one one day- it’s old enough that it should be declassified, there are Americans and Aussies who love it, and it’s two-crew so it should be manageable – again much like the Tornado. Why I want it anyway: The F-111 hits that sweet spot between, say, a Tu-22 and a Tornado- it had that unique deep strike mission, but also performed tactical strike missions in Libya and Iraq. Again in that “kinds of missions that haven’t been flyable in a sim ever before”, imagine flying Mach 2.5 (OK, Mach 1.2 at sea level) screaming over the treetops with your TFR, racing in to deliver your nuclear payload against the Warsaw Pact, or crossing an ocean to strike at Ghaddafi’s forces with pinpoint precision, unloading tens of thousands of bombs on an airfield in Iraq – even the Tornado doesn’t get quite get there with these kinds of missions. 7) The aircraft: Mi-28 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: A front-line, probably classified REDFOR aircraft, and it’s had struggles getting into service its whole career. Even now it’s still not 100% clear how functional it really is in combat. Why I want it anyway: If you think about front-line modern attack helicopters, the most prominent ones are the AH-64 (check), AH-1 (not in the game yet, but I think it will show up eventually via mod or official module), Mi-24 (check), Ka-50 (check), Ka-52 (not in-game, but “close enough” to the Ka-50)… and the Mi-28. This is the only missing premier front-line attack helicopter in DCS, at least among the two major players (though I wouldn’t complain seeing a Eurocopter Tiger/Z-10/T129!). To me the DCS helicopter stable is sort of “incomplete” without one. 8 ) RAH-66 Comanche Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: Never entered service. Just a prototype. Why I want it anyway: Continuing along the same lines as above, this is the only other concept for a completely new US attack helicopter since the Apache arose in the late 1970s. (putting aside the currently ongoing FARA competition). And, come on… a stealth helicopter! What more need I say? Plus glass cockpit, air-to-air weaponry, retractable weapons bays and gears, incredible maneuverability… if I have to justify it to you at this point, you’ll never get it. Hopefully we can at least get it as a mod one day. 9) YF-23 and X-32 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: Same as above- just prototypes. Why I want it anyway: Look at pictures of those freaking things. If those sexy stealth aircraft with glass cockpit and next-gen avionics don’t excite you, well… I won’t be able to do it in words. I’m hopeful we can get one of these or the Comanche at least as mods one day. 10) SR-71 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: Kind of a difficult aircraft to simulate- hard to handle, only does a reconnaissance mission (and I can’t think of a single game simulating a reconnaissance-only aircraft via a non-mod), only does a single mission and needs a lot of room in which to do it. Why I want it anyway: I don’t think I even need to explain this one. Again in that category of “things you’ve never been able to do in a sim” – skimming the coasts of the Soviet Union at Mach 3 and 85,000 – overflying the North Korean DMZ or Hanoi in a literal spacesuit, hoping the MiG-25s don’t come up and notice you, while they take potshots at you in SA-2s that can’t quite get all the way up – there’s never been a mission as dynamic and high-performance as the SR-71’s primary task. I know there’s a mod for this one, but it’s not really that functional. 11) MiG-25 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: This one I do think we could theoretically get one day – after all, a NATO nation (Bulgaria) operated it for a time – but it’s probably a long way off. Why I want it anyway: I don’t think I even need to explain this one. Well, it’s the other side of the SR-71 mission. Mach 3 and 85,000 feet to intercept an SR-71, plus high-altitude reconnaissance of its own. Imagine the possibilities- scramble to intercept a flight of SR-71s of XB-70s (and man would I love an XB-70, or a B-58 for that matter but I won’t even bother to ask for those here), high-altitude, high-speed photography over Israel or Pakistan – there’s never been an aircraft quite like this in a sim. I’ll lump MiG-31 in with this as well since it’s a very similar airframe and mission. 12) F-117 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: This one I do think we’ll get one day at least in a mod (there is a mod right now, but it seems to have been abandoned and isn’t really functional). You can fly it right now in MSFS, though of course it doesn’t simulate any of the systems. But the immediate problem is that I imagine much of it is still classified. Why I want it anyway: You either want to fly the Wobblin’ Goblin or you don’t. That mission during the first night of the Gulf War, flying in to Baghdad, guns and missile blazing, completely undetected to open the conflict- it’s one of the most iconic of all time. Here we did have the great Sid Meier sims of the late 1980s, but they weren’t accurate (not that they could have been at that time). It’s actually a rather simple aircraft that just has one mission- essentially deliver its two GBU-12s and go home. I think it would actually be much simpler to learn than many DCS aircraft. 13) Tu-128 Why I realize we’ll almost certainly never get it in the foreseeable future: It’s just a really niche aircraft. I bet even a lot of people here have never heard of it. The heaviest fighter ever to enter service, almost 100,000 lb. Its sole mission- long range interception to defend the borders of the Soviet Union. This one you could probably do, I just don’t think there’s enough of an audience for it (though someone could build one with an amazing module…) Why I want it anyway: Beating the dead horse of “unique combat aviation missions that have never before been possible in a flight sim” – take off in your barely controllable 100,000 lb behemoth to fly 1,000 miles at 60,000 feet to try to knock down the B-52s before they can unload their devastating nuclear ordnance on Soviet cities, using nothing but your garbage R-4 missiles and GCI. I don’t know. Probably I’m the only one who finds this really compelling. But I’d love to fly that mission. Honorable mentions to the F-22 and F-35, which I’m not including because 1) there’s a great, fully-functional mod for the F-22, and 2) I think there will inevitably be an F-35 mod someday, just a question of time. Goes without saying, it’s a classification issue with regard to official modules for those two aircraft. I’d love a B-36, B-58, or XB-70, but the latter never entered service, and I think the former two are so niche that it would be hard to get enough people interested. But I can dream! Oh, and V-22 anyone? Here endeth the list of dreams.

I just wanted to say thanks to ED for…. everything they do. I’m part of the “silent majority” of DCS players. I almost never post here, I only pay passing attention to all the detailed ins and outs of what’s happening with development, and just play an hour or two here or there each week as I get those rare blocks of time not taken up with work or family. I spend a lot on various modules, but I don’t have much of an “online presence”, so to speak. That’s why I wanted to share this thought. As I was playing the multithreading beta in VR this weekend, I looked out from my F-14 in an extremely heavy mission over to the sun rising over the mountains as I was getting 100+ fps with settings maxed out. And it occurred to me: DCS has spoiled me so much that I can hardly play any other games. I was thinking of firing up one of my old favorites, EECH Comanche vs. Hokum, and I though, “no, it doesn’t have anywhere near the realism of a DCS helicopter. I might as well play an arcade game”. I look at games like IL-2 without the moddability and think “I could be playing all the amazing user-generated content in DCS instead.” I look at MSFS and think “the terrain is nice but the system simulation is so poor relative to DCS, why am I not playing DCS instead?” DCS is the game we all dreamed we were playing as we squinted at our 320x200 version of Tornado screaming along at 2 fps on DOS in 1993 and declared it the future. DCS is the game we thought we were getting every time a new landmark sim came along – Longbow, Tornado, IL-2, etc. You take: 1) The best, most photo-realistic graphics of any sim out there 2) An enormous library of switch-for-switch accurate jet aircraft, helicopters, piston aircraft, multirole fighters, civilian cargo helicopters, and more 3) An astoundingly rich database of user-generated missions and other content, including a dynamic campaign generators and all sorts of weird and wonderful aircraft 4) The best VR compatibility of any game on the market 5) Constant free core updates plus loads of new aircraft, missions, and campaigns coming all the time; 6) And oh, by the way, the framerate just doubled this past weekend with multithreading. For free. Only in DCS can you use the real flight manuals as a truly useful guide in-game, or vice versa. Every switch, every obscure radar mode, every rivet is lovingly modeled. And its trump card over the likes of BMS is that it just doesn’t do this for one aircraft- it does it for nearly every major American and Russian postwar fighter, with more being added all the time (plus helicopters, plus civilian aircraft), and even more available via mods. Are there bugs on page 57 of the MFD when you’re in an inverted flat spin in a rainstorm at that one spot in the map if you press the fire button and open the airbrake at the same time? Aboslutely? Does the AI eagerly find a taxiway full of aircraft to land on at regular intervals? No doubt. Does it make an RTX 4090 look like a PS1 struggling to put frames on the screen sometimes? Sure. But find me another game where I can race over the treetops at Mach 2 in my F-14 in the rain, at night, in virtual reality, trying desperately to avoid that SA-6 as I attempt to reach my target airfield and obliterate it with GBU-12s, sputtering back to the carrier on my last 300 lb of fuel as my HUD winks out due to my engine fire. It is my contention that anyone who does not consider DCS to be the definitive postwar combat aviation sim either hasn’t played it, or is wrong. I’m going to for the most part recede back into the background here, but keep developing this amazing sim to the standards you’ve held up so successfully over the years, and I’ll keep supporting it and buying pretty much every module that you release. So thanks, ED. You’ve spoiled me. I don’t want to play anything else anymore, because I know I could be playing DCS instead.

IRIAF Tanker War. And I'm having a great time with it, I was just wondering if the usual end state was someone deciding "I've flown enough of this campaign" once they get to 50 missions or something. Sounds like it is BTW I got a very similar error to Barthek the last time I tried to generate a mission but I didn't get a picture of it- I will if it happens again.