Gorn557

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.

Separate question- is it possible to "win" a DCE campaign (short of reducing all the enemy's units to zero)?

That's fine but it's a more general question about tactics.

Hello everyone: As a player of Longbow and Longbow 2 from the before times, I've been eagerly awaiting a chance to sink my teeth into this, and have finally been able to over the last few weeks. I think I'm now at a point where I can (arguably) operate the helicopter (and having a total blast by the way- quality is astounding), and I'm starting to try to learn how to really employ it correctly. I understand the perfect theoretical application of the Apache, where you're in some hilly forested terrain and can bob up just a few feet above the trees to pop off a Hellfire from 9 km away, and then disappear again. Of course, real life often conspires to make everything more difficult! Let me give you two examples of where this tactic isn't really usable, both from IA missions included with the module, and pose the question of how it should ideally be approached: 1) The Instant Action SCUD Busters mission: here, the targets are hidden in bunkers and behind trees as seen from a distance. If you fly close enough to see them, you'll get torn up by small arms fire. As far as I can tell, there would be two possible ways to approach this situation: a) at maximum range, go up to a few thousand feet to get LOS to the targets while remaining out of range of the small arms, while maybe keeping an eye on the ASE, but this would seem to expose you to manpads; b) fly over the target at very high speed, but then you both are exposed to small arms and will have a difficult time popping off a Hellfire due to the small ToT with LOS. 2) The Instant Action Red Flag mission. Here, the issue is that there's really no cover. You can hide behind the mountains to the west, but if you pop out for even an instant you're exposed to SA-11s. The only thing I can figure out here is to just go to absolute maximum Hellfire range, launch them, go back to the FARP, rearm, repeat. Thoughts from more experienced pilots than me? Am I thinking about this right? Am I missing other tactical options?

My computer is working fine. I plug in thing X from a company. Now my computer doesn't even start. I ask for help on the thing I spent nearly $1000 on. And I'm "blaming" the manufacturer? And it's certainly not true to claim no one anywhere has ever had a problem with MIP (just take a gander at r/hotas for example).

I'm having a weird bug where DCS crashes in VR when I have multiple monitors plugged in; if I remove the monitors, it works perfectly. I can also launch in multiple monitors in 2D with no issue. Here's what seems to be the relevant portion of the crash log: 2023-01-10 03:18:39.726 INFO VISUALIZER (Main): VRG skip, ask for support if you own VRG helmet 2023-01-10 03:19:00.541 ERROR VISUALIZER (Main): unable to init OpenVR runtime: Connect to VR Server Failed (301) 2023-01-10 03:19:00.544 INFO GRAPHICSVISTA (Main): renderer: 'dx11backend.dll' 2023-01-10 03:19:01.019 INFO DX11BACKEND (Main): DX11Renderer initialization (w:1280 h:768 fullscrn:1 vsync:0 adapter:0 monitor:0 shaderErrors:1) Any ideas? dcs.log-20230110-031901.zip

Yes. Ironically, they told me to make sure my drivers were updated. That's why I thought I'd try here. I've had tech support people telling me that for various issues since the DOS days, and it has yet to actually be the cause of a problem in my experience.

Understandable- it doesn't make for great gameplay when you have a weapon which would be the chess equivalent of kicking over the table with the board on it (although the DCS MiG-21 has nuclear weapons, though it's not an ED plane and they're not very realistic at all).

And whoever said it's out if it's not conventional? Like it or not, nuclear tactics were the backbone of huge swaths of both the USAF and Soviet Air Force for the better part of half a century - it's high time someone simulate it! Imagine the possibilites- flying low over the pole at Mach 2 in your B-58 in the dead of night, praying you won't be detected by the Tu-128s as you skim along at 100 ft above the water... I realize this will never be in DCS because much of the relevant data has never been declassified.

Hello all: I finally got my MIP a few weeks ago and I have to say, it is extraordinarily unstable. I have long had a bunch of flight sim-related peripherals connected to my PC and never had any issue with any of them. The MIP is an entirely different animal. If I connect the MIP to my PC before boot, either via a powered hub or individually, about 3/4 of the time my PC will fail to boot, citing a watchdog clock timeout. So I have to have the MIP unplugged just to boot (it actually does this in Windows 10 and 11, I reinstalled the OS just to be sure). Then, once in Windows, I have a whole new set of problems. If I have SimAppPro running and try to launch DCS in VR, it crashes, so I can't have SimAppPro open at all. Then, if I have the MIP plugged in at all, DCS will also crash, VR or not. The ONLY way I can not crash both my PC and DCS is to hotplug the MIP after launching DCS. Otherwise, either Windows or DCS will crash. If I do it this way, the MIP works. So does the MIP work? Yeah... kind of, I guess... but I would never ever recommend it to anyone under these circumstances. I have yet to have anyone recommend useful troubleshooting for this sort of problem beyond "make sure your drivers are updated" (they are), but I'd love to be proven wrong! I'll add that I've uninstalled and done clean reinstalls of both Windows and DCS. There's literally nothing on the PC right now except DCS (and SimAppPro). Anyone have any idea what might be going on here?

Doesn't work if you're running DCS in VR. All the Winwing program does is auto-write the script telling DCS which viewports to export.

Anybody could make this claim about any aircraft. For some, learning the complexity IS the fun.

Bumping this- still wanted in 2023! As a cockpit builder AND a VR user, the technology has improved to the point where there are now a number of little VR utilities that will let you designate part of your FOV as "real world" and pass through your view to it. It would be fantastic to be able to export MFDs to my real-world cockpit screens when in VR mode. I know people have noted this can't be done in threads going back to at least 2016, but with the tech leaps now possible, I'm adding it to the wish list of things we'd love to be able to do.

As a cockpit builder AND a VR user, the technology has improved to the point where there are now a number of little VR utilities that will let you designate part of your FOV as "real world" and pass through your view to it. It would be fantastic to be able to export MFDs to my real-world cockpit screens when in VR mode. I know people have noted this can't be done in threads going back to at least 2016, but with the tech leaps now possible, I'm adding it to the wish list of things we'd love to be able to do. Edit: sorry, realized I accidentally posted this in weather wishlist rather than core wishlist.

Bump... this still would be nice!

And two years later, checking in... assume no one ever made any progress with this?

I would love this as well.

Oh I so desperately want multicrew bombers...

That makes sense, thanks. I did some further research, I see a number of weapons were in fact tested on the Apache including AIM-9s, AGM-65 and AIM-92, but not made operational, at least on US AH-64Ds.

Raytheon would disagree with you. https://web.archive.org/web/20131104071216/http://www.poweredmodelairplanes.com/pma/a10/maverick04.pdf

Apologies if this has been asked and answered; any plans to add AGM-65s? I believe they are correct for this version of the aircraft.

I often play SP in a dedicated server on the same machine to improve performance. Given real life demands, however, it would be fantastic if I could use time compression in the dedicated server. At present I must choose between better performance in the dedicated server (where time compression is not possible) or choppy without the server but allowing me to use time compression and maybe realistically finish a mission. I'm sure there's lots of complexity I'm unaware of that probably makes this impossible, but the large contingent of "20 minutes between putting the baby to sleep and going back to work" pilots like myself would appreciate it greatly!

Yes. It does help a little.