JHzlwd

Is there one? The one I find in the DCS downloads is the same as the original. I could use some documentation re what some of the new options are or is it just "trial and error". Best wishes, JH

Much thanks. I will try that. I had assumed there should be something when the zone is first established.

There is almost certainly a simple answer to this but can't find it on my own. I use the Mission Editor a lot and see several references in the docs about assigning a Moving Area Target Zone to a unit but no instructions. Furthermore, I cannot find anything in the editor itself that would seem to support this. All I see id the stationary type Zone. Any info appreciated.

Believe me it was a problem and for some other folks too. Access to the G510 download was very intermittent the last few days and the link to the x64 package unavailable. Luck of the draw, perhaps.

A few days ago I reported complete success installing DCS World and aircraft modules under Win 8 but could not install the profiler for the Logitech G510 gaming keyboard. The problem seems to be with the Logitech site which may have a faulty link to the Win 8 (64 bit) compatible code or, perhaps they are fiddling with it. Here's the starting link: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support/game-gear/gaming-keyboard-g510 Yesterday it worked correctly for a short time so I downloaded the package and it installs and runs perfectly (also very nice looking). Today when I checked again I could NOT find the package and for awhile the page could not even be opened (no response yet to my problem ticket). Very mysterious. What you need is "lgs835_x64.exe". If "lgs835.exe" only appears, that won't work as it is the 8 nit version. Keep re-visiting the download until the x64 version appears. Total success, but not without that temporary compatibility issue.

Hi Hamblue, Just a couple more observations for others thinking about Win 8 with DCS ... Practically all Win 8 reviewers and most people who have never used it seem to think the regular desktop has been done away with. *This isn't true*. All you have to do is click the "Desktop" icon on the Metro page. The Metro page disappears and you have the desktop you know and love for the rest of the day. Yes, "Start" is gone but many of those functions (including "All Programs") are found in the "Charms" menu that pops up on the right side. I have pinned some of my regular desktop apps to the Metro page so right after boot I can open them in regular Win 7 style desktop with a single click. Otherwise I have no use for and never see the Metro page. What the Metro view and functionality does is provide a way to integrate/manage your desktop PC together with any Windows mobile devices like the "Surface" while providing a convenient gateway to the regular desktop. If someone getting a new PC were to ask me should they go with Win 8 as opposed to Win 7 I would say "It depends". If you have a Surface and/or Windows Phone it's probably a good idea. Also, on my machine at least, Win 8 gives around 8% better performance (that's not a lot but you do notice it) and USB 3 is faster. You want to think about compatibility at this stage of the game. In my original posting I note that the Logitech G510 keyboard profiler will not install. It's not relevant to the topic but my legacy Epson 4870 scanner has no support either (works perfect in Win 7). It may cost me $600 or so to replace it as I doubt Epson will ever update those drivers. Win 8 compatibility is very good but by no means perfect. Agreed, Win 7 is a fantastic OS and I am keeping it on another machine. It will be supported for years. For me Win 8 was just something to do for fun. I prefer it somewhat to Win 7 which was unexpected. I defend it once in awhile because a lot of the reviews are inaccurate/misleading.

Agreed - more or less I had no problem with Win 7 either but another geek goaded me into being an early adopter so the Win 8 project was mostly for sport. It's weird what some people will do for fun. Anyway, it turned out just great. I kept the Win 7 system on a separate SSD just in case ;-) My normal behavior is not to tamper with success either.

P51 Fixed OK. The P51 is fixed. After deleting the config folder again I then completely un-installed the P51 module, then re-installed. This cost me an activation but so what. It works just fine now meaning everything I have for DCS runs perfectly in Win 8.

Good to hear more positive experience. All my benchmarks improved which is always welcome for us gamers. Frame-rates are even better now and more consistent. Some folks dislike the "Metro" interface but it's there mainly for integration with mobile devices and apps. One click on "Desktop" and you are in the familiar Win 7 environment. Once you get used to it there are a lot of very nice improvements in level of information provided (consider Task Manager) and convenience of access. Haven't booted back into Win 7 for over two weeks when I first put Win 8 in. P51 is not a big issue for me as I'm mainly interested in Black Shark anyway. But as I did pay for the former would be nice to get it working.

These upgrades requiring a precedent can be a pain in the neck. When configuring a new machine the other day I got messed up with the various versions, wasting an hour or so trying to re-establish BS2. The solution? Just hauled out the credit card, paid for and downloaded the full 1.2.2 version. It's only $40 bucks and you can delete all that cr-p you needed before. What a relief. Quite frankly I find all these free/cheap upgrades (for other products as well) seldom worth the hassle keeping track, installing and fooling with multiple authentications.

I broke my lifelong rule never to be an early adopter and put Win 8 (64 bit) up on my gaming machine as a boot option (the other OS is Win 7). It's a slick system and no issues. I have not found any of the criticisms holding water so far. Herewith the DCS results which some of you may find useful. The following software installs with no problems: DCS World Black Shark 2 A10 Warthog P51-D Mustang Gaming Hardware: Saitek X52 Pro FCS ... Win 8 automatically finds and installs drivers. Existing profiles created with Black Shark (for example), work perfectly. I was surprised, having feared the worst. Logitech G510 gaming keyboard is NOT YET SUPPORTED except as a conventional KB. The profiler will not install so no macros. I have submitted a ticket to Logitech to find out what's up. This is one of their high-end KB's so you'd think they'd be on it soon. In the meantime I have programmed some shortcuts using the DCS profiler (no macros though). In Flight: All modules work perfectly, except for P51D (see later). Performance is noticeably improved in a number of ways. Evidently Win 8 is more efficient at something or other. P51 will fail trying to enter any mission and you get a box saying "DCS has stopped working" followed by the "Play Again" option. Yes, I tried deleting the Config folder to refresh the environment but no dice. Also re-installed. In fairness to Win 8, I couldn't get P51 to fly on Win 7 either. I would appreciate suggestions re P51. Everything else runs perfectly but I miss the G510 macros. Basically very good news. Updated tech stuff: Asus P8Z77 MOBO/I7-2600K@4.7 GHz/ATI 6940 graphics/Win 8 64 bit Pro/8 GB RAM/Sandisk Extreme SSD/Windows Experience Index 8.2

Boat Attack Glitch Confirmed Flew a bunch if test missions this aft and confirmed that infliciting damage on an armed speedboat with *any* weapon, be it rockets, cannon or missile (guided or unguided weapon makes no difference) crashes BS 2. Just one bullet nicks a boat and you'll need to bail out with Task Manager. Have not experimented with other water craft but would not be surprised if the same thing happened. No doubt ED will fix this so until then best to leave any boats alone. Otherwise quite a solid release and even more enjoyable than before. Very nice.

Not sure if this is totally relevant to the problem but my experience is that one needs to be very careful with Saitek software. The following may be helpful to someone... After installing BS 2 I went to the Saitek site and downloaded their latest/greatest drivers and profiling s/w for X52 pro. The drivers put my system (see below) into an unusable state. Luckily I have lots of restore points so could recover. I tried many things but always the same result. Finally went back yet again to a restore before any saitek drivers installed, plugged in the X52 Pro and just waited for Windows to install drivers. I have no idea which/what these are but they worked. The Saitek application software was fine and I have no problems with the unit now. Botton line(s): - Always create a restore point manually before installing any new drivers. Windows should do this automatically but you never know. - Try the default drivers Windows finds if new ones are flaky. - When confident everything working, create another restore point.

Thanks. Unless something else is reported I will simply avoid naval targets for now on the assumption there will eventually be a fix.

I am running BS 2 (1.1.1.1) and my system as described in the signature block is 100% up-to-date. Two things have come up. (1) I am tuning up one of my own custom missions. Everything fine except for this ... If I target a naval vessel (gunboat in this case) and lob a Vikhr the missile quickly disappears from view (no smoke trail). At about the instant I predict it should hit the boat I get a popup from Windows "DCS has stopped running" and Windows looks for a fix, which it does not find. BS is now gone from the monitor and the trackball pointer as well. I then must use the "3 finger salute" to launch Task Manager to clear DCS.exe and recover use of the system before I can restart the sim. Rarely (and this is very amusing) after the Windows alert I get a BS popup saying I have earned the Purple Heart. Well, at least that is sort of an apology :~. Land targets are no problem. I have put BS 2 up on my other high-end machine and obtain exactly the same result. Naval targets break it every time. Workaround ... don't assign naval targets but really, I would like to have some. Have tried eliminating the wingman, moving waypoints and a lot of other manipulation of the mission parameters but no dice. (2) This second glitch could be my fault/misunderstanding but never had it before with BS 1. My wingman refuses to obey any orders. If I request him to attack clearly visible targets he always replies "... unable". What's with him anyway? Then he loiters around like a sitting duck until someone shoots his pants off.

More About Rockets It's largely a matter of practice. You have to learn to anticipate the drift and accommodate that, which is the main challenge. For example, if the helicopter is rotating to the right during release, the rockets will impact somewhere to the right of where the targeting reticle aims. I find them very useful against larger targets like buildings, storage tanks and parked aircraft where you don't usually want to waste a Vikhr. IOW, save the rockets for easy targets. Since you get a lot of them they can also be useful as a sort of "shot gun". If there's a sniper or MANPAD hidden in the woods I like to saturate the area with rockets and hit something soft. As others have pointed out, rockets aren't meant to be very accurate but close-in, with suitable targets, you can still do a lot of damage. Because they are unguided there is no setup time (unlike Vikhrs) and have occasionally saved myself by using them immediately when ambushed - just spray 'em around in general direction of the threat and hope for the best. Often works. Best wishes, JH

W7 Pro (64 bit)

Thanks for the interesting replies and discussion. It boils down to the fact locating many types of targets is just plain difficult, as it must be in real life. I have discovered usefulness of the wingman for this and sometimes send him in first while covering him. Many threats leave a clue as to location. For example, the trails produced by MANPAD launches clearly locate the culprit. Best wishes, JH

I have been playing Black Shark for a long time in(almost) pure simulation mode and would welcome responses to this posting. I fly some of the canned missions and many of my own, where you can ramp-up the challenge. Large objectives such as buildings and fuel tanks are not so difficult to find in the target zone but the smaller "gems" are practically invisible (launchers, for instance) unless you are practically on top of them in which case it is too late. Consider the "South Ossetia Pirates". Similarly, convoy units and their dangerous escorts are almost impossibly difficult to spot so I find myself a "sitting duck" a lot of the time unless I cheat by .... ... turning on "Labels" which is a big help. This is not authentic but just about the only way to survive most missions. Best wishes, JH

FIXED Thanks to the great replies received to my initial posting this problem is fixed. Although I had chosen simulation options the game mode was actually "Free Camera". Choosing "Ka-50" does the trick. The reason I overlooked this was it's an option you easily forget about once you have the sim running and I had been using 1.0.1 ever since available. Apologies for wasting anyone's time with this stupid oversight. Best wishes. JH

I am in pure Simulation mode. Unless something else is indicated I will try re-building the stick profile from within 1.0.2 and see what happens, JH

Installed the 1.0.2 patch today as per the official instructions (clean re-install of original, then patch) and copied the Control profiles into /Blackshark folder where they were to begin with. If I go into OPTIONS/CONTROLS in the sim I can load the profile I want and it checks out perfectly. The profile is loaded and the CONTROLS panel responds to all control input as expected (units is Saitek X52 pro). I then go to fly a mission but instead of the chosen profile I get the sim defaults - the profile I loaded is ignored. Suggestions appreciated. Best wishes, jh

The cause and solution to this problem (which I posted 3 days ago) are so obvious it embarrasses me to write this but as I am sure from other messages here and elsewhere that others have been afflicted in the same way, here goes: (1) It is vital to keep in mind there are always TWO profiles active ... one for the keyboard and one for the stick. (2) Before loading a profile you must highlight either the KB column or the stick column (OPTIONS/CONTROLS) and then load an appropriate profile. (3) It is all too easy to highlight the wrong column ... the simulation profiler will happily load a stick profile into the keyboard or vice versa. If you are in a hurry and don't check you might then end up with a bogus KB profile *in which PAUSE/UNPAUSE has been cleared* and therefore inoperative. It's a small design weakness in the sim that it doesn't determine which is which. (4) So, be careful. If you are tweaking profiles a lot it's easy to get caught. I now make a habit when starting up the sim to take a quick look in CONTROLS and ensure everything is OK. If you messed up, just reload your KB profile, then highlight stick column and reload that. It's a good idea to keep backups. I have inadvertently saved a stick profile under same name as KB profile and you then have to work back from the KB defaults which can be tedious if you did a lot of customization. Best wishes,

Black Shark Can't be Unpaused - Problem Solved The cause and solution to this problem are so obvious it embarrasses me to post this but as I am sure from other messages here and elsewhere that others have been afflicted in the same way, here goes: (1) It is vital to keep in mind there are always TWO profiles active ... one for the keyboard and one for the stick. (2) Before loading a profile you must highlight either the KB column or the stick column (OPTIONS/CONTROLS) and then load an appropriate profile. (3) It is all too easy to highlight the wrong column ... the simulation profiler will happily load a stick profile into the keyboard or vice versa. If you are in a hurry and don't check you might then end up with a bogus KB profile *in which PAUSE/UNPAUSE has been cleared* and therefore inoperative. It's a small design weakness in the sim that it doesn't determine which is which. (4) So, be careful. If you are tweaking profiles a lot it's easy to get caught. I now make a habit when starting up the sim to take a quick look in CONTROLS and ensure everything is OK. If you messed up, just reload your KB profile, then highlight stick column and reload that. It's a good idea to keep backups. I have inadvertently saved a stick profile under same name as KB profile and you then have to work back from the KB defaults which can be tedious if you did a lot of customization. Best wishes, JH

Yes.