Emacs

Tempting... Thanks for pointing this out to me! A bit too F-18 for me (flying warbirds mostly). Cheers, Emacs

Hi there, Does anyone know of a gear lever / switch to be used with DCS? One with an up, a down, and a neutral position. Green/red light would be a nice touch, but is not required? cheers, Emacs

Hi Razo+r ok, I will experiment then. Haven‘t thought about the manual prop gov. Good idea ! Cheers, Emacs

Hi there, I‘m new to the 109 and I‘m currently preparing myself for the Jagdflieger campaign. During some test flights I found I have a hard time to get out of a dive during strafing runs. I know about compression and I have read about the stick forces required in the 109 at high speeds. I‘m not questioning the implemented flight model, but I would know about practical tips for diving and getting out of dives in the 109. Flaps don‘t seem to be an option (way too fast). Trim? Shallower dives? Don‘t strafe at all and leave that to the Antons? What‘s your technique? Cheers, Emacs

Hi Baldrick! thank you so much for the explanation ! I thought I had broken my installation. Well, then I hope for the next beta update to bring the original descriptions back. It's ok enough as it is to get me flying again. Not nice, but ok. Cheers, Emacs

Hi there, I re-built my PC (with new harddrive SSD) and re-installed DCS completely fresh. This time Open Beta only. The "real" non-beta was never installed on this PC. I found a few strange things. One of them being that all controls setups for all my aircraft show a strange mix of descriptions like "Gear up" "Gear down" (the normal descriptions, as I knew them from my previous install) and some rather abstract entries like "Input.Bf109K4.trigger_a", "Input.Bf109K4_trigger_b1", "Input.Bf109K4_trigger_b2". It's not obvious to me which weapons "trigger_b1", etc refer to. It's a pretty frustrating task now to do all the bindings again, without really knowing what exactly I'm setting. How can I get back the "normal" text descriptions for all controls to be setup? Cheers, Emacs

Hi Flappie, thank you ! Done as told and it's working fine. Cheers!

Hi everyone, I did a fresh install of my PC (Win11 this time) and re-installed DCS OpenBeta. In my "Saved Games" folder I know have an "DCS.openbeta" folder, where I had an "DCS Beta" in my previous install (did a backup before). Can I just copy my backup of "DCS Beta" to the new "DCS.openbeta" folder to get all my button assignments and custom missions back, or is there something else to watch out for? Cheers, Emacs

No problems with TrackIR and the Mossie here for me.

FoV = field of view The sense of speed depends very much on how much field of view you have. When zoomed in very much (like Phil at 16:30) you don't have any peripheral vision on the computer screen. Just a tunnel of what's in front of you. That rarely gives an impression of speed. When zoomed out to a wide angle (you see the whole cockpit) there is much more landscape visible and there further to the side this landscape is, the greater is the perception of speed. Zoomed in you can look far ahead and the landscape in front of you is just getting bigger. Zoomed out landscape on the side or in the "peripherical vision" is rushing by. In the real world one has a pretty wide view with lots of peripherical vision. Cheers, Emacs

Great post!! Thank you

Thanks a lot ! Then I wasn't actually too far off. I haven't expected that the Spit would have so much less range then the other warbirds. Better get those external tanks added ! Cheers, Emacs

ok! I‘ve just started in with the Spit in 2.7… Cheers, Emacs

I have a Thrustmater setup. Warthog with an 7 inch extension on the stick. Due to the extension that stick moves very easily. The spring is just about strong enough to center it. Rudders are the TM pendular rudder which allows a lot of personalization. I have set it up pretty loose with very relaxed tension on the springs. But for me it is not about the force I have to apply. It is about the force the aerodynamics put on the control surfaces and how these forces transmit feedback back to the pilot by changing the tension constantly. Or by moving the stick or rudder actually by their own force. I remember one or two unexpected sudden gusts of wind, that were close to blowing the stick out of my hand. Thinking about it, „force feedback“ is actually describing it rather well. Too bad none of the high end manufacturers has a product like this in their offerings. > Everything feels so much better with nyogel. I‘ll try to remember that ! So true ! Cheers, Emacs

Hi there, I‘m new to the Spit and enjoying this module very much. Mostly I‘m flying on the Normandy map out of Tagmere. I have built a mission which allows me to train a lot of mission types near that airfield. Lately I flew my first missions over the channel over to Caen and Le Havre. I must have done something stupid (more than usual) because my fuel wasn‘t enough to get me home again. Was it my flight profile? I climb out of Tangmere up to 30000ft and reach that hight about halfway over the channel: Admittedly a quite aggressive climb, I guess. +3000 ft/min at 160Kts most of the time. 2650rpm and boost depending on hight. Shortly after top of climb I decent again to about 10000ft over the coast of France. By this time my upper fuel tank is empty and about half of the content of the lower one is gone too. Three quarter of my total fuel consumed during ingress is not a promising perspective for an avid student pilot… How where pilots flying the Spit back then? Not so high? Slower? With external fuel tanks? Cheers, Emacs

Switching the fuel pump on helped me in such cases. Fuel pump being the foremost of the hard to see three switches on the left side. The fuel pump switch is practically under and hidden by the rudder trim. And I think my new callsign will be „Spazzing“ Spazzing, out

Oh yes. FFB - in rudder pedals and the stick -that would be something. Really good FFB that is. I have my few dozen (solo) hours in gliders myself too. Many years (decades, actually) ago. But I still remember vividly how you could very much feel the airflow over the control surfaces. Yes, during take-off run one knows exactly when rudders and ailerons become effective because they become „live“ in your hand and feet. And in flight you can feel exactly when you are close to pulling so hard, that the airflow over the control surface is about to depart. And you feel it before it does. It was easy to tell where a thermal uplift is, because you know from the movement of the stick in your hand if your left wing or right wing got into that thermal. Well, that was some 30 years ago. No VR glasses or 4k video is going to bring that experience back. Anyhow, learning to fly and land the DCS Spit is still a super satisfying experience if you‘re willing to put in the hours and the effort. And if you‘re willing to accept that you will fail - a lot - before you master it. Reading all those posts about how twitchy the Spit is and how the nose dances around… After a few hours, I don‘t feel that at all anymore. I think she is more responsive than most WWII planes in DCS. But in regards to stalls and flipping over when pulling too hard, I think she is much more forgiving than i.e. the Mustang. The DCS Spit is a real joy to steer around, once one gets used to her (and has an extension on the hotas stick). If only I would have the time to practice landings more. Or a flight instructor. In the real-world the learning curve of gliders was hard too. More so, as failing badly will kill or hurt you. You can only dare to fail a little bit every time you go up. But then again most of the time you have a real instructor with you in the cockpit behind you who wants to have dinner with his wife too (or with your wife if you‘re out of luck). He lets you know exactly what you did wrong, even if you didn‘t notice. Particularly, when you didn‘t notice and were pretty satisfied with your performance yourself. That always seemed to give them the most satisfaction. He would lecture me for hours if he felt that I did the flare during touch down a foot (one single foot!) above the perfect altitude for flaring. When he said „With todays weather you fly the final at 95 kts!“, it was clear he meant 95 kts. Not 94 kts and not 96 kts. He said 95 kts during final and that was exactly what he demanded. And on those flights when he wasn‘t in the cockpit behind me, you can be sure, he was right in the back of my head still nagging and bitching at my every move. Rightly so. All those parts are missing from PC flight sim and will be missing for quite some more time. Cheers, Emacs

Yup. That dance… It works for me, or rather I‘m able to dance right, during take off. Took maybe six to ten attempts to get the muscle memory to get reasonably good results. But during the landing, even if I start dancing, there is always one moment where she surprises me with a sudden veer to one side I didn‘t expect. Even when we’ve slowed down quite a bit already I often find myself full depressing rudder on one side and a sudden swing to the other side happens. And more often then not the „inner“ wing, the one into the sudden turn, moves down and scrapes the ground. I find this particularly odd. I would expect the outer wing of the turn to go down, but it is usually the one inside the swing. Anyhow, I‘ll keep trying and learning. Love learning the Spit ! During the first flights I could hardly fly her straight and level and was fighting the controls all the time. After some hours now I have zero problems with her in the air. In fact I find the Spit in many regards easer then the P-51 - in the air. On the ground no so much, but I‘ll get there. Cheers, Robin

> Pulling stick back in spitfire does nothing, tail wheel is free all time and you cant lock it. Ah... now that explain a lot of the strange stuff I was experiencing Thank you, Graf Spee ! P.S.: That reminds me of the old joke, where the pilot leaves a note to the maintenance crew "Auto pilot a bit rough occasionally, please check." And the maintenance crew replies with a message "No autopilot installed in this plane." Cheers, Robin

Hi there, I'm pushing myself through the rather humbling experience of landing the Spit in DCS... I'm okay with taxiing. I can take-off pretty consistently now. Not pretty, but ok. I can fly here just fine. I'm not too bad with the constant rudder trim changes and keep her trimmed quite well. Still, each and every landing so far resulted in one wing or the other touching the ground and some pirouettes. Yes, I have watched several youtube videos about landing the spit and I have read chucks guide and the very well written essays about taildraggers here. Two questions so far: 1.) During final approach and flare, do you move the rpm lever at all? Does it matter? 2.) Pulling the stick back to lock the tail wheel -> when do you do that? Right after touchdown? Or - if you're really good - it is already there at the end of your flare manouvre? Phil Style mentioned in one of his old videos, that setting the wheelbrakes to about 30% gives more stability after touchdown. And yes, it seems to me it does. Is that something real-world pilots would have considered? Or is that just asking for a prop strike in the real world? Cheers, Emacs

+1

Hi there, I did a bunch of Instant Action missions with the new clouds and love them. Is there any mission where there is rain with the new clouds ? Cheers, Emacs

Yep I have vsync on now. Pretty sure I had it on before too. But anyhow, I'm super-happy with the settings as they are. 4K with SSLR and SSOA, 8xAF, Texture, Terrain, Water, and Clouds on "high" and the new detailsFactor settings on "1", global cockpit illumination is on too - it's a dream at 30fps. I'm not going to touch those settings anytime soon. It's so good, I probably have to take a day off work tomorrow

I did my first few flights today - and I'm blown away ! It is yaw-dropping beautiful. Did the instant action missions for the F-5 in Syria. There is a light cloud layer and the sun is low on the horizon. The clouds and in particular the way they spread and a distributed makes the sim look so much more real. Georgeous! The Sidewinder occasionally locks onto the low sun when I'm flying into it. Just great. And then I took the Anton out over Calais on the channel map... A heavy cloud cover with some small gaps (7/8 maybe). It is beautiful how the light plays on the terrain when it comes through the clouds. This is close to photorealistic. Flying is different too. When above the clouds I didn't want to just blindly decent into them, not knowing how deep the clouds go. Instead I instinctively waited for a gap in the clouds to make my decent with some terrain visible. Performance has changed too. I have an ATI 5700XT (probably the only ATI guy here) and was getting more or less 60fps in 2560x1440 with 2.5. Those settings gave me some heavy stutters and fps fluctuating a lot in 2.7. It's not that the fps didn't reach 60 anymore, but they were all over the place and that made flying pretty uncomfortable. I reset all settings, deleted my shaders and reconfigured to 4k with the preset "High". That includes SSLR and SSOA set to "On" ! With these settings I only get 30fps but those 30fps are absolutely rock solid. No fluctuation whatsoever. Downtown Beriut, down in the trenches on the channel map, or high over the desert. The fps counter is 100% stuck on 30fps and there is absolutely no tearing or stuttering whatsoever. Frankly, the absense of any stutter and fluctuations makes the 30fps very, very playable for the style of playing that I do. And DCS never looked that good on my computer. Yes, it did crash once and once it went into the game unable to render the terrain at all - but that's what I expect from a first release of a new version. In short: love it ! A job well done, ED ! Cheers, Emacs

That is a bit of a nasty approach to that airfield, isn't it? I was just following the instant action (cold start) and didn't check out the airfield before I actually got there. Cheers, Emacs