Randolf

My philosophy on controlling the ka50 is that if you touch the controller, you also press the trim button. If I need to move the controller a lot, I keep the trim button pressed down the whole time.

But won't people just take off from the taxi way? I mean they do that sometimes anyway...

It is indeed much easier with the shark because you can just sit at 10km, scan and snipe targets with vihkrs. It is also easier to find the threats because Shark wingman can datalink them to you. Su25t however is completely hopeless when it comes to searching targets. @MadDog-IC: thanks, I just downloaded the fixed missions. The orange smoke in the first mission is now actually visible.

That campaing is somewhat lazily designed. Most of the time the briefing is one sentence short and there is no intel whatsoever about the locations of enemy sams. You can cheat with f10 or mission editor but that might make things too easy. Personally I use f10 with the fog of war setting. That way you don't see all enemy locations, but you aren't entirely without intel either. One annoying thing is that your wing man is very stupid. He can see the enemy targets from 100km away, but you can't really send him to attack them on his own because he can't prioritize threats properly. He will probably try to do a rocket attack against the radar sams that protect the enemy air field (how is it even possible to create AI as dumb as this is beyond me). I feel that he stays alive much better if you give him one target at a time using the "attack my target" -command. An useful thing to know is that some of the missiles can hit targets from much greater distance if you override the launch authorization. Once you have pressed the "override launch authorization" -key, turn laser on and just point the targeting screen to the location you want to shoot at. Then shoot the missile and it will try to follow your laser. The S25-L and Kh-25ML missiles can often hit targets from 10km+ so they are pretty good against enemy SAMs. However, I don't know if this behavior is realistic because Encyclopedia says that the range of S25-L is only 3 kilometers...

No clue if it's actually modelled into the sim, but when flying inside with one of those small toy helicopters, they always get pulled to the walls of the room.

I feel that the idea of Kick Starter or other community funding is welcome as it allows one to avoid third party publishers. Having a publisher who attempts to maximize profits often results into dumbed down or "streamlined" games. This is a general issue with all video games that has been bothering me for a while. ps. Before someone starts to split hair, I use the term "game" broadly, be it tetris or flight sim. :P

Ya I mean, they do wait for you to get close, but they don't just stand there. I certainly wouldn't. Instead, they take cover and make themselves very difficult to be spotted from the direction of the chopper. Once the chopper is close enough, I assume they pop up and strike fast, and then hide again. Considering the poor optics we have in the shark, it must be very difficult to spot a small, hiding target from kilometers away.

Hitting f10 every now and then is pretty effective tactic. It's not very realistic, but since these mandpads aren't that realistically modeled in the first place, it's not really an immersion breaker. I mean, it's not like in the real field the stinger guys were just standing there on the plains waiting for either a) you to notice them and vihkr 'em b) you to not notice them and fly too close. Personally I believe mission designers add way too many sams into their missions for them to be something a pair of sharks could realistically pull off. Difficulty should come from something else than just sams.

I hope this thing adds more depth into the game when it comes to sams. Currently you only really lose in the game (this is especially true for the shark) because you didn't notice some sam and flew straight over it.. It's so tiresome to scan and scan the combat area for that little sam guy in a forest. Especially with those sh*tty shark optics.. Surely no commander in his right mind would put a lone shark pair into an area invested with 1000 iglas? This is why I don't fly the shark much anymore. It's simply too ****king difficult to survive a mission. This is why I need to know if combined arms comes with some sort of system which allows directing player airplanes? Like warning them of spotted sam threats and updating route plans real time? Information is they key to survive in a modern battlefid. Currently we have a modern battlefield, but the 2 pages of text during briefing is pretty much all the intel we get during the course of a mission.

I wouldn't think twice before buying DCS: F18. I would also probably buy DCS: F16, but I would think twice.

I wonder if anyone has tried one these? (http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/10/2552518/sony-hmz-t1-personal-3d-viewer-review) . Combined with Track IR I imagine it could give very immersive simming experience. They are currently very expensive. 800€ in Sony's shop to be precice, though that shop has always a slight overprice. However, if they get a little cheaper in a while I might consider one, given that enough people confirm they are actually good for flight simulators. ps. Some advanced graphics cards have the possibility of creating a 3D effect on a 3D screen* even in some games which weren't designed to have such a feature. I am not however, sure if DCS is one of these games. If someone has tried this on DCS, I would be interested in your success / failure. *Same likely applies to this HMZ-T1.

Random system failures are interesting. At one point your mission might be to destroy enemy tank convoy, but due to a random twist of fate, that might suddenly change into getting back home safely. They make missions less straightforward. I agree that the DCS world seems a little bit sterile. Better and more detailed graphics is the most effective way to make the world more interesting, but it takes lots of work and makes the game eat even more system resources. It's quite hungry already, mind you. Still, the thing I really want to see is more, hell of a lot of more smoke. The common issue with all current war games is that smoke disappears way too quicky, isn't dynamic and isn't thick enough. Having good smoke would greatly boost immersion.

This looks particulary interesting. I hope it will be like DCS but for mechs and with BattleTech rules, though, I don't think the odds are by my side here. :(

Seems to be the one making assumptions is you, by assuming that none of us knows anything about how these systems work. Anyway, I would love to see this happening. It would be awesome to give support to real players and not just computer controlled ones. I think we might get this type of a battlefield simulator one day, but probably not anytime soon.

Image really tells more than a thousand words ever could, huh.

I don't think DCS graphics engine is bad. In fact, I think it's rather pretty and immersive most of the time. Explosions could be better though, but that's a mere detail. The real problem is that it's very difficult to get it running smoothly. For example, currently SLI rendering does not work well in DCS. I have managed to get SLI working sometimes, and when it works, it dramatically increases FPS. However, almost always when I have set SLI on, everything turns half blue, transparent, laggy, flickering and awfully ugly. This could be problem only I am having, but then again, no other game has ever done this. If someone happens to have a workaround, I'd love to hear it. Anyway, one more thing. When I play a fantasy game, I want it to look as beatiful as possible. However, when I play a combat simulator, I want the view to be as realistic as possible. That is, I want the simulation to give visual information which corresponds to what a real pilot sees. Eg. it's more important for a tank to be spotable from a realistic distance than it is for it to look pretty. Realism and good looks aren't mutually exclusive of course, but I'd dare to argue that it's a lot more difficult to create a game with both of them than just the other.

Yes please please model that guy! It's probably the most beatiful military aircraft to hit the skyes yet. Spacecraft are still unmached though:

True, it wouldn't be relevant even if he was the lead engineer on the a10C project if he couldn't backup his arguments with evidence. In a rational discussion, facts are relevant, not arguments of the type: "I'm kind of a big deal, so just trust me!". On the topic though, I don't think sniper pod would be too interesting. What actual difference would it add to the gameplay?

I don't understand this Flying Legend Aircraft thing. Assuming it's going to be a historical combat aircraft, then in what environment will it be flyable? Will Eagle Dynamics create a whole new world for this aircraft? By the way here's my personal quess of the "legend":

I think the simulator is best enjoyed online in cooperative play, or in a well designed, closed pvp scenario. Open pvp servers easily turn into typical online crazyness.. Personally I'm really looking forward to flying together with a10cs.

In A10C I run dual monitor setup where I have one small screen for the MFCS's and a larger screen to display the actual cockpit. I get pretty good fps. However, when I try to do the same in BS1 I always get low fps, even if it runs smooth without the extra screen. I wonder if this is fixed in BS2.

Now that's pretty vaque and could mean almost anything. Anyone has more precise information about this? I'm curious.

"In future ED software" :music_whistling: Anyway, I would love an Independence Day mod, indeed I would. At least once we get a fighter. I have to admit that sounds actually pretty exciting...

Looks good, but is it vaporware ? :(

Now, I am not 100% certain, but clicking on the JTAC unit in the F10 view should display the JTAC's radio frequency at bottom left corner of the screen.