PoorOldSpike

Speaking of missiles, just about EVERY type of russki plane and heli in the game will pop chaff/flares the instant we fire a Sidewinder at them, even at very long range, so presumably they've all got missile launch detectors or eyes like hawks, which is it? PS- and if they've got detectors why hasn't our Hornet?

Speaking of engine sound, it's fine for me EXCEPT when I pan around in external view so that i'm looking at the nose, then I get NO engine sound at all! It's not a Hornet bug, I googled it and it's a known issue with Win 10 but apparently theres a fairly easy fix for it but I'm too lazy to do it because it's not really a big issue..:)

Are you sure the enemy missile missed you and sailed off harmlessly without exploding? If it exploded it might have damaged you even though you weren't shot down. Also when you shot down the enemy plane, perhaps you took collateral blast damage when your own missile hit him? Planes do get damaged in the sim resulting in loss of systems etc.

Another guy asked a question something like that a while back in the Flight Sim X forum, so we suggested he juggle the zoom in/out keys til he finds the setting he likes, and he later came back thanking us and turning handsprings of delight..:) Basically if you zoom out, the moving landscape races by fast giving a greater impression of speed, but if you zoom in, it slows to a boring crawl.

Hi, is there any way to turn off Steam auto-updates for DCS and all other Steam games? I'm fed up sitting down to start a game, only to get the message "Updating, game will be ready to play in X hours". Ideally there should be an option saying "Update ready for download, click if willing to proceed now", so that we can ignore it and download it at a more convenient time of our choosing like overnight while we're asleep, but I can't find any such option.

And if the carrier is moving at say 25 knots into a headwind of 25 knots, there's a useful 50 knots knocked off your relative approach speed to make landing much easier..:) PS- in real life what's the top speed of a carrier while recovering aircraft, 25 knots or more? And in real life if a plane still has stores on board when returning to the carrier, do pilots jettison them all for a lighter landing? (Sidewinders, bombs, missiles, pods, tanks etc)

Try all the 'F' keys one by one and hit them twice to see what happens. I haven't got the Mirage but in the Hornet it's key F3 that takes me to the cockpit, and if I hit F3 again it loses the cockpit framing. PS- Also, check the 'Controls' screen to make sure the view keys are there, and that they're not blank.

Remind us what you need smoke markers for exactly?

Depends on what units you're attacking and what weapons you're using. For examp you mentioned an AIM-120 AMRAAM versus a carrier and I can tell you now forget it because a single AMRAAM won't even tickle a carrier (maybe around 1% damage if you're lucky). Anyway how do you lock onto a carrier with them? Regarding other enemy units, clobber them from outside their maximum range and they won't be able to fire back hehe..:)

Thanks guys, wow there's nothing you don't know, I bet you even know where babies come from, i'll ask you to clue me in about that later..:) Okay, for any masses of poor huddled noobs who wander into this thread, here's how i did it with the guys help- 1- I don't own the Supercarrier DLC but I tried it with the stock USS Stennis and it worked, look..:) 2- the 'Hot' option is the one we want, (I earlier tried the 'Ramp' option but the aircraft starts off cold like a dead dingo's donger and you have to press loads of boring switches to bring it to life) 3- there's our boy sitting with engine running and wings folded ready to taxi to any catapult. (for the record we're smack in the Straits of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf map)- 5- Hit the "Undesignate nosewheel steering switch" key combo to make nosewheel steering more sensitive (I assigned Right-Shift-T), then taxi to any cat (preferably in F2 external view so you can see where the nosewheel is) then get in the c/pit and click the launch bar lever (below), then hit key 'U' to lock on the cat- 5- and it should look like this, note the blast shields have auto-raised to confirm you're good to go, (and I somehow remembered to unfold the wings)- 6- Slam open the throttle and the cat will hurl the plane into the wide blue yonder, piece o' cake..:)

I've been trying to build a tiny mission where my Hornet starts on a carrier so I can taxi to the catapult for takeoff, but when I start the mission the plane immediately drops like a stone through the carrier innards and splashes.

DCS runs fine on my big desktop PC, but I'm going to buy a laptop for surfing and watching youtube and stuff, and it'd be nice if it could also play high-end games like DCS, so I recently sent this email to my local computer shop- "Hi, I want to buy a laptop but only if it's powerful enough to play high-end strategy games and flight sims, do such super-duper laptops exist?" And this was their reply- "Yes they do , start at £799 and go up to £3000! gets higher spec and game frame rate as you spend more. So depends on your budget? this sort avail at £1199 inc vat- · Intel Core i5-9300H Quad Core Processor · 17.3" Full HD IPS 144Hz Anti-Glare Screen · Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit · 8GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM · 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD + 1000GB HDD · Dedicated GeForce GTX 1660Ti 6GB Graphics." What do DCS members think, will those specs do the job or should I spend more? And will it have enough onboard hard drive capacity for a bunch of games? And will I need a fan thing to keep it cool? Are fans noisy? PS- I plan to plug the laptop into my big 27" monitor, I can do that can't I?

There's an old fighter pilot saying-"Don't fight the way your enemy wants you to fight" So, if the enemy plane has got better dogfighting manoevrability than yours, DON'T get into a tight-turning fight with him. With modern missiles there's no need to dogfight him anyway, just clobber him with AA missiles at arms length. As regards WW2, if his plane dogfights better than yours, the same applies, don't try to dogfight him but dive on him at high speed and hose him down with MGs and cannon before he can react, I think it was called a "slashing attack".

Just create your own mission in the editor, it only takes 2 minutes no kidding, just place your plane on an empty map then hop in and away you go and have fun pressing all the buttons and stuff without getting distracted by anything shooting at you. In fact I've created a number of such missions for myself with different weapons to try out in each one, eg Mavericks, Sidewinders etc as I find it's the easiest way to learn..:)

Speaking of Hornet guns, there's a thread about it here- https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=271654 And in it I proclaimed- I use manual aiming most of the time because it's much more fun (we don't need no steenkin pipper); the gun is boresighted to that small cross (arrowed), so the cross is what I use to lay the gun on target. However (and this is where the fun comes in), you have to use all your awesome skill and experience to allow for gravity drop by aiming slightly above the target at med/long ranges as in these stunning screenshots. (It works for air targets too, it's fun using the gun like a chainsaw to scythe off wings)-

There's another chaff/flares thread here- https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=278617 These are the keys I use to pop chaff/flares, first I switch the dispenser on with RShift D, then manually hit D and E to pop them, simple as that. I haven't a clue what all the other keys are for, but the bottom line is i don't need 'em anyway, I'm kool.. I think there's an option to "auto-pop" them (whatever that means), but I haven't experimented with that yet. (PS- just type the 4 letters "disp" into the control search box, it works better than typing the full word) Below: my Hornet popping away in the Gulf. (noob note- chaff is small bundles of foil, so don't wrongly assume they're not popping if you can't see them, look more closely and you'll see a bundle just leaving the tail like in this shot)

I know GE is offtopic but I'm desperate, having asked around everywhere with no success. Do any of you guys know how to make the GE eyepoint rise and fall with the terrain as we drag the forward view around? I'm trying to simulate what a WW2 bomber nose gunner would see as he looks forward, but the problem is that the dragged view keeps bumping into hills and mountains instead of going over them and down the other side!

Sorry i don't know what you mean by 'brick', 'dugout' and 'AOT zone'..:) PS- in fact between you and me, I can't understand half the posts in this entire forum because they're sprinkled with so many abbrevs and stuff, so i feel sorry for poor noobs who must be even more mystified than an 'old hand' flight simmer like me with almost 40 years simming experience behind me..:)

Thanks, I wish there were some hotkeys that we could hit to do all that stuff quickly and easily instead of having to rummage around in the cockpit looking for buttons to click on..:)

I ran these two radar-range tests for my own amusement but I might as well post them here, especially for noobs to look at while munching their popcorn. 1- This is the setup in the editor, my Hornet at bottom left (blue circle) is loaded for bear with Sidewinder AIM-9X's. flying directly north towards the Bear (red circle). The Bear's view of the proceedings, its course is due south straight and level at 400 kts/ 10,000 feet- TEST 1- both machines are flying HEAD-ON at each other, and note that even though I've set my radar to its maximum range of 160 miles, the Bear's blip (red circle) doesn't appear til I get to within 70 miles of it, presumably because of its small frontal aspect radar signature. (noob note- click on the blue-squared MFD button to set your radar range, mine is currently at 160 miles (blue circle). I've also yellow-texted the range ticks in miles)- TEST 2- back in the editor I've now given the Bear a 90-degrees easterly course so that it'll present it's larger side aspect to my radar, and yeehaw, the radar now detects it (red circle) at an incredible 150-ish miles- And Ivan eats an AIM-9X..:) NOTE- I left most of the radar's settings on pure default for simplicity's sake and only touched the MFD range button. I know you can set its beam to tilt up or down, and use different targetting modes etc, but i'm too lazy to do any fiddling. i also know I could have used use longer-ranged AMRAAM's or Sparrows, but my preferred weapon is the Sidewinder because you have to get in closer and it's more fun. If anybody wants to post wise comments, sage advice or death threats etc in this thread please feel free..:)

And for good measure I might just as well toss this couple of screenshots into the soup- These are the keys I use to pop chaff/flares, first I switch the dispenser on with RShift D, then manually hit D and E to pop them, simple as that. I haven't a clue what all the other keys are for, but the bottom line is i don't need 'em anyway, I'm kool.. I think there's an option to "auto-pop" them (whatever that means), but I haven't experimented with that yet. (PS- just type the 4 letters "disp" into the control search box, it works better than typing the full word) Below: my Hornet popping away in the Gulf. (noob note- chaff is small bundles of foil, so don't wrongly assume they're not popping if you can't see them, look more closely and you'll see a bundle just leaving the tail like in this shot)

A few comments to kick around- 1- Try standing on the brakes instead of applying them "intermittently". 2- 2.5.6 seems to have changed my countermeasures key bindings, so double check your Brake key bindings. And I think they can be applied individually left or right wheel only, so perhaps one is somehow jammed 'on', making the plane veer at touchdown. 3- And doublecheck the wind direction (if any) to make sure you're not landing crosswind and getting your tail fin pushed around. PS- To digress slightly, I've always found the Hornets brakes to be very weak in the sim, I stand on them at the instant of touchdown but the plane still needs a lot of runway to come to a stop even with full flaps and full speedbrake.

Thanks..:)

I simply hit key '1' (my assignment) to bring up the Sidewinder circle in the middle of the HUD, then fly it over the target plane and fire when it starts screeching. (For switching to A/G I've assigned key '2')

Yeah I suppose game devs have done some bean-counting and decided it's worth letting Steam take a 20% cut. When I was a dev with Cases Simulations 35 years ago there was no Steam and every penny from our sales went straight into our pockets, putting smiles on our faces bigger than waves on slop buckets..:)