CommandT

No matter what curves you have the behaviour is just off atm. 1.2 did bring significant improvements but it's still not possible to be super precise with it. I'm holding off on flying this before more FM improvements are made to make it more realistic.

Yeah ideally I'd like to have the camera a bit more forward. Also when the virtual pilot moves around during manoeuvring and Gs, the head cuts in and out. But yes if you position fr back enough it works, it's just not a great views as most of the cockpit is covered by the pilot's head that way.

Thanks, yeah unfortunately with the F-18 and using that sort of view you are likely to have the pilot's head disappear. Seems like different planes are coded with slight differences in that sense. Hopefully there will be some adjustments in the next patch.

Yep, that was it!! Thanks a billion! Never knew that icon was even there! Must have clicked it by accident at some point.

Hi all. I have a bizarre problem which I've never experienced. I have some very strange things going on with the mission editor. It started happening only recently and I can't for the life of me figure out what I could have modified in any of the folders in DCS to cause it to be like so. 1 - none of the mod aircraft appear or can be selected from the drop down menu in the mission editor. 2 - combined task force red & blue don't appear in the drop down for countries. If you go to manage factions they are on their respective sides blue and red as you would expect, then when you go to the drop down all of a sudden they are there and can be selected as country. However only the currently selected aircraft is available from the drop down menu, or if no aircraft is selected then only the A-10A is available. I am totally flabbergasted. I have no idea what's going on! Any help appreciated! Thanks! Edit - just realised one thing that could somehow be related but not sure. Recently I received a refund for the F-15E and it was "taken away" from me in DCS so I uninstalled it. But why on Earth that would have caused such strange mission editor behaviors I have no idea. Also just for clarity - if I load any of my old missions all the mods and factions and aircraft load correctly.... however all of the above problems persist if you were to then try to add another aircraft... combined task force factions only show A-10A or currently selected aircraft before changing faction to combined task force blue or red. And still no mods can be seen or selected, despite the fact that the mission may already be using mods which can be seen on the map, so they obviously exist in DCS.

Yes, tried with the camera further back like you have - it works fine if using normal zoom but if you try ultrawide it looks silly with most of the shot taken up by the seat headrest. Any further left and you start cutting though canopy glass (if using ultrawide angles and rotating the camera like a stabilized insta360 camera). Any further forward and the pilots head is likely to disappear. The problem is often that the pilot's body moves around left, right, forward and backward and the head sometimes comes too close to the camera position and disappears as the margins are always based on the pilot's head which moves around a lot. Heatblur way is the way to go. Just need them to fix the replay sync bug issue.

Great, thanks for doing a bug report if it's not fixed in the next update! And yeah I remember the issue with the F-18 pilot head popping up when looking back. I agree it was not ideal but was super great for cinematics. And yes, real life type footage is exactly what I've been trying to do. In fact my problem right now is that I'm trying to do an "insta360" type shot where the camera keeps level with the horizon whilst the plane is rotating around it (can be done easily by tweaking trackir roll limits)... that's where I'm getting the stupid issue of the pilot's head disappearing, or otherwise the canopy glass cutting through the image because you have to be so far away from the pilot's head. In other words, the real life shot cannot be made in DCS in the F-18 at this time. In the F-4 it is possible but since the pilot's hand isn't holding the stick properly during replay that shot is ruined for that reason. Just for reference, the shots I'm trying to get are here at 1:55 onwards:

I wonder if they used a replay or recorded the pilot head on shots "live" in the latest video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8_4ex8RiSJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Unfortunately that "Freeze" button doesn't work for replays from what I can tell. So basically it means you'd have to fly the plane whilst looking backwards to get your pilot shot! Gah! Thanks for clarifying all of that though! And regarding the Heatblur F-4. Currently there's a bug in the replay - the pilot doesn't hold the stick during the replay, he holds thin air and the stick itself moves freely in and around his hands! So totally ruins that shot. Also it would be so much more useful to have the pilot head either on or off like the F-4 for other modules. I've been trying to get an angle that works in the F-18 but the problem is that after rotating your angle even by a bit sometimes using your trackir the pilot's head disappears. Basically it needs more margin for when the head is visible as getting good shots can be almost impossible with how far away from the pilot's head you need to be to have it not disappear... but then you end up cutting through the canopy glass and that's the shot ruined!

I think the point being made by a number of us is not that things shouldn't be changed between development screenshots and EA release but rather that things should look at least as good as they do in the development screenshots by the time the map is released. In the case of the Bodo terminal they improved it and made it more realistic, and that's exactly what one would expect - things to either change to look better or more realistic. With the images of the Russian bases it went the other way. I know they claim they changed the concrete textures because in real life the colour is lighter grey but the reality is a) it still looks nothing like reality, and b) it is just very very poor quality/ implementation compared to what they "advertised" with their development screenshots. I mean not even the concrete but just in general the quality and resolution of the ground textures around the runways and taxiways - the development screenshots sold one thing for us to buy but reality is just very poor. We are not complaining that it's different, we are complaining that it's worse. MUCH worse.

Ah thanks for letting us know. That's quite frustrating. I remember Heatblur said they wanted to implement a similar "GoPro view" feature in the F-4, I guess via actual DCS view settings but I cannot find any info in it at all, anywhere!

Sorry if answered before - are there any plans to have a version of the map that focuses on the Soviet operations in the 80s? I guess the only thing that would really have to change are the airbases. Thanks!

What I'm confused about is how your pilot's head movement is independent of the camera angle. So in your track file, you go to F1 view, used the R-SHIFT + R-CTRL and numpad keys to move the camera to the desired position and then use your trackIR to angle it the way you want, yeah? Because in my case if I move the camera angle with trackir, the pilot will move his head in the same direction as the camera angle because even during the replay the trackir position/ angle is linked to the pilot's head. At least in F1 view. So I still don't really understand how you got round that in your video, where you clearly see the pilot move his head irrispective of your fixed camera position. Maybe it's not a thing with F-16 replays but is with F-18? No idea.

Actually realised there's another problem I don't understand how you got round. I don't have the F-16 but I did get the pilot head to appear in the F-18. However - it appears that the pilot's head is pointing in the direction that you are viewing during a replay... I mean the pilot's head is not mimicking what happened during the actual mission but rather your current view direction during the replay. So what happens is if I look back towards the pilot from the HUD lets say, the pilot twists his head as far back as he can... how did you get round this anomaly? Thanks again for the help!

Can't seem to get the pilot head to appear on the Heatblur F-4. The views.lua is in DCS World\Mods\aircraft\F-4E\Entry Changed to the values you have but the pilot's head is still not visible. Any ideas? Works ok in the Hornet though. Edit: doesn't work in the F-15E either... hmmm.

Just curious, does Heatblur have any plans to create the F-4 AUP version with the upgraded MFDs ect? Cheers!

New and improved airshow display with thrust vectoring using the Su-30 mod:

Thanks for posting this here. I can see their logic at least but the implementation of the "more realistic" lighter grey tiles is absolutely terrible unfortunately. I hope they can improve on it going forward and make it worn and torn and "rough" like in reality.

AMAZING!!! Thanks a million!! Works s advertised! Will start to implement in future videos of mine! Huge thanks again!

That's not a valid argument. By that logic they may have as well just given us a 10km x 10km patch of low res forest as a starting point for "Early Access" and then it would be ok... because it's "Early Access". They advertised and released a product for people to buy. At the very least we would expect to see what was advertised on the development screenshots that were used for promoting the map and hence for people to buy it. I think it's a very valid question. Things generally improve after initial development screenshots, not get significantly worse like in the released version. So I would like to know why the later build looks worse than an earlier build. Early Access or not. It's fair enough that there are shortcomings for early access release obviously but not for areas which are already advertised beforehand and form a marketing foundation for the product and expectations by the consumer. You can't advertise one thing and sell another just because you stuck an "Early Access" at the end of the title.

I just wanted to ask - why do the Russian airbases which look pretty decent and realistic in the preview development screenshots look nothing like the released product? I'm just curious as the authenticity of the Russian bases was one of the key selling points of the map to me. The released version is pretty shameful compared to what was "advertised". Preview screenshot here:

Exactly! How did he get the pilot head to not disappear with the in-cockpit view?

There definitely is a way of enabling the F1 view pilot head somehow, I just don't know how. Here for example - camera facing pilot is using F1 view (you can tell but the level of details of the rivets ect):

Thanks though unfortunately those are not what I am after. That's just using the external camera to get into the cockpit but that method results in using the external model of the cockpit, not the 1st person F1 view that has all the detail. I know there's a way of getting that to work somehow without the pilot's head disappearing. I just don't know how

Hi all, Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Could someone tell me how to make the 3D virtual pilot head visible when you are inside the cockpit and move the camera off-center? For a sort-of "GoPro" view of the pilot sitting in the cockpit for example... I see some videos make this happen somehow but I'm not sure how to do it. And a separate camera question - how would one create the sort of constantly rotating camera shot like Matt Wagner sometimes has in his videos? Example below: Cheers!