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https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/upload/iblock/ed6/87v22jwd1xh51i3rgki944xsf503istq/DCS_User_Manual_EN_2020.pdf

HAPPY NEW YEAR. In this video - Wags enters correct elevation in feet for his offset location, however the manual seems to insist that the elevation should be rather the difference in elevation between Waypoint and the offset. F/A-18C Early Access Guide Updated 18 July 2023 p. 132 Example: With my WP1 set at 9000 feet MSL corresponding to IP ADDER, JTAC gives me RNG 14nm BRG 019 and ELEV 100 feet. I try to create offset from WP1 that is ADDER IP, I enter BRG/RNG all good, I try to enter -8900 feet in ELEV and I get ERROR on UFC. It works when I create the same offset but in ELEV I enter 100 FEET just like Wags did in his example. Which one should be correct? Is manual wrong or is the simulation not programmed in yet?

Introduction Over the years, i have installed and tried to learn how to fly in DCS multiple times. After couple of hours sorting keys for the free SU-25T (with Cyrillic labels in cockpit and HUD), watching multiple guides, going through tutorial and several deaths on the first mission in campaign, I gave up and uninstalled. About year or so ago, i installed DCS again and decided to buy FC3 right away and start with F15C. All that, because i felt like it’s the only way I can learn this (with English cockpit, it will be easier). And in the end – i did it. Because of the money spent, i did not gave up so easily and i spent hours playing with settings, reading and watching guides, testing, flying, dying and playing with settings again. I used to fly planes and helicopters in ARMA before, so i thought, i already have experience in „combat fly simulator“ ... looking back, how ARMA looks arcade-ish now, boy was i wrong. Reason I am making this „guide“ is to give DCS newcomers – like i once was - a head-start. There will still be a lot to learn to fly in DCS, but i wanted to share my experience and help people, that like to fly in military games like ARMA, Squad etc., to step into new level of combat flying and enjoy this unique simulator faster and have better experience starting and show them, how to do all of this without building entire cockpit in your basement. Disclaimer: I would like to say, that are things mentioned bellow are my subjective opinions how I see and experienced things. I am still a beginner in this game (as i don't play it frequently) and i don't have all the knowledge about this game, but that's the kinda the point of this post. Game and modules First we need to install DCS – I recommend installing standalone (no steam) beta version. I have always used this and never had any issues – i don't see reason installing stable version. About modules. After login on DCS website, you can go to E-Shop - > Modules and there you can „Trial“ any plane or helicopter for 14 days (and after 6 months you can do that again). I started learning in F15C, but i can not recommend it now, because Russian planes from Flaming Cliffs 3 are just easier to fly. I recommend starting with SU-27, SU-33 and J-11A – these 3 planes are EXTREMELY similar, they all can do Air-to-Air as well as Air-to-Ground combat and they are easy to fly and easy to land. This way, you will have 6 weeks of free flying and you have enough time to learn everything. If you decide to buy, please don't forget, that you have 50% off on first buy. I do recommend to buy Flaming Cliffs 3. With the sale its about 25 dollars. For that price, you get multiple jets to fly. Yes they are all low fidelity models (non-clickable cockpits), but that's a good thing for start. Starting on full fidelity plane would be complicated and overwhelming. I play DCS (not frequently have to say) for about 2 years now and i am now considering buying first full fidelity plane. Please also note, that the sale is for the ENTIRE first order, so consider testing any jet you like before actually buying something, because you can save 50% of that full fidelity plane/helicopter price too. Peripherals Another big topic. You really don't need expensive hardware to play this game. That said, i don't think it is possible to play this game on keyboard+mouse only. There will probably be people, that will disagree with me, but even though it can be „possible“, i think even cheap joystick will work better for gameplay, overall experience and it will be more immersive. So, what do i play on? I have Thrustmaster T16000M. Bought this joystick way back for flying in Arma 3. In my opinion, this is best entry-level joystick you can get. I have mine for about 8 years and it still works like new. I actually just bought another T16000M with throttle, so now i have joystick+throttle for planes and double joystick for space sims. The most important keys can be mapped on the joystick itself, rest of the functions can be controlled on keyboard with the left hand. When i started, I used joystick hat to look around. It was ok-ish for flying, but combat was absolute nightmare. So i started looking for the cheap headtracking. I didn't want to invest into trackIr or similar „hardware“ tracking devices, because i wasn't sure at that time, that i will stick with DCS. After a while i found Aruco tracking. How it works is, that you have to print sort of „QR code“ and put it on top of your head (headphones) and opentracker then use webcam to track this QR code. After using it for a month or two, i still was not satisfied. The looking was twitchy and light (or absence of light) was making issues with tracking. For example, i have window on my right and when i looked right, the light reflected by the paper QR code made it unreadable to my webcam and headtracking in game lagged. After that i discovered AiTrack and after more than year flying, i can say, this is best headtracking available (if i don't count TrackIR and other rather expensive hardware solutions). Took some time to get the settings right, but it works like a charm, it has no problem with too much light or too low light. I wear glasses and it works well with them too. For the headtracking i use my old Logitech C720p HD WEBCAM (i don't think they even make them anymore). If you don't have webcam, you probably can use your phone (or old phone) with proper app or you can go and buy some cheap webcam. I actually have my webcam resolution down-scaled to 640x480 to maintain stable 30fps. If you are going to buy webcam for this purpose, look more for FPS than resolution, if you can. Here you can check my video to see AiTrack in action along side with the modded SU-27 cockpit Learning how to fly Just briefly, because there is tons of materials on this topic. If it is available, do the in-game tutorials for the plane you want to fly. If there is no official tutorial, take a look on Custom files on the DCS website. There you can find user-made tutorials similar to official ones (like this one for F15C for example) Look at the Youtube (i recommend Grim Reapers). If you know how to control the plane, you can jump on some PVE multiplayer server first. I like 4YA servers, where you can test and train your skills in a persistent pve scenario and cooperate with others as well. My „starter pack“ I have put together this „starter pack“ and this is main reason i wanted to make this post as i believe, that this pack will improve the experience for new players. If you have T16000M joystick and webcam, then this .zip file will have everything you need to get you started. Inside you will find following: Keybinds for (i think) all FC3 planes for T16000M joystick in form of exported files – so you can simply import it and you are (almost) good to go Word file containing schema of these keybinds for each plane (not so good looking, but usefull and editable) Headtracking (AiTrack and opentrack installations) including setup guide Profile for opentrack i use (i have flat settings in DCS and all tuning is done in opentrack) – you will probably want to modify this soon or later, but i think this is great starting point Kneeboards, Liveries and mods: Kneeboards for each plane, with info about loadouts, landing and take off speeds, etc. which you can display in-game (made by Goldwolf - https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3318384/) Liveries – English cockpits for FC3 Russian planes (made by musolo (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3318997/) Mods to make FC3 planes partially clickable (made by Redk0d https://redk0d.gumroad.com/l/fvkodo) ReadMe file with notes and installation guide My „starter pack“ can be downloaded here. I hope, that this guide will help at least some struggling pilots jump into the DCS, but i have to warn you. Once you learn how to fly and fight in DCS all the other games will look like arcade game for kids

I'm almost finished with a massive undertaking of a fully fledged ID4 (independence day) experience, but have this simple little hickup, that I can't figure out. I'm amazed how far I've gotten with this mod (though with many sleepless nights, forgotten meals and severe sanity loss as a price), only to get this little detail in the way. I've managed to get the animation with their respective arg's (each within 100 frames) to work in the model viewer as seen in the added images. Tried getting the arg's to play via ME, but I keep getting a static version (as show in the "in game" image), stuck in 0 for each arg-nr. The link to my google drive folder contains videoclips (also contains the images in the post in original quality): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rZrrC487FlppDiahGMyItWEspzyQL_AM?usp=sharing In the clips, you can see how I want the result to play out in game, so in addition to get the animation to work in game at all, I need to know how to apply different durations from -1 to 1 for each arg. Originally I had two additional args, one that also moved the entire ship from point A to point B and a second that kept the ship rotating (which you can see in the clip with rotation) throughout it all. Ideally, I'd like to go back to using those args as well. The idea is to make the entire animation play once from start to finish throughout a mission (30 minutes) that this animation is intended for. The ship moving from point A to point B for 28 minutes, followed by the ship opening and firing its primary weapon for 1 min and 30 seconds (leaving it at the last frame those last 30 seconds) while having the ship rotate the entire 30 minutes. If the engine is somehow too restricted for such grand ideas, my backup plan is to settle with only animating the primary weapon by itself (as shown in the clip without rotation) those last two minutes of the mission. (as shown in the clip without rotation). Please can someone help me with this? If you need more info than what I already added, ask away. Best of regards, Jahn

So, I've been meaning to sit down and do this for a few weeks and have just now found the time. I'll try to keep it short, but it won't be, so I'll try to keep it dense. I was an Aeroscout from 1988-1993 flying the old OH-58 A/C. Back then, the scouts were unarmed for the most part, save a M-16 jammed across the glare shield and my .38 revolver in my survival vest. For this reason, we typically operated in a scout/weapons team with an AH-1S following as our armament. The Apaches and 58D were just coming online when I left the Army. I'm loving the DCS Apache and am chomping at the bit, but not holding my breath, for the Kiowa Warrior. I've been observing how the Apache is being employed on several servers and very much so on the Rotorheads server. I have some observations to offer tactics-wise that some may find helpful. This will apply to the U.S. attack and utility helicopters specifically as the Russian helicopters are designed differently and for different doctrine and they are employed more like very low level, very maneuverable, fixed wing aircraft that happen to be able to take off and land vertically. Keep in mind, I was in a very different aircraft with very different equipment and very different times, but I think this advice should still hold true. If there are any Apache or Kiowa Warrior vets here that have anything to add or critique or correct, I welcome the input! 1) Here's the biggest thing: I see a lot of folks just hovering at 800, 1000, 1500 feet AGL for many minutes, lobbing hellfires at bad guys. If you are doing this, you are really missing the advantage of a helicopter which is to utilize cover and concealment to survive. You should unmask just high enough to spot and shoot the threats that are in range. In some threat situations this may be fine but for the most part, the longer you are way up there, the more likely you are to be tracked and shot down. It also leaves you with less evasion options especially when trying to evade from a state of zero or low airspeed (-60kts). 2) Too much hovering. You present a more difficult target to track when moving even if it is at just 30-40kts and you have a quicker response for the aircraft to deploy to cover if you are engaged. Also, you will increase the flight endurance by keeping hovering to a minimum. This is also a great way to avoid settling with power. Also, if you are hit, it is easier to autorotate with some forward momentum and it gives you a better chance of getting to a safe landing location. 3) Unmasking in the same spot twice in a row. This is a cardinal sin! I learned this in my first trip to Hohenfels maneuver area where we war gamed with m.i.l.e.s. equipment. On a night scout mission, we unmasked from cover and saw a OPFOR tank nestled in a tree line. We immediately masked but didn't get a good fix on the type and exact position soooo, popped right back up in the same spot and this time, Mr. tank had his turret pointed right in our direction and shot us down (simulated)! 4) More of a courtesy: Calling "rifle" on comms and coordinating laser codes with others to avoid targeting conflicts and other pilots frantically dumping precious flares and diving for cover every time a friendly Apache fires a missile. Along the same lines, I typically set my countermeasures on bypass, so I'm not wasting flares on friendly fire, and I don't carry chaff. If you have your helicopter close to or down in the weeds, radar guided AA should be a non-factor and then you can carry more flares. Also, if you limit your altitude, and a radar guided weapon is fired at you, you can easily defeat it with cover or concealment. If you are still with me here, my typical planning and profile looks something like this; Before departure-I set a start point in the TSD, and alternate, and then note a point that is about 10K from the FEBA with good terrain relief or concealment, trees or buildings, and set a release point there, in the TSD. Load 50-60% fuel and 90 flares plus weapons of choice. If there are preprogramed CM's or TGT's on the TSD, I make note of them and plan for my ingress from the RP to avoid contact. Countermeasures on bypass, Acq to TADS, left MFD to Vid/TADS so I can see what the CPG or George is looking at. During the day, I will jump in the front seat for a sec to set TV instead of FLIR if I have no CPG. If someone knows how to do that from the back seat, let me know. After takeoff-Climb to about 800ft AGL so I can safely get my head in the cockpit for a minute without driving into the ground. If no CPG, I get George set up and WASed on hellfires and have him look ahead at the next waypoint. Make sure all exterior lights are off, countermeasures on, weapons armed, gun WASed. Set direct to RP and note the flight time. I usually use flight time plus 30 to 45 minutes, depending how far away I get from the RP, for my bingo time. When I'm all fenced in, I head down to treetop height for ingress, around 100kts, using terrain features to mask my aircraft. Approaching RP-A click or two out from RP I will pop up, keeping my speed up, high enough to get a good view over the terrain. I have the CPG or George do a quick look at 10, 12 and 2 o'clock. If nothing, back down to the weeds and because I'm expecting enemy contact but don't know where or when, I proceed a little more methodically. 40kts, quick pop up every couple of clicks, quick scan, if we make contact, back down in the weeds and head that way at 60kts, quick pop up now and then while under way until I'm in hellfire range. Targets in range- At this point, come to a hover behind cover or concealment noting the terrain around us as we prepare to engage. Identify ahead of time the next firing position and where it is safe to break to cover and always know the safest egress. Unmask, just high enough to see the target and either fire if it has already been acquired or, spot, lase and store, then immediately deploy back to cover. Don't get fixated on multiple targets and drift higher and higher in a hover and remain exposed. Fixating is easy to do and I'm guilty of it myself. Hard to resist easy pickings but when that Strela shows up that I didn't see before or it spawns in near me and I'm 1500ft in the air with nowhere to hide...bad news. Kill one, back to cover, I reposition laterally (not actually flying sideways but actually moving to positions to the left and right of me) instead of moving forward, below the tree line or terrain feature then pop up and repeat. A lot of times it pays off to bob up to just do a scan from 9 to 3 o'clock and, from close to far, to identify any threats you missed, just spawned in, or are a greater threat than your target group, without engaging. When all targets in range are cleared, I go back down, 40kts, bounce cover to cover and repeat the above until new targets present themselves. In the thick of it- I stay low, like weed top level, and moving 30-40kts, unless I am actively popping up to search or engage then quickly back to cover. Avoid flying over groups of trees and if I have to, always make notes of clearings to duck into or autorotate into if I get hit. I don't want to have to crash land into trees. Pop up only high enough to see and engage targets and don't unmask in the same spot twice in a row. If that manpad, Zeus monster or Strela, sees me and doesn't have time to fire, he surely will get me the next time I expose my helicopter in the same location. Great thing about helicopters is if one gets disoriented or loses SA, one can just scoot to cover, land and get regrouped. Egress-No matter what phase of the fight I'm in, I ALWAYS know how I'm getting the heck outta there! At Bingo (ingress+30 to 40 minutes fuel time) or Winchester, whichever comes first, I get down and fast, staying in low ground. 10ft AGL is a lot of work but it's a blast! 120kts, 10 feet off the ground feels pretty fast. In fact, all this is a lot of work and a few hours of it is pretty tiring. Often my rear end hurts from clenching, working rudder pedals. I probably actually have a higher "fatality" rate from pilot error than I do from being shot down. But the more I fly, the better I get. Night and other considerations-The dark offers a level of concealment that allows to fly a little higher up, 200 to 500ft AGL. Keep in mind though that the dark only protects you from visual acquisition. The Apache is fully capable of operating down and dirty in complete darkness and I usually don't change my strategy. It does require significantly more focus and SA to do safely. I will usually ingress, egress and land using NVGs and then transition to IHADDs when I'm close to the RP. In situations where the AA threat is non-existent, flying and attacking from altitude is fine but it is a good idea to stay moving. I'll usually do orbits, engaging as I approach and then breaking when I'm close to small arms range. This makes it easier to maneuver if a threat does appear, make it easier to autorotate if the need arises and uses significantly less fuel than hovering. Like I said, there may be some new considerations that I'm not aware of due to the ancient nature of the helicopter I flew in. I would love to hear some thoughts, positive or critical, on this from Casmo or other guys that flew Apaches or Kiowa Warriors. And one last thing, if anyone sees me, Aeroscout'88-'93, on a server somewhere, feel free to hop in the CPG seat and we'll go put some warheads on foreheads!