Flight manual upate?

[LeCuvier]

The Early Access Guide is hopelessly out of date, and people have to guess how newer features work, or try to find out by going through endless threads not knowing how good the information of these posts is. My time is too previous to waste it that way.

After all this time, I believe that ED owes us a flight manual that covers current functionality. Until that happens, I will not try to use new functionality. And I will be more cautious about buying EA modules until I see that ED provides adequate information.

[LordOrion]

Well, at least Chuck's Guide will be updated soon

 

 

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[Bobik2002]

There's YouTube videos

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

And Hoggit ...

 

https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/F/A-18C

https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/DCS_mission_editor

 

But yes, ED ought to give updated guides or a live page like Hoggit's.

[BuzzU]

This might be the reason why.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=284699

 

 

 

For now we have Wags mini updates to show new features added.

[Griffon345]

And Hoggit ...

 

https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/F/A-18C

https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/DCS_mission_editor

 

But yes, ED ought to give updated guides or a live page like Hoggit's.

Great steer thanks!

But it would be nice if paralleled by official sources. Resources not available? I'd have to say I'd prefer updates towards a complete F/A18 product than an official manual. Many talented individuals taking care of the latter and open source docs to suppliment.

 

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[AKULA_OPTIMUS]

Agree, having to rely in a outside person to make updated manuals for your own product is a bit ridiculous. Hope this gets fixed soon. This only proves that a product is as great as its comunity is, and the DCS one is awesome, cheers:thumbup:

[Doum76]

The Early Access Guide is hopelessly out of date, and people have to guess how newer features work, or try to find out by going through endless threads not knowing how good the information of these posts is. My time is too previous to waste it that way.

After all this time, I believe that ED owes us a flight manual that covers current functionality. Until that happens, I will not try to use new functionality. And I will be more cautious about buying EA modules until I see that ED provides adequate information.

 

 

It would be a pain and waste of time to always update the manual to fit the patches, so many stuf changes, evolves, moving around stuff in the manual to add or remove stuff etc... I can tell you as a computer graphics or (infographiste) i would tell the client to finish is product than having me move stuff around for a work in progress item, adding, removing chapters, merging, sperate chapters, fool around the index, table of content, taking snapshot temporary or having to redo them once stuff change, the actual manu helps for the basic stuff, all adictionnal stuff are basicly covered by Chuck Owl manuals if not, Wags, Grim Reapers and Redkite on youtube does often videos with changes and explains stuff pretty good. And remeber something, if they update teh guide, basicly in engish, they'll have to update all otehr languages, pay for languages translators everytime etc.. And they would have to remember what has been added in the Open Beta guide and the stable guide?

 

 

That's my own opinion

Edited August 30, 2020 by Doum76

[Cepheus76]

Temporary Revisions

 

There are some valid points made as to why the manual isn't updated as frequently. However, there's a solution, which is pretty close to what is done in the real world: Issuance of temporary revisions. This way, ED could make a set of documents which apply to a current build or new feature and incorporate it only into the module's guide once the feature is considered stable enough.

 

Apart from this issue, but picking up on the term "Flight Manual": I would love to see a Performance Section, with the necessary data to calculate trip fuel for a given mission and loadout. Combat specific data like the doghouse-charts are other things I'd love to see. I am not asking for the publication of classified data, but rather that the developer creates the diagrams and tables from the thrust and drag data they use to calculate the aircraft's behavior. This approach should yield better results for use in the sim anyway, since real world data are probably only applicable to the flight model in a limited way anyway.

 

To include the performance data into the manual would also complement Eagle Dynamics' claim that they want to deliver the most realistic experience. This would include also a as complete as possible documentation of the simulated aircrafts- well at least for nerds like me :smartass:

Edited August 30, 2020 by Cepheus76

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

For a product in development, I think a live official online manual would be practical where edits and corrections can be suggested, like Wiki. They could update it maybe every 2-3 months when the changes are still fresh in their memory. The more it fills up, the less there is to do later and edits become incremental as the product matures. Thankful for 3rd party sources though. They've been a great help.

[BuzzU]

When was the Hornet manual last updated? It doesn't say on the manual.

[Doum76]

When was the Hornet manual last updated? It doesn't say on the manual.

 

 

 

 

June 20, 2019 (last page of the manual)

[BuzzU]

I didn't know it was that long ago. That's not good.

 

 

Edit.......I haven't looked in the manual in a while. It looks like it was updated in Dec 2019. Page 9. Still a long time ago considering all the updates the plane has gotten.

Edited August 30, 2020 by BuzzU

[rob10]

June 20, 2019 (last page of the manual)

 

 

That's the date still in the manual, but it was updated approximately May 20th of this year.

[BuzzU]

That's the date still in the manual, but it was updated approximately May 20th of this year.

 

Where did you find that?

[LeCuvier]

It would be a pain and waste of time to always update the manual to fit the patches, so many stuf changes, evolves, moving around stuff in the manual to add or remove stuff etc...

That's my own opinion

I don't agree. I have done a lot of publishing myself in my career, and it was often on evolving content. If the document is well structured there is no need to move stuff around. You just leave gaps and fill them as development progresses. It's a much bigger pain to redo the entire manual when the module goes to release. That will be a huge task that will introduce a lot of documentation errors.

[rob10]

Where did you find that?

The date or the updated manual? Date is based on when the new one showed up in the OB release. I marked the date when I saved it out of the game directory to my tablet. It had 20-30 more pages and added content over the original version from Jun '19. The 05/20 manual is the one that currently in the docs in the normal OB docs directory. Yes the last page still says Jun '19, but it has had stuff added. And actually I haven't looked at it recently, so it's possible it may have had more added since May.

Edited August 30, 2020 by rob10

[BuzzU]

Ah,ok. I was going by page 9. May is better.

[MacEwan]

I don't agree. I have done a lot of publishing myself in my career, and it was often on evolving content. If the document is well structured there is no need to move stuff around. You just leave gaps and fill them as development progresses. It's a much bigger pain to redo the entire manual when the module goes to release. That will be a huge task that will introduce a lot of documentation errors.

 

This is very true

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

I don't agree. I have done a lot of publishing myself in my career, and it was often on evolving content. If the document is well structured there is no need to move stuff around. You just leave gaps and fill them as development progresses. It's a much bigger pain to redo the entire manual when the module goes to release. That will be a huge task that will introduce a lot of documentation errors.

 

 

Agreed. Furthermore, selling EA and playing OB is the way things generally go in DCS. A 'live' manual for consumers would be helpful and complementary to this business approach.

[BuzzU]

Agreed. Furthermore, selling EA and playing OB is the way things generally go in DCS. A 'live' manual for consumers would be helpful and complementary to this business approach.

 

Exactly. We can't beta test a new feature if we don't know how it's suppose to work.

[Stearmandriver]

Agreed. Furthermore, selling EA and playing OB is the way things generally go in DCS. A 'live' manual for consumers would be helpful and complementary to this business approach.

 

Yup. VRS moved to this approach years ago and it works well. The time spent on Wags making a video on new features could just be spent updating a live wiki type of manual instead, and we'd have a comprehensive manual instead of content scattered all over YouTube and multiple cheat-sheat type guides by 3rd parties (which I am very grateful for btw, considering the state of official docs).

[HILOK]

some info can be found here:

https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/F/A-18C#Real-Beam_Ground_Map_.28MAP.29

 

 

Yup. VRS moved to this approach years ago and it works well. The time spent on Wags making a video on new features could just be spent updating a live wiki type of manual instead, and we'd have a comprehensive manual instead of content scattered all over YouTube and multiple cheat-sheat type guides by 3rd parties (which I am very grateful for btw, considering the state of official docs).

 

although i very much appreciate watching wags' YT clips, i have to agree with this. especially, because part of the content becomes obsolete, after some time, as the module is developed further.

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

Pretty good collation of tutorials here by MemphisBelle...

 

http://www.dcs-tutorial-collection.de/contents/pages/1moduleroot.php#ma

[tugais]

Hi guys,

 

Hoping that someone from Eagle Dynamics read this thread. It would be great to update the actual official manual to include the latest updates/upgrades on the Hornet. Apparently it's been a while since it has been done and I can't rely on Youtube videos to learn how to fly the module.

 

Thanks