Bugs & issues

[Sandman Simulations]

Please report here if you encounter any problems while playing the campaign.

[deathhoneybadger]

Typo in Mission 2 voice lines, Intercepting a "bougie" when the Mig 29 first pops up on scope

[Lt_Jaeger]

Barely started, but it is pretty annoying to have awacs calls on the approach and depature channel during carrier qual. I think they should be on a different frequency. 

I think the landing check list is to long. As I understand it the pilots quotes the items and the RIO just confirms them. Working the whole list takes way too long if you not doing a 2 mile downwind leg. 

 

[Sandman Simulations]

17 hours ago, deathhoneybadger said:

Typo in Mission 2 voice lines, Intercepting a "bougie" when the Mig 29 first pops up on scope

I will check that. Thanks.

[Sandman Simulations]

13 hours ago, Lt_Jaeger said:

Barely started, but it is pretty annoying to have awacs calls on the approach and depature channel during carrier qual. I think they should be on a different frequency. 

I think the landing check list is to long. As I understand it the pilots quotes the items and the RIO just confirms them. Working the whole list takes way too long if you not doing a 2 mile downwind leg. 

 

Hi, and thank you for your feedback. 

You might be right about landing list. I know in real life it really goes like you said. My argument for challenge type list reading was to get single player pilot to check all critical items when Jester won't do it for you. But you are not only one who has said it will take too long time. I will think about changing it.

About AWACS calls on mission 1 and 3. There should not be any AWACS radio traffic on departure channel (preset 2, 328.0 MHz) or approach channel (preset 5, 255.0 MHz). AWACS should be heard only on Preset 3 (225.0 MHz). Can you confirm neither one of your radios to be set on preset 3 and still hearing AWACS calls? If you leave either radio on preset 1 (259.0 MHz) you will hear BARCAP flight calls. 

 

[Indianajon]

Hey Sandman. Really enjoying this so far. Brilliant work. Thanks. With regards to the downwind landing checklist I wonder if it would be easier if you press space to start it but that it then just works itself through at a steady pace. This way it would remind the player what to check, give that extra immersion but stop the need to keep pressing space when trying to keep the throttle etc in sync. Just a suggestion. 

Anyway thanks again. Been great fun.

[Lt_Jaeger]

5 hours ago, Sandman Simulations said:

Hi, and thank you for your feedback. 

You might be right about landing list. I know in real life it really goes like you said. My argument for challenge type list reading was to get single player pilot to check all critical items when Jester won't do it for you. But you are not only one who has said it will take too long time. I will think about changing it.

About AWACS calls on mission 1 and 3. There should not be any AWACS radio traffic on departure channel (preset 2, 328.0 MHz) or approach channel (preset 5, 255.0 MHz). AWACS should be heard only on Preset 3 (225.0 MHz). Can you confirm neither one of your radios to be set on preset 3 and still hearing AWACS calls? If you leave either radio on preset 1 (259.0 MHz) you will hear BARCAP flight calls. 

 

Hey, thanks for the answer.

 

I did this mission 1 again, and yes, there are AWACS calls on departure and arrival. I made sure this time to switch both radios between Ch 2 and Ch5 so there would be only one freq.

 

Too bad the radios are not to be seen, but both are set to departure. Like I said, same thing on arrival.

 

 

 

[Sandman Simulations]

1 hour ago, Indianajon said:

Hey Sandman. Really enjoying this so far. Brilliant work. Thanks. With regards to the downwind landing checklist I wonder if it would be easier if you press space to start it but that it then just works itself through at a steady pace. This way it would remind the player what to check, give that extra immersion but stop the need to keep pressing space when trying to keep the throttle etc in sync. Just a suggestion. 

Anyway thanks again. Been great fun.

Thank you. Nice to hear! 

About landing checklist. I'll try to find right parameters so that pilot could just call the items in row and Jester would notify if something is not right. Like "check flaps" if flaps are up. Can't promise I can make it work.

[Sandman Simulations]

1 hour ago, Lt_Jaeger said:

Hey, thanks for the answer.

 

I did this mission 1 again, and yes, there are AWACS calls on departure and arrival. I made sure this time to switch both radios between Ch 2 and Ch5 so there would be only one freq.

 

Too bad the radios are not to be seen, but both are set to departure. Like I said, same thing on arrival.

 

 

 

I still couldn't find reason for that. I tried with simplified radio too but it should not cause the problem. Are you having same problem in other missions too? Hearing AWACS or something else you should not even if on another channel?

Please report if someone else is having the same problem.

 

[Sandman Simulations]

On 4/30/2022 at 5:52 PM, Sandman Simulations said:

Thank you. Nice to hear! 

About landing checklist. I'll try to find right parameters so that pilot could just call the items in row and Jester would notify if something is not right. Like "check flaps" if flaps are up. Can't promise I can make it work.

How about something like that? No more bolters because you forgot the hook! If you have everything right on downwind, pilot will just call checklist items. If something is missing, Jester will tell you to check the item. Try with that .miz file. 

Landinglist test.miz

[Lt_Jaeger]

12 hours ago, Sandman Simulations said:

How about something like that? No more bolters because you forgot the hook! If you have everything right on downwind, pilot will just call checklist items. If something is missing, Jester will tell you to check the item. Try with that .miz file. 

Landinglist test.miz 2.54 MB · 3 downloads

I briefly checked that template and must say I like it very much. Might be even a little faster with Pilot calling the items and a fast reply from Jester (check). I really like the bitching Jester does if you forget something (deliberately tested some items). For me, this would be the way to go.

 

After trap, if you move the wings back and raise the hook, jester bitches too, This might to be looked at. Other items are not called out (did e.g. check SAS)

 

On another note.....

 

I must admit that I am a little reluctant to play the next mission. This computer generated voice is an absolute immersion killer for me. Immersion is everything in a (paid) campaign, and you most probably know the good examples out there. I was instantly turned off, like literally 1 second after mission start, as soon as I heard that voice.

I do work with some guys who do (online) training programs, and they go through great length trying to make a computer voice (if there is really no way for a human speaker) sound as good as technically possible, but in this campaign the voice reminds me of the first efforts to make computers talk. Furthermore, I really really recommend to re-think this approach. I (roughly) understand the pain you have to go through if you need voice actors, but I believe there are enough guys out there, which will do some acting just for the fame in the credits. If this is not your way, there is software out there which is way better in reproducing human voice.

I will continue with the campaign and hope for some nice missions, but I won't be as engaged as with other campaigns out there.

This is no dissing, I hope you understand, but I'm a little disappointed.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Lt_Jaeger

[Sandman Simulations]

3 hours ago, Lt_Jaeger said:

I briefly checked that template and must say I like it very much. Might be even a little faster with Pilot calling the items and a fast reply from Jester (check). I really like the bitching Jester does if you forget something (deliberately tested some items). For me, this would be the way to go.

 

After trap, if you move the wings back and raise the hook, jester bitches too, This might to be looked at. Other items are not called out (did e.g. check SAS)

I still has to work with it to stop Jester looking for missing items after landing. Also wave off -situation is a bit difficult to make work perfectly. And yes, maybe even bit faster could be better. 

[Sandman Simulations]

3 hours ago, Lt_Jaeger said:

On another note.....

 

I must admit that I am a little reluctant to play the next mission. This computer generated voice is an absolute immersion killer for me. Immersion is everything in a (paid) campaign, and you most probably know the good examples out there. I was instantly turned off, like literally 1 second after mission start, as soon as I heard that voice.

I do work with some guys who do (online) training programs, and they go through great length trying to make a computer voice (if there is really no way for a human speaker) sound as good as technically possible, but in this campaign the voice reminds me of the first efforts to make computers talk. Furthermore, I really really recommend to re-think this approach. I (roughly) understand the pain you have to go through if you need voice actors, but I believe there are enough guys out there, which will do some acting just for the fame in the credits. If this is not your way, there is software out there which is way better in reproducing human voice.

I will continue with the campaign and hope for some nice missions, but I won't be as engaged as with other campaigns out there.

This is no dissing, I hope you understand, but I'm a little disappointed.

 

That's a matter I did think about a lot when started building this campaign a bit over year ago. Sorry to hear that voice-over quality has been so immersion-killer for you. And again, like about landing checklist, you are not only one to say there could be some work to do.

At beginning I did some tests with human voice "actors", quite fluent English speaking friends. Quality was sometimes ok but it was clear that speaker was non-native. Also not everyone willing to try had voice fitting for this purpose. There was also a problem that every time I fixed campaign so that I had to change some voice-overs I had to reach the same "actor" again. Of course voice-overs should be done last but I can tell there is no point when campaign needs no fixes anymore. Mostly for those reasons I decided to use computer-generated sound actors with some editing. By the time I didn't found a perfect program for the purpose and had to use quite a lot of time trying to make voices sound better - not enough according to your experience.

Afterwards I found out that there is a very large community willing to participate voice-acting as you said. There is still that campaign-fixing problem but I have now seen quite many developers using this method with very good results. I just also found a much better program for quite-humanlike voice generation with natural emotions and so on. Expensive as hell of course but maybe worth the money. But I haven't been able to use it in this campaign. 

 

[AH_Solid_Snake]

I'd add the same for the current voice overs, particularly the "player" voice is very high pitched and quick tempo - its a real immersion killer.

Persevering though as the missions you have are excellent, lots of stuff going on and decent variety.

For other recommendations I'd say try to match aircraft side numbers a little better - its a bugbear of mine that the new ATC comms will correctly reflect side number, but that the defaults are numbers you'd never hear for a Navy jet, at least I never heard of 071 as a MODEX.

On a related note it would be great if you shipped a couple of variations to the VF-24 skin so that not everyone is 201 uniformly, at least within own player flight or on deck at the same launch cycle. For the F-18 this is simpler as the skins will respect the programmed side number from the mission editor.

 

[Sandman Simulations]

17 hours ago, AH_Solid_Snake said:

I'd add the same for the current voice overs, particularly the "player" voice is very high pitched and quick tempo - its a real immersion killer.

Persevering though as the missions you have are excellent, lots of stuff going on and decent variety.

For other recommendations I'd say try to match aircraft side numbers a little better - its a bugbear of mine that the new ATC comms will correctly reflect side number, but that the defaults are numbers you'd never hear for a Navy jet, at least I never heard of 071 as a MODEX.

On a related note it would be great if you shipped a couple of variations to the VF-24 skin so that not everyone is 201 uniformly, at least within own player flight or on deck at the same launch cycle. For the F-18 this is simpler as the skins will respect the programmed side number from the mission editor.

 

Hi,

And thank you for feedback. Nice to hear you have enjoyed missions even with those pilot voices.

To get side numbers match with ATC is on fixing list, but as you said it would need custom skins to get variations for numbers. At leas at this point I have no resources for custom skins. But never say never.

[Whistler_RIO]

Theres a mission for night qualification that fails to write the ICLS channel for the carrier in the briefing.  kind of important

[Sandman Simulations]

4 hours ago, Whistler_RIO said:

Theres a mission for night qualification that fails to write the ICLS channel for the carrier in the briefing.  kind of important

Thanks you for your notice. It's really important indeed. Fortunately channel 11 is preset for ICLS but it really is ment to be in kneeboard too!

[Sandman Simulations]

On 5/19/2022 at 12:36 PM, Whistler_RIO said:

Theres a mission for night qualification that fails to write the ICLS channel for the carrier in the briefing.  kind of important

 Actually now that I finally got to check ICLS channel is on kneeboard as it should be or did you mean something else?

Spoiler

 

[Whistler_RIO]

On 5/23/2022 at 3:23 AM, Sandman Simulations said:

 Actually now that I finally got to check ICLS channel is on kneeboard as it should be or did you mean something else?

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I see it now in the comms sheet. Sorry about that.

[Sandman Simulations]

21 minutes ago, Whistler_RIO said:

I see it now in the comms sheet. Sorry about that.

[Pac-man_]

On 5/10/2022 at 3:29 PM, Sandman Simulations said:

To get side numbers match with ATC is on fixing list, but as you said it would need custom skins to get variations for numbers. At leas at this point I have no resources for custom skins. But never say never.

Are there any plans to change this in the near future? I can live with the robot voice, but having cloned planes fly alongside me during a mission is a bit of an immerson killer.

To end on a positive note: I have played the first two missions of this campaign and so far I really like it. The Cap flight in mission 2 was the right amount of action vs. routine. I am looking forward to the rest of the campaign.

[Sandman Simulations]

7 hours ago, Pac-man_ said:

Are there any plans to change this in the near future? I can live with the robot voice, but having cloned planes fly alongside me during a mission is a bit of an immerson killer.

To end on a positive note: I have played the first two missions of this campaign and so far I really like it. The Cap flight in mission 2 was the right amount of action vs. routine. I am looking forward to the rest of the campaign.

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback. 

I have been working with performance fix for last months so side number fix has not been my first priority. But now that you mentioned I will start working on it. However, it will take some time.

[Sandman Simulations]

Will be something like that. Painting will be VF-24 Low-Viz but with unique side numbers.

[Pac-man_]

15 hours ago, Sandman Simulations said:

Will be something like that. Painting will be VF-24 Low-Viz but with unique side numbers.

Hey, thanks for getting back to me on that. 

This is exactly what I mean. The unique numbers add a lot to the overall immersion.

[Pac-man_]

DCS: F-14B Operation Sandworm Campaign by Sandman Simulations

• All missions. Custom VF-24 Low-Viz liveries added with unique side numbers.

You did it! Thank you very much!