How to get started, second tutorial too difficult

[ScottVal]

Hello-

I'm new to DCS, and somewhat overwhelmed by the complexity of it all. I had high hopes that this would be a cool thing and a good alternative to FSX. But at this point I'm just frustrated.

 

I got through the first tutorial, you know, where you just taxi and take off. Pretty straightforward. I thought it was strange though, how you couldn't see the runway right in front of you, and all you see is a green field. If you hit F2, OK, then you see the runway.

 

The second tutorial is too difficult. The gates are in too much of a zig-zag pattern, and you have to turn too sharp sometimes to get to the next gate and there isn't enough time to make the turn. Also, it's hard to see the next gate sometimes because the framework of the canopy gets in the way.

 

I don't really care for this Russian plane, and I've never really been interested too much in Russian planes. I find the use of the Russian alphabet and Russian vocabulary to be confusing. I never studied Russian in school. Are most of the DCS customers Russian?

 

-Scott

[Flogger23m]

Sounds like you need to enable AA. The Su-25T is not as detailed as the A-10C or other "study sim" level aircraft.

 

If you want to buy more aircraft at a similar realism level as the Su-25T, get Flaming Cliffs 3. That comes with a bunch of aircraft, including the A-10A and F-15C. Note that you will need a copy of LOMAC, which can be bought digitally via Amazon.com or Ubisoft.

[lesnyborsuk]

ScottVal don't give up!

I love FSX and I am still using it for navigation and practising flights, but when it comes about flight dynamics and action - DCS is the best.

I have never liked free SU25 that comes with DCS World (but it's only my opinion), so I advise you to do some personal research and try to find the best suitable module for you

 

P51 - if you want just to enjoy flying and all the details and flight dynamics

A10C - if you want just to bring peace with 3900 rounds per minute and enjoy close air supports

MI8, UH1 if you want to taste the most realistic flight dynamics for helicopter end just enjoy flying it!

 

Good luck :)

[kontiuka]

Keep at it, ScottVal. Persistence pays off. By the way, if you press Left Alt-F1, it toggles the cockpit off and you can see everything in front of you. You might have to press K to get rid of the knee board (in-flight map).

 

And, no, we're not all Russian customers here.:)

Edited December 12, 2013 by kontiuka

[VincentLaw]

P51 - if you want just to enjoy flying and all the details and flight dynamics

A10C - if you want just to bring peace with 3900 rounds per minute and enjoy close air supports

MI8, UH1 if you want to taste the most realistic flight dynamics for helicopter end just enjoy flying it!

And Ka-50 if you want to curse at the trimmer all day.

 

The P-51 is by far the easiest full DCS module to learn from a systems standpoint, UH-1 is second place. A-10C is the easiest to actually fly, but all the buttons, switches, and displays might overwhelm a new player. Also, all three of these are American, so the labels are in English.

Edited December 12, 2013 by VincentLaw

[javelina1]

And Ka-50 if you want to curse at the trimmer all day.

 

The P-51 is by far the easiest full DCS module to learn from a systems standpoint, UH-1 is second place. A-10C is the easiest to actually fly, but all the buttons, switches, and displays might overwhelm a new player. Also, all three of these are American, so the labels are in English.

 

amen on the A-10C. A bit of work to learn, but a big payoff once you do.

 

Danny: Y'all pilots?

Gooz: Uh, we're working on it. There's a lot of switches and stuff. Pride of the Pacific.

Earl: Who are you?

Danny: Terrors of the Skies.

[esb77]

The only seeing a green field instead of the runway sounds like it could be a graphics card problem. DCS really needs a dedicated graphics card to run happily, you get weird glitches (which can sometimes be quite funny) many times if you try running it on integrated graphics chips.

 

Many computers come with the integrated graphics chip as the preferred default graphics processor, so you may have to change your control panel or graphics card driver settings to get DCS to run on the dedicated video card.

 

As far as flight difficulties go, these are fairly good simulations of military aircraft. They are not meant to be especially easy or safe to fly, they are meant to perform very specific military tasks and to perform them well. They are not easy to fly, let alone to master. Depending on your skill level coming in, there's no reason to be dismayed by things like fatal crashes and mission failures.

 

To put it another way, after 100-200 flight hours you should be at a beginner's level of competence.

 

As far as the Russian, well, it's a Russian plane.

 

There are mods available that relabel some of the Russian aircraft in English, and the HUD can be set to English in the Options menu, though I forget on which page they put the little checkbox for that. Not sure if there's an English cockpit mod for the Su-25T, but I've learned most of the Cyrillic alphabet as a consequence of learning the Mi-8 module so I haven't bothered to look for English cockpit mods.

 

There's a link to a collection of mods on the DCS Store web page.

[lmp]

To put it another way, after 100-200 flight hours you should be at a beginner's level of competence.

 

Whoa, aren't you exaggerating quite a bit? I have about 25 hours in the Huey and 15 in the Hip and I can fly them confidently. I never crashed the Hip (though I have been shot down once) and crashed the Huey maybe 3 times. I'm no expert, but I certainly reached "beginner's level of competence". And sure, I've flown other, simpler helo sims before, but the OP is also coming from FSX.

 

No need to scare the man away. DCS requires some stick time to get used to but in the end the AFM feels more natural and intuitive to me than simpler flight models in other games...

[Jetkar]

Hi scottVal

 

This is common with all newbies to DCS. If you interested our squadron offers a very comprehensive training on most DCS modules and on a one to one basis so u fully understand and are able to fly as well as enjoying playing.

 

If you interested check my link on my signature below for our TS details and you can speak any member of squad we all happy to help.

[esb77]

Whoa, aren't you exaggerating quite a bit? I have about 25 hours in the Huey and 15 in the Hip and I can fly them confidently. I never crashed the Hip (though I have been shot down once) and crashed the Huey maybe 3 times. I'm no expert, but I certainly reached "beginner's level of competence". And sure, I've flown other, simpler helo sims before, but the OP is also coming from FSX.

 

No need to scare the man away. DCS requires some stick time to get used to but in the end the AFM feels more natural and intuitive to me than simpler flight models in other games...

 

No, I'm not exaggerating at all, if anything I'm understating. The question is, what standard am I using for beginner?

 

When I say beginner, I'm talking about in comparison to a real pilot, not in comparison to a player of flight sim games.

 

By that standard 'experienced' means flight time counted in thousands of hours.

 

If you're just talking about taking off and achieving enough to not fail the mission, 5 - 20 hours might be enough.

 

Of course we're at a disadvantage, because even if we get hours on the sim, we don't have the educational, training, and documentation support that a real pilot would get (except for those that are real pilots of similar aircraft), so really we probably need more time to reach an equivalent level of competency.

 

[/sarcasm]Of course we all do things like fill out pre-flight checklists, know how to operate all modes of radio and nav gear, write up flight plans before heading to the plane, know every single emergency procedure well enough to do it without error in a high stress situation, etc.[/sarcasm]

We don't just jump in the plane and fly off to try to shoot stuff, because let's be honest, what kind of incompetent fool would you have to be to do that! :music_whistling:

 

For reference, depending on the training program, aircraft, and locality, you typically need ground school and 30 - 100 hours of supervised flight time before being licensed to fly civilian light aircraft solo in VFR conditions. Turbine, multi-engine, and IFR qualifications require more education and more flight time. Qualification in combat aircraft if you're a military pilot requires still more.

 

So really, perhaps I should have said, 100-200 flight hours to be a rank beginner. ;)

 

DCS does currently suffer from a lack of training aircraft, and the Su-25T really isn't what you'd call a beginner friendly airframe. Great in many ways, but not the easiest to fly. It will punish you pretty badly for certain mistakes.

 

Of course with enough time you can learn to do some fairly amazing things with a Su-25T. Or even more amazingly, doing those same things after large chunks of the plane have been shot off.

[VincentLaw]

As far as flight difficulties go, these are fairly good simulations of military aircraft. They are not meant to be especially easy or safe to fly, they are meant to perform very specific military tasks and to perform them well. They are not easy to fly, let alone to master. Depending on your skill level coming in, there's no reason to be dismayed by things like fatal crashes and mission failures.

 

I would like to challenge this statement though. High performance does not have to mean death trap. While combat aircraft are not designed to fly like airliners, they are not designed to be hard or dangerous to fly either, and they often have sophisticated control computers to improve their handling. The more attention the pilot has to devote to flying the airplane, the less they have for managing combat.

 

The A-10C is in my opinion easy to fly, and I have not flown the Su-25T much, but I don't remember anything challenging about it. The key with both is to not pull too much on turns or you will stall and lose turn rate (and potentially enter roll). The last time I tried pulling a really hard corner in an airliner in FSX I entered an unrecoverable flat spin and crashed. I have not even managed to do that on purpose in the A-10C.

 

Also, You are right that it takes many hours to have all of the specific procedures down for one aircraft (depending upon complexity), but most airplanes can technically be flown without knowing most of the procedures, and general flight skill is fairly portable between airplanes. I can "feel" an airplane well enough to safely land it without knowing the correct approach speed.

 

Having procedures down is more important for combat survivability because doing the right thing quickly matters when you are being shot at. There is certainly a long stretch between "able" and "effective", but even so, just knowing how to arm the guns (two switches) is sufficient to have some destructive fun in the A-10C.

 

The key is, it doesn't take hundreds of hours before you can A: fly around without crashing, B: blow stuff up, C: have fun.

 

(Actually it only took me about 2 hours (maybe?) before I knew how to properly operate every system on the P-51 without a checklist.)

Edited December 13, 2013 by VincentLaw

[lmp]

@esb77

 

I assumed you were talking about the game, not the real thing. Throughout your whole post you're discussing mainly the game. Even in the previous sentence you said "no reason to be dismayed by things like fatal crashes and mission failures". That obviously is true only in the virtual world. So if you're going to switch the topic to real world military pilot training, I say it would be best to mention that fact, because otherwise you can give the readers the false impression that they'll need months or years of practice until they can even begin to grasp the game. And that is not true, with some dedication and possibly previous sim experience, you'll be beating missions few hours into the game.

[esb77]

Fair enough Imp and Vincent.

 

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I can fly a mission with 100% mission completion and targets of opportunity taken out as well, and still consider the flight to be embarrassingly terrible flying.

 

As far as the Su-25T specifically, it's a very nice plane in most of its flight envelope, so it can be a bit of nasty surprise when you get to a spot where it is suddenly no longer the forgiving plane that you may have thought it was.