Need improve my flight skills

Just a couple of questions on how to fly Pony correctly:

1. Coordinated flight without looking at the bubble. Because we are sitting in a virtual cockpit instead of the real aircraft, we don't feel the real forces and inertia that the flight motion is exerting on us. At the same time, you need maintain your eye contact on the bandit to guide your maneuver. There are also so many different variables that can affect yaw moment, your speed, power settings, aileron movements, etc. So how do we fly a coordinated flight in the heat of a battle without looking at the bubble?

2. Engine management in combat. What is the optimal way? Should I leave RPM at 3000 and just adjust MP? Should I leave both at the max? Sometimes, in diving you don't need full power, would it be the best time to let engine rest and gain some green territory so that you have reserve for emergency situations?

3. How to spot enemy in distance? I know this is due to the fact we are in a sim environment. We are staring at pixels instead of real metal of aircraft. Sometimes, even if I use zoom in, I still couldn't see the other guy. I saw many youtube videos, people can spot enemy miles and miles away; even against the ground cluster.

Any tips would be welcomed.

I aways have thought that the movement in the cockpit can be tied to the "ball" instead of a canned effect.

1. Coordinated flight without looking at the bubble.

For this one you can develop some muscle memory, practice coordinated turns with the ball and after some time your feet will put the right amount of rudder when banking without thinking about it (make sure you're trimmed).

Also by looking outside it's possible to evaluate sideslip, it's not too accurate either but it will help a bit too.

Once you get some muscle memory from previous exercise, practice again by forcing yourself looking the least possible at the ball, your eyes will also develop a "feel" of how the environment should move around you when in a correct turn.

Just a couple of questions on how to fly Pony correctly:

 

1. Coordinated flight without looking at the bubble. Because we are sitting in a virtual cockpit instead of the real aircraft, we don't feel the real forces and inertia that the flight motion is exerting on us. At the same time, you need maintain your eye contact on the bandit to guide your maneuver. There are also so many different variables that can affect yaw moment, your speed, power settings, aileron movements, etc. So how do we fly a coordinated flight in the heat of a battle without looking at the bubble?

 

2. Engine management in combat. What is the optimal way? Should I leave RPM at 3000 and just adjust MP? Should I leave both at the max? Sometimes, in diving you don't need full power, would it be the best time to let engine rest and gain some green territory so that you have reserve for emergency situations?

 

3. How to spot enemy in distance? I know this is due to the fact we are in a sim environment. We are staring at pixels instead of real metal of aircraft. Sometimes, even if I use zoom in, I still couldn't see the other guy. I saw many youtube videos, people can spot enemy miles and miles away; even against the ground cluster.

 

Any tips would be welcomed.

1. I turn up my cockpit sound in audio settings. The air rushing past the canopy get louder the faster I fly. I have rudder trim mapped to two keys on my game pad, and make adjustments. This helps in rocket runs where I am diving. It also helps with turn coordination because rudder input changes with trim settings.

If you need another visual cue, set your K-14 for a rocket run. The fixed sight will be displayed along with the gyro sight. You'll get a feel for how your rudder is working by the separation of the two. It's a strange feedback, but the movement of the gyro pipper will help you develop a sens of how you are going.

2. I'm usually around 2800, and 55" unless I really need some power - then I max it out. I keep oil and coolant "open" switches mapped, so I can cool the beast down. Depending on speed, I'll drop MP coming over the top, but only if I have speed over 275. Under that, I risk my engine by powering over the top - with rads open, of course. If the engine gets too hot, I dive away and cool off - and try to come back to the fight if some Kraut doesn't follow me. Ground cover. Works great with humans, not so much with AI.

All of this supposes that you have altitude to trade for speed. Get too low, you'll soon be slow and hot, and then dead.

3. Set you model to large. If you think someone is out there, zoom OUT, and the sprite will get bigger. IF you are close, you cna zoom in and see the plane. Somewhere in the mid range, I find it hard to locate them, and use a mix of the above.

Btw, where to change the size of model? In graphics settings, I don't c such an option.

1. I've notices that besides the muscle-memory, I've found that if I'm yawed to one side or the other a little, it 'feels' strange sometimes. When I look at the bubble, I see it's off a bit. Actually, I think you can 'see' it to some extent, because your nose will not be going exactly straight. I never noticed it in the beginning, and was surprised when I started noticing it, and don't always notice, but more and more. So I guess it's just a question of experience.

2. I generally fly short missions with 2700 RPM and 46" MP, and only increase RPM to 3000 when I'm getting into a combat situation, and throttle as needed. I try to keep an eye on oil temp and manually open the radiator door, when necessary.

After some minutes, when things have calmed down, I do an engine check first thing. RPM back to 2700 and throttle to 46" or less depending on the situation. Oil radiator door depending on temperature. I don't think I've ever seen my water temp going high, unless I've taken some damage, and I can't remember that last time that happened; the over temperature, not the damage :D

3. I've been trying this out: Universal Model Visibility Setting Mod I've found the scaling to be very well done. No sudden jumps, which sometimes causes aircraft to suddenly disappear just when you're getting closer :huh:. I'd suggest it to anybody interested. Try it out a bit; it can't hurt.

I've found that if I'm yawed to one side or the other a little, it 'feels' strange sometimes. When I look at the bubble, I see it's off a bit. Actually, I think you can 'see' it to some extent, because your nose will not be going exactly straight.

This works if there's no wind, but if there's any wind, and you aren't aligned with it (travelling exactly with it or against it), then this effect will be deceptive. The wind will make it look like you're flying uncoordinated even when your ball is perfectly centered, because it's blowing you sideways relative to the ground (but not to the airmass, which you are only moving forward relative to, and not sideways, barring small increments during brief gusts).

I just learned something new over the weekend. When doing high G maneuvers, need set elevator trim to neutral. Coming from Il2 background, this has never been the issue. In Il2 you trim your plane to straight flying before combat and that becomes your starting point. In combat, just readjust trim slightly to help with aiming, climbing and diving. But DCS is totally different. Before, I was stalling all over the sky with only slight stick input(even at pretty high speed over 300mph) and couldn't figure out why. I try to adjust response curve but not working. Neutral trim helps a lot, but my stick is still too much for the plane to handle. Now my next question is:

Possible to change stick response curve window from a square to horizontal rectangle?(basically make Y axis 10 units long but X axis 20 or even 30 units long) That way you can lower the slope of your response line, in essence making your stick to travel farther to get the same ingame effect on the control surfaces. Say for example, a curvature=0 X saturation=100, Y saturation=100, your response curve is basically a straight 45 degrees sloping line. The slope of the line is in essence the response rate for your stick. Under current system there is no way to lower this slope while still maintaining a straight line and at the same time allowing your stick to reach 100% ingame deflection. You can either build in a curve which sacrifice the high end of the curve for low end or decrease Y saturation, which would make 100% elevator deflection unreachable. But if you can have Y axis 10 units long, but X axis 30 units long, you can decrease your response rate to 1/3 of original, but you can still reach 100% if you really need it. The only difference is you just need pull stick a bit further back to reach the same deflection. This is essencially the same as put your stick on the floor and lengthen it with a foot long stick attached to it.

Coordinated turns are difficult to explain but I'll try to give my advice:

1. Apply aileroun always slightly ahead of rudder when goin into/out of a turn.

2. If our nose yaws into your roll direction while initiating the turn your rudder input was too much / too early. Vise versa if the nose yaws counterwise of your roll direction.

3. At high airspeed rudder becomes very effective so you meed less than at lower speed. Also the rudder imduced roll momentum will increase.

4. Alternatively to the "balll"the gyrosight can be used to check for coordinated flight (the more it wobbles around the less coordinated your flight).

Best way to practise coordinated flight is with rolling exercises. To do that you just fly straight and start banking left and right while slowly increasing your bank angle with each turn. If you apply rudder perfectly the nose should stay fixed at the horizon without wobbling left or right.

Something I found really helped make my turns better coordinated was flying the "Nevada Tour" (the one with the big green hoops in the sky) lots of times ... as fast as possible. Having the hoops as reference I found I got a really good feel of when I was sloshing the plane around, developing the reflexes there then allowed me to spot the same thing in normal flight (it's there, it's just much more subtle). Was really good for my rudder skills in general, I feel like my landings are much neater now.

3. I've been trying this out: Universal Model Visibility Setting Mod I've found the scaling to be very well done. No sudden jumps, which sometimes causes aircraft to suddenly disappear just when you're getting closer :huh:. I'd suggest it to anybody interested. Try it out a bit; it can't hurt.

Orso. I tried this mod. It helps a bit, but the objects are still hard to see from the background. Sometimes, even when a 109 is so close, I still could see it. Anyway to adjust this mod's settings to suit my graphics and screen?

I don't know, but I've never looked into modding this mod :)

I know it's a PITA trying to locate a 109 with a green cammy paint job while it's flying over a green background, but I think that was the idea ;)

I don't know, but I've never looked into modding this mod :)

 

I know it's a PITA trying to locate a 109 with a green cammy paint job while it's flying over a green background, but I think that was the idea ;)

My 109 wasn't hiding in the bushes. It was against clear blue sky. I saw many online videos, the contrast was so good. I have this gut feeling that my graphics was set up right somehow.

There's no situation better than having the enemy against the blue sky, for spotting anyway.

I don't really play around with graphic settings really, mostly because I'm lazy, but also because I've already got them mostly turned up nearly all the way. How far you can do that will really depend on your system.

Aside from that, you might want to look into the DCS World 1.5 Beta and 2.0 Alpha section on graphics. There are some threads talking about settings and making some suggestions. That might help you far more than anything I might suggest.

I know there are specific situations where even against the blue sky an aircraft is difficult, if not impossible to see, and that is when it is facing either straight at or straight away from your position, but that's fairly realistic I think.

Aside from what I've written, you might try using <F5> to find your nearest opponent, at least in single player, to give you some experience with what it looks like when an aircraft passes you or is trying to maneuver to get behind you. I did this for a while, because it was the only way I could ever find the enemy aircraft, besides when it was right behind me :joystick:

Re: monitor settings your best bet is to download a test pattern and set your screen to that.

Lots of contrast looks great while you're playing with settings but washes everything out, this is usually the culprit.