tf_neuro

After all current project and beginning to work on the most popular wishlist stuff, I would suggest: 1- Pacific map with Zeros and Wildcats to begin with, possibly expandable with Corsairs, Hellcats, newer Zeros, Georges, Franks, dive bombers of both sides, and what not. 2 - Med map with Cr.42 and C.200 vs Hurricane and Gladiator as the first planes, some room for other planes here too (maybe with a priority for the S.79) 3 - Spanish Civil War map with at least i-15 and i-16 vs. Cr.32 and maybe early 109s, and possible later additions As for the La-7, I can undertand how some players may be against it, it was considered an "invincible uber-plane" in the old IL2 game, but the real problem was that a lot of players never figured out how to fight it. And besides, the simplified aircraft systems modeled in that game made everything much easier to fly, so it boiled down to performance. Pilot workload was never a factor. An accurately modeled La-7 would be much harder to fly than the highly automated (for its time) Fw-190. The La-7 may still perform better in many respects (not all, though), but an La-7 pilot will have more things to think about compared to the Fw-190 pilot, and that may very well make a difference. Long story short, I'm all for the La-7 (but then we'd need 109Gs and 190As)

Hi, name is Luke (actually Luca, "Luke" is the "international version"), some of you may know me as tf_neuro, of the 68 sq. The FoxBats (aka Luke771 on websites not related to combat flightsims) I'm born and raised in Naples, Italy; lived in different countries for a number of years, but as the Big Five-Oh approached I started to feel kind of homesick and moved back to Italy. On a number of forums and game servers, I earned a reputation as a major @$$hole and impossible to get along with, and frankly, I'm almost proud of that. The "problem" is actually a total lack of diplomacy and a bad habit of calling things by their names rather than using politically correct euphemisms, both things that tend to annoy stupid people. There's only one thing that I wanted to do as long as I can remember, and that's flying. I didn't get a chance to do that until recently (some three years ago) so I used to compensate by playing flight sims: started with MSFS but I got bored of it pretty quickly, then I discovered the old IL-2, joined a bunch of squadrons over time but I never could get along with them, so eventually I started my own squadron where no one can kick me out. As you can expect, it's a pretty small squadron, but all like-minded: hardcore simulations, an interest in history and RL flying, and no need for political correctness. If you want to visit us, we're at http://foxbats.foorumi.eu As IL-2 eventually became obsolete (and it lasted awfully long), we tried a number of new games, including the highly anticipated (and released with a "two weeks" delay) Cliffs of Dover, the WWI sim Rise of Flight, and only later DCS. Our interest in DCS increased when the P-51 was released, and a lot more when we heard of the WWII project: all of our squad members backed the project to different degrees, and all of us are enjoying the Fw-190 right now. Personally, I can't wait to try the me-262: it was fairly tricky to fly even in the old IL-2, so I can only assume that it would be a real challenge in DCS, with all systems modeled, performance and limitations close to the real thing... in fact, I heard of players being against the idea of a flyable 262 because they thought it would be invincible. I think they will find out that yes, it can be invincible if you learn to fly it properly, but that's not going to be easy (and besides, even in the hands od an uber-ace, the 262 is still extremely vulnerable on take off and landing, but that's another story) Back to my presentation: I'm playing a lot less flight sims since I got a watchman/handyman job at a small airfield for ultralights, (off-the-grid power, currently not sufficient for my gaming box) but I can still manage to get on line with the squadron for a few hours once a week or so. Right now we're in the process of regrouping after a few months of inactivity, and learning how to fly DCS planes under the guidance of our own (virtual) test pilot, instructor, and overall aircraft genius tf_t4trouble. We hope to be able to put up a serious fight within a few months, but much depends on how much each member is able to attend our training sessions. This is me in my "watchman uniform" I thought of setting up a sign reading "beware of the crazy watchman" but the owner vetoed it. This is me with Leone (Italian for "Lion"), my deputy watchman and intruder detection system. Below: me flying my Comco-Ikarus C-22 Fox ...and that's all for the presentation. See you in the virtual skies for a good virtual fight S!

As a hardcore simmer I'm reasonably pleased with the advanced models I tried so far, even though I have to admit that modern A/C such as A-10 and Ka-50 are a notch or two over my head (but I'll catch up, eventually). I know nothing about programming, so don't be too hard on me if my requests are impossible or extremely hard to implement: I'm only listing what I would like to have, but I realize that some of those things may be a lot easier said than done. That being said, let's see my personal wishlist (perhaps better described as "whine-list") Being a 99% online player, I think I'll mention some things that IMO could be improved in that area: - Listing servers by ping does make sense, but if you're trying to find one particular server in the list you never know where to look because they move around all the time as ping changes. Possible solutions: *ability to bookmark servers *ability to choose listing by ping, by name (alphabetical), by location, et.c. also, it'd be nice to have filters by plane set, by weapons on/off, you name it. -Having to leave the server to change any settings or assignments is a fairly huge PITA. Possible solution: *ability to change settings/assignments on the fly. Where too hard/impossible to implement in-flight changes, making it possible between flights without having to leave the server would still be a great improvment. Autorudder and take-off assist should be available only in "game" mode (which I'm completely uninterested in), while "sim" mode should have no such options and no external views either. However, as a second best, I would say that server settings for autorudder and take-off assist would be OK (assuming that A/C icons already are. I have no idea because my icons are off, which IMO is the only possible option if you want a sim and not a game) If for some reason it is decided that takeoff assist in sim mode should be available, then it should at least be set to zero by default. Having it to 100% by default may be a good idea in game mode, but definitely not in sim mode. OK, all you have to do is drag a slider, but not everyone knows about it when they first start playing DCS. That's exactly what happened to me, and I must confess that I was more than a little annoyed when I understood what happened: people were talking about how hard it was to take off in the Mustang, and I was like, what? what's the big deal? Then I found out about take off assist, disabled it, and then I had to start over because most of what I'd learned that far was wrong. As for user interface: - I understand the need to have different key/axis assignments for different A/C, but there are a lot of those assignments that we use on all planes, and having to set up each plane from scratch is another PITA we would happily skip (or at least, I would) Possible solution: * an "apply to all" option when setting up controls/assignments. Clicking that button would apply that same assignment to all the A/C you already have, and default future ones to it. Single A/C assignments could still be changed afterwards. A very nice 'finesse' could be to have three buttons: "apply to all A/C", "Apply to all fixed wings ", "apply to all rotorwings". A "lock" option would be nice, too. After setting up a plane that needs special configuration, you could select "lock", and then it wouldn't be affected by changes made by "apply to all". Then of course you'd need a list of aircraft in the main controls setup page, with checkboxes for lock/unlock and an "unlock all" button. ... and I suspect that it's getting waaaaaay too complex... but the point was to throw in some ideas, maybe there's something actually feasible among all the crazy stuff. - Currently, when multiple game controller are detected, the system assigns bank/roll/pitch/throttle and a few more to all of them, sometimes even assigning non-existing axes (!) Possible solution: *At the first start only, make a a box pop up asking what game controller is the stick, and apply the defaults only to that one, leaving axes and buttons untouched on all other game controllers. A more advanced idea (no idea how feasible) would be a "wizard" kind of thing that lists all the available game controllers with a drop-down menu for each of them, where users could select "bank/pitch", "rudder", "throttle", "other". Multiple selections should be possible, too. That way, a user with a twist-handle joystick could select both "bank/pitch"" and "rudder" for it, or even "bank/pitch", "rudder", and "throttle" if s/he wants to have them all there. All of that, if more than one game controller was detected. If there's only one game controller, the system would automatically try to assign as much as possible to that one, without bothering to pop up a window. Also, as long as I've been playing flight sims, I've always found that the only joystick button default that most users keep is button zero for the guns. Almost everyone changes all other button assignements (and some change the main guns button, too). Therefore, I would suggest to leave all joystick buttons unassigned except for the usual 0=fire all guns. Another thing that could be improved is the overall reliability of online servers: planes "rubberbanding" all over the place, players being kicked off their planes becuse their speed was registered at 16.000 knots, sudden disconnections, screen freezings... OK, I realize that at least in some cases the problem may be on the user's end, and anyways, I'm assuming that you're aware of the problem and working on it, so I'm cutting the bad-server-whining part. Besides the relatively small problems that I have pointed out, I find DCS a very good simulation. I never flew any of the featured A/C IRL but I think we have the most accurate flight simulation that we can run on a home PC, and it's still improving. I'm not going to talk about the weather system because I don't have enough experience in DCS to be a judge. And besides, for some reason the people who run the servers tend to set wind speed and turbulence to values unrealistically close to zero. Personally, I think that a landing with no wind is like a pizza with no cheese, but that's a matter of opinions. One last small note: the power line wires are way too thick! IRL you can barely see them if you're low and slow enough. A little bit higher and faster, and you don't see them at all (unless they have those red and white balls that are put there for the specific purpose of making them visible) Common practice is, if you see the poles of a power- or telephone line, always assume the wires are there too, even if you can't see them. Therefore, IMO the power lines modeled in DCS should have much thinner wires, barely visible at close distance and completely invisible from farther off (say a couple of miles in average/goodish visibility conditions). And of course, invisible power lines should still be pretty solid if you fly into them. OK, that was all for now. I hope I gave you at least some good ideas. Thanks for reading, /Luke

Roger that.

Well, yes and no. Yes, OK, for the WWII stuff. No, I don't need a T-shirt, a cap, or some kind of metal mention, so I was thinking if I could trade that physical stuff for some more in-game stuff...

OK, so where do we talk backers' stuff?

Hi there. How do I get into the Backers' Forum? Someone suggested http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=326 but when I tried to access it I got "Invalid Forum specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator" Clicking the 'administrator' link did nothing. And yes, I was logged in and the backer section with serial numbers and stuff works fine. Only problem, the forum.

No, I'm not sure. But I'm sure I can see a mirror on top of the cockpit, same position as the P-51 mirror. Not available at all, huh? Anyone can confirm that's the case?

Yet another silly question: In the controls assignment GUI, 'Right mirror on' and 'Left mirror on' are under R and L, respectively. However, I can't find anything like 'Top mirror on', or 'Center' or 'Middle'. Question: where is the control to activate the center mirror? (also: it'd be nice to have all the mirrors under M, all the trims under T, and so forth)

Thanks for the suggestions. One thing kind of worries me: Catweasel's tip 'make sure you're trimmed for level flight' seems to imply that if I increase or decrease throttle the A/P will disengage instead of retrimming for the new speed. Is that the case? Also, does the A/P auto-disengage if I move stick/pedals? EDIT: Answers to my questions seem to be no, and yes. A/P working flawlessly. Thx.

The 'neck mod' worked flawlessly. I manually changed the min and max FoV to 45 and 135 respectively, and that gave me exactly the view I was looking for. Thx again, S!

I'd like the plane to keep its heading and altitude while im working on my weapon systems. However, the autopilot doesnt seem to work. It is armed and set to alt/hdg, I hit the engage/disengage button, it goes 'ding!'... and the plane keeps drifting all over the place. I tried putting it in straight and level before hitting the button, same result. Also, it only goes 'ding' the first time I hit it. After that, no matter how straight and level I fly, I never hear that 'ding' sound again. What am I doing wrong? Any A/P tutorials around? BTW, I can't find any autopilot assignment in the controls GUI. It'd be real nice to have the engage/disengage A/P button on a keyboard key but I can't figure out where to assign it.

Forgot to mention: the command line trick worked right away. Thanks.

Roger that. Thx.

Running 3840x1024 with the old Triple Head box, I'm getting a small problem with my FoV: using 'one screen' option the FoV is too small, but using the 3-screen option the FoV looks like it should look if I had three HUGE monitors positioned at 90 degrees angles around my head, one in front and 2 on the sides. As I don't have such 'monitors box' but only 3 monitors in front of me, the result is a horribly distorted view. Question is: how do I increase both default and maximum FoV in one-screen mode? EDIT: Moving the default pilot's head position a more to the back of the cockpit may very well do the trick. As I found out, I can get a nice FoV by moving my (real) head towards the monitor, recentering TrackIR, and finally going back to my normal position. The problem with that is that I have to repeat this rather involved procedure every time I need to recenter TrackIR. If I could simply center and have my 'virtual head' further back in the cockpit, that would solve the problem.

Here's the problem: After getting A-10 and Ka-50, I bought the Su-25, then I bought FC3 which seems to have the Su-25 included. In other words, I think I bought the Su-25 twice. If that's the case, could I get a discount on an extra A-10 that I would give away to a squad mate?

Trying to install FC3 gives me the following error message: "Can't install FC3 1.2.5.16184 into newer DCS World 1.2.5.16508 Please, download FC3 1.2.5.16508 installer" However, FC3 1.2.5.16508 is nowhere to be found. All download links point to FC3 1.2.5.16184.

Here's another problem and how I got around it, in case someone is interested: I was trying to set up the Su-25A, then save the profile, and finally load it in the Su-25T. However, every time I tried to do that I ended up with keyboard settings being loaded in the column that I have selected, and some fields were greyed out. When I saw that mess I hit 'cancel' and it reverted to default, which might explain why there was no su-25T folder in the config directory... and then it hit me. I simply made a copy of the su-25 folder and renamed it su-25T. It will probably require some manual adjustments for stuff that is peculiar to the T model, but I got most of the stuff already in place.

It worked. Thanks.

Hello there. I'm posting here because I couldn't find a Su-25 section. Sorry if I picked the wrong forum. I have some problems trying to set up the su-25: many items in the 'controls' page are greyed out, including some very important ones like gun trigger and rudder. In some cases an item is greyed out for one controller but not the other. For example, I can assign the rudder axis to the joystick but not the pedals, gun trigger can be assigned to keyboard but not to the joystick. Everything works fine on all other aircraft that I have tried so far, which includes P-51D, A-10C, Ka-50. The problem only shows up for the Sukhois, both Su-25 and Su-25T. My game controllers are: Kg-20 floor-mounted joystick from Schreinerschmidt (visible at http://www.thefoxbats.ch/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=390 ) CH Pro pedals CH Panel (6-slider throttle) The throttle off an old Saitek X-52 "frankenstick" for additional buttons and sliders, built out of an old Logitech stick (visible at http://www.thefoxbats.ch/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=92 ) As I said above, this rather unusual configuration gives me no problems at all on DCS, except for the Su-25. Everything else works just fine. Can you think of any way to fix this problem? If you need additional info, don't hesitate to ask.