Newbie Looking for Some Advice

Hello DCS community, glad to finally meet you!

I'm looking for some advice and possibly a regular or group of regulars to take me under their "wing" so to speak. I have a ton of questions, but before I begin I'd like to tell you a bit about myself.

I'm in Tampa, Florida and I'm 34. I have a pretty decent job as a systems analyst. I game on evenings and weekends. Mostly right now I play EA hockey, but I'm looking to get back into combat flight sims. Growing up I was a pretty die hard fan of the original EF2000 & F22 series by DiD. I recently started playing it again, err... Total Air War, and realized how much I miss the sim world. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get TAW running as smooth as I want on my Win 7 PC, so over the past weekend I researched other options and I decided there was no competition in the combat simulator space, DCS seems to be the easy decision. I bought FC3 and have it installed, everything is working great, and I don't mind buying any of the other modules, but FC was on the front page so that's what I bought first.

My system details (may be pertinent to some questions below):

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2GB

Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30GHz

16GB DDR3

65"Mitsubishi DLP HDTV

Now my questions for the community:

I plan on purchasing the following tomorrow, is this good/recommended equipment?:

CH Products Fighter Stick

CH Products Pro Throttle

CH Products Pro Pedals

TrackIR 4 Pro

I'll be welding a cockpit together around a race car seat and hope to have that finished by the weekend.

As far as communication when online, what do most people here use? I assume Team Speak, but to be honest I'm not sure if there's any internal coms that are used. I don't have a Team Speak account yet, but will purchase if it's used here.

Where's the best place to go for a printable quick reference guide to the default key commands?

I'm a newb and I come to the community in all modesty and humility. I know this isn't an arcade game, and frankly I don't want it to be. I am a quick learner though and I listen and take instruction well. I do have previous experience with flight sims, and no I'm not talking about AfterBurner or Ace Combat. I am very aware of the steep learning curve that awaits me. It's what has me so freaking pumped up!

That said, I want to have a good time getting back into the flight sim world and all the rest of my friends play games I can't stand - i.e. Wow and Team Fortress. Not saying those are bad games, just saying they are not for me.

So any DCS veterans want to put this rookie through his paces and help mold me into a DCS regular?

I'm open to any advice even if you don't want a newb on your wing or in your squadron but am looking forward to your helpful feedback.

I'm stoked and can't wait! :pilotfly:

CH is a very good combo, the Warthog is good, but it cost $350-500 dollars. Then you'll still need to buy a TrackIR and rudder pedals. Get the CH first and if you don't like it, you can sale it later and get something else.

With teamspeak, you don't need to buy anything, servers have already did that. All you need to do is download and install it.

There is a thread for Squadrons:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=34062

Look for groups flying FC since that's the one you have now.

Look for groups in or close to your time zone.

Look for groups that will fly with you at your current skill level.

Being a CH user myself, the gear you listed is good. A lot of folks use the Warthog gear which is also good.

Don't worry about the comms. The group you join will help you sort that out. Installing the free Teamspeak client isn't a bad idea though. Most public DCSW servers use it.

The ...Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Mods\aircrafts\Flaming Cliffs\doc\ folder is a good starting place for info.

and have fun!

Hello and welcome. If you can, get trackir 5. The difference isn't too noticeable when you go from 4 to 5 but it sure is when you go from 5 to 4.

Welcome aboard! :)

Yes, Eagle Dynamics (ED) is the best (so far) in the field.

That's debatable.. depends on what ya wanna fly :thumbup: F-16.. nobody comes close to BMS.. old school WWI.. Rise of Flight. Ya I'm talking about other sims ED big deal!

TIR, TM wathog, ch pedals. if you can't afford the hog, a saitek x52 pro or ch stick/pedals is good enough. though trust me when I say that the hog is worth the $500.

Also a good cushion will be worth your while. some missions can run in excess of six hours, especially with air refueling, and a sore tooshie is not a good thing to have.

That's debatable.. depends on what ya wanna fly :thumbup: F-16.. nobody comes close to BMS.. old school WWI.. Rise of Flight. Ya I'm talking about other sims ED big deal!

yeah, but bms is free, and lets face it, someone is going to make a dcs sopwith.

...and lets face it, someone is going to make a dcs sopwith.

Though I really wish you were correct, I sincerely doubt it. :)

As far as communication when online, what do most people here use? I assume Team Speak, but to be honest I'm not sure if there's any internal coms that are used. I don't have a Team Speak account yet, but will purchase if it's used here.

Hi mate,

Actualy ingame radio can be used with TARS (http://www.excessiveheadspace.com/tars/). It is kind of a mod to TS3 that allows to use ingame radio frequenzies. (Thats the short explanation).

However, most likely you will not need this unless you join a virtual wing that uses TARS in missions.

Regards,

RR

Thanks for all the replies!

The Warthog does look nice. I'm getting a pretty good deal on the CH stuff though, so since I haven't heard anything bad about them I'm going to give them a shot.

Been reading through the manual from the docs folder, so cool :book:. It'll be fun mapping all of the functions to the stick and throttle. I'll probably be looking the web over for presets peeps have uploaded and customize from there... if I can find any that is.

As far the coms are concerned, it looks like there's a bunch of options. Think I'll just hit the squad forums once I'm a little less green, hopefully I don't pick up too many bad habits in the meantime.

I haven't been this excited about gaming in a while. Reading the manual this sim is as deep as was hoping it would be.

Again thanks for all the replies, and keep the tips coming. If you have any "a-ha!" moments since you started playing share them here if you would! Or any face palm stories for that matter :doh:.

For those interested, this looks to be the best preset profile for CH Fighterstick setup..

http://www.ch-hangar.com/forum/showthread.php?7149-Lockon-Flaming-Cliffs-2!-PT-FS-PP

Update.

I got the CH products today and loaded Capt_Crunch's profile for them. Took a few quick test flights.

I have to sort out an issue with the pedal axis as they are controlling throttle and not my rudder in both the A10 and F-15. No sweat I don't think, just gotta assign in DCS world options; simply managed the runway ramps with z,x.

Cycling the various missiles is also not working quite right. Overall it was a good first few flights though. Probably just going to build my own profile in due time.

I've also gotta fabricate a proper cockpit ASAP.

I built my own CH profile also, it worked out better for me. However, I just deleted every action on the stick and throttle. That way, all I had to do was figure out where I wanted the commands to go. I wanted mine to be as close to real as I could get, but kinda hard to do with the throttle. Good luck in getting everything sorted out, CH is a really good set-up. Have fun on building a pit, that is going to be fun for you.

This thread is turning into my pilot's log :-D

So I sorted out my axis issues and did the first 2 campaign missions in the F-15. Just flew around to different way points and the wing man pointed things out. This is a very cool game.

Landed successfully both times to boot, wooot! Though the first time it took me two passes before I lined things up smoothly.

I like the com system with the tower and wing man. Very different from ef2000 where you had to write down the frequencies for each mission as well as make a list for each base. It was quite frustrating not being to end a mission successfully because you didn't request perms to land at a unscheduled base because you were damaged/out of fuel.

On that note, I wasn't sure how to end the missions. After landing do you just kill the engines, pop the canopy open, and go to quit? I wasn't sure and I followed my wing man and he taxied into an open hanger. I taxied for about 30 minutes looking for my open hanger and couldn't find one! Next time I'm thinking I'll wait for him to land, follow him, and when I see his hanger taxi sprint him for it :-) . I just don't like using a "quit" selection to end a mission, I'm not a quitter and it bugs the hell out of my OCD ;) .

In other news, I found a $400 race car seat for $80 on craigslist. It's 2.5 hours away by car to pick it up though, thinking I'll just take an A-10 to go get it. :pilotfly: Gonna be nice and comfy in the cockpit me thinks.