Who auto starts their aircraft

I know this is gonna be contentious but who here uses auto start? I literally never use it for any aircraft because I feel like it defeats the purpose of playing a game like this. If I want to auto start I’ll go play arma or ace combat or something. I love bringing the jet and it’s systems to life.

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Which is it then, a sim or a game??

I have a full-time job, cook and clean for myself, and regularly go to the gym and enjoy other hobbies. During the work season there just isn't time for "proper" starts, so I either do an auto start or a hot ramp start most of the time.

During vacation periods when I have more free time I'll do full cold starts.

The argument against auto starts or hot starts purely boils down to gate-keeping arrogance, i.e. "I'm better than those auto start plebs." Same with the sim vs. game argument. Are you using this simulator to train to real life? No? Then it technically isn't a simulator in the true sense, especially when you consider that "simulator" could apply to DCS, Xplane, P3D, FS2020, yet the difference in fidelity among these titles is quite large.

Sometimes for just training or time constraint reasons I’ll auto start and time accelerate. But most real DCS missions or campaign missions are so long that the startup time is inconsequential. Sometimes for a particular quick mission I might want to rerun or something it’s worthwhile. Generally I like the full start as it’s all immersive etc.

Always cold start, never used auto start.

I always autostart and never manual start

I use both tbh, but I like manual start overall. For the F-16/18 I almost always manual start it, for the Mirage I autostart, simply because I havent bothered to learn it yet. TBH one of the main reasons I dislike the autostart it how inefficient it is. Being an airquake/air combat/BVR guy I really dont care for the full complete startups, its just not what I play for. I can literally start the F-16 in 30 sec manually, the Hornet under a minute (excluding INS alignment). Meanwhile the autostart seems to take forever. Just my 2c

Always Cold Start.

It’s part of the fun.

I have done all the cold starts I meant to do during my msfs flying days.

I love the simplicity of FC3 planes, it's rather convenient if you get shot down a lot like me.

I have a full-time job, cook and clean for myself, and regularly go to the gym and enjoy other hobbies. During the work season there just isn't time for "proper" starts, so I either do an auto start or a hot ramp start most of the time.

 

During vacation periods when I have more free time I'll do full cold starts.

 

The argument against auto starts or hot starts purely boils down to gate-keeping arrogance, i.e. "I'm better than those auto start plebs." Same with the sim vs. game argument. Are you using this simulator to train to real life? No? Then it technically isn't a simulator in the true sense, especially when you consider that "simulator" could apply to DCS, Xplane, P3D, FS2020, yet the difference in fidelity among these titles is quite large.

100% this

How often I do auto start is directly proportional to how much time I have to myself.... yadda yadda yadda, I auto start quite a bit.

Cold start only on official missions considered serious. For dedicated testing or training, I can even appear already in the air or on the ground with the engines running. But automatic start, no.

When the A-10C came out i always cold started the thing but since then a lot of modules were added and i can't remember each and one of those startup sequences, especially when i don't fly them for a long time (i'm way beyond 51 already, things don't get any easier). So auto-start it became most of the time.

I am probably one of the greatest flight model and system realism snobs, and I use auto start. Used to not, but that was in a period when I did not have one full time and one part time job, as well as personal projects, other hobbies, and almost every aircraft module.

It doesn't defeat the purpose indeed. The purpose of having aircraft with as realistic flight models, systems, and where applicable also weapons as possible remains very much intact.

I don't own all modules, but in the ones I do, putting immersion and whatnot aside, starting them manually is actually much faster, so I stick with it.

I'm mostly a warbird guy, however. I suppose things might be different for modern jet players.

I do manual starts because they are faster. If I need hot aircraft, I just set it that way in ME.

I don't really use autostart because for most of the modules I can go from cold to hot faster than autostart can.

auto start almost always

Always cold start on the A-10C. Autostart quite often on the other modules.

Btw, if you do not use autostart and autostop, you can rewrite macros to do something more useful.

One of the joys of DCS, ie it allows pilots to chose.

If other players use auto start, that’s fine by me.

As for myself, I don’t actually know how to auto start.

This is like asking people how they like their tea.

I think the statement behind it, is, "How clever do I feel" which is a bit silly. Go do it with every single module and it's still not some sort of feat. Its highly useful, let me share a couple of normal, not so "I'm clever remebering a 40 keypress sequence"

1) It's actually useful for recalling which way all your switches are set. Not all modules have good setups for cold and dark, going through the cold start gets you to look a good way around the cockpit and makes you think of things that cannot be setup. Good example, A-A waypoint for the F-18, what actually is the Bullseye for today? Asking that question before you start is better than asking it whilst defending a missile.

2) It's a good refresher on the placement of the switches. Like many folks, if you are using lots of the modules in DCS, some have common themes and others put things in places you dont expect. So the startup sequence is a short period of acclimitisation. It goes places you dont always have time to look at, keeps your brain wired into the aircraft layout and covers a deeper set of switchology.

All the debate about sim vs game are redundant. Often the case the aircraft in many countries and type is started for a pilot anyway, there's way too much missed out to begin to start the comparisons here, but, it IS useful.

starts

When I first get a new a/c I'll go with "full starts"--once!

After that it is a waste of time in both SP and MP. :pilotfly:

I start hot or on the runway. Ramp start is like an EULA; one wrong answer and you can't play.