Simulated Aerial Combat Roundtable

[Lusche]

Space Wars was the first video game I played. In the 1970's. It was mind blowing. Games got better and better over the decades becoming less like games and more like simulations of real like.

I remember when playing Lucasarts "Battle of Britain" for the first time and was like "Wow, that really looks like a" *squint eyes* ".... uhm... Do-17! Amazing!"
Or how exciting it was when 'Aces over Europe' went to 640x480 

I'll take real life over a simulation

Except when shooting is involved 

Now that I think of it, I never would dare to actively fly a helicopter in any way at all. 

[Lusche]

Do you like the helicopters?  I love the huey.  I really like the Mi-8 too but haven't flown it as much yet.  I just wish I knew what that Russian chick was screaming at me all the time.  For me, helicopters were like learning to fly all over again, but strangely, I think they somehow improved my fixed wing flying.  I never thought just picking up and hauling sling loads would be fun. 

I never really got into the Black Shark, for two reasons: One is ADHD related, I really have trouble learning the more complex stuff (especially as I tend to do prolonged breaks from the game and can basically start again from scratch after like 5 months. This changed with the Huey, as it's not that overloaded with systems.

The other issue was my equipment, only when I upgraded my stick to a VKB Gladiator I was finally able to control the choppers in any meaningful way, the T16000 M was way too imprecise for that.

But now the Huey and Hip have become really fun, it's basically all I fly in DCS now. Even though my 'landings' still suck 

[GasTeddy]

I want a sim first. Painfully realistic. A game second.

Simple as that. But somehow, there are those who cannot accept different tastes and/or opinions. Just like those who claim to be the most tolerant and go berserk immediately someone disagrees in what ever subject.

[CptTrips]

I never really got into the Black Shark, for two reasons: One is ADHD related, I really have trouble learning the more complex stuff (especially as I tend to do prolonged breaks from the game and can basically start again from scratch after like 5 months. This changed with the Huey, as it's not that overloaded with systems.

I hear ya.  I have a appreciation of the Apache,  but the complexity was starting to make it feel like ...work!  And I realized I was sitting at my desk staring at a computer screen looking at a character sitting in a cockpit staring at a computer screen.   That's when I grabbed the spit and started trying that.  I thought I was done with fixed wing but now I'm enjoying them again.  I will definitely be flying the Apache some more, but having some analog options is a nice respite.

The other issue was my equipment, only when I upgraded my stick to a VKB Gladiator I was finally able to control the choppers in any meaningful way, the T16000 M was way too imprecise for that.

Exactly.  I went from the T16000 to the Gladiator as well and it was night and day.  I had never realized had a problem with it until I started helicopters.  They require a whole different level of fine control.

Then I  upgrade to the VBK T-Rudders for same reason.  I had long been satisfied with my CH pedals flying fixed wings, but was dissatisfied with them for helicopters.  No amount of WD-40 was sufficient to get them as smooth as I wanted. 

I also swapped out my TWCS throttle too.  As I'm sure you found out fine control of the collective is way more important than a throttle in a warbird.  The TWCS was just too grabby for me.  Too much sticktion.  And that was even after I ordered a 3rd party upgrade to replace the rail bearings. It was better but not quite what I needed.

I had initially switch to one of these:


Which was cheaper than my TWCS but worked much better for the collective.  I think the lever arm length gave me more leverage so I felt little to no sticktion and the longer throw distance gave me finer resolution. 

However Iron is the devil and kept buying nice toys and telling me about them so I was forced to break down and order one of these against my will:



I've been so impressed with VKB stuff I decided to complete the set.  VKB stuff is the best bang for the buck out there, IMHO.

 

[CptTrips]

If you're talking about a cult, I've noticed that since I've stopped reading any posts from Animl-AW that I haven't felt the cult thing so much. It's almost like there's a logical conversation going on.

  Sig line 

[Lusche]

I also swapped out my TWCS throttle too.  As I'm sure you found out fine control of the collective is way more important than a throttle in a warbird. 

It is! But I still have to stick with my X-52pro throttle. The Gladiator was already stretching the budget 

[Animl-AW]

What I see in this thread and who started it is grown adult men who spent their whole life avoiding competent maturity at all cost and have been very successful at it, who sell complete horse crap to the weak minded who eat their own feet, and think its smart. The escape from reality never to return. I’m not one to accept weakness, excuses and severe immaturity.  These are the types who play victim in a bar because they got smoked after poling a drunk in the eye, and too stupid to learn anything from it and rinse and repeat like a gold fish in a glass bowl, placing distance is mandatory out of fear its contagious.

That 14 yrs did me righteous.

[GasTeddy]

^  You mean all those who fly in some other sim than AH?

[AKIron]

"However Iron is the devil and kept buying nice toys and telling me about them so I was forced to break down and order one of these against my will"


Hold on now. I was fine with my 25 year old ch pro pedals. Then "someone" told me how great their VKB pedals are...

 

[Animl-AW]

^  You mean all those who fly in some other sim than AH?

Don’t conflate flying other sims with those you allow to crap in your own yard. Don’t point at me while the people who don’t play other sim are disrespected, while they bring their ither sims where it doesn’t belong. People who call you brother while they crash your party and oee in your grandmas beer. Please keep arrogance in your own house. The invaders should never be pampered. Bring it here IS arrogant immaturity, but please continue to prove stupid, glad itd mow me, I have manners. Don’t play victim with me.

[Dadtallica]

Animal take a step back for a bit holy moly. Nobody is trying to sell anyone anything here. You don’t have to answer ALL the posts and take ALL the bait.

You very much are being fish hooked daily. Give it a rest.

[edge12674]

But now the Huey and Hip have become really fun, it's basically all I fly in DCS now. Even though my 'landings' still suck 

Flying multi-crew in helicopters is still the best.  A four man Huey crew is a blast. 

I am far from bored flying WWII in DCS (posted that last video as an opposing view), but was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed other types of aircraft.

I wonder if WWII flight sims are going the way of WWI flight sims due to being so far in the past. 

I am in hopes "Masters of the Air", development of "Combat Pilot", and DCS PTO will spark a resurgence in WWII interest, but doubt it.  There is a new generation of flight sim enthusiasts that are seeing modern fighter jets on the news daily, so that is their bent.

[GasTeddy]

 I have manners.

Then use them.

 Don’t play victim with me.

I don't need to, you do it for everyone. 

It's still not too late to do this:   

[Drano]

Animal. Are you OK bud? I mean...you are pretty much the entire post count of this forum recently. Usually with a wall of text rant over everything. You talk about people being adult and not obsessed with a video game. Uhh   mirror? Why are you so triggered by this conversation? No one is "shilling" for other games.You really have to stop thinking it's still 2005--when other games for the most part didn't exist yet. There are several reasons this sim is in the state its' in. They've all been explained to you--in adult fashion btw, but you persist in tuning it out and living in the past. This is what this is. People are playing other games. THAT is the biggest reason that AH has the numbers it currently has. There's no coming back. There simply aren't numbers in the market available to make that happen. Flight sims themselves are a tiny tiny niche of the gaming market. And if you aren't "keeping up" you'll become an even smaller niche of that. This is where we are now. The game hasn't kept up. Nothing is changing. Newer stuff is available--cheaper too-- and people are gravitating to that. There's nothing on the horizon that says there's any change or improvement to the game coming. If it did, I'd be glad to be a tester as I had in the past and be happy to do it.

On the whole niche thing. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I'm on Twitch now and then. Usually I'll have something messed up in VR, too big of a pain to fix in the middle of a FSO frame and I'll cut or delete my feed, but that's a me thing. I bring up my Twich app just now. Admittedly, it's morning eastern US time but this is quite typical of every time I look there. Currently there is no one (zero) streaming AH, no one (zero) streaming IL-2, a whopping 2 streaming DCS and 1,500 on MSFS. That one really kills me. People watching someone fly an airbus from JFK to Amsterdam. I don't get that at all. But that's what you see. That's just flight sims! There are tens of thousands people just watching people play FPS games at any time. THAT's where your numbers are. Those people are also making more money streaming than we are working for a living BTW. Crazy town!

That is what that is. You really need to stop thinking you alone are gonna stop the internet or gaming itself. There is no "we". It's just you. HT is the only "we" that matters here and as you've been told before, he checked out years ago while you were gone. Shut down the factory and laid off the workers. Wish it weren't so, but there it is. The writing was on the wall then, you just weren't here to see it. Having been thru the AW thing myself you can't draw a straight line to that situation. AW had devs that were actively supporting the game. They sold to EA who had no intention whatsoever of continuing. They bought the game specifically to remove it from the marketplace and competition for their other games and did exactly that. That's a fact. None of that's happened here. Just enjoy the game while you can and stop agonizing over things you ARE NOT going to change. Other games are gonna happen. No stopping it.

[Drano]

Just to add where I'm at on this. I started in AW many moons ago and came over to AH with my squad when EA killed it. Been here ever since. Have taken a few breaks here and there but even during those was always active in events. I don't think I ever missed an FSO other than a frame or two, usualy due to wife ack, in all that time until this year when my FSO squad folded. So it's gone with the people I've flown with over the years. They moved on (or passed on sadly) for whatever reasons they had. I'm currently kind of on hiatus from AH. Keeping my sub current but don't currently have the itch. The 80th guys aren't around when I'm on. Only a couple left far as I can tell. Lazer and Shuff. Miss you guys. Numbers in the events have dropped to the point it's just not working for me either. I was CIC when we ran Stalin's 4th the first time. Had a couple of hundred just on my side. Light years away from that now.There was always that but now it's gone too. Still hanging around tho.

I mess with IL-2. Nef talked me into trying it but I held off until they added a P-38--of course! It's a beautiful bird. The engine management thing isn't a big deal with that one even with two engines to deal with. Really not. But it's really how I'd hoped that AH would have evolved into looking like as time went on. I'd always hoped we'd all be flying something that looked more realistic and IL-2 has done that. That's not a deal breaker but for me it's a sign things are changing/evolving for the better. There's better technology, better PCs, better graphics engines. Why not take advantage of that as time goes on? Anyway, I like the game. I've only messed with MP a few times. Didn't like it when I started flying in VR as I kept getting whacked by people I never saw. Now with NeckSafer I can look around as I did with TIR and that's no longer an issue. The servers are small--but so are the maps so they're paired better than AH with the same numbers, a third side and huge maps. There isn't a built-in VOX system and I don't like that. But they use SRS that a lot of people (not enough) use. The people that run the Combat Box server have gone all in with what that program can do, It has bots that can talk back to you giving you things like a callsign or flight callsign. It knows where you are and can direct you with traffic around the airbase or give you a mission and grid to head to. Pretty cool. No icons is something to just get used to. No biggie. Navigation is a challenge on certain maps but you just look for waypoints on the terrain and navigate the old way. It's harder but I'm OK with that. YMMV. And YMMV is what it's all about. I like it, you may not. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I started dabbling with MSFS last year. Talk about real, this one uses real world maps and topography. You're flying over the real world. You can have live weather or inject your own. You can also inject real time air traffic. I have another program for this. Pretty cool. First thing I did was to buy Flying Iron's P-38 which is outstanding. Starting that thing is a challenge as are most warbirds. I snagged their Spit IX, F6F and 109 during a Christmas sale but don't have near the time in them yet. MSFS is a different animal. No combat. No functional weapons either. That's a good thing. There'd be nitwits shooting down 747s on approach to LAX the first day. They're out there! But I see this as more of a sightseeing thing than anything else. I just fly around places I know I'll likely never get a chance to see. I recently bought the A2A Piper Comanche which is a "study level" plane with all the bells and whistles available. They say it's the GA bird to have. So far I'm liking it. This plane will age as you use it and even have things fail if you just ignore them. I wanted to learn about navigation from point to point in the real world. It's been fun. Using Little Navmaps to make flight plans to get from place to place. Doing IFR stuff at night and in weather is a lot of fun believe it or not. Gotta concentrate on your instruments and have them set up right. That's what I've been doing more of lately. It's a challenge and I have to beat it. Setting up controls in this one is another level of hard! The clickable cockpits go on forever. Every switch, button and knob in ever bird. This is why I'll never mess with airliners! Just too much! Even with all my nice gear I'd run out of switches buttone and knobs! I'm using a third party software, Spad.neXt to map things as there are SO many of these you'd run out of key commands so they use code strings to assign stuff. Trick is finding them. A lot of common ones but every plane is different. The Spad software is difficult but the light bulbs are starting to go off in my head. I got past the VKB and Virpil stuff then Joystick Gremlin--this is just more of the same. My latest hurdle is assigning the fuel tank selector knobs for the P-38 to the rotary switches on my Virpil Throttle. Some great peeps on the Flying Iron Discord are helping me out. Lot of community there.

But as I've said, YMMV. If that's not your thing, that's fine. I'm just looking at newer stuff. I'M NOT SHILLING FOR ANYONE--just to be clear for the impaired among us. Basically, because I have the rig for it. What I have is really overkill for AH.