DCS World module sale

BeastyBaiter said:

You want the MiG-21 Fishbed. There really is nothing like what is effectively a manned missile, pretty much everyone who tries it loves it. Short video of yesterday's escapades on 104th with it:

https://youtu.be/vVdzkKXmNms

My god, you can see those targets in VR against terrain without labels in VR?  It's so hard to see when they get to those distances.  Against the sky is no problem, but terrain?  I lose them about 100% of the time  :(

went a bit crazy with this sale & picked up the Mirage2000 Fishbed Huey & F-5 along with the other 2 purchases. The Harrier is amazing i think my favorite so far yet to try the above apart from the Fishbed. Was a bit disappointed by the quality of the Mig modules 3d Model & textures, doesn't seem as high quality as the other modules i try, maybe is older?  

Any recommendations for campaigns? I also have the ww2 planes, Warthog & F18.

BeastyBaiter said:

falken76 said:

BeastyBaiter said:

You want the MiG-21 Fishbed. There really is nothing like what is effectively a manned missile, pretty much everyone who tries it loves it. Short video of yesterday's escapades on 104th with it:

https://youtu.be/vVdzkKXmNms

My god, you can see those targets in VR against terrain without labels in VR?  It's so hard to see when they get to those distances.  Against the sky is no problem, but terrain?  I lose them about 100% of the time  :(

It's easiest to spot them against the horizon. Once spotted, I can normally track provided the background isn't too busy. So against a blank hill it isn't an issue normally, but forests and especially cities can cause me to lose track. It does depend on range though. I'm also using graphics settings that have an emphasis on spotting. So lighting and shadow effects are turned up a bit and I have AA turned off completely. I'm using 1.3 PD which strikes a nice balance between cockpit readability and being able to spot targets.

The reason this helps with spotting targets is because DCS's graphics engine will render at least 1 pixel if the object is within around 20km. Increasing PD or upping AA will cause that pixel to be blended with the background, as that's how PD and AA work in all games. By using a more modest PD setting and switching off AA completely, I can get a fairly sharp image that preserves most of the original object pixel's color. 1.3 PD is also the point of diminishing returns for image quality, so I get nearly all of what you'd get at PD 2.0 without suffering the massive performance hit.

Lighting effects also help, as it generally adds color contrast between aircraft and the background. Finally, even if I can't see the plane itself, sometimes I can see the shadow against the hill. If the plane is flying very low, that's often good enough for tracking until I can re-spot them.

nrosko said:

went a bit crazy with this sale & picked up the Mirage2000 Fishbed Huey & F-5 along with the other 2 purchases. The Harrier is amazing i think my favorite so far yet to try the above apart from the Fishbed. Was a bit disappointed by the quality of the Mig modules 3d Model & textures, doesn't seem as high quality as the other modules i try, maybe is older?  

Any recommendations for campaigns? I also have the ww2 planes, Warthog & F18.

The MiG-21 was the very first 3rd party module, so it's always had
some issues due to that. I don't think graphics are among them though.
If you want to see a truly dated model, grab the Ka-50. It was the very
first DCS module and has the finest 3d models and textures from 2008. :D 
Thankfully there are some "HD" texture packs for it, but those only go so far and are also fairly old at this point.

With that said, I think the AJS-37 Viggen really upped the graphical fidelity in DCS. That thing has amazingly high quality textures in it.

I think the textures of the cockpit looked a bit illustrative rather than realistic, a bit more Iike iL2 if that makes any sense but i guess i'm being somewhat over critical. At least you can mod it. I also noticed the wing is not attached to the fuselage if you look over your shoulder out of the window, i know in reality i wouldn't do that but it bugged me a bit. Completely forgot i have the ka-50 although i didn't spend much time in it but graphically it does look admittedly older. 
 

You guys who are buying new modules or DCS World for the first time - you might like to have a look at my guides website:

https://sites.google.com/view/virtual-pilot/home

Most of it is start-up guides (except the Mi-8MTV2 which has the weapons covered as well) - but more is being added constantly and I have big plans for adding more stuff this year.

There's also this "utility" for want of a better word, which I used to call "KIF" or Kneeboard Information Files. You put the images into your kneeboard folder - path is C:\Users\*username*\Saved Games\DCS\Kneeboard

Inside the Kneeboard folder are folders for each individual module and the images go inside these folders. If the Kneeboard folder doesn't exist, you can make it yourself. I did have a tutorial video up on my old YT channel, but I closed it recently (due to closing my Google+ account), but I have started a new channel and will reupload the relevant videos.

In the meantime, you can find the Kneeboard files here:

LINK

Or you can simply refer to the info directly from their folders on google drive. Please bear in mind that these folders also contain my notes and such-like, as it's my own storage area for these files ;)

These are also mostly start-up guides (the pictorial guides from the website, compressed into kneeboard form) and checklists, but there are also other procedures described for aircraft such as the A-10A, A-10C, F-15C and Su-25

As with the guides, there will be more uploaded in the coming months and I'm making a new website which will be devoted entirely to this kind of information.


PS - I've just uploaded the first demo video I made of KIF in use into the Kneeboard folder on Google Drive, so you can have a look using that second link and see if it is something you can use.

I guess they must of head us, getting a GFX update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BLwBaNvmjU