1Table of contents
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Games
Age of Fable
I like the pictures that accompany the text.
At first I found it boring, but I gradually got more and more involved in the universe that it was discussing; it was kind of like being hypnotized into forgetting about my life and instead being sucked into a dream.
It seems like in order to get sucked into the dream you need to have it be different enough that you won't be reminded of things that you're encountering in your real life, but similar enough that people can understand the images you're trying to convey.
AI War
General thoughts
First impression from reading the developer's prose in the tutorials is that this guy sounds competent.
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Camera controls
Hold right-click and drag to drag the map around.
Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel.
UI
The grid lines are every 1km.
As units fire, you will see yellow, red, and grey fire lines emanating from the unit firing toward the target. The yellow lines are for anti-personnel, the red for anti-armor, and the grey lines for indirect fire. Thicker lines indicate heavy fire.
Unit types
Use Annex D in the manual (“Unit Types and Symbols”) to understand what your units are.
Order engineers to secure bridges so they don’t get blown.
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How to get back into playing:
Don't try to refresh your memory of everything the first time you play.
Do the 'Harbor Tour' Instant Action mission with no shooting and where you start already in the air, and just try to follow the other helicopter around.
Try some landings.
Try more of the missions that don't have any shooting.
Try a mission that has a cold start to refresh your memory of how to start the helicopter.
Try one of the Instant Action missions that have shooting to refresh your memory of how to control the weapons and gunner ROE.
Throughout all of this, remember you can search the in-game controls menu to check how to do something.
How I start the game for VR:
Get the Quest ready:
Turn on the lights in my room so that the Quest doesn't have trouble doing motion tracking.
Connect the Quest to the PC with the link cable.
Power on the Quest.
Confirm your Guardian area (stationary guardian).
I use a room guardian and make it larger than my actual seating area so that the blue warning wall never shows up.
If the Quest doesn't already ask you to enable Link Mode, go into Settings and enable the Quest Link.
In Steam on the PC, launch DCS in Steam VR Mode.
When the game launches, I reset my view (a Quest feature)
Core controls I use:
Hardware I use:
Oculus Quest 2
I pinch my fingers to select menus; I don't use the Quest controllers.
Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Joystick
Mouse to click through the DCS menus and to toggle switches in the cockpit.
Keyboard to press various hotkeys.
Keyboard shortcuts I use frequently:
Startup:
Close cockpit doors:
"Start engine" button: LCtrl + del
In-flight:
Night ops:
Toggle night vision: h
Increase / decrease night vision polarity: LShift + h / LCtrl + h
Flashlight (to see your instrument panel when starting the helicopter):
Gunners:
Toggle copilot / door gunner ROE (hold fire / return fire / fire at will): LCtrl + 2 / LCtrl + 3 / LCtrl + 4
My joystick setup:
Toggle gunner ROE UI window visibility: one of the buttons on my joystick.
I have set-trim and trim-release bound to buttons on the actual stick near my thumb.
On the six flat buttons I have controls for opening and closing the map, toggling the on-screen gunner ROE UI
Checklists / How-to
Startup
1 Minute DCS - UH-1H Huey - Startup Tutorial
Ensure all the controls operate freely.
Overhead middle panels:
AC Power panel → Set to AC PHASE.
MAIN GEN to ON and put switch cover on.
VM to ESS BUS (essential bus).
BAT (battery) to ON.
Lower middle panels → Engine panel → LOW RPM to OFF to silence to low RPM warning.
Overhead middle panels:
Right side → Adjust the panel lighting if you want to.
Left side:
ANTICOL (anticollision lights) to ON.
POSITION (position lights) to ON.
Lower middle panels:
Make sure your dispense and jettison systems are set to safe (near the armament panels).
Set your comms and nav systems as you like.
Take the IFF MASTER out of the OFF position (top-left most panel).
CAUTION panel: Test and reset the warning panel.
Front panel: Test the fire indicator (push to test).
Lower middle panels:
ENGINE panel:
Make sure the RPM governor is set to AUTO.
Turn on the fuel pump.
Top-right-most panel:
Turn on FORCE TRIM and HYD CONT (hydraulics)
Throttle:
Engage the idle-release switch.
Roll the throttle to fully-on (roll it to the left).
Roll the throttle back (to the right) and it'll stop at idle.
Close the doors.
You can click close the pilot door but will need to use the keyboard to either close the copilot door directly or switch to the copilot seat to click the door closed.
Press and hold the starter button.
There's no way to press it in-game so you need to use your keyboard. I bound it to Left Ctrl + del.
Hold it down until the GAS PRODUCER gauge on the front panel is at 40.
Overhead panel: Set INVTR (power inverter) to ON (MAIN).
Increase throttle to full.
Radio setup:
1 Minute DCS - UH-1H Huey - Radio Tutorial
Switch to the copilot seat by pressing '2' so you can see the radio panels more easily.
Panel names:
Your VHF panel is the one with 'VHF COMM' at the top.
Your UHF panel is the one with 'SQ DISABLE' at the top.
Your Signal Distribution panel is beneath the UHF panel; it has a row of switches and two knobs.
VHF:
Click the wider ring knob at the bottom of the left knob to turn on the VHF radio.
Click the 'Test' button to make sure it's working; you should hear radio static.
UHF: Set the function selector to T/R (transmit/receive).
Signal Distribution panel:
Make sure all the switches are in the UP position.
The big selector switch knob lets you switch between radios:
PVT: Hotline (?)
INT: Interphone, i.e. internal comms (?)
1: VHF FM i.e. internal crew comms (?)
2: UHF i.e. primarily air-to-air comms
3: VHF AM i.e. ATC, Tower, and secondary air-to-air comms
4: No Function (?)
The first thing you'll need to do is to contact the tower for permission to take off and for a hover check.
Set the frequency for the tower on the VHF panel.
Set the Sig Dist selector switch to 3 for VHF AM.
Press the radio trigger on your stick to open the on-screen menu and request permission to start.
You can also use the knob at the top of the UHF panel to switch between preset channels.
Takeoff
Navigation:
Avoiding in-flight accidents / failures
The 'normal' cruising speed is apparently ~80-90 knots. You can push it further but the airframe will start to vibrate and you may also risk an engine fire.
UH-1H Huey: How To Avoid Engine Fires & VRS | DCS WORLD
Summary:
Engine fires:
Engine temperature limits:
Max continuous (green arc): 400 to 610 deg C
Takeoff power (max 30 min): 610 to 625 deg C - risk of engine fire after 30 min
10-second power limit (max 10 sec)(Engine Hot Start): 675 to 760 deg C - Only for engine start and acceleration
5-second power limit: 675 to 760
EGT Redline: 760 deg C - If exceeded in flight, high risk of engine fire.
What can happen first before a fire is that your RPMs can drop ~200, so you'll lose power/lift.
The higher your altitude and the heavier your helicopter, the more likely it is that you'll run into these limits. (You can see an example of this happening at 6:20)
TLDR: Make sure your EGT never exceeds ~625 (the first red line on the 'EXHAUST' gauge) and you'll never need to worry.
VRS:
VRS is when you 'fall out of the sky', it generally happens when transitioning from fast to slow speeds when coming in for a landing, when your rotor is trying to generate lift from your own downwash.
To avoid VRS, when you're below a speed of 20 knots watch your VSI (vertical speed indicator) and make sure it never goes below -1000 feet per minute.
Comments:
"Keep an eye on the torque , till 10.000 ft of density altitude it's your first engine limit indicator. The uh1 is a Cat B helicopter and you should always (when conditions permit) take off gaining speed at very low altitude, this way your power limit will decrease because the rotor start to act more like a wing after translational speed is reached. VRS wise, on single engine low powered low speed helis we use 30kts 300ft/min as a general rule, so from 30 kts and below 30kts never go more than -300ft/min, keep your nose into the wind whenever it's possible and you should be ok."
"Great video but you really should be thinking about the VH diagram more, the so called dead man's curve. Even without VRS you can still be putting yourself in a potentially dangerous situation. In a single engined helicopter you shouldn't be hovering at the height you were. If your engine fails you might not have enough height to safely enter autorotation to the ground. If you have sufficient forward speed then you don't need to be so concerned about your height you'll have enough energy to glide to a run on landing maybe."
"There are other techniques you can use to take off from the ground or hover with raising the collective above the EGT limit. If you're on the limit in the hover then start moving forwards to gain airspeed, once you transition into forward flight you will need a lot less collective to fly. Therefore reducing the risk of reaching it. Also if you are too heavy to get into a hover, you can go light on the skids and bounce and skid it forwards into forward flight. With practice these two techniques will stop you from having engine fires at all!! "
"For these takeoffs with max power applied it pays to do a level acceleration takeoff. Forward flight takes much less torque than to hover, once you get through ETL. Bring it up to where you were (3-5 ft) and slowly inch forward building speed. The faster you go the more efficient the rotor system will perform, as the lift improves continue to nose forward to keep a level altitude until you get to 30 kts or so. Voila you are in the air!"
Using the XM60 Reflex Sight
UH-1H Huey: XM60 Reflex Sight Tutorial | DCS WORLD
Comment: The first step is selecting an attack range. You may want it greater than their effective counter fire range. Then you set your sights for that range, then you calculate how many mils it will be in your sights at that range (or you chose your attack range based on it), and when it grows that big as you approach, you know you're at the correct range.
Landing
My notes:
Try to come in facing the wind.
Hovering
Don't let the Hover monster get you! Confidence through practice and patience. DCS Huey
My notes:
It's significantly easier to hover if you position yourself into the wind. This game is just like the Search & Rescue: Vietnam Medevac game in that regard.
More stuff I want to know:
I want to know what range of flight paths are considered "acceptable / professional" for various maneuvers, like coming in for a landing, taking off, straight-and-level flight, etc. Like, I wish the game was tracking my helicopter through the entire flight and could tell me both immediately and after the mission how "professionally" I'd flown it. Because a lot of the time I find myself yanking the helicopter around because there's no penalty for it, but it breaks immersion. But then I'm not sure what actually would be "realistic" flying. I feel like the closest I can get to this right now is to have a professional pilot watch one of my missions and tell me how I did.
How I beat various missions:
Instant Action missions
Ground Attack Hard
After trying this mission maybe 20 times or more, I've discovered that the way to beat it:
As soon as the mission starts I click the switch to turn on the pilot gunsight and then click the other part that swings the gunsight down in front of my face.
I then:
flick the switch that arms the weapons
set the selected weapon to the FFAR (2.75 inch) rockets
set the number of rockets per trigger press to '1'
(these are all switches in the bottom-left of the middle panel)
I press LCtrl + 3 twice and LCtrl + 4 twice to set both door gunners to FIRE AT WILL.
I fly towards the vehicles parked at the orange smoke, ignoring the moving convoy for now.
I manually fire the rockets and use them to take out the truck-mounted ZU-23-2 first.
The ZU-23-2 is an anti-aircraft system and the most dangerous weapon system you're facing. It's also unarmored, so the shrapnel from the rockets will more-easily destroy it.
Be of the attitude that all your rockets are dedicated to taking out this one weapon system; don't try to conserve the rockets for the BTRs. Just fire one salvo, see where it lands and adjust, and when you're more-or-less zeroed in then empty the rest while moving the gunsight around a little.
I start shooting the rockets when the ZU-23-2 starts shooting at me and reveals its position.
Once the ZU-23-2 is destroyed, fly a very tight circle at a hard bank a few hundred feet above the BTR-80 that's accompanying the ZU-23-2 while letting your door gunner fire the minigun into its roof to quickly destroy it.
The BTR-80s seem to be shooting at you with 20mm cannons and it seems like they're not as effective at tracking/hitting targets directly above themselves.
Do the same thing to destroy the two BTR-80s in the other convoy (fly a tight circle high above each one so your door gunner is shooting down into the roof of the BTR).
Have your door gunners and/or have the copilot use the front-facing miniguns to destroy the logistics trucks at your leisure.
Things that I tried that don't work well:
Trying to pop up behind a hill or building and then pop down behind it. You aren't firing Hellfire missiles from miles away like if you were in an Apache. Your weapons are inaccurate and you need to be pretty close to get them to hit. But the BTRs are so well armored from the side that you don't do much damage when shooting from far away and from the side. You do way more damage when shooting from close up and from above them.
Trying to sneak in low to hit them in a fly-over pass with the miniguns from up-close doesn't work well because 1) on the incoming approach you're easy for them to hit if you're within their field of view, 2) if there's something blocking their field of view of you then it's also blocking your view of them and making it harder for you to hit them, 3) your weapons are inaccurate and a quick flyover doesn't give you enough time to disable the enemy weapon systems before they're able to hit you with their weapons.
Trying to use the rockets on the BTRs didn't work well because you need to get close to get a direct hit, which puts you in danger of getting hit with their 20mm cannons, and your rockets are also HE rather than AP, and they're not very accurate, so they're just not a great weapon to use against armor, as indirect / nearby hits aren't going to do any significant amount of damage.
Other thoughts:
It's kind of ridiculous that they don't just tell you in the briefing how to beat it.
I should replay this mission while using the gunsight to fire the FFAR rockets outside the counterfire range of the ZU-23-2.
UN Pilot campaign
General thoughts:
I like this campaign. It feels realistic and it's a nice way to get more comfortable flying the Huey.
It's not clear to me if using the in-game mission planner before the mission starts to see the waypoints I'll be following is considered unrealistic or not.
1 - Into the AO
Your mission is to fly from the airport you landed at on your commercial flight to your operating base.
Time compression is your friend. This is a long mission where you're flying pretty much across the entire Caucasus map, basically getting a tour of the map.
The first time I tried this I got lost about where I was supposed to turn right to start following a different river. Use the in-game map (*not* the briefing map) to get a better sense of what the terrain looks like where you're supposed to turn.
Learn to use the ADF navigation radio. The morse code radio signal for the station is "TI", not "TIG" like it says in the briefing.
2 - Hauling Trash
Your mission is a straightforward delivery of supplies into a forward operating base at a village in a valley. Easy mission.
My guess is this is meant to serve as an example of the kind of mission a real UN pilot would probably be doing most of the time.
3 - Reporters
Your mission is to give reporters a tour of the country so they can get video footage for their news report on the UN's work.
This mission introduces 1) needing to fly in close formation (the main challenge of the mission IMO), and 2) very briefly it has you getting shot at for the first time.
4 - Race Against Time
A medevac mission. You have to race to pick up a wounded soldier before he dies. You then have to fly him to a meeting point where he can get picked up by another helicopter to take him to a hospital on the other side of the map (where you started on your first mission).
IMO the main challenge of this mission is to fly as fast as possible without running the engine so hot that it causes an engine fire. You will fail if you don't get there fast enough. I already knew about needing to keep the engine exhaust temperature in the green (on the gauge), so I never had an issue with that, but I could see a new player having their helicopter fall out of the sky until they figure out what's going on.
5 - Lost Contact
A SAR mission. Your mission is to go find some helicopter pilots who were shot down.
This mission seems to be introducing the idea of a SAR mission.
The landing at the crashed helicopter is a little trickier than other landings you've needed to do up to this point because a lot of the ground around the crashed helicopter is on a slope, so you either need to be able to choose your particular landing spot or you need to be able to land on a slope.
6 - Patrols
A troop insertion mission.
Easy mission, no combat. Just seems to be introducing the idea of inserting troops into combat, especially as part of a formation.
7 - Tango
A troop insertion and air attack mission.
This is the first mission where you really need to use weapons and the first mission where you really get fired at.
I failed this mission the first time because I ran out of fuel literally hundreds of meters from the landing pads at the end of the mission. I read online that after a recent patch the Huey has a higher rate of fuel consumption, so that might be why the fuel is so tight. It may be possible to load your helicopter with more fuel; I didn't try it. On my second attempt I landed at the end just as my Master Caution came on to warn about dangerously low fuel levels.
8 - No Time to Drink
This is the first night mission. So you need to learn how to turn on your NVGs, adjust their brightness, and adjust the brightness of your cockpit lights.
I failed to get a score of 100 on this a couple of times. I think I crashed more than once and one time I just couldn't figure out how to take out the vehicles fleeing for the village.
It's tricky flying around in the narrow valley; it's easy to end up in VRS.
Another tricky thing is that you need to be kind of close to the ground to have your door gunners start to shoot, but the flashes from the guns blind you when you have NVGs on, so you have to look out your side windows to try to avoid hitting trees.
9 - Whiskey
This is a fun one to try to do “properly”, you’ve got to do some shooting.
10 - VIP Passenger
I couldn’t finish this one because the flight model was changed in such a way that the helicopter runs out of fuel more quickly.
11 - Teacher’s
12 - Caravans
This is a fairly easy one.
13 - Crisis
This is a hard one, I died a lot, it’s worth replaying.
14 - Aurora
This is the hardest mission I’ve played in this campaign so far.
The enemy units spawn in, so if you’re just flying around you can get caught with them spawning right under you.
The way to win is to trim for a hover once you’re at the city, stay at rooftop level, and try to stay back as far away from the enemy positions as you can while still within a range where your gunners can effectively engage the enemy infantry (so like ~300-500m).
You don’t want to fly higher than rooftop height because then you’ll get picked off by the AAA guns further away from you. I was wondering if I could maybe take them out myself, I might replay the mission to see if I could approach it that way.
You want to hover because it makes it easier to wiggle into positions where you can see the enemy infantry units you need to take out.
You want to stay back because the enemy infantry have a lot of RPGs that can kill you very easily if you’re up close. I just Googled it and RPGs apparently are meant to be used at 500m, so IDK if this tactic of just hovering at a distance is realistic or not.
Looking back on my playthroughs, the reason I kept dying was: 1) I was flying too high and getting taken out by the AAA, 2) I was flying over / getting too close to the enemy infantry positions I was supposed to be taking out.
15
The mission seems broken. After I destroy the enemy convoy I get told that I didn’t destroy them, and the mission ends in a failure.
I found this post in the DCS forums:
Ok, I studied the mission's trigger zones, I tried expanding some of them including the one that is supposed to be for the allied infantry coming from Metaxa LZ.
However It still didn't work so I decided to try changing the triggers a bit,
There are originally 2 conditions for victory:
First: you destroy the convoy west of the LZ and report it
Second: allied infantry squads like Ford, Uzi, Springfield reach the trigger zone where the enemy infantry originally was + less than 21% of the enemy infantry alive
I simply changed the second broken condition to the first one, so now the victory only depends on you destroying the convoy and reporting it, than up to 30 seconds your mission should be "successful" and you should get all the success reports...
Performance tweaking
The #1 most annoying thing I've encountered while playing is the stuttering of the graphics. Things I've noticed that cause the game to stutter:
This is a VR-only issue. The game seems to run fine if I don't play in VR.
I've noticed that I can stop the stuttering almost entirely by turning all the graphics settings down to the minimum.
I've noticed that the game seems to slow down significantly when I get into a hovering situation with the Huey. My guess at the moment is that it's because the CPU has to do a lot more work to model the complex physics of a hovering situation (vs. straight-and-level flight).
I've noticed the game will start stuttering if I fly closely past detailed models of vehicles, like radar vehicles around an airport.
I noticed that when I played a mission, failed it, and then played it again, the graphics were stuttering more the second time. And then when I tried quitting the mission and starting it again, the graphics were stuttering even more. And then when I quit DCS entirely and started it again, the graphics weren't stuttering. So it seems like there might be some kind of memory leak or something when you start a mission.
I noticed that as soon as I got the "Low Battery" warning from my Quest 2 the game started stuttering like crazy.
Other things I've noticed that are annoying:
The jaggies on everything out in the world while flying break immersion more than low-poly graphics or low-resolution textures IMO.
Feature requests
I wish the game would track my inputs and the G-loads the aircraft is under during my flight that are then used to generate a rating of how "professionally" I flew the aircraft, the assumption being that a more-professional pilot is going to be a "smoother" pilot.
Random wind changes (direction and velocity) that can require the sudden addition of power to maintain lift.
Things to try:
I should try flying with random system failures.
"It's small things like the need to do a quick GENTIE reset in the Hornet, pitot heat just not working in the A-10, etc... I've heard somewhere from a Navy pilot, that you're almost guaranteed to have some minor system have issues during a 3+ hour flight." (source)
Doom and Doom II
General thoughts
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