I picked up the A-10A for $7 during the Steam sale. My experience with fixed-wing flight games are limited to Novalogic's F-16 Multirole and ArmA 3.
I find that the DCS aircraft doesnt fly as stable as i thought it would. I find that even after i apply trim the plane still moves around a lot. it makes targeting with AGM somewhat more complicated than it should be. I adjusted my stick sensitivity - and it doesnt seem like an issue with the stick configuration.
Is this something with the game? wind / velocity effects perhaps?
Another issue - even larger - I have a hard time gaining situational awareness/understanding in the scenarios. the mission briefings seem to lack details. Why doesnt the game have tactical graphics? I played the first four missions of the A-10A campaign, and I understood the higher situation - pushing back a mechanized infantry force, that seems to have a lot of AA. If i tried to play the scenarios without unit labels, there would be no way in hell that i would be able to find my targets.
any help would be appreciated.
-is there any way to better stabilize flight?
-is there any way to gain better situational understanding within scenarios?
The flightmodel in DCS is pretty advanced and the A-10A recently got updated to bring its more arcade stock flightmodel (from the flaming cliffs days) to the more advanced flight model sported by the DCS line of aircraft like the A-10C.
Things like assymetrical lift, atmospheric effects and what not are all modelled, so if you're used to the much more simple flightmodels of Novalogic games and ArmA then it will take getting used to.
As for situational awareness: you picked the worst version of the A-10! The C model has an upgraded avionics suite specifically aimed at enabling the pilot better SA.
But even in the C model, workload is pretty high in a high threat environment.
Scanning outside is paramount. Use the zoom feature to scan the world around you. This might seem gamey, but actual A-10 pilots use magnifiers or 'binoculars' in real life too.
The A-10 is slow. It is ill-equipped to operate in a heavy anti-air AO. It has virtually no means to effectively engage in air to air combat.
It can take a beating, though. Half a wing gone might still keep it in the air. But you will have to pick your fights carefully.
The briefings are indeed very basic in many missions in DCS. Before flight you can enter the mission planning section, which is basically the mission editor with fog of war enabled.
Try to get as much info there as you can.
It depends on the mission author how effective this will be depending on how much info he chooses to present.
Another way is to load the mission in the editor first and run over everything, but that is gamey.
As for SA in the cockpit itself and finding the enemy; labels can be configured in various ways. This requires some ini file edits.
Other than that its looking around and having a picture of the AO in your head before hand. Just like the real guys need to.
A solution many find acceptable is to have labels remain a plain dot for long and only reveal more info as you get close. This compensates for the loss of fidelity in vision on a monitor as opposed to real world eyesight.
Falcon has a thing called 'Smart scaling' which makes objects larger than they are the further away they are. DCS would benefit from such a system.
Still, I think you are introduced to the fact why many people don't find DCS a full package. For virtual wing Operations in multiplayer the sim aspects are top notch, and we mostly use custom created scenarios in this setting.
As an entertainment product for a single user the game lacks and feels far too technical at times without giving the player enough information at the same time.
Quote from: Yskonyn on November 05, 2015, 02:34:57 AM
As an entertainment product for a single user the game lacks and feels far too technical at times without giving the player enough information at the same time.
In the world of flight sims, I find DCS and CLoD currently cover most of what I'm interested in. But I play single-player and only in the editor and almost always have an air start and an pretty simple tactical problem or two. I did try flying the A-10 (A, I think), but after the Mig21 and the Mig15 it felt like a very dangerous plane to fly.