*** Official DCS World Thread ***

[Littlenose]

Importand / easy commands for Voice Attack (VA) are things like "Gear Up", "formation lights". I find that if it's a critical command then VA will decide not to recognise the high pitched version of my voice. Although "fek fek fek" works well for countermeasures.
But you will likely end up writing scripts in VA to do a whole startup from cold... my advice would be to just start playing and add other commands as you think they may be useful.
Also... VA is free to use with a limited number of commands, so you can see if it works for you before paying anything.

 

[danlightbulb]

Importand / easy commands for Voice Attack (VA) are things like "Gear Up", "formation lights". I find that if it's a critical command then VA will decide not to recognise the high pitched version of my voice. Although "fek fek fek" works well for countermeasures.
But you will likely end up writing scripts in VA to do a whole startup from cold... my advice would be to just start playing and add other commands as you think they may be useful.
Also... VA is free to use with a limited number of commands, so you can see if it works for you before paying anything.

I still will have the issue of the training sessions requiring various key commands. I.e one last night required me to change waypoint by pressing ctrl-`. I mean, what a strange combo, who on earth uses tilde key for anything?! Then later in the same mission I had to engage some sort of auto pilot with shift-alt-something. I stopped playing at that point.

This kind of complexity has always been what has put me off these sims. Its not that the complexity is there (its a sim after all) but impossible to remember all the commands. Within VR, Im hoping that this can all be done by clicking within the cockpit, which is what the actual pilot would have to do.

 

[SimonRigga]

@danlightbulb i stopped playing DCS for the exact same reason.

I tried and liked the basics in VR, but i just couldn't get into the 4 trillion (yes i know it's an exageration!) commands you have to try and remember, and then the convoluted key presses associated with said commands when you are inside your headset. I gave up in the end, and haven't played it for at least 3 months.

If you do find a way though please do post here, as i would be interested to know what you did.

R.

 

[danlightbulb]

@danlightbulb i stopped playing DCS for the exact same reason

Is it the same problem in MSFS?

Ultimately the answer has to be clickable cockpits surely. With a hotas, and two oculus controllers, I should be able to behave like im piloting the plane in real life. Hands on stick and throttle for flying, oculus controllers placed just to the side of each so I can use my 'hands' whenever i need to.

 

[SimonRigga]

I don't play MSFS as i wanted the combat aspect, so i'm unable to comment, but i'd assume the amount of commands would be much less for general flight.

My son plays VTOL VR which has full clickable cockpit and controls, but you can't use your flight stick as far as i can tell, and like you holding your arms out all the time to pilot the aricraft is very tiring.

I'm ideally looking for something which is a cross with MSFS, DCS and VTOL VR, so you get the combat, you get the scenary, and the in cockpit controls like VTOL VR.

Flight sims in VR are so amazing i want to believe there is a solution, alas i haven't found such a thing yet.

 

[Littlenose]

Totally agree, the key-combos are bonkers sometimes, HOTAS + button box is definitely the way forward. In-game clickable cockpits are handy, especially once you know where stuff is.
I personally wouldn't worry about all the waypoints and autopilot stuff initially, keep it simple, when I start on a new module I generally:
- take off, fly about, land
- drop dumb bombs
- IR missiles / guns
- smart weapons (LGBs, JDAMs, Mavericks etc)
- radar modes and radar missiles
- then all the stuff like waypoints, start up from cold etc.
I've rarely found the in-game tutoritals handy. Particularly as they slowly become out of date as the software gets updated. Use youtube instead, lots of great tutorials out there.

This way it's in bite sized chunks:
Step 1, use "auto start", then you'll just need gear, flaps, throttle, brake, and the flight controls for pitch, yaw, roll.
Step 2, adds system mode (NAV, A/G etc), weapon select, master arm, weapon release
.... etc

 

[Littlenose]

Is it the same problem in MSFS?

Ultimately the answer has to be clickable cockpits surely. With a hotas, and two oculus controllers, I should be able to behave like im piloting the plane in real life. Hands on stick and throttle for flying, oculus controllers placed just to the side of each so I can use my 'hands' whenever i need to.

I think the controllers may be making things trickier for yourself.
With the clickable cockpits, it's simple to just use a mouse.

 

[hyperseven]

I'll try voice attack, is there a list of the important commands I need anywhere? The control menu in this game is hundreds of commands long, so I don't know what I really need and what I don't out of that.

This fella should have you covered for VA profiles

Bailey's VoiceAttack Profiles (Added Mirage F1!)

Hello and welcome! I thought a place to have all my VoiceAttack profiles in one place on the ED Forums would be a good idea. More are on the way! I most certainly take suggestions, questions, comments, etc. I hope we can continue to take VoiceAttack for DCS to the next level! Sooo, here it is! I ...

forum.dcs.world

 

[kdd]

Just to add the AH-64 Apache is on the free trials now

 

[One 48]

I love DCS. own 90% of all the modules, all the theatres and terrain .. gulp and need to slow down, the new F-15 pre order too.

But my most recent major purchase flight sim related hardware unit for a while is Win Wings so called Top Gun add on LOL. It sounds silly but is some bit of kit specced fully out with working screens for the MFD's.
Good to go with other FS peripherals, from TM, Virpil, Honeycomb and so on ... know Win Wing software inside out already from other panels and should be good to get going when this new kit arrives soon.

To be honest, it was something like this or a new Motherboard DDR5 CPU combo I asked about in another thread here .. still good to go, so its upgrade FS controller time for me

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Ref the controls, I find kneeboards help a lot, particularly as they can be happily tailored for each aircraft.
For myself, I have a page for every aircraft with a diagrammatical picture of the various controls by controller, e.g. what's on the stick, throttle, control panels etc.
Then I have walkthrough summaries for the more complex tasks or things that I typically forget, e.g. last night I was out in the Harrier and forgot how to switch to IRMV mode for the Mav-F and couldn't work out why I couldn't fire it. Took a quick scan in my KB, job's a good un.

I do use voice-attack, but only in a limited way. As I've got enough controllers to deal with the obvious things like gear, flaps etc, I use it for communications, e.g. to ATC. As such, my profile was simply built up over time from scratch, based upon what I need. I did buy the well known profile, but never got on with it.

Ref the multi-threading. Just wow. Helps that I've an 8 core CPU, even if it's an old 9700, as MT has massively improved my frame rate.
Just looking forward to further refinements to MT, and then Vulkan and DLSS...

 

[Doggie2k]

Been having a ball with DCS recently in VR. I bought the F-86 Sabre and the Frogfoot (flaming cliffs version) and have been learning that. Last year I bought e A-10 C and was totally overwhelmed but the frogfoot is easy to get into as its not full fidelity. The Sabre is full fidelity but simplier system to learn and its a lot of fun.

Will pick up the A-10 again in due course.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Go grab yourself the free community A4. It really is very good.

 

[mattyg]

I love DCS. own 90% of all the modules, all the theatres and terrain .. gulp and need to slow down, the new F-15 pre order too.

But my most recent major purchase flight sim related hardware unit for a while is Win Wings so called Top Gun add on LOL. It sounds silly but is some bit of kit specced fully out with working screens for the MFD's.
Good to go with other FS peripherals, from TM, Virpil, Honeycomb and so on ... know Win Wing software inside out already from other panels and should be good to get going when this new kit arrives soon.

To be honest, it was something like this or a new Motherboard DDR5 CPU combo I asked about in another thread here .. still good to go, so its upgrade FS controller time for me

Yep. For a free game i've spent £1000's lol.
I like that winwing unit. Even though I play in VR i think it might add to the immersion, But would require feeling for the buttons without a decent VR glove set up

 

[One 48]

Yep. For a free game i've spent £1000's lol.
I like that winwing unit. Even though I play in VR i think it might add to the immersion, But would require feeling for the buttons without a decent VR glove set up

It arrived today much earlier than expected from China, sure enough Fed Ex demanded an extra £65 ish import duty to pass on and that was kinda expected to be honest, pushing the whole price up to around £890 ish ... easily the most expensive single FS peripheral I've ever bought ... but to be honest, have the pair of TM MFD's too and for years was researching and tinkering-thinking to adding popular third party LCD screens behind them, for DCS and Falcon 4 BMS use, even very recently on Ebay there was a guy selling his TM MFD's with working screens and even offered to provide an LUA script or something to make it work for me with my particular monitors resolution ETC .. I already had and still have the 2 x TM MFD's though and it all seemed a lot of hassle.

Apparently Win Wing take care of all that and the unit integrates perfectly with DCS at least.

But yep, noticed Win Wing had this for sale and in stock, the DCS Hornet is easily my most favourite module ... I looked outside and indeed the planets were aligned (pure lies) and then checked my fragile bank balance and its forecast and went for it ... as soon as I clicked buy, felt buyers guilt and remorse as I always do, but that's all evaporated today now the parcel has arrived ... I'm very excited, we only live once
No immediate rush to assemble it all here. Might have it all up running by weekend and will report back, couple of main FS desk mods and measurements to do yet.

Here are my unboxing pics I took this afternoon.

 

[One 48]

erm ... sorry for such large pics? WTF? new phone too recently and first time using it ... Hope I can sort this?

 

[Borsch]

But the main issue I wanted to ask about is how to control the game in VR given you can't see the keyboard.

When I was playing in VR with Oculus Rift CV1, Rift S and HP Reverb G1, the very first thing I did was remove the nose rubber pad. It was detachable on all those headsets and for a good reason - the gap was small so as not to affect the field of view in front of you, but just big enough to see your lap, and, with a slight tilt of a head, your keyboard. You can always reattach it back, but i never ever did for any games.

I still will have the issue of the training sessions requiring various key commands. I.e one last night required me to change waypoint by pressing ctrl-`. I mean, what a strange combo, who on earth uses tilde key for anything?! Then later in the same mission I had to engage some sort of auto pilot with shift-alt-something. I stopped playing at that point.

One word - HOTAS with one key modifier, or Joystick with 3 key modifiers. You hold down the modifier key on your joysitck base or on the throttle (I use a button near my pinkie) and a single modifier key doubles the amount of effective keys, 2 modifeers triple this number (not needed if you have a HOTAS). All this is done within DCS, which highlits all the buttons and whoat they do when you press on them in the settings menu - when you forget them, e.g., after a week break.

but i just couldn't get into the 4 trillion (yes i know it's an exageration!) commands you have to try and remember, and then the convoluted key presses associated with said commands when you are inside your headset.

See above, HOTAS is a must. The planes in real life are ergonomics masterpieces, Hands On Throttle And Stick was invented and refined so that the pilot rarely needs to remove hands from the HOTAS.

 

[Brazo]

I still will have the issue of the training sessions requiring various key commands. I.e one last night required me to change waypoint by pressing ctrl-`. I mean, what a strange combo, who on earth uses tilde key for anything?! Then later in the same mission I had to engage some sort of auto pilot with shift-alt-something. I stopped playing at that point.

This kind of complexity has always been what has put me off these sims. Its not that the complexity is there (its a sim after all) but impossible to remember all the commands. Within VR, Im hoping that this can all be done by clicking within the cockpit, which is what the actual pilot would have to do.

Can’t you just click on the MFD to change the waypoint? Assuming your using a plane with a clickable cockpit?

 

[ak22]

I still will have the issue of the training sessions requiring various key commands. I.e one last night required me to change waypoint by pressing ctrl-`. I mean, what a strange combo, who on earth uses tilde key for anything?! Then later in the same mission I had to engage some sort of auto pilot with shift-alt-something. I stopped playing at that point.

This kind of complexity has always been what has put me off these sims. Its not that the complexity is there (its a sim after all) but impossible to remember all the commands. Within VR, Im hoping that this can all be done by clicking within the cockpit, which is what the actual pilot would have to do.

You can change the commands yourself, I always look at chucks guide and see how the hotas is setup in real life first. I then map the buttons to my hotas, once you learn the plane things like waypoint changing is done by the mouse and clicking on the cockpit. One of the first and biggest hurdle is mapping buttons and learning what is needed. You can always check out user files and download presets form other people. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/]

Well worth reading these guides: https://chucksguides.com/

 

[Borsch]

On FC3 non-clickable planes (which are the best entry into DCS and which largely share all the controls) the change waypoint is a useful keybind. I have 4 hat switches on my throttle, and assigned modifier+hat4Left/hat4Right for changing waypoints up and down. It became so engrained that I have then started assigning clickable planes' waypoints to the same combo (even though I could use a mouse instead, HOTAS is quicker and more ergonomic).