If I were to ask you what makes DCS interesting and distinct, what would your answer be? I could guess that a varied range of answers could arise: from the people that love the action of close-in dogfight on both jets and props, to the folks that love dropping death from above with bombs; and those who prefer low level flying with helicopters or the few that enjoy tank combat! But, aside from a couple of helicopters, we have not seen a specific type of gameplay which could be beneficial in bringing combined arms and air corps close by bridging the gap: Cargo. I know that this opinion is not one that is shared by many, but I ask of you to at least read what I want to say here as I think I have a proposition for everyone who has any doubts. Last year, a modder known as Anubis released a mod which is not only unique but one that has no precedent in the game: a relatively high fidelity C-130J Super Hercules with a clickable cockpit and an EFM (external flight model). This mod allowed me to have my first taste of what could be possible with a heavy cargo aircraft inside of the simulator. And I was immediately taken by surprise. I always used to think that flying a cargo aircraft would be boring and tedious, but I was proven wrong. Cargo aircraft are not only for hauling cargo to and from airbases, but they can also deliver it directly to the troops/civilians in need straight to them by dropping it via parachute or LAPES in the case of the Hercules (Low Altitude Parachute-Extraction System). With these capabilities, not even taking into account the mountable cannons, allow for some interesting mission scenarios for multiplayer sessions. One of which being a very interesting combined arms scenario which includes almost every playable vehicule type: "A group of soldiers, accompanied by a small armored regiment and attack helicopters, is in need of reinforcements. A group of F-16CM will escort a pair of C-130 loaded a paratrooper regiment and vehicules. The mission is to get the C-130s to their drop point and back to base safely." To me, this is a multiplayer mission which I would love to be a part of as I wouldn't even have to choose which part to play because, surprisingly, all of the components in this mission are player controlled in one way or another. Even the dropped vehicules cold be player-controlled once they are on the ground. That being said, at the moment this scenario would only be possible thanks to the C-130 mod. Which leads us to the question on the title: Do cargo aircraft have a place inside DCS World? To me, yes, they do. The C-130J mod has showed me how surprisingly fun tactical cargo aircraft can be in DCS; and, by looking at the way that the community has responded to this mod, I am not the only one that thinks that way. If, at any point in time, Eagle Dynamics were to release a high fidelity module of a tactical cargo aircraft; you can count me as a day-one buyer. Here's hoping that that happens one of these days. This mod can be found on this discord server, where it was originally published. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

The Hip is one of only two dedicated cargo helicopters capable of light combat in DCS World. It is the largest flyable helicopter in the simulator, with the capability of providing both close air support (CAS) and cargo lifting for the troops on the ground. These capabilities alone make it an outstanding module on its own, but with the upcoming Mi-24P; this helicopter will become a much more interesting piece of the DCS ecosystem. During the last free-to-play period, I dedicated myself to spending as much time as possible with the Hip to be able to write a short piece about it. So be warned, I am in no way an expert when it comes to this bird. Although, all I can say is that this experience made me want to buy it really hard. This is not a review, but an overview. There are things I will omit for the sake of brevity and to leave some points so that the inevitable review is a bit more complete and less redundant. With that being said, let's take a look at this beautifully ugly bird. A MISLEADING FRONT COVER, A TYPICAL SOVIET TOUCH My first impressions of the Hip came in the form of what I'd consider a, to put slightly, overwhelming sense of dread as I started at view from the pilot's seat. To put this into perspective, most of my time spent flying helos in DCS has been on the UH-1H Huey. I'd consider the Huey a relatively straight-forward helicopter when it comes to its learning curve as it has relatively few controls and a simple cockpit layout. The Mi-8, in the other hand... For a novice, this is a terrifying first impression. In fact, I had the same impression when I flew the Fishbed for the first time in DCS as well; but just like the Fishbed's, this cockpit layout is much more intuitive and simpler than at first glance. You will have to adapt to the very different design philosophy that the Soviet Union's design bureaus had, that's it. The moment that that clicks on your head, things start becoming easier to understand. I thought that I would have had to spend hours upon hours learning, but I was in the air only half an hour after learning how to start it up. Overall, it was easy enough. Compared to the Huey, it might be a handful to manage alone. Since you will have to switch around from one seat to the other to have easier access to certain panels, such as the armament panel that is on the co-pilot side or the top rows of instruments and circuit breakers that are easily accessible by the flight engineer/navigator. Sadly, it does NOT have multicrew as of the writing of this article, so you are stuck managing this bird on your own. A HEAVY ARMED BIRD THAT FLIES LIKE A FEATHER IN THE WIND (WITH EXCEPTIONS) I have got to say something: The Mi-8 flies much differently than I thought. Since it is a lot heavier than the Huey, I expected it to be sluggish and that it would require much more collective to get off the ground. Oh boy, how wrong I was. This thing has power, a LOT of power. It only takes a bit of collective to make it go and as long as you know how to manage your trim and activate the stability augmentation, it is also surprisingly easy to fly too! Despite everything I said until now, the Mi-8 does have some quirks which you will have to get used to. For instance, I found it much easier to fall into a ring vortex state than with the Huey. It could have been that my approaches were too steep, that I just lacked the experience with the type and my inexperienced self was flying it as if it just were a big Huey. It took me a bit to adjust to the small quirks and found myself enjoying flying it around both the Caucasus and the Persian Gulf with the same ease as with my other helos. It is, without a doubt a very interesting and fun bird to fly. There is just one thing left to address from the section header: armament. Sincerely, I was a bit underwhelmed by the armament but it is ok, this is supposed to be a cargo aircraft first, attack aircraft second. I still had enough variety to play around for a bit. There's something about these cargo aircraft showing their fangs that always brings a smile to my face, a smile that can only become larger by those waterfall-like casings falling out as my pods reign fire. Such a blast, quite literally! OVERVIEW CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE PLANS When it comes down to getting the job done, the Magnificent Eight will not disappoint. It is, as of now, the most capable cargo helicopter in the simulator in my humble opinion. But, just kike every module in this and all other simulators and games, the Hip does not exist on a vacuum. Against the venerable Huey, the Mi-8 is a great counterpart while also being unique and distinct from any other helicopter out there, both aesthetically and functionally. There is, however, a big "but" in this case; at least to me. Soon a certain, let's say, distant cousin of this craft that I am quite interesting in. The Hind is fast approaching and with it, a whole new world of possibilities arise. Joint missions where Hips and Hinds assault together, each complementing each other's flaws and shortcomings. Even with that said, if I could only choose between a Hind and a Hip, I would always pick the former. It has light troop carrying capabilities as well as a lot of power for sling loading cargo, oh, and do not forget that it carries a lot more of a punch when it comes to armament. The Mi-8, on the other hand, is more of a tactical cargo helo with an emphasis on troop transport and light combat. Nothing like its cousin, but close enough to form some parallels as to how these two will complement each other in the DCS ecosystem. At the moment, all we can do is wait for this Soviet duo to be reunited in DCS. Hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

If there's a single resource that has proven to be a very knowledgeable source for learning everything IL-2 Great Battles related, it would have to be Requiem's channel. In our second entry of our Creator Highlight series, we wanted to give the spotlight to Requiem's Air Combat Tutorial Library. He is an online creator and airline pilot IRL who has one of the largest and most interesting libraries of educational flight simulation videos out there. Be it the basics of aircraft operation such as taxiing, landing or engine management or much more complex topics such as energy management or combat maneuvering, Requiem has always had something to fill me in about a certain flight simulator subject. Some highlights I'd like to make are his videos on air combat maneuvering (ACM). It is one of his longest running series which has taken different types of focus to better tackle different scenarios. In my honest opinion, one that still holds up when it comes to quality and usability as most of the things you can learn here can be applied to any flight sim, regardless of its complexity. Here is one of my personal favorites from that playlist, simply due to the fact that he takes a disadvantaged aircraft and uses it to surpass his adversary while explaining everything for us to learn: He has been at this for a long while too, with his earliest videos dating back to almost 6 years ago. Additionally, while he has been primarily focused on creating content around the IL-2 Great Battles series, he has started tackling DCS World as of late with his F-5E series of videos. If his DCS videos are as detailed as any other content he has made, there is nothing but awesome videos coming our way. His production quality is also impressively high, with detailed graphic explanations of topics that need them coupled with very good utilization of tools such as Tacview to illustrate. But to me, what makes his channel unique is his approach towards newcomers. From what I have seen during my years of watching his content, he is always very open to feedback and helps people that post questions in the comment section of his videos. This is something that I do not see that often anymore. Nowhere is this more noticeable than with Learn to Fly series on specific aircraft of the IL-2 Great Battles series. They are short but highly detailed, including everything you need to get up to speed with each aircraft. I have personally used them several times to refresh my knowledge on Boddenplatte's aircraft. Here is an example of this series that I'd recommend: To conclude: I couldn't recommend Requiem's channel more. I strongly suggest you give him some love on his channel or his Patreon, if you feel like supporting his creative efforts. We need more creators like him in the flight simulator scene. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

To say that the upcoming 2.7 update for DCS:World is one of the most anticipated ones that the simulator has ever received would be an understatement. I have not seen players this excited for a patch ever since the patch that brought in the new Eagle Dynamics Graphic Engine (EDGE) engine back in 2014. That is still one of the biggest leaps this program has received to date, alongside version 2.5 in 2018. But even after the EDGE update and all of the 2.X updates until now, there was still a very visual reminder (not going to mention all of the inner workings of the sim) that we were still flying under the same skies as we have always been: the clouds. Despite all of the improvements that they had received, you could always tell that under it all they were still those same old clouds from almost (if not more than) a decade ago. All of that is set to change with the new clouds that are going to be implemented in eleven days as of the writing of this article, with the drop of update 2.7 for the sim. With these new volumetric and much more realistic clouds, I expect that a general change to the weather system is also coming. Keep that in mind for the rest of this article as it will become important to comprehend some points. Also, keep in mind that I have not tried the clouds for myself and that I will have to assume some things for the sake of argumentation. Let's hope I am not proven wrong in two week's time. CAREFUL FLYING AHEAD Entering a storm should not be something that you do normally, yet, it is something I do constantly with the current DCS weather and clouds. If things change, this will no longer be an advisable thing to do if you value your aircraft or the time you have put into your flight. Avoiding dangerous clouds will become a normal thing to do, just like assessing the weather prior to and during your flight to see what will be needed to get from point A to point B in one piece. There is also something that substantiates my thoughts in regards to this. A week or so ago RAZBAM posted a couple of teaser pics like they tend to do, but one of the screenshots caught my eye more than the others: This is what, to my untrained eye, seems to be a weather radar display being implemented to the Mirage module. The fact that this feature is being added represents to me a bit of proof that weather conditions inside clouds will become more of a crucial aspect when it comes to flying in DCS: World. COMBAT INCONVENIENCES AND NEW PLAYSTYLES Another very important aspect that these new clouds will most likely change is combat strategies. Specifically, how players will both love and hate clouds in certain combat scenarios and mission types for a plethora of reasons. Weather over the mission area will affect the way that players engage targets. Let's say that you are on a precision strike mission with GBU-12 bombs (laser guided munition) and the area is unexpectedly covered with thick clouds, making it difficult or outright impossible to get a visual on your targets. You would, at that point, have to fly lower than the clouds or you could rely on a JTAC unit to lase for you as you drop your bombs blind. In the future, interactions like this could also be done with the upcoming Kiowa module playing as a FAC for the fighters! This would bring a completely different set of possible scenarios to the table, forcing the current playerbase to adapt and improve their combat strategies to fit the new aerial battleground. You will need to be more aware of your surroundings, cloud formations and how your enemies could use them against you. I do expect clouds to be used as visual cover while dogfighting, particularly in World War 2 scenarios. Hiding behind the clouds to ambush an enemy flight could be very fun or scary depending on which side are you on. Oh, and these kinds of scenarios would be most likely only be useful on multiplayer scenarios as the AI will most likely be all-seeing through the clouds, just like it is right now. That being said, yesterday I had a very small exchange with Jon Coughlin, one of our readers who interacts frequently with us on Twitter. He brought up an interesting point: most public multiplayer session run on clear weather conditions because of the playerbase. While he is right in that point, I sincerely expect that mission creators will utilize the new clouds to provide much richer environments, and while they might not all be full overcast conditions, it is always good to have some clouds than to have none. Additionally, I think that the low quality of the old clouds contributed to their rejection, which is something that the new ones do not have. IFR FLYING AND CONCLUSIONS The last thing I expect clouds to impact is primarily low visibility and night flying. IFR flying has the possibility to become much more important than ever before. This might force some people to learn how to use TACAN stations to navigate and use their ILS systems on landing to ensure that their precious aircraft does not end up as a very expensive firework show. From what I have always noticed in my years of flying sims, these systems are usually underutilized due to the fact that, as Jon said, most people prefer clear blue skies with no clouds, not even high altitude ones. I hope that with this update, more people will start using them to navigate through adverse weather and moon-less nights. To close this rather messy article, I wanted to share one last thing. A very dear friend of mine mentioned this quote from the great Antoine de Saint-Éxuperry which I think fits my feelings on the clouds both IRL and in-game perfectly: Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing... But you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity. Clouds might be beautiful things, floating with grace, but remember that they are treacherous and could hide your imminent death either behind or inside them. Stay safe, fly responsibly. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

I have been playing flight simulators for almost half my life and there is a constant that I always notice, no matter the platform I am currently flying on: the high new player turn-around rate that flight sims have. Be it because of of their high level of entry of flight sims, unintuitive controls or just the nicheness of the genre, flight simulation is the genre of games where I have personally seen the largest amount of people try it once and then turn around, never to return. DCS:World is not an exception to this trend. I have seen many try it out and leave without even spending more than two hours on it. But unlike some other sims, I have noticed that DCS has some characteristics that make it easier to get a hold off like interactive tutorials, in-house instructional videos made by the developers and many other things. Yet, I still think that just a couple of things could bring even more player into the game, long-term players at that. I have been thinking about writing this article for a while but it has been difficult as this is a topic that needs to be tackled seriously. Spitballing ideas is not something ideal in this situation as it might bring more confusion to the table. Additionally, remarking problems without bringing solutions to light is just like throwing gas into a fire; I will try to illustrate each problem and after that, I will propose a solution for it. Please take this as a passionate open letter from a lifelong flight sim enthusiast to the fantastic developers at Eagle Dynamics. It is my opinion and everything here just reflects what I think as someone that has observed the environment that surrounds this genre, its people and what some of them think. Oh, and I am not a gamedev, so this is only my opinion as an experienced player. With that out of the way, we shall begin. FIRST IMPRESSIONS MATTER A LOT It might sound like a simple thing, but it is one of the things that I have been told by several people who have tried DCS and turned away: when they opened the main menu for the first time, it "scared" them. With "scared", most of them told me that they meant that it looked unintuitive and that it does not provide any kind of assistance as a first time user. Sure, everything is labeled right there but as a new player it is kind of confusing. For long-time users this might be a non-issue as most of them already know how to navigate and, in general, most of them already knew what they were getting into when starting the program in the first place. This is something that only affects players that come from other games where initial tutorials are common. Therefore, my proposal: A guided tour on first start. This guided tour, which is something that other simulators use, would guide you through the UI via pop-up elements. It would tell you what each part of the menu does, what you can access with them, etc. After that, it would send you to the training section so that you can start your first training session. In my opinion, this would allow new players to familiarize themselves with DCS' menus and it'd get them started on their journey. HOW A DIFFICULT AIRCRAFT SETS WRONG EXPECTATIONS The second most common complaint I have heard from the people that I got to talk to to make this article is this: The starter plane is too difficult or variation of that statement such as "why do I have to start with a difficult aircraft?". These comments were in reference to the Su-25T, one of two free aircraft that come with DCS:World, the other being the TF-51 which is a full fidelity "training" unarmed variant of the P-51 Mustang. The Su-25T is, in my opinion, a wonderful ground pounder. It is capable of doing almost every single ground strike task you can think of, mostly thanks to its sensor package and weapon variety. I do not have any issues or complaints from my experienced user standpoint, but, is this really the best aircraft to be someone's first jet or aircraft as a whole? DCS is, to some, their first flight simulator. They will need to learn all the basics of flight before they even start thinking about combat. In my opinion, the Su-25T does not give new players the best impression. It is slow and most importantly, it is a temperamental bird that might appear unfriendly to the newcomers. The TF-51 is a much better trainer and it would be perfect if it were not for one reason: its lack of multicrew. I have personally taught several of my friends how to fly in DCS with the help of multicrew. Specifically, the aircraft I taught them with was the MB-339 mod since it allowed me to teach them without them having to spend anything on the sim. That is a very important part of this argument because the fact that they did not have to spend money at the start to begin training with a friend marked the difference between turning around and staying. I love what the modding community has done to alleviate this problem. One only needs to look at the marvelous work of the A-4E-C team (which I am glad to be a minor part of) or the highly expected T-45C by VNAO. Aircraft like those solve this issue, allowing newcomers to have a taste of DCS before they take the plunge into buying a module. Therefore, my proposal: DCS would benefit from a third free aircraft, an official multi-crew capable module capable of training missions. I know how expensive and difficult module creation is, I have seen it first hand. My proposal is not without flaws, either. Modules such as the L-39, C-101, YAK-15 and the IFE official MB-339 module, which is in development, exist for a reason and serve the exact role I think would benefit DCS in the long term: but they are all paid. A lot of newcomers would prefer buying a fully-fledged fighter like the Hornet instead of buying a module just for training, or so I have been told by the people I spoke with to make this article. It is all about accessibility and zero monetary compromise Having mods such as VNAO's T-45C is great for the community as a whole as they fix that hole that exists in accessible initial pilot training. But there is no official support for mods like these, their maintenance after each patch falls to the mod developers. There is no guarantee that they will keep working after a major patch such as the upcoming 2.7. In fact, the T-45C developers have stated that they are waiting to test the mod on 2.7 before they release it because there is a chance that the update might break things. I truly believe that a free official trainer would increase sales of actual modules in the long run due to the fact that you have already had a chance to learn how to fly in the sim with a much more friendly aircraft than the Su-25T or the TF-51. But those are only my personal thoughts. CONCLUSIONS I love DCS:World and flight simulators as a whole but I have always wanted to share that experience with more people. It is one of the reasons why I write reviews that take me days to complete, to inform people that might be questioning what aircraft is the best for them. Modules are expensive, after all. It is always better to buy something after you have informed yourself about what you are buying. I wrote the article to throw a bit of light into these two issues that I have noticed ever since I started playing DCS. I hope that it can help in some way, make people discuss about these things. After all: the more people that talk about this, the more likely is something to change. Take care and fly safely. If you want to talk with me about this, feel free to contact me on my discord which is linked on my author bio below. About the author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

After months of waiting, the much awaited 2.7 update for DCS: World finally dropped on April 14th following a couple of delays. The major addition that this update brought are the new cloud and weather systems alongside an almost uncountable amount of fixes and quality of life (QoL) improvements to the sim. We took a couple of days to let the changes sit in just so we could give a better perspective on what our thoughts are as there is a lot to go through. Clouds with a side of new propellers! As seen in the deluge of screenshots that have been taken within the first week, the clouds' visual impact is undeniable. But viewing wonderful pictures is different from experiencing them. From inside and outside the cockpit, they look stunning. With there being 24 presets total, using the Mission Editor is the easiest way to get hands-on. Their wonders and dangers are immediately apparent from flying high above scattered clouds or doing low-level canyon runs in near-zero visibility overcast. Even something as simple as cloud surfing, playfully dipping in and out of them, can cause icing on the aircraft. And this was in a peaceful, free flight setting, clear from the rigors of combat. The only minor problem we found while testing everything is what we called “puffing”. At distance, clouds seem to puff-up into cotton ball-like mass. Here, have a look: Another feature that was added with this patch was a new propeller rendering technology. I won’t go into the details of how it works, but all we need to know is that it accurately calculates the position of each blade to accurately render then in a way that looks natural to the human eye. Here’s how it looks on the TF-51, quite the change! Performance impact, or lack thereof Although very far from being scientific, as there are no built-in benchmarks, we asked several of our friends which had varying levels of hardware. Interestingly, against all of our predictions, performance seems to have had an overall improvement no matter the level. The lowest spec GPU we “tested” on was the GTX 1060 6GB and even that one showed either higher or the same average fps than it did when running DCS 2.5.6.61 at 1080p with mostly the same settings as it had prior to the update. The graphics cards we have at the moment are both a GTX 1660Ti and a RTX 2060, with the first one being Cubeboy’s and the latter Ribbon-Blue’s. Cube’s card showed the same average FPS over Dubai while flying the same route in 10 different runs (~75FPS), while the average FPS at altitude was reduced when compared to 2.5.6 (Ultra clouds, Overcast 3). High preset clouds showed similar results with a noticeable reduction of frames which might indicate that optimization efforts were directed at the Ultra preset for this initial release. Combat impact and thoughts Admittedly, the perception of just how much harder clouds make combat is somewhat skewed for now. With AI units being unaffected by clouds' presence or intensity, these non-player controlled units currently have an advantage against human players. This is a known issue that is already set to be fixed by Eagle Dynamics, but this is a factor for hosts of multiplayer servers that feature AI-controlled units. As mentioned in an earlier article, which mused about the possible impacts of clouds, this temporary unfair advantage may be yet another delay in the employment of clouds by server hosts on their multiplayer servers. After hours of server hopping to get a general feel for the number of servers that immediately enabled the cloud presets, it was a pleasant surprise to see that a majority of the servers our staff visited were using one of the presets. Improved rearming menu The changelog for DCS 2.7 Open Beta is long but distinguished. One of these updates is slightly more detailed information about the weapons and equipment that are loaded onto hardpoints. The refuel/rearm function in the ground crew radio communication menu has often been the cause of quick web searches to confirm a few specifics about them. Things like whether or not they're laser-guided, semi-active radar-guided, capable of bunker penetration, etc. For veterans of this simulator, this information is everyday knowledge. But for those learning new modules or still learning DCS as a whole, the addition of just a few more words in the text box has an impact. Simple tags like "GPS Guided Bomb", "IR ASM" and "Active Rdr AAM" will become a vital part of planning for players. This doesn't replace the need to learn how these weapons operate, but it does prevent accidental weapon-type mixups that could impact a sortie. Get those IFR skills in shape! For the first time in a long time, players might be finding themselves revisiting navigation system tutorials. With so much of DCS' flying being done in VFR-friendly conditions, there wasn't a pressing reason to become an IFR guru. But now depending on whether or not the mission creator decides to throw storm clouds your way, you will need to know how to navigate in the sea of white with your instruments alone. So get practicing! Also, for mission planning in online servers, paying attention to the topography along the ingress, egress, and in the objective area is a slightly higher priority. While information about the exact type of cloud coverage that will be encountered may not be available, knowing the maximum height of the terrain is helpful in avoiding ground collision even in cloud obscured areas. Setting custom warning altitudes in the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) data sublevel could now be just as life-saving as it is in the real world. Conclusions Much like update 1.5 and 2.5, DCS World open beta update 2.7 has changed the simulator in such a way, it almost feels brand new again. Similar sentiments are being expressed by established content creators and players that have flown in DCS for over a decade. A secondary effect update 2.7 has had is a noticeable spike in interest by people that have never heard of DCS before or were on the fence about ever giving it a serious try. This sudden burst of interest coupled with the Sping Sale could result in a new wave of players to further expand the overall player base and eventually populate multiplayer servers even more. After a few more adjustments and minor updates that are bound to happen within the next few weeks, by the time this update reaches the stable build of DCS World, there’s little doubt that 2.7 will go down as one of the pivotal updates within this simulator’s history. About the co-author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034 About the co-author Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza The Director of Operations for Skyward Flight Media. A lifelong aviation enthusiast with a special interest in flight simulators and games. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating aviation related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He continues to explore past and present flight games and sims with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. | Twitter | Discord: RibbonBlue#8870 |

After around two years of work, the mod team at Virtual Naval Air Operations (VNAO) have finally released an aircraft that a lot of us in the community were waiting in anticipation ever since it was announced: the T-45C Goshawk, a naval trainer aircraft that every naval aviator will fly at some point in their career. This is not a review but only a first impression look at this mod's initial release (IR) build. The developers are still working on it as I write this article, so it is only natural that things will be improved over time. This article is based on my impressions of v1.0. Additionally, I will treat this mod just by what it is: a mod. It shall not be judged or compared to paid modules. It is a community project made by a group of dedicated modders that made this aircraft with passion. That being said, there will be circumstances where I will need to reference paid modules to make an argument, but it shall not be directly compared to one. With that out of the way, let's take a look at this trainer! EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS This is an area that caught me off-guard, both because of how well executed it is and by the fact that some details seem to have passed through the artists eyes without being seen. The external model is gorgeous from almost every angle. Rivets, panel lines and even smaller details such as exhaust fume burns from the Gas Turbine Starter (GTS) are there! The included liveries are absolutely great, with plenty of details and accurate markings that make these birds feel a bit more believable. Although it is when you start looking at it from certain angles that you can notice that some things are a bit off, particularly with the bump map textures for the wings, the exhaust pipe's model and texture. If it were not for these two details, this model would not have anything to envy from other aircraft in-game. Here are both examples: From my limited experience working with 2D art for 3D models, I would amend this issue by applying a more matte texture to the tail pipe, alongside a normal map that would act as the "substitute" for the detailed engine exhaust, since a new model would add even more tris to an already overly detailed model (~2.000.000 tris). That would make it harder to run on lower-end machines. The normalmap seems to be inverted and it is reflecting light from angles it should not, in addition to the panel lines being too thick. This should be fixable by re-inverting the texture and making the panel lines less thick. Since the developers have already done an excellent job with the external model, I think these solutions should not be outside of their capabilities. Now, one area that they absolutely nailed was the internal model for the cockpit. This is a beauty, no other way to say it. Both the student and instructor cockpits are extremely detailed and very well made. Analog instrument and the Multi-Function Displays (MFD) screens look the part. Lighting is sublime as well, giving you a very nice experience and immersion feel. I do have two very minor complaints, and when I say "minor", I mean it. The first of these is that, while under direct sunlight, the canopy glass' texture seems to be diffusing the sun's light in a very weird way. The second one is that some sunlight seems to go through the frame and illuminate the instruments in scenarios where they should be under full shadow. Here are some examples: This effect is a bit disorienting and I'd suggest that the canopy glass texture should receive an overhaul. I know that some of the textures were still WIP, so I hope this will be tackled in an upcoming update. This effect seems to also affect other aircraft in-game. As far as my knowledge goes, this is a 3D issue. Light is passing through the shell that goes around the 3D model of the cockpit, making it look like the sun is going through the fuselage and straight into the instruments. Again, this is not a deal breaker but something that could receive some attention later on once more important bugs are fixed. FLIGHT MODEL I'll keep this section short and sweet. As long as you fly it within the expected flight envelope you will not find any issues with the flight model. It is a smooth ride from taxi to landing. Stall characteristics are a bit weird sometimes, but it is not a deal breaker. It is an aircraft that requires a lot of trim but that's a good thing, as that is an essential ability that every pilot should know even if they will fly something equipped with a FCS. The behavior on the ground is solid as well, with lock-up mechanics on the nose wheel steering mechanism if it is operated wrongly. The aircraft does feel like it carries some weight to it, both on the ground and in the air. But, what happens when you get it out of its expected/tested flight envelope? I did several test flights the same way that I did when I was testing EFM builds for the A-4E Community mod when they grabbed some of the active testers from their public Discord server as dedicated EFM testers. What do I mean by that? Well, I just tried to fly it like I'd normally would just with the difference of paying really close attention to everything and, whenever I would find a potential flaw, I'd try and track it down. What I experienced was a bit unexpected: I got it to go to Mach 1.4 on level flight, I zoom climbed to 75.000ft and I almost reached Mach 2 on a dive. I know that this is the initial build and that bugs are to be expected, but I was not expecting to get to supersonic speeds or to pull 20G on a corner with no consequence whatsoever. The developers are aware of these issues, and they are working on solving them. I even notified them of the issue with excessive thrust at altitude despite it having been reported before. But this is a first impressions article and I have to be honest with my thoughts. What VNAO has is a great foundation, it reminds me to the first builds I tested of the EFM for the Skyhawk. The A-4E-C devs even had the same issues at first with excessive thrust at high altitudes, causing me to reach Mach 3.31 at some point! I know the devs at VNAO will solve these issues as they have shown they are passionate about this project. MISSION CAPABILITIES This is a pure trainer and that's it. Forget about doing combat missions with this aircraft, if that is what you want you can download other community mods such as the A-4E or the A-29B. The Goshawk's mission is to get rookie pilots to the level where they can feel confident flying more advanced aircraft, like the Hornet, as their time with the Goshawk provided them with all the basic skills they needed. You will be able to do all sorts of training sorties with this bird, though. From basic landing patterns to CASE I and CASE II recoveries on the carrier (due to the lack of ICLS, CASE III practices are not recommended) and basic air to ground and air to air weapon employment. I did some mock dogfights with Hueman, a close friend of mine. I was surprised at the fact that I even managed to get him on my sights a couple of times, calling out simulated kills. This is something I was not expecting. You will be surprised at how useful flying this bird is, even for experienced pilots. It is a much more raw experience than jumping straight into something with a flight computer. Also, this is the ONLY carrier-capable trainer in-game. You are able to be both the pilot and the instructor for a friend thanks to its multi-crew capabilities. This means that you will be able to train your friends or that a veteran friend of yours can be your instructor! Pretty cool and useful. TRAINING ARMAMENT BDU-33 SMOKE BOMBS Perfect for practicing your aim and perfecting your bombing techniques. They are a great companion for this aircraft. They even have their custom bomb rack! M274 SMOKE ROCKETS Useful for practicing different scenarios, marking things for others to see, etc. They are fun to use, like any rocket would be. Give them a try! THE FREE TRAINER THAT DCS NEEDED There is something that I discussed earlier this month, and that was that DCS' newcomer experience is something that needed improvement. The free aircraft that come with the game are not enough to hook some people, making them turn around and leave DCS never to return. I think that what VNAO has done is solve one big piece of that puzzle. This is not only a new free aircraft to DCS, but one that is capable of doing multi-crew training for FREE. As long as the mod is supported and is kept alive, new players will have a chance of getting a taste of a modern DCS aircraft and of getting to train with a friend or even a stranger on an organized training squadron! It might not be an official module nor might it be a perfectly polished mod in its current state, but it delivers in the area that matters the most: training new players. I am really happy that VNAO decided to release this mod publicly as it will help the entire community as a whole. Well done, VNAO! DOWNLOAD THE MOD FROM HERE: OFFICIAL MIRROR 1 (MEDIAFIRE) OFFICIAL MIRROR 2 (UFILE) About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

It was quite surprising to see, that almost out of nowhere, VTOL VR's developer BahamutoD released a new game: Jetborne Racing. This was a very unexpected release; not only because of its timing but because of what it is. This is, to my knowledge, one of the only modern flight games on the market that is solely focused on racing! Initially, I was a bit shocked at the premise. Not because it was strange or anything of the sort, but because it is such a logical game idea that I am in disbelief that no one had done it in recent years. Sure, there are some flight racing games from back in the day, but nothing like this, even less when you consider that it was made with VR in mind. AUDIOVISUAL DESIGN Visually, this game is very similar to VTOL VR if not identical to it. Very simple textures that do not have any kind of embellishments. This has a performance benefit for VR users as the game does not have to load 4K textures with roughness and bump maps, which would need to calculate light reflections on them. This should make sure that the game will run flawlessly on many systems out there. Despite having a minimalistic style, Jetborne has very interesting map designs. From the simple yet elegant wooden tunnels of Mountain pass to the craziness of Moon Base Alpha and the narrow tunnels of Underwater, this game has variety. Take a look at the small gallery bellow so you can see the examples I mentioned. Additionally, the cockpit design is minimalistic. No bells or whistles here, all the information you need is displayed right on the Heads-up Display (HUD) or right bellow it, such as your total and split times. I find this to be beneficial as it makes it easier for you to focus on your flying and what is happening outside of your canopy instead of looking around the cockpit. Audio-wise, the game does have some very good aspects to it. The sound you can hear as you pull Gs and the audio deafening effect as you black/red-out is good. But one area in which I feel there could be some improvement are structural sounds such as the wings swinging back and forth, a louder afterburning sound, etc. In a game that has you constantly pulling over 10Gs I would consider these to be crucially integral to judging your aircraft's attitude while on tight corners. GAMEPLAY Here is where Jetborne shines. It has the same level of polish as VTOL VR, which is one of the best VR experiences out there. It might not have the interactivity and system operations of the former but it does not need them, at all. The flight model is not realistic, but it feels grounded. Taking turns feels exciting and every single time in which I crashed, it was because of my own fault, some exceptions applied. It has been a blast to go through every single circuit, both in single and multiplayer. The best I have to describe it is that it feels like a more realistic Ace Combat-like flight model, don't mind being able to pull 14Gs without consequences. After all, you don't have blood in VR. The best way I have to show you what I mean is with this video I recorded of myself running one of my best personal times in East Bay Loop. I uploaded it to the Skyward Twitter account. Music in the video is courtesy of Cindego (Kubson#1138 in Discord). Very nice stuff all around! Maps feel like they are laid out in such a way that turns flow into one another, but of course there are some maps that are a bit better at this than others. Beginner-level maps are very easy to finish but hard to master. That run I have on the video was a 1:56:858, which is more than a second slower than the world record. It took me a solid day of solely playing this circuit to figure out all the best angles for my level of skill, including the "blind corner" that is the last turn, which leads me to my only complaint. To get the best times on tracks such as Moon Base Alpha or East Bay Loop, you will have to rely on taking corners while blacked out. This means that you will have to memorize the angle of the turn, your bank angle and the number of seconds you will have to keep turning until you can straighten out. While being able to do such a feat is impressive on its own, I can not call it a good game mechanic. Being able to control the aircraft after you black out should not be possible, there should be some kind of penalty for doing so. The rest of the game mechanics are fun. The spectators, which can move from platform to platform, have their own way to affect the race by shooting at the racers. This can be either hilarious or really annoying, at least it was prior to the damage reduction that the spectator guns received. Races with objects, á-la Mario Kart, are really fun as well. FIRST IMPRESSIONS CONCLUSION This is a really, really fun game. It is unique and brings things to the table that no other game has, at least in the last decade or so. It has that VTOL VR polish to it, making it run smoothly on almost any machine. But I do fear for its longevity. Sure, record hunting has been a blast during the release period and it has been exciting to get into a track just to try and get back into the top spots of the leader board. But for how long can that excitement last? How many times can I do a run over and over again on the same map until I get worried. The game has eight maps as of the time of writing, so this feeling only grows more each time I play them. I would recommend this game to any of those who want to race with their friends, VR or not. It is a great game as it is, but I hope that it will get expanded with more maps at some point. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Over the years I have noticed that there are not that many websites solely dedicated to covering flight games like us at Skyward, and even less that approach them on a journalistic way. One of these would be Stormbirds, a blog ran by ShamrockOneFive! A couple of weeks ago, Stormbirds was celebrating their fifth anniversary. We decided to approach Shamrock in order to talk a bit about how has it been running the blog on his own, his motivations for running it, the experiences he has had along the way, etc. I'd like to thank Shamrock for letting me have this interview with him on such short notice. He made the interview roll smoothly, I appreciate that a lot. Hello and thank you for accepting to have this interview. Can I ask you to introduce yourself? Sure! My name is Colin and I go by ‘ShamrockOneFive’ in most of the sims (and games) that I play. Before we get into talking about the Stormbirds blog, we’d like to learn some more about yourself. How did you end up becoming a flight simulator enthusiast? My interest starts with my lifelong interest in all things that fly. I’m told that I was only a couple of years old when I began pointing at the sky in excitement whenever an aircraft flew over. I went to my first airshow at the age of five and I’ve been fascinated by all aspects of aviation ever since. I have a large collection of books on aviation and history, I enjoy airshow photography, and I love flight simulations as an extension of that interest. In retrospect, not much has changed over the years as I still point excitedly at the sky whenever an aircraft flies over! I think my first flight sim was A-10 Tank Killer by Dynamix but the sim I first fell in love with was Aces of the Pacific by the same studio. I played that sim whenever I had time. From there I played a variety of different flight sims. Aces Over Europe, F-15E Strike Eagle II and III, Fleet Defender, various iterations of Microsoft Flight Simulator, a tiny bit of Lock On: Modern Air Combat and the IL-2 series before jumping into the modern titles. Are there any simulators or flight games in general that are especially important to you? Maybe something you’d suggest to people? Right now, there are four or five sims that I’m focused on writing about and personally enjoying as well. I tend to write about what I am interested in as a starting point, so these are sims that I recommend on a regular basis but also spend a great deal of time enjoying myself. On the civil aviation side, I really enjoy both Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane. Both have their upsides and downsides but the two both offer some compelling experiences on the civil aviation side. Whatever you’re looking for, either one or both of these tiles will have it covered. On the combat flight simulation side of things, IL-2: Great Battles, IL-2: Cliffs of Dover and DCS World are what I’m focused on. The IL-2 series has a long legacy stretching over 20 years and the second and third generations that are still being actively developed are impressive in so many ways. I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours with all three generations of the series. DCS World is also an extremely impressive and complex sim that is doing incredible things for WWII through to the modern jet age. It’s only in the last 4-5 years that I’ve really gotten into it but I’m glad I did because there’s so much to know. My simulator interest does extend into other genres too. I’ve also been a fan of various racing sims over the years and more recently I’ve developed a bit of a love for Train Sim World as well. Good fun when you’re looking for a very different sim experience. How and when did the concept for the Stormbirds blog come around? Around five years ago I was looking for a new creative outlet and at the same time I was looking for a way to practice my writing skills. In my professional life I am called on to occasionally write news stories for my organization. Sometimes these come up with a very tight timeline. I wanted to be faster at writing and I thought that practicing with something that I’m interested in would help. It did! I’ve also considered multiple times jumping into the video creation side of things rather than doing a blog, but I tend to be the kind of person who likes to run counter to some trends and do my own thing. So, in the age of the YouTube channel content creator, I decided to write a blog. I have, however, put some content together on Stormbirds.blog YouTube channel including starting my own podcast series which now has five episodes. Episode releases come out irregularly as my focus is still very much on the blog and everything tends to relate back to it which is very different than the usual YouTube channel approach. When the blog was created, was it meant to be primarily an IL-2 Sturmovik blog? My content mandate, the thing that drives me to write, is essentially centered around writing about what I want to write about. That sounds a little selfish perhaps, but I think that’s important to do as a content creator. You have to have a passion for whatever it is that you’re writing, otherwise I think the audience will feel the lack of interest. I do feel some responsibility to cover certain subjects that may not be at the top of my interest list, but I do try and stick to my simple mandate most of the time. I always intended to write about multiple sims when I started the blog. When I started it was mostly the IL-2: Great Battles series that I was flying on the regular but it didn’t take too long to expand my coverage to DCS World and on from there. For those that do not know, what is Sturmovikfest? Sturmovikfest is a weeklong celebration of everything IL-2 Sturmovik. It’s only run for two years so far but the festival has offered a variety of serious, competitive, and non-serious events including mass formation flypasts, air racing, and more! When did Sturmovikfest start? How has it changed since the beginning? I started the festival last year. The idea came to me not too long after the pandemic began as I looked to put my energy into something that could be done virtually. With everyone stuck inside, locked away and with so many real-world events cancelled, I thought that it’d be a good idea to try and raise spirits by hosting an event that people could engage with. It proved to be popular enough that we brought it back for this year. I think its future is bright! Have you received any help from IL-2’s developers when it comes to organizing the fest? The festival has certainly had some support from the developers. It has had shout-outs from the developers, the festival thread has been prominently placed on the official forums and I know that the developers have also taken part, quietly, in at least a few of the events. What are the highlights of Sturmovikfest thus far? Many! The community has generated so many ideas over the last two times that we’ve run the event that I can’t wait to see what happens next. From the traditional fly-in event on different servers each night of the festival to the more unique events such as Project R air racing, IL-2 tag, and the Mass Formation event organized by JimTM. That last one, the mass formation, is a unique experience getting pilots together in a non-combat formation pass that has involved a few dozen players at a time. We’ve even had experienced real world aerobatics pilots join us so that has been something special! How do fly-ins work in this event? The concept of the “fly-in” is to say to the community that we’re going to agree to try and fully populate a specific server tonight. Sometimes it’s been a popular server like Combat Box or Finnish Virtual Pilots Dynamic War server and sometimes we go somewhere new that hasn’t seen as many pilots (or tankers) but is just waiting to be experienced. Last year, Finnish Virtual Pilots – Dynamic War server was a relative unknown before the festival and has since become one of the top servers in the community. The fly-in helps provide some visibility for servers that may have not had any yet and at the same time it’s a highly accessible way to participate in the festival by just being there and doing what you’d normally do. During the time you’ve been running the blog, what do you think some of the most substantial releases, updates or news bulletins have been? There’s definitely some big highlights. The release of IL-2: Battle of Kuban was a huge point for the IL-2 series and I had a great time writing both the news in the run up to that launch as well as writing my review of it when it finally released. Another one that sticks firmly in my mind is Heatblur’s release of the DCS: F-14 Tomcat. While the F/A-18C early access release was big for me, the F-14 was just an order of magnitude bigger for the whole sim and my early access first impression review is still a piece that I’m really proud of having wrote. Finally, the reveal of Microsoft Flight Simulator back in June of 2019 was absolutely huge. I had just finished up two fantastic days at FSExpo 2019 in Orlando Florida and was sitting in my hotel room when the news came in. I tapped out an article as fast as I could after I had finished picking my jaw up off the floor. The launch was a big deal too but that initial announcement was momentous and it was when I realized that we were now in a new golden age of flight sims – having seen everything that FSExpo had to offer and learning that so much more was still to come. How do you think running Stormbirds has helped you grow as a writer? It has certainly helped me grow as a writer. It’s let me find my own niche as a writer, improved my “voice” as a writer and it’s broadly improved my overall ability to just sit down, write and get something written down “on paper” so to speak. I used to suffer from a lot of writer’s block, not being sure what to write and then struggling to piece things together. I’m sure it’s not quite as bad as I make it out to be but every essay in university was a painful process. It’s really quite different for me now as I’ve learned to just write and get it out there and then fix it later. I still need to continue to grow as a writer. Some of my regular readers and commenters are extremely helpful at point out when I make a mistake and I appreciate those helpful tips. As much as I pride myself on getting things right and perfect the first time, sometimes I don’t. I’ve gotten better at this in the last five years and I intend to get better over the next five as well. Does having to write articles in a short period of time affect your writing style? It most certainly does. I tried at the outset to keep my time spent on the blog limited to just 30-40 minutes a day at the most. That means writing quickly and sometimes that means abbreviating my style as much as possible. I’ve had many comments from readers that they appreciate the brevity of the articles so obviously that style is helping not just me in managing my time but also the reader. My goal with a lot of the news articles is to get to the point, get to the key facts and provide links to the sources. It’s the synthesis of the news around the flight sim community combined with the breadth of sims that I cover that I think seems to appeal most to my readers – or that’s what I tell myself anyways! I also think it’s important to commentate along the way. This is a blog and I unashamedly inject my own comments into the news as it comes along. It’s obvious that I’m a fan of flight sims. I think they are incredible pieces of software that transcend their programming and become memorable experiences and there’s something really special about that experience that is almost undefinable. I want to project my enthusiasm for that experience into everything that I write. If I wasn’t excited about it, I probably wouldn’t be writing the blog in the first place. How do you manage your releases? Are there any goals or deadlines that you set for yourself? It took me a long time to accept that I’m a goal and deadline driven type-A personality but I have accepted that and so I do aim to produce a fair bit of content according to my own internal goals and deadlines. Being a content creator does always bring with it the risk that you become a slave to your own deadlines and to the audience that you’re trying to appeal to. As much as I like and appreciate my audience, I also have to respect my own well-being and that sometimes means that I’ll do something later when I feel that I want to do it. Striking a balance between those two competing aspects is a challenge and one that I continue to refine. Thank you so much for accepting to have this interview with us. Would you have anything else to add before we conclude? My thanks to both of you for doing this Q&A with me. I’m usually the one doing the interviewing so it’s nice to be on the other side of that and talk about what I do. I’m looking forward to some future possibilities of collaborating between our sites too! Check Stormbirds out if you need a quick fix on the current happenings inside the flight sim world, to check out Shamrock's opinion on a particular matter or just to have a nice read. CHECK STORMBIRDS HERE About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy#9034

If there is one developer that took me by surprise by what they are creating, it would be IndiaFoxtEcho (IFE). From their years of making add-on aircraft for civilian-centric simulators, I would have never expected them to venture into DCS World. I had the pleasure to talk, yet again, with my friend Giuseppe. Better known as Duke, he was responsible for coding the EFM for the MB-339PAN mod. Nowadays, he works as a coder for IFE helping to create plenty of amazing aircraft for a variety of simulators. We last spoke with Duke when we covered the Frecce Tricolori Virtuali and its endeavors; today we will have another talk with him about everything IFE is up to. From some personal questions, to the DCS MB-339A and some exclusive details on the recently announced DCS Fiat G.91! First of all, thank you so much for accepting to have an interview with us. Could you please start by introducing yourself? My name is Giuseppe, also known as Duke in the Flight Sim community. I’m an aerospace engineer, aviation enthusiast with a great passion for flight simulations. My adventure in DCS modelling started with the Frecce Tricolori Virtuali development team as an EFM coder for the popular free mod MB-339PAN. Today, the rest of FTV development team and I have joined the IndiaFoxtEcho team. For how long have you been a part of IndiaFoxtEcho? How has the experience been so far? Our team has always been in excellent relations with Dino Cattaneo of IndiaFoxtEcho, but only in the first half of 2020 we have increasingly begun to talk about a possible collaboration that has materialized during the summer of 2020. This has allowed us to have a contract with Eagle Dynamics and to become official 3rd party developers. How has the transition from being a modder to a full-time developer been? Any differences in the way you approach module development? Honestly, the only thing changed is having a direct communication channel with ED specialists allows us to get information sooner than reverse engineering from other modules. From the workload side, everything is like before. We all have a primary job and aircraft development started as a hobby and today becomes a second activity for us. Tackling both Microsoft Flight Simulator and DCS at the same time is no easy task. How big is the team at IFE and what does each member of the team do? IndiaFoxtEcho development team is composed of 10 people active mainly on DCS projects. Some of them are also involved in MSFS development which requires a less amount of time to develop a new aircraft thanks to a good SDK base and to the fact that the majority of systems and flight dynamics are precompiled and available to developers for customization. The team also includes several external contributors and internal testers which helps us to test new functionalities and support us making other features for our modules. The MB-339 mod for DCS, which is now unsupported, was one of the best community mods in the eyes of many including myself. Now that it is being remade and improved as an official module, which do you think are the key differences between the mod and the module? Gallery of the new 3D cockpit assets and textures made for the MB-339 (WIP build) The new MB-339 will be totally different from the free mod. First, the 3D models (internal and external) have been totally revised. Geometry has been improved thanks to several surveys on real aircraft, such as textures that now look real providing a more immersive simulation experience. Also systems have been redone: now the aircraft has an electric system with five separated bus bars including working circuit breakers, main and emergency hydraulic systems, full working pressurization and oxygen systems and more. Finally, the module includes also a complete navigation system composed by GPS, TACAN, VOR/ILS and Flight Director. All the on board systems are linked to the damage model which is also compliant with real aircraft limitations. Have you been working with any subject matter expert (SME) to get the MB-339’s flight model as close to reality as possible? The EFM of the free mod was developed with the support of real pilots and instructors of MB-339 which provided us precious feedback for creating a flight model as close to the real aircraft’s performance. For this reason, we focused our efforts to develop a more detailed aircraft in terms of systems and weapons. For future projects, we started a cooperation with DIMEAS – Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Polytechnic University of Turin to create better flight dynamics with a specific focus on flight control systems simulation. DCS, at the moment, lacks a trainer aircraft with air to air refueling capabilities. Since some variants of the MB-339 do have refueling probes, will any of them be included at some point in the project? Yes, it would be nice to have a more advanced trainer with AAR capabilities but the DCS MB-339 will be a fidelity reproduction of the A variant used by the majority of Air Forces of the rest of the world. From what I have seen, the official MB-339 will carry more specialized weaponry than the mod did. Which of these weapons do you think will stand out as a unique inclusion to DCS? We have worked hard to develop new weapons such as the BAP-100, BAT-120 and Durandal bombs. These weapons have been passed to ED which kindly supported us for integrating them in DCS Core so they will be available also for other modules which are supposed to carry them. We also included several weapons for training but they are Italian Air Force exclusive like Aerea Dispenser BRD-4-250. How is the new DCS damage model being implemented in the MB-339? Any highlights? Currently, the new Damage Model is available only for WWII aircraft. For our MB-339 we used the classic one but we have been careful to model the damage by putting virtually every single piece of equipment in the real position on board the aircraft in order to recreate the related failure depending on where the plane is hit. (Here is a document that IFE made about the DCS MB-339 damage model) Have you encountered any setbacks while developing the MB-339 that may have delayed its release? How has the team handled such challenges? One of the main things was rewriting the code. Until the ED contract, we wrote the MB-339 code without SDK support so we had to write from scratch the entire DCS interface. This took some development time which delayed the release of the module. However, the delays weren't so bad and within a couple of months we picked up where we left off. Without getting into any specific dates, how close would you think the MB-339 is from release At this date, the MB-339 is at 90% of its development. We could release it at a “early access” state but we prefer to provide a full module considering that currently the free mod is still available (even with some issues due to DCS 2.7 release). We are confident to release it within the end of 2021. I saw a very interesting picture in your social media, the teaser picture for a Fiat G.91. Is there anything you can share with us about that project? (i.e aircraft variants, weaponry, etc.) The G.91 started as a toy project in cooperation with some Sim Skunk Works members when we were modders. Today, as part of IndiaFoxtEcho, we have discussed several projects to be developed in future for DCS World and the G.91 was an obvious choice thanks to the availability of official documentation (we have access to the historical archive of the old FIAT-Aeritalia) and the access to several aircraft in good state for surveys (for your information, next year in Italy for the 100th anniversary of Italian Air Force, a G.91R-1B will back in flight). Several versions of the aircraft are similar enough so we planned to develop the PAN (aerobatic version of Frecce Tricolori), R-1B (Italian Air Force version) and R-3 (Luftwaffe version). We are also considering making an R-4 but we will see in future… probably this version will come later as bonus aircraft but this is not confirmed yet. As for the weaponry, our goal is to add all G.91R weapons reported in the flight manual such as the AS-20 Nord missile and AIM-9B. Speaking of these two weapons, for the record, the AS-20 was not used by any air force equipped with G-91s due to its costs (only FIAT-Aeritalia performed some tests to shooting range for weapon qualification) whilst the AIM-9B integration was a total fail during tests of Portuguese Air Force (the IR sensor of the missile never locked the target so the integration was abandoned). Aside from the two confirmed modules for DCS, are there any plans to bring some other aircraft to the simulator? Particularly, are there any plans to bring the M-346 to DCS at some point after the two ongoing projects are complete? Unfortunately we cannot discuss further projects, but I can say that other news will come as soon as the MB-339 is released. Once again, thank you so much for accepting our interview request. Would you want to add anything else before we conclude our interview? Many thanks to you for your interest in our projects, we are glad to have had this interview and we hope to have the opportunity, in future, to discuss our next steps on DCS World in greater detail. We'd like to take the opportunity of this interview to thank all our followers and our supporters. We are a small team with a great enthusiasm and we hope not to disappoint your expectations. About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy#9034

As a follow-up to our review of this spectacular community creation, we got in contact with JNelson to ask him a series of questions about some of the experiences he had while developing the External Flight Model (EFM) for the Skyhawk alongside Farlander. We hope this interview brings some insight into what goes into making an EFM for DCS, the discoveries that were made along the way that enabled some of the best additions for v2.0 of the Scooter. We'd like to thank JNelson and the entire A-4E dev team for allowing us to have this interview and for their work on this mod. Q: Hello! We really appreciate that you are taking your time to have this interview with us. Could you please start by introducing yourself? A: Hello I’m JNelson, one of the A-4E Community Developers. I wrote the EFM for the A-4E with Farlander. I also have programmed many requested features, a few being the CP-741/A bombing computer, radio, new Tacan and ICLS. Q: How did you get into DCS? Have you done/been a part of any other projects prior to the Skyhawk? A: I’ve been playing DCS since late 2012. I picked up the A-10C on steam for £7 back then and since then I’ve been hooked and now have several thousands of hours flying in DCS. The A-4E was my first DCS related project. Q: What brought you and Farlander to the A-4E project? Did you have any previous experience with coding an EFM or was this your first time? A: Farlander had worked with the team before to produce some 3d assets in the past, so I knew about the project. We both love the A-4E however we both absolutely hate simple flight models and thought the A-4E being SFM was a tremendous waste of potential. So rather than complaining about it we both looked into it. This was the first time for both of us creating an EFM, however I have a degree in Physics and Farlander is studying to be an Engineer, that combined with our experience in DCS and general interest in aerodynamics certainly gave us a foundation to learn the principles we needed for a detailed and realistic EFM. Q: Which was the first step you took to create the EFM? Data gathering or did you start by researching how things work inside of the DCS framework? A: The DCS framework is really quite straightforward. It’s essentially an interface into the DCS physics engine. The first issue was we did not have a good collection of equations to implement a basic flight model. We tried to make a basic example back in October 2019 this worked but was pretty garbage. In May 2020 Farlander found a book called Principles of Flight Simulation by David Allerton. This had everything we needed to get going. The first step after gaining this information was to get a minimal working example which we could expand on. The night Farlander found this book I told him by tomorrow I’ll have a working EFM. All night later I had a very garbage but functioning EFM. There were all kinds of problems with this initial model but it was a base from which to improve. From here we gathered as much NASA data as possible. To replace the placeholder values I had used for the first version. Q: Which parts of the EFM were the hardest to code? (stall characteristics, engine simulation, system simulation, etc). A: Not necessarily the hardest thing to code but the thing we ran into the most problems with were conversions between the wind axis and the body axis. This was compounded when we went to an element based model as alpha and beta had to be calculated for each element. A good set of tests would have prevented a lot of this pain but we were doing this in our spare time and who wants to write tests. Other than that I don’t think anything was particularly difficult to implement, the primary difficulty for most things is getting the first working example to be improved. Q: How hard was it to code the EFM while not having access to the SDK? Are there still things that cannot be added due to not having access to it? A: This is generally a common misconception out in the community. There are very few things (if any) that stop a fully realistic implementation of an EFM. There of course limitations for systems and interactions with the DCS world however something like the A-4E can almost all be accurately simulated with the current interface we have available to us. One thing I would love ED to add would be the ability to write our own hook physics similar to the Tomcat and F/A-18. Q: When it comes to systems the way they interact with the SFM, which ones had to be rewritten in order to make them work with the EFM? Probably the most time consuming thing from my perspective for the early part of the project was integrating the EFM to the existing lua. A lot of the sensors and data no longer existed and had to be replaced with values from the EFM. There are other things which were completely broken and needed complete replacement, a couple of examples would be the AFCS and radio. When these were re-written we took the opportunity to make sure these systems were as close to real life as possible. There were other systems which had to be ripped out for the system to be functional. An example of this was all the carrier work-around script. The work-around had interesting things like an invisible afterburner to get the A-4E to launch off the deck, but this had unforeseen things like the throttle being routed through the carrier script so the player couldn’t engage this afterburner. This all had to be removed and replaced with the official DCS interface for the carrier. Q: One of the most impressive additions to the A-4E that came with the EFM was the addition of functional radios and TACAN/ILS/ICLS navigation. What was the process of developing these like? Any hurdles that you had to get through along the way? A: These changes fall into two categories. The radio and the radio navigation. Radio The process itself is really just a case of browsing the memory for known values and trying to tie that back to things to which you have access. I spent weeks without getting anywhere. Once you have memory addresses of important objects you can then easily call their functions (without getting too technical is not always straightforward since some are virtual). It is easy to see what functions and objects are possible to interact with by looking at the relevant DLL’s. This information is available to anyone who simply dumps these functions. The issue is that the exact makeup of the structures used is not known. This would normally be given in a file (header file) with the SDK which of course we do not have. So this has to be worked out by monitoring the memory. I eventually found a method for reliably getting the position in memory for any lua device using the lua. The final step was figuring out functions which needed to be called to enable the radio. TheRealHarold had already figured this out and shared this information with us. Combining this with my method for getting the positions in memory allowed us to get the radio working reliably. There was only one remaining thing to be sorted which was to get the radio menu to come up during flight and this was just simply calling one of the functions relating to the intercom with the memory address for the intercom. Radio Navigation The primary issue to solve is the position and heading of the beacon you are trying to track. There is no interface for getting this information in DCS. There are avTACAN devices you can try and create however these fail to be initialised so you cannot use the same method as the radio. The avILS device can be reverse engineered in a similar way to the radio, I did get this working however this is of no use because it only works for land based ILS without some unknown and likely time consuming (to reverse engineer) changes. The static land based ILS and TACAN were already covered since we can retrieve the map beacon data. This is how the initial TACAN and ILS were implemented. There was no implementation for the ILS yet so I implemented this. These aren’t too complicated since it’s just basic geometry Video of AA TACAN working. Video source: JNelson. The position and heading of the beacons for moving objects, ships, aircraft and portable tacan units was the big problem to solve. After a long time investigating all kinds of avenues. I found a way (which I won’t go into for security reasons) to essentially get the memory address of an object based on it’s ID in the mission file. This is useful because the vehicles in the mission file have their TACAN and ICLS channels, so I can essentially correlate a mission ID to a real object in game. Once you have that object you just need to find the location of the positional and rotational data which is just some offset from the address of the object. This is easy enough to do by just comparing the values in the memory to the position in game. Since this is essentially a hack we haven’t released the source code for this. Although ED are welcome to get in touch if they want to find out how exactly I did it. Q: The A-4E, as of now, is one of the only if not the only community made mod capable of doing air to air refueling. Which discoveries made this possible? Was it a complex feature to add? A: The DCS API supported this already for any EFM’s the issue was getting in contact with the tanker which required the radios to be reverse engineered. Once that was reverse engineered it worked like a charm. Q: Getting an EFM to behave accordingly is quite the challenge but with the Skyhawk, flight characteristics seem to be on-point according to NATOPS. Did you have any help from a Subject Matter Expert (SME) at any point during the development? Very early carrier tests (Not everything is smooth sailing, but at least you get cool videos) Video source: JNelson A: We mostly used NASA wind-tunnel data for the EFM. However the transient data was not as accurate so a lot of this was augmented by help from our SME (A-4M pilot). We also had a few excellent testers which found discrepancies for us to fix. This sped up the development and was incredibly helpful. Q: How complex is the code behind the flight dynamics in terms of simulation? Any highlights you would have that you think are cool and worth mentioning? A: As stated before we used NASA wind-tunnel data for the EFM. Farlander spent a long time splitting the wings and surfaces into elements, this provides a more dynamic simulation of the wing. It’s not completely accurate since these elements are completely independent but it provides a good approximation. The other cool thing are the physically realistic slats, modeled physically and deployed based on their aerodynamics. Q: How many hours do you think you have spent coding the EFM as a whole? A: At least more than a thousand hours between Farlander and myself. Q: The A-4E had public tester events that members of the mod’s Discord could request access to. What was some of the most beneficial data learned through these events? A: The primary reason for these events were to pick up difficult to detect bugs. There were some very interesting bugs that were found and fixed as a result of these. Q: Version 2.0 is going to be a big release for the project. Are there any additions that are going to be made after 2.0? How will the mod be supported after the launch? A: The radar has been re-written for v2.1 to greatly improve performance and resolution. Making the radar much more useful for IFR and regular navigation. The JATO is also being modeled and simulated for v2.1 which will make shortfields much more possible and exciting. Early look at v2.1 radar improvements. Notice the radar shadows being cast from the terrain. Video source: JNelson Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions. We really appreciate it and we wish that these answers help to clarify any of doubts some of the users might have had about the complexity of the development of an EFM for DCS World. Our review of this community module can be found HERE, check it out! About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy#9034

I have been playing Il-2 Great Battles for the last year or so and I have been loving this flight simulator to bits. It is engaging and offers a set of scenarios and a roster of aircraft that you just cannot find anywhere else. But I had yet to try one major aspect of this sim, that being its compatibility with VR headsets! VR flying is always awesome, no matter the platform. IL-2 is one such experience, but let's take a bit more of a detailed look at how it compares to flying with a head-tracker and at how the developers adapted this desktop-first simulator into VR! THE GOOD: AN EXCELLENT AND OPTIMIZED FLIGHT EXPERIENCE To be completely honest, I am not the biggest VR user out there. I mostly play games with a couple of close friends and fly around in DCS: World to relax after a long day. That being said, I have noticed a couple of things that have made my VR flying experience a bit unpleasant, the main one being the performance and optimization of VR titles. My specs are not the greatest, falling on the lower-mid tier for modern hardware but there is a reason why VR titles have the reputation of being performance hogs. So you can imagine how surprised I was when IL-2 ran smoothly without any major adjustments. I did not even have to run the textures and reflections to low or decrease my draw distance by that much! Cockpit models transfer excellently to VR, with proper scaling. It is hard to describe how something like this looks in VR without being in VR, but all I can say is that the models are stunning and I wish that some other games could look this good while also running as smoothly as this does. Seeing your enemies go down, the effects of G-LOC (G-Induced Loss of Consciousness), the breath of your pilot as they struggle to stay focused and awake while maneuvering. These are the aspects that make this experience worth it. To demonstrate a bit of how it would look, I recorded one of my first dogfights. There were some recording issues that caused hiccups here and there. But you should get an idea of how much freedom of movement VR has when following a target around. Take a look! My PC Specs: Ryzen 5 3600 Stock. 16GB DDR4 @3200MHz GTX 1660Ti w/6GB GDDR6 Overclocked @2055Mhz 1TB NVME SSD Oculus Rift S THE NOT SO GOOD BUT STILL ALRIGHT: USER INTERFACE AND MENU INTERACTIONS Everything good has to have some flaws and IL-2's VR implementation is no exception. Although these are mainly minor complaints, I sincerely think that they should be addressed at some point on one way or another. My main complaint would be that there is no way to interact with the menus from inside of VR by using VR controllers. The only way to interact with any kind of menu is by blindly reaching out to your mouse and clicking your problems away. Is this something you can get used to? Yes, in fact. I have already gotten used to it. Should this stay like this? I hope it does not. There is a reason why many games, including ones that do not have their focus on clickable elements, have the option to use your VR controllers to navigate. Aside from that, my only other complaint would be that you cannot have separate settings for VR and Desktop, forcing you to always reset your settings by hand each time you switch between modes. DCS World does have this feature, allowing you to save up to three user presets which you can switch to without much hassle. This is useful for those who switch between Desktop and VR, people like me. In conclusion: If I am complaining about petty features like this, you know that this is one hell of a solid VR experience. I love it. If you have this sim and a VR headset, give it a go. You won't regret it! About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy#9034

After some years of development and a couple of set backs, one of the most expected WW2 modules for DCS is finally here. The de Havilland Mosquito is one of most impressive aircraft that Britain built during the war, so having the possibility to enjoy it as a full fidelity module is fantastic. To say that I like this aircraft would be an understatement, seeing as I have a scale model of it right under my monitor as I write this, of the same variant too! Let us take a look at what this highly anticipated module has to offer at launch and how this Early Access launch stacks in relation to previous releases such as the P-47 Thunderbolt. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL MODELS She has, without question, one of the most complex and intricately-made models currently in the game. The shapes for the external model might be simple but they are polished and to the average user it looks perfect (This is not considering some of the things I have noticed when looking at it as a "2D artist" such as the stretched UVs) . From the subtle curves of the main wooden fuselage that lack rivets to the impressively detailed bomb bay, this model is pretty. Click the pictures to enlarge them The cockpit is not slacker either. It has been beautifully recreated and excellently weathered. All the knobs and crevices look like they have been used but not like they have been beaten with a bat, a nice balance indeed. Both the pilot and navigator sides are gorgeous, even more when you the back side of the navigator side and its equipment. If the release delay was because of the remodeling process, then it is certain that it was worth the wait. Scroll through the pictures! FLIGHT AND SYSTEM MODELING I have the very respectable amount of zero flight hours on real life Mosquitos, so take my opinion here with a Texas-sized grain of salt. Without axis curves, this aircraft feels a bit overly sensitive. That is something I also experienced with all other WW2 aircraft that I tried, so I have gotten used to tweaking my desk-mounted short stick (T1.6000 and TWS Throttle w/pedals) to these modules. From what I have heard, these modules are modeled to reflect the longer control columns that these fighters had. To fix that "oversensitivity", lower your saturation and add a slight curve. That should do the trick. But when you have tuned her well, oh boy, she is a joy to fly. She is maneuverable but not as much as a Spitfire or even a P-47D. She is fast and, when using all of her advantages, she can annihilate almost every fighter. Remember that you are heavy but extremely fast for your size, so use that to your advantage. I can't really complaint about the systems since I have not had the time to use them to their fullest, so I will reserve my comment on this subject for a future full review once it is out of Early Access. Oh, one noteworthy thing about the engine modeling is that the developers modeled the infamous carburetor issues that can cause engine stalls during negative G maneuvers. Watch out for this, since you will most likely be in this situation (like I've been countless times). ARMAMENT At launch, this bird came only with a fraction of the weaponry it should have. But remember, this is an Early Access launch inside of the Open Beta branch. This means that features will be added as they are developed. .303 BROWNING MACHINE GUNS (4X) Kind of weak but their sheer volume of fire is enough to deal damage. You have 4 of these with plenty of ammo to spray and pray. HISPANO 20MM CANNONS (4X) Now these actually deal some significant damage. Not as much ammo as the MGs but plenty to last a while, watch that trigger time though! 250 and 500LB BOMBS The only externally mounted armament in the Early Access release. These are enough to do a single pass on a target and the scram towards allied airspace. CONCLUSION So, after talking about this bird, what are my thoughts on it? Simple, this bird feels right at home in DCS. It is a welcome addition to the WW2 roster and I can not wait to see how the developers will handle the Early Access period. This was a great module launch. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

DCS, lately, has been an interesting simulator to enjoy. Between the multiple modules that are due to arrive sooner rather than later, the mod team that I am now a part of and the vast amounts of modules I have yet to explore; it has been a bit difficult for me to find the same type of enjoyment in DCS as I did when I first tried it out so many years ago. To be honest, it is not that I do not enjoy my time flying. Quite the opposite, I enjoy it now more than I have ever done. But, as time has passed, the types of activities I do to enjoy my time in this extremely vast game have changed a lot. At the start, I flew DCS like I flew all my other flight sims: like a hermit. I sat down and the only thing I ever did was do single player missions. Those, alongside campaigns, kept me mostly satisfied for a while. Until it got stale. That is when my luck came to the rescue. It was about that time that my best bud, "Ribbon-Blue", decided to also get into DCS. He also introduced me another one of his friends, now my friend, "Kosmos". Some others that got into DCS around the this time were "Prov", alongside "Hueman". We started flying more regularly, and some of my other friends (like "Raptor86") slowly starting drifting towards organizing flight nights where we do semi-organized combat sorties. I found more fun and excitement in those early multiplayer sessions than in all my single player sessions combined. Yet the reasons behind my enjoyment might not be clear. Anything is better with friends, of course, but there is more to it. The same stale missions that I used to play became more random with more players involved, which led to situations in which I have never would have been involved if I was flying by myself. Everything became more dynamic and two things became clear to me: First, DCS is currently best experienced by having a group of close friends to enjoy it with, hell, even flying with randoms can be extremely entertaining. Not only due to the fact that flying together is great but also due to the fact that you can discover and learn new airframes and ways to use those airframes together! That is an experience unique to DCS and some other flight sims but one that is rare on other sides of the gaming community. Second, DCS is dependent on multiplayer and community to be truly enjoyed, something that is a double edge sword. I'll explain why. With community comes great potential for future growth and additionally, potential for community-made creations that can elevate the experience even more. Just look at mods such as the A-4E, C-130J and MB-339. All of those are community-made creations made by passionate individuals that have changed the way I look at DCS, an impressive achievement! But what happens if the player plays the game like I did, as a single player title? Other sims such as Falcon BMS and IL-2 Great Battles have alternatives for them, while also having rich multiplayer communities. DCS, currently, is lacking on single player features. The main feature that is missing is the dynamic mission or campaign generator, instant mission aside. We know that Eagle Dynamics is working on it and I hope it will turn out to be a great tool for all of us to use, but its absence is more noticeable to me more now than ever before. To give some context: I have been extremely busy with several projects (and so have some of my friends), including being the sole (for now) texture artist for the DCS UH-60L Blackhawk project. My time for extremely long DCS sessions is no longer there and even when I have sessions with my buddies, which I always enjoy greatly, my lack of energy has made me prone to exhaustion. This is why I have delved into shorter single player flights to clear my head. In those flights is when I started to think to myself: "hey, I could be playing a 30 min flight on a dynamic campaign in Falcon" or "Man, I wish DCS had some other way to play on my own". I realized that I had become dependent on DCS' multiplayer to even enjoy DCS. I just hope that, as I manage my time, I start finding time to fly more with my buddies. But for the time being I think that, aside from the Blackhawk and the occasional session with my friends, my enjoyment of DCS World will not be the same as it was with multiplayer. That dynamic campaign generator can not arrive soon enough, I am counting on you ED! About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer, content manager and the co-founder of Skyward Flight Media ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

It has been a while since we last talked about Desert Wings, hasn't it? We really liked what we saw back when this expansion launched in August 2020. But that does not mean we have not revisited the title on the time since then. Quite the opposite, we have kept our eye on the developers and the game as it continues its journey. To say that the guys over at Team Fusion Simulations have been busy would be an understatement. They have kept updating the game at a constant pace, including many quality of life improvements to the core of the game. This is something that I wish more developers did and it shows how committed this team is to their project. Aside from these QoL improvements, the developers have been actively working on more content such as a number of campaigns but, additionally, they have worked on two aspects that could turn this game from a game I casually play to one of my primary flight simulators. These are still in development but these are the two main fields they have been working on: AN EXTREME VISUAL OVERHAUL I don't tend to use the word extreme very lightly, when I say extreme I mean extreme. They have been retexturing the external models of aircraft and upscaling their resolution all the way to 4K (4096 x 4096). That would put these textures on-par with contemporary simulators such as DCS:World or even CLoD's successor, IL-2 Great Battles. It is hard to put into perspective the effort that goes into retexturing but ever since I started working on the DCS: Blackhawk project, I have learned to understand how time consuming a process like this can be. But believe me when I say this is worth it. Here are a couple of my favorite picks from the images that TFS have been sharing of their retextured models, take a look: They have not only worked on textures, though. They have also been working on the implementation of TrueSky, a fact that surprised me since this is the same tech being used on games like Ace Combat 7 and Project Wingman, just to name a few. This means that the sky will get a lot prettier as this new tech allows for volumetric clouds and weather to go with them! You can see them in action on the above screenshot but here is one where the scale of this change is truly appreciable. I expect this game will get a lot more enticing for new players as these cosmetic changes to work like make up for this old title, taking it to the current generation of flight sims. But speaking of current flight sim tech, let's talk about the other feature that the developers have been working on. VIRTUAL REALITY INTEGRATION Yup. This old game is now getting VR compatibility, making good on the promise that the developers did when they launched Desert Wings. Not that much is known about the VR implementation aside from a couple of posts and a recent video by the developers but what has been shown looks very promising. As someone that is quite new to VR, I am excited to try it out and see everything for myself. What also helps VR to be much more appealing now rather than before are all of those cosmetic changes we discussed previously. Those will be the cherry on the cake for this title, finally putting it at the same level as all my other simulators. Check the official informational video that the devs made about their VR implementation: I sincerely applaud the developers for not only proceeding to develop all of these aspects into their simulator but also for the fact that this will be a free update for all owners of the game. From modders to proper developers, the folks at Team Fusion Simulations never cease to amaze me with their level of dedication and passion towards this lovely simulator. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder, content director and writer for Skyward Flight Media ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

There are only a couple of games that such an emphasis on combined arms like Arma does. And out of those, only Arma has such an extensive modding scene that allows this experience to be taken to the absolute extreme. Today, I wanted to talk about RHS' Apache mod and how it has allowed me to practice multicrew for the upcoming AH-64D module in DCS World. It might not be clickable nor very in-depth when it comes to managing its systems, as it is usual for most aircraft in Arma, but it has a balance of realism and arcade mechanics that lends itself well to the combat environment that it will fight in. With that being said, let's start! A GAME WHERE CLOSE AIR SUPPORT MATTERS Aside from being an infantry focused FPS, Arma has always had a focus on combined arms combat. To the point where it has become a staple of the franchise. The Apache is, for a lack of a better term, the ideal Close Air Support (CAS) support aircraft for a game such as this. Maps are smaller than one would think and they can be flown over by aircraft in a blink of an eye. While something like an A-10C would do wonderfully as CAS if the maps where smaller, the slower speeds and operational flexibility it offers make it better suited to the smaller map sizes of Arma. To understand this a bit more, put yourself in this situation: You have just been ambushed on a road by four APCs and a lot of infantry, you and your squad have called in CAS to support your advance. What would you rather have as support? 1. An A-10C which could take a minute or so in-between passes as it clears the area because, if it linger for too long, it might get shot down by an Igla. It's passes are deadly but it can only fire a Maverick and a short burst of 30mm with each pass. 2. An Apache that can stay closer to you and your squad while also being able to provide almost constant air cover for your guys. It stays behind a hill or at stand-of range, raining radar-guided Hellfires into the enemy vehicles, and once the armor is out of action it can fly close and obliterate the enemy infantry with non-stop 30mm cannon fire. I would, personally, like to have an Apache cover me in this specific situation. An A-10C would probably be able to provide great cover too, but I love having the aircraft covering me be closer to the action. This is exclusive to Arma, though, so please do remember that everything I talk here is only about how me and my group have operated the Apache over fixed wing aircraft as of late. THE KING OF CLOSE AIR SUPPORT For me and my group of friends, the Apache has been our primary CAS aircraft. Not only have we used it to defend our base from attack but we have also used it to attack enemy outposts and to provide support for allied armor assaults. It has been quite the workhorse! Even inside of Arma, this whirly bird has quite the arsenal (these are specifically talking about RHS' Apache): INTEGRATED HELMET AND DISPLAY SIGHTING SYSTEM The IHADSS is an extremely useful piece of kit. It offers navigational and targeting displays for both pilot and gunner, making it essential for combat even on a game like Arma. You are able to slew this puppy to the M230 cannon and to most of your sensor suite. Just aim and shoot! M230 CHAIN GUN Being able to choose your burst length is a godsend. It allows the gunner to put accurate fire exactly where it's needed and for no longer than it's necessary. You are able to use the gun both with the camera and with the Integrated Helmet and Display Sighting System (IHADSS). Just look at what you want dead and press the trigger, pretty neat! 70MM HYDRA ROCKETS ON M261 PODS Although they lack the moving pylons, these are still extremely effective for area denial. You have 19 Hydras on each pod. AGM-114 HELLFIRE MISSILES Tired of that pesky APC that is bothering your troops below? That is what these are for. You have two variants. A laser-guided one (AGM-114L) and a radar-guided one (AGM-114K). These are extremely deadly and accurate, and a lot of fun. But there is something deadlier than an Apache, an Apache with a coordinated crew. MULTICREW PRACTICE FOR DCS' APACHE For quite a while, I've flown with Kosmos. He is good friend of mine and someone with who I have always had good chemistry, primarily when it comes down to working together as a team on games and such. But I have always said that the place where we both fit perfectly with each other is as a helicopter crew, specifically, as an Apache crew in Arma. He's a pretty decent pilot in Arma and DCS, so he has no issues keeping the bird steady for me to work the gun and Hellfires from the front. We help each other, giving pointers and directions as to where targets are using our sensors. This usually has some awesome results, We usually use terrain masking and take advantage of the ability the JTACs have, which is to lase for us. There is something specially satisfying about using laser-guided Hellfires from behind a hill on Lock-on After Launch (LOAL) Hi mode. You just see this missile go upwards and then behind the hill where RibbonBlue, which is usually our JTAC, has his laser on an APC or any other piece of armor. Then you hear confirmation of a hit from Blue, that's always exciting. It is that kind of teamwork and multicrew performance that makes me really excited about putting all this practice I have into "the real deal" whenever DCS's Apache comes out, which should be sooner rather than later. And I really, really am looking forward to flying with Kosmos in DCS. I am sure we'll be as good of a team there as we are here. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder, content director and writer for Skyward Flight Media ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

This idea has been in my backburner for a while now. I started making liveries for DCS:World in 2019 when I finally got my hands on a PC that could run it, but I have been creating liveries for different flight simulators for the past decade or so. And as time passes, I have realized that I have not really seen many tutorials or detailed guides on this aspect of games and that most of what I know has come from teaching myself how to do things from experimenting. In this guide, I will try and teach you everything that you might need to get started with livery/skin creation for flight simulators but more specifically for DCS: World. I will provide you with tools, explain basic concepts and guide you through the creation of a complete livery for the Community A-29B Super Tucano mod. Let's get started! THIS IS VERSION 2 OF THIS GUIDE: -ADDED MODELVIEWER2 TUTORIAL AND SETUP SECTION. STEP 1: BASIC CONCEPTS AND NECESSARY SOFTWARE To start, I would like to explain what a "texture" is and how it interacts with the model of the plane we are going to texture, in our case, the Super Tucano. This also applies to any other 3D model you might encounter out there. A texture is nothing more than an image consisting of pixels (a bitmap) that carries color or some other information (such as reflectivity, bumpiness, etc.) in which a 3D model is unwrapped over. Usually, this unwrapping process is done by the 3D artist while creating the model. The best way to visualize this would be with an example most of us are familiar with: A candy/chocolate bar! To the left, the "textured model" To the right, the "unwrapped" texture for model. See how the 2D plastic wrapper (right) bends to form the complete wrap (left)? That is essentially what a texture is. The chocolate, in this case, would be the untextured 3D model; hence why textures are sometimes referred to as "skins" that envelop this model. Now that we all understand what a texture is, let's start creating one by downloading an image manipulation software of any kind. This will be our main tool to work with textures as well as with any other images we wish to edit for it. I will recommend two for our use case: GNU IMAGE MANIPULATION SOFTWARE (GIMP) Free and open source, this is the best alternative to Photoshop available at the moment. It has all the tools we might need for texture creation with one particular exception: It's lack of options for DDS compression. I will explain what DDS is in the next part of this article, but let's just say that it is important. Aside from that, GIMP is an excellent platform with a very friendly and intuitive UI that resembles that of some Photoshop versions. This is, in my honest opinion, the ideal tool for those who do not want to pay for Adobe software. This will be the software we will use throughout this tutorial with only one exception which you will see in the guide. PAINT.NET Utilizing the .NET framework, this image manipulation software is also sufficiently useful for what it offers. Despite having a less intuitive UI, it has almost complete feature parity with GIMP and surpasses it in some very specific aspects. We will use it for a single aspect of our creation but feel free to use it for all your livery creation needs. Just know that most examples throughout this guide will be depicted with GIMP. Now that we understand what a texture is and we have the software we will need, let's get started! STEP 2: KNOWING YOUR SOFTWARE, WORK ON THE BASE TEXTURE AND INITIAL TESTING STEP 2.1: For the purpose of this tutorial, you will need to download the following things before we start: Community A-29B Super Tucano Mod Template for the Community Super Tucano by Cubeboy Improved Textures for the Community Super Tucano by Cubeboy Install the module in: Users>user>Saved Games>DCS>Mods>aircraft. Example: Now, open a-29b-community and go to the Textures folder. You will find a single file named A-29B.zip. Delete this file and replace it with the one you downloaded from the Improved Textures link. IMPORTANT: Do not unzip the new file, just delete the old zip and replace it with the new one. The DCS side of things is done, so let's proceed to creating our first livery. Open GIMP and load the template you downloaded. You should be greeted by something like this: It might look a bit intimidating at first, but let me break it up a bit so you can understand what you are seeing a bit more: GREEN: These are your tools, most of them are self-explanatory so try them out to see what they do. BLUE: These are your tool options. This is how you configure the active tool (brush, paths...) RED: These are your layers. You will have several layer groups that can be opened by clicking the PLUS sign to the left of the name, the one next to the image preview window. Group and layer names change between templates, but usually you will find: WEATHERING: These layers will usually have wear and tear effects such as carbon residue from the engines, oil leaks, panel line accents, etc. MECHANICAL: These are usually parts are are left untouched. They include landing gears, wheels and other mechanical elements of the plane that are not as crucial for the look of the skin as they are not part of the fuselage. In general, you can also find parts that might be optional such as radio antennas, formation lights, etc. PD: You usually find these at the top of the template, seeing as they will need to be over all other layers to be visible PAINTABLE PARTS: These are self-explanatory. You paint in these. In the case of the template that I created for the Tucano you can also paint certain parts of the aircraft inside of the Mechanical folder, such as the propeller blades and propeller hub. Now, remember when I explained what a texture was and how 3D models are laid-out over them? There is a better way to see that now that we have the template open. On the layers tab (RED) find the "FULL UV LAYOUT" layer and make it visible by clicking the eye icon. You should see this: Do you see that web of lines? That is our 3D model! By looking at this, you get a much better idea of how the 3D model has been mapped over the texture map. Neat, huh? However, while this might help us in some ways, we are still lacking a small detail. Direction. While we might know it is mapped, this does not tell us if the mapping is inverted. This means that you might have to look at the text to find which parts are mirrored and which are "normal". Imagine the text in 3D space as if it was the wrapper of the Snickers bar. Notice how the top of the wrapper has its text upside down. Well, that is because when it is wrapped it moves to its proper orientation. The same concept applies here. In our case, the Tucano has no mirroring in its texture so you have it easy, for now. STEP 2.2: TIME TO PAINT! Now, as a singer I like used to say: Let's get creative! Open up the "PAINT HERE" layer group to find the place to paint. I have already made a mask for you (the one that can be seen to the right of the preview) so that you can paint like a madman and still make a convincing-looking aircraft! Additionally, I have also given you a couple of pre-made liveries so that you can check how I create them. There is a very important rule when it comes to layers: The ones at the top rise over the ones bellow, meaning that to make a multi-layered camouflage paint you will need to watch how your layers are placed in relation to each other. There is an example of that inside of the template as well! Don't forget to save often, you might lose hours of progress. In my template I have also included a set of decals for you for both PTBR and EN, to make livery creation easier. These are on the Decals layer group, the one above the main painting area. Play around with them and remember, not all template have these so you might have to create your own for other aircraft. Additionally, you might want to tune the weathering to your liking. Use the opacity bar at the top of the layer with the layer selected to make it more or less translucent. I will use the premade USAF livery for the rest of the examples! STEP 3: SAVING AND IMPLEMENTING YOUR LIVERY IN-GAME For this part, I might suggest downloading Notepad++ seeing as we will be editing some very simple code to make all work smoothly and nicely. Now that your livery is all nice and done, it is ready for testing! Let's start by making our livery into a single layer. Go to the LAYER tab to the right, select one of the top layers and right click to get a pop-up menu. Select "New from Visible" A new layer should have been created. Click over this newly created layer and go to File>Export as. This is on the top row of buttons. Export it to your Desktop as a .dds file. In our case, the file name should be a29b_01.dds Select to export it WITHOUT compression (for now) and WITH mipmaps. If you want to compress it with a modern compression standard such as BC7, use paint.NET and save it with that compression there. GIMP is limited to older compression models that ruin quality! You now have your first texture file, but how do you make it appear in your game? Well, this is where the coding aspect starts. I will explain to you how to create a livery folder from scratch and modify a description file that will allow you to see your livery in-game. Go to the Mods folder and open the one for the Super Tucano. Inside you will find the sub-folders, click the one that says Liveries and then the A-29B folder inside it. You will see something like this: These are the liveries that your Super Tucano install has and the ones you see in-game. For convenience purposes, we will duplicate one of these and modify it so that it will read our file! Grab the FAB folder, copy and paste it, and then rename it to something else. In my case, I will rename it to "EXAMPLE LIVERY". Let's open that one: This is what you should see. Now move your a29b_01.dds file here. After you have moved it, it should look like this: Now, let's open the description.lua file with Notepad++, you should see something like this: Appearances can be deceiving, so let's break it down into the segments that you need to know as they are the only ones you will be using constantly. YELLOW: This is the part that declares which part of the 3D model is being called-in. Do not change it as this name is usually set when the model is export it. RED: This is the part that defines which type of texture you are using. 0 in this case means that it is a DIFFUSE (color information or a normal image). ROUGHNESS_METALLIC carries reflectivity information as well as roughness and metallicness. NORMAL_MAP refers to a normalmap, a type of texture that carries height data to emulate depth with light reflections. DARK BLUE: This is the part that declares the name of the texture the game will look for, in our case, the name will be a29b_01 (the one that is there by default on line 3) MAGENTA: This one can be either TRUE or FALSE. If it is set to FALSE, then the game will look for the texture inside of this folder. If it is set to TRUE, it will look for it in the Texture folder for that module or elsewhere. CYAN: This one declares the name that will be displayed in-game. This name can differ from the folder name for the texture (in this case EXAMPLE LIVERY) LIME: This variable is the one that declares which countries will have the livery available for it. I usually leave this space empty as that makes it available for ALL countries, I recommend you do so as well! For our case, we will comment out (remove the two -- at the front of the line) LINE 3. This line already has everything set up for us as it is declaring the part we want (a29b_01.bmp) with a DIFFUSE (0), the texture name (a29b_01) is correct and it is telling the game top search for this file inside of this folder. Change the name to your liking, careful with the syntax as the quotation marks are necessary. Whenever you are more experienced you will find yourself creating your own roughmets and normalmaps, but we will leave those out for now as this guide is intended for newcommers. If you have any questions about. Your description.lua file should look like this now: STEP 4: USING MODELVIEWER2 Did you know that DCS comes with an app that allows you to visualize all in-game models without having to boot the game up? It is called modelviewer2.exe and it can be found in: Program Files/Eagle Dynamics/DCS World/bin You will have to search inside of the bin folder, but once you find it you can always create a shortcut to it on your desktop, which I recommend doing if you are going to use it for skinning your aircraft. Since most of us do not have access to the 3D models unless we are involved with the teams creating them, this program is our best alternative as it has a great number of features: It allows for as close as we will get to real-time editing of textures. It allows you to check the alignment between texture maps for difficult lines. It allows you to look at your textures in-engine, letting you adjust your colors to the ones you desire by looking at how they change once the game renders them. But before we open it up, we will have to edit the lua script that the modelviewer uses at start-up to search for textures on our Saved Games folder, since that is where our mods are. Modify this file at your own risk, but if you follow the guide you should not have any issues. Here is a pre-modified file with the modifications already pre-done, but you will need to edit lines 70 and 71 with the correct file path for your install. But before you do anything, please, back up your original autoexec.lua file. It can be found on: Program Files/Eagle Dynamics/DCS World/Config/ModelViewer As you can see, I have my old file backed up as _OLDautoexec.lua. Additionally, I have a copy uploaded to my GDrive, you can never be sure. After and only after you have backed up your autoexec, do the following: -Unzip the zip you downloaded above -Drag that file and replace your existing autoexec.lua with it -Open the new autoexec and edit lines 70 and 71 with your install path, use mine as an example (Highlighted inside the RED box). -Change the GREEN to your drive identifier letter -Change the MAGENTA to your user name When you are done, save the file. This file gets overwritten with each update so do back up the new file too! With all of this out of the way, let's actually open up modelviewer. the first time you open it you will be greeted with this. Do not get scared by the amount of options, let's break it down. At the top you will have your typical option layout. To load a model, go to the FILE option and click on Load Model. Search for a model, in this case our A-29B, which you can do by navigating the menu. Go to your Users/User/Saved Games/DCS/Mods/aircraft/a29b-community/Shapes. Inside of the Shapes, find a lot of files. Open a29b.lods or a29b.edm Your model is there, now. Fantastic. if it Here are the controls: Right-click and drag to move the camera on the current center. Left-click and drag to move the camera linearly towards or away the current set center. Middle-click and drag to move the focus center of the camera. You can snap views to certain angles by using the icons next to the webcam icon on the toolbar. To change the liveries on your model, open the tools tab at the top and look for the Liveries tool. A new window should pop-up. Look for the designation of your aircraft and on the left side you should be able to see the liveries that are available. In my case, I will chose the USAF AFSOC livery. These should be the results! Your livery loads up and you can inspect it by using the controls described above. If you have made any changes to the livery and updated the dds files, you can also use the reload texture button (The blue ball on the toolbar) to reload that specific livery! This should be enough for you to get started. Experiment and if you have any doubts, I am sure that the folks over at the DCS: Livery Art Group could help you a lot. There are a lot of aspects that I glossed over to keep it short and approachable, so they should provide the help you need if your doubt was not covered in this section. STEP 5: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH Now, go in-game and check your livery out! I hope that this guide was good enough to give you the crucial information that might be needed to start making your own liveries. Go ahead, create and fly! What I thought you here applies to ANY other aircraft, these are just basic concepts to get you going. You can find most official templates on the Download page of the official DCS website. If they are not there, then Google away! About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

It has been almost a decade and a half since Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception launched for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) back in 2006. Personally, it doesn't feel like it was that long ago but indeed, it has been 15 years since ACX released. And like other titles of the era, specifically ones for portable consoles, it is undeniable that the game has aged since then. When played on its original hardware and screen these problems are not as noticeable, but the moment you try to emulate it it is when you realize the severity of these issues. Particularly as you are pushing the game to resolutions it just was not designed to manage. The issue is that emulation has become one of the only ways to play this title. Access to the original hardware is rare and will only become rarer with time. To me, this has been the avenue that has allowed me to truly appreciate the true beauty of this entry in the Ace Combat universe. Let's delve into how PPSSPP and the work of some amazing modders have made ACX into one of my favorite titles in the franchise. Thanks to Ostrich for his help and collaboration while writing this article. ACX ON THE PSP: HOW A GAME CAN BE LIMITED BY ITS HARDWARE (GOOD AND BAD) Just like many others, I got excited when I saw that my favorite franchise at the time was going portable. I had just played Ace Combat 5 on my PS2 and the fact that I would be able to have an Ace Combat title with me at all times made young Cube one happy kid. I finally managed to get my hands on it a couple of years after its original release. Everything was well until, well, I actually started playing it. It was obvious from the get-go that this title was being seriously hurt by its controls. The PSP lacked several buttons and a second joystick, this meant that to yaw the aircraft you would need to take your finger away from the stick to use the d-pad. It is inconvenient and show that, if you wanted to play it like a regular console release, the PSP was not the best fit for the game. I finished it and played it, but it always felt awkward. Additionally, the flat joystick on the PSP did not lend itself well to this kind of game. Was it sufficient to play it? Yes. Was it ideal? Far from it. Story-wise I love this title, it is a proper Ace Combat game in every sense of the word. Despite being limited by its hardware, the developers used it to its limits and presented players with a proper narrative structure told in the best way possible within their limitations. PPSSPP: UNLEASHING THE TRUE POTENTIAL OF ACE COMBAT X Emulation with PPSSPP (a free open-source PSP emulator) is where we can take ACX and let it shine like it never did on console. Almost every single issue I mentioned in regards to the controls are fixed by the ability to use a Xbox controller, a DualShock 4 or any other type controller! This way you can map yaw to the lower bumper buttons, allowing you to finally play it with a very similar layout to all the other home console titles. With the control issues aside, there is only a single major problem that shows its ugly head only when emulating: Low resolution textures. The assets that this game were designed to be seen from the infamously low resolution screen that the PSP had. As a consequence, the moment that you try to push the game to higher resolutions thanks to the upscaling features native to PPSSPP it will look like a pixelated mess. This is where texture modding comes in. For years, AC Fans have been working on HD texture packs that drastically change how the game looks. Today, we'll be featuring Super Ostrich's HD texture pack since it is the most complete one out there. Not only limiting himself to redoing the texture for almost every allied and enemy unit but also re-doing a lot of the UI elements that the game uses. Here is a side to side example so you can see how much these textures change the look of the relatively low-poly models. To the left are the original textures and to the right are the ones included with Ostrich's package. Click to expand them! The UI also goes from barely readable/a pixelated nightmare to something that is incredibly sharp and unrecognizable when compared to the original textures. ACX is still very much a PSP game in function but these changes make it so much more bearable. You can find the latest version of this pack and installation instructions by clicking the button: Additionally, the full list of credits for this pack is on Ostrich's website! I was able to test some of the textures that will be included on version 2.0 of this pack, and I absolutely love them. A lot of attention went into making them, so here are some of the ones I personally found to be excellent. Mitsubishi F-2A with warning labels, BuNos, etc! Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet with its correct panel lines, markings and BuNo styles. Dassault Mirage 2000-D with detailed panel lines, markings and warnings Saab JAS-39C Gripen with impressive attention to detail, just look at that APU exhaust (left)! ONE LAST ISSUE TO BE SOLVED: 60 FPS The only issue with ACX in PPSSPP is that it is limited to 30FPS. Even when 60FPS is enabled via cheats, parts of the game start breaking. Both Ostrich and Alban (one of the main admins Acepedia) have opened a bounty of USD$475 for anyone that is able to solve this emulation issue. So if you have the technical know-how, go ahead and give it a chance! CONCLUSION I no longer own a PSP and I know that finding one in decent condition as well as a physical copy of ACX will not be easy. If it wasn't for PPSSPP and the amazing community that surrounds it, many of its titles would have been destined to be forgotten. ACX is important to me and the fact that I can enjoy it in a completely different way thanks to emulation is something truly noteworthy. To me, the definitive edition of ACX can only be enjoyed on PPSSPP. PS: Little known fact, but did you know that there is was a beta version of ACX that never saw the light of day? It was most likely a de-bug build used by the developers, but the build date is awfully close to the official for the game. This might be one of the last builds before the game went gold. It has been preserved and archived by the Hidden Place, in no small thanks to DRW, kabojnk and MysteriousCube. If you are curious, info on it can be found HERE. DISCLAIMER: We do not advocate piracy so, if you have the capability, you should dump your own ROMs for your own personal use, here is a short guide by the PPSSPP devs. But with that being said, we stand by data preservation and we understand the importance of not letting these games become lost media. In a world where many of these titles have become hard or outright impossible to acquire legally through official means (official stores or directly from the developers), it is inevitable that some of these games will be lost if we don't do something. Contribute to these conservation projects that are making that dream a reality. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

VTOL VR is a game that, without looking photo-realistic, managed to immerse me like no other game had done in VR. Stable framerates on mid-range machines, immersive cockpit interactivity and unparalleled blend of realism and simplicity. I have always loved this game but, like many, I noticed the biggest flaw that it had: its lack of multiplayer. When we saw that BahamutoD, lead dev and creator of this title, announced that a public test of the multiplayer feature was available both Ribbon-Blue and I jumped right in to test it. I am not going to lie, I was pretty excited when I heard the news. Until then, players had to rely on a community-made third party mod to use multiplayer, so this was a long time coming. The first aspect we tested was the stability of the "netcode", or, how well could clients see each other and how the clients synced. I am extremely happy to report that our experience with this was extremely stable. There was never a case of client de-sync, enabling us to fly in close formation, dogfight and engage targets without any issue. Staggered carrier take-offs and naval ops were awesome to explore in multiplayer, but what really changed the way these scenarios changed was the ability to share information between aircraft to build even more situational awareness (SA) than before. We had more fun in PvE scenarios just because of this. Marking targets with IR lasers at night with night vision googles (NVG) on, planning your own objectives with your friends and using the aircraft to its absolute limits, that is what made this beta worth it to me. Aside from gameplay, I was highly impressed by how smooth the entire experience was. From choosing a lobby to getting airborne, every step of the way is as clean as it can be. Menus are simple and easy to read and before you sortie out, you enter a briefing room where you and your teammates can plan out everything, load your weapons and go. It is impressive, but I kind of expected this. After all, this same level of polish was first seen in BahamutoD's secondary title: Jetborne Racing. This racing spin-off served as testbed for networking within the developer's framework, allowing him to hone his skills to make VTOL VR's multiplayer transition even smoother than it could have been. VTOL VR's multiplayer is the last piece in the puzzle for me to consider this as a must own title for everyone with a VR headset. You have to try this out for yourself. It might be hard to adjust to not having physical feedback from a joystick, but believe me when I told you that this compromise is well worth it for the immersion that you will experience. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

VTOL VR has a great variety of playstyles for you to choose from. From the heavy and only true VTOL aircraft, the AV-42C, to the agile, fast STOVL like the F-45A. But it was always missing a crucial type of aircraft that is the definition of vertical take-off and landing: a proper helicopter! That has now been addressed with VTOL VR's first DLC, the AH-94 Attack Helicopter. Launched on the 6th of January, 2022 alongside the multiplayer update, this aircraft is the first addition to the VTOL VR line-up in quite a while, aside from mods of course. Let's see how this rotary wing treated us in its first days of release. INITIAL IMPRESSIONS At a first glance, it is pretty evident that this design is a mix of several western attack helicopters, with heavy influence coming from the Comanche and Apache airframes. The cockpit design is pretty much straight out of US Army helicopters, specifically, the AH-64A/D. It has a large set of sensors and most of them are intuitive and easy to manage if you have any knowledge as to how any of the other aircraft work in VTOL VR. Some of its systems, such as the TADS and its augmented vision mode are exactly the same as they are in the F-45A. If you had any experience with that aircraft, you should not have any trouble transitioning over to the AH-94. But the same cannot be said about its flight dynamics. After all, last time I checked the only moment when a F-45's wings rotated was when I got hit by a SAM. FLIGHT DYNAMICS For not being a full-on simulator, it is pretty solid! You have to manage your systems and engines the same way as you would have to do on any helicopter. It flies mostly as you would expect it to, as a fast helicopter even when loaded to the brim with Hellfire missiles and a full belt of 30mm. It is extremely agile as well, letting you do plenty of wacky maneuvers. It is a sim-lite, after all, you have to have some fun. There is an aspect which was pretty weird to me, and that is the behavior when the helicopter entered an overtorque situation. It just spazzes out, pitching up and down. I tried applying all of the techniques I use in other flight sims where helicopter flight models demand that you do "proper procedure" per aircraft in order to recover from those scenarios, but to no avail. The only way to get it out of that state was to drop the collective all the way down and pitch nose down and right after that, pulling up. An example of this is in the video below: It felt weird and somewhat broken, in a gameplay kind of sense. I like that the developer took the time to implement something akin to the difficulties that are experienced in rotary wings, but the implementation is a bit quirky. Again, I could just be talking out of my previous experience and putting unrealistic expectations into something that does not need them. MULTICREW This is the first aircraft in VTOL that allows two players to fly in the same aircraft. To say that this is fun would be an understatement. This is, by far, some of the most fun I have had in a while. Coordinating attacks with another Skyward staff member, RibbonBlue, planning out strategies, delegating tasks and utilizing the aircraft to its very limits. That is what real teamwork is, and with a good friend by your side, you can not go wrong with the AH-94. It is an incredible experience, and one that would be flawless if it were not for the plethora of issues that we had while trying to use multicrew. I had several crashes to desktop and freezes, all of which were only while playing the AH-94 in multiplayer. But, at the same time, these crashes were extremely inconsistent and we had zero issues during our second session which lasted 2 hours. If you have VTOL VR, you need to try this experience out. It is fun, challenging and exciting at the same time. Bring your best pal along for the ride, you will not regret it. About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Those enamored by flight will pursue it wherever it can be found. It's the type of passion that drives people to look up when they hear an aircraft overhead during their everyday lives. This same passion is not restricted to aircraft, but to any kind of vehicle whose size and magnitude stuns one's mind at the mere sight of it. Submarines, tanks and war machines all do this. Our second interview for Creator Highlight Month 2022 (CHM) is with Wolfpack345, a video creator and streamer who mostly covers historically-focused games, be them flight games, submarine simulations and tanks battles from WW2 and beyond! We had the pleasure to have a delightful interview with him and are honored to have him as a guest in our first CHM! First off, we’d like to thank you for accepting our interview request. Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about what you do? I am happy to conduct an interview! Thank you for having me! I run a YouTube and Twitch channel by the name of Wolfpack345 and Wolfpack345Live respectively. I mainly focus on Air Land and Sea simulation content on the channel. I do try to do things a bit differently than just showcasing gameplay however. I try to make my videos cinematic, and I also like to inject RPG elements into these sims I play on the channel. Additionally like a lot of people interested in these types of games I do have a passion for history. I integrate that passion into my content as well. How did you get started with flight simulation? Do you have any early childhood memories about your early experiences with them? I first got into flight simulation with the first iteration of the IL-2 series. Around that time I also played some Combat Flight Simulator 2 and 3 but I do not remember them as fondly. I am a bit newer to the genre than a lot of other folks. That being said I played loads of the original IL-2 and some of those campaign missions in the 109 and IL-2 will stick with me forever. I still have the original disk! Along with Forgotten Battles, Pacific Fighters, etc. Your channel is mostly WW2-centric for almost every game you cover. How did you grow to like this era and what aspect do you consider to be the key one that caught your attention? The Second World War has certainly been an interest of mine for a while. Naval combat and more specifically submarine warfare is what I would consider to be the key area that catches my attention. That being said I am fascinated in the air war as well and my interest don’t only lay with WW2. I find the First World War extremely fascinating. Especially when it comes to the aircraft. I do feature a good amount of WW1 flying on the channel in Rise of Flight and Flying Circus. The reason WW2 is so prevalent on my YouTube channel isn’t really due to lack of interest in other time periods. It mainly has to do with what is available game wise. The Silent Hunter series covers the two most prevalent submarine campaigns of WW2. Other than that, there is not much in the way of modern subsims. Dangerous Waters is a modern submarine simulation released in 2005 however it has not aged as gracefully as Silent Hunter 3 & 4. That being said it seems things are changing. Of course there are more WW2 games coming out that I am interested in like Task Force Admiral however there are also more modern naval games on the horizon like Sea Power and Modern Naval Warfare. I am positive all of these titles will be main stays on the channel. Which other flight-related titles have you played that you personally enjoy but that you haven’t recorded yet to your channel? As far as titles go there is only one flight sim that I am interested in but have not played on the channel and that is Wings Over Flanders Fields. A WW1 flight sim that looks like it could be tons of fun! There are plenty of modules I would like to showcase in DCS that I have not shown on the channel. The MiG-21 for example is an aircraft I would love to make videos on and will be doing soon. Same with the P-47. One of the most popular franchises that you cover in your channel, and one that I particularly enjoy, is Silent Hunter. What would you say that is the factor that attracted you to the series? Is there anything in them that you would think is shared between it and your passion for flight sims? Silent Hunter 3 & 4 are two of my all time favorite games and Silent Hunter 3 probably takes the number one spot! I absolutely love the tension and thrill these submarine simulators provide. There is absolutely similarities between flight sims and subsims. Just like in aerial combat in naval combat positioning is more than half the battle. Both of these genres certainly reward patience as well. Taking your time to acquire more information before diving on a target or engaging a convoy can prove to be extremely beneficial. If you rush in you may just miss a destroyer nearby or a 2 more Bf-109s looking to bounce you. How long does it usually take you to make a complete video from start to finish? I suppose it varies a lot from series to series. Oh boy… The answer is… it depends. My Silent Hunter 4 videos are the ones that take the most time. Silent hunter is a rather slow game to play and a lot of the time you are just waiting around or chasing the enemy down. It also depends on what I am trying to do in the video. A lot of times I will spend lots of time working on a transition that maybe only a handful of people will notice but it is all about learning new things and implementing new editing techniques. I always try to improve; it is a never ending battle however it gives me a sense of satisfaction when I see a finished product. I am quite proud of my latest content, but I am sure in a year or so I am not happy with the quality. I feel this way about my older content now haha. When I first came across your channel it was due to your IL-2 Great Battles videos. What is it about IL-2 that made you make it one of the primary titles in your channel? I do play a lot of IL-2 on the channel! One of the main reasons for that is its career system. I love the ability to make a pilot and try to keep him alive as long as possible. The “dead is dead” style of gameplay really appeals to me (in flightsims and subsims) and allows me to tell a story over the duration of a Youtube series. I have a history of playing a lot of Role Playing games and I certainly transfer some of that into flight simming. The career mode in IL-2 (and Rise of Flight) makes it very easy. Additionally, I like the variety that IL-2 brings to the table. Lots of aircraft and fronts to take part in and learn about! Despite having a preference for WW2 aircraft, you do have some experience with Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) and its mostly modern set of aircraft. Is there any aircraft that you particularly enjoy over the others? I really enjoy the early Cold War jets a lot! I love the F-86 and would be ecstatic to see a proper Korean War scenario in DCS World. As of late I have been flying a lot of the MIG-21 and 19. Both are really fun jets with a lot of character. Although I prefer the older stuff, I do find my self in the Hornet a lot and it is probably the modern jet I am most proficient in. I have been dabbling with other modern aircraft though. Such as the F-16 and F-14. As I play more and more DCS my interest in these aircraft has increased. As for the more modern aircraft in DCS such as the Hornet, what has been your experience with them so far? Is there anything you have personally liked/disliked about them? The Hornet was my first full fidelity module in DCS and it has been one fun ride learning it. It has been a very rewarding experience learning that aircraft. I still remember the first time I did AAR. There is not much I dislike about these aircraft. I just like aircraft that try to kill you a lot. The Mi-24 Hind was way more fun than I expected. I have had a blast flying that helicopter. We’ve noticed that you cover IL-2 Great Battles a lot more frequently than DCS on your channel. Is there something about IL-2 that attracts you to more to it? Like I previously said the career mode for IL-2 is fantastic and I would love to see something similar in DCS world. You recently released an article about how DCS is multiplayer dependent, and I agree that it is. Although I love flying multiplayer it is a bit harder to craft stories around these multiplayer sorties. I try to make my content unique, and I have just not found a way to do that with the multiplayer missions. I do tend to stream DCS multiplayer, however. The other big turn off for making DCS content is the replay system. With how finicky it is it can really be a chore to make content with it. I do have plans for more DCS content. I did the Hunters over the Yalu campaign on the channel, and I loved it. A new series will be coming soon. Have you flown any of the World War II aircraft in Digital Combat Simulator? What are your opinions on them as someone that primarily flies in IL-2? I really enjoy the WW2 aircraft in DCS! I have primarily flown the P-47 and love the way it handles. I do want to do more with it for sure. My main issue with DCS WW2 is the plane set in conjunction with the maps. The BF-109 K4 and FW-190 D9 just don’t line up with the time frame of the maps. That is kind of a turn off admittedly. I think that is why I like IL-2 more for the WW2 stuff. Just the sheer amount of variety really makes me feel like there is a war going on. The world feels more alive to me. Of course, like everything there are tradeoffs, DCS for example has some strategic bombers which IL-2 lacks. Both are fun and do some things better than the other. The Korean War era “Hunters over Yalu” campaign is the only full DCS World campaign you’ve recorded. Do you have a favorable opinion of Korean War era aircraft in DCS? I do have a very favorable opinion of these aircraft! I think they are very unique and loads of fun. Unfortunately, DCS doesn’t have much in terms of content for these aircraft. The Hunters over the Yalu campaign was top notch and I would really recommend it but there is not much else for the F-86 besides that campaign. There is even less single player content for the MiG-15. I would love to see the Korean war properly done in a flight sim. I do believe it is a very interesting conflict and would be a blast if properly done. In addition to that I think the Cold War would be a great place for DCS World to expand in the future. So many fun platforms and unique gameplay opportunities are there. As a content creator, are there any features you would like to see added to DCS? The biggest thing that I would like to see in DCS is an overhaul of the track system. It would really help with making cinematic content and allow me, and others to show off DCS in all its glory! Regardless of this issue I do plan to make more DCS content and look forward to what the future has in store for the sim. That will be it, thank you a lot for answering our interview! Is there anything else you would like to add before we conclude? I really do not have anything else to add! I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to come on here! It has been a pleasure. About the interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

I believe the term "more than meets the eye" might be the best way to describe my experience with Frontiers Reach so far. There's more going on with this game than even its Steam page lets on. It has been in development for at least two years now by Blind Alien Productions. Following a massive project shake-up in December 2021, Frontiers Reach hit its second wind after multiple significant reworks to the project's gameplay, flight model, story, and overall scope. Following the game entering beta on October 29th, 2022, Skyward Flight Media got in contact with the game's development team to get more information on the project and help identify some gameplay bugs. There are so many functions, customizations, plot points, weapons, galactic travel options, and other topics to discuss; I need more time with Frontiers Reach before attempting to summarize them all. I've been taking my time playing this game from beginning to end, but it's too early to write anything like a review. Instead, I'd like to discuss a few things that have caught my attention so far. Responsive Development Team An odd point to start on, sure, but highly important for any game at this phase of its development. Since I started playing Frontiers Reach, I've been surprised at how responsive the development team is to bug reports. Quick fixes to specific bugs or more overarching reworks are published within hours to a day or two after they are reported. Rather than hold off on creating massive quality-of-life updates every few weeks, a steady stream of updates has maintained the team's presence even among its beta testers and quality control team. There is plenty more work to do before the game can be considered complete, but seeing fixes and updates applied within such a short amount of time is heartening for any game in early access. Unexpected Story, Expansive Campaigns The initial story setting for this game is prime for the classic tale of the heroic fighter pilot singlehandedly winning the war. As mentioned in the introduction, in the year 2230, two human factions that control vast areas of space are preparing for all-out war. Here I assumed the player would take the role of a brave pilot bringing peace by skillfully defeating one side while flying for the other. But in Frontiers Reach, the player is not diving into danger for glory. Instead, they are attempting to save the lives of people living on the fringes of the known galaxy by avoiding the coming war. Here, victory is survival at any cost - even if it means stealing fuel, facilitating prison breaks, raiding mercenaries, or ambushing government patrol fleets. The ultimate goal is to flee to uncharted space before the war inevitably ravages entire star systems. The overall feeling of the story is heavy. The vagrant nature of the crew with few loyalties to anything, coldhearted objectives that involve breaking laws to save lives, and the sometimes frenetic combat make the experience invoke memories of popular sci-fi series like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. This was a refreshing change from the tried and true hero formula. Destroying a heavily defended fuel depot to cause chaos so you can slip into a factory to steal supplies later isn't a standard mission set you'll find in most flight games from the past or present. Surprisingly, this game has two single-player campaigns. The first campaign is linear and story-driven. It comprises 20 main missions with some side missions offered by allied characters between missions. This campaign introduces the setting and story while familiarizing the player with controls, game mechanics, managing resources, meeting the cast, and traveling across the galaxy. It is a complete campaign from start to finish, despite technically being the "introduction". By the end of the 20th mission, a second, more dynamic campaign begins, putting all decision-making power in a galaxy-wide conflict into the player's control. With 37 nodes (planets, locations in deep space, etc.) being contested by different factions, the second campaign is worth an article all on its own. You can be sure that I'll write thoroughly about it for my next article on this game. Advanced Controller Support The list of supported controllers is still expanding, with more settings for controllers being added by the developer. Today, custom keybinds for keyboard-mouse, gamepads, and flight sticks have been included. Including multi-USB controllers like hands-on throttle and stick controllers are something I plan on testing with a variety of sticks I have on hand. More on this later. Flight Model The current flight model has been completely overhauled from its earlier build. Even while flying the most maneuverable spacecraft available at this time, the smooth turning characteristics are notable. Epic turning battles with half a dozen fighters are commonplace. Most of the combat happens within blaster range (gun range). Even with the few guided missiles equipped, the fighting style is more like World War II or the Korean War. Expect to turn and burn for superiority in each mission. Depending on the throttle setting, a consistent turning radius can easily be maintained, letting players focus more on their maneuvers without getting too wrapped up in the finer points of flight you'd expect from a full-fidelity simulator. Turns can be enhanced by momentarily using the reaction control system to make course corrections or snap turns to catch adversaries off guard. With the reaction control system equally effective in the atmosphere and space, it's an ace in the hole for players under challenging situations. There is a considerable feeling of momentum and weight with each spacecraft. That's more apparent in some than others. Those factors help smoothen out gameplay from becoming so fast-paced and twitchy it is unwieldy. But in low-speed, low-altitude situations, it's one of the most significant hazards to players. Landing, searching for resources, and the admittedly difficult segments that require flying through buildings, space stations, and underground tunnels are much more dangerous than being fired upon. More than once did I find myself carefully flying slowly at 5+ degrees nose up in a system of caves to avoid early warning radars. Learning how to manage low throttle settings during low-altitude flight is a lesson learned through trial and error. Fortunately, the game allows players to respawn up to three times per mission without a checkpoint system that automatically saves progress. With Frontiers Reach still undergoing development in its open beta phase, I look forward to continuing the process of getting to know a game I should have checked out much earlier. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.

We have not only one, but two winners. Surprise! The results of our spur of the moment giveaway are here! Once again, the Google Random Number Generator was used to select the winners for this giveaway. The winner for this month's giveaway are: Blaireau tarnished (@palemoon_hunter) Tomtomb (Website Submission) Skyward Flight Media would like to thank everyone that participated and helped spread the word to others to participate! The winner will be contacted soon to begin discussing their prize. Here's to many more years!

In just a few days, Skyward Flight Media will be celebrating its third anniversary. Naturally there must be a giveaway! DIGITAL COMBAT SIMULATOR GIVEAWAY From March 20th, 2023 to March 23rd, 2023 we have a Digital Combat Simulator World giveaway. Taking advantage of the current sale, we are offering one (1) winner the prize of any map or module available in Digital Combat Simulator on the Steam or Standalone version of the simulator. The winner for the DCS giveaway will be contacted on March, 23rd, 2023. HOW TO ENTER This year, we have two ways to enter this giveaway. Follow SkywardFM on Twitter and like our pinned 3rd anniversary giveaway tweet. Retweeting is not required, but helping spread the word is appreciated. For those that do not have a Twitter account, they can fill out the Contact form on our website. Please include your Name and/or Screen Name, email address and that you are entering the giveaway, so we can contact you if you win. Skyward Flight Media will announce the winner publicly in a tweet and blog post on March 24th, 2023. Thanks for joining our giveaway and supporting our three-year celebration efforts, Skyward Flight Media Staff

The easiest way to describe what it provides is "task-focused gamification" without compromising simulation. While official Digital Combat Simulator World campaigns made by third-party developers are the gold standard, there are a lot of creative mission editors with names that may never be as well known as Reflected Simulations or Baltic Dragon. In July 2022, I was severely bitten by the DCS mission editor bug. With a demand for more dynamic multiplayer missions on Skyward Flight Media's DCS World server provided by Fox 3 Managed Solutions, I dove into the world of mission editing. While watching tutorials and meeting others with mission editor experience, the hot topic at the time was a mission known as Foothold by dzsekeb. I was downloading missions from the User Files section of the official DCS website to study them for inspiration, so I looked into the Foothold mission as well. A few months of multiplayer server management made me understand why large-scale dynamic multiplayer missions, like Through The Inferno, are so popular. When providing a large number of concurrent players with access to as many aircraft as possible and multiple sub-missions in a single mission file (.miz), it's obvious that only a massive scenario with just 1000+ units could fulfill that. These missions either continue forever with respawning objectives, or they're so enormous it may take up to a week to complete. The allure for players is the ease of flying with friends for a few quick sorties and little-to-no restrictions, but the nebulous mission structure doesn't have set terms for "a victory." Combat continues forever. Most of these missions are for fast jet fixed-wing aircraft with minor consolations for rotary-wing platforms in designated areas. In my opinion, the format of Foothold missions interests people because of a few key points that set it apart from the usual multi-faceted multiplayer missions. CAPTURING AND HOLDING TERRITORY From the start, the name "Foothold" denotes how the BLUFOR side starts with a single airfield to its name, while REDFOR controls multiple bases, airfields, oil fields, and other locations; they are referred to as "zones." In the F10 map, all friendly, hostile, and neutral zones are shown with a clear indication that the goal is to occupy all zones on the map. Players are the leading force against REDFOR, though a limited number of computer-controlled BLUFOR units assist with zone capture and defense. As other zones are captured, more allied computer units are launched, and in turn, hostile forces may launch counterattacks to reclaim lost zones. Territories can be captured and have their defenses upgraded by both sides. These areas are captured by removing all hostile units from them, then transporting supplies to them via ground forces or helicopters. After being captured by friendly troops, these zones can be upgraded through the same methods. Each upgrade adds more defenses to make them harder to be re-captured. Some of the captured zones have specific functions. There are forward deployed airfields for faster deployment into combat, Surface-to-Air Missile sites that can be upgraded with various types of missiles. Some facilities provide a passive kind of support that is a vital function of the Foothold mission style. POINT SYSTEM Players are incentivized to fight, survive and hold territory with a credit system. These credits can call in "off map supports" to counter against the overwhelming REDFOR advantage. The points of all BLUFOR pilots are added to a shared pool for all players to use at will with the radio menus. These supports include SEAD flights, fighter sweeps, cruise missile strikes, and time-limited AWACS. However, 100% of these credits can only be recovered when players successfully land at a friendly airfield or aircraft carrier. Even after the aircraft touches down, there is a ten-second timer before points are given to BLUFOR, leaving a small window for a botched landing to result in all credits the player just earned being lost. 25% of the credits gained during a sortie can be recovered if the pilot successfully ejects from their aircraft, but it is a fraction of the overall amount. Credits can be gained passively by capturing and holding zones like the oil fields and factories mentioned earlier. They provide the side that controls them with credits at a set rate of time, but their vital structures can be destroyed, which removes their ability to produce credits passively. Protecting or destroying them to deny their use is a part of a long-term strategy. HELICOPTER INCLUSIVE DESIGN Foothold missions give helicopters a place to shine. For logistics, BLUFOR relies on computer and player-controlled helicopters as the primary means to capture and upgrade zones. By either sling-loading supplies or "virtually" loading the supplies inside the helicopters, a handful of sorties can turn a basic defensive position into a well-defended forward arming and refueling point (FARP) for easier helicopter operations. Having a player that flies helicopters available can be a game changer since they can focus on rapidly capturing and upgrading zones faster than computer units can. In combat, they can remain near zones for extended periods using terrain to protect themselves, then fly to any nearby-friendly zone to resupply. As REDFOR sends their helicopters or land convoys to capture BLUFOR zones, helicopters can be the first defenders to respond because they can remain forward deployed. Pilots that have ejected from their aircraft can be recovered by player-controlled helicopters that choose to perform combat search and rescue missions (CSAR). By either landing near or hovering above the pilots, helicopters can pick them up and deliver them to nearby friendly zones. Recovering one pilot grants more credits than shooting down an enemy aircraft, making CSAR a worthwhile mission to fly. MODS SUPPORTED FOR LOGISTICS Adding aircraft mods to the mission is simple enough, but the mission has optional logistics functionality specifically for the UH-60L Black Hawk Mod and the DCS Super Hercules mod by Anubis. With one of the most capable transport helicopters and so far the only transport aircraft available for free, any player can get in on running logistics. The Super Hercules mod is particularly interesting because it can airdrop supplies into friendly or neutral zones, making capturing and upgrading zones farther from airfields a much faster process. REASONABLE ENEMY VARIATION While there are enemy combat air patrols, surface-to-air missiles and columns of armor to fight against, Foothold mission designs do not go overboard with modern weapons capable of shooting down aircraft 100 nautical miles away or intercepting allied launched missiles. There is a balanced mix of threats that still let less advanced aircraft be effective in combat. Even early Cold War aircraft or light attack aircraft like the DCS OV-10A Bronco by Dikennek/SPLIT AIR or the A-29B Super Tucano Community. can be used with success. AUTOMATIC SAVING As mentioned in the description of the User File page, Foothold missions automatically save progress locally, but servers for online multiplayer operations can be modified to save progress there as well. While this sounds minor, I can assure you that automatic save functions that retain players' progress on the server keep players eager to continue. DOCUMENTED CUSTOMIZATION Foothold missions are well documented for customization by mission editors with brief, understandable explanations on how to add new zones, name groups, and set up supply lines for computer units to upkeep. That's not to say that it's easy to modify an entire Foothold mission in just five minutes, but it's more accessible to begin the mission editing process. While Skyward Flight Media has mostly been playing the Caucasus version of Foothold, we have plans to start on the much larger Syria version soon. We recommend trying this mission with a close group of friends to experience its full potential. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. A lifelong aviation enthusiast with a special interest in flight simulators and games. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating aviation related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He continues to explore past and present flight games and sims with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. | Twitter | Discord: RibbonBlue#8870 |

Initially published 05/03/2022 // Minor Corrections: 3/11/2023 If you find yourself going to public servers in DCS World, you will find all sorts of people flying their favorite modules. Places like Hoggit's Persian Gulf at War, Growling Sidewinder's Open Conflict, Through the Inferno and the 4YA servers are the most popular ones as of the time of writing, with relatively high average player counts no matter the time of day. It is in places like these where one can take a glace at what the "average DCS player" flies, and it is only logical that some trends will start to show up. Evidently some of these trends will change overtime but for the past couple of years there have been two planes which have taken Digital Combat Simulator by storm. These two are the F-16CM "Viper" and the F/A-18C "Hornet". Go to the servers I mentioned previously and it will be evident that both of these modules surpass the others in terms of numbers. A lot of people seem to have taken a liking to these planes, myself included. But why? Today let's try to rationalize some of the possible reasons as to why these aircraft dominate DCS World. THE DEFINITIVE JACKS-OF-ALL-TRADES The multirole nature of these aircraft is, most likely, one of the main reasons behind their popularity. If you buy a Hornet or a Viper, your mission set is not set in stone. You can go against a swarm of enemy fighters, do close air support, reconnaissance, long range strikes and precision strikes. All of that with a single module? Sounds like a dream come true. Does this mean that these two are the best at every single role? Not by a long shot. If we were to talk about the king of beyond visual range (BVR) air to air (AA) engagements, then there is little that the F-14A/B has to envy from these modules. The same goes for more niche tasks like the dedicated low altitude air to ground role (AG) and anti-ship role which would be better served by module like the AJS-37 Viggen. But that is the point. You do not need all that specialty when you can do everything well enough. As the saying goes: "a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one" Both of these modules are more than capable of holding their own in almost every single scenario possible. There really is no compromise when it comes down to their armament. I have seen F-16s go on Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) mission and then running a Close Air Patrol (CAP) right after they have struck their target. I have seen Hornets hit an entire airbase by themselves and later dealing with the interceptors that were sent to dispose of them. Hornets and Vipers engaging an enemy fleet together is not a rare occurrence. They are also capable of being some of the best air to air platforms in the sim. The Hornet is infamous for being able to carry 10 AIM-120s, which is one of the best missiles in-game. The Viper has an unparalleled thrust to weight ratio, too. This allows it to lob missiles at distances that are only rivaled by what the F-14B can do with its Phoenixes. This is not a measure of realism or accuracy, it is just about the capabilities that these modules have in-game. THE "BANG FOR BUCK" RATIO This is an aspect which is usually not taken into consideration by more avid flight sim aficionados. Our hobby is an expensive one and when someone new to this world, there is a very important decision that they need to take: "Which module do I buy?" or "What should I spend my money on?" This is a question that which has an infinite amount of answers. Each person will have their own priorities and needs that lead them to choose an aircraft. For someone who is confident that they will be playing DCS World or any other simulator for a prolonged period of time, it is easy to just choose what they like at the moment and then get something else later. But, what happens when the person in question does not even know if they will be playing this simulator in the next 30 days? It would make sense for this person to get something that can show them what DCS has to offer. Two modules fit this definition perfectly: F/A-18C and F-16CM. The Hornet, in particular, offers every single mission set and situation possible, including being able to land and take-off from carriers. The same is applicable to the Viper, excluding carrier operations. At this point it is a matter of buying something with more bang for your buck, and that is exactly what these modules offer: A full perspective of the depth and richness of modern air operations in DCS World. As stated previously, both the Hornet and the Viper offer some of the best that DCS has to offer in terms of system modeling and depth. They are very easy to get started with but they are relatively hard to master, demanding you to read and research about their systems. You can cooperate with other aircraft with your datalink and targeting pod. You can do everything. Does this mean that these are the perfect starter aircraft? Yes and no. But, would you prefer having the capability of being able to learn something with what you own or having to buy another module just to have the chance of doing it? I will leave that up to you to decide. GLOBAL MILITARY AVIATION LEGENDS This is an intangible and emotionally-driven aspect, but it is one that certainly affects how we perceive aircraft. This will require me to get a little more personal. When I was little, I always got to see my country's F-16As and Bs fly by my house every time that we had a national holiday. When I look at the sky I can always see those distinctive silhouettes flying above me, a formation of three F-16s in a delta formation with their engines roaring and shaking the windows. It is only natural that I have grown attached to these machines, is it not? I might not be a supporter of my current government but those "Dragones" are one of the only military assets that make me feel something for my country. Seeing as the F-16 is one of the most common 4th generation fighters in the western world, I am certain that many others around the world have that same attachment. A memory of happier times when we would watch these planes soar high above at breakneck speeds, shaking the very ground we stood upon. This does not only apply to younger people, but to older ones too. Which should be evident by the time these aircraft have been in service. Unsurprisingly, airshow teams could also be a part of the reason behind the fame that these two aircraft have. The Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels fly the Viper and the Hornet respectively, with only the Blue Angels having changed to Super Hornets recently. Thousands upon thousands of kids and adults around the world have seen these demo teams perform incredible maneuvers with unbelievable precision. The same can be said about the RCAF's Demo team, the Turkish Solo Viper Demo, BAF's Solo Display Team, RSAF's Black Knights and the HAF's Zeus Demo! All of which take these aircraft to their absolute limit. Additionally, we cannot overlook the role that media plays in these attachments. Movies and TV series almost always depict the "good guys" with F-16s or something that looks like them and, whenever there is a carrier usually a Hornet follows shortly after. Of course, the elephant in the room here would be Top Gun's star: the Tomcat. It is obvious that the Tomcat is not only an aviation legend, but also an icon of aviation media. The same principle applies, it is this fame and perception we have of the aircraft that makes buying a full simulation of them that much likely. Which is is why a lot of people have bought the cat, too. Aside from it being one of the most complete and polished modules currently in the sim. That being said, the Tomcat does not really fit into the "bang for buck" category. It is one of the most expensive modules in the game and its usual discounts during a sale are lower than both the Hornet and the Viper. Furthermore, while it is capable of performing both air to air and air to ground missions, it lacks that full multi-role functionality even while having the Jester AI companion helping you out on your missions. Its weapon and mission set is very limited too, in comparison to the Hornet and Viper. It is one of my personal favorites, but I can understand why both the Hornet and Viper are more popular with the average DCS player. This does not mean that it is a bad beginner aircraft, quite the opposite, it is excellent due to jester AI managing all the systems for you. These three aircraft are icons and legends, but both the Hornet and Viper have a much more visible trail in the minds of aircraft fanatics all over the world. A fact that is backed by the amount of countries that have bought these aircraft, keeping them in combat roles to this very day and for decades to come. It is this presence and visibility that have engrained these airframes into our minds, making it so that it is much more likely for us to gravitate towards them. THE REIGN OF A BUG AND A SNAKE: A DESERVED ONE When it comes down to it, we will all like what our preferences lead us to and to what our life experiences have made us believe is the right choice. This "reign" of the Viper and the Hornet is not going to be everlasting. DCS World is a very dynamic sim in which aircraft are added constantly, all of them fitting a certain niche. It just happens to be that both of these aircraft fit well into most niches, lending themselves to be must-buys for any player. I do sense that a challenger to this reign is fast approaching, one that has been preparing itself to become either the next ruler or a new member of this ruling council. An aircraft as capable as these two but with some inherently unique features that make it familiar but distinct enough to the point that it can be a justifiable purchase for owners of the current ruling modules. The Strike Eagle is screeching and hunting for prey. We will just have to wait how complete and in which state this new bird of prey will launch. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

In a genre where speed is life, moments where you can sit back and take in the sights of the world as it passes by make you appreciate things. Floating on the ocean's surface just a few minutes after settling your aircraft on the water, the ambient activity of civilization and nature just seems enhanced. It has been about 11 months since The Brew Barons by Lifetap Studios completed its Kickstarter campaign, and I still return to its demo for a taste of the experience. The demo is certainly outdated by now. It has not received updates since March 2022, but it still represents the core of the gameplay experience and the overall concept. The developers have been heads down, working, albeit with seemingly few updates. While their social media accounts may not be posting a screenshot a day, they're hard at work. According to their Kickstarter updates and Discord conversations, the cast of flying brewers and bossy pirates has expanded with new skills, new characters, new side stories. Even a new ability for co-pilots to provide minor repairs while they are in the aircraft. Further visual upgrades to this already beautiful game have been paired with performance optimizations, resulting in a reduction of 2 to 3 GB of RAM usage. But between the VFX polish, new soundtrack and aircraft customizations, my mind remains focused on the ever expanding world. The Brew Barons' open world seaplane gameplay still has me swooning over possibilities. Even more so with a series of updates about how the open world is still expanding. A proper world map is under development to assist players with navigation, managing quests, brewing orders and deliveries. It shows the locations like ports, towns, bars, salvage wrecks and areas with known ingredients. Even the general locations of known brew pirate divisions. It's a vital tool in any open world game. The way the islands are generated in the playable portion of the open world. Using a random set of rules, all islands are generated only one time when a new game is started. Meaning each new game changes the locations of the islands and the locations of towns, ports, landmarks, salvage wrecks etc. This is an important step towards increased replayability. Also remember that some of these islands have the potential to have rather complex topography, an example of flying through caves was showcased quite some time ago. The single landmark in the public demo was a way to both encourage players to explore and expand the lore of the region. With more of them confirmed in development, it gives players a good reason to occasionally set aside their brewing jobs and explore every island they see. There is more life coming to the game as well. The already bustling towns with people traversing its walkways and boats sailing freely are being expanded with hot air balloons, ships at sea and even whales in the ocean. I'm especially interested in the floating markets that relocate themselves from time to time. After landing via sky hook, players can purchase uncommon goods and even have them shipped back to their base of operations. Even the amount of "less-than-friendly" life has increased. In the demo, a few brew pirate aircraft appear, but that's nothing compared to three new pirate divisions centered around armored warships, submarines, massive flying boats and an armored blimp - each of them with smaller escorts using similar types of vehicles. The wider variety of baddies to bash further adds to the life in the islands. On October 24th 2022 a delay moving the release date back into QI and Q2 of 2023, but with the additions made and further expansions to come, this delay for higher quality is hardly a concern. As stated in our previous content about this upcoming game, its greatest strength is letting its players indulge in a true aviation adventure. Crop buzzing, island hopping, soaking in the scenery, occasional bouts of combat and a bit of entrepreneurial spirit - it's the type of stuff adventures are made of. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.

Two free to download Skyward themed liveries for the DCS F-4B/C Phantom by VSN Century Series Digital Combat Simulator. Check out our first impression of this mod here . F-4B/C Skyward CAG Designer : Cubeboy Release Date : 2/3/2023 F-4B/C Skyward Low-vis Designer : Cubeboy Release Date : 2/3/2023

Flight simulation and flight arcade, as a genres, are vast. From casual entries such as Ace Combat to the full-fidelity representations of Digital Combat Flight Simulator, the spectrum of realism has no end. Some people prefer a casual experience, untethered by the shackles of realism; while others prefer feeling like they are in a virtual representation of a real aircraft that they have to learn and master to even be able to do the simplest of tasks. This is where a game like Tiny Combat Arena (TCA) comes into play. A mix of realism and casual gameplay, this game offers a plethora of fun scenarios for you to enjoy. Let's talk about TCA, its gameplay and features to see if it is a fit for you. DISCLAIMER: We were provided a pair of press copies by TCA's publisher, Microprose. There was no embargo or any strings attached. We had complete editorial control over this article. WHAT IS TINY COMBAT ARENA? If you want to learn about this game's past and its development, we highly suggest looking at our series of articles about TCA. This includes our full look at this game's history and a two part interview with its developer. With all of that out of the way, let's talk about TCA. TCA is a sim-lite flight game with heavy inspirations from flight simulators from the 1990's, if that wasn't evident by the art style. It reminded me a lot of the old Novalogic and Jane's games, but the game where it seems to have gotten the most inspiration from was Parsoft Interactive's 1996 title: A-10 Cuba! Something that the developer does not shy from admitting. At its core, TCA is a spiritual successor to these flight sims of old. From its gameplay style to its looks. It is quite unique in this, and I love how the developer managed to emulate this art style without compromising too much. The use of dithering to create opacities for materials is excellent. It looks great and, best of all, it does not feel unnatural. Here is an example of what I am talking about. Check the smoke, dust and explosions as they use this old-school rendering technique very well: GAMEPLAY AND THE HARRIER GAMEPLAY: Gameplay-wise, this game is both familiar and unique. Familiar in the sense that it integrates an instant action mission creator (Quick Mission Builder of QMB) that reminded me a lot of the one that IL-2 1946 has. You can select different pre-made scenarios (Strike, Dogfight and Free Flight), which you then customize to your liking. For the dogfight mode you can set distance to merge, situation (neutral, advantage or disadvantage), altitude and the general loadout for the aircraft involved. You can also set AI difficulty levels, which will determine their behavior during combat. It is pretty complete, and I can see myself using it quite a lot. As for Strike mode, there are also plenty of options to keep you entertained. The QMB is all fine and dandy, but it is not the meat of what TCA is all about. That title falls to the Arena mode. This mode can be seen as a pseudo-dynamic base capture mode. Two factions fight over control of several bases, fighting to capture them with their armored units as well as air support. A single map is available at release for both QMB and Arena modes: Sand Island. Living to its name, the map is not big. One could even call it tiny, but the game loop has been structured in such a way that you will not feel the need to wander around for long. In Arena mode, as you can see below, the map has 5 different bases. Your side spawns with two under your control, while the enemy has three. The arrows indicate the direction armored units are taking as you do not have direct control over their movement. These lines are as a pretty good indicator of where frontlines have been established. Your objective is to support your units and secure all bases for your side. Only then you will win. Simple yet entertaining. Ground units and air units do their own thing and move around, engaging enemy combatants at will. It is quite amusing seeing them in combat. THE HARRIER The only flyable aircraft in TCA, the Harrier will be your workhorse. It is capable of carrying insane amounts of firepower, both guided and unguided. While some people might be disappointed that all the other aircraft are not flyable, I sincerely do not mind it. Its flight model is quite realistic in the way that it behaves. You lose airspeed as you do tight turns, you gain airspeed on a dive. There is certainly a solid energy management game here, one where the aircraft does not feel like a paper plane that you can throw around like it weighed nothing. You will have to conserve your fuel and care about your stores because, after all, they are not unlimited. I had a lot of fun dogfighting against MiG-21s! The VTOL controls are a dream. Don't go thinking that they are exclusive to doing landings and take-offs. Just like with the real Harrier, you can move your nozzles mid-flight to make your turns tighter under certain circumstances, or just straight up move yourself on a different axis to set yourself for a shot. This is what Vector in Forward Flight or VIFFing is all about. EARLY ACCESS, BUGS AND THE FUTURE Despite all the praise that has been said, not everything is perfect. One has to be aware that this game released in Early Access so bugs and issues are to be expected. This in itself is not an issue as many games have done this before. The problem comes from a just a couple of bugs that just cannot be fixed, at least according to what I have talked with the developer. The first of these is a floating point precision error that occurs when the player moves in the vertical axis. The higher you go, the more it is noticeable. While it is only a minor annoyance at 5K feet, it really starts to show once you go above 15K feet. Here is an example of this error. The developer said that this problem is caused by the rendering/game engine limitations, so the further away you go from the origin point, the worse this effect becomes. It is not something that can just be patched out. The other bug is one that affected me personally, but might not affect you. It is related with controllers and the way the game currently sees input devices with negative axis controls. These lead to infinite acceleration, allowing you to go Mach 9.4 or more. I will not lie when I say that this bug frustrated me to no end, as I was unable to fly as I was meant to. It was borderline unplayable. I reconnected my controllers time and time again, resetting their bindings and remapping everything countless times. But there is is a good side to all of this frustration. This is currently being worked on by the developer, who has been extremely open when it comes down to addressing and fixing bugs that they community finds. As time moves on, I expect a lot of the major and minor bugs to be removed from the game as it receives more polish and content. Why485, the developer, has shown that he cares deeply about fixing and tidying up his game, something that is commendable in this day and age where the broken AAA games are the norm. CONCLUSION I have personally wanted for quite a while. A casual yet deep experience that threads the line between simulator and arcade. It is a fun game by nature, one that has a lot of promise. While it lacks content at the moment, I am sure that Why485 will add more maps, mission types and scenarios for us to enjoy as time moves on. A After 10 hours of flying it I can say that I sincerely enjoyed my time with the Harrier, too. Its systems are basically non-existent aside from having to manage fuel and keeping an eye on your ammo. Everything is gamepad friendly, yet, I still feel the same joy as I would feel from flying in a complex simulator such as DCS World. It is that balance that defines what TCA is. What we have here are some excellent foundations for an even greater game. Congratulations, Why485! About the author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

(REVIEW FIRST POSTED 04/02/2020) Released back in 2016 with fairly good reception the F-5E-3 "Tiger II" module by Belsimtek is one of the most popular for DCS World as of 2020, being a solid all-weather fighter with air to air and air to ground capabilities. It is an old module with a lot of limitations but at the same time a lot of features which make it an excellent beginner aircraft. In this review we will be taking a look into several different parts of the module and evaluating if this fearsome little bird is a fit for your style of flying. These points will be divided in several sections: External and internal 3D models Visual and sound effects Flight modelling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve Module content issues Is this aircraft for you? EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS A very important part of any module is the way that you, as a player, perceive your aircraft as a tangible and well recreated version of the real life counterpart. In this regard, we got a very detailed recreation of the aircraft when it comes to the external and cockpit models of the module. In the external model one can see that a lot of attention to detail was put into it from the air vent animations to the wing flex that happens when you maneuver harshly or while rolling around on the taxiway/runway. I have got to admit that this is a feature that I wish more modules had, as it is present on all the "must have" aircraft such as the F-14A/B, the F-16CM and the F/A-18C. There will be a video of this in action in the next section of the review. The cockpit model is good but not without flaws. Even though it is pretty accurately modeled, the textures are falling a bit behind when compared with the more modern modules such as the F/A-18C by Eagle Dynamics or the F-14B by Heatblur. Some parts feel too lifeless, lacking depth and reflections that are present in more recent releases. Here are a couple pictures, scroll around and judge for yourself. For example: the gun camera casing, which is one of the objects you will be looking at the most thanks to its location in front of the gunsight looks a bit too faded, like it lacked color depth and definition. This is mainly due to the age of the module now being close to 4 years old as the writing of this review, which would make these non-updated textures a relic of the older lighting engine present in DCS as the time of its release. VISUAL AND SOUND EFFECTS Something crucial for a simulator is the sound design, since it is one of the only ways that the player can receive feedback from its plane when the airframe is stressed due to high-G or high-alpha scenarios, while rolling down the runway or even when getting into a compressor stall. This is one area that the F-5E-3 does great and at the same time it lacks. External effects are great, you can easily hear the engine going through the entire RPM range and hear the distinct sound of the afterburners kicking in and feel their force, even though they are one of the weakest afterburning engines in DCS. Cannons have that characteristic sound that echoes through the canyons after you fire, accompanied with the smoke deflectors that make the smoke go over your canopy in order to avoid flaming-out the engines with the exhaust gases. Overall, fantastic. Animation-wise, here's one of the more notable examples of the wing flex that occurs: When it comes to the in-cockpit sounds, things are not as excellent as the external ones but still pretty solid. The flaws derive from a certain lack of feedback when clicking the switches or turning the dials, which can be somewhat frustrating. The engines are the main problem when it comes to badly designed in-cockpit sounds mainly because, when flying at higher speeds or at high-alpha scenarios, there is not a notorious change in sound when the afterburners are on. This can be troublesome during a dogfight when you have to keep visual with your enemy at all times and you can't afford to look at the fuel flow gauge or the instrument panel in general, which is the only reliable mean to know when you have passed the afterburner detent. Other modules such as the AJS-37 "Viggen" give you a very distinct engine sound when your aircraft goes into afterburner at the cost of realism. We as players need that feedback since we cannot feel the vibrations of the engine or the rumble of the wheels. Here is a recording at full in-game audio for both ground and in-flight engine sounds from the cockpit so you can judge this for yourself: EXAMPLES: Engine sound while on ground: ( Idle-->Full Afterburner-->Idle ): Engine sound while in-flight: ( Idle-->Full Afterburner-->Idle ): FLIGHT MODELING This is a make or break for the product since it is the most noticeable characteristic of every module. Thankfully, this is one of the most pleasant and good-feeling aircraft to fly in DCS. The Tiger handles like a glove and responds very well, even more if you have the dampeners turned on (although for fine control, I would suggest having them on at all times). The feedback from going into high-g and high-alpha scenarios is enough to tell you that you should probably ease up on the controls. Stalling the aircraft is genuinely difficult and even if you get into a stall it is very easy to regain control by applying the standard recovery methods. One thing to have in mind is that the F-5E-3 has a relatively low thrust to weigh ratio of around 0.58 with afterburners on which means that you have to conserve your energy well during a dogfight since you do have the capability to bleed it very fast thanks to the turning capabilities of the aircraft. In addition, the Tiger does not respond well to pitch down movements since it has very bad authority in that axis. Although some real Tiger pilots have said that the engines and the flight modeling feels "off" or "inaccurate", the FM behaves in a believable way and are pretty most accurate to what's on the manual. Each version of every aircraft will behave differently, so pilot feedback can either be the best feedback you can have or an outlier in the data. Most if not all users/buyers of this module would not have flown the F-5E, even less the F-5E-3 on the same exact configuration, making this flight model accurate enough for the purposes of DCS. In summary, there is a reason why this aircraft is used as an aggressor flying red air for the USAF and this is why. MISSION CAPABILITY Weighing only 10,659lb empty, this fighter is very lightweight but this does not mean that it lacks the fangs to rain death upon the skies with a maximum take-off weight of 24,663lb which means a lot of punch for such a small machine. And thanks to the drag chute, it is able to land almost anywhere but it will still need a lot of runway to take off. While it is indeed and all-weather fighter capable of day and night operations thanks to its AN/APQ-159(V)-3 Radar giving it night interception capabilities with the aid of an AWACS, it is restricted to WVR (Within-Visual-Range) combat since it lacks radar-guided missiles of any kind, no BVR (Beyond-Visual-Range) capabilities whatsoever. You also don't have a modern HUD (Head-Up-Display), everything is done through the AN/ASG-31 lead computing sight and its operational modes, which can be surprisingly accurate under the right circumstances. This is not a 4th Generation aircraft and it shows, but don't let that deter you from what this aircraft is capable of thanks to its loadouts which can be somewhat versatile and pretty powerful for such a small fighter. ARMAMENT M-39 20mm CANNONS: These two 20mm cannons are the most noticeable armament of the Tiger since they are one of its main means to attack both air and ground targets thanks to their versatility and reliability. Having 280 rounds each and firing in between 1500 to 1700 rounds per minute, these are surely going to provide you a lot of fun times annihilating MiG-21s and APC convoys. AIM-9 SIDEWINDER: These IR guided missiles are the only air to air weaponry you have in this aircraft so make sure to get used to them and their quirks. They might not be as maneuverable as you could like but they are still fairly useful when it comes to engaging aircraft that are at 2nm or closer. You have three variants at your disposal: GAR-8 / AIM-9B ( Rear-aspect early variant, very unreliable ) AIM-9P ( Rear-aspect with longer range, better boresight and G-loading ) AIM-9P5 ( All-aspect variant of the AIM-9P ) BOMBS You have a very good selection of GPBs at your disposal which allows you to obliterate almost everything that you could encounter. You have four GPBs in your arsenal: Mk.82 (500lb~) and its high-drag variant the Mk.82 Snake Eye (500lb) Mk.83 (1,000lb~) Mk.84 (2,000lb~) M117 (824 lb~) If what you want is to obliterate a bigger area you have the CBU-52B General Purpose Cluster filled with 220 BLU-61А/B bomblets. Finally, for precision bombing you have access to the GBU-12 (500lb~) Laser Guided Bomb. Of note, you cannot utilize this bomb on your own since you do not have an integrated targeting laser. You will require the assistance of either another player with an aircraft that has a laser designator or an AI JTAC to guide your bomb onto the target. ROCKETS Launching a salvo of rockets on top of a convoy is always fun, so it is good that you have 2.75-inch rockets available to spread death and destruction. There are two pods to choose from: LAU-3 ( Nineteen 2.75-inch rockets) LAU-68 ( Seven 2.75-inch rockets) AN/APQ-159(V)-3 RADAR Limited in range (40nm-5nm) and very susceptible to ground clutter, this radar is your eye in the sky that will allow you obtain target data for your gunsight for maximum accuracy. It is easy to use in its two main modes: Dogfight (DG) and Search. While in DG mode, your radar will act like it had a FLOOD mode by locking the strongest, closest target to the boresight of the aircraft letting you get fast and almost instantaneous gun solutions whenever you are in a pinch. DEFENSIVE EQUIPMENT Just as important as the capability of destroying your enemy is your ability to avoid being destroyed in the process. This is done through two main means: The AN/ALR-87 radar warning receiver (RWR) will notify you of any radar contact in its cone of detection and when one or more of those contacts have opened fire at you. This system is quite reliable and gives you some situational awareness unlike other planes that will be competing in the same category as you, such as the MiG-21. When you are indeed fired upon, your best friend will be your АN/АLE-40 countermeasures dispensing system, which consists of 15 flares and 30 chaff that are droppable in either single mode or multiples via programs. Additionally, you do have an IFF system (Identification Friend or Foe) but with the disadvantage of not being able to interrogate, but your allies can indeed interrogate you to avoid blue on blue situations. EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE The best thing about the Tiger is its cockpit flow design and shallow difficulty curve for basic operations. This aircraft does not punish you if you commit some mistakes here and there. It is very forgiving, reliable and predictable from its radar to its gunsight. Engine start up requires connecting ground power to the aircraft, but nothing about the process is either difficult or troublesome. Landing the aircraft is also very forgiving with help of the drag-chute, giving you the capability to land in shorter runways without the worry of a runway overrun. As long as you treat her nicely during landing and you do not smash her into the pavement like a navy pilot, she will treat you well. The main flight instruments are easily readable and the radar scope is very intuitive if you have ever operated a radar before. The RWR equipped on this aircraft is simple and easy to both read and interpret, giving the average player a tool that allows them to have a better survivability rate than with a Fishbed or a L-39. Weapon management is as simple as flipping a switch and pressing the trigger with the only difficulty being encountered while using the gunsight to bomb accurately, which can be solved by practicing by yourself or with the included training missions. I would recommend this aircraft to both new and old players just for this reason. I don't joke when I say that it is easy. MODULE CONTENT ISSUES This module has one main issue when it comes to what ships with your module when you pay for it, this being the lack of substantial pre-packaged single-player content. In fact, there is not a campaign that comes included with this module with the only ones available that were made by the developers being sold as separate pieces of DLC that require that you also have the NTTR (Nevada Testing and Training Range) module installed. It is only fair to compare this module to others of its price range such as the AJS-37 "Viggen" which comes with two campaigns that follow a very loose story-line, multiple single missions and instant-action scenarios. In the other hand, the Tiger II only comes with the expected tutorial missions, some instant-action scenarios and merely five dedicated single-player missions that can each be completed in around half an hour at most but typically take much less if the player is experimented with the platform. These modules are not cheap and most people have to weigh-in their purchases very carefully to get the best possible experience out of their modules, making this lack of content a net-negative category for what is an amazing module. IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module that has an easy learning experience with room for mastering your abilities. If you want a solid dogfighter that needs a more hands-on approach when it comes to maneuvering but that can still handle gunfights with powerful 4th generation aircraft such as the F-15C "Eagle" and the Su-27 "Flanker" in the hands of a good pilot. If you get satisfaction from bombing targets without all the blips and bloops of a HUD with a CCIP indicator and you have the patience to practice bombing approach patterns to secure those hard-to-hit targets. If you don't care about the lack of a campaign and are fine with the package that is included with the module because you eagerly away to destroy MiGs on the multiplayer scene. If all or some of the above is what you want then the F-5E-3 by Belsimtek will not disappoint. Images from: Official Flight Manual by Belsimtek and Santiago Cuberos. Area 88 skin (Shin Kazama) by Noel Shourai About the author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

ORIGINALLY POSTED: 09/30/2020 | SMALL UPDATES: 3/12/2022 Even predating Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) as a platform, the Ka-50 Black Shark has the longest history of any module out there. Initially released in 2008, the then standalone Black Shark module was a success. Later on it was improved with a subsequent update which made it the Black Shark 2 in 2011. But do not let its age trick you into believing that this module is not worth it, as there is absolutely no doubt that this coaxial helicopter is a staple aircraft of both DCS: World and Eagle Dynamics themselves for a reason. Today we will be taking an in-depth look at this module, its upgrades, its capabilities and its future so that you, the reader, can determine if this peculiar whirlybird is for you. For that purpose, this review will be divided into several categories: External and internal 3D models Audiovisual effects Flight modelling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve The future of the module Is this aircraft for you? EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS The Black Shark is a very unique-looking helicopter which can be identified immediately by almost everyone who knows a bit about helicopters. Fortunately, the in-game counterpart does this look justice. I was quite surprised by how detailed the external model was at first, since I was expecting a much lower quality model from a module that has its roots over a decade ago. It has lower resolution textures, for sure, but it is still good looking even after all these years. OLD BUT STILL DECENT The most detailed items on the external model are the lifting rotor mast and the cannon assembly. These two have higher resolution than some other details and they are pretty well animated for the time. It is worth noting that some of the default textures lack resolution and can not hold up to modern DCS standards, but it is not game breaking in the slightest. The cockpit, oh boy, the cockpit. At the moment, the Ka-50 has one of, if not the prettiest cockpits in the simulator thanks to the updated 3D mesh and high resolution textures it got earlier in February 2020. This all-new model has nothing to envy from much modern modules such as the Hornet or the Viper. It is simply a spectacle to see and a pleasure to use when compared to the older, very dated cockpit model. The fact that this came as a free update to all owners of the module is something I do have to applaud Eagle Dynamics on, that was a really good move on their part. Here are some screenshots of the cockpit, please scroll through them to see the different panels and how the illumination affects them. Overall, while dated, it can still hold up for a little while. At least until Black Shark 3 arrives with its complete overhaul of the external model, its textures, etc. AUDIOVISUAL EFFECTS In this category, the Black Shark has some pretty interesting effects up its sleeve. The external lights look pretty much how they should with the exception of the blade tip lights which seem to be a little bit too dim to really be noticeable. There are not any grandiose vapor effects like in the fixed wing aircraft but there is something interesting that was animated but I will mention it on the flight modeling section as it is more pertinent there than here. Sound-wise, the Kamov sounds a bit more muffled and quiet than other helicopters but as far as I am aware, that's something that all coaxial systems have. The lack of a tail rotor means less noise, naturally. This does not mean that it is "quiet" per-se as rotary wing aircraft are going to be loud even at a stand-still; but when comparing it to the Huey or the Mi-8, it is relatively quieter. Inside of the cockpit it is pretty easy to know how your engines are performing just by listening, which is excellent and something that other modules lack; primarily fixed wing aircraft. The different audio warnings and advisory alerts have distinct sounds making them easy to differentiate even in the middle of a combat situation. The ones you will be hearing the most are the rotor overspeed warning, engine overspeed warning and your radar altimeter; you will like to fly this bird low and fast so get used to those. EXAMPLES: A short hop, notice the blade sound and engine ramp up as I start taking off, then the radar altitude warning kicks in and then the blade sound as I stop myself to enter a hover): A fly-by at the Kamov's top speed, 305 km/h. You can be sure that the overspeed alarm was ringing like crazy. FLIGHT MODELING Before I start, I would like to clarify that I am mostly a fixed wing pilot. Most of my thousands of hours of flight sim experience have been with all sorts of fixed wing aircraft, not with rotary wing. I do not know the exact number of hours I have spent on rotary wing aircraft on both XPlane11 or FS2004, but I know it is not enough to say that I am deeply knowledgeable on how helicopters behave inside flight simulators but I can defend myself with them. So my opinion in this category is one that comes from a more amateur side, unlike my fixed wing reviews. I will not be judging its realism either as I have never flown a helicopter in real life, and the only "real" helicopters I have flown are mini-coaxial RC helicopters as a child. That being said, even being such a rookie, I decided to make the Ka-50 the first full-fidelity helicopter I have ever tried in DCS. I was immediately surprised by how different it felt from other helicopters I had tried in the past. It was very easy to hover thanks to the characteristics the coaxial system which eliminate many of the undesirable torque-related behavior of single rotor helicopters. The only downside I noticed at first glance was the poor yaw authority it had, which is another quirk of coaxials. It is a very acrobatic machine, regardless of the yaw authority issues it has. Be careful while flying as you can enter a vortex ring state or hit your blades. At high speeds, there is a noticeable reduction in agility but I would not suggest being aggressive during this scenario either way due to the behavior the rotors have when pushed to these scenarios. Excuse me if I am wrong, but from what I know this is because the faster you fly, the more the rotor rolls to counter the blade's roll tendency. If you pull up on the cyclic, even just a couple of degrees, your blades will impact each other and your helicopter will not be more than a glorified hunk of metal barreling towards its fiery grave. At least you can eject from it. The Ka-50, being a single seat helicopter, had to be designed with pilot comfort in mind as the pilot had to also serve the role usually assigned to the gunner in other attack helicopters. For that reason, it has a very friendly autopilot system which acts as both an actual autopilot which follows waypoints as well as a stability enhancement system which helps the pilot through the entire flight envelope of the machine, even featuring an auto-hover mode. This helicopter is friendly to fly thanks to its coaxial system, its autopilot and its responsive collective controls. It is a fast and mean machine which taught me how fun helicopters can be. MISSION CAPABILITY This helo excels at what it was designed to do, which is to attack enemy armor while being able to perform reconnaissance of enemy positions and passing that information to allied units through its datalink. It is a front-line helicopter through and through. Of course this doesn't mean that it isn't capable of performing other more generalized tasks such as cargo lifting. Unlike the Mi-24P, the only task it can not perform is troop transport. THE "SHKVAL" TV SENSOR This front-mounted camera suite is what allows the Ka-50 to engage from a relatively extended stand-off range. It gives the pilot the ability to do target designation, recon and self-lase to use the beam-riding anti-tank missiles. When used alongside the "ABRIS" Advanced Moving Map System, it could allow several Ka-50s to communicate between each other sharing the intel they have gathered. This alongside the Helmet Mounted Sight (HMS) makes it easy to plan ahead and engage on the spot. The Black Shark can be just as scary as it is sneaky. I can plan ahead with updated enemy info provided through datalink, attack a target while popping in and out the terrain leaving the enemy wondering what happened. All without having to rely on in-game tools such as the F10 map or anything like that. That's just awesome. ARMAMENT SHIPUNOV 2A42 30MM CANNON A weapon which is shared between helicopters and APCs, this dual-fed cannon is a devastating weapon. Capable of utilizing both HE and AP shells on the same loadout, it offers versatility on the battlefield. You get 240 rounds of HE and 220 rounds of AP. AT-9 VIKHR (9А4172) ATGM This peculiar missile will be your main anti-armor weapon as you will have 12 at your disposal if you load two of the APU-6 launchers. With a pretty decent range between a half and eight kilometers during daytime conditions, these missiles are precise and get the job done. Kh-25 LASER GUIDED MISSILE This is the largest and deadliest single weapon you can carry on the helicopter. Possessing the longest effective range and the most precise delivery method, this missile is a must when you want to ensure that your target will not get away. I mean, this missile is indeed capable of sinking medium-sized ships under the right conditions! UNGUIDED ROCKETS When precision is a relative matter, these pods can pulverize an entire city block full of MRAPs without breaking a sweat. And you get different sizes to choose from too. From the 80mm S-8 rockets to the larger 122mm S-13. UNGUIDED BOMBS Although not the most effective weapon carried by a helicopter, you do have the option to carry both FAB-250 and FAB-500 unguided bombs as well as bomblet dispensers. Accuracy is completely out of the question with these weapons as you mostly have to rely on the good ol' Mark.1 Eyeball to determine the impact zone. Just like in ye old days. UPK-23 GUN PODS These are the most fun weapons to use, second to the unguided rockets. These are for those occasions in which you need the power of two GSH-30MM cannons apart from your own internal cannon. These have the same cannon as the one mounted on the MiG-21s, by the way, so these do not play around. Ammo is quite scarce, make it count! DEFENSIVE AND SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT Flares, flares and flares. This helicopter has one hundred and twenty-eight flares, sixty-four per dispenser. You can rest assured that if an Igla comes straight at you, the least of your worries should be running out of flares. You also have a more discrete but equally effective defensive system in the form of your L-140 Laser Detection System. Being composed of several laser sensors, you will know when someone is painting you with a laser and from where, allowing you to evade accordingly. But, if everything else fails and you found yourself trapped inside a flaming chuck of metal, you have one last line of defense to ensure your survival.The K-37-800 ejection seat means that, if you are still alive inside of the helicopter, that at the very least you will have a way out. Before ejection, all of the blades are blown away by explosive charges to avoid collision. It can be quite spectacular seeing it happen, just hope it does not happen to you! EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE This helicopter is, in my honest opinion, the easiest one to get into. It has a lot of computer assistance and the lack of noticeable torque effect makes it infinitely simpler to fly than all the other helicopters available in Digital Combat Simulator. When it comes down to flying, those helicopters are more about the cyclic and rudder inputs to keep control of the aircraft. The amount of videos I have seen of people dying (both in-game and of laughter) in the Huey while trying to hover it for the first time is immense. And do not get me wrong, I like those helis as much as I like this one. But for a newcomer, the Kamov does feel a lot more friendly and intuitive. The only tricky part for me was getting used to using the trimmer, but that was about it! If I, a relatively amateur heli pilot, can fly it even from outside the cockpit to get shots like this; I am sure most other people can. Navigation is easy too, thanks to the "ABRIS" Advanced Moving Map System. The map is easy to read and pretty useful for almost everyone. Overall, this helicopter is a wonderful little machine engineered to be simple to use. You have some training missions as well as a few campaigns to practice with, but as far as I have seen, the campaigns have not been updated in a long time making them kind of broken with the current terrain. Just be mindful of this when going in. THE FUTURE OF THIS MODULE Just like it just happened with the A-10C module as of time of writing, the Ka-50 is also receiving a paid update later in 2021. This update will not only add a new and improved external model made to the current DCS standards of quality but it will also add new capabilities such as the ability to carry air to air missiles, updated sensors and much more. We do not know much about the current state of development for the Black Shark 3 module, but we do have a couple of screenshots of the WIP updated external model. It's looking pretty good so far! I have high hopes for this release. It should be able to fix most grievances I personally have with the current module by and maximize the enjoyment factor of this wonderful machine. UPDATE (MARCH 2022): As of the writing of this update, we still do not have our hand on Black Shark 3 (BS3) module. A lot of things have changed since the writing of this article. The initial feature proposal has been reduced due to a change in Russian legislation. This means that we are not getting certain features anymore, the extent of which we still do not know. What we know is that we are still getting an updated Black Shark, one with better sensors and a much needed overhaul to the external 3D model. The last look we had of this new model was during the New Year 2022 trailer. Here it is: For now, all we can do is wait. But rotary wing fans will have a new toy to play with, the Apache. It is slated to release during March, and the product has "gone gold" already. IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU If what you want in a module is: A fun and exciting aircraft. To dominate ground forces from a distance. A solid flight model with some interesting quirks A unique flight sim experience. If you don't mind: Getting used to a new type of aircraft. The lack of air to air weaponry. The dated external model. Being bullied for becoming a rotary wing fan. If all or some of the above is what you want, then ED's Ka-50 Black Shark 2 is for you. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

To say that this module has been highly anticipated by the community would be an understatement. Well over a year after first being teased and numerous delays, we finally have our hands on the AH-64D in its early access period. As it is an early access (EA) product, this will only be a first impressions article. We will only be talking about the features that were available at launch. We will also update this article as features are released, so stay on the lookout for that. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL MODELS The external model is extremely detailed, as would be expected from a flagship-type product from Eagle Dynamics. Almost every single aspect you can think of has been detailed to an absurd level. It is, sincerely, one of the prettiest models I have seen in DCS so far. I can not say I am surprised by this level of detail, but I am glad that we have it in game. Below you will find a gallery with the model from several angles. There is something that I personally found to be a bit lacking with this external model: Its unwrapping. Texture-wise, it has an extremely unintuitive layout. For simple things such as emblems and basic decals, it is fine. The bigger parts of the model are flat and not super segmented. The problem lies in the details, quite literally. As someone that enjoys making liveries, this one has me divided as to if I will ever tackle complex camouflages or not. On a more positive note, let's take a look at the cockpit model. It is nothing short of beautiful. Its textures and details are absurd. The more you zoom in, the more details you will find. Subtle dirt build-up around knobs and buttons, scratches on the panels and exposed primer. Even the colored reflection that the screens have once they are hit by indirect sunlight is there. ED, stupendous job with this model. Kudos to the hardworking 3D and 2D artists! FLIGHT MODELING First, I will clarify that I am not a certified helicopter pilot nor do I hold any licenses. I will not be judging its realism either; as I have never flown a helicopter in real life, and the only "real" helicopters I have flown are mini-coaxial RC helicopters as a child. But, that being said, I have spent quite a lot of time with simulated helicopters in DCS. The Apache feels stable and is stable, once you get used to the way its trimmer works. If you do not have a force feedback (FFB) stick, then please do yourself a favor and change the trimmer options in the Apache's Special menu to Central Position Trimmer Mode, as this mode is more tailored to the average non-FFB HOTAS. With that said and done, I find the Apache to be an incredibly agile bird. She just... moves the way I want her to. She has been modeled, according to people that know a lot more than I do about Apache flight dynamics, extremely well. Effects such as ground effect, VRS and even realistic settling with power situations have been implemented. The effects of torque feels realistic enough that I will not even complain. It is that good! Still not perfect, but an excellent start. Hovering her is extremely easy once you get that trim just right. The only aspect that took me a bit off-guard is the fact that this is the slowest attack helicopter in-game. With a full combat load (eight Hellfires, two rocket pods and around 75% fuel) I can only achieve a maximum of 135Kts on level flight. This is still faster than a Huey but it is slower than a Mi-24P (170/180kts) or a Ka-50 (165/175kts), both of which with similar combat loadouts and fuel loads. This limitation will only be a hindrance on longer flights, but I am sure that with good mission planning it will become unnoticeable. SYSTEMS MODELING AND GEORGE AI This is what the Apache is all about. Its systems are the most advanced of any western helicopter we have gotten so far, and rival or surpass those available on the Ka-50. This is not a module that you can pick up and learn on a single sitting, no sir. You will need to set some time aside to learn how to navigate its displays, targeting modes, weapon delivery modes, etc. You have an all-weather capability as well as one of the best if not the best night fighting capabilities of any helicopter in DCS at the moment. The Apache rules the night thanks to its night sensors and integrated displays within the Integrated Helmet and Display Sighting System (IHADSS). If you want something dead, it will most likely die. As it stands right now, this helicopter is capable of quite a lot but we are still missing some critical systems such as Link16 (Datalink) integration with other modules, numerous system display pages and, most worrying of all, its signature Longbow radar system along its radar-guided Hellfire variant. These systems will be implemented as the EA period progresses and I have no doubt that ED will deliver on these promises. But enough of this, let's talk about the elephant in the room: the George AI. George AI is the computer companion system that allows you, as a lone pilot, to operate a strictly twin seater aircraft. When you sit at the controls, he will be your co-pilot/gunner (CPG), managing all the weapon systems for you. All you have to do is instruct him on what to do using the relatively intuitive interaction menu and you are good to go! When you sit as a the CPG, George will handle the flying for you. He is a bit rough around the edges when it comes to flying, but if your commands are clear and not sudden then he manages it like a champ. I sincerely expected him to be a lot worse at flying than what he is, it makes me wonder what kind of black magic is happening in the code to make him fly like this. WEAPONS M230 30MM CHAIN GUN The only weapon system that you will always have on-board, this cannon is lethal all the way to 1.500m. Thank to its capability of being controlled both by the Target Acquisition and Designation Sight (TADS) or the IHADSS, it is extremely versatile when it comes down to self-defense and engagement of unarmored targets. HYDRA 70MM ROCKETS Your standard, run-of-the-mill unguided rockets. There is nothing special about them. They will do what rockets do: fly fast and explode upon impact! AGM-114 HELLFIRE The main weapon system of the Apache, these missiles are capable of penetrating anything that you fire them at. For now, we only haver access to the AGM-114K, the laser guided variant. Once the Longbow radar is implemented, we will get access to the radar variant of the Hellfires: the AGM-114L CONCLUSIONS If what you want is to have a helicopter which basically flies itself, one that has the capability to destroy every single target imaginable both during the day and at night. If you don't mind it being an Early Access product, the lack of crucial systems and the slower than average speeds for an attack helicopter. Then and only then, I can truly say that the Apache is for you! About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Flight simulation is a surprisingly diverse when it comes down to player-base diversity. From teens, late-teens all the way to young-adults and adults. This means that they all coexists in the virtual skies we all fly upon. I have met some incredible friends that, regardless of age and demographic, are a blast to play alongside with. I have found that, in my years of observing and being part of several communities for a variety of games and titles, the ways that someone can find enjoyment inside of a flight simulator are almost limitless. Civilian-focused sims are some of the finest sandboxes to get lost in, something that is even more noticeable now with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and its almost 1:1 replica of the blue dot in the sky we call home. DCS World is not exception to this rule. I have seen some people enjoy it for the search and rescue missions, others for the relaxed feeling they get for flying a warbird or the thrill of modern combat and some for the detailed single-player campaigns. While limited in its possibilities, DCS offers an amazing set of tools for you to enjoy flying over the skies of the Caucasus, Nevada, the Persian Gulf, Syria the Mariana Islands and even the English Channel! While there are some that worry exclusively about performance data, flight models and the newest "meta" in DCS, you should never feel guilty about liking what you like in DCS World. Do you enjoy flying warbirds at breakneck speeds over the Channel hunting the Luftwaffe? Then go for it! Are you one of those that enjoy flying helicopters and going on precision PvE strike missions alongside your buddies while they fly top-cover for you? Then you would probably fit well on my friend group. Or are you one of those that actually worries about the competitive aspect of DCS, learning the minutia of each and every modern competitive aircraft, including how to properly notch missiles from every range? Then you are probably more skilled than I am. But never, never let someone else tell you how you should or should not enjoy your time when you fly in DCS. You do not have to feel the need to be the best pilot in the sky or the one that knows every single system. If you have that need, then let it be a personal one and something that you personally want to strife for. My heart breaks every time I see someone online say that they were interested in DCS World but were intimidated by its community. That perception that your typical DCS player is an armchair fighter pilot who acts like a know-it-all is one that we need to get rid off. So, please, if you want to try DCS, do it. Do not be intimidated by the shadow of elitism that looms over DCS World. It is a game at the end of the day, and games are meant to be fun. Some of the best moments that I have had in DCS have happened while flying in challenging but unusual ways. Yesterday night I had one of those moments alongside my friend Erika, as we flew the A-29B Super Tucano mod together. Everyone else was flying jets but we decided to venture head-on into the fight with a pair of turboprops. It was a blast and I would do it again, no questions asked. So stop worrying about how good of a pilot you are or if you should be flying something else. Enjoy what you do, and aim for what you want to aim. Let yourself enjoy your time upon the virtual skies. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

It has now been two years since aviation established a footing in VRChat (VRC). It is a number that rolls easily off the tongue but that carries with itself a very important connotation. It means that, despite all odds, aviation related communities are not only alive but have been growing immensely. I personally didn't get into VRC until mid-last year, when I got my hands on an Oculus Rift S thanks to my good friends Aaron and Cody. My initial expectations for the aviation worlds was low, mostly because I knew that VRC was not built with vehicles or aircraft in mind. I could not have been more wrong with my expectations. I could have never anticipated what awaited me. Note: Thanks to VTail for aiding with most of the screenshots present in this article! AN UNEXPECTEDLY GOOD EXPERIENCE Instead of broken planes and barely flyable machines, I found an impressively well developed flight system. I was extremely surprised at how intuitive the controls were, since they utilized the VR controllers and their position in relation to a relative zero to emulate a flight stick and throttle. The rest of the actions (gear, flaps, missiles, guns, etc.) were performed using action wheels, akin to the ones you would see on console titles, which you controlled with the joysticks on the controller. It was a great experience. Like many, my first experience with these planes and the system that drives them was in the showcase world made by the creator of this flight system, Test Pilots. Made by Sacchan, who we have interviewed previously, this world showcases the SaccFlight system that he created with a variety of aircraft that were modeled either by him or Sagi-chan. These aircraft are extremely fun to fly, which is evident by the amount of people that have favorited the world surpassing +185,000 as of the time of writing, with a visit count in the 3.8 Million range. An absolutely impressive amount that I was not expecting from an aviation world. This is where things get interesting. Since Sacchan's pre-fab is public, this has led to a flood of creators to hop onto the aviation train. This is the aspect that interests me the most about VRC Aviation: Its community. THE COMMUNITY For a socially-focused game like VRC, it is only natural that communities will be formed. Since the start, there have been several communities within VRC Aviation that have dedicated themselves to creating content. For the most part these communities are English-speaking, with the second largest cluster being the Japanese-speaking ones. From the extremely serious Japanese VRC Flight Academy to less serious worlds that let people just fly together and relax, the amount of worlds is absolutely mind-blowing. It has been a blast being around people from South East Asia, Europe, India, Africa and the Americas, mostly when all of us share this passion for aviation, to a certain degree. I have spent most of my time in VRC with some of the independent creators and users as well as with a lot of the members/admins from the VRC Black Aces, one of the biggest communities currently in VRC Aviation. They are an interesting bunch to hang around, since many of the admins are involved in world creation themselves. There is always something going on. Be it someone needing testers for their new aircraft or someone that needs to verify that a new feature works as intended. These are almost daily occurrences. Of all these creators, there are a some with whom I interact with more. Riko and NON (both being the Black Aces head admins), Zweikaku, Erika, Zhakami Zhako, Ahri, Raptoritasha, VTail (the one who generously provided most of the screenshots used in this article), Sagi-chan, Uni Power and even Sacchan himself. There are more, of course, I most probably missed a couple of people here. Not everyone mentioned above is from the Black Aces, keep that in mind. As to the Black Aces, just like other communities before them, have been organizing events and get-togethers. This is an aspect of VRC that I was already familiar with as some of my earlier exposures to VRC Aviation prior to my direct involvement with the community were through these events, as I did attend a couple alongside Aaron and Cody. EVENTS, AIRSHOWS AND TOURNAMENTS This is, to me, the most exciting part about VRC Aviation and the one that differentiates it from any other virtual aviation experience out there. It combines the social aspects of VRChat with aviation in just the right ways to form an experience that you cannot get anywhere else. Be this a free-for-all dogfighting event, a full-on airshow or a ranked tournament. I have never seen a place where you can have this much direct interaction with participants and other community members. I suspect that this is due to the immersion and depth that VR brings. There are other games with similar events and communities, one of these being DCS World. But DCS airshows are presented on livestream format by big communities, forcing you to only witness it from the ground as if you were watching an actual airshow from your TV. In VRChat, this is not the case. Aside from the 80 person per instance limit, everyone is welcome to join the Black Aces airshows and events. As a spectator, these shows are a blast. You get to see some rare aircraft that you can only see in the virtual realm, as they no longer fly or have been destroyed. You also get to see them up-close and personal as the real life airshow restrictions are nothing but a joke in VRC. Extremely low passes at supersonic speed, tandem cobra maneuvers in front of the audience and some pretty unique formations. All of that while in VR, giving you a sense of depth that you can only get with that block of plastic strapped to your head. I have participated as a pilot in two of these airshows and all I can say is that this is the only experience that has motivated me to learn more aerobatic flying. You can see me above flying as number 3 in that 5-man formation doing the break. That event was a blast for me, as we rushed practice since I was only a back-up pilot for that position until the actual person was unable to fly that day. I got an intensive course, got accustomed to the routine and everything went as planned. The other occasion was a bit more special for me, though. I got to fly the An-225 only a couple of days after it was confirmed as destroyed during the ongoing Ukrainian-Russo War. We wanted to honor the memory of that giant of aviation and what better way to do it than letting people have a look at how it would have been to have that aircraft fly overhead. I planned out the route for the final pass as that is when we wanted people to see the Mriya. As I was the center of attention, I got to fly as flight-lead for that formation. I was immensely excited and nervous since I had one shot to get it right. You can see the results below: This brings us to the tournaments. I never expected to see a competitive scene rise in VRChat. Yet, here we are. Several communities arrange and regulate independent tournaments. The ones I follow the most are the ones that the Black Aces organize. They started small, with only 20 or so people signing up for their events but have grown exponentially since then. The last two tournaments have been particularly big for VRChat, which even forced the organizers to split the participants in elimination brackets divided by block. This was due to having 80 or so participants per event, which would break any sort of acceptable experience due to performance reasons. They have livestreamed these events to their YouTube channel. They are particularly exciting and surprisingly well organized, even if there are a couple of hick-ups here and there behind the scenes. I even participated as one of the commentators for last tournament's finals. It was an exciting event with lots of impressive maneuvers performed by the participants. Here's a couple of shots from the last two tournaments, which had F-14Ds and MiG-29As respectively. Additionally, I designed the tournament liveries! MY PERSPECTIVE For me, this community has been a breath of fresh air. I mostly come from the DCS World side of things, where elitism is not only prevalent but just an inherent part of the community, as I stated in my last article about letting yourself love your own play-style. It is one of the reasons why I do not really interact with the greater DCS community. In VRC, specifically the creator side of things, I expected much of the same. I couldn't have been more wrong. People are constantly helping others out, sharing their code and experience because they want this community to grow and learn. No one here is doing anything for money, everyone is here because this is a passion of theirs. They have even motivated me to start learning Blender and take up VRChat world development. I have actively pursued the first part by starting to model an aircraft that my friend, Hueman, and I have been designing for quite a while now. It's Hue's original design with my take on several aspects, but it will be ready and flying in a Skyward-themed world at some point in this year. That is the plane model you see above, which is the state of the asset as of the time of writing. This community has been unexpectedly welcoming. In fact, the word "unexpected" can be used to describe most of my experience in VRC Aviation so far. I cannot wait to see what these guys make in the future, as everything I have seen until now has been nothing but impressive. Fly skyward and fly safe. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

There are only a couple of people whose work has made me reconsider what was possible in a game. One of these people would be Zhakami Zhako, an indie developer who basically redefined the way I looked at VRChat (VRC) world development. We had the chance to talk to him about his development endeavors in VRC, the systems he has developed and what his plans are for Project Fairy, the Yukikaze fan-game he has been developing in VRC for the past two years. How has he developed what can be summarized as a full-on desktop-compatible indie game inside of another game? Let's find out! First off, we’d like to thank you for accepting our interview request. Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about what you do? Hello. I’m Kim S., also known as “Zhakami Zhako”. I’m just a programmer with some odd… habits. I do programming stuff, as well as home door-to-door PC maintenance and Unity in my free time. What is your background as a software developer? Anything you would consider noteworthy? I’m a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, and basically been with the industry for 4 years and counting. Currently I’m working with my second company and I’ve been developing Web-based apps (like React.JS, Vue.JS), API servers (involving Spring-boot, Node.JS), mobile apps that’s usually based on Javascript (AKA React-Native & Native-Script) and microcontroller related systems (like Arduino). I would probably say that the fact we’ve released two games (just very simple ones), built a wallet system, as well as a job finder app and a catalogue app which has been quite an achievement for me. How and when did you get into VRChat? Were you always interested in creating content for VRC or did something motivate you to do it? It was back then around 2020 when the COVID pandemic arrived and we were stuck at our homes doing nothing. Although I’m not that sociable, I always wanted to try out VRChat to try and meet new and all kinds of people. It was quite sluggish at first; trying to blend in, finding your first preferable avatar and like real life, trying to find your group. After a while, I met a couple of people (HolyKnightAD) who introduced me to Sacchan. At the time, Sacchan was working with his first few iterations of his flight System, SaccFlight. At first you can only fly arcade style with basic controls like Roll, Pitch, Yaw using the left and right analog sticks (Or WASD on desktop) and holding down Trigger (or shift) to control the throttle plus you didn’t have health nor gun damage. Even at the early state of the system at the time, it mesmerized me. I never thought that this kind of content creation was possible in VRChat; let alone programming something like this in VRC. After a while, a few friends (HolyKnightAD and Zweikaku, VRC World Creators) started making their own aircraft worlds. That made me think: ‘If I make my own aircraft world… It has to be a bit different.’ So I chose Yukikaze as a theme. I started researching how to get models, if there are free models, and how to extract things. It made me start learning how to use Autodesk 3ds Max, Blender, Unity, even hex editing just to get certain contents from the main game itself. Ever since then… I’ve been somewhat competitive but never properly released worlds. But here I am right now. You are quite the fan of Yukikaze, the sci-fi aviation book and anime series. How did you get into the series and what would you consider to be the best entry point for someone trying to get into it? Back then when I first encountered Yukikaze, it was just a random game that I found on the internet. I gave it a try and “holy crap, I love the Super Sylph”. Albeit the game felt rushed, there was something in me that kept telling myself “Man, the game feels rushed or unfinished. I wonder what if it had more.” I started to look for everything that’s related to the game. I saw that the anime actually exists; I’ve watched it for the action scenes (since I was a kid back then) but there were some things that I couldn’t understand. It would depend on one’s preferences. Starting from the anime then to the books has some sort of a different impact compared to reading the books then watching the anime. I’m pretty sure some people who have read the books then finding out that an anime of it exists definitely would make people feel excited about it and try to expect things like what happened on the book to be in the anime. Whereas watching the anime first, then reading the book would give you a different approach like... finding out why this happened in detail, what happened further in detail and what were the thoughts of each character when this and that happened... as well as being surprised when the anime had a different interpretation and delivering a different outcome compared to the book. Personally, I have a different impression since the order for me was playing the game first, watching the anime, then reading the books. I had zero idea of what Yukikaze was all about, zero knowledge of Japanese (since the game was 100% in the Japanese language) and used context clues in order to interpret what was happening around the game. Then I watched the anime and understanding what was happening, and ‘extending’ further on what happened after the last mission of the game, then reading the book to see more in depth details of what exactly is happening inside the crazy world of Faery. It even surprised me that the DACT mission of the game between the player and the Fand-II had further interesting scenes that happened in the book, and never was shown in both the anime and the game. As well as what happened to the “Public Information” mission where Fukai and Randy got themselves into a different dimension of a JAM area, (*spoiler alert, Randy lost his arm*) (P.S. I don’t find the interaction between Maj. James Bukhar and Lt. Fukai as gay when i first watched the anime as to how others interpreted it. I find them as buddies taking too much care of each other) I would probably like to talk about the canceled missions of the original game at some point. There were some interesting findings on unused content, unused audio files and the mission titles that I’ve found; especially “FRX99 DACT”,“ASAT”, “In Earth Air”, “Scramble”, “Operation Omega”. Your flagship project right now is Project Fairy, a Yukikaze fan-game inside of VRC. How did this project start and for how long have you been developing it? It started back in 2020 when I was developing the AI’s and the Trigger system in Project Fairy and as I went along, I kept re-watching the series again as I worked with VRC World development. When I began this project, I only wanted to create a world that has planes and free flight. But as I’ve progressed further and the more I ‘wanted’ more things in it, certain questions came popping in left and right. Like “what if I make users experience what the people in Fairy experienced when fighting the JAM?” and “can I recreate scenes from the anime?” I began by making a world that has a dialogue system (aka the trigger system) and the AI’s, which is the current public world called "Fairy Air Force". Albeit that I’ve released it, it felt like I’ve rushed it, or rather... it felt too janky. Sure, the idea was to play cooperatively by spawning AI’s around and fighting an ‘enemy’ Banshee, however... people did not seem to appreciate it at the time. And ever since then, I haven’t updated it for almost a year. Synchronization sucked at the time, networking was too janky, and it felt too heavy on performance. When that happened, I changed my perspective. I wanted to make it into a single player world. The plan back then was to make it a concept world, rather than a “first episode”. Despite being a concept world, I wanted to give it my all. I began imagining the hangar of the SAF. Lights turning on and making a dramatic entry; as based on how the anime depicted it. Then I began looking into the concept art of the anime, the concept art of the SAF underground hangar... then began modeling and texturing the hangar. Personally, I don’t have skills when it comes to modeling. I’m still learning. UI elements such as the HUD, indicators and other things were made from scratch with a mix of Photoshop and Blender. The hangar at first was meant to be some sort of a hangout or sightseeing place at first, since I did not know what to do with it. Or rather, I did not have the rest of the systems to make it work or the skills to detail things further especially the elevator. Until magically, Sagi-chan (VRChat aviation focused aircraft modeler) appeared out of nowhere, asked me for the concept art papers and ultimately gave me a very detailed hangar elevator. I’ve taken clips from the anime, mix and matched and improved the trigger system for the dialogue and extended it further. And that’s how I’ve managed to create the scene of the intro. As I progressed on this… I’ve been writing scenarios, dialogues and story for Project Fairy. This has been in development since late 2020. I have big plans for Project Fairy, but that’s not limited only for Yukikaze related content, but for SaccFlight in general as well. What is your current scope for Project Fairy? Currently, there are two missions that are being worked on. But we’ve somehow written some other missions based on the novels and the anime. Actively developed is the prologue, which is more or less a ‘feel’ of the game, then the next episode which is based on the first episode of the anime but with a mix of the interpretation of the first book. Some of the episodes that are already written are based on the first encounter of the gray sylph, the first encounter with Col. Guneau and his ‘Knights’, the canyon chase with the gray sylph, Banshee 4 examination, as well as flying with the POV of other pilots. Personally, I’m more excited about recreating the canyon chase scene in the anime. The writing is in the works, but development hasn’t started yet. The way each episode would be handled would be per world. (e.g. 1 world = 1 episode). Having multiple episodes with each world may be possible, but it can weigh down a lot in terms of world size (megabytes) and performance hits (the amount of scripts!) Aside from Project Fairy, you have developed several sub-systems for SaccFlight and Unity. Could you tell us a bit about some of these systems? There were a couple of phases before I managed to make subsystems for SaccFlight, namely the arcade SaccFlight and then the new SaccFlight phase. During the early days, there were no afterburners. I had to make an afterburner module where you had to double tap your trigger (or shift) in order to enable the afterburner. HUD’s were too simple back then; I wanted to make a working HUD based on my own system. I made my own HUD system. And the thing I was most proud of during that time was the missile system. I managed to make a simple target selection, lock on, fire missiles and fire flares for countermeasures. However, this was only made available in the Fairy Air Force world during the early days of SaccFlight, as it was too customized to transfer to the prefab SaccFlight system. However, to this date, I still use the same missile / weapons system that I’ve made from the early days, only then with some improvements. Old system aside, I’ve been sharing the gauges-controller that I’ve tailored for Project Fairy to the developer friends I am closest with. It’s a simple controller that translates whatever the situation of your aircraft into animation parameters and values in order for you to use, customize and apply on each of your aircraft. Basically you just input the minimum / maximum value of your gauges on each gauge type, animate the gauge according to the min/max value, and call it a day. It’s very simple to the point that most of my friends are using it now. It covers the ADI, Fuel, Speed, AOA, Altimeters, Radar Altimeter, Pull up indicators, G’s, Mach and other things. Basically if you have a model that has these kinds of gauges, you wouldn’t need to dig through programming just to make it work! AI Systems are also made. Project Fairy wouldn’t even be a solid project without the AI’s. AI scopes from stationary, to ground moving, to aircraft units. They’re very customizable to the point where you can set waypoints, set targets whether who and who not to attack, attack range, the number of weapons that it can have (like turrets, missiles, guns), the speed, flight characteristics (for the fighters!), the amount of missile salvos per minute (yes.), the time to to change between targets, as well as formation characteristics. Aside from fighter aircraft configurations, naval vessels are also possible, as well as airships. Adding multiple turrets on each AI object is also possible. A Damage System is also available. It is a little nitpicky when setting it up, however you will need to set up these fine details in order to achieve a working damage system. Basically you can have burning individual engines (up to 2 at the moment), losing wings (left and right!), and even control surfaces (flaps, ailerons, elevators, canards, etc.) Another system that I’ve made tailored specifically for Project Fairy is the dialogue system. It’s essentially one of the core components of Project Fairy in order to achieve the story mode. But, despite designing the dialogue system, I do not know how other games (like Call of Duty, Halo or Ace Combat) actually achieve their dialogue systems or event systems. It is very, very customizable and dynamic in a sense that you can call an event if an AI gets destroyed, you cross an objective, a condition is met, and other neat things to achieve a scripted event. And lastly, one of my proudest achievements so far is the system that may blow other creators' minds. A floating origin shifter system. I call it Open World Movement Logic (OWML). It’s a system that basically allows us to move further than the 40km boundary of VRChat (or perhaps Unity itself), all the way to… whatever you can imagine. Your only limit is your imagination, and ironically… Optimization. And since we’ve broken that limit… We’ve also developed a navigation system that’s just a simple TACAN navigation system. Example 02 - Example 03 The biggest and most impressive of the features that you have developed so far is the Open World Movement Logic (OWML) script for Unity. It solves some of Unity’s inherent issues with floating point precision calculations in large maps. Could you tell us a bit about how it works and what went into making it? Basically OWML works in a way or form on how origin point shifting works in theory. If you travel a specific threshold away from the center of the world space, it moves the “map” according to the area or coordinates you’ve traveled, then teleports you back to the center of the world space; thus avoiding further floating point precision errors. As this is tailored for SaccFlight, the way OWML works whenever you enter a chunk will call a synchronization fix in order to make other players synchronize seamlessly (and happens locally). OWML is not only limited for the aircrafts, it’s also tailored for the players. As you travel on foot (or SaccFlight avatar fly), it will move the map accordingly as well once you’ve entered a chunk. In order to synchronize players, we use a method where we ‘fake’ sit a player on a seat (which is called stations), but as the other player is moving around, their position also updates accordingly; thus even if you’re somewhere on the center of the world space, for the other player’s view you will be where you are supposed to be. Other games like Kerbal Space Program (I’m assuming) use a form of origin point shifting, but the execution may be a bit different. The early version of OWML that is currently in Project Fairy works in a way that it moves the world *all the time*. It activates once you’ve crossed the first waypoint or once you’ve used one of the scene selectors. The current version that’s stable and synchronizes with all the players moves the map according to the threshold. The reason that I’ve come up with the threshold instead of moving it the whole time is due to a synchronization problem with Sacchan’s Synchronization method between players, that might affect the flight physics plus the amount of extern calls (and function calls ) when you enter a chunk. However, this threshold can be customized as you set it up on your instance. In all honesty, It was only an idea that I’ve come up with, and never found out that it was actually a method or an application to a theory. Will you release the OWML script as a public prefab for Unity? If so, what are your plans for its distribution? At some point in time I will definitely release it as an extension for SaccFlight since this is tailored specifically for VRChat, VRChat’s Networking and SaccFlight itself. A general purpose use for Unity itself can be made however with some changes but the same methods can be used. There may be other systems out there in the unity store for all I know that use origin point shifting, but I barely have surfed through the asset store or other systems in unity to know. Since you are using SaccFlight for Project Fairy, will you be using all of the subsystems that you have developed to further improve the project? Definitely. Some of them will be shared publicly. As for the others, people may need to contact me as it may need further setup as most of the subsystems are tailored for my needs in Project Fairy. Why did you decide to make Project Fairy in VRChat instead of a standalone project? One reason would probably be for people’s accessibility. VRChat is free, the worlds can be publicly accessed by everyone whoever has VRChat. Another probably the built in functionalities of VRChat, like its VR Engine itself (albeit it’s still basic Unity VR, it’s already good enough). A running standalone project would be much more preferable for most people but I would say it’s like the ‘testing grounds’. If it’s a successful project, we can convert everything into a standalone project as is; as VRC is running on UdonSharp, which is a scripting engine that also uses Unity’s C#. Whenever Project Fairy reaches completion, how will people be able to access it? It will also be free to access, correct? Of course! As long as it’s in VRChat and as long as VRChat is alive. Unless, admittedly ambitious; if I am permitted to sell such a game. But that’s just wishful thinking for now. Again, this is a hobby project; I do this in my free time. About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Once upon a time, the king of DCS modules was the A-10C. It reigned supreme in terms of capability, realism and popularity. But, those times are no-more. Released in June of 2018 into early access with some controversy regarding its initial systems, the F/A-18C Hornet has surpassed the A-10C in terms of popularity and, in some regards, combat capability. The Hornet has now cemented itself as the king of the carrier deck and of DCS: World as a whole. Today, we will be taking a look at this bug and its stinger to see if it is a fit for you. As always, our review will be separated in several sections for ease of reading: External and internal 3D models Visual and sound effects Flight modelling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve Super Carrier DLC Is this aircraft for you? REVIEW FIRST POSTED: 03/20/2021 UPDATED: 5/13/2022 EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS When it comes to this are the Hornet both shines like a firefly at night and also falls short in some areas. Externally, the 3D model is nothing short of gorgeous. Every rivet and every panel line has been excruciatingly represented, I do not envy the 3D modeler and the 2D artists that worked on this model as it must have been painful to go and include all this detail. That being said, their work is some of the best in-game, very lovely. Additionally, for those that also delve into texture creation like I do, this model has very nice unwrapping and only consists of two main diffuses plus a couple of additional ones for the fuel tank as usual. Livery creation for this aircraft is far easier than, let's say, the Tomcat or the Eagle. Internally, the cockpit model is more than solid. It has been lovingly crafted to the best degree possible. The only complaints that I might have are minor details, mainly the use of baked reflections and the weird/unnatural weathering patters on the Up-front Controller (UFC) and the metal panels in general (last picture in the gallery bellow). I do not know if it is only me, but they look a bit unnatural and artificial when you compare them to the ones inside of the Viper's cockpit. That being said. Texture work is magnificent and weathering, aside from the previously mentioned, is spot on. It looks like a worn-out cockpit but not one that has been leaved on disrepair. Nicely done, ED. VISUAL AND SOUND EFFECTS This is an area of constant change for the Hornet as it has gone through several sound overhauls throughout its development, as well as visual ones. At first, external sounds were rough and surprisingly underwhelming, while the visual effects have always been absolutely stunning. Visually, as of the writing of this article, the Hornet has some of the best visual effects in-game. From the water vapor that appears on the LERX while at high AoA scenarios or the subtle but very well represented win-flex that occurs at high G. These are some of the things that make the Hornet an absolute blast to fly around. She is a looker and she knows it. Afterburners looks like actual afterburners, unlike previously where they used to look a bit artificial. The effect is not perfect nor is it ever going to be, but as it stands it is the best it has ever been and clearly an improvement over what used to be. Bellow there's screenshots of both vapor effects and afterburners, check them out. As for sound, the Hornet now has very solid internal and external sounds. It used to have what some might consider "not the best" or "meh" sound design, but all of that has changed. The roar and howl of the General Electric F404 engines is there in all their glory. Something else that I consider noteworthy is the fact that the sound for the M61 Vulcan cannon has drastically changed for all aircraft that use it, including the Hornet. It used to be noticeably muffled and packed less of a punch, but with the new sound design all of that has changed. Here are some samples we recorded so you can judge it for yourself, all of them were recorded in-game and were not modified in any way. EXAMPLES: Fly-by at around 450Kts, full military power: (Volume Warning) Various in-cockpit sounds (engine throttle, gun firing, annunciator): FLIGHT MODELING This is always a tough category, as like with any other aircraft, there is a lot to take into consideration other than just the feel of the flight model. This category is the most subjective one in this article as I do not have any real world experience with this craft. I will only base my opinion on practical experience and knowledge of practical aerodynamics and the theoretical behavior that a Hornet should have under certain scenarios. That being said, the Hornet does feel real enough for me to believe its depiction in the simulator. It behaves just like what I have read and seen on publicly available information. First, It has absolutely mind-blowingly good nose authority at high-AoA which lets it perform excellently in a dogfight. She can maintain energy really well thanks to the high thrust to weight ratio that it has, which comes in handy in fighting contemporary adversaries such as the Fulcrum or the Flanker. The behavior of the Flight Control System (FCS) is, however, another one of those things that I can only talk about subjectively. The FCS does seem to be less restrictive than on contemporary aircraft such as the F-16CM, with the ability to do what I would consider riskier maneuvers without the FCS trying to over correct or compensate. The aircraft will always try to keep itself aloft and will also limit the amount of Gs you can pull as required by the load on the pylons. You do have the ability to override some of those limitations with the push of a button, but there is no such thing as a "FCS OFF" button. To me, the Hornet is one of the best handling aircraft currently in the simulator, both for veteran and rookie pilots alike. It will let you be aggressive when you need and it will help you when possible to avoid dying by your own mishandling, even if it means restricting some of your inputs. She is just a blast! MISSION CAPABILITIES If there is a single aircraft in DCS that truly is a representative of the power of a multi-role fighter, it is the Hornet. This is the aircraft that defined modern multirole capabilities, with its ability to perform multiple mission types at once without compromising on any being unparalleled as of the time of writing this review, with the only aircraft that come close being the Viper and the JF-17 or Jeff, as it has been lovingly named by the community. The Hornet is a fully fledged multirole 4th generation aircraft. At the touch of a button it can shift between anti-air and anti-surface operations with its radar automatically switched to the appropriate mode. The radar is powerful enough to provide scans of terrain that can be used for navigation and targeting while also being able to fire upon up to 8 air targets within seconds. It has systems that share target data with other Hornets in the flight, access to the best data link DCS has available and its detailed helmet mounted display allows it to maintain impressive situational awareness. The three screens in the cockpit allow for quick selection and display of multiple systems at once, rather than having to pick and choose a single system they want to focus on. Anti-ship, anti-air, air-to-ground, SEAD, CAS, Precision strikes, recon, COIN, etc. Every single mission type is possible with the Hornet; and thanks to its ability to do air to air refueling, it can do all of them far away from its home at sea or ground. Additionally, its capability to communicate with other aircraft through data link makes joint attacks a breeze, even more when smart weapons are being used. Nothing beats the feeling of sending a swarm of JSOWs in-land to strike a SAM site while a buddy is backing you up with HARMs. It is able to perform any kind of task you can imagine, with the exception of satellite intercepts. Those are only for the Eagle. ARMAMENT M61 VULCAN 20MM CANNON 578 rounds of pure destruction. The Vulcan has a particular quirk in this aircraft, its angle. It is angled 5° upwards as this allows for air to air benefits when on a dogfight; that is all great and dandy until you get to strafing a ground target. You will find yourself slightly pitching down to position the target, but that shouldn't be an issue as you have a very accurate radar guided pipper. This cannon is just fun, what can I say? AIM-9 SIDEWINDER The companion that will never disappoint. This missile will act the way you expect it, but they are a lot more interesting to use due to the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS). The JHMCS is wonderful to use with the more modern variants of the Sidewinder available to you, the 9X. With that combo, you get up to 180° of off-boresight capabilities! You have three variants available: AIM-9L AIM-9M AIM-9X AIM-7 SPARROW This will be your Fox-1 type missile. Do not underestimate this missile just because it lacks internal guidance, it can be just as capable as any other missile in the battlefield if employed correctly. You have three variants available as of the writing of this article: AIM-7F AIM-7M AIM-7MH AIM-120 AMRAAM One of the best Fox-3 type missiles right now. Long range, self-guidance and maneuverability make this missile a lethal weapon. The best (or worst, depending on your opinion) part is that you can carry as many as 10 of these on a full air to air loadout. You have two variants available: AIM-120B AIM-120C UNGUIDED ROCKETS If what you need is volume of fire and you have great trust in your aim, these are it. Nothing more to be said, to be honest. You have two main rocket variants available: 2.75' HYDRA rockets available on both LAU-61 and LAU-68 pods. ZUNI rockets on LAU-10 pods. UNGUIDED BOMBS Good ol' iron bombs. They come in all shapes and sizes, not only limited to only irons. Here is what you have as your selection: Mk.80 series bombs (Mk.82 on all of its low and high drag variants, Mk.83 and Mk.84) CBU-99 Clusters Mk.20 Rockeyes BDU Practice bombs GUIDED BOMBS My personal favorites, these bombs will hit hard and hit right on target. You have a very decent selection, including a much modern bomb that was added recently and a particularly cool yet kind of unjustifiable optically guided glide bomb! Laser guided GBU series: Old Paveways such as GBU-10, 12, 16 and the much more recent GBU-24 Paveway III. GPS/INS guided GBU series: GBU-31 and GBU-38 Last but not least, the AGM-62 Walleye, an optically guided precision guide bomb that allows man-in-the-loop guidance. Old but somewhat capable! AGM-154 JOINT STAND OFF WEAPON (JSOW) One of the most versatile weapons in the Hornet's arsenal. It comes with both a cluster (A variant) and bunker buster (C variant) warheads. These have the capability to glide on-target from a long ways away, as long as you give them the impulse they need. They can be programmed with their own approach vectors, burst heights and approach speeds as necessary. They are fun little bastards, you can carry up to 8 of them. AGM-84 HARPOON AND SLAM MISSILES Although both missiles use the same "base", they are completely different. The AGM-84D "Harpoon" is an anti-ship radar-guided missile capable of destroying even the mightiest of vessels, you can see them in action on the Mission Capability section of this review and above, being launched. The AGM-84E, on the other hand, is a Stand-off Land Attack Missile. It is guided by INS into a target with GPS coordinates. The SLAM and its range extended variant, the AGM-84H SLAM-ER can also be manually steered into a target. At a designated range from target, the missile transmits a video feed from its WALLEYE camera to the Hornet for target correction. You, as the pilot, directly control the missile's flight path during the last approach to target with the aid of the AWW-13 DATALINK POD, as seen in the picture bellow. This is called a man-in-the-loop system. AGM-88 HIGH-SPEED ANTI-RADIATION MISSILE The best Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) weapon in the simulator. Period. With firing modes for self protection, seeking out emitting SAM radars and pre-emptively lobbing HARMs to catch them off guard. It's easy to deploy, precise and deadly. All you need to know to fall in love with it. AGM-65 MAVERICK Mavericks are always a welcomed weapon. Although, the Hornet can only have 4 at a time, so it is limited when it comes to time on station. It has two variants: AGM-65F (INFRARED) AGM-65E (LASER) AN/AAQ-28 LITENING POD One of the best sensor pods you can get, the LITENING provides incredible precision and impressive optical capabilities to aid in getting those guided munitions where they need to go. Equipped with both air to air and air to ground modes, it can also track everything than moves and even more. AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR Functionally pretty similar to the LITENING, the ATFLIR is the second targeting pod which can be used by the Hornet. It operates in a similar way to the LITENING but with some differences in the display layout, controls, targeting and track logic, etc. Additionally, this is the only naval operations qualified targeting pod; meaning that if you want to go for full realism while deploying from a boat, this is your only choice. Practically, this limitation is not modeled in-game so it is up to you to choose which of these two TGPs serves you best. EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE There is a reason why I have recommended this plane to all my friends who have wanted to try DCS out ever since the Hornet came out. It is the most modern aircraft that also has the smoothest learning curve out of every jet in DCS, period. The aircraft's controls are intuitive and easy to map, even on simpler HOTAS systems with less buttons or hat switches. Impressively, the most capable aircraft in-game is also the one that is the easiest to use to its fullest with the least amount of buttons possible even when you take into consideration the sheer amount of things you can do in this aircraft. After updates in April 2022, its navigation systems are now so advanced that players who set up navigation correctly are able to utilize the Hornet’s automation. The Hornet is able to use automatic throttle control and couple its autopilot to waypoints and TACAN to fly itself without pilot inputs. With the automated carrier landing system the Hornet can essentially land itself back on an aircraft carrier with minimal inputs from the pilot. Additionally, the aircraft comes with a very detailed manual that has been kept up to date with every update that the module has had over the past three years. If that is not enough for you, then both Matt Wagner's official videos and the included training missions can get you up and running. My only gripe with the training missions is that there are none for some of the newer systems, which would be a very welcomed addition of development time permits. THE SUPER CARRIER DLC MODULE It feels kind of weird to talk about another module while reviewing another, but in this case it is completely unavoidable. These two module are like two peas in a pod, they were meant for each other. But that does not mean everything about this relationship is perfect. I have one gripe with the Super Carrier, its price. I know that development costs need to be paid and that there is more to the Super Carrier than just a pretty model. The LSO stations are awesome to use and offer a certain kind of experience that the diehard fans crave for, I get it because I have used them and they are pretty amazing. The deck crew is wonderfully modeled and animated as well, adding to the immersion factor when flying the Hornet from the ship. But in my honest opinion the price is too high, even more when taking in consideration the fact that the vanilla CVN-74 has an incorrectly sized bow which causes Tomcats to hit their wing tips at launch from catapults 1 and 2. This module should have come as an included bonus for everyone that buys the Hornet, Tomcat or the future Intruder: even when the team that developed the latter two is also making a Forrestal-class carrier that will be added to the base game assets for everyone to use. If the user doesn't own the Hornet but wants the Super Carrier, then the base price should be half of what it currently is. I am aware that if you own the Hornet you get a permanent discount on the Super Carrier, but it is not enough. Even more when you consider the base price of the Hornet and not its price at discount during sales. I am not a game developer (yet) and I might have said something that is completely wrong from a gamedev standpoint, but as a consumer it is a bit hard to justify the price tag. I love Eagle Dynamics and what they do, they have shown great dedication too keeping this simulator alive with constant patches and module releases and supporting their effort is enough reason for some to buy the carrier. Ultimately the decision of buying the Super Carrier module is up to you, the reader. Take into consideration the points I mentioned previously. IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module is: An amazing weapon platform. An excellent flight model that is fun from 0 kts to Mach 1.2. To be able to fill almost every role on a mission. To carry 10 AMRAAMs and lob them in disrespect towards your enemies. A lovingly crafted cockpit model that, despite its flaws, makes you feel like you are there. If you don't mind: The ridiculously simple learning curve. The hand-holding behavior that the FCS has sometimes. To be bored because you can do everything with just one plane. Being able to launch AMRAAMs from 50 miles away and kill a fly. If all or some of the above is what you want, then Eagle Dynamics' F/A-18C Hornet is for you. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and writer ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

When you search for DCS content on YouTube, or almost any other video sharing platform, most of what you will find are videos of 4th generation fighters ripping the skies apart at supersonic speeds, launching guided air to air and air to ground ammunitions from thirty thousand feet in the air. While I do enjoy doing just with the Viper and all of my other modern fighters, there is something I have been doing even more: low level ops. NEW STYLE, NEW STRATEGIES Low level combat flying with challenging aircraft is something I enjoy greatly. It makes you be much more aware of your surroundings and forces you to plan your missions in advance. You do not only have to know exactly what your target is but also the route you will be taking since terrain will actually affect the way in which you will navigate. It presents a completely different set of challenges which I find extremely delightful. Light Anti Air Artillery (AAA) is a legitimate threat no matter what you are flying, rotary wing or otherwise. You will be forced to scout from a distance at low level to increase your chances of survival during your attack run. Using terrain as cover is by far the best strategy to avoid them. You will have to stay fast and maneuverable. You never know what could lurking be in that area of operations. Low level operations are some of the only ways to use a more diverse set of aircraft. It is the only way in which I have been able to adapt the Super Tucano mod to our regular missions which were never designed with these slow turboprops. I like to stay low to avoid the long range radars that might still be active, wiping down minor threats and strategic objectives. The same applies for my rotary wings. I usually enjoy wiping down air defenses and convoys with the Mi-24P Hind using its Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) and the 30mm cannon. Getting low and fast with the Hind is extremely fun, which is something that applies to all of the other rotary wing aircraft that I use in DCS. They make the game feel much more alive for me, even more in a time where I feel like everyone in the game is awaiting new modules to arrive. Low level infiltrations to attack as strategic target and leave as fast as you arrived are where the situations in which helos will shine their best. You can also just sit just behind terrain and lob ATGMs at the enemy so that, when they inevitably fire at your position, you can hide as fast as possible. Then reset your attack behind a new piece of cover and try again. Does that mean that low-level insertions are restricted to only helicopters? Of course not! I have had some of my best infiltrations while flying a Viggen. Low level gets a lot more dangerous at those higher speeds but the Viggen is the king of supersonic low level operations. It was designed to do well in those environments. Mavericks, bombs, rockets and even anti-ship missiles. All of which are better employed while staying low and fast. If you find yourself ever wondering how can you spice your DCS World experience, give low level ops a try. It is going to be more challenging but I assure you that it is worth it. Do remember that these types of ops only work for certain mission types, so adapt to the missions. Increasing one's skill set is always something worthwhile. About the author: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

One area which has always been of interest for us is the graceful world of virtual airshows. In the past we have followed these interests by talking to our friends over at the Frecce Tricolori Virtuali (FTV) and with their spokesperson and our friend, Duke. It has been quite a while since we had those interviews with the FTV, so we decided to contact another excellent Digital Combat Simulator World virtual demonstration team who has been making quite the name for themselves lately: Virtual Team60. We contacted the leader of the Virtual Team 60, Fredrik "Breadmaker" and asked him if he would discuss how the virtual aerobatic teams works, what their story is and a bit about the aircraft they fly. I personally extend my thanks to Fredrik for allowing us to have this interview with us. This is part one of two of this interview. Next time we will be talking with Fredrik about the Saab Sk.60 project for DCS World! First off, we’d like to thank you for agreeing to have this interview with us. Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about what you do? Thanks for having me! My name is Fredrik, callsign Breadmaker, and I’m a guy from Sweden who has had an interest in aviation in general and military aviation specifically since I was a kid. When I was young my dream was to become a fighter pilot, but life took another path so that didn’t happen. So I was quite happy when I discovered DCS a couple of years ago. Of course I had to fly the Viggen since that’s one of the most recognizable Swedish military aircraft ever. After having flown military type of missions for a while I also discovered that there are people doing close formation flights and airshow replications, and that really caught my interest. First I started doing formation flights with a few friends, and a little bit later I joined the Virtual Al Fursan as the number 7 pilot. That team ended up falling apart unfortunately so I was left without a team to fly with, but I still wanted to do it. What was the motivation for forming Team60? Around the same time as the Virtual Al Fursan had fallen apart I had started talking to a few friends about trying to make an SK60 mod for DCS. At first it was just a crazy idea, but we soon realized we were actually going to be able to make it and that’s when the idea of forming a Virtual Team 60 came to life. For Swedish aviation enthusiast, the real Team 60 certainly has a special place in their hearts. Unfortunately the team isn’t active anymore. But when they were, and especially at their peak, they were one of the most recognizable display teams in the world. So to have the opportunity to pay homage to the work they’ve done in a virtual environment felt like something we just had to do. For how long has the team been active and in which shows have you performed? The team started in the summer last year (2021). It took a while to nail down the final team lineup, but in August we had all six members in place and started doing regular practice sessions (once a week). At first we needed to just get to know each other and figure out who was going to fly what position, but when we had achieved that we started looking at our first program to learn. We decided to try and replicate the program the real team made on the Swedish Airforce annual airshow in 2018. We felt like the difficulty of that show was on a level that would be a good enough challenge for us. After having practiced it a bit we decided to sign up for our first show – the Virtual International Air Festival which was held in December of 2021. So far that’s the only show we’ve done but we’re currently working hard on preparing for the next one. 😊 Team60 seems to be extremely passionate about what they do. What is the current composition of the team? Yes indeed we are! When we started the team, none of us had much experience in flying in a virtual display group before. One of the guys didn’t even have a computer when we first got in contact. So everyone has really been a key part in building the team from the ground up and we have been working hard together to not only get better as individuals, but as a whole unit. And I really think the hard work has paid off. If you knew how it looked when we first flew and compare it to how it is not, the progress is just amazing. I’m super proud of the guys in the team! The current active flying members of the team is as follows: #1: Fredrik (Breadmaker) Elm – Team Captain and founder. Also leads the SK60 development team. #2: Ola (Bulletproof) Rådeström – Flies inner right wing Diamond formation #3: Nino (Propilot) Glad – Flies inner left wing in the Diamond formation #4: Kalle (Bobcat) Dådring – Flies slot in the Diamond formation #5: Casper (Ghost) Nilsson – Flies outer left wing in the Diamond formation & solo #6 Tim (Jugg) Jansson – Flies outer right wing in the Diamond formation & lead solo Besides these guys we also have a few “reserve” pilots who sometimes fill in during practice sessions if one of the regular members can’t fly that day and also some other “crew” members which aren’t as clearly defined. The Virtual Team 60 is also functioning as testers for the SK60 mod developers so some guys who aren’t necessarily flying with us during our training are also in a sense a part of the team, but have a more technical role. How closely does the team follow the routines of the real Team60? We try to follow them as close as we can. We’re actually in pretty close contact with a few of the old pilots from the real team who have been helping us out tremendously. Mostly we study what ever material we can find on the internet (Youtube videos mostly) to try and get an understanding of how the team flew their displays. But we also get first hand information from the pilots which provides a whole lot more detail regarding how the maneuvers are performed and what you need to think about and so on. We’re really trying hard to pay as much tribute as we can to the real Team 60 so to have their support means the world to us! Has the virtual Team60 been in contact with members of the real Team60? If so, in which aspects have they helped the virtual counterpart? As I said in the last question, yes we have! We actually met a few of them a couple of weeks ago and let them fly a bit on our computers. It was an AMAZING experience to be able to connect with them in that way. One of the founding members sent us a really encouraging message after we met them which is something that we in the Virtual Team 60 are going to carry with us with humility and pride for a very long time. How do you guys tackle training for the air show season? Do you run over the entire routine from the start in each training session or are maneuvers practiced individually? We have scheduled practice sessions every Monday night. But then it varies a bit depending on what time of the year it is and how soon it is to the next show. Currently, for example, it’s summer here in Sweden so we’re not focusing quite as hard on practicing super seriously every week. Most of us have families and so on that also need their fair share of time, and especially during summer it can be hard to put aside the time to fly in DCS every week. Those of us who aren’t occupied with anything else though try to meet up and do at least some type of flying as often as we can so we don’t loose our form completely. We have a routine that we’re practicing for the next show and if all pilots can fly during a session we most often run through that show – even if it’s a bit more laid back at the moment. When fall comes though we’re going to be more focused and strategic about nailing down the details. I think this gives us a good balance between seriousness and fun. I truly believe that when you’re doing something like this in your spare time you can’t be too serious about it (unless everyone agrees on that of course…). For us it’s important that we have fun together. One the one hand I think all of the team would agree that part of what makes it fun is the feeling of making progress and seeing that it actually looks good when we fly, and that takes a fair bit of dedication, but it always needs to be balanced so it still feels like a hobby and not a job. Does the team have any trainees at the moment? What would you recommend someone who would like to join your team? Not at the moment. Since we only started last year the Team is pretty fresh still. All of the guys are very dedicated and show no sign of stopping. My standpoint as the Leader of the team is that if someone has a place in the team and they want to keep it, it’s theirs. All of us are very well understood in what it means to have an active spot and understand what’s required to keep that spot and be a valuable part of the team. So no, there are no trainees and currently no openings. If that changes in the future, we’ll let people know. 😊 What are some memorable airshows the team has flown in the past? Are there any you'd suggest for new viewers to watch first? Well... We have only flew one so I’d suggest you go look at that one. It isn’t perfect by any means but if you take into consideration that we did our first ever practice session in August of 2021 and then flew that show in December the same year I think you could at least say we did a pretty decent job. The video can be found below: Which would you consider to be the most complex maneuver which has been performed during one of your shows? We have a maneuver in the show we’re working on now which is a bit tricky. Pilots #1 - #4 has just done a flyby and are heading out a bit from the airfield to let the Solos do one of their maneuvers. After a few seconds we turn back in and while approaching the airfield I have to roll upside down while still flying level (so the guys who fly off me won’t get lost). As soon as I’m inverted, #2 & #3 also goes inverted. #4 flies in slot behind me and #2 and #3 flies off of his wing. We then do a flyby over the runway like this before rolling back out and changing to a right echelon formation. What makes it really tricky is that it needs to happen very fast but very controlled. If anyone messes up it’s gonna look bad when we pass the crowd. Another tricky one is the “Sandwich roll” that the Solos do. They fly toward the display line, #5 rolls over and flies inverted, #6 joins and flies right underneath him. When passing the runway threshold, they put their smoke on and do a barrel roll in this formation. It’s awesome! Just like many airshow teams in DCS, Team60 has developed their own aircraft. How much influence has the aerobatic had in the development of the Sk60? That’s correct! I’d say it has had a very big impact. Getting the flight model correct and the visual appearance has been super important in allowing us to replicate the real team’s maneuvers. The mod isn’t actually going to be strictly Team 60 though. We’re also giving it some light attack and trainer capabilities before we’re going to release it to the public. There are some parts of it that will be exclusive to the Virtual Team 60 though, but I won’t tell you what. 😊 When flying the Sk.60 in airshows, what are some of its notable flight characteristics? Since the SK60 is a trainer aircraft it’s very stable in the air. This is a good thing when doing the big formations as it provides a very smooth flying experience. It’s a bit tricky though when we need to do some more “aggressive” maneuvers. For example, the roll rate isn’t super fast. Especially if you fly below 300kts and in some cases that can be tricky. But if you learn how to treat the aircraft in those situations you can still do it. This is one of the moments where the feedback and input from the real pilots are super helpful! They can tell us how they actually used to do it, which removes the guesswork for us. Does the Sk.60's side-by-side two-seat configuration have any impact on formation references when flying with multiple aircraft? Not very much. Of course, it’s going to differ a little bit depending on whether you fly right wing or left wing. But it’s hardly noticeable. I’d say it’s most apparent when you’re flying slot since you can’t place your head directly behind the tail of the aircraft in front of you but you have to be a little bit to the side. It’s also noticeable for me who flies in the front of the whole formation. If I look out to my left I can clearly see #3 and #5 just below my wing. If I look to the right though there’s half a cockpit in the way. That will be it, thank you so much for answering our interview! Is there anything else you would like to add before we conclude? Thank you! Hope you found what I had to share interesting! If you want to know more about us and just get in touch with us in general – feel free to join our Discord server. Thanks for your time! About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Initially released into early access in late 2017, the Harrier II is one of the most interesting modules currently available in Digital Combat Simulator World. Mainly thanks to its unique design, advanced systems and special flight characteristics. In this review we will be taking a look into several different parts of the module and evaluating if this powerful, chubby bird is a fit for you. These points will be divided into several sections: External and internal 3D models Visual and sound effects Flight modelling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve Companion AI assets Is this aircraft for you? This review was initially released on the 1th of August, 2020. At that time the module was still in its early-access (EA) period. I have modified and updated this review as of July 1st, 2022 to better reflect the current state of this module. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS RAZBAM has done quite a good job modeling the Harrier to near perfection, both externally and internally. This is something not uncommon with this third party developer as they have shown similar levels of quality on their other modules. The external model is excellent. From the nose-mounted camera to the beacon lights. The animation of the nozzles is pretty good and the stairs that deploys when the canopy is open give the Harrier a very believable feel to it. Let's hope that they keep similar or better attention to detail on their upcoming modules. ADDEMDUM (7/1/2022): In terms of textures, this model could benefit from a slight rework to its Normal maps, which are the ones that create fake depth in a model. As of version 2.7.15.26783, these seem to have strange artifacts around the rivets and panel lines, which gives the model an eerie look when viewed from certain angles. Examples of this effect can be seen above, pay attention to the artifacting that occurs around the rivets and panels. ATTENTION TO DETAIL One detail that I found pretty amusing is the wind vane that sits right in front of the canopy. This vane's illumination is controlled not by the external lights panel but from the cockpit lights panel. It is one of those details that would normally be overlooked but seeing it work correctly gave me a pleasant surprise. The cockpit is a faithful recreation. It has a weathered-out look which makes it feel lived-in like many operational birds out there, even the screens have fingerprints on them! The internal lighting is marvelous, in part due to the way that the roughmets and normals were handled, making the way that they reflect the light from the flood lights very believable. Overall, this has got to be one of my favorite cockpits currently available in the sim, both from a design and modeling standpoint. The VR pilot is very well modeled as well! VISUAL AND SOUND EFFECTS Visually, this aircraft has some pretty good looking effects such as over wing vapor while at high Angle of attack (AoA). This, alongside the abundant smoke produced while in VTOL or even during cruise flight, gives the Harrier a nice immersion factor. Next is the sound. This is one area which RAZBAM had to nail perfectly. The Harrier has such a unique sounding engine that getting this part wrong would be a detriment to the module as a whole. I am happy to inform that the sounds are brilliantly done and implemented like they should be. From start-up to shutdown, you feel the engine alive behind you, roaring with the identifiable high pitch tone of the Pegasus! This aircraft has got to have one of the loudest engines in-game, which makes it a joy to listen during a fly-by if you are wearing headphones. It is also one of the most identifiable sounds from the ground, even from miles away, thanks to the very high pitch frequencies of the Pegasus engine as it spools up and down. That and the smoke plume which can be seen from even more far away. EXAMPLES: Engine while on the ground: (Idle-->Full Power-->Idle) Engine while in-flight: (Idle-->Full Power-->Idle) Fly-by at 510 knots, full power: (Volume warning) FLIGHT MODELING If I am completely honest, this is the hardest category to comment on when it comes to the Harrier. Seeing as it is the only VTOL jet in the simulator, there isn't a direct comparison to be made with any other module as of the writing of this review. I do not have any experience with VTOL aircraft in real life either, so my opinion here only reflects what my instinct and experience with other aircraft have taught me about practical aerodynamics and flight modeling from an end-user standpoint. It feels "right enough" as there are some things that do feel a bit off, such as the lack of a more pronounced buffeting effect while entering a stall. In other words, sometimes it feels like there isn't enough feedback being given to the player in either high AoA or stall scenarios. Just a tiny bit more would do the trick. Don't get me wrong, this module is a joy to fly in almost every circumstance. If I were to describe flying it, I'd say it is a mix between the Viggen and the Warthog. In a quote from one of my inspirations, Laobi, on his first impressions of the module back when it first launched: "It neither crawls around like the A-10 nor does it split spacetime like the Viggen". That being said, having the possibility to do VIFFING in DCS is amazing and I wouldn't take it over anything else. Even with its flaws, it is still one of the most enjoyable aircraft to fly in DCS right now. It is very hard to stall it if you pay attention to what you are doing and its flight computer does not feel as restrictive as it does on other aircraft. There is noticeable compressibility and flutter at high speed, effects that are more noticeable as your loadout weight and drag increases. The Harrier will let you know if you are pushing it a bit too hard. Those effects, alongside its unique flight characteristics make it very fun to fly and learn. Just do not expect to beat Flankers and Fulcrums on BFM scenarios pretty often, that is just not your forté with this aircraft. MISSION CAPABILITY This bird can do almost everything you could want, all with the exception of beyond visual range (BVR) air combat, prolonged dogfights or anti-ship. The Harrier is a ground pounder through and through. It has a pretty considerable loadout option and pretty acceptable range with the help of air to air refueling (AAR). It is also a bird of the night, as this version has been specifically designed with night operations in mind. INTEGRATED SENSORS These include the integrated TV Camera and the FLIR sensor at the nose, two systems that give you excellent attack and navigation capabilities in adverse situations. They also allow you to opt-out of carrying the LANTIRN pod and replace it for the ECM pod for self defense when the situation merits it, such as when there are multiple SAM installations in the area. When it comes to mission types it can do plenty: Low-level attacks, Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD), Anti-Ship, Close Air Support (CAS), and many more. Being able to perform multiple of these in one sortie, though possible, is not recommended if there are not any support aircraft to perform AAR. ARMAMENT GAU-25 EQUALIZER 25mm CANNON (POD) This cannon, even with its limited 300 round drum, has the potential to annihilate every single lightly armored vehicle and even some medium armored ones with ease. The ammunition should last for at least 10 seconds of sustained fire which would give you plenty of chance to get rounds on target, be it an aircraft or a very sneaky APC. This pod is one that I recommend in every loadout as you do not know when you will need it AIM-9 SIDEWINDER Your only true air-air missile. This will be your self-defense weapon during most if not all strike missions so you will have to learn to love it and its little quirks. Who knows, you could also learn how to dogfight the big air superiority aircraft and one of these could bag you a kill! You have access to: The AIM-9M (All-aspect seeker) The CAP-9M (Training variant, not for combat operations) UNGUIDED BOMBS For almost any occasion, these unguided packets of death will serve you well as you can equip 3x Racks for a total of a lot of bombs. The best part is that you have sizes and flavors to chose from. Small diameter, cluster munitions, high and low drag. The Harrier sure treats you well with these: You have access to: Most of the Mark 80 series: Mk.81, Mk.82 and Mk.83 (Low and High Drag configurations) Mk.20 Rockeyes (Cluster Munition) GUIDED BOMBS When it comes to precision bombing there are also some options for you. Thanks to both your DMT and the LITENING II pod, self-lased bombing is something you will do very often once you learn the system. Same goes for GPS guided munitions. You have access to: GBU-12 and GBU-16 (laser guided munitions) GBU-38 (GPS guided munitions JDAM) GBU-54 (Laser seeker-equipped JDAM with GPS functionality as well) Both the GBU-12 and GBU-38 have the option to be mounted on 3x Racks for a total of at least 6 bombs per sortie, with a theoretical maximum of 12 bombs. That's a lot of bombs, but I would not recommend a full bomb loadout unless you are crazy. AGM-122 ANTI-RADIATION MISSILE It might be just a modified AIM-9C but this little missile is more useful than one might initially think. It opens all SEAD missions for you, giving you the capability to directly attack enemy SAM installations from longer distances than you would otherwise. I quickly fell in love with this compact stick of death and I hope you will too. AGM-65 MAVERICK (LASER AND IR) Anti-Ship, CAS, Anti-Armor. This missile does them all. Both the IR (AGM-65G) and Laser guided variants (AGM-65E) are included, giving you the possibility to attack targets in any situation at any time. You can self-lase or call one of your buddies to lase for you. It is safe to say that this missile is one of if not the best weapon available for the Harrier just due to its versatility. ROCKETS When you want to obliterate an area in the most flashy way possible, this is the way to go. Your effectiveness will depend greatly on what pod you equip and the type of warhead that you go with, but be sure that all of them will end up in a satisfying explosion. You have available: LAU-10 (4 ZUNI rockets) LAU-68 (x7 2'75 inch rockets with either HE, HEAT or WP warheads) NEW: LAU-131 APKWS (x7 Laser Guided 2'75 inch rockets) The LAU-68 pod can be equipped in the internal pylons, giving you a maximum loadout of 28 2'75 inch rockets. COUNTERMEASURES: You will inevitably be attacked by either a MANPAD, a SAM installation or another aircraft. This is why you carry a lot of both chaff and flares (120 flares and 60 chaff in a standard loadout). These, alongside the optional ECM pod, will give you a small advantage by making it a little harder for the enemy to lock on you or to evade an incoming missile threat. Additionally, before anything is fired at you, your trusty radar warning receiver should give you an idea of what threats surround you and what are their intentions. LITENING POD Nothing is better than to know what awaits you in an area of operations long before you get there, a task that the LITENING accomplishes with very little effort. Equipped with both IR and TV imagery, this pod will be your best choice for precision weaponry deployment and recon in all scenarios. Addendum: The Harrier is now equipped by a Gen-4 LITENING II Targeting Pod whereas before it had a Gen-1. This adds some features that were missing before. As far as I am aware, there are still some features that need to be added. I'll be honest, this is a very welcome change as the new one adds much more functionality, changing the way you operate it dramatically. You get used to it with time and I assure you that you will struggle at first if you come from the Hornet or the Viper modules, but it will become second nature in no time. EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE The Harrier has a cockpit layout that is similar to that of the Hornet, in a sense. It is very easy to learn where each panel is, giving even the more inexperienced players a welcoming time. Even with the systems being this well designed, most newcomers might find it a bit challenging if they skip on a critical part of the module: the tutorials. RAZBAM did something that I was not expecting when I first bought this module. They assembled easy to follow tutorials that are even separated in smaller, mini-tutorials for those times in which you need a little refreshing on a specific weapon system or sensor. This was the cherry on top for me as these tutorials made my transition from the other modules I have to the Harrier a walk in the park. These tutorials are all voiced, have good scripting and provide players of any level the help they need to get themselves immersed into this aircraft's systems. There are even some easter eggs at the end of some tutorials which made me giggle. This is something that no other developer has done, as far as my knowledge goes. With all that being said, I do think this is an aircraft that one should buy if you already have experience with another high-fidelity module. COMPANION AI ASSETS AND CAMPAIGN Alongside the Harrier, RAZBAM also launched two other "companion" AI assets to give a better home for the Harrier inside of the DCS ecosystem. These being its two homes, the U.S Navy LHS Tarawa and the HMS Invincible, with the addition of the KC-130, an air refueling version of the C-130 Hercules that is typically operated by the U.S Marine Corp as a support aircraft. These two assets are available to use for any DCS user as these were contributions to the larger DCS database. The first of these two, the Tarawa-class Amphibious Assault Ship, is the one that gave the Harrier a home at sea. Being able to take off and land from this massive ship is simply fantastic. It has a very detailed 3D model and ATC integration, as expected. The second AI asset, the KC-130, is one that is useful to every player in DCS even if they don't use the Harrier. It is a slower tanker that fares better with a larger assortment of aircraft when compared to the KC-135 MPRS, which tends to fly comfortably at a faster speed. The refueling position is much more comfortable than the one present on the Stratotanker, being more centered and with more accessible visual cues to help you keep position. Additionally, a campaign prologue has been added to the Harrier module. Made by Baltic Dragon, it is a very fun introduction to the Harrier as a whole as it showcases several operational scenarios. It has a basic story-line that follows a Harrier Squadron that has been deployed to the Black Sea to do joint exercises with the allied countries in the region. The chemistry between the characters and dialogue of the campaign are very typical of Baltic's mission structure and style, but that's a good thing. This campaign is one of the best additions that the module has seen so far, so if you have/plan on getting the Harrier, please do give it a try. I assure you that you'll have a good time and learn something about the Harrier in the meantime! IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module is: A good learning experience full of tricky challenges along the way. A quirky flight model that is forgiving yet difficult to master. To be able to fill the attacker role with a chunky aircraft. To take off like a helicopter and fly like a fighter. A fun campaign that will help you hone-in your skills. If you don't mind: The relatively steeper learning curve that comes with VTOL. The quirks of vertical landing operations or rather, enjoy them. Playing through long tutorials to get accustomed to the quirks. Not being able to launch AMRAAMs from 50 miles away. If all or some of the above is what you want, then RAZBAM's AV-8B Harrier II N/A is for you. To download the skin I created for this review, click HERE About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder, writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Entering early access in December 2015, the Mirage quickly established itself as one of the best dogfighters in DCS' competitive environment. Having one of the most polished flight models in the game, it also provides more than great Beyond and Within Visual Range (BVR and WVR) combat capabilities as well as some ground-pounding potential. In this review we will be taking a look into several different parts of the module and evaluating if this beautiful French lady is a fit for you. These points will be divided in several sections: External and internal 3D models Visual and sound effects Flight modelling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve Single player content Is this aircraft for you? This review was initially published on the 14th of August, 2020. Minor revision: 20th of February, 2021. Screenshot overhaul and content revision: 6th of August, 2022. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS Externally, the Mirage has got to have one of the most recognizable airframes out there, mainly due to the very similar shape it has kept ever since the Mirage III came out in the 1960's. Razbam, thankfully, has done it justice with this module by giving it a very gorgeous exterior and interior which are full with detail everywhere you can look. Exterior-wise this module boasts a very appealing model that is full of detail, complex curves of the Mirage show all their grace. All the animations, such as the intake shock cones movement or the flight surface movement while taxiing, are fluid and give the plane a bit of life. For the rivet-counters out there, this model should be a feast for the eyes. COMMITMENT TO DETAILS From the inner side of the turkey feathers on the engine to the emergency canopy release handle, the work that went into getting these very easily overlooked details shows that Razbam researched this aircraft to a very high degree, which is commendable. Interior-wise this module can only be described as gorgeous. It received a major update in late 2019 and several minor once since, all of which aimed at keeping it up to date with the Mirages then-currently in service with the Armée de l'Air (AdA). This included the addition of a Night Vision Goggle (NVG) mount along with a rework on how the NVGs worked in the module, an updated radio panel and an ECM annunciator on the right side of the dash. The way the annunciator lights shine gives them a very believable feel, a feel that is exacerbated by the flood lights reflecting off the surfaces and screens. I'll take my hat off and applaud Razbam's work, they really did well in this regard. EDIT 02/20/2021: There is another model that I forgot to mention in the first revision of this review, that being the VR pilot model. Since I mostly fly without the pilot model to make it easier for myself to click around the cockpit I had not noticed the detail that the pilot model has. This must be a treat for those who fly VR, very well done. EDIT 08/06/2022: Up-to-date pictures have been added. These represent the current state of the module, which is still gorgeous. The cockpit has changed a lot as it evolved alongside the one used by the AdA, but now that the type has been officially retired, I do not expect any more major changes to be done to it. VISUAL AND SOUND EFFECTS Apart from being well modeled, this module also has some of the best looking visual effects out there; on par with the Viper and the Hornet. When at a high AoA scenario, the amount of vapor that's produced by the vortex generators, the inner corner of the leading edge and the massive clouds that form above the wing left me speechless the first time I saw them. These are the kinds of details that make a module feel alive. Sound-wise the M2000 has a very distinctly sounding engine that gives the pilot a lot of feedback, at least while you are on the ground. In the air the engine's sound is not as clear as it is on the ground due to the extremely loud noise generated by the wind hitting your canopy. Don't get me wrong, I like the realism aspect that comes with the reduced auditory feedback that the engine gives at high speed but, and this is my personal opinion, sometimes it is better to sacrifice some realism to improve usability. I know that you can enable the "loud afterburner" option in the menu but I write these reviews in function of a unhampered experience, with default options. As I put it in one of my earliest reviews, the one I wrote about the F-5E-3 Other modules such as the AJS-37 "Viggen" give you a very distinct engine sound when your aircraft goes into afterburner at the cost of realism. We as players need that feedback since we cannot feel the vibrations of the engine or the rumble of the wheels. Overall, sound design is very solid in this module but as always I will let you, the reader, be your own judge in this regard as this category can be very subjective: EXAMPLES: 1. Engine while on ground: ( Idle-->Full Afterburner-->Idle ): 2. Engine while in-flight @450 kts: (Idle-->Full Power-->Idle) 3. Fly-by at +550 knots, full afterburner: (Volume warning) FLIGHT MODELING Over every other category, this is the one that makes the Mirage shine. It has the best-feeling flight model currently in DCS, period. From the buffeting at low speed to the highly responsive flight controls, this flight model truthfully represents what I have heard from real Mirage pilots. This bird excels in a dogfight thanks to the advantages of the delta wing design, these being good nose authority at high AoA and stellar low speed performance characteristics. She is a fierce dogfighter and she knows it. The way that the Fly-by-Wire system (FBW) is programmed here gives you very precise control over the aircraft making it feel snappy and responsive while keeping you, the pilot, away from a deadly stall. Unlike some of the other aircraft that have FBW, this one feels less restrictive. It has two modes: Charges and A/A. Charges will limit your maneuverability to a mere 5.5G, and your roll rate to 150°/sec. This mode is to be used when you are heavily loaded, as the name implies. A/A mode will raise the amount of Gs you can pull to 9Gs and roll rate to 270°/sec, which is immensely useful during a close range combat scenario. It is difficult to put into words the feeling of flying the Mirage, but if I had to describe it briefly I would have to say that after I flew it the only other plane that could match its snappiness was the F-16CM, but even it lacks that spark that puts this French marvel above everything else. It does have some quirks that you will have to get used to such as the slow engine response time which can make air to air refueling a bit tricky at first. Once you get used to it, though, that is when you will learn to appreciate this beast for what it is. MISSION CAPABILITY Even though the Mirage is capable both A/A and A/G missions, it truly shines in the air to air role thanks to its design as a capable dogfighter and interceptor. It is able of operating independently without the direct aid of either a Ground Control Intercept (GCI) station or an AWACS due to its capable radar. Operational range is not a problem as long as you conserve your fuel or, alternatively, have a tanker at your disposal. LIMITED BVR CAPABILITIES It has the same limitations as some of the Russian aircraft present in FC3, this being the lack of any actively guided missiles (Fox-3 type). While the Super 530 is a great semi-active missile (Fox-1 type) it does lack active guidance. This limits your capabilities in an engagement as you will have to keep the target locked all the way to impact, so no fire and forget. Doing precision bombing on the Mirage will be a bit tricky considering that you do not have any targeting pod (TGP) at your disposal. Guiding GBUs will be the job of either a JTAC or a friendly aircraft equipped with a TGP, so better be prepared to communicate a lot in order to get those lasers where you need them and when you need them. That being said, low level bombing can be done very effectively on the Mirage. Dropping either BLU-66 canisters or Mk.82 Snake eyes on a target while going as fast as possible can be one of the most rewarding things you could do on the Mirage. AIR TO GROUND RADAR Added not so long ago, this radar does expand the air to ground capabilities of the Mirage by quite a bit. It is relatively simple to use and offers basic targeting, terrain mapping and terrain avoidance modes! It is not going to turn the Mirage into an amazing ground pounder, but it certainly does make it into a much more interesting platform for certain niche missions. ARMAMENT DEFA 554 30MM CANNONS These two cannons might not fire as fast as a rotary but when they hit, they hit. Just a couple rounds should be able to annihilate most aircraft, turning them into a burning wreck. Note: Do conserve your ammunition as you only have 125 rounds per cannon. Make them count. MATRA R550 "MAGIC II" As your sole option for IR-guidance, this missile has solid all-aspect guidance and relatively high maneuverability when compared to some competitors, such as the R-60 or the AIM-9P5. Overall, it is a solid missile and it should serve you well. MATRA SUPER 530D Just as the Magic II is your only choice for, the Super 530 is your sole option for radar guidance. Its range is average and it has above average maneuverability but with a little practice this missile becomes a deadly weapon. It is semi-active, though, so be careful not to drop your lock by accident. Mk.82 BOMBS (SLEEK AND SNAKE EYE) Whether you know the target's location or not, these will never fail you. The only unguided bombs that you have are these wonderful Mk.82s in both its low drag and high drag variants. You are guaranteed to have a blast when you use them, literally. CLUSTER MUNITIONS Do you want to bomb a big strip of runway or a large area full of enemy units? Then these puppies should do the trick. You have two different cluster munitions at your disposal, each with a different purpose: BLG-66 "BELOUGA": This one was designed to quickly deal with densely populated enemy areas. They can be launched as low as 1000ft while in level flight. BAP-100: Designed to effectively deal with enemy runways. They can be quite the asset to use early in a conflict to avoid the enemy from launching more aircraft. GBU-SERIES (LASER GUIDED BOMBS) Even if you are not able to guide them by yourself, having the possibility of doing pin-point strikes is always a welcome addition. You have three sizes at your disposal: GBU-12: 500lb bomb GBU-16: 1000lb bomb GBU-24: 2000lb bomb MATRA ROCKET PODS Carrying eighteen 68mm rockets each, these pods ones are one of the most fun weapons available in the M2000-C arsenal. They are very precise and able to destroy most armored targets upon direct impact and COUNTERMEASURES The Mirage has a very complete countermeasure suite on board, including both flare and chaff dispensers and an internal ECM. While not being the most powerful jammer, it should still gain you some precious seconds to get your Super 530s out of the rail. You also have the option of equip the ECLAIR pod, which would increase your countermeasure expendable stores at the cost of removing the drag chute. So, when equipping this pod, you should always take into consideration yoru mission profile and the length of your airstrips as that drag chute might come in handy on a short runway. Thanks to Butterfly 055 from the TTI server for pointing this out. EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE: This is not a difficult aircraft to learn at first glance. The cockpit layout lends itself to being simple and easy to learn but the difficulties start to show up once you have learned how to take off and land the aircraft and you start learning the more in-depth systems such as radar modes, weapon management panels and navigation. The navigation panel on the M2000-C is not for the impatient out there, just like the Tomcat's. In order to correctly start your flight you will have to learn how to properly align your INS, which can be a bit of a daunting task for a newcomer. This is not an American aircraft and as such it comes with some quirks that you will have to learn to love, such as the solid five minutes you will have to wait to get your INS aligned after you already spent one or two more minutes imputing the coordinates into the panel. Personally, I am one of those guys that loves learning this kind of stuff so I am not bothered by the initial shock that comes from learning these systems. But that might not be the case for a newcomer. This module is not a good first buy, that title belongs to aircraft such as the F-5E-3 or even free mods such as the MB-339 (which is now on its way to become an official module) or the wonderful A-4E-C Community mod. Rather, it is an aircraft that you should approach if you already have some experience with other NATO aircraft and want a different yet oddly familiar experience when it comes to combat and system management. SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT One of the most positive aspects of this module is the fact it comes not with one but with TWO single player campaigns created by one of the most respected mission creators currently in DCS, Baltic Dragon! The first of the two, which takes place on the Caucasus map, is a training oriented experience which guides the player through some of the more tedious parts of any module in an interactive way, slowly easing them into combat scenarios. Great for beginners and available for all to play, playing this campaign is a most. The second one, only available for those who also own the Persian Gulf, takes more of a focus on the combat scenarios which play out on a fictional UAE Coup d'Etat. Playing the role of a French pilot based at the UAE as the Coup erupts, you are forced into combat with unfriendly forces. This campaign is a blast to play, even more given that it comes with custom comms outside of the DCS ATC system, a feature which is impressive to say the least. Seeing as most modules tend to lack when it comes to single player content, these two campaigns are a breath of fresh air for any player that either does not feel ready for the multiplayer arena or for those that just want to have a short, fun session after a day of work. IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module is: A powerful dogfighting platform. Good single player content made by a very good creator. A solid flight model that will have you coming back. A experience that only a European fighter could give you. If you don't mind: The quirks that come with a non-American aircraft. The lack of a targeting pod. The relatively steeper learning curve. Not having access to actively guided missiles for BVR engagements. If all or some of the above is what you want, then RAZBAM's M2000-C is for you. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and one of the main writers. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

If you were to ask 10 different people who have played DCS if they would classify it as a simulator or a game, then you would probably get very polarizing answers. Generally, you will find some that see it as a game while some others will say it is a serious flight simulator. Recently, I have witnessed both types of people within my close friend group. This has made me wonder: What makes DCS able to ride this very thin line between a game and a "serious" flight simulator? I usually define a game as something that I can casually put time into with no commitment whatsoever. I can boot it up, do a couple of missions and then log off knowing that me leaving had no consequences in the game world or towards other players' experiences with it. This is something key as to how some people find enjoyment in these titles. A really good example of this would be War Thunder. It is a game that has been designed from the ground-up to work in these quick log-in log-out situations, which surely plays a part in why it is such a popular game. A "for real" flight simulator is, usually, related with long flights with pre-planned missions that will take a very long time to complete. These could be as easy as a ground pounding mission or as complex as the Gulf War's initial strikes. But what defines something as "serious" is the time commitment. I know that if I am flight lead for someone, I will have to be there. My absence will affect the game and other people. It's these two conflicting ways of enjoying a piece of software that take center stage in this argument: There are those who think that DCS should be simplified mechanically and stick with simpler, more convenient experiences while others cannot find enjoyment without having "the full package" experience with long-range complicated missions. DCS is, at its core, a platform. Specifically, it is a highly customizable flight simulation software that allows for extremely customized experiences that could tailor to both sides of this argument. The developers leave the complexity of the second to second gameplay to the mission creators and campaign developers. This is where we start to see our answer. It is due to this freedom provided by ED's mission editor that DCS can provide such a wide spectrum of experiences. It is the reason why people like Enigma have been able to gamify DCS' gameplay, allowing them to enjoy an experience much more similar to War Thunder's but with a dynamic campaign tied to it. Additionally, this is the reason why we have extremely complex missions that need the cooperation dozens of players to even work. By giving its community the power of controlling their experiences to the tiniest degree, ED have allowed two opposite groups to coexist, whether they like it or not. There is no "perfect" way to play DCS, like I said on one of my previous articles. All it takes is finding your niche inside of this wonderfully vast simulation platform. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and one of the main writers. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

Mercredi prochain, le 7 septembre 2022, DCS recevra quelque chose qu'il obtient rarement : un tout nouveau modèle haute-fidélité. Il sera le légendaire OV-10A Bronco, un avion d'attaque et d'observation léger bimoteur qui a servi de nombreux pays pendant plus de 50 ans. Ce mod est développé entièrement par Dikennek de SPLIT-AIR, un moddeur talentueux qui a travaillé sur certains des autres mods de SPLIT-AIR comme le Long-EZ. Comme nous l'avons fait dans le passé avec le MB-339, l'A-4E et le Sk.60, nous avons voulu mettre en lumière ce projet et le travail nécessaire pour le rendre réel. Un grand merci à Dikennek pour nous avoir permis de réaliser cette interview de pré-lancement. NOTE : Cette interview a été réalisée en français par Santiago Cuberos. Une version en anglais qui a été traduite par lui est disponible ici. Avant de commencer, je souhaite vous remercier d'avoir accepté notre proposition d'entretien. Pouvez-vous vous présenter et nous en dire un peu plus sur vous et ce que vous faites? Bonjour, merci à vous de m’avoir invité pour cet entretien. Je porte le pseudo Dikennek et je suis Français. J’ai découvert DCS en 2016 et m’y suis tout de suite attaché. Après plusieurs années j’ai décidé de me mettre au vol en formation, tout d’abord en intégrant l’équipe Flying Cobra. Le vol en formation nous pousse à recréer des patrouilles réelles utilisant des avions exotiques, étant grand fan d’avion bizarre je décide de refaire la patrouille REVA évoluant sur Long-ez et Vari-ez. C’est sur ces deux avions que j’ai fait mes armes, tout d’abord en 3D, suivides textures, pour ensuite crée un EFM, car ces avions sont trop légers,et pour finir le code en LUA. Etant en étude d’Ingénieur Mécanique Général j’ai eu l’occasion d’apprend l’aérodynamique ainsi que la base du Code C/C++. En début 2021 avec l’équipe de la Wolf Delta, nous avons créé l’association Split-Air qui est un regroupement de patrouille de voltige et de moddeur. Toutes cette équipe m’a grandement aidé pour faire du modding sur DCS, nous échangions des astuces pour améliorer nos rendus etc.... L’objectif de la Split Air est de rendre, dans la mesure du possible, le plus de mod publique. Nous avons déjà publié le mod RAF basé sur le Mirage 2000C. Depuis combien de temps le OV-10A est-il en développement et pourquoi avez-vous choisi de développer le Bronco? C’est lors d’un rassemblement aérien que j’ai découvert cet avion. En effet en France le bronco solo display de Montélimar présente cet appareil tous les ans depuis 20 ans. Lorsque je l’ai vu j’ai été impressionné par sa maniabilité ainsi que sa polyvalence. Les deux moteur T76 qui donne 700ch chacun lui offre un taux de montée impressionnant. Il peut se poser sur de très courte distance et emporter de l’armement. De fil en aiguille j’ai voulu recrée le Bronco Solo Display sur DCS. Il est en développement depuis fin 2020, en effet je suis le seul développeur de ce mod. Je me suis occupé de la 3D, texture, code, le tout en parallèle de mes études. Cependant plusieurs membres de la Split Air m’aidentgrandement pour tester ce mod et me donner des retours. Ils s’occupent également de créer des vidéos ou de rédiger de la documentation autour du mod. Quel niveau de détail peut-on attendre du Bronco? A-t-il été difficile de faire fonctionner les systèmes comme dans le vrai Bronco ? Le Bronco est avion conçue pour être opérable partout et en tout temps avec un minimum d’entretien, les systèmes sont donc rustiques mais efficaces.Malheureusement je ne suis pas un codeur hors pair, et les systèmes ne fonctionnent pas tous comme dans le vrai Bronco mais j’ai essayé de me rapprocher au maximum de la documentation dont je dispose, comme la procédure de démarrage, l’armement ou les différents paramètres moteur. L’illumination du cockpit est une caractéristique sympathique et qui m’a pris énormément de temps à faire car il y a un peu de travail de modélisation 3D.Cette illumination a la particularité d’être synchronisée en vue extérieur ainsi quand multijoueur. Comme dit précédemment l’audio intérieur est simplifier au click bouton, cependant le seeker des FOX-2 est complètement fonctionnel. A l’heure où j’écris ces mots je suis en train d’investiguer pour recréer les sons d’un turbopropulseur, j’espère arriver à intégrer les sons extérieurs dans la première version. Pour cette dernière, le Bronco sera monoplace, ce n’est pas par difficulté technique mais par choix. Je prévoie de le rendre Multi-Crew pour les prochaines versions, cela me permettra de réellement travailler sur les différents rôles de l’équipage. Le Bronco aura-t-il une fonctionnalité radio complète comme le modèle A-4E? Avez-vous rencontré des obstacles en raison de l'absence d'accès au SDK ? Le bronco ne sera pas équipé d’une radio complète pour la première version, cependant pour cette version je prévois d’implémenter le menu de communication, en effet il est important de pouvoir accéder au menu de communication F10 lors d’une mission. J’ai implémenté des instruments permettant la radio navigation comme le TACAN malheureusement je n’arrive pas à le faire marcher pour des balises mobiles ce qui est quelque peu embêtant pour la navigation. Le Bronco ne possède pas de radar ni de système moderne et complexe donc l’absence de SDK n’est pas un problème majeur hormis pour les radios. Quel type de travail a été effectué pour créer l'EFM ? Avez-vous fait des études CFD pour le perfectionner? Pour moi si le modèle de vol est la colonne vertébrale d’un module, il est inutile d’avoir un beau 3D ou plein de systèmes complexes si l’avion ne peux pas voler comme un avion. J’ai donc porté une attention particulière au modèle de vol. J’ai dans un premier temps réalisé une étude complète sous OpenVSP, c’est un logiciel développé par la NASA qui m’a permis d’avoir une première approximation des différents coefficients aérodynamiques. Une fois l’aérodynamique terminée, je me suis penché sur la simulation d’un Turbopropulseur, ce qui est une grande première dans DCS. Après plusieurs études sous Matlab j’ai réussi à donner vie aux deux Turbopropulseurs T76 du Bronco. Cette modélisation en question permet d’avoir quelques caractéristiques intéressantes comme le fait que les hélices peuvent tournées même si le moteur est éteint ce qui génère énormément de trainée. Dans l’EFM sont modélisés : Un système électrique permettant une gestion de la batterie, en effet il ne faut pas rester sur le starter indéfiniment car la batterie s’épuisera. Un système de fuel limitant le temps en vol dos à 30 secondes grâce à une gestion des nourrices qui est également implémentée. Un système d’amortissement du lacet permettant d’avoir une stabilité accrue. Le décrochage est également modélisé avec un départ en vrille si la symétrie n’est pas respectée. Tout est fait pour que le pilote se sente bien dans un avion qui vie et qui se pilote avec les fesses. Les modèles externes et internes sont superbes. Quels outils avez-vous utilisés pour les réaliser ? Avez-vous utilisé un scanner 3D ou avez-vous seulement utilisé des schémas? Le Bronco a entièrement été réalisé sur le logiciel Blender à partir de plan « 3 vues » ainsi que de photos, En croisant toutes ces données, il est long mais possible d’arriver à un modèle 3D correct. De plus chaque Bronco est différent, pour la version A je n’ai pas trouvé deux fois le même cockpit, j’ai décidé de me baser sur des photos disponibles sur aviation et photographie. J’ai tout de même pris quelques libertés sur certains points où il manquait énormément d’informations. Cependant à la Split-Air nous commençons de plus en plus à travailler avec des scans 3D. Cela permet de modéliser plus rapidement avec un niveau de détail irréprochable. Les futurs projets de la Split auront donc un 3D garanti conforme à la réalité. En termes de textures, quelles références avez-vous utilisées ? Y a-t-il une liste des livrées qui seront disponibles au lancement ? Pour ce qui est des textures j’ai vraiment voulu faire ressortir le coté vieilli et mal entretenu de ce type d’appareil, notamment avec des effets de tôle ainsi que pas mal de salissures. Pour les livrées, un pack comprenant plusieurs pays sera disponible, fait à partir de plusieurs photos j’ai pu recréer relativement fidèlement certaines d’entre elles comme les CAL FIRE ou la livrée Sable du Solo Display Montélimar. Cependant pour les livrées vénézuéliennes je me suis permis de prendre quelques libertés sur la forme du camouflage car je n’ai pas vu deux camouflages identiques sur les images à ma disposition. Y aura-t-il un template de la texture au lancement ? Un Template sera disponible avec le mod comprenant tous les calques de salissures ainsi que les UV Maps. Les livrées créées par la communauté pourront être intégrées dans le mod si la livrée apporte un réel plus au mod. Le Bronco est principalement un avion de reconnaissance et un A-FAC, mais il peut également transporter des armes. Quelles armes seront disponibles au lancement ? Le Bronco pourra emporter des bombes, roquettes, Fox-2 ainsi qu’un bidon ventral. Il y aura quatrebombes : mk82, mk82 snake eye, mk83, m117. Trois types de roquettes : m260, ZUNI, Hydra. Et untype de Fox2 : Aim-9P. Pour la première version, le Bronco pourras emporter 50% de tout son arsenal. Je créerais de l’armement pour les versions futures je prévois de modéliser80% de l’armement pour la deuxième version. Il est aussi prévu d’implémenter du transport de cargaison, et le largage de 5 parachutistes comme le fait si bien le mod Hercules. C'est tout. Merci beaucoup pour votre participation aujourd'hui. Y a-t-il autre chose que vous souhaitez dire avant de conclure ?? Merci pour cet entretien, je ne vois rien à ajouter et j’espère surtout que ce mod plaira au plus grand nombre. Malgré tout, des bugs peuvent persister, donc n’hésitez pas à remonter le moindre bug que vous trouverez. Bronco sera gratuit donc n’hésitez pas à le tester, c’est l’avion qu’il vous faut pour tout détruire dans une mission Cold War 😉.. LE BRONCO SERA DISPONIBLE LE 7 SEPTEMBRE, 2022 A propos de l'intervieweur Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Fanatique d'aviation depuis longtemps, avec une préférence particulière pour l'aviation militaire et son histoire. Ses intérêts remontent au début des années 2000 et l'ont conduit à se plonger dans les simulateurs de vol civils et de combat. Il a été impliqué dans quelques communautés mais n'a commencé à être actif que vers le milieu des années 2010. Rejoint en tant que traducteur de l'espagnol vers l'anglais en 2017, il a été actif en tant que cofondateur et gestionnaire de contenu depuis lors. Twitter | Discord : Cubeboy#9034

Right now it is a very weird time to be a flight simulation fan, as we seem to be in the middle of a new golden era. MSFS is still pushing forward, looking into adding several types of aircraft currently unavailable to the sim. IL-2 Great Battles just released the long awaited Normandy expansion, including a theater of war that many have wanted for a while now. And then there's DCS World. They have been announcing modules at an unprecedented pace, many of which are aircraft that fans have been desperately asking for what seems like an eternity. But I have noticed something interesting in the community. There are those that seem excited for this never-before-seen stream of announcements and some that have taken them with a bit of confusion and distrust. After talking with several people about this subject and seeing different opinions, I wanted to dig a bit deeper to find why this reaction has been widespread amongst some members of the community. I now think I have found two clear reasons as to why someone would have an adverse reaction towards these announcements: 1. UNPRECEDENTED BOMBARDMENT OF ANNOUNCEMENTS Since July 29th, there has been a module announcement a week. This means that in the span of two months and change, we have had 9 new modules shown to us in various stages of development. Many in the community are not used to this amount of modules being revealed in such a short amount of time. This leads to confusion, making people wonder: "What changed inside of ED to lead to this?" "Is there a reason for this?". After all, it is not like people should be expected to just take everything in with unquestioned excitement. I suspect that this is due to the fact that some fans were used to these modules announcements not being frequent. For this "pattern" to be broken, they might see it as an aggressive marketing strategy change that is aimed at creating hype for these products before they are even complete. This is just speculation aimed at trying to understand this point of view, so please do not take it personally. I do feel like spacing some of these announcements out would have helped with audience reception from this specific demographic. Something that I do know is that people tend to have an inherent resistance to change, and that is clearly a part of this conundrum. 2. DISTRUST IN NEW DEVELOPERS AND THE "RAW" NATURE OF THE ANNOUNCEMENTS Another aspect that I have seen is that some people seem to see these announcements with distrust, seeing as the majority of them are from new third party studios which have no track record on any other simulators or even any other projects of any kind. This is a point that I understand and can relate to. Why should I trust a new developer before they have shown what they can do? I have no doubt that many of these studios are led by passionate individuals who are professionals to the very core, but there is something that did not help in regards to creating this possible consumer distrust: the nature of the announcements. Out of the 9 announcements that have been published since July 29th, 5 of them are aircraft. Of these 5 aircraft, only 3 have any kind of in-game footage(screenshots or video). The only one that showed a more advanced state was Aircraft Simulation Company's (ASC) C-130J, which showed two trailers where its systems are clearly visible and working in the cockpit. This means that 2 of these new new modules are nothing more than documentation and 3D models. From this point of view it is easy to understand why there is skepticism in some corners of the community. Not that long ago module announcements were handled in a completely different way. Shamrock from Stormbirds even commented on this in his article, one that gave insight as to why this change in announcement policy happened: In a post on the DCS World forums, community manager BIGNEWY, gives us some insight as to the reasoning. In the past we generally waited until a 3rd party module was quite far along in development; however, this has resulted in duplicated efforts and inefficiencies. Instead, once a 3rd party module has a completed license agreement, we will now announce it to allow the 3rd party to “plant a flag” and avoid duplicated efforts. Once a 3rd party project is roughly six months away from release based on an internal evaluation, more news and updates will be made available. Because we have several 3rd party projects in development, and the change in announcement policy, we have had a flurry of announcement activity. BIGNEWY on the DCS World forums It is natural for people to be skeptic of new products and new groups until they have proved themselves. While I do feel like these individuals have not given these developers a chance to show what they can do, I do understand where they are coming from. At least three of these projects are from people that have previous experience in the DCS modding scene (Grinelli Designs, ASC and Crosstail Studios) so they are already familiar with many of the workflows required to get something flying in DCS World. That being said. I do not completely understand why this change of policy, which seems to be directed at reducing confusion between third parties, could not have been dealt internally. This would have avoided announcing modules that are extremely early in their development cycles, which is what seems to be leading people to their skepticism. Some of these people feel like these modules were announced too soon, with little to make them feel excited. This leads to one last point: where do I stand? MY POINT OF VIEW I, personally, fall in between these two camps. I am cautiously excited for several of the modules that were announced. Heatblur's upcoming F-4E is the one module I have been the most excited about, seeing as I have a very unique relationship with that plane. Additionally, seeing that some of my favorite aircraft (Kfir, Skyraider and Hercules) are now official projects is honestly very heartwarming. The C-130J has to be the worst kept secret that DCS has had in a while. Almost everyone knew that it was already official and becoming a "graduated" module from the same guys that developed the mod, so that announcement did not take me by surprise. But to the point. I feel like some of the adverse reactions that I have seen are justified but some of the most extreme ones are not. I read the comment section of Shamrock's article about this very subject and I saw a couple of people acting, like he said in the article, a bit "grouchy". This even got Nineline, one of ED's community managers, to peek their head there and leave a couple of comments. He said this in one of his comments, which I feel is true: What I found unusual is the terms used, and them seemingly being so aggressive in that I can’t think of anything that became vaporware from DCS, I don’t feel like we are “idiotic-ly incompetent” or “lying”. I think that we, as a community, should strive to communicate better what we feel to the people that can do something about it. If we are upset about something that ED has done, we should try to communicate it in a more polite and civil manner. That goes both ways, too. I feel like ED could benefit from a bit more of transparency with these decisions, which they already did to a certain degree, but in a more public and direct manner. Not in a comment section or a forum post, but in an official publication. But for now, I will enjoy the modules that I already have and the mods that we just got. I will be cautiously optimistic about the modules that got announced and I will wait until they are further along in development to get more excited about them. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and one of the main writers. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

The first time I saw this project I got excited like a kid in a candy store. Someone was, finally, going to make one of my favorite aircraft for DCS World: the OV-10A Bronco. I have somewhat of a connection with this aircraft due to the fact that, before their retirement, I got to see them quite a few times. Now, we will all get the chance to enjoy this slow yet exciting aircraft, for FREE thanks to the effort of the Dikennek, who we interviewed last week about this project! In this review we will be taking a look into several different parts of the module and evaluating if this small but tough bird is a fit for you. These points will be divided in several sections: External and internal 3D models Visual and sound effects Flight modelling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve Its developer Is this aircraft for you? EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS I was honestly impressed by the external 3D model, it is on-par with several official modules. The is a lot of attention to detail both in terms of the 3D model itself and on its texturing work. The gear is a great example of this attention to detail. It is intricate with many moving parts, but despite that, it has been modeled extremely well. It looks and moves like it should. The tires have wear and dirt, just like the panel lines and rivets do. It looks exactly how you would think a Bronco should look: Like an aircraft that has seen some stuff in battle. Additionally, the engines, specifically the props, are an era where I was pleasantly surprised! There is a lot of edge wear in the correct leading edge, which is something that you do not see often. You can see that for yourself in the gallery posted above. The cockpit is equally as good, with a few exceptions. This model seems to have been created with a lot of care, seeing as almost every switch has been modeled. Many of these switches are not functional right now, but everything that is critical for the plane's operation works just as you would expect it to. Just take a look at how good the glass looks with those smudges of oil and dirt. At night, the cockpit comes to life with this lovely red flood light and backlit panels. Thanks to the original design of this unique-feeling cockpit, I have found myself enjoying my time just sitting in it for minutes on end. My only gripe would be the font used in some of the panels, it looks a bit off but that is a problem that is easy to solve! VISUAL AND SOUND EFFECTS There is not much in terms of unique or distinct visual effects. I do enjoy that the developer found a way to use the new prop rendering system that was implemented with DCS 2.7, it makes those moving props come to life! Keep an eye out for the transition between the regular prop and the moving prop on start-up, it is really cool to be able to see it happen. Despite what I stated earlier, there is a single effect that I found to be one of the most interesting ones in current mods. The internal cockpit lighting is synced with the external cockpit, which means that when you turn on your flood lights everyone will be able to see them from the outside. This effect had only been done before a couple of times, including the UH-60L mod, which did something similar but not to the same extent. Sound-wise, the Bronco is one of the only flyable turboprops that we have in-game at the moment. This means that there is not much to compare it to aside from a couple of mods such as the A-29B or the C-130J-30. I found that the in-cockpit sounds are excellent, as I can tell in which RPM range my engines are and how far I have pushed my throttles just by listening to the distinct high-pitch tone of these T76 engines. That being said, the external sounds are not perfect. They sound extremely well when on the ground and from the side, but the fly-by effect leaves something to be desired. The audio compresses a bit. Overall, sound design is very solid with the exceptions that I have already mentioned; but, as always I will let you, the reader, be the judge in this regard as this category can be very subjective: EXAMPLES: 1. Engine in cockpit: ( Listen for the changes in Throttle and Prop RPM): 2. Fly-by at +240 knots, full throttle: (Volume warning) FLIGHT MODELING This is usually the make-or-break point for many mods. In the words of Dikennek (the developer of the Bronco) himself: "For me the flight model is the backbone of a module. It' s useless to have a beautiful 3D or a lot of complex systems if the plane can't fly like a plane. So I paid particular attention to the flight model." He seems to be a man of his word as this has got to be one of the best feeling mods in DCS, period. It is on par with the A-4E-C in terms of fidelity, at least on the surface. That means that it feels and flies like you would expect a Bronco to do. It is extremely responsive to roll inputs and responds wonderfully to control inputs even when you fly it at near stall speeds. Also, the feeling of being able to take off in what feels like 1/32th of the runway never gets old. This is a STOL plane in its purest form and I love it. This is due to the fact that this is a proper external flight model (EFM) that was developed with the aid of tools such as MATLAB and OpenVSP. That means that the developer went out of his way to study the aerodynamics of this aircraft in order to make it as accurate as it can be with his level of knowledge. This bird flies low and slow by nature, so flying it at tree top level is intuitive and almost therapeutic. I have no other way of describing it other than this is what I have always wanted out of a mod. It even spins naturally, which is impressive as it is one of the things that only a couple of other communities have gotten right. The yaw dampener is something that kind of took me by surprise. It does aid in keeping it steady when you yaw, dampening your inputs in a relatively natural way. I cannot praise about this mod's flight model enough, it is that good. MISSION CAPABILITY This plane was designed to play a role that is rarely used in DCS: Airborne Forward Air Controller, or A-FAC for short. Thanks to your incredible visibility from the cockpit you will be able to spot any target easily so that you, as a proper observation aircraft, can relay their location for artillery or other fighters to destroy. That does not mean that you do not have fangs. You do have a small arsenal at your disposal that will allow you to destroy targets of opportunity at will. You might not be able to destroy an entire convoy of enemy tanks with your weaponry, but you will be able to weaken that convoy long enough so that your back-up can arrive and take over the task for you. It is an extremely agile plane so you will be able to somewhat defend yourself against other aircraft in a dogfight. Just do not end up like the Traitor OV-10A that got shot down by the Loyalist F-16A during the 1992 Coup in Venezuela. ARMAMENT M60 MACHINE GUN X4 While of lower caliber than a M2, these M60s are extremely good to pepper an area with infantry. You also have tons of ammo too! AIM-9P SIDEWINDER Surprisingly, the USMC put sidewinders on the Bronco. We get them too! We get the Papa version, which means that it is not an all-aspect missile. You will have to maneuver behind your targets to get a lock. DUMB BOMBS (SLEEK AND HIGH DRAG) Just your typical iron bombs. We get four types: Mk.82 / Mk.82 Snakeye, (500lbs) Mk.83 (1000lbs and centerline only) M117 (750lbs) ROCKET PODS This will be your main weapon for ground attack and spotting. You have three different pods: LAU-68 : 19x HYDRA Rockets LAU-10: 4x ZUNI Rockets M260: 7x HYDRA Rockets More weapons will be coming in the future, including gun pods EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE This is an extremely simple aircraft to learn and operate. Start-up can take a single minute and setting up for a mission takes less than two. It is kind of surprising how simple it is to learn this aircraft, to the point that it could become an excellent initial trainer for people interested in ground attack! This is a plane that anyone could like, no matter if you have not tried flying props or not. The experience of flying it is enough to make it worthy of a try. ITS DEVELOPER Dikennek from SPLIT-AIR is the only person that actively worked in developing this beauty. Yes, this is a one man operation. Hard to believe, huh? This project has got to be one of the most complete and competent that I have seen in a while. There is something that I do want to tell people since I feel like it is important, since it made me trust him as a developer immediately: Right after the interview was released, Dikennek sent me a preview version of the Bronco for me to test and also to write this very review! I found a very important and game-breaking bug during my testing and reported it to him. In a matter of a single day he had al ready sent me a corrected version. I was genuinely impressed at how open he is to constructive criticism and suggestions. I personally think that he cares deeply about this project and its future. If you want to count this as my personal vote of confidence towards him, then that's fine by me. I will be enjoying this mod a lot! IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module is: A zippy turboprop that doesn't disappoint A very nicely modeled interior and exterior An excellent EFM. A solid fixed wing A-FAC aircraft . If you don't mind: The quirks that come with a mod. The lack of any kind of guided weaponry. The simplicity of its systems. Not paying for an excellent aircraft. If all or some of the above is what you want, then Dikennek/SPLIT-AIR OV-10A Bronco is for you. TO DOWNLOAD THE BRONCO, GO TO THE SPLIT-AIR COMMUNITY DISCORD! About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and one of the main writers. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

The metagame of Ace Combat provides the player the ability to upgrade their aircraft, weapons, and at times their aircraft performance by spending a form of in-game currency. Sometimes called “credits” or “MRP’s”, this currency is earned through the completion of missions and the destruction of enemy material in the form of aircraft, ground vehicles, ships, and buildings. From the perspective of the player, these credits do not represent an accurate price reputation in a reality where modern fighter aircraft are worth more than their weight in gold (reference document by Defense Aerospace). Metagame aside, the economic implications of this currency and trade system combined with the prevalence of well-equipped mercenary organizations on Strangereal (the original, fictional world of Ace Combat) paint an unrealistically rosy perspective for weapons and personnel sales in this comparatively high-quality-of-life world. Put simply, war is good for business. Ace Combat is a poster-child for this proto-dystopian corporate-conflict fiction. Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere firmly established the existence of the megacorps General Resource Ltd. and Neucom Inc. and their dominance over the civil governments across continental USEA. The representation of their dominance is projected in their war material. Neucom with their R-series aircraft, and General Resource with their COFFIN-equipped contemporary designs, and both their willingness to use them against one another. The culmination of Ace Combat 3 and these megacorps is well chronicled. The release of Ace Combat 7 further cements the fated timeline of the series with the introduction of the General Resource Guardian Mercenaries in Operation: Sighthound. The decisions to represent Ace Combat as a universe ripe for modern-day knights for hire does so much to motivate the player to fly and fight without introducing controversial geopolitics. It also provides a unique experience for this strange, real world that you are expected to indulge in. Especially at the time of their release, these hyper-powered mercenary groups and payouts for the destruction of rival militaries felt solidified in fiction. But is there more realism to this fictional representation then there seems? For much of history, mercenaries were a fact of war and highly sought after for any conflict. Standing armies as we know them today were rare—armies were raised and fought for conflicts that arose. As the imperial age gave way to the formation of the nation-state in the last half of the 19th century and the solidification of the total war posture of nations following World War I, the need for mercenaries dwindled, and modern rules of engagement forbade their treatment as lawful combatants, discouraging their use—at least in official capacity. This grey area of mercenary work is what forms the basis of the representation we see in game, particularly with aircraft. The United States was a well-known supplier of personnel of all combat professions, even in those that it had little experience in, like combat pilots. In fact, the United States first taste of air combat was in a volunteer capacity with the La Fayette Escadrille in 1916. These pilots built a positive reputation for the perception of the United States otherwise weak air corps. (reference article from The Centanaire). Their fight represented the glamour of air combat to the United States, despite their unofficial capacity. The experience the returned to their home nation jump started the meek U.S. Army Air Corps and started its formation into what would become a world-class organization by the 1940’s. The United States mirrored this support for Allied nations during the events leading up to World War II. Once again exhibiting isolationism, the United States officially kept its national forces out of the conflicts across the oceans. However its actions spoke a different language. The Lend-Lease program for Europe and the embargo of supplies required by the conquests of the Japanese Empire spoke volumes for who the United States was supporting. But the government also provided a secretive program for the deployment of American volunteers to the Chinese mainland. This American Volunteer Group was provided the same provisions as national flyers, but with a further benefit: A monthly stipend of $750 and a bounty of $500 for every Japanese aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground. (Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941–1942, HarperCollins 2007, pp.44–45) Adjusted for inflation in the year 2020, this translates to a generous sum of over $13,500 per month and over $9000 for every Japanese aircraft destroyed. This provided the potential for some rather wealthy Flying Tigers. It is at this point that we see that the fame and fortune of combat pilots in Ace Combat don’t seem quite as fantastic as initially believed. Perhaps the best analog to these early war guns-for-hire is the mercenaries hired by the Ustio government during the Belkan War chronicled in Ace Combat Zero. The player decision to fight for the extremes of hard cash or noble notoriety in its representation of the Mercenary-Soldier-Knight system isn’t just a modest allegory to chivalry, but perhaps also a play on the volunteer roles of Western pilots on the forefront of aviation. During the 1950’s and 1960’s Africa served as a hotbed of mercenary activity. The post-colonial era saw uprisings of independence across the old European territories. This independence could not be achieved by peaceful means, however. Whether they were groups marginalized and brutalized, or wealthy landowners declaring self-sufficiency, these groups knew that their lack of military equipment and trained forces meant that they needed to seek experience and arms from those that may not see loyalty for an ideology, but rather can be bought with a promise of adventure. As warlords and colonialists fought for dominance, the border lines of the African continent shifted. There is perhaps no more recognizable group of soldiers of fortune than those of the now-defunct Executive Outcomes. Executive Outcomes was primarily formed from special operations forces from the defunct South African Special Forces following the end of the South-African border wars in 1989. Though established as trainers of Angolan military personnel, their activity expanded to direct confrontation with UNITA forces following disputed election results three years later. Their reputation was sealed with a quick and decisive victory against UNITA forces, brokering a peace deal and facilitating displacement of their forces with UN peacekeeping troops. Three years later the group engaged in combat against RUF forces in Sierra Leone who had gained control of diamond fields and held them for arms deals against the legitimate national government. Executive Outcomes again rapidly forced capitulation of hostilities and brought the group to talks. (The New Mercenaries and the Privatization of Conflict Archived 7 January, 2016 at the Wayback Machine Thomas K. Adams. Parameters, Summer 1999). During this war Executive Outcomes employed comparatively advanced heavy equipment, including the use of Soviet-era T-72 tanks and a privately owned-and-operated Mi-24 gunship. This equipment was provided to them by Iblis Air, which themselves also had access to MiG-23 and -27 fixed wing aircraft armed with air-to-ground munitions. Executive Outcomes was forced out of the conflict after peace talks and replaced again with peacekeepers, which were not effective in maintaining the ceasefire. Executive Outcomes demonstrated a relatively new concept of professional army for hire. The effectiveness of this company not only demonstrated an effective augment of national forces, but also the ability to win wars independently. In Air Combat and Ace Combat 2 this is exemplified with the Special Tactical Fighter Squadron Scarface—a government on the brink of disaster reaching out to well-trained mercenaries with their own equipment in a desperate bid to win back their territory. There’s merit in the thought that this representation of mercenary activity in-game is not a coincidence. The mercenary activities by groups like Executive Outcomes in Africa were regularly demonstrating the ability of a well-equipped but small force driven by a desire for wealth and manifest to be able to defeat in short time significantly larger national forces of the day. There is something of an unsettling “seediness” associated with the modern-day private military corporations that represent a significant chunk of armed security around the world. Whether this reputation is deserved is perhaps up for debate, but business suits and combat vests makes for strange yet effective bedfellows. However this combination is far from a novel paring. Companies and corporations have held their own private security divisions since their development, and what may have been configured as a requirement for the protection of trading vessels and caravans grew into its own lucrative stream of income for those so well equipped. The contemporary view of mercenaries meets this juncture with groups like the well-known Blackwater (now Academi following several reorganizations). But in just the last few years has a glut of surplus equipment provided the ability for legitimate companies to via for contracts assisting national air forces in combat training. It is in these companies that the line between suits and soldiers blur. Perhaps these companies do not use the weapons of war their equipment was initially equipped for, but they are displacing what were once tightly cherished national logistics lines, and not in small numbers. In fact, in the case of companies like American-based Draken International there is a maintained force of combat aircraft totally nearly 100-strong, outpacing the size of the air forces of majority of the world’s nations. And they are not alone: Air USA recently secured the purchase of over 40 ex-Australian F/A-18 Hornets. What makes these unique is they were purchased as is, weapons, avionics, and all with no plans for demilitarization (reference article from the Drive). To add further, these companies are not just lapping up older equipment—Air USA’s Hawk trainers are equipped with EL-2052 radars and are the only privately owned adversary aircraft equipped with AESA radars in the world. The vast sums of money available in private sectors and the United States government’s willingness to cede partial control of air combat training and logistics operations to civilian sectors represents an almost eerie bridge to the corpocracy represented in Ace Combat 3. Large defense contractors like Northrop Grumman are not unwilling to participate in this industry, with groups like Vinnel Corporation having once been lodged firmly under their umbrella of control. It has become far from unfathomable that this alliance of enterprise and defense will be checked. Neucom Inc. and General Resource Ltd., corporations once believed to be improbable during a time of anti-trust litigation and crackdowns on cartels and oligopolies now seems an inevitability in our world’s new order of private security in the name of cost savings. Ace Combat once may have been a glimpse into a different reality than our own, but in recent years the geopolitical structure of our world has shifted drastically. Dreams of private glory and gold once thought over with the establishment of boundaries and treaties had only been tempered for a short time before rebounding in ways reminiscent of eras long past. Trillion dollar companies with vast cash reserves and the acceleration of an unpredicted form of globalization and asymmetrical warfare has fostered the growth of new supranational organizations with a discerning eye for the future of inter-state security. But if we were to be honest with ourselves, there is perhaps little different. The clear blue skies—a link from past to future—forever stays the same. Yesteryear’s Dutch East India Company is today’s Saudi Aramaco, just as Ace Combat's Grunder Industries paved the way for their General Resource. About the Writer T.J. "Millie" Archer A Life-long realist and aviation enthusiast. Once the co-founding Administrator of the Electrosphere.info English Ace Combat Database. In the present day he is freelance, roving the internet in search of the latest aviation news and entertainment. Read Staff Profile.

During our latest dive through Itch.io, the fish like shape of a space fighter darting across the surface of an asteroid caught my attention. What seemed to be a small one-off game demo took me to a website of a developer that had a lot more going on than it seemed. With multiple projects beneath his belt, a game award and mentions of being an educator, we reached out to KookaNova for an interview about their past and current projects. Hello, and thanks so much for accepting my sudden interview request. After reading about you on your website, I felt like I had to talk with you. Thanks a ton for reaching out to me. I'm glad you find my work interesting. I'm Connor Cox. I'm a game developer and a teacher of technology and programming. I've been drawn to games since I was very young, and always knew I wanted to do something creative. At a different point in time, that has meant different things. It was fine art, it was animation. These days, it's programming, 3D modeling, music, and piecing all together into games that I want to play. Growing up, how did your interest in video games start? Were flight games and simulators a part of that? Despite my childhood being spent mostly in the 2000s, I grew up on the Super Nintendo first, and then Nintendo 64 and Arcade games. My first game was MegaMan X. Early on I encountered Ocarina of Time as well, and then in an arcade with my father, I experienced Galaga, which became my favorite arcade game. Somewhere in the midst of all that, my brother got his hands on a Playstation 2, and with that, Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies. That might have been the first game I actually completed, and that experience specifically has driven me forward in the creation of my most recent projects, Space's Aces and now Ace Perinova. When did your interest shift from a pass time towards learning game development? I was always interested in game development, but my environment growing up wasn't conducive for understanding it at all. When I was very young, I was under the impression that everything was code, even all the music, and art. Eventually, I learned how game engines worked. Throughout high school, I was certain I was going to be a 2D animator or a musician because I really didn't understand technology very well. I thought if I couldn't make my own games, I could at least work on them through art. Yet for some reason when the time came to apply for colleges and sign up for courses, I dove fully into the hands-on coding classes and 3D classes instead of animation or music. Learning that is what has led me here. While Skyward Flight Media has interviewed indie developers before, I believe this is the first time we have interviewed an educator. Please tell us about your teaching experience thus far. I am, in fact, an educator. Specifically, I teach Unity Development, 3D modeling, programming, app/web development, and a plethora of other interesting general technology skills such as Arduino. I run the Makerspace at a residential treatment center where we focus on young adults with processing disorders, severe ADHD, who are on the autism spectrum, or who maybe struggle with depression or addiction. Specifically, our goal is to take in these young adults who have these hurdles in their life that make living on their own a challenge, and teach them how to become self-sufficient and independent. At the Makerspace, I teach students (often with technology addiction) how to use that interest in technology to develop skills and make technology work for them, as opposed to controlling them. Do your students create games as a part of the syllabus? Part of the fun of my class is that it's mostly self-directed. A new student comes in with an idea of what they want to learn, and I feed them the tools they need to be successful in that. I've had multiple students make games, and they learned a ton of great information about Unity that you can't get from tutorials on the internet. On the other hand, I've had students who used CAD software to design buildings and parts, and then print them out with our 3D printer and piece them together. One of my favorite projects has to be from a student who is fascinated with data science. They've enjoyed collecting data and finding ways to display it. This student is currently on a quest to find the center (in graph theory terms) of Wikipedia. That is, where all links in Wikipedia connect through the most. All that is to say, there's not a specific curriculum, just self-directed projects and myself as a really strong resource and guiding hand for the students. Some make games, some do other equally interesting projects. Has being an educator also helped with your own development projects outside of the university? Yes, very much! In University, I mostly learned programming and 3D art as it related to games development; however, the interests of my students have pushed me to pursue web development, programming console and windowed apps outside of Unity and with other languages, creating fun hardware projects (I once made an Arduino "scream machine" for the class), and generally I have been exposed to the broad world of technology where before I was very limited to only Unity. I will say, my favorite way to develop is still Unity. The game that caught our attention is Spaces Aces. Was this game developed as a part of the university course? Space's Aces was developed as my end-university capstone project. In our classes, we worked in cohorts, meaning we stayed with the same people from year 1 through year 4. So in the middle of year 3, we all came together to pitch capstone projects that would be completed in year 4. Then people got to pick which projects they wanted to work on. I pitched Space's Aces, and had a team of 6 initially join up with me. That was enough to make my project one of the few that would be completed in year 4. I created all the design documents and tasks for everyone to complete. Unfortunately, before we actually started the project, I lost 3 members of the team. Two of them dropped out due to long-covid symptoms, and one of them I had to fire because of a nasty little thing called plagiarism. Our team still felt confident that we could deliver on the idea of what we wanted, and so we continued development with a slightly scaled-down scope. In the end, we published what we would refer to as a complete demo of the game we wanted to make. I can understand Space’s Aces being seen as a demo for future work, but even this demo is already award winning isn’t it? Yes! We won a gold award at our University's "Digital Media Showcase" for 2022. It's similar to a film festival, but a lot more broad range. Each year in the spring my University holds this showcase where any student or alumni, single or as a group, can submit a "Digital Media" project to the event. There were really cool music projects, films, websites, commercials even. VR and AR projects of different kinds as well. My buddies worked on an animated horror short together for it. In the end, Space's Aces won Gold in the Animation/Games category. Fun fact: the video for that still had some of the cut features from Space's Aces. Spaces Aces is a single-player game but it's set up as a team deathmatch-style flight shooter. Did this game have local multiplayer? Were there plans to make it multiplayer? Multiplayer functionality was a part of the original scope, and we actually did have it completely in-game and working. Even better, it was online multiplayer! You may have also noticed that the enemies have names and character art. There were supposed to be characters in the game, and they were in and function too. Thank you so much for asking about this. So where did that multiplayer go? Well, the university had promised all of us that the projects we made for them that year would belong entirely to us. Then we changed deans something like 3 times, and whatever legal document was there that was supposed to guarantee us ownership vanished. When we caught wind of that, I decided I wasn't going to pay for server hosting for a game that I couldn't even legally claim as mine, and the team and I chose to cut the characters I designed out so that I could save them for a future project. I then kept them up to date with Ace Perinova development. My original plan was to take Space's Aces further outside of university and add a story mode, more ships and characters, more levels, game modes, and just more of everything. I'm most curious about what seems to be a cast of unique characters tied to each spacecraft. There isn't much information about them. What can you tell us about them? So actually, the characters are not tied to specific spacecraft. You were able to independently select them, and each had their own set of unique abilities that complemented the function of specific spacecraft. For example, one could teleport herself forward through time, and with the press of a button, could do the same to the secondary weapon of the spacecraft she was using. This was really effective with tracking missiles, which I think all spacecraft in this version come with for the following reason. This character ability functionality is actually still in the game, just this specific move set is selected by default and the select screen has been removed. That is due to me wanting to save the idea for a game that I can actually claim ownership on. Ace Perinova is your current development project. This game is inspired by Spaces' Aces but not completely based on it. What can you tell us about the ongoing development of Ace Perinova? Ace Perinova is essentially going to be what I wanted Space's Aces to be, but this time without any of the limiting factors. I have more time to work on it, a ton more knowledge (I built what you see for Ace Perinova with entirely new and 10x more efficient code in 2 weeks), and with a better render engine. I've taken a few month pause so that I could focus on learning more in general technology and programming so that I could be even better at my work and make some different portfolio pieces. I really want to return to it, because I can't think of a game I want to play more right now, but I'm also trying to get hired out in Seattle by some game developers so that I can hone my craft and use my income to fund further development of Ace Perinova, including things like voice acting for the characters and server hosting for the multiplayer. What are some of the biggest features/functions that Ace Perinova is bringing to its future audience? The biggest part of Ace Perinova I look forward to seeing is the way people use character and ship combinations to accomplish stunning feats that I probably couldn't have imagined. I have a character that creates gravitation anomalies for instance. Can you imagine the cool things people can come up with for using that? Or how about a grappling hook that attaches to ships like a towing line would? That's probably the most important part about this game. There are some other features though that I never planned on for Space's Aces that I now know how to incorporate thanks to my recent time off. Like a replay/picture mode! Imagine how Halo's Theater mode works. I plan on incorporating that and hiring a friend of mine to take some advertising shots for me, and in the meantime, it'll act as a good way to share development progress. I just have to implement it. We mentioned in a tweet a while back that the flight model of Spaces Aces was surprisingly well done for turning battles. Will Ace Perinova continue to focus more on close range combat or is longer-range combat coming with the new game? I saw that tweet and I was really happy to hear that. Having played Ace Combat a lot and really enjoying Project Wingman a while back, I find fun in the circle game of trying to maneuver behind your target through careful management of speed, pitch, yaw, you get it. That will certainly stay in for Ace Perinova. However, some ships will be better for maneuvering behind while some might be more suited for bombing an objective, or taking long distance pot shots. Of course, Ace Perinova also focuses on the characters and their abilities and how they play along with the weapon types and maneuverability provided by the ships. Some of the planned abilities affect movement. So the outcome may vary in any case. I look forward to seeing how people use these mechanics to change the game and seeing how I as a developer can play along. Ace Perinova is still a ways away, but do you have an idea of what you’d like the final product to look like? Visually, I have some ideas. The rendering in my videos on the game were actually an experiment with Unity's HD Render Pipeline and some of the effects I can get with that. Same with the updated Tri-Speeder ship. I tried some new techniques to add more polygons without hurting performance. So right now, I'm capable of producing something with visual fidelity comparable to that of Star Wars: Squadrons. I like that look a lot, but is that definitely what I want? Maybe. I'm working on some concept art and trying to see how vastly different environments may look. In terms of features, I absolutely know what I want. I have made up my mind on what the play experience should be like and what features can be expected by launch. For example, Online multiplayer and objective game modes that put emphasis on team cooperation. I have a required number of ships and characters to have in for launch. I have a specific list of features that are needed before launch, and that list isn't allowed to be changed. Removing anything to be a detriment to the project, and if I add anything I would consider that feature creep. I can't go into full detail on the plans, but I have a really good idea of what I want, and a decent understanding of how I'm going to get there. Thanks for this interview. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future. I’ll be checking in to see how your next game project is doing for sure! Thank you for the interview! It's been great to have a chance to talk about this work, and has given me even more motivation to keep the progress going on it. For anyone looking to know more about what I do, I'm @KookaNova on Twitter and YouTube, where I post about the games I'm working on, or some of the techniques and technologies I'm learning and tutorials for them from time to time. Currently, I'm posting about a mobile strategy board game that plays like an infection checkers. When that's done, it'll all be about Ace Perinova for a while. About the Interviewer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.

Beyond the hyperspace corridor beneath the glare of two suns, humanity combats mysterious alien invaders that once overwhelmed Earth's military forces. Started by a sci-fi novel series began in 1984, the Battle Fairy Yukikaze franchise has only spawned one official game release.  Available in Japan only for personal computers and the Xbox Original, "Battle Fairy Yukikaze: Fairy Dancing in the Sky" offers the opportunity to fly reconnaissance and combat missions over the fictional planet named Fairy. About Yukikaze ​The world portrayed in the Yukikaze franchise revolves around humanity's first contact with and war against an alien race they named the JAM. The novels, original video animation (OVA) series, and video game all focus on a period over 33 years after the conflict began. The ongoing war started on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica with the JAM invasion through a hyperspace corridor, later named "The Passageway." After the formation of the Earth Defense Force by the United Nations, a  successful counterattack forced the JAM to retreat back through The Passageway. The first Earth reconnaissance units found a completely different planet on the other side. This planet, believed to be the JAM homeworld, would be named "Fairy" by humanity. To prevent a second JAM invasion, the Earth Defense Force established a series of military bases and massive airborne aircraft carriers around The Passageway on planet Fairy. Due to many factors related to the type of enemy the JAM is and the geography of the planet, the aircraft and personnel of the Fairy Air Force are the leading force against the JAM. Game Mechanics In this game, the player takes the role of a member of the United Nations Earth Defense Force, Fairy Air Force, Special Air Force 5th Squadron (SAF-V). Known as the "Boomerang Squadron" for their record of always returning from their missions, they utilize thirteen immensely high-performance aircraft which the whole of the Fairy Air Force relies on for gathering data on the capabilities of the JAM. Early on in the conflict, the JAM destroyed many human-made reconnaissance satellites that were put in orbit around planet Fairy. This forced the Earth Defense Force to rely on reconnaissance flights by aircraft able to outrun and evade JAM aircraft. The thirteen aircraft of SAF-V become a vital part of humanity's ability to combat the alien threat. ​Both the PC and Xbox Original versions of the game utilize aircraft designs, engine sounds, weapons and characters seen in the OVA  rather than the novels. Even the unique Heads Up Display (HUD) of the FFR-31MR/D Super Sylph in the OVA is recreated. Differences between the personal computer and Xbox Original port of the game are minimal. The Xbox port has minor non-story related cut scenes were removed, one or two elements of the HUD are visually different, but functionality remains the same. Other small features like free look around the aircraft are inaccessible during missions due to the limited number of buttons available on the game console controller. ​During game play replays more cinematic camera angles can be accessed. Including flyby cameras and 3rd person, multi-angle cameras.  The Xbox Original port of the game is arguably easier to play due to its compatibility with the console's controller, whereas the PC version supports keyboard control without the use of a computer mouse. A limited number of flight sticks are supported without any software or modification needed. On the Xbox, the console specific version of the Thrustmaster Top Gun Fox 2 Pro Flight Stick is the only flight stick supported whereas the PC version supports the SideWinder Force Feedback, Thrust Master Top Gun AFTERBURNER 2 and Top Gun Fox 2 Pro USB.  ​​The soundtrack of the game is limited, but this is hardly noticeable during gameplay with a few exceptions. Music from the two original soundtracks or ending theme created for the animated series is not used. On the subject of sound, engine noises, missile launches and the like sound good with the radio chatter during missions being a nice added bonus to the atmosphere of everything.  In the graphics department, the game is somewhat minimal with pre-rendered explosions that appear two dimensional and terrain at low altitudes is not particularly remarkable. The aircraft models in the game are faithfully recreated from the OVA release; not the original designs from the sci fi novels. Only the FFR-31 MR/D Super Sylph and FFR-41MR Mave (arguably the two titular aircraft of the entire franchise) feature multiple points of view, whereas other aircraft only have A Heads Up Display view or a single external view. A majority of the player and enemy controlled aircraft can be viewed with the model viewer available in Extra Mode. They can be further appreciated with the replay viewer that plays after each mission in single player, VS mode or Extra mode. The overall flight model of the game feels stiff in some areas, primarily in the touchy rudder response. Even lightly pressing the analog triggers of the Xbox Original controller can cause a full input rudder response, forcing the nose of an aircraft as far to the left or right as possible. Very little pressure is needed to make precise adjustments. Pitch and roll react nicely. They accurately become less responsive at higher altitudes or near stall speeds. Applying aircraft rudder to maintain yaw over a long distance can also cause the aircraft to slip into a stall and force it to tumble. ​Aircraft performance is most affected by battle damage which can disable afterburners and limit mobility. Though visual damage is not often shown outside of a specific story mission, heavy damage to the aircraft engine does cause it to visibly smoke.  Throttle control can be adjusted to maintain a specific engine output without continually having to hold a button to decrease or increase speed. By setting the throttle to a specified thrust, the player can then focus more on maneuvering the aircraft with minimal throttle management. ​​​ ​Offensive weapons systems are simplified to a mixture of the aircraft cannon, gun pods, two types of air-to-air missiles with specific effective ranges and one type of air-to-ground missile. For certain missions, deployment of tactical air information system pods takes up weapon slots. The gun sight used for the aircraft cannon is not always accurate, with each aircraft having its position at a slightly different angle. Visually confirming the flight path of the cannon rounds from the gun by test firing and understanding the aim point by seeing its tracer rounds. Usually, the aim point is just below the Whiskey Mark on the HUD. Something to note is the effectiveness of the Air-to-Air missiles in this game. They are quite accurate and realistic in comparison to other console based flight shooters and flight simulators. A single missile is more than capable of bringing down a JAM fighter, but like wise capable of destroying or heavily disabling the player aircraft. Generating the correct angles, altitude and speed to evade incoming AAMs without using countermeasures is challenging. Unsuccessfully evading an AAM usually results in battle damage that will make dodging future guided missiles even more difficult. ​ Defensively all aircraft come equipped with an ample supply of countermeasures which can decoy all incoming enemy guided weapons. Deploying countermeasures while the missiles are at a medium distance from the aircraft is optimal. Missiles in this game do have a type of proximity detonation which can still damage the player aircraft. Unlike most flight shooters found on game consoles, the missiles are very accurate and attempt to lead their targets, making evasion by outmaneuvering the missiles much harder. Because of this, use of countermeasures is strongly suggested for new players of the game. With experience, the player will be able to aggressively maneuver their aircraft close enough to get within minimum missile range and prevent them from successfully firing a missile, but even then, flares will be needed to handle medium and long range missile fire. Single Player Campaign​​ During the campaign, the player plays as Lieutenant Rei Fukai, the main character in both the novel series and the animated OVA. Lt. Fukai is the pilot of the FFR-31MR/D Super Sylph modex #503 nicknamed "Yukikaze." Staying in line with the story only the Super Sylph is available for all except technically the final mission of the 15 mission single player campaign. Weapon selection varies depending on the mission with upgrades to missiles introduced as the campaign continues. A majority of the missions are original, created specifically for the game. There are a few notable missions from the first novel that feature changes from their original form. For example, the mission to 'support' the American journalist Andy Lander. Lt. Fukai is tasked to provide the journalist with a joyride for an article he is writing about the Fairy Air Force. In the novel, Yukikaze is forced to land in an unknown zone created by JAM interference. During their time on the ground, the journalist loses their hand after attempting to touch an unknown swamp of yellow material. After a second run-in with the JAM, the pair escapes the trap and returns to base. In the game, the mission includes a brief entry into the same unknown zone, but do not land. Instead, some brief air-to-air combat occurs before Yukikaze, and its crew returns to base. The bulk of the campaign is made up of air-to-air combat missions with a rare air-to-ground mission or two. A pair of missions in support of one of the few absolutely hulking AAC-4 Banshee airborne aircraft carriers are also included. When assisting the Banchee, mid-mission airborne landing, rearming and launch from the AAC-4 is included. While not every mission involves direct combat, the possibility of being attacked by JAM aircraft while flying to the mission area and while returning to base is a possibility. Depending on the mission, shooting down every enemy is not a requirement. Evading enemies using high speed and countermeasures, then returning to base before they can shoot down Yukikaze is an option at times. ​​The most interesting mission type featured are the reconnaissance missions which fall in line with the role of the SAF 5th squadron. Utilizing a Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS) the player flies through a series of way points on a flight path shown in the mission briefing and during the mission through their HUD. These missions are set up to challenge players by having them fly at low speeds and various altitudes to reach them. Passing through them too quickly will not allow the TARPS to gather data and cause them to be missed. Some of these way points can be set at radically different altitudes or directions from the previous ones. This challenges the player to make coordinated, low speed turns while trying to avoid stalling and missing the optimum flight path completely. When it comes to flight games and simulators, this is an interesting challenge not often presented. Especially in arcade combat flight simulator games which place less emphasis on technical flying and more on high speed, high G maneuvering. The events of the campaign mode end around the same point within the novels where the transfer of the internal operating system of Yukikaze is done from the FFR-31MR/D Super Sylph to the FFR-41MR Mave. The events of the campaign are presented as a memory of Lt. Rei Fukai as he recovers from his last combat mission in which the Yukikaze Super Sylph was destroyed, and the lieutenant himself was injured. ​ VS Mode This game mode supports a maximum of two players in either player vs. player or player vs. CPU combat. Combat against the CPU in this mode is often very fast with engagements rarely taking longer than four minutes on average, depending on player skill level. VS Mode has the largest aircraft selection. Both human and JAM aircraft: FA-1 Fand 1, FA-2 Fand 2, FFR-31 Slyphid, FFR-31MR/D Super Sylph, FFR-41MR Mave, JAM Type-1, JAM Type-2 and Gray Sylph. ​After setting weapons to either Guns only or Guns and Missiles, a maximum of six locations is available as the setting for the battle: Forest, Fairy Air Base, Grassland, Sugar Desert, Subspace and Wilderness. Finally, the option to allow accompanying aircraft to act as the wingman for each player is available. Turning the 1 vs. 1 to a 2 vs. 2.  No options such as 1 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 3 are possible. The settings for VS Mode are shown below in two screenshots: Extra Mode This is an instant action game mode with some details that are not fully explained from the start. Its appeal is to let the player select an aircraft then pit them against waves of enemies. At the end of the session, their points are accumulated and compared against a leaderboard. It starts with aircraft selection, which is coupled with a model viewer for each aircraft available. Each aircraft model can be rotated with a zoom in and zoom out function. A selection of Human and JAM aircraft is available, but it is not clear why every aircraft from VS Mode is not available in Extra Mode. Only in Extra Mode can aircraft besides the FFR-31MR/D be flown using the full screen rather than being stuck in split-screen VS Mode. ​ After aircraft selection, the player is placed in an onslaught scenario. Waves of JAM Type 1 and Type 2 aircraft attack the player. Over time the player is taken to different maps with gradually increasing JAM presence. Weapons do not replenish between each round, and the damage is not repaired. The difficulty is further enhanced with the JAM using their unknown ability to disappear and reappear at random locations. Any missile pursuing a JAM loses lock when it disappears - this is the most frequent cause for wasted missile shots in Extra Mode. ​In the story of Yukikaze, the complete capabilities of the JAM remain a mystery throughout the entire conflict with humanity. Their ability to disappear or teleport is first visualized in Battle Fairy Yukikaze OVA episode 1 and episode 4. JAM type 1 and the JAM created Grey Super Sylph clone could disappear both visually and from radar.  Though never explained in detail, the ability is most likely tied to the truth behind the JAM's very existence - something explained within the novels and animated OVA. At the end of each Extra Mode play through, all points are tallied up, and the player's score may be entered on a top ten scoreboard. Battle Fairy Yukikaze: Fairy Dancing in the Sky as a flight game is not particularly spectacular. It would be somewhat confusing and slow paced for someone that has not at least seen the OVA. Die-hard Yukikaze fans have most likely sought this game for years now, and their efforts are rewarded with a decent overall experience. The biggest hurdle to overcome continues to be the game being rather inaccessible because of its exclusive Japanese release. The difficulty of finding physical copies for the PC and Xbox Original and region locking which prevents Japanese games to be played on non-Japanese Xboxes can be costly to deal with. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. A lifelong aviation enthusiast with a special interest in flight simulators and games. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating aviation related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He continues to explore past and present flight games and sims with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. | Twitter | Discord: RibbonBlue#8870 |

The SIMPLE Series was created by D3 Publisher starting in October 1998. The focus of the series was to publish budget-priced video games. These games were developed to meet a price point of 1500 JPY, much lower than the usual high prices of brand new games released for the Sony PlayStation 1 and the Sony PlayStation 2. With a wide variety of developers involved, the genres of games produced cross just about every genre there is: racing, shmup, mahjong, dating sims, light gun shooters, sports, board games, roleplaying games, and so many more to mention. Of course, there were a few flight games, which brought us to SIMPLE 2000 Series Vol. 117 THE零戦 (The Zero Fighter). ​Released on May 10th, 2007, for the PlayStation 2, The Zero Fighter was developed by Mobile & Game Studio and Bit-Town. Of the two studios, Bit Town was primarily a developer of flight games. Their works include the Sidewinder series (known as Lethal Skies and Raging Skies outside of Japan) and Astro Trooper Vanark. This developer also worked with Asmik Ace Entertainment and Aqua System, who published other flight games on the Xbox Original, Super Nintendo, Sega Mega, and PlayStation 2. This was stated earlier, but it must be repeated.tle that's a part of a lower-budget series of games. Don't load up this game expecting to play something on the level of its high-profile contemporaries on the PlayStation 2. ​Visually this game is about as presentable as could be expected of a title on the PlayStation 2. The soundtrack and sound effects are not worth focusing on much due to their low quality and limited variety. Skipping all of this, we'll focus on other parts of this release. ​​​ Mission and Story This game features a ten mission long, single-player campaign that is set in World War II. The missions are based on well-known battlefields of the Pacific Theater of World War II. Rabul, Port Moresby, the Solomon Islands, Pearl Harbor, Santa Cruz, and more. Some battles are easier to recognize than others. While one should not expect to see the majority of the US Navy Pacific Fleet rendered during the attack on Pearl Harbor mission, the representation of many warships and the general layout of the map is adequate enough to make the battle scene identifiable. ​ Each mission comes with a few optional settings before aircraft selection and beginning the mission. These options can change the time of day and weather, along with choosing mission difficulty. There are no pre-mission briefings to explain the situation or combat objective, but a sentence quickly sums up the type of mission you are about to embark upon. Mission objectives are very straightforward, with few surprises. There are no mid-mission updates, surprise waves of enemies, or unusual objective types. After completing all missions as a pilot of the Empire of Japan, playing as a pilot of the United States of America is unlocked. This grants access to new aircraft but only flip-flops mission objectives. The Japanese and American campaigns are essentially mirrored versions of one another. ​ Enemy difficulty does vary somewhat with the increase in mission difficulty, but the level of challenge isn't anything to write home about. Raising the difficulty level increases the amount of damage output from the enemies but not their skill levels. The most difficult enemies to deal with are the warships. They usually travel in groups with multiple anti-aircraft guns with a longer engagement range than your aircraft machine guns and cannons. The warships quickly concentrate fire on any aircraft that enters their weapon range, bringing a large volume of firepower directly onto the player within seconds. Aircraft Selection Fifteen aircraft are available in total: 6 for the United States of America and 9 for the Empire of Japan. These aircraft are a mixture of land-based and naval aircraft: fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and strategic bombers. ​​ Imperial Japanese Aircraft Aichi D3A Type 99 Carrier Bomber Kawanishi N1K-J Mitsubishi A6M2B Zero Type 21 Carrier Fighter Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero Type 22 Carrier Fighter Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero Type 32 Carrier Fighter Mitsubishi A6M5 Zero Type 52 Carrier Fighter Mitsubishi Navy Type 1 Attack Bomber (G4M) Nakajima Type 97 Carrier Attack Bomber ​ American Aircraft Boeing B-29 Super Fortress Consolidated B-24 Liberator Grumman F6F Hellcat Lockheed P-38 Lightning North American P-51 Mustang Vought F4U Corsair Completing missions unlocks more aircraft, while the post-mission rating the player receives unlocks paint schemes and aircraft tuning settings. Changes to engine power, armor, machine gun power, and more can be made, but they are subtle changes. These are minor adjustments to base aircraft performance, but they are adequate in combat. Especially increases in armor. Weapons When starting up a game or simulator set in World War II, anyone with basic knowledge of history understands the level of technology available throughout the conflict. The weapons selection includes bombs, rockets, and torpedoes of many sizes. The option to sortie without these weapons is also available. There is no limit in the quantity of how many of these weapons can be carried, but there is a reloading timer after the available stock of weapons is fired. Naturally, bombers such as the Mitsubishi G4M and Consolidated B-24 can carry larger versions of the torpedoes and bombs that smaller aircraft cannot. But even so, fighters like the A6M Zero and F6F Hellcat can be seen with almost comically large weapon loads. The first sight of a Vought F4U with four full-length torpedoes beneath each wing requires a moment or two to let sink in. Luckily, these visually overloaded weapons do not cause performance reduction on the aircraft carrying them. ​ The machine guns and cannons available on each aircraft share the same damage output and sound effects. They are especially effective against air targets because of the large gun sight the game provides once an air target is in range. The enemy aircraft hitboxes are also somewhat on the large side, making it easy to shoot them down once in range and at a good angle. The gunsight provided only appears to help the player lead their target. The player is not provided with their own gun sight to generally show the path their bullets will follow. This means that visually guiding tracer fire into targets while firing is the most reliable aiming method. Thorough use of yaw when firing is necessary; fortunately, yaw is very easy to use at any air speed, and there is no threat of entering a stall or departing from flight because of overuse. The omission of the aircraft having its own gunsight makes it especially hard to attack land and naval targets. A strafing run on a warship is particularly unrewarding. The time spent making corrections to hit the target allows the warship to pummel the incoming attacker. Factoring in that these warships usually travel in groups, the attacking aircraft will quickly find itself being hit rapidly from multiple angles. Coming off of a tedious strafing run with a large number of new holes in the aircraft isn't entirely worth it. The use of air-to-ground and anti-ship weapons becomes even more appealing because of this. Now, this is where things get... interesting. With the game set in World War II, the safe assumption would be that the most advanced weapon available would be unguided rockets. Most likely created for attacks against anything that doesn't fly. 'The Zero Fighter' throws a curveball in weapons characteristics by providing all torpedoes and rockets the ability to self-guide onto targets after achieving some sort of target lock. By far, the most beneficial optional weapon is Small Rockets. Capable of hitting air, land, and sea targets at twice the range of guns, they are akin to Standard Missiles in arcade flight action games like, Sky Rouge, Project Wingman, or Air Force Delta. The enemy also possesses these weapons, so evading guided rockets from an Aichi D3A is something that will happen. Alternatively, selecting a Mitsubishi Type-1 Attack Bomber with Small Rockets makes it a pseudo-Arsenal Plane, capable of firing many rockets at all targets from medium range. I doubt anyone saw that coming. Game Mechanics The overall flight model lands squarely within the flight arcade genre. While it is possible to increase or decrease and set engine power to hold at a constant speed, there are no other more sim lite functions. The focus on aircraft control is more on maneuverability than speed. All aircraft featured seem to accelerate and decelerate similarly and share the same top speed - which feels like a very low speed. Do not expect to outrun enemies or perform zoom and boom tactics during gameplay here. All aircraft, including the strategic bombers, are more than maneuverable enough to outturn one another. The prospect of bringing a B-29 Super Fortress to a large-scale air battle is actually very positive. Its now fighter-like maneuverability and forward-mounted guns are backed up by all other gun positions on these bombers, being capable of firing at targets independently. The gunners can even hit targets while performing barrel rolls and Immelmann Turns. ​ Each aircraft comes with at least one Special Move - an ability that temporarily alters aircraft capabilities or weapons systems. These abilities have a cool down gauge which must be full or all green before they are used. The four skills available are: ​Homing After selecting Homing but before activating it, enemy aircraft that are in attack range show a red lead indicator somewhere near them. Once Homing is activated, aircraft speed and control are automatically taken over by an autopilot. The player only needs to fire their machine guns until the target is destroyed. Once the target is destroyed, Homing turns off, and the player regains full control of the aircraft. ​ Kamikaze This causes a set amount of damage to enemies that are rammed while also inflicting damage to the player's aircraft. This function is the hardest to use due to the restriction of aircraft performance in the game. Multi-Bomb While active, it is possible to launch bombs, rockets, and torpedoes at multiple targets. This ability, coupled with the guided missile-like performance of these heavier weapons, can make an attack or bomber a medium-range powerhouse. Power Boost Engine output is doubled for a short time. Hot Swap A feature that many would remember from a first-person shooter than a flight game. At any time during a mission pressing the Triangle button will allow the player to switch from their pre-selected aircraft to any of the other allied aircraft participating in the battle. Though the aircraft cannot be manually selected before switching, the player can access attackers, fighters, and bombers and their equipped weapons with a few button presses. This is by far the most attractive addition to this game, but a specific danger comes when hot-swapping to another aircraft. Suddenly taking control of an unseen plane may put the player from flying horizontally to diving nose down at the ground in the middle of a dive-bombing attack. The threat of taking control in a somewhat dangerous position is real, but the reward of always being able to remain in action via hot-swap feels as though it is worth the risk. Immediately throttling down as soon as a hot-swap is complete allows for more time to ascertain the situation of the aircraft that is now under the player's control. Two things to remember: Hot Swap is not available while a Special Skill is active, and being shot down while attempting to Hot Swap will result in mission failure.​ ​ Replay Viewer The replay viewer features four camera angles that can be selected by using the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons. Though camera #4 has frequent problems with clipping through aircraft or being blocked by parts of the aircraft, cameras #1-3 offer camera angles that focus on the player's controlled aircraft and dynamic cameras, which show the battle from many sides. The emphasis on showing the large scale of the battle is evident in the replay viewer. The quality of the replay viewer makes watching the post-mission replay twice or three times in a row entertaining.​ SIMPLE 2000 Series Vol. 117 The Zero Fighter doesn't offer much in terms of replay value or long-lasting experience but it does have a few minor features making it worth playing all the way through at least one campaign. Flight game enthusiasts outside of Japan certainly haven't missed out on much by not having easy access to this title but it is worth entertaining a passing interest if you happen to see a copy of it somewhere. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.

I know it might be a bit heretical to say that I spend quite a lot of time in flying non-combat missions in DCS, but I do. One of my favorite things to do is to hop into the cockpit of one of my favorite aircraft and spend and outrageous amount of time cloud-surfing or down low, close to the terrain at treetop level. To me, the most enjoyable aircraft in this role is the Scooter. It is such a wonderful little jet with its agility and, most importantly, the excellent flight model that both Farlander and JNelson worked on for months. They managed to get it to fly not only accurately (within the limitations of a mod) but they also managed to make the flight model feel engaging. The feedback you get from the aircraft when you push it is absolutely amazing, this includes everything from the thud and impact of the slats deploying to the gut-wrenching feeling of high AoA maneuvers. It is an aircraft that just feels alive and I love that. It is that feedback that I miss while flying the F-5E or even other more recent modules like the Mirage F1. They lack that feeling of not being in control even when you are completely in control. I feel like, since we are missing that physical feedback, developers should really focus on ways of getting that feedback out to the player with the use of audio and in-cockpit effects. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034

If there is one helicopter that has captured my imagination ever since I was a child, it has to be the Mi-24. From movies to video games and even in-person, I have always had the Hind in mind. Now, after years of development, Eagle Dynamics has finally released their Mi-24P Hind module to DCS; allowing us to have the highest fidelity simulation of this aircraft to date! This article will be kept up to date as updates arrive to the module. The last update to this article was done on 1/11/2023. This article was originally posted 06/22/2021. I will divide this article in several areas, as per usual, to make it easier for you to go to the parts that interest you the most. This is so you can judge this module for yourself and decide if it is a fit for your own flying style. External and internal 3D models Audiovisual effects Flight modeling Mission capability Armament Ease of use and learning curve The state of ED's Early Access products Is this aircraft for you? EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS The Hind-P is the latest module by Eagle Dynamics, so it is natural that it has one of the prettiest and most detailed 3D models currently in-game. The level of detail reaches levels of absurdity in some areas, it is outright gorgeous. From the rivets on the outer fuselage and the way that they have depth, to the internal turbine model that is only visible from certain angles; it is clear that a hundreds upon hundreds of hours were spent recreating the Hind to the highest level of detail possible. It boggles my mind how such a detailed model does not tank my PC's frames like some other aircraft have done in the past. It must mean that it has also been highly optimized, which is a feat in and out of itself. (Example of what I said here on the gallery above). UNAPPRECIATED DETAIL It is in areas like the rotor that you can clearly see how detailed the model really is. Every single mobile part has been painstakingly detailed and animated. It is hard to see when it is rotating, but the texture work is also sublime. I love it. The external model might be gorgeous, but what you will be staring at the most is the cockpit. In this regard, the cockpit model has nothing to envy from the external model. The cockpit is bathed in the all too familiar Soviet teal-like blue. Every switch and button has been animated and textured in great detail. Metal textures look realistic and gauges feel alive. It feels like you are not flying a brand new Hind, but one that has been slightly weathered with time. even the leather on the seats and on the canopy frame looks fairly realistic! Cockpit lighting is just...beautiful. There is no other way to describe it. Here I will leave all the pictures that I have taken of the cockpit so you can see everything that I have said so far: AUDIOVISUAL EFFECTS The most striking part of the effects is what appears to be the application of the new propeller technology to both main and tail rotors. It is the most convincing rotor effect I have seen in a simulator until now. At night you can actually see the halo emitted by the tip lights much more clearer than with other helicopters. This is great stuff, I tell you. You can see the halo effect which I talk about here on the Armament section of this article. External lights look much different than in other modules. Gone are the floating balls of light and in are the more realistic looking navigation lights. Here, have a look: Audio-wise, the Hind also makes itself known. Seriously, you will hear this beast approaching you. The multi-layered external audio design gives this bird a distinctly unique sounding engine and rotor sound from different angles. This has been applied on multiple modules over the years so this tech is nothing new. But its implementation here is excellent. I leave you with a recording so you can hear a bit of this design for yourself. VOLUME WARINING. Fly-by at maximum IAS (330 Km/h) FLIGHT MODELING Just like the last time I talked about a helicopter flight model, I will state the following: I would like to clarify that I am mostly a fixed wing pilot. Most of my thousands of hours of flight sim experience have been with all sorts of fixed wing aircraft, not with rotary wing. I do not know the exact number of hours I have spent on rotary wing aircraft on both XPlane11 or FS2004, but I know it is not enough to say that I am deeply knowledgeable on how helicopters behave inside flight simulators but I can defend myself with them. So my opinion in this category is one that comes from a more amateur side, unlike my fixed wing reviews. I will not be judging its realism either as I have never flown a helicopter in real life, and the only "real" helicopters I have flown are mini-coaxial RC helicopters as a child. My experience with helicopters has expanded since I said this, but I still stand by this. With that out of the way, I would like to talk about how the Hind is the most unique-feeling helicopter I have ever flown on a sim. It does not like to hover, it is heavy and yet it is the fastest helicopter I've seen, to the point where I have gotten myself into retreating blade stalls because I was overspeeding it on a shallow dive (360-370Km/h). It is not maneuverable in the way that some other helicopters are, you will not be doing loops like a Bo-305 or a Gazelle. At high speeds, you will notice that it relies a lot on its wings for stability and that the tail acts like a tail, aiding in stability. It is clunky, it feels like you are flying a boat; yet, it has to be the most fun I have had on a helicopter so far. The Hind demands your attention at every moment, specially at low speeds. Once you start gaining momentum, it just goes. I can not attest for its fidelity in relation to a real Hind, but it sure feels like what I would think a Hind would. I have enjoyed every second of it. MISSION CAPABILITY If what you want is a modern tech-filled helicopter, you have come to the wrong place. The Hind shines on missions in which air superiority is guaranteed and AAA is light to none over the area of operations. Your armament and design lend themselves to a gun-ship style of mission, mostly proportioning CAS for your troops and escort for convoys. This is a helicopter which is capable of doing sling-loaded cargo deliveries as well as troop transport. Hell, if you are empty and light, you could do both at the same time! You can do it all, as long as you are brave enough to get close to the enemy. Your ATGM missiles do not have enough range for you to do stand-off shots, a-lá Black Shark, nor are your sensors good enough to give you an accurate representation of the battlefield around you. You will have to get close and dirty with this helicopter. o ARMAMENT AT-6 Shturm-V-2 (9K114) ATGM & AT-9 Ataka (9M120) ATGMs This is your only ATGM. Guided by a SACLOS (Semi-automatic command to line of sight) system, they required to be manually guided all the way to the target. Employing them can be a team effort, but I can assure you that both with Petrovich AI or with multicrew, that they can be an effective weapon! GSh-30-2 30MM CANNON and MG PODS The meanest weapon in your arsenal, by far. It is mean and it sounds mean. It is loaded with 250 rounds, which can last either really long or they can be gone in an instant depending if you use it on low or high fire rate. Here are examples of how both sound, enjoy. Short burst, low fire rate: Short burst, high fire rate: You also have access to Machine Gun (MG) pods equipped with 12.7, 7.62 and 30mm grenades, which can be a bit lackluster with the current DCS damage model. B-8 AND UB-32 ROCKET PODS These are devastating for area denial purposes. You can equip both S-8, S-5 and S-13 rockets as well as larger S-24 rocket, those do not come on a pod. UNGUIDED BOMBS A bit difficult to use precisely. They are still as deadly as ever, though. You have access to 100, 250 and 500Kg variants. As well as a bomblet dispenser! R-60 AND R-60M VYMPEL (IR MISSILE) These "new" missiles were added with an update. They are the best missiles currently equipped to any helicopter and they are extremely deadly. From dealing with enemy helicopters or even fixed wing aircraft, they make quick work of anything they touch. EASE OF USE AND LEARNING CURVE This is not a helicopter that can get the "Baby's first helicopter" award. It is not as easy to fly as a Huey nor is it as forgiving as a Black Shark. It lies somewhere between the Ka-50 and the Mi-8 in terms of learning difficulty. Mainly because, while you do have a stability augmentation system (SAS) in the form of your autopilot, it is far from the computer assistance encountered on the Ka-50. And yet, I have found that it is much easier to land in comparison to the Mi-8. It has a relatively shallow learning curve, at least shallower than the Mi-8 or the Huey. Specially the Huey since that one has no kinds of assistance whatsoever, which makes flying it more similar to trying to balance a yoga ball at 100Kts. I found that, on my 12 hours of flying time since release, I have been able to operate the Hind to a level in which I have been able to perform combined attacks with fighters and even multicrew employment of ATGMs! PETROVICH AI, YOUR BUDDY. Lastly, the Petrovich AI. While simple, it has got to be one of the most useful and beginner friendly aspects of this helo. Its manner use and UI are a bit clunky, being controlled solely through a 4-way hat switch, but it manages to make solo-pilots combat capable! I haven't had many issues with it, both from a gunner and pillot's perspective. KORD GUNNER Added in an update, this new gunner position provides a new dimension to the gameplay possibilities that this module has for all types of users. If you don't feel like flying then now you can join one of your friends as a side gunner equipped with a KORD machine gun! Additionally, if you are a pilot and you do not have a friend of fill this slot, then good news! This position can also be filled by an AI gunner that you control from your pilot seat. THE STATE OF ED's EARLY ACCESS PRODUCTS This part is for those who are wary of EA products or those who have been disappointed by Eagle Dynamic's Early Access programs in the past. I know how something like the Hind being released as an EA product can generate a bit of doubt or mistrust, and it is understandable! After what happened with the F-16C's EA launch, with it being broken (lacking a damage model, broken collision boxes, lacking essential systems and weapons, etc.) many players have grown bitter with time, and I understand it. I was angry too when that took place. But with the Hind, ED seems to have finally proven that they have learned their lessons from that event. All the systems implemented currently, work. Both cockpits (pilot and gunner) work to the extent in which I expected them to. But does this mean it is perfect? No. Does it have to be perfect on day one of an EA period? No. What is here is what should be the standard for any future ED Early Access programs for DCS World. A solid fundament in which systems will be built upon as the EA period progresses. Well done, Eagle Dynamics! Your devs should be quite proud of their work. IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module is: A beast of an aircraft that makes you feel like you own the skies. To annihilate any light armored targets in your way. A uniquely-feeling flight experience. A helicopter that can prove to you how fun helis can be. If you don't mind: Dying over and over trying to hover The lack of truly stand-off ATGMs. Having to find a friend to share this awesome experience with. Being bullied for becoming a rotary wing fan. If all or some of the above is what you want, then ED's Mi-24P Hind-F is for you. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities but only started being active around the mid 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy #9034