DCS Black Shark

[Acidburns]

Has anyone else been looking forward to this? I'm swamped with work so I've only had a brief period of time to play about with it. From the reviews I've read it seems to be a top quality sim, and my short playtime concurs at least with the level of detail they've put into the helicopter.

I started in "game" mode and I was up and about quite quickly, once I've got comfortable with my control layout I think I'll be moving straight to "simulation" mode. The menu's are a considerable improvement over Lock-On and IL2. Music, sound and graphics are all great, and it performs well on my computer; my computer is pretty beefy so I don't know how well it runs on more moderate systems. While no dynamic campaign is a shame, the game has a campaign that branches depending on how you perform on each mission. There's also random mission triggers, and scripted set-pieces etc. so as long as it's more immersive than lock-on and IL2 were (which wouldn't be hard) I'll be happy.

Bad news is that Starforce rears it's ugly head once again. I got the digital download, so it operates an online activation system similar to windows. As there is no disc there shouldn't (hah) be any disc related shit that Starforce has pulled before. They are looking at releasing it on Steam later, which if I knew about I probably would have waited for, but I've done it now.

I'll let you know how I get on with it once I get some time to get stuck in.

[CaptHawkeye]

I heard it's currently bugged like mad and only the Black Shark is flyable. The day of the single vehicle sim died back in the 90s. So single-type sims usually don't draw me in that well. Then again, the developers rumored somewhere back about putting in other helicopters and aircraft. I'll have to wait and see what they decide to throw in with future patches.

[Baka^Ni]

Been playing Blackshark for a few weeks now.

The level of detail is simply a wonder to behold, apparently I'm so sad as to enjoy button pressing. It took a while to learn to fly the Ka-80, never flown a chopper in any capacity before and my fixed wing knowledge was getting in the way. A proper forcefeed back joystick is a must, or trimming is a pain in the ass and highly awkward.

The game engine is a utter piece of shit, it's single core only and heavy cpu-limited, not a good combination. Under Vista you can force multicore but it's a messy hack for something which should of been included from the start. The game also renders waters under the terrain, so performance is crappy all the time unless you drop the water quality.

Anti-aliasing drops performance quite sharply and dust/clouds can utterly tank performance.

Trees don't exist, oh you can see them perfectly well but they're non-collideable and the ai can see straight through them, leading to strange situations where you can only see a forest but the ai can spam never ending salvos of missles through the trees. I don't expect this to be fixed any time soon.

The next module for DCS will apparently be the A-10.

Although the game engine is god awful. I'm still really enjoying playing with the Ka-80 and scooting around the landscape at 250kph @ 4 metres!

[Laughing Mechanicus]

It's Ka-50.

I am also really looking forward to this, but I am determined to wait for a boxed copy in the slim hope of getting a printed version of the (apparently very good) manual.

In the meantime I have been dusting off my skills with the latest community modded version of Enemy Engaged: Commanche Hokum. As a Hind fetishist I am extremely happy because the latest version of that has added an amazingly detailed Mi-24 cockpit and a slew of graphical enhancements: take a look.

I have high hopes for the DCS series: the next installments are supposedly going to feature A-10, Apache Longbow and Hind as the flyable craft - which is a line-up entirely composed of awesome.

[Baka^Ni]

It's Ka-50.

I could of sworn it was the Ka-80, seemingly not.

I am also really looking forward to this, but I am determined to wait for a boxed copy in the slim hope of getting a printed version of the (apparently very good) manual.

There will almost certainly not be a boxed copy with a manual, it's just too big. ED will provide a printed manual as a separate purchase. In the mean time http://www.simw.com/index.cfm?fuseactio ... s&pid=1526 for all your printed manual needs. As far as I know, the boxed copy will come with a quickstart sheet thing and the same internet activated drm that the download copy comes with, so you're probably not missing much by purchasing a download copy now, unless you have a box fetish

The manual itself is fine, I haven't really used it other than for a quick reference, ie how to enter co-ordinates into the pvi-800. Note that the images of the cockpit in the manual are in RUSSIAN, which makes the screen grabs significantly less useful than if they'd done some localization. There is a pdf of the manual released somewhere, you can take a peek yourself and get acquainted.

I have high hopes for the DCS series: the next installments are supposedly going to feature A-10, Apache Longbow and Hind as the flyable craft - which is a line-up entirely composed of awesome.

As much as I'd love a longbow, I doubt it'll be modelled as ED won't have access to any documentation for the 'cool' stuff. Looking forward to hopefully a Hind though, it's ugly bulbous shape tickles my heart strings.