Brain

DPRK has the numerical advantage to make up for their generally outdated vehicles. Russia and China also entered the war, further encouraging a push. So, REDFOR is expected to be aggressive like that.

The reason these units are diverting east is simple: somebody took out the western bridges, just north of Seoul. Your SEAD efforts didn't have a direct impact, but they might have opened the corridor for the responsible Strike packages.

Are you talking about support in the form of a Tanker or actual combat flights (escort etc.)? Can't say for certain what's going on but there were issues with 'dropped' flights/packages before.
The AI wingman is a slightly different topic. Ramp start defaults to 20 minutes before takeoff, taxi to 4 minutes. If you commit 'by the book' these 20 minutes are more than you actually need and you might be inclined to taxi after just 5 minutes. Your AI buddy however doesn't care and will wait until taxi time. If you move beyond 30 miles from the airport, while your wingman is still on the ground, the plane gets deleted and you're on your own.
Set the TO time to +10 instead when going for a ramp start (shortening the wait time) or try ordering 'rejoin' once you taxi (not sure it still works).

If flying from A to B sounds boring, you're probably looking for a career as bounty hunter. You'll need cash (as always) and more importantly some combat practice, both easily obtainable in Resource Extraction Sites; either high or low density.

The ship really doesn't matter as long as it's not a lumbering school bus. You want to practice maneuvering around an enemy while pointing your weapons at him and evading return shots (aka "stay on his six"), which is something different in a 6DOF game. Eagle is most definitely the ship of choice and since you're not doing any heavy lifting its payload is more than adequate. Just remember to not get shot at too much.
If you did trading before you can of course sacrifice some agility in favor of a more expensive and sturdy ship. Just be aware these cost more insurance and outfitting is more expensive.
Secondly you want practice micromanaging your capacitor. It's not about balancing the settings, it's more about maxing the specific system you need the most. Put power into ENG for a quicker turn, into SYS to increase shield resistance, into WPN to keep firing. In a dogfight you might do that every few second and it requires quiet some multitasking and muscle memory, so keep on it. It will give you a slight edge.

Before you undock make sure to install a Kill Warrant Scanner and put it in a firing group. Once in space see if there is a Resource Extraction Site (high or low) on your left hand nav panel. If not, ffly to another station and check there; this is to minimize flight times later.

Once in an RES, try to find a System Authority Vessel. They should usually be in a formation, making them easy to spot. They will respond to any fight breaking out in the area and otherwise pursue and scan any ships that come through, making them almost perfect wingmen.
Your job will be keeping around these guys and scan every other ship for bandits. If you find somebody make another scan with the Kill Warrant Scanner to maximize your profit. Pirates may scan you in return, looking for valuables, but they won't find anything and bugger off, so just wait till they are done. That allows you to go into position behind them and initiate combat. Unless another fight broke out elsewhere already, your 'buddies' will come to aid you.
'Agro' works similar to most RPGs out there: AI will focus on the target doing the most damage. Once your 'buddies' step in they should quickly draw attention, leaving you free to maneuver and deal damage. Focus on not being in front of the enemy and hold fire if you actually got 'agro'. Don't worry about dealing the killing blow, you'll still be fully rewarded.

Sometimes you can be lucky and don't have to do anything. Police would quickly scan some Pirates, allowing you to step in and claim a reward for scanning and shooting once. Just make sure "wanted" shows in the target info, else opening fire would be considered a crime, even if the Police is already engaging.
Even luckier if you got a good spawnset. A 'spawnset' determines which kinds of ships will spawn when the area is being populated (first player entering). You may get something like Vipers, Cobras, Asps or Anacondas, Clippers, FDLs. Heavier ships generally offer more reward for less flying around, so if you're alone you can simply leave and re-enter to see the kind of ships you got.

You can make 500k - 2.5m per hour, depending on how much luck you get. Being able to deal damage without worrying about getting shot at helps speeding things up a bit and that's what you're working on anyways.

It's a late gift from Benchmark Sims, apparently released yesterday:

https://www.bmsforum.org/forum/showthread.php?29413-Falcon-BMS-4-33-U3-Incremental-Installer

BMS only models the F-16 avionics and every other plane only has very minor differences. If you want to get close to the real A-10 you'd have to go through the control layout in the DCS manual and find similar functions in BMS. Even then you'll still be far away from accurate, just because the real avionics work so differently.
I accepted the fact I can't make any other plane that more realistic by rebinding keys, so I just stick with the F-16 controls. Less confusing when I do my occasional flight in another plane, mostly Hornets.

The 4.33 full keyfile is excellent. It's a variant of the old alternative Kolbe keyfile, which I liked a lot more than the default 4.32. There is also a special section dedicated to all buttons found on stick + throttle, should you decide to configure your controls inside BMS, instead of mapping keypresses in TARGET. However you do it, I'd not change any key combinations. The most common buttons in the pit are easy to access or mapped with some logic behind it. Using a default keyfile also helps when asking for key combinations in flight.

That said, I'd set up 2 joystick profiles, rather than keyfiles. I'd be worried something goes wrong while loading the keyfile and I take off with the wrong control layout. Loading a different joystick file in flight on the other hand shouldn't be an issue.
Not that there was ever such a problem, I'm just not trusting BMS

If I knew I'd have set out long ago to retrieve it and raise the average IQ again ... I know, I'm not that funny.

Did any of you ever play R-Type on Gameboy? It only has 6 levels but the difficulty increases significantly. Once you learn how to use the Force (that probe thing on front of your ship, not a Jedi reference) it's all about tackling different situations the right way. Eventually you'll reach level 4 which has you flying through tights corridors while near indestructible things fly at you. YT link for those interested.

It's stressful, aggravating, frustrating and as a consequence I'm quiet exhausted. With BMS being so time consuming and of questionable reliability, I felt like moving on and trying something more relaxing. Yeah, DCS got me. Either learning more about the KA-50 or tagging along/refueling in my F-15 or SU-27, mostly soaking in the eye candy. Just put on some classic music or other relaxing tunes and relax.
Also occasionally flying some Trans in ARMA 3. To give you an example, here is Jive from ShackTac shifting troops at night. It's really dark because of the more realistic (?) NVG mod. If earlier NVGs were really that crap we're blessed in sims. Anyways, usually prefering music more in the noise spectrum, I actually like the tune and it fits pretty well.

Thankfully I've been blessed with a new GPU (R9 380) and started using OBS a bit as well. Not quiet there yet but not bad for a start either. Need to remember uploading one just as a test. I thought about writing some 'tutorials' on various things already but I think I could do better than that. Who reads these days anyways? lol
Got some ideas on why you suck at air refueling, cross-reading instruments for improved SA, passing necessary information (ie. bandits) quick, easy and efficient, your questions here. Lemme know, maybe I'll just answer it in 3 sentences here
Also still got my little music project going some of you might know off. One song has 1940 clicks and on average it was turned off after about 1:40 ... so I'm not really a star yet. Got 137 downloads though (which is totally L33T). If I ever do some kind of flight sim montage I shouldn't have to worry about any copyright issues

Yeah, so that's me. o/
How's everybody else doing?

I'll chalk that up as another probably performance related bug.
Multiple callsigns aren't unusual as each plane type has a limited pool of callsigns available, the F-16 obviously having the most. IIRC "Cowboy" is the first callsign in the F-16 pool. When 1 flight is created it should step through the list, giving you the next available callsign + number. However, if BMS has another brainfart ... this might happen? Fits pretty well into the picture with flight creation being heavily delayed or packages not showing up in the ATO.

Similarly something might have gone wrong with the BE coordinates. We know that already from this 'brave HQ battalion' and DTC is weird online anyways. Sometimes it gets saved between connections, sometimes it doesn't.

Welcome to the world of quality HOTAS systems ... enjoy!

In reality both sticks are almost identical and so is their mapping, although the A-10c avionics work a bit differently. You shouldn'T have any problems mapping it in a realistic fashion.
For the throttle you need to take some liberties, but you should have all the appropriate buttons (2x buttons, 2x 3-way rocker, 4-way switch, analogue cursor, 2x rotaries). There is a diagram of the throttle somewhere in the manual for reference. Leave the rest unmapped for now, as you will find additonal functions you want on your fingertips later. It may not be realistic but you don't have a physical pit to press buttons in so ....

Since you already started on mapping I'd recommend doing the rest on your own as well. Helps memorizing and is good practice with the TARGET software.

Although the stick is in pristine condition you might want to set a curve for that center precision as the F-16 is very very twitchy. The AAR training mission will give you a tanker to hold formation with. Just try to stay on his wing and see how accurate your pitch and roll inputs are.
Just talking from general experience with sticks and sims, never tried a Warthog, so you might find it unnecessary.

I just did a ton of research, made a time-line in Excel and just scrapped everything I typed here so far. Now I wanna do something else. So...

But first :Fun with history

Story goes during the Vietnam War the Thanh-Hóa bridge could not be destroyed after numerous air raids and hundreds of bombs dropped. In 1972 F-4 Phantoms tried again:

Quote

 

On 27 April, twelve Phantoms of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, based at Ubon, Thailand attacked the Thanh Hóa Bridge. Eight of their number carried laser-guided bombs. The raid was carried out without a hitch, and when the dust of the explosions had cleared it became apparent that the bridge had been dislodged from its western abutment, dropping one half into the river. To complete its destruction, a second attack was scheduled for the thirteenth of May when fourteen Phantoms were engaged, with LGBs of up to 2,000 lb (910 kg) aimed at the central pillar supporting the bridge. Once again, the attack was successful, and the "Dragon's jaw" was rendered completely unusable. The US command, however, was not satisfied, and ordered a final attack on the sixth of October.

This time, four U.S. Navy A-7s from VA-82, aboard USS America, successfully delivered 8,000 lbs of high explosives with two planes carrying two 2,000 lb (910 kg) Walleyes, while two other carried a further 2,000 lbs in Mk 84 GP bombs. In a simultaneous attack, the center piling on the bridge's west side was hit and broke the span in half. After this, the Thanh Hóa Bridge was considered permanently destroyed and removed from the target list.

 

So your initial question ultimately lead me there. I'm such a nerd. I've also been reading a lot today.

Just imagine how little range you got with 7100lbs carrying a heavy load in BMS and add some extra flight time because we don't do realistic departure patterns and such. Taking external fuel tanks for long range precision attacks was probably what they had in mind, so they didn't bother with the inner pylons.
And I think you can'T carry 3 GBUs on 1 Pylon because of risks the extending fins could hit the fuselage. Same for CBUs although the MK-20 might be small enough in diameter so there are no concerns. 

It's less sophisticated wiring on the inner pylons. Don't know what's so different about it but it's not compatible with 3 Mavs or a JDAM.
Similarly 'stupid' is the TER which presumably only splits incoming signals, which is sufficient for CBUs (etc) as they only need to be updated once their profile changes. That's why small JDAMs won't go on a TER but the newer BRU.

Sounds like your Logi is getting old and doesn't center properly anymore, caused by wear on the internals. It will happen even to a TM Warthog eventually but you're likely to get replacement parts in that case and maybe some special grease to slow down the process in the future. Static could tell you something about the latter if he passes by again.

You want to do 2 things:
1. Set an axis response curve for pitch, roll and maybe even rudder. It makes the stick more precise in the center while still giving you maximum control at the outer limits. I find it a necessity no matter what I fly. The settings can either be found in the Logitech programming software (if any) or the Win game controller panel. BMS does not have such an option AFAIK.
2. Define a deadzone to make up for the loose center position. Should be in the same place as axis curves. If not, BMS at least gives you the option to choose 3 levels of deadzone in the advanced control settings.

If there isn't any software for the joystick, make sure you installed the latest Logitech drivers for your device as the generic Windows drivers might not include these tuning options!

Rudders are not critical for BMS except for high crosswind landings/takeoffs and some rare emergency situations when part of the FLCS gets damaged. On a Warthog you should have some spare buttons to map the rudder keys to.

The Cougar is well engineered, but the internals are some zinc-aluminum alloy which wears of rather quickly. Because of that there are some (expensive) modifications out there to replace these parts. 2nd hand Cougars are often modified already; part of the reason they can be so damn expensive. Should you be interested in one of these you can find everything about it here: http://cougar.flyfoxy.com/mods.php

The Rhino stick doesn't come with enough buttons for the F-16 (6 buttons + 4 4-way switches!), so you'd have to deal with that somehow. Same goes for the DCS A-10C should that become interesting at some point.
Another thing I think Ralfidude brought up, is the terrible shape of the lower hat button. It has extruded edges, making it hard to reach the switch above.
The stick mechanic is a plastic ball rubbing against a plastic case. They use that since the X45 I believe (which I used for MANY years) and plastic dust + grease will form a mess. After a while there will be some stickyness, forcing you to clean and re-grease that thing.
If the programming software is really as bad as Semler describes ... well. Personally I had no issues with their OLDER (pre Win 7) software but I know times change.

The Thrustmaster throttle won't match the F-16s but all the necessary buttons are there. Including a true analogue axis for the FCR/MFD cursor.
Using the classic TM Cougar I can say the stick can get uncomfortable if you got small hands, but since it's designed for the AF you can easily access everything and once you build up some muscle-memory everything makes sense. Whatever I fly, I try to mimic the F-16 stick layout as close as possible ... but I digress.
Can't say much about the Warthog mechanics, only that I heard about some seam line left from production. Don't know if it's on all or what, but the fix is said to be easy.
What it definitely does not come with is a rudder axis like on your Logi or the Rhino, so pedals might become necessary.
If later you decide to go for the full experience on the F-16 you can get an USB adapter to use the TM Cougar throttle with your Warthog stick. Our buddy Nuts does that and he enjoys it (too) much.

If I had the choice, there wouldn't be a choice. My stick is over a decade old, still working fine and I got another ancient TM Gamepad that has almost no wear on the analogue sticks. These Thrustmaster things are build to resist!

Regarding using this thing in PR ..... I think you still might be better off with the Logitech. Depending on what you fly you'll have to do these precise split second inputs you can't really do with a HOTAS...at least I can't. It's a very different kind of being in control.
But, if you wanted you could certainly map every PR keybind to that thing

On startup it's detected some systems aren't running properly (yet). That's 100% normal.

With F-ACK you will not delete those faults, you are just acknowledging them. That clutters up the fault list, potentially increasing the workload when identifying new ones in flight.
Once spooled up you want to bring up the TEST MFD and hit CLR on the top to clear all faults. Here you can also review all faults with timestamp (time till engine start up). If there is an actual problem it will reappear.

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As far as setting up controls, you will want to mimic the HOTAS from the F-16 as best you can, from Throttle Idle-Cutoff to NWS/Missile Step

Idle-Cutoff can be clicked on the left side of the throttle or by using ALT + i. You'll rarely need it so it's not really worth wasting a button.
Other than that I agree. Having all the real HOTAS commands will give you almost full control over the aircraft. All the 4-way switches might seem daunting but except TMS they all perform relatively simple tasks. TMS itself is context sensitive, depending on mode/display/weapon selected but there is a pattern to it.
Krause used key commands for a lot of it not long ago and I know of other less experienced players without a HOTAS, so it's certainly doable.

Programming your joystick with DX buttons is recommended but I find it tedious. As long as you follow your procedures and only press one button at a time you should be fine with using your joystick's profile editor to map key combinations. Only exception I made was the trigger and pickle button.

There is an abundance of tutorials on YT. I know JoNay did some good ones as well but can't remember all the others. Has been a while since I needed a tutorial but I know if you look for a certain topic you will find a video on it.

While ramp starting helps with the immersion I skipped it when starting with BMS. Most flights start on the taxi way anyways, because once you know how to do it there is no real challenge other than waiting and it takes long enough to set up a flight in the first place. It's really up to you.
Start with some BVR to be able to defend yourself, get used to how the radar operates and build up some muscle memory. Just DO NOT go up against Fulcrums/Flankers as their R-77 missiles are a nightmare for beginners. From there pick a basic a2g weapon like the GBU-12 to practice with the TGP and CCRP bombing mode. Congratulations, you can now shoot down planes and drop almost half the ordinance available in game ... you're becoming dangerous!

I got good news and bad news.

Bad news: No. This tool doesn't work anymore. When PR got it's own EXE years ago the tool stopped working. Says it right there in the FreeTrack Forum: http://www.free-track.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2998&page=1
PR has changed even more since then and there are a lot of little things the tool checks for. If you want to find somebody to go through the trouble of reverse engineering and fixing it or starting from scratch, try the PR forums.

Good news: Getting 3DOF head tracking working for vehicles is possible using a tool like GlovePIE.
You can translate the head tracking input to mouse input and automatically hold the mouselook key for you, once you move your head past a certain threshold. You'd need an extra key to toggle on/off to avoid screwing up your aim but it's at least an option.

IMO unless you're a dedicated pilot it's not worth the trouble. Any other vehicle station only requires one hand to control, leaving the mouse free to look around.

We are aware of this issue and we know how to fix it. The discussion can be found here:
http://veterans-gaming.com/index.php?/forums/topic/7712-possible-solution-for-uncredited-kills/

TLDR: The server isn't powerful enough. Either get less kills in your logbook or deal with more frequent lags and crashes.

I see the problem but I have never seen it happen in KTO. Please keep in mind this may change your ACData, preventing you from entering servers that enforce the same data (basically anti cheat).

First test flight with 4 JSOWs earned me the distinguished flight cross after 54 kills, so that went pretty well.
Second flight (quick SEAD) with AI wingman worked pretty well until I fired my first AGM-88. At this point I got a short time compression followed by a few second pause (blue message, server sided) and AI comms broke down completely. Didn't get AWACS (not even on UHF 13), tower, buddy calls, wingman, not even my own launch calls. Issuing orders however still worked (tested with "drop stores"). Engaged some bandits, checked on some Phantoms and none of them were lagging.
Talked to Kaos on TS and can't imagine why he had these issues. He's in Germany as well so we should have pretty similar connections. If there was a restart in between our flights, that might be why it worked OK-ish for me.

If you run into similar issues, try increasing your BW to 2048. If it still turns out to be unplayable ... well, at least we know how to theoretically fix the issue.

The mission rating is something different. Say you do a SEAD mission, you take out all tracking radars along your route (successfully suppressing any AAA/SAM, accomplishing your mission goal) and still you would get a "horrible" rating. In case of SEAD (and others like CAS, AI ...) it seems to expect a certain kill count, not destruction of high value assets. This dates back to at least 4.33.6 but the problem at hand surely doesn't make it any better. Just mentally recap your flight and judge by yourself how well you did, then shout at BMS for simply being stupid.
 

On 7.9.2016 at 7:37 PM, Buschwick said:

[...] only keep the connection open and  rely on clients' data for 3d action instead of the server being, technically, part of the action

This is exactly what solved the lag/rubberbanding issue.

While the server is in 3D (assuming g_bServerHostAll = 1) it will calculate and distribute data about every active 3D object ("inside player bubble", 40nm or something) to every client in the area.
Think about a 1-ship flight along the FLOT early in the war: artillery guns on all HART sites, tanks, (mech) inf, command battalions, countless search radars, NOE scout helicopters and of course planes and any fired ordinance... on both sides. Even if you don't spot it visually, it's still all there and every single bit of it has to be dealt with by the server and sent to the client.
Next up a 2-ship in close proximity: The "bubbles" are mostly overlapping, so it's only a marginal CPU load increase at first, but BW usage doubles because of the 2nd client. I'm no expert but I suspect the OS/driver needs some CPU power as well to send data through the network adapter. Finally the AI has to take into account the actions of 2 players. Things start to pile up.
Just imagine 3 clients split into 2 packages, operating in completely different areas. And don't forget there is still a war going on in Korea. Hundreds of battalions have to move, flights have to fragged and flown ... yeah.

Currently (in 2D) the server simply can't do that, because the 3D part isn't running at all. It's "only" calculating the 2D campaign and sending updates about units that enter a client's bubble. From there the client himself will have "ownership" of the objects, calculating the AI and 3D coordinates, as well as distributing the data to others nearby*. There is some more traffic to and from the server (ie. campaign commander ordering a unit to retreat after taking fire) but it shouldn't be nearly as bad. It's server-ception!

*Note: that's why a P2P connection is so important. One CS player would relay ALL it's traffic through the server. When in doubt, reconnect.

Even though we drastically reduced server load there are still strange things happening like totally out of place battalions, particularly that one blue HQ. It seems its coordinates have been lost, causing it to spawn at the origin, in the center of the map. It happens in every campaign, could be just a minor save/load bug but shows that BMS has a black-out every now and then.
Which brings us back to our initial problem: what is happening with the data about destroyed units? -- I have no clue. Is the "owning client" struggling with the calculation? Is there kind of an invisible lag spike between server and client, causing data to be lost? Does the client send 'destroyed' and 'damaged' in quick succession and can the server not update fast enough? Any more questions?

As I said we could try the server in 3D with g_bServerHostAll = 0 set. Yes, it will increase resource demand on the server but as long as it can handle the traffic around Kadena and the 2D campaign it should be fine. Every "action scene" will still be handled by which ever client has "ownership" of the units involved. The whole point is to make sure the server "understands of the concept of 3D" or something. Maybe it fixes it, maybe it doesn't. Worst case: server crashes, probably only to 2D, at which point we are "back to normal". If it doesn't help, just leave it in 2D and restart as usual.

Just thought about a fast food chain for zombies called "Food for thought". It's stupid but kind of ironic, which could make it art with an uncertain level of comedic value.

EDIT: tried to get a flight in, did get "bad timing" on multiple F-16 squadrons at Osan and Seosan. No idea why, closed BMS in disbelief. Campaign is on day 26 so it's pretty much fighting for the left overs.

Thanks Derk for having a look at it!

g_bServer 
I think that's the option I read about being "not officially supported" either on BMS or FO. It shouldn't matter for us unless it frees up some resources (eg. not prefetching 3D data).

g_bServerHostAll
The description confirms that the server is supposed to be in 3D. You can only own a unit while in 3D.
I think this would be worth a try. With the server being on the map, clients have been "owning units" all the time and we hadn't had any game breaking issues. BW demand on the server shouldn't change too much either. Kadena is remote and only has the occasional support flights. There would also be a way to deactivate 3D rendering (2D still works I suppose).There would be this "player bump time" thingy as well that needed to be cranked up!

There is also mentioning of desync issues which is what I suspect is causing the issue in the first place. Just think about the crazy debriefings we have seen.

I'm not up to date on all the current settings but basically I'm a log with all the things we were able to dig up and change since .33
Agree on the tankers. Love seeing that KC-10 butt again! In a flight so much fun. So much eyecandy. So many screenshots. And it's more intense than most combat situations, because pressing pickle just doesn't help you much.

Eliminates all file size issues (PNG is BMS default, 1080p = 2mb), convenient to add and read descriptions (no extra clicks needed), no flooding of the gallery/feed after a good night of flying, more organized, no admin work if something goes wrong, easy to share across forums/social media/IM .... I can think of a lot of advantages.

The VG gallery seems fine for single pictures but in flight sims you're on a mission. You capture different things that happen and might want to share the story behind them. For this I find a decent image hoster to be superior. 
EDIT: just noticed the gallery always scrolls up to "add image" for me.

Few pics of the 5-ship strike a couple of days ago: http://imgur.com/a/6eBV6

We had crazy warp issues and disappearing units before and it made playing almost impossible. I've heard about "force host ownership" (the host always calculating units instead of clients calculating in their own bubble) which might have caused the issue but never found the variable for it.

If we can find it and it turns out to be set to ON then we could test this, otherwise we would just be back to the warping thing again.

It's annoying but if you had a good mission the numbers in your logbook aren't going to change that.

As promised, a new home for all your BMS 4.33.1 screenshots. Doesn't matter if you fly on VG or somewhere else. If you got a picture or an album worth showing, please share it here. We partially fly for the eyecandy, don't we?

This is how I intend this to work:
- register with a reliable image hoster (no imageshack with praying kitten please!). I personally recommend imgur.com but NutsBe for example is using postimage.org. Even having a google account and using google drive might work these days.
- upload a bunch of good screenshots into one album/folder ('picture dump')
- pick your favorite picture and embed it into your post using the image BBcode
- leave a brief description of the picture and/or album/folder content
- attach a link to the full album/folder
Finally keep "comms quiet". Give a thumbs up for posts you really like to show your appreciation. Avoid 'nice pictures'-replies and just share your own from time to time. We might become the largest BMS screenshot archive this way ... but don't overdo it. We don't need every flight captured
Should make things more organized and save BW and traffic on the VG end.


After about 6 hours of flying in total and finishing off with a 2 and a half hour flight I'm still not exhaused. So, to calm myself down I queued up some Thrash Metal and went through my BMS screenshots. Ended up with 22 decent pictures partially dating back to July. Full album is to be found here: http://imgur.com/a/FYZB1

Enjoy and happy sharing!

Do NOT resize them just yet. At least keep the original as backup, check my recent reply on the the "picture size"-topic

I remember reading or seeing something about a 0.2 meg cap for uploads. BMS by default saves PNG, which are 'huge'. You could use a tool like irfan view to batch convert all screenshots to JPG  .......

Anyways: I actually thought about this before but now that you bring it up...think about this:

I've flown some great missions today and I know on every flight somebody was taking screenshots. I only took 8 across 3 flights but I know that's just the very tip of the Eisberg (after like 6 hours on the server in total)!!

So, instead of bombarding VG with dozens of pictures after good flights/evenings like that, I'm thinking about a dedicated BMS Screenshot thread. Instead of uploading to VG I'd recommend using a decent image hoster. Personally I'd recommend imgur.com. Drag & drop functionality, easy to set up albums, easy to add descriptions to each image (if the image doesn't say enough words already ), dark background making it easy on the eyes .... and you can easily share your album in the forum. NutsBe is using postimage.org which looks fine as well (running adblock fyi) and stuff like google drive should work just as well these days. Just don't pick some stupid hoster that will display pictures of a praying kitten begging for better image hosting in 2016

What I'm thinking is: upload all the pictures you like into 1 album, pick a really good one and post it in the BMS Screenshot thread (use "BBcode"). Basically like this ... only more BMS related:
 

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Look at this!! That's my stupid nerd-face next to a Dutch F-16 Block-15 in 2014. One day, I'll make it into one of those. Got close though and still took seat in a Bölkow Bo-105 and a Westland Lynx. Next chance coming up next year around June. Still haven't put all pictures together, but shows you some of the 'smaller' highlights going on around the airshow itself. So much more than just static displays. Definitely check the story about the AA vehicle. The Dutch are awesome!

http://imgur.com/a/b4DgG

Just using BB code for the 'cover image', followed by a link to the album.
Will look through our BMS archive and see if I can find us a nice screenshot topic to fill. Was a good day flying with ya'll ! Can't wait to see your pictures.

Successfully set up a KC-10 (910th) for refueling just now. Take-off set 20minutes in the future. Server response was a bit slow due to the long uptime but it worked.

You frag your own flights regularly so I'd say we move one of the tankers to another airbase and see what happens. The current one is pretty crowded so other flights might be interfering. It would mean you got very unlucky every time you tried it as I had no issues so far

EDIT:  All Tankers fixed, turned off HQ Fragging on all the above listed Player Tanker Squadrons  Sept. 22, 2016 -SemlerPDX