=VG= SemlerPDX

I just checked the server, it's up and running - Kaos was in-game at the time. For the record, the server is once again operating from the 2D menu, our test from above did not work out. A recent change was a config addition to try to force the server AI units to idle after 2 hours with no human player on the server. It was restarted to Day 1 on Monday, so this is the first full test with the "idle" setting - we'll see if the campaign can get past day 12 now.

^What he said. The Thrustmaster is perfect for the DCS A-10C addict, but the stick does not twist and therefore requires additional gear, rudder pedals. That's another $100+ on top of a $400-500 flight stick, and you're in Australia so we could easily add 10%-20% to these estimates I assume. The key features of the TM Warthog HOTAS includes it's near 1:1 realism, 4 springs including a strong central centering spring for smooth motion, and a quality level higher than any flight stick on the market (it's mostly metal). The bad features start with it's price and end with application. You can use this HOTAS for a flight sim, but considering the strength of the Joystick centering spring, it is not an easy stick to move requiring considerable arm strength to manipulate. While this is very desirable for a flight sim like DCS, BMS or others, it makes it very difficult to use in any other PC game. From War Thunder to Elite: Dangerous or even BF2: Project Reality or BF4 or BF1, joystick movements are rapid and to the extent of the pitch/roll and then back again to counter and so on. Doing this with a TM Warthog would get tiring very fast, and the HOTAS gets bad marks for the number of applications a person would use it for (i.e. only flight simulators). Finally, it is very large. Like, huge. I looked deeply into buying a better HOTAS than I have and spent countless hours reading and watching videos and comparisions of products. Plenty of them take up desk space, but the TM Warthog is in it's own class of size. I used cardboard to cut out rectangles the size of the two units to see where they could sit on my desk, or if I could make some stands I could move around and how big the would be - they were just too large to fit in my current setup, and even if I attached them only when I wanted to fly a sim, I'd still barely be able to fit them my small desk. Consider that space requirement, and the space requirement you'll need for rudder pedals. The X-55 Rhino is an overpriced younger brother to the other high end Saitek HOTAS systems lacking all the cool features of the slightly more expensive entries in the lineup like force sensing or force feedback and still sticks us with that annoying ergo-styled throttle even if it does have a fighter jet stick that is very close to the 1:1 modeling of the F-16/A-10 flight stick complete with the CMS Hat near where the thumb rests on the stick and pinky button and pinky "flying" paddle . If I were gonna go for the Saitek high end line, I would avoid the Rhino and go for the Saitek X-65F Pro Flight Controller instead. It features a force sensing stick which is similar to the way the "fly-by-wire side stick" works on the F-16, where it does not move but senses the force applied to it. Of course, this is a matter of opinion - some might prefer movement, others might prefer the force feedback sticks. All of these entries are pricey though, and require rudder pedals as few if any of them twist for rudder axes. The F-16 flight stick inspired the A-10C flight stick, and so they are nearly identical - this makes TM Warthog very easy to translate to Falcon sim flight, even though the throttle is different. Thrustmaster did make a Falcon HOTAS, called the Thrustmaster Cougar, and they are still floating around ebay and the likes, but they are not plug and play like sticks made today, and you'd need to do fair research and careful purchasing to ensure it works - caviat emptor. It's worth noting that CH Products makes some affordably priced sim controllers. You can tell why they cost a little less from the pictures, all plastic, and not always 1:1 modeling. The CH Products rudder pedals in particular look a little odd, but I hear they feel pretty good, even when compared to some of the current models. The rudders on the market used to be better - so these days, it's gonna come down to your personal preference. The best was the metal Saitek Pro Flight Combat Rudder Pedals and though once in awhile people had issues with the tension cap in the middle, they had the form and function that keeps them at twice the price if you can find them these days on ebay. The Thrustmaster Elite rudder pedals were pretty cool, in that they looked wide enough to have a center cockpit console between your legs - these days, the TM rudder pedals look closer together than the gas and brake pedals in my car. So, that is what you have to deal with nowadays - too close rudder pedals. Get what suits you, do your research. I'm a dedicated sim player who has several hundred hours in an F-16, an A-10C, and civi crap in FSX. I don't fly as often as I'd like to for reasons and other reasons as well, but my point is I'm hooked and know I'm gonna fly off and on - making a huge investment in gear should be appropriate in that regard. Make sure you are dedicated before you buy some flight sim HOTAS that cannot be easily used in other PC games you may own. For some people just getting into all this stuff, I would recommend getting a Saitek X-52 (or the X-52 Pro). Difference is negligible between the two, different materials/sensors - I use the non-Pro, works well after 6 years, but it lacks the total number of buttons and I have to use shift-states which can get complicated. A note about Saitek - they sometimes have a "mouse stick" and if you have any problems with the stick or your mouse, it will need to be disabled. Some people have no issues, others like me have a cursor that streams to one side and never stops until unplugged or disabled - also, their programming software is shit, but some people have had success. But if you can afford it, and you have the space, the TM Warthog and some rudder pedals you like would be a very great interface for several PC sims.

Brain is absolutely right about Ramp starting not being necessary - you can get flying much easier and get into the lessons in the air which will give you more of a sense of why we enjoy the sim in motion. But the reason I often recommend it to newcomers is because when you first get into that cockpit, it looks like there's a thousand little switches that you will never possibly be able to commit to memory and the feeling can be so overwhelming that someone might put this thing down before getting a chance to see how it can be made easy to understand. A simple Ramp start can familiarize the player with several key sections of the controls we use, and in a way, it eliminates them one by one from the mental clutter the cockpit imposes on them - they now know that the pit is consumable in sections. The radios volume section, the lighting section, sections with buttons we so rarely use they can be ignored - but at first, every button seems like it's supposed to be memorized so it can be used on an hourly basis in the sim which is untrue and discouraging to new pilots. I feel it's easier to start chipping away at the mountain when you have a better idea of it's composition, just a bit, in the sections the Ramp start familiarizes you with. It's actually a short procedure unless you run through all the tests that official checklists have, but I'll say I've not had a fuel flow fault yet in several hundred hours flying and I rarely do that test when I Ramp. It's not included in this little Flash based Ramp Start Trainer I pass around still - just a little .exe that runs you through the basics of getting the jet ready to fly. It glosses over the 9 minute Align and moves the view around the cockpit in sections highlighting what you need to push next, and showing brief text of what you are doing (i.e. Set Fuel Flow to NORM). https://www.dropbox.com/s/ug7rl65nprbbkmh/sp3_ramp_start_trainer-FLASH.exe?dl=0 Give it a try if you want, I stand by my belief that the cockpit looks less intimidating once you view it in sections like this Ramp Start Trainer highlights. The second reason I push the Ramp to new pilots is, while actually simple, it gives that quick confidence boost where the player tells themselves "Hell, I could probably walk onto a runway (given permission) and could sit in and fire up a real life F-16 now with this knowledge!!" - then it's all downhill from there cuz they're hooked! Youtube is the biggest help, made it so I could more "skim" the manuals instead of reading them through like the damn thick-ass encyclopedias that they are. Can't go wrong there.

We use a combination of the TO-BMS1F-16CM-1 and TO-BMS1F-16CM-34-1-1 (we call them "Dash 1" & "Dash 34") manuals as well as the included Training Manual, supplemental checklists, and guides found in the sim under the Docs folder. In the game, under Tactical Engagement, under the Training tab, are 23 training missions that follow the supplemental Training Manual. You'd use those to learn the sim. I learned by reading manuals, flying training missions and watching videos back when we were still flying Allied Force and these Red Viper tutorials crossed over just fine. Refer to the manuals for any clarification for procedures, but for 99% of learning the F-16, you can follow the same tutorials to this day (as the operation of the F-16 remains unchanged except for a very minute few functions or procedures). Here's the series I followed first: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6715E7C5F39AC02E -- This series follows the original Falcon 4.0 manual to the letter (as in, the commentary from the youtuber is not his, but text from the manual) and he expands with graphics to explain concepts. His English is very passable, but obviously not his first language. And here are some more recent (but still not for current version 4.33.2) by Krause: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E09AA94FF0EACEC To start with, I'd go over lesson one, HQ Ramp Start video and fire up the sim to practice the procedure. If you need to just fly around, use the Instant Action missions in the game (the enemies appear on radar after a few minutes of flying so you have some time to just cruise). It's best to learn the systems in order, but you can skip certain parts to focus on others such as a certain weapon system like HARM (if you wanted to skip it and learn the next lesson first) - the lessons are not exactly built upon the preceding lesson, though they are in a mostly intelligent order. 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 you gotta have these buttons somewhere because you cannot click them with a mouse in the cockpit like everything else (with the exception of Trim). The HOTAS system on the F-16 uses 6 total 4-way HAT switches (TMS, DMS, CMS, Trim, Cursor, Comms) which all need to be accessed on your stick or throttle if possible, keyboard if not possible. Using shift states and programming software for whatever flight stick you use can help, and BMS can be forced to work off a DirectX assignments file for even deeper customization. Guides and controller profiles are easy to google, and there are some here under Downloads. Feel free to post up questions here (I've moved this post to the correct section of the forums, "Falcon BMS 4 - Help and Support").

Had the opportunity to check out a BDRM in person with =VG= Tankmaster and =VG= Airbats in 2015, seen in the video below. This thing has been sitting for 40+ years, but it's turret still spins like it was built yesterday - Praise to the BDRM for sure!!

I'll go ahead and try that. Next time I see the server empty, I'll save the campaign, add it to the cfg and restart the server to the save. Won't lose any progress so far, and should help draw out the campaign if it works. *2 hours should be fine, I'll set it to 2. Good lookin, man! Thanks a lot! **Config change added and server restarted (to Day 7) -- Monday, Nov. 14 2016

**Just got home and checked the server - it's running just fine. CobaltUK is on a mission right now. @babucatron try to connect again, it might have been some minor connection hiccup.

I could make one - so could Double_13 (and several others here I assume) - I think the consensus is that it's just a zip file to extract, and spending a few hours testing and troubleshooting a quick and dirty installer is just a waste of time. Unzipping a file package is not advanced computer science and though we all have different levels of computer literacy, I feel that if people cannot figure this one out, we can handle it on a case by case basis. No one would reject an installer if someone makes one, just make the source code open and put links to the code from pastebin/github or wherever so people can check it out.

I doubt the Project Reality Mod would add that command for players, it's emphasis is on Reality right down to the fact that it takes a few seconds to aim and shoot a rifle accurately. Adding the ability for a single soldier to flip over a vehicle turned turtle is vastly unrealistic and is an operation that would most certainly involve a winch and another vehicle, possibly an M936 - a Medium Wrecker Truck with a crane on the back. Forgetting the fact that the manner in which vehicles get flipped onto their top is a bit gamey, there are numerous functions and actions in game that deal within these margins in order to handle the various game breaking exploits found in the original BF2 game. Like you said, it would have to be coded into the BF2:PR engine, meaning it would need to be part of a future patch if it was to be implemented, and it may be best to suggest this directly to the PR Dev team.

I tried many years ago to get my TrackIR to work with PR - I was a pilot, mostly flew CAS choppers. I set the TIR to a mouse emulation mode and a macro to toggle the mouse look function. Biggest problem I ran into was that when mouse look is active, no other controls were recognized (I believe this even included throttle, IIRC) - but this could have been due to the way I was toggling the Mouse Look button. Was more trouble than it was worth, and never got it working better than that.

If there are any other players here who know Qreed and wish to vouch for him, now would be the time to speak up. We take a dim view to disruptive and immature individuals on our TeamSpeak server, and reading your report (hard to call it an unban request when you have not requested such) we have little reason to unban you. You've made no request to be unbanned other than putting this thread post in the unban requests forums and we're to assume all the details you left out. You've made no personal statement as to why we should unban you and you seem to express no remorse for you actions, merely an awareness of the event that happened. Feel free to add anything to your argument for unban if you wish, I'm in no hurry. FYI, if you think I'm too grumpy, the man who banned you fought in two wars and I know he has zero patience for kids spamming lame music over the TS3 when he's trying to chill with his buddies and relax with some games.

^^ What he said is correct - the server runs the 32-bit version and you can select that option when you launch BMS if you want to fly on our server. It makes no difference really, nothing you will notice anyway. Be sure not to start a 2nd campaign on the server if you join, find connection instructions here if you still have problems joining:

First the bad news then good news... I stopped the server this morning (Day 8) to repair the Day 1 save files and (current save) Day 8 files - one time, when re-loading the other, I made the requisite changes and then proceeded to overwrite the Day 8 save file with the Day 1 campaign. All that effort twice, only to end up with a proper Day 1 save - UG! So, I've lost the Campaign progress so far and have had to revert to Day 1 again, albeit with all the changes we wanted. The good news: I was able to change the weather as requested to have 90% reasonable skies leaving two 5% chances for inclement and poor weathers respectively. I've also gone through each airbase to double check our AI vs Player squadron setups. I did find a few issues and I've corrected them, and while I was doing it, I was noting each FS# and Airbase name for the requested 'official list'. There were no 40's for the players at Kunsan like we used to have, so I've removed the 80th from AI/HQ fragging, and Seosan had a few AI FS's HQ fragged and I've turned that off. Seosan should now have a very low volume of AI activity, if any at all, which is how we've run Seosan for years to give players priority at that airbase in everything from taxi to landings (especially helpful for newcomers). Here's the list you asked for, please note and post up if you ever find the server fragging different (i.e. "after server disruptions") This is not a complete list of all squadrons at these airbases, only the player squadrons (not fragged by HQ): Choongwon 600th FS F-16CM-52 908th TS KC-135 (AI Controlled/HQ Fragged)* 910th TS KC-10 (AI Controlled/HQ Fragged)* *to be used (not flown) by players for AAR support in missions Kunsan 80th FS -- F-16CM Block 40 601st FS -- F-16CM Block 52 602nd FS -- KF-16CM Block 52 Carrier VINSON 603rd FS -- F/A-18C 604th FS -- F/A-18E Osan 36th FS -- F-16CM Block 40 605th FS -- F-16CM Block 52 606th FS -- KF-16CM Block 52 Seosan 120th -- KF-16CM Block 52 157th -- KF-16CM Block 52 607th -- F-16CM Block 52 608th -- KF-16CM Block 52

Thank you again!! I've uploaded the new Campaign and restarted the server to Day 1. It's live now - spread the word!

Thank you very much!

I forgot about the keyfile changes when I updated. My personal set is Read Only, I started up the sim, flew an instant action and all my HOTAS and MFD controller commands still worked the same. Odd. I'm gonna go through the old and new keyfiles side by side to see if any of the DX commands I use on my controls have changed, but I might have gotten lucky with my particular setup.

Okay - server is updated and running Update 2! Campaign is on Day 1. We'll be changing/updating the Campaign save soon, see below... I still need some help with the day 1 save file - we had a few custom options I wasn't able to recreate. The Carrier group that has a few player squadrons (also I think it was tweaked to be there day 1?) and a few other squadrons that were added here and there. I've attached an rar file with the Day 1 save file and a folder with pictures of the customized airbases and the added squadrons. I believe Brain added the tankers, but not sure who added the other player squadrons in the list. Whoever can help, it's much appreciated! Master VG Day 1.rar

Server is going down for the update - I will need to remake the Campaign file - I will post up when it is complete.

Yes