It was 0.97. I left our descent too late and was zigzagging down, so the departing Chinook may have been on a heading over the mountains. It pass right under us though. I did a quick switch to the F10 map to check type. It had nav and anti collisions on. Speaking of that, I had selected flashing IR navs top and bottom, but they showed up as flashing red. Maybe a bug.
Good to know about the maps. I bet if you just hide statics it would go a long way to aiding readability on the F10 map.
Yep hiding the statics and sticking a small blue diamond where the FOBs are looks a lot neater. Are maps about this size usable for VR?
Iāll probably keep helo traffic as is, and I noticed the same on the IR strobes. Itās very dim but still visibly red. The IR search light is the same, except itās almost invisible at distance and looks neat under NVGs when youāre illuminating something.
EDIT:
Protip for flying the Helmand North sector: Bring lots of gas. A couple tasks have you loitering for 10-15 minutes doing overwatch. I went in for a āquickā play test in the Warthog and ended up doing a 100 minute flight 
Yeah that will be much better. 
FYI, I donāt remember what the grid coordinates were in the assigned LZ, but on the map, the very crucial circle was drawn in an adjacent grid. Maybe a bug or maybe a magnetic vs true issue. Looking at the relief/elevation lines on the map, Iām pretty sure that the circle on the map matches where you placed the LZ. Because that plateau is pretty much the only flat ground around. The drawn map grid seems to be a bit off. But the reason that I landed away from the planned DZ was just my poor airmanship and probably because I didnāt use my NVG.
That was probably due to me not being that familiar with the Chinookās cockpit lighting and I had it too bright, even that I thought that I had turned it down. Later I was tinkering with the MPD brightness and contrast and found turning the brightness down to about 25% and raising the contrast a bit was much better. All the things that should be done in preflight.
Need to find if there is red or green cabin lighting. Also wondering why the flashlight has only clear and green filters. Red seems obligatory, Perhaps they only have one option and the green is NVG friendly. Most likely the snake eaters donāt want any illumination back there during the mission, choosing to provide their own during the mission. Just from the night sport jumping Iāve done, the cabin is usually unlit, allowing everyoneās eyes to adjust during the climb to exit altitude. But thinking that it would be a necessity for crew chiefs and gunners during preflight.
Iām expanding the embark range to 1000ft to give a bit more flexibility in landing zones. Now that I think about it, disembark shouldnāt use the zones at all for the actual disembarkation. If they are disembarked within the trigger zone you get a task complete message, but you should be able to disembark them anywhere on the map.
Testing so far the Helmand North tasks seem to be working fine. Two of the tasks in Khost arenāt working: NITRO and RATTLER. I think Iāve fixed them but need to test to be sure.
So far Iām finding my favorite tasks to be ones where Iām talked on to a certain building in a compound or urban area for an airstrike. I have the triggers set so the target building is randomly chosen out of a pool of two or three targets.
Anyone know proper procedure for a show of force? I have a few of them on the map but have them set to where you have to fly within 500ft of the baddies for anything to work. Iām usually screaming over their heads at treetop level but I imagine thatād get my wings rescineded in real life.
Updated version on the Git. Some housekeeping tasks still to do (mainly radios and kneeboard).
v.0972 changelog:
Thanks for the update Clutch. I wonāt able to give this a try until Monday night, but looking forward to it. Will fly some rotor and fixed wing.
Is the Afghanistan map working okay on your dedicated server? The recent patch seems to have broken mine and Afghanistan is āunauthorized.ā The only fix Iāve found so far is to revert to the previous DCS build.
Yep, Afghanistan and the latest version of your sandbox seems to load and run fine on my dedicated server. I updated DCS on server and client around 2025-04-07T03:45:00Z. Looks like I need to update DLSS again. Did not have time to fly a mission.
Fixed my server, and released a ābetaā for the next version with some fixes and additions.
With the next āfullā release Iām hoping to add more tasks to Helmand South, Ghazni, Khost, and Korengal.
I only had time to fly one test mission last week, another troop transport mission in the Chinook. The F10 map is much better and very usable now that it is uncluttered. The mission was to lift from Bastion Heliport to move to the large ramp at Bastion main airfield for the troop pick up, and deliver them to a DZ on the SW side of a small development. Looking around with I saw that there were what looked like Taliban on the NE side of the village.
I didnāt hang around to see if the troops eventually came into contact, because I wanted to test TACAN in the big bird. After inputting the desired freq, you get the overly bearing pointer to the station, but no DME, which is a module bug.
It would be nice if the troop transport script (if thatās what it is) gave more feedback when the troops have disembarked, similar to the CSAR script in Into the Jungle, but unsure if thatās possible. Otherwise, all went as expected
Iām not familiar with the scripts, what kind of feedback do they give for the embark/disembark?
Iām using the internal DCS triggers which give text feedback in the upper right corner for starting embarkation, embarked, and disembarked. Kinda hard to notice in VR so I added a sound trigger to disembark but I donāt think I can do the same for the embarkation process.
I was in VR too, so might have missed it. Is there a way to have a sound file play? Something like the crew chief saying that the troops are clear and that we are good to lift? Not sure what the phraseology should be exactly. Might be a good question for 47driver, or another āguy I knowā.
For disembark I have ātask completeā audible once the troop group is inside the associated trigger zone. They magically spawn next to the helo in a line and that trips the ātask completeā message and sound. But there may be some tasks where the sound file hasnāt been added. Iāll go through and check the tasks, especially the ones like Bastion. I made those so long ago my mission building logic was a bit different than it is now.
For embarkation, I may experiment with the opposite: all of group out of zone (loaded in the helo) trips a sound.
I would like to get the troops to move once disembarked, but the āgo to waypointā trigger is constantly getting broken. For other tasks I worked around this by having the group despawn and a copy of the group spawn and continue the route. Essentially a relay system.
