I have had numerous very close encounters (crashes) with target fixation which may also include trees when attacking ground targets 
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So apart from the engine management, the navigation using a stopwatch and a compass with a drifting gyro, the lack of HUD, the manual non gyro sight, the open hatch to bail out, and the target fixation, what have the Roman’s ever done for us? 
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Use set and forget settings, make up for the difference with tactics.
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Do any of the engines in DCS WW2 offerings quit if you abuse them? I think I recall flying the P-51 during our MP evening and commenting that my engine was overheating and someone chimed in that I needed to ease the prop back a bit. That helped bring the (water? cylinder head?) temperatures back down. My assumption is that the engine would have quit if I hadn’t?
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Yep, it would die. As @Mudcat alluded to, it seems like for something like the Spitfire you can move the radiator to ‘open’ and leave it there rather than ‘auto’, as the penalty in airflow for it isn’t probably as high as it would be in real-life, so you don’t really lose that much speed. You still need to watch RPM and Boost/MP, as you can kill them all if driven hard enough. The German planes are more ‘vorsprung durch technik’ and are harder to blow up, but it can be done if you don’t let them warm up etc.
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I still just fly vaguely somewhere over there and correct along the way, like when the mission lacks useful waypoints. 
Even our Sabre lacks that…and the F-14’s isn’t luxurious like the Hornet either.
Fly a Mustang or Dora! The Mustang’s sight is the best to use out of our current plane set.
Cntrl+E x3 always works for me! Plus in a jet it’s a lot more lethal to try to bail out without first opening the hatch, a main lesson of our holy scripture - TopGun.
Great scene! How about: gave us a common enemy, else we’d be fighting each other! 
Perhaps we should ask how many horses this conversation has cost?
Too much boost in the Spitfire on/post takeoff and the engine will lose power and die. I have a story for the screenshot thread on that actually.
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Absolutely. I’ve blown up my share of Merlins in the past. You need to babysit them or you’ll end up having an engine seizure, glycol leak or governor failure depending on the kind of damage the engine overheat causes.
Prolonged used of War Emergency Power, engine overboosting, playing too agressively with the throttle at high power settings, or failing to maintain enough airflow (to cool the engine) during a climb can cause many headaches.
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Sorry should have expanded, I was referring to using max continuous settings for RPM and/or boost/" hg etc. Leaving only really having to fiddle with the radiators as needed (throttle here and there). WEP is emergency power, attacking isn’t an emergency, getting away is.
Save cooking your engine for when you forget to open your radiators after start-up/take-off 
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Ideally though, you’re adjusting everything throughout the engagement. Prop RPMs should be slightly higher in a climb for more bite, slightly lower for a dive for more speed; throttle will have to be adjusted to keep the engine within parameters; and radiators, while leaving open should be OK, you can still run the risk of overcooling your engine. One can watch the gauges in German planes as their automatic systems will do this in flight to get a feel for how to do it in planes without as much automation.
While I absolutely worship my IL2 installation, I believe DCS still has a place in WW2. It seems a bit ad hoc to have the current collection. The I-16 needs an opponent, the P-47 is so late to the party. We lack a true WW2 Experience. It’s getting there and I believe this is still possible. What keeps my Hope’s up are the thought of a full switch twin(Mossie, Lightning) and maybe an early Jet. Cant wait to have a Biplane in DCS too. Hs-123? Gloster Gladiator? Yes I think DCS should continue with WW2.
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DCS has huge promise, but currently fails to deliver a truly great sim or, dare I say it, game. Il-2’s philosophy may not allow it to reach the same heights as a perfectly executed DCS, but it does currently deliver exceptionally well against its promise.
I usually go through a cycle with DCS of coming back to it after a hiatus and playing around with a few new features and old favorites. After a while I’ll hit a few rough edges but think to myself that it’s just a temporary bug or missing feature, and the next update will be awesome! Then either the next update breaks something else or takes what seems like forever to come out. In the meantime, I’m playing around with little bits and pieces, waiting for that spark that never seems to come. After a while I decide to shelve it for a while to wait for more bug fixes and missing features to be implemented, and the cycle starts again.
I think I remember someone saying that DCS Black Shark is a great simulator but a poor game, while EECH is a good simulator but a great game (I must have seen that a looong time ago). Insert Il-2, or BMS for that matter, in place of EECH and I think the comparison is still quite valid.
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Sticking with IL2 into IL2 Battle of X seemed logical as I’ve been playing since the original IL2 Box game way back when…
Not a big fan of multi-player so the lack of content for DCS warbirds puts me off…shelling out for a plane/map/assets to have only 1 short DLC campaign and a handful of user-made single missions doesn’t really appeal!
Obviously the planes in DCS look far better and with full-clickable cockpits and more realistic modelling they are as “Planes” simulated better - but its not enough to make me invest in the DCS warbird ecosystem at the expense of what i’m already enjoying…
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I only found I can use track IR with it a few days ago. That game is just full of lovely surprises.
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Did you know that old school il2 would download all skins used on a server. So if I owned you in a pink hello-kitty themed 109, you would see that. Such a neat touch. (FWIW I flew a dark grey I-16 mod 24)
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The skins were low res then and it was feasible. With today’s high-res skins the server could be overwhelmed trying to send every client those skins when they joined, leading to awful lag/rubber band moments when a couple of people join.
I fly combat flight sims, or more precisely I fly combat flight sims. I would make the word flight in smaller font if I could, because I care about the modeling of the systems that enhance combat and the ones needed for flight barely at all. I mean, I enjoy aerobatics just fine, free flight with no weapons or enemies and taking it through its paces in mountains or between buildings or under bridges or whatever.
Start up sequences? Zero interest. My first car was a 79 Toyota Corolla with manual choke. It was SUCH a pain to start it up in the morning, especially when the weather was cold. Pull it out, not TOO far, not too little, pump the gas, turn the key, starts to fail, adjust choke, pump gas…ugh. Now I have a car with a button I press to start it. That’s about right.
Navigation? Clicking through waypoints on the HUD is all I want to deal with. TACAN? Radio beacons or whatever? Don’t care.
Radios? I’d prefer if everyone was just on one channel like Il-2, I don’t want to fiddle with that. Never was big on talking to people on the phone, and using call waiting to switch between people? Ugh. Radios are call waiting x10.
Engines? Never cared for complex engine mgmt in the old Il-2 or any sim before or since. I get taking care of it and not just 100% from takeoff to touch down all day long, that’s not what I mean, but I do mean losing an engine not because of damage or abuse but just due to a mistake or neglect during combat. Like your car’s engine blowing out because you hadn’t changed the oil and reached 5001 miles.
AAR? Holds as much interest for me as putting my gas in my car. But while I’m on a hoverboard, the car is moving, and the gas station is iced over.
I wonder if there was an enforced law that no one could devote more than 2 hours a week to DCS, including reading or watching videos when you’re not actually in it, so you had to pick how you were going to spend those 2 hours, just how many people would still clamor for a dozen modules that each require grad school courses to master? Doesn’t matter how much time you want to devote to it, you CANNOT.
By my estimate, it would mean most jets would take you 6 months to figure out to exclusion of flying anything else, and of course by then you’d have forgotten stuff about one of the others you haven’t touched in 6 months.
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I’ll buy all that. Although I do think that Black Shark had a terrific campaign at release. Wags wrote it to perfectly match the capabilities of the module at the time. The feature of the ABRIS that predicted and displayed own-ship detectability to known enemy AAA reminded me a lot of the gameplay in F-19/F-117. It was about as much fun as I have had outside of Il2, RoF and BMS.
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Oh man that was both great and horrible at the same time.
I would love to know that people see me flying around in my C-101 with @komemiute’s awesome skin. 
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Lol, that skin by Canon is still available on Dart’s site.
http://www.darts-page.com/files/Bf109E4_Girly.bmpIf you are feeling really adventurous there is also a Hello Kitty skin for the Go-229.
You can download it at WW2aircraft(dot)net.
Wheels
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Hahaha entirely too nice! Thanks!
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I totally understand what you’re saying, @JediMaster, but I repeatedly get to a point in IL2 BoX where I can see the button or lever I need, but I have to try to remember what I have it bound to (or worse, what the default is). Playing in VR these days just makes it worse. There has to be a middle ground where I can enjoy the flying without being taken out of the experience by clunky interface - oddly enough I experience DCS to be better than IL2 BoX in that regard (except for the FC3 aircraft, which have the same problem…)
I understand this is all personal, of course. And I think your idea of having a set time limit for learning and playing is a very good point - whether we are conscious of it or not we all do have a set amount of time to devote to the hobby!
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