Okay that needs to be on a T-shirt.
Marines know the taste of victoryā¦.and crayons. 
Just back from work. You all al probably VTOL-saturated.
Manā¦Iād love toā¦but I gotta get some sleep for that possible morning page. If Iām not flying mid-day tomorrowā¦Iāll hop on!
True storyā¦my military base experiencesā¦with PPRs we used to go to bases to take injured or sick servicemen/women to care facilities:
USAF / Andrews AFB: Canāt remember the name of the transportation squadronā¦but they had a nice Base Ops buildingā¦great air conditioning and coffee and donutsā¦flight planning computers. Very civilized.
Army / Ft. Stewart AAF: The base time forgot. I swear to God we pulled up and there were Quonset huts and guys that looked like Honeycut and Hawkeye in Hawaiian shirts grilling out in flip-flops and throwing horseshoes. I am 99% certain that the Army didnāt even know these guys existed.
Navy / China Lake: Didnāt fly in thereā¦instead got a tourā¦and had my camera images deleted at the request of security. Chunx drove his car like he stole it.
Marines / Cherry Point: It was about 130 degrees on the ramp in July and this Marine stood in front of our airplane at parade rest for like two hours straight. I donāt know if he was just that goodā¦or had gotten in trouble to warrant that treatment. I stood in the shade of the tail of my King Air and watched Harriers do patterns. Mesmerizing.
Coast Guard / Elizabeth City: I donāt remember anything about the Coast Guard Station other than being grateful to be able to find their ramp because our windows had fogged up so badly on the King Air that I could barely see to move. Thatās what the windshield heat ON prior to descent is for. Lesson learned. Only memory is that everything was dripping wet and foggy. And they had some pretty orange helicopters and a couple C-130s there. No coffee. I found that to be odd.
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It sounds odd, but a physical HOTAS would just be a hinderance in this game/simā¦
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The VTOLVR Briefing Room. Years ago I dabbled in ARMA as an inept tourist among the regulars at SimHQ. I was generally scared and lost. I quickly learned that the mission lived and died in the briefing. ARMA has a 2D briefing screen that can be annotated real-time among participants. I came to really enjoy comparing the plan to what actually transpired after (the enemy gets a say as we all know).
VTOL is obviously far different. There is almost no fog-of-war in the game and the briefing probably isnāt as important as it was in ARMA, where it was vital. Too bad really because that briefing room in VTOL really is amazing. The leader can stand at his own dais and scream and gesticulate just like a real general, while advancing the slides behind him. And youāve got that cool 3D map rotating in the center of the room. I donāt think drawing is possible, yet.
I see a future, probably happening already with organized squads, especially in PvP, where this level of preparation will be utilized. And this will separate VTOL from every other combat flight sim. It is such an obvious feature. Yet no sim, except ARMA if that can be considered such, has anything close. This is primarily because the co-op model (fixed start) has largely died in flight sims where players have shown a preference for the DF model, where you come and go as you please and generally āroll yer ownā experience. The only recent co-op style flying in my experience has been Squadron J5ās big WWI events in IL2 (āBloody Aprilā). J5 might use some fancy tech to brief but those of us flying Entente would just chat on Discord and hope that participants could follow along with a printed map.
Well, this has turned into an odd, sleep-dreprived-induced lengthy rant. To sum it up, the briefing room is nifty. Other flight sims should consider it.
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Having not really used the Valve Index controllers outside of Beat Sabre so far, I have now learned a bit about them 
I wondered why I had a hard time grabbing the throttle, only to discover that pulling the trigger is not the same as the grip force sensor ā¦ Now I at least managed to get out of the hangar, on to the taxi way and airborne, following the waypoints faithfully ā¦ and crashing into the sea instead of landing so far (TeTeT: 0, Sea: 3)
Good fun so far, great use of those controllers for a change!
Cheers,
TeTeT
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I wonder if that isnāt a common trait among those that get into our profession. I can absolutely obsess over a map. I loved ARMA for the mapā¦and planningā¦and comparing what I was seeing to what was on the map. Even though I didnāt play a lot of itā¦Steel Beasts was the same way.
We need a laser pointerā¦ 
It sure is. I think yesterday was the first time I actually saw a person in the briefing room with me ( @Troll ) and it was really cool watching him gesticulate and try out his fingers. As a WMR userā¦I donāt have fingersā¦wellā¦not individual digits that flex unlike some other hand controllers.
And I know I mentioned it previouslyā¦I find the budgeting and limited lives in the Greek Isles Liberation mission to be very intriguing. Iām not sure how the logic works quite yetā¦but I think the āgroupā is given a certain number of spawnable slots. It may be two for each flight position. Once you crash those aircraft, they become unavailable. New ālivesā can be gained I think by taking each of the islands (there are like 6 or 8 of them?). I like that game mechanic because it does make you at least a little bit aware that you are using a limited resource. As well, that mission also has some quirky economy based limitations. When I went to refuel/rearm at one of the captured basesā¦I had a very limited budget for additional weapons. Iām not sure what the variables are thereā¦perhaps Iāll ask the mission designer. It is nice to have to think about what to take and what to leave behind. And Iām not sure if the budget is player specific and based on kills or score or whatā¦no idea. Would be cool if it was though!
Iām on call this morningā¦first up because our other two planes are already out flying. So I could be off all dayā¦or I could be paged at the end of this sentence. If anyone wants to playā¦give a shout here. Iād prefer someone else to host a mission since if I get paged Iād have to boot everyone in the middle of their game. I donāt know if it is easier to ping everyone that a game is up on the Mudspike Discord? Perhapsā¦ I donāt know much about Discord other than that I hate reading the flow of messages on there usuallyā¦ Iām too old schoolā¦
I still have my server machine here at the new house. I wonder if a dedicated server option is in the works for this gameā¦I would love to run a 24/7 serverā¦
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So does the Index controller allow you to grip with one pull of the trigger and then let go and the hand is latched to the stick and/or throttles? I like that feature that you donāt have to constantly squeeze the trigger to stay connected to the cockpit controls.
You just grip itā¦ The controller is strapped to the back of your hand so you just open and close your grip, on the throttle and stick.
Ha! That sounds about right. When I was flying Citations and Kingairs out of Andrews, we used to drop into some of those places and the difference was hard to miss.
Iām glad you never ran afoul of the Air Forceās āRed Lineā.
I know of at least one Lt Col who wound up on his face in the middle of about 50 acres of concrete of no discernible value with what I think was all the M-16s the AF owned pointed at him for crossing what he took to be a pretty innocent looking red line painted on the ground! 
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Awā¦just got paged so Iām out for VTOL this morningā¦maybe this afternoon!
Nooooo. Safe flight!
I just hosted a session using the Greek Islands mission. Usual password.
My flight canceled. Iāll be home in about an hour and can hop on then.
How does it work when they cancel a flight? Are you still on stand-by or does that free you for the day?
Wheels
I had to step away for a bitā¦
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Once they āactivateā me by paging me for a weather checkā¦that starts a clock. I belong to them for 14 hours from that pointā¦so my clock starts ticking. At some pointā¦6 or so hours into my duty dayā¦it becomes somewhat harder to use me for a normal trip. I could still do an out and back or a quick hitter organ box runā¦but our normal trips take anywhere from 8 to 12 hoursā¦so duty time becomes an issue. This morning they paged me for this pop-up trip at 9AMā¦so Iām only good until 11PM now. Realisticallyā¦10:30PM to allow for 30 minutes of post-flight activity.
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Yeahā¦I was amazed at how chill Andrews wasā¦of course, we are talking pre-9/11ā¦those were the days. Most airports didnāt even have perimeter fences. The good old daysā¦
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