Helicopter Gunship DEX News

Quick update to fix a couple of bugs...

1. Prevented controls from being used before the mission starts. This will prevent flight controls or wingman controls from being triggered while loading weapons etc!

2. Switching the HUD off now no longer stops the cockpit MFDs from working.

3, Toggling the HUD no longer resets current waypoint.

4. Tweaked some settings in the wingman A.I. to help them navigate uneven terrain better.

5. Fixed a missing texture on the Gazelle's left co-pilot door.

This update includes the following...

1. Changed throttle axis range so hopefully you should find throttles now go from 0 - 100% on the collective correctly.

You may need to adjust the calibration of your throttle axis so it looks like this....



The important part is the "Zero" setting. This should be centred as shown. You should find that moving your throttle moves the blue arrow & white arrow fully left & right.

BTW the blue arrow shows the input from your device while the white arrow shows what is being sent to the game just in case you ever wondered ːsteamhappyː.

2. All TSD icons have been updated to vector icons which makes them a little easier to read when there are a number of units grouped together. Icon symbology is unchanged and remains as follows...

• H symbol - Tracked Vehicle
  
• Circle symbol - Wheeled Vehicle
  
• Square symbol - Building Vehicle
  
• Hourglass symbol - Helicopter
  

3. Icons now only show know unit locations. It doesn't show Line of Sight at the moment as it wasn't working correctly. I'll re-instate that shortly once it is working properly!

4. Bullets now have a chance to ricochet! Ricochets are still counted as full hits so are purely cosmetic. Ricocheted bullets do no further damage.

5. Missile Cam! There is now a basic missile cam in game bounce to "F4" by default. Press the "Prime Missile Camera" to prime the camera then next missile, rocket or bomb that you launch will be tracked by your camera. You can rotate the view around the missile while it flies.

The HUD currently stays on screen so you can also watch the missile on your Targeting Pod and also maintain some kind of control of your aircraft.

Pressing "Prime Missile Camera" when the camera is primed will un-prime it. Pressing "Prime Missile Camera" while tracking the missile will return you back to your previous view.

6. Slow Motion! You can now reduce the speed of the game to 1/16th speed! Camera rotation controls remain constant. However, button presses sometimes won't be seen correctly.

7. Player.log files have been disabled for the moment as there was a lot of log spam being produced by the GPU Instancing system when pausing the game and/or slowing the game down. Not sure why but seems to be a Unity issue that I can't fix. It doesn't cause any other issues apart from making huge log files!

Disabling the log file system may give a small performance boost anyway so I'll leave it turned off until I need it.

8. HUD now utilises FXAA to smooth out some of the vector shapes.

9. TOW missile now "snakes" while flying to its target again.

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This should be the final update before pushing all the updates and fixes out to the default branch.

A few fixes - thanks to those who reported them.

1. Reaper drone now launches all of its missile correctly rather than getting stuck after firing its first missile.

2. Fixed a truncate text description in the Control Settings menu.

3. Altitude Hold display will now reflect the chosen units of height instead of always showing the target altitude in meters.

This update will be pushed to the default branch in the next day or two as it now includes quite a few important fixes and updates.

Another new ground unit modelled by the amazing Zensiter! This time it's the BM-30 Smerch MRLS system for REDFOR.

Expect to go hunting for these units in future missions before they can deploy and destroy allied units.

***IMPORTANT***

Necessary changes to the control binding system means you will need to re-bind all controls even if they are showing up correctly and appear to be working in-game. This is to ensure no legacy bindings are still present causing hidden "double bound" controls.

There is also an option in the Game Settings menu to "Clear Data". This will reset ALL stored data such as control bindings and other preferences but will not effect your Sierra Hotel data.

I will keep these kind of changes to an absolute minimum but sometimes core changes will mean I'll have to ask you to reset things which is a pain, I know, sorry. ːsteamsadː

UPDATES

1. Added button to clear all stored data (except Sierra Hotel) in the Game Settings menu.

2. Added some extra controls....

Weapons & Targeting

• Fire Weapon / Wheel Brake in Nav Mode - This allows you to bind a control which will fire your weapons when you have a weapon selected but, when in NAV | SAFE mode, it will control your wheel brakes. This is now the default control for the right trigger on joypads freeing up the left trigger.
  

View Controls

• Hold for Cyclic Look - Allows you to bind a control which, when held, switches your cyclic control (usually right stick) into view control mode allowing you to look around. This is now the default control for left trigger on joypads.
  
• Hold for Collective Look - Allows you to bind a control which, when held, switches your collective & tail rotor control (usually left stick) to view control mode allowing you to look around. Some people may prefer this arrangement over using the cyclic as it allows you to switch on Alt Hold and still remain in complete control of the cyclic while looking around.
  
• Toggle HUD - turns the HUD overlay on or off. Now you can take nice screenshots!
  

3. By default the Cyclic / Collective Look will be in smooth, unrestricted mode allowing you to rotate your view to any angle and it will remain there even when releasing the look controls.

However, there is a 2nd mode activated by ticking the "Enable "Snap" Cyclic / Collective Look" option in the Control Settings menu. This will map the view angle directly to the input of your control allowing you to quickly look left, right, up & down. When you release the control your view will snap back to looking directly forward.

Maximum rotational angles in this mode are limited depending on your current view position. In cockpit it is 110 degrees left/right & 45 degrees up/down. While 3rd person is 180 degrees left/right and 85 degrees up/down.

4. The Harrier now releases its bombs smoothly so they don't lag behind when travelling at high speeds.

5. Fixed a bug which might cause MFDs to not be shown when starting a mission.

6. Fixed a bug with smoke from flares which would sometimes cause a trail of smoke to form when the floating origin system reset.

7. Your missile warning system should now pick up missiles launched within 1km of you and deploy flares/chaff as necessary.