Howdy All,

Tacview at http://lomac.strasoftware.com/tacview-en.php
Bumped into this software couple of days back. Seems quite powerful and handy for post mission analysis.
Anyone tried it ?
If so, is it user-friendly and relatively intuitive?

Cheers,
Slug

It's absolute brilliant. I've been missing it in DCS World, but now it's finally out.

You have to start it once to enable recording of flight data in DCS, afterwards it will silently record all single- and multiplayer missions you fly and dump them to a specified directory.

The interface is pretty simple and self-explanatory. You can play back the mission at different speeds or just scroll around the timeline. All the important features are available in the free edition, so don't hesitate to try it out.

Sounds great guys. I'm really interested in this. I take it that this doesn't suffer from errors like the built in replay tracks do?

No, it does not. It is very effective for exploring your tactics, and those of others.

Excellent! Thanks GrayGhost!

Wow... sounds like a winner- though I'll feel exposed a little knowing that people can sit down and humm and haw at my unorthodox techniques. I can see it now:

Wrecking Crew says: "Okay, so looking at this flight plan for a minute... Eno makes a rather awkward hammerhead stall here (probably by accident), swings his nose around into the path of a Shilka that is well within range and once he's completed that maneuver manages to fire a maverick at the sun while simultaneously dropping his landing gear and ejecting. Interesting... But here's how I would have done it differently."


He's so diplomatic that way, you know.

I'm sure I remember hearing that it can prevent you joining MP servers. That put me off getting it before. Does anyone know if this is still the case with the new version?

Not yet, but I guess people will lock it out eventually. I'll keep using it anyway, and I probably won't visit servers that lock it out. It is the best way to gauge your performance and tactics.

I had not heard that about MP and Tacview. Seems like a rather odd thing to block since it merely records a 'track' not unlike the one the sim records already, albeit a far more useful one.

Great tool! 21 days free use as a demo then pay for it.

Makes fast-checking of mission planning and resulting Ai behaviour/performance to the mission orders much easier too, so you can edit the mission faster, to make it work closer to what you want in the scenario. If I want to test the Ai plans for a mission I set just the mission running in DCS then go to the shops, come back in an hour and quickly review what transpired on the ACMI, then I'll make any indicated desirable change to plan, then run it again, go make sandwich, peruse a thread, then rapidly review the second mission outcome, adjust the mission some more as needed. That can free-up a lot of time and speed up mission making and scenario refinement. Otherwise, I might spend 10 to 20 hours testing a mission manually for detailed planning issues and function gremlins.

You NEVER see everything, when testing a new mission manually, even with a track, so it's not only useful for air-combat-analysis. Once happy with the units and Ai, you can hide these on the map, then set up your own flight and go fly. Or even wait a month until you forget what's in it, and where everything is sited. I don't bother with the waiting part because a soon as you analyse the mission outcomes, you can see where everything was again, anyway. So just hide it on the map and fly - or not.