Further to this.....I'd buy The Fraggers mod for $9.95 whether it flies or not.....Happy to use it as an AI static aircraft so I can upload screenshots for reference when the numerous other officially licensed 3rd party devs come to town. It can be used as an 'officially licensed learning tool' to show them that if they do not pull their heads out and have a business plan in place, included in that plan a business model so that if the texture artist\coder etc walk off the job, the module will still be complete with out public drama's and ongoing developer statements issued to consumers or expected consumers........

ED can use the static aircraft in the contracts and in big bold letter's say "DON'T BE THIS GUY"

Myabe the makers of such mods got tired of having to re-do the mods for every time ED updates their supposedly modular system?

Okey dokey, next newb question; I have DCS 2.5 installed with FC3 and when I go to start it, Steam asks if I want to install Steam VR (which I have not yet, bc I want to see what the game looks like on my monitor first) and then when DCS starts, it does not appear full screen and has this weird warped look to it and I cannot move the mouse around. I assume (probably incorrectly) that this is due to having my Oculus Rift and HTC Vive plugged in? I assume DCS 2.5 thinks I am trying to start up the sim in VR, and this is the reason for the funky screen?

I dont have VR but Steam usually allows you to choose pre-launch, if hardware attached try disconnecting and try again.

Yes, you shouldnt have to, but try it and see.

In the settings under the VR tab uncheck the "use bla bla bla headset" and check the "use mouse" the game will restart but not in vr.
You'll have to use your OR im afraid as ED has it default. And the headset is the mouse

It was Starway's terrain texture mod for 1.5.xx. The plan was indeed to make it a 10 bucks DLC, but since in the software world there's no way you can reliably copy-protect a couple of texture zips against leaking out soon for free, the idea was eventually dropped (they can't be password protected as the game needs to extract and load them from the vfstextures folder on the fly). I seem to recall that was the announced reason, no possibility of DRM for such a mod.

Can the game not check if you have a key for such mod and if not, load the default textures? I'm sure there can be a way to check filesizes and if those don't match, the files are re-downloaded, so that takes care of just renaming files.

Thanks Art_J

As I fool around with DCS and experiment with different settings, I will try to answer some of the questions I myself have. For those few people who are curious about DCS and Nvidia SLI, the answer is that yes, it does work, but it requires a bunch of fiddling and the correct driver version from Nvidia. I am running Windows 10 64 bit Home and Nvidia Version 391.35 with an EVGA 1080 Ti card and installed another 1080 Ti to see how much it would improve. Using my 4K monitor (3840 x 2160) on mostly high settings I went from 67 fps to 103 fps when I put in the second graphics card. If I max out every graphics setting in DCS 2.5, I get 77 fps. and so far, I do not have the flickering cloud problems that other SLI users have seen. I will experiment with the code tonight and also with VR and the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Next question for you veteran gents, I installed DCS World (2.5) using Steam (simply because FC3 was on sale) instead of from the DCS website. I turned off VR but now, I get to the start screen of DCS and I see a bunch of little icons for the different planes in the lower left (I assume these are "lit" to indicate that you have that paid mod installed) but clicking on these icons does nothing. I then go over to the right side and click on training (which was working for me for the past few weeks) and select the P-51 and then it tries to load but never does saying DCS is not working properly or some such? Is this because I have my DCS Steam install on a different solid state drive from my main C drive? Or is this a common bug or something else?

a) Bottom icons are indeed only for show, they're not clickable;
b) Location should be irrelevant, you can have as many copies on your computer as you want, installed on any drives.

I don't own Steam version nor a VR, though, so won't be able to help with remaining questions. Fixing/troubleshooting non-Steam DCS is easy, first you run repair and cleanup scripts, and if that doesn't help you rename Saved Games/DCS folder temporarily to let the game reset all its settings and narrow down the source of the error. These three steps are good enough for fixing 99% DCS issues, No idea how that knowledge applies to Steam though (integrity check is similar to repair I guess?).

They are clickable for me but I'm not on Steam version. They only have "set wallpaper" or "buy" links which is probably why Steam version has them edited out.

Another question for you guys; I did not do much flying over the summer but now have both the Steam version and the ED stand alone version (both are updated to 2.5.3). Most of the payware planes indicate that they will not work with the Steam version (not sure why). So, these have to be installed to the ED stand alone version only? (like the FA-18 Hornet)

Admittedly, I don't have any payware installed yet, but with 2.5.3, so far (fingers crossed) I am not having problems with either 4k or VR at mostly highest settings. Are most guys happy with 2.5.3, and is there anything I should watch out for?

A few notes as well:

Nvidia SLI is working decently in 2.5.3. With one GTX 1080 Ti, I now get 43 FPS (average) directly over the Batumi map with almost everything set to highest levels, and 72 FPS with both 1080 Ti's running at 4K.

Virtual Reality settings with most things at highest levels give me about 53 FPS with the Oculus Rift and one GTX 1080 Ti card. With the HTC Vive Pro, I get about 58 FPS with one card (VR at 1920 x 1080 capped, although the Pro will go higher)

Another quick question, I have played through all of the P51 training missions, all of the Su-27 missions (I have FC3 installed in the Steam Version) and am mostly through the Su-25 missions. Can anyone give me a rundown on the time commitment to get up and flying and carrier landing with the F-18? This is a full on study plane, so does that mean I need like months to get up and going?

I don't really use Steam, but I think the modules available there are only those that are feature complete. Again I'm not completely sure because I don't use it. The F-18 is certainly not feature complete yet though.


I don't have any issues with 2.5.3.





What is available for the F-18 right now isn't that difficult to learn in my opinion, I mostly focus on air to air. Study modules can take months to fully learn, but flying competency can take only days or weeks (depending on previous experience with sims I guess). You can fly the F-18 for free this weekend:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=221005

So I guess that's better than any answer I can give.

The payware not working with Steam has nothing to do with completeness or anything like that. It is due to the fact that ED keys are not transferable to Steam. This is/was a Steam decision and ED had no choice in the matter.

Ah, I thought what was meant was that some modules weren't available on Steam at all.

Thank you Exorcet!

I will continue to tinker around while breaking the sound barrier into the nearest building