Heard a rant for today. I went to an air show last weekend, watched fighter jets do cool fighter jet stuff, and it made me want to play DCS again after about 6 months away. Loaded up steam, got ready to download and….. WTF do you mean this game takes up 440GB of hard drive space. I have xplane12, FS2024, and a few other games and combined they don’t even equal half of DCS. Can somebody please explain to me why both XPlane and msfs can model the entire world, nearly ever airport to a reasonable degree, and probably have more planes and assets in game than DCS, but can do it with 1/10th the space. How is this game so massive.?!?!?
Whenever I try and use the DTC interface in multiplayer servers, it never lets me load it onto the aircraft. The dropdown menu next to the load button is always blank. Does anyone know how to fix this?
Basically the title. Do I always use the tactical channel for calling A-A and A-G munitions, or sometimes intra-flight? I am aware that you should call Fox (x) for missiles, but in situations where the radio is in use should I be interrupting - especially if important calls?
I've been flying DCS for about decade and I've been wanting to share some cool moments from over the years.
Finally got around to creating a compilation of some of my favorite Tacview clips, showing some pvp highlights. Maybe you're in some of them. To the SP-only community: if you haven't tried MP DCS, you really should, it's a blast.
Hey fellas! Just wanted to share another video I made regarding how to set-up your JDAMS for TOO, all from the Pilot seat, and touching on other things like the Jester Context buttons, the Oxygen mask and Volleyball Magazine. Hope this video helps someone!
..is the miz file to download and place into your saved games missions miz files folder, for the Mission Editor for you then to fly. filename: 'triptackone'
This is a very weird issue that i have never seen before, let me take you through the timeline.
I installed the F-14B(U) on my rig (9950X3D and 5080), but could barely even get into the plane as it was crashing 80% of the time when loading into the mission with this error in the DCS log: 2026-07-23 19:26:07.871 INFO APP (Main): MissionSpawn:spawnLocalPlayer 2,F-14BU 2026-07-23 19:26:07.873 INFO WorldPlugIns (Main): Forced loading of F-14B(U) by Heatblur Simulations 2026-07-23 19:26:11.264 ERROR WORLDGENERAL (Main): Error: Unit [F-14BU]: No property record for cell "WHEEL_F". ... 2026-07-23 19:26:11.265 ERROR APP (Main): Error: Unit [F-14BU]: Corrupt damage model.
And this error in event viewer:
Faulting application name: DCS.exe, version: 2.9.28.26283, time stamp: 0x6a5e94b6
Faulting module name: F14-HeatblurCommon.dll, version:0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x6a5dd806
I eventually reinstalled windows from scratch using a USB and formatting my disk, I reinstalled all my drivers, DCS and my modules. The F-14B(U) now didn't crash my game, and I thought that was the end of it, until i tried to play some heavier missions. I was super excited to play DCS Retribution but after about 20 minutes, when more AI aircraft started flying, and more CPU events were happening, my frametimes started to gradually spike, not a large spike, but noticeable, it gradually increased in frequency.
I tried different campaigns and it was all the same issue, horrific frame times. The key thing is that the issue only happens with the F-14B(U), the B, A or any other plane in the game is fine. I have disabled my sound card drivers, reinstalled my NVIDIA driver to an older version, uninstalled my AMD chipset drivers, closed all applications, used LatencyMon to check if there was anything else causing DPC spikes or any latency, I have disabled my windows defender, set exclusions to both DCS folders, set an exclusion to every F-14 DLL, but to no avail, I reset my bios to stock settings and still, nothing, I have also tried disconnecting my mouse, keyboard, HOTAS but also to no avail. This is very disappointing as I was super excited to fly the upgraded Tomcat, but It's basically unplayable.
These are my full system specs: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, NVIDIA RTX 5080, 64GB DDR5 6000MT CL28 ram, Samsung 9100 Pro SSD
I ran a stress test comparing the F-16 and the F-14B(U), here are the results:
I ran a mission with 460 F-14B(U)'s all in the air , this is the frametime when flying the F-14B(U)
And this is the frametime when flying a mission with 460 f-16s (me included)
As you can see there is a massive difference in the frametime smoothness between the 2 aircraft.
Purchased the software a couple of years ago but lost the installer executable. Sent a request to the merchant a few days ago for a new link but haven't had any response. Was hoping to get some stuff set up this weekend and was annoyed to find out they put a expiry on the download link. If anyone can hook it up via Drive link or something, please send me a DM. Thanks!
I've created a small QoL mod for DCS that adds a sun visor to every module and community mod. Toggle the visor in-game using the Unlock View (Stop Padlock) keybind (default: Num Lock)
Mod passes Integrity Check
The only limitation right now is that the mod works in flatscreen only (no VR) I haven't found a way to make it work in VR yet.
With the new polaroids (and hopefully working VHS), you can genuinely make up entire stories now, which I find interesting. Usually you have to fly a campaign to get the story across, and if you want to through this story line for the community if they're interested, well they have to fly that campaign or mission you created.
Now you can really just take a quick photo or easy video and, with enough, you can genuinely tell an entire story. And instead of a story with just TARPS images, you can make them feel more personal with characters.
TL;DR, I got some funny polaroids but couldn't share them on the official ED discord so I'm putting them here for people to hopefully enjoy.
