Getting Started in DCS: World - Learning to Fly: Episode 1

I'm sitting at my desk right now I'm staring at a computer screen with a Google Doc up that says learning to fly a DC s-series then I write the series goal is to share what it takes to learn to play DCs world from start to finish in a way that is informative and entertaining to new players and fun and exciting for veterans I've controlled pairs I play the most immersive PC games in the world and this is DCs world a few months ago you might remember that I posted a video where I took the su-25 T frog foot a Russian strike aircraft out for a spin in the famous online flight simulator DCs world I explained what DC s was in that video but I think it's important to recap it here particularly as we begin this incredible undertaking with such a broad and deep subject DC s world digital combat simulator world is a free quote unquote flight simulator developed by Eagle dynamics and available for download on Steam or from their website as a standalone application now after I posted that video of the su-25 T flight I was so impressed that the game was free-to-play and then immediately in the comments and over on reddit and elsewhere where I shared my experience people were like yeah it's free-to-play but dot dot dot it is an investment of our time and that's turned out to be true so I had such a positive experience flying the su-25 learning that aircraft and just becoming so immersed in the digital world that I decided to invest more heavily and I purchased some hardware as well as some modules that have led me on this journey to exploring the game more fully and the scope and the depth of this series that I'm throwing together is designed like I said previously to entertain and educate new players as well as hopefully entertain some veterans and just generate some general discussion over what it takes to get started in this simulation before we go any further I feel that it's necessary to preface this discussion with the obvious fact that I am NOT a veteran or an expert in this game but I am a new player who's managed to overcome some of the hurdles that frequently prevent people from enjoying the experience in DCs world and I thought that it was important to share that experience with the broader community to drive some of this discussion about how he get more people into the game and how we can help new players have a positive experience first why would anyone want to play DC s world well funny enough I was actually browsing YouTube looking for some immersive fun new simulation games and I had a fond experience with flight simulators in my past I used to play fly aces hi - it's an old warbird massively multiplayer online game that I think is still active but I had some great experiences in that game previously and I was interested in pursuing a new flight simulator I had in the past also played some lock-on modern air combat though I never fully understood or mastered the game I kind of installed it played it a little bit failed at it and eventually quit probably because I was just too young to fully appreciate that experience with that in mind I saw a video pop up from a youtuber who I later learned was spud knocker a pretty infamous content creator in the DCs content creation community and spud knocker did a video that you know I'll progressing lycée was a ripoff of a video done by operator ruski some time ago operator drew ski originally explained why he loved tactical shooters so much I had seen that video and I loved it spud knocker used a similar script to explain exactly while he was so passionate about DCs world as a flight simulation it was a compelling argument and I immediately bought in and I started to research so that's what got me on the journey to look into DCs world more seriously so after doing some more research watching some more YouTube videos and ultimately deciding to take the plunge into DCs world I flew the su-25 T mission and then decided I was going all-in the next step obviously was to choose an aircraft so like I said the game is free but these premium modules can run anywhere from seven dollars for the low fidelity simple to fly modules that you can get with a bundle called the flaming cliffs 3 bundle which I highly recommend for new players or folks who are just dipping their feet into the flight simulation environment for the first time all the way up to 80 and 90 dollar modules like the premium f-14 Tomcat by heat blur simulations so rather than pay for the whole game you buy modules on a piecemeal basis yeah there's periodically sales and I was fortunate enough to take advantage of one but I had to go shopping and decide exactly what I wanted so what was I looking for in an aircraft well I wanted something that was more nimble than the su-25 tee that flew around like a brick and seemed to fall out of the sky at all the times and I wanted something that could perform in a multi-role capacity I didn't want to have to spend tons of money to get a bunch of different experiences in other words I didn't want to buy an aircraft for ground attack and then a few weeks later I purchased an aircraft for an air superiority mission and then a few weeks later decided that I wanted something that could do carrier operations for example out of the box I wanted something that would allow me to learn the game and learn all these different roles and ultimately master those different roles without having to purchase a bunch of different modules with that in mind the obvious choice seemed to be the fa-18 C Hornet fighter aircraft and so that's why I purchased about the Hornet and in addition to the Hornet I also purchased the Persian Gulf map the main driving reason for me to purchase the Persian Gulf map was because the multiplayer experience is very varied one of the more infamous opportunities that you have in the multiplayer servers is hosted by a community of pilots called Hoggett and Hoggett is a noob friendly community that has a great subreddit that I highly recommend as well as a very large discord population that invites new players to come and ask questions that are very quickly answered and hoggin also hosts three of the most important servers in the DCs world multiplayer community the first of which is a training server or you can spawn in enemy aircraft and ground targets and then go practice attacking them as well as conducting air refuel and carrier operations and what-have-you the second is Georgia at war which takes place on the Caucasus map which is the one free map that is included with the free-to-play version of DCs world but the reason that I purchased to the Persian Gulf map is because Hoggett also hosts a Persian Gulf at war server in DCs world multiplayer and these servers host up to 40 players at the same time in a PvE environment that is generally dynamic where you can spawn in in an aircraft take off fly with your friends and then go and fight in a digital battle that is changing over time and because I was passionate about having the opportunity to play in that sort of dynamic environment it seemed obvious that I would need to purchase the Persian Gulf map the bonuses the Persian Gulf map is also the most beautiful of the maps offered by Eagle dynamics in my opinion and of course it's located in one of the most tenuous geopolitical regions in the entire globe making for realistic mission opportunities at every moment so having purchased the f-18 in the Persian Gulf map next I needed the tools to be able to drive that machine in the game when you watch my su-25 t video a couple months ago I only had a flight stick at the time so I was missing some key pieces of equipment one of them was a throttle and a throttle is critical in TCS world it is a full simulation of a game and so that throttle and being able to manage that throttle is incredibly important because it adds a bunch of key bindings that will go into more detail later that are absolutely critical for you being successful and it's also important to have that throttle so that you can manage your speed whenever you're flying in formation whenever you're conducting air-to-air refueling ever you're conducting carrier operations which of course the f-18 is fully capable of doing in addition to the throttle I also purchased a head tracking solution that allows me to use infrared lights on a device that is affixed to my headphones and tracked by an IR readable camera on my monitor so that when I turn my head left-right up-down and then translated around those lights are tracked in time and space and then the inputs of the tilt in my head are turned into an axis of control and allowing me to look around the cockpit in the game this is absolutely critical for DCs world it's possible to have a good time without it but you can't fully enjoy the immersion of the experience or maintain situational awareness particularly in ground attack or in dogfighting without a head tracking solution of some sort a future video will contain an unboxing of each piece of equipment as well as my initial impressions and a review after I put some hours into the game with each piece of we're what I'll say right now is I purchased the t 16000 M flight stick from Thrustmaster as well as the thrust master TW CS or the rest master weapon control system as my throttle I also purchased the Delon clip fusion head tracking solution which is the only wireless option that I found I can recommend confidently each one of these pieces of equipment although I do have some critiques that I will offer whenever I release that first impressions video as well as the review for each one of those pieces of hardware but if you're interested in pulling the trigger on any of those things right now I am 100% confident in recommending it as an entry level set of flight sim equipment and there's links to each of those products available in the description if you're ready to do that now so after I ordered the gear of course it's in the middle of this coronavirus pandemic and so mail is running relatively slowly so I had plenty of time to do some studying while I waited for everything to arrive so how do you go about studying a simulation where the aircraft itself is a mere one-to-one replica in appearance and complexity in systems as a real fighter aircraft well here's what I did and I think there's a bunch of options here but this worked for me and I will say that I was pretty passionate about it and so I invested the appropriate time learning the airplane and reading about it and watching YouTube videos and studying before I ever even sat in the cockpit for the first time so the first resource that I'll recommend to you is Chuck's guide Chuck is a community member who when each module releases at least so far invest god knows how many hours in developing an in detail PDF document that covers everything from the specifications of the aircraft to how to navigate each one of the systems within that aircraft and I can say confidently that every checklist that I could have possibly needed every image every reference to a silly button inside the cockpit where I needed to find something and click it to move on to the next step all the answers to all those questions were in Chuck's guide and by the time I finally sat down in the cockpit and I was ready for my first flight I felt comfortable because I had seen those images and read those lists and studied Chuck's guidance depth that I had felt like I had been there before so Chuck's guide is my number one recommendation if you are not a reader and you need videos or audio or what-have-you to be successful I will give you three options and then I will explain some pros and cons which eat with each of them the first one that I have to highly recommend is the Matt Wagner YouTube channel Matt Wagner works for Eagle dynamics and runs a YouTube channel that does a tutorial on virtually every update that is released specifically for the f18 he has an entire playlist that covers a lot of the basics from top to bottom that you could need to get started in the f18 most of his videos are pretty short and they're easy to follow and they are very descriptive and you can easily pause them and play them back and learn some process or some procedure over and over again so Chuck's guide + Matt Wagner Co tutorials will put you in a really good spot the next recommendation I've got for you is the YouTube channel of Jabir's Jabir's is a community member who has done some really really really good tutorials I specifically recommend all of his carrier operations tutorials he taught me how to land on the aircraft carrier and of course when you get the f-18 that's one of the first things that you want to learn although you should not learn it first I'll say that don't get to it more later next I'd like to recommend the red kite YouTube channel red kite is different from the previous two recommendations in that he picks one topic and he'll go very very very deep into that topic so where you get a lot of breadth and you get some six synced information from my previous two recommendations a red kite will go very very in-depth on say specifically the Lightning targeting pod on the f-18 and in fact I do think it was red kite that taught me how to use the T pod as well as the radar system and some of the other more intricate systems within the f-18 cockpit that you're going to get to as you explore the simulation more thoroughly and then the final recommendation that I'll make although I will do it with a grain of salt is all of the tutorials offered by the Grim Reaper's Grim Reaper's are a community within DCs world that is headed by cap or super cap as he is known and he is an infamous personality in the DCS world community he's also a polarizing personality I don't know the man although he is a productive and passionate community member so I will not say anything negative about him however what I will say is that I have found the tutorials offered on the Grim Reaper YouTube channel r-wave top only they rapidly get to the point and answer the question that you're quickly typing into that youtube search bar but sometimes you may get bad information with the goods sometimes it won't go into an up depth there is some risk of learning some bad habits depending on what you're looking at but if you need a quick answer and you just need to accomplish something very quickly I think that the grim reaper tutorial videos are a great place to start finally and I'm reiterating this one I already mentioned Hoggett as a community for new players I highly recommend that you subscribe to the Hoggett subreddit as well as join the Hoggett discord it's a great place to get simple questions answered find people to fly with and overall will contribute to having an excellent experience in DCs world all right that was 14 minutes and 45 seconds of me talking about getting started playing DCs world and in that 14 minutes and 45 seconds I described actions that take hours and hours and hours so why would you want to play DCs world at this point if you've listened for this long you're clearly a psychopath but you've also clearly come to the right place and I'm really excited to be able to share this experience with you guys as I have gone through the process of learning how to fly the f-18 and learning to enjoy DCs world there's a lot of good stuff coming up thank you so much for tuning into the very first episode of learning to fly this DCS world series uncontrolled pairs I play the most immersive PC games in the world and I'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Controlled Pairs Gaming

Views: 266,439

Keywords: Controlled Pairs Gaming, dcs: world, dcs: World f18, dcs world tutorial, dcs world getting started guide, dcs world resources, learning dcs world, how to start dcs world, jabbers, redkite, spudknocker, matt wagner, grim reapers, dcs world gameplay, dcs world joystick, dcs world throttle, delan clip, head tracking, how to play dcs world, dcs world f18 getting started guide, what plane to buy dcs world, best dcs world plane, beginner dcs world, dcs world how to, learning to fly

Id: cPS4f_YWQbc

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020