'Learning' a new sim

[MaverickMike]

After a recent trip to my local game shop I found DCS:Black Shark for £4.99 so i picked it up. (Bargain)

 

I have started going through the training missions and understand the basics. I have gotten as far as the cold startup training mission. This is the first real sim that I have decided to spend some time 'learning', so to speak so I was wondering how the regular flight sim guys go about learning a new sim.

 

Are there any ways which you guys find help you to learn quicker? Do you read the manual cover to cover? Look on youtube for user created training videos? Buy a third party book and read that?

 

Any help would be much appreciated

 

Mike

Edited November 21, 2010 by MaverickMike

[fatkat357]

The trick to learning a sim is to try at it - it's like exercise, you have to find something about it that motivates you. I remember the old EF2000 years back. It was a great sim and a fun game for its time but I couldn't get into it. I'd fly around on the training missings, maybe do the "scramble" mission now and then but nothing really dragged me back and do the campaign mode. One day I decided to try a smartbomb mission (the target was a hydroelectric dam). For some reason, completing that mission suddenly made the game much more interesting. Instead of just flying around and zapping-till-I-get-zapped, now gameplay has a point: finish the mission by achieving goals. Taking that I finally gave campaign mode a try and everything that seemed complicated for me at the time suddenly began becoming second nature.

[MigBuster]

Reading the entire manual is not really much help tbh you will just forget whats gone before. Study sections of it as you do training missions - you need to be able to relate the written info to how its done in practical terms.

 

How quick you learn depends on previous experience or how much time you are prepared to put in - but it comes with practise eventually.

[JediMaster]

The startup training was interesting, but I only looked at it once and never bothered trying it. There are shortcut keys to auto start and auto shutdown and I always use those. I just don't have the spare time to waste on that stuff anymore! The most challenging thing at first will be to takeoff and land without crashing. It's a very demanding bird. After you get that and simple flight figured out, THEN you can start on the weapons. Believe me, this sim is at its hardest when you're trying to attack a moving convoy on mountain roads/terrain that's supported by SAMs and AAA. Unlike the Apache or Cobra where you can attack targets off-axis, this thing only wants to hit the target RIGHT on its nose. I mean you can't even alter your pitch let alone your heading. Since in this case it means having your nose pointed down, you wind up accelerating towards the target...and its defenses!