The latest DCS World Open Beta, 2.5.6.59398, is out and with it comes a headlining feature that has been awaited by the community for many years. It’s multi-crew capabilities for the DCS: UH-1H Huey helicopter that has been part of DCS World for years now.
Multi-crew is here
There’s lots of new items to enjoy and plenty of fixes in the latest DCS World open beta patch but one is standing out in particular. Multi-crew is has been awaited by the DCS World sim community for many years now and now, after a long wait, it has finally arrived. Written in the patch notes is this description of the feature:
Added the ability to play with multi-crew for the UH-1H. Up to four crewstation are available for cooperative play: pilot, co-pilot, left gunner and right gunner (if they are added in missions). Added multi-crew missions for the UH-1H helicopter.
Although that sounds positive, it is followed by some known issues that seem to suggest that this implementation, though here, is still something relatively new and in need of further development work and testing.
– Possible desynchronization of the state (visualization) of the helicopter in case of damage and when requesting ground power before engine start.
– When leaving the crewstation of the left (right) gunner into the spectators and back, the gunner’s body-model may disappear.
– There may be problems in the cockpit with controls that have axis settings commands (knobs for adjusting the volume, setting the altitude, etc.), if the controls is intended for another crewstation.
– There is no visualization of the cargo mark on the cargo indicator (cargo position display).
So, it sounds like there’s some definite good parts here with the feature finally being here counterbalanced by some potential significant bugs. If you’ve had a chance to try it out, I’d love to hear from you on the experience and what was good and what didn’t work so well. I’m sure these will eventually be solved… just hopefully a bit faster than the feature coming to us in the first place. Fingers crossed!
Stormbirds 
Doesn’t sound overly dissimilar to the issues faced by the Gazelle when it had multi crew. I thought they were holding off implementing this until they’d fixed those issues. They released it a while back, whether by mistake or not I’m not sure, then pulled it. Really hope they can fix these issues as multi crew for the Huey will make it a lot more useful and entertaining.
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We tested it yesterday and it works pretty well. The only glitches I had were in the gunners seat involving the camera placement and controls. I think we are going to test it again this morning and run more tests. The basic functions in the cockpit and location and attitude of the aircraft worked properly though, so I am hopeful.
I would say this is a MUST before they move forward on the Hind and Apache,
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That’s great to hear! It sounds like there’s some multi-crew plans for both Hind and Apache going on in the background.
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I think I found the solution to my door gunner issue. I just have to hit suspend on my trackIR and use the mouse only to aim the gun. That way your view tracks the gun and I didn’t have any issues with the view getting out of place.
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I hope they eventually implement multicrew for the Mi-8 as well. I can’t even imagine how much fun being with one or even two buddies with one as a gunner!
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