SonofEil

In my younger days I actually asked a few Viper pilots about it (got plenty of groans and eye-rolls btw). First, correct, the air boss would never clear a Viper to land on the deck. No way no how. Second, a Viper pilot would never ask anyway. If for whatever reason an F-16 absolutely had to land and the only available asphalt was a carrier deck, they’d punch out. It wouldn’t even be a point of consideration or debate, they’d punch. Both of those points were unanimous among the pilots I asked (maybe four or five over the course of my enlistment). That being said, of course I’m going to try carrier landings once our 16 gets a functional tail hook!

Sorry, but that’s the primary reason I’m here. My expectation is that ED model overspeed/overweight/over G effects and the limitations various loadouts place on an aircraft. Such things are integral to a full fidelity simulation. Yes, currently you can fly around in Cat I without a care in the world, but you shouldn’t be able to (WIP I hope). There are much better games out there if I just wanted to *pew pew* all over the sky without worrying about aerodynamic loads, cockpit setup, or stores configurations.

Pylons have been removable since the Hornet's first or second update back in Spring 2018. EDIT: Checking...yes. https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3524220&postcount=60

Just an FYI, I don't think anyone's noticed that the MFD brightness rockers are already functioning as of the most recent update. Current max brightness is still inadequate, it should probably go up to 11. :smilewink: An option to remove reflections (MFD's and canopy!) would be fantastic. Baked reflections became obsolete the day head tracking was invented. A dynamic reflections option would certainly be welcome.

If you start from "Default" (RET?) DED page, click LIST, then 7 CMDS (as an example), then SEQ...it will work and cycles through CMDS pages. If while in the CMDS page you back out by clicking LIST, then return to any of the sub menus, say 7 CMDS again...SEQ will not work to cycle through the pages. Nor does it work on any other sub menu page using this method. You must back out to the default DED page by hitting RET, then back in through LIST for SEQ to function properly. Track attached demonstrating only this. F16DEDSEQFail.trk

They occasionally introduce new ground units into the sim and update existing graphics for legacy units, but the limited overall fidelity and functionality of Combined Arms has remained fairly static since its introduction. And it’s not necessarily that Combined Arms is more work than airplanes, but more that ED has limited resources (budget/manpower) to devote to it. I suspect that DCS’s core ground functionality will have to be vastly improved to make the future Dynamic Campaign feasible. Hopefully there will be positive benefits to Combined Arms from those developments. Dynamic Campaign is currently forecast for introduction in 2021/2022. Other than that (pure speculation btw) I haven’t seen any indication that Combined Arms is on ED’s priority list at all.

Hi, Welcome! While I think Eagle Dynamics created Combined Arms with the best of intentions the end result has been pretty limited and gimmicky unfortunately. Big improvements and renewed focus had been promised for years without materializing. One of the producers said in an recent interview that significant improvements to Combined Arms requires a complete code rewrite, or something to that effect. I take that to mean that it’s not something we’ll see for a long time, if ever.

I always wonder why ED has such a hard time with attitude indicators. They drift and tumble in quite a few modules including the damn F-16! Attitude indicators should be a solved problem since they’ve functioned just fine in flight simulators going back to the early 1980’s.

I voted a very tentative "yes". Unfortunately whatever ED is doing now just isn't working. Decade long module development (Hornet and Viper). Half decade and counting for quality of life upgrades most of which we still don't have (ATC, weather, AI, etc.). Broken/unfinished/seemingly abandoned modules. Antiquated air and ground assets that belong back in the 90's. Replays/Tracks. This list could go on and on. I hate to say it but I grow more cynical with each update and newsletter announcing the same things "coming soon" year after year. If subscription can put ED on the road to a higher quality, more modern and stable core, yeah, I'm on board. It's time for real results.

Oh cool, that’s good to hear. Outside of niche industry applications, consumer vehicle/equipment simulations is the one area where VR actually shines. And with MS heavily invested in pushing AR/VR, it’s still pretty bizarre that it wasn’t a high priority for the devs from day one. At least that news moves MSFS2020 from a ‘hard no’, to a ‘we’ll see’ for me.

According to the DCS Shop the Assets Pack is EA. ...is how it’s described by ED. Listen, I’m not bitching here. I’m just saying that I 100% understand people’s frustrations and that to use the “if you don’t like EA don’t use it” argument increasingly limits people’s DCS options.

Go check out the DCS modules page. Almost everything that draws new people to DCS is in Early Access, a few have been EA for literally years now and there’s no clear timeframe to release status for any of them. Viper, Tomcat, Hornet, Harrier, Viggen Fw-190, I-16, MiG-19, Yak-52, Christian Eagle, even the “WWII Assets Pack”. Ok, so now you’re pretty far down the DCS products list. Check the forums for the completed modules. With many of them you’re still dealing with major missing features and long standing bugs, slow or no response from developers, lingering lighting issues from the 1.5 to 2 transition (which began over four years ago), VR scaling and texture issues, etc. etc. A few should never have been moved from EA status to begin with. (I personally view the move from EA to Release as more of a module’s slow death sentence than something to be happy about.) And let’s not even mention Combined Arms. If you want to participate in anything “released” by ED in the last three years it’s going to be in EA. I’d even consider DCS as a whole as primarily an EA product. The “just wait for the final product” argument doesn’t really hold up anymore.

I certainly wouldn't mind a whole earth approach to DCS. And as much as I hate to say it, another graphics engine redo is also good news. DCS 2.X never really reached its lofty goals imo, and I get the feeling the many lingering graphical issues aren't being actively worked on any more. At the same time, I also have a healthy skepticism of how good MSFS2020 will actually look. Mid and high alt will look amazing, yes (as it does in DCS too for the most part), but it looks like MS are taking a similar approach to how Google Earth generates its 3D scenery, which absolutely falls apart below a few hundred feet. Notice that there isn't any low-and-slow footage in any of the released videos, and you can still see that trees and buildings look kind of 'melty' and Picasso-like in some of the closer stuff. Add to that the lack of VR support (which is insane! ("maybe" in the future, they say)) and unfortunately FS2020 is already a hard pass for me. That said, I'm happy to see them back in the game, being my primary sim for the first ~20 years of my flight sim life (FS2 back in'83 was my first).

Are you sure you didn't jack with your shadows settings? Don't remember the specific settings names off hand, but my cockpits looked like that a while ago and it was caused by a shadow setting being too low. I'm definitely not seeing that issue currently.

That is so strange. For me the F-18 is the easiest and most intuitive aircraft to fly. From day one I’ve been making acceptable carrier traps, my first stab at the tanker was an uneventful success, high alpha maneuvering is a blast, and field landings are the most straightforward in DCS. To me the most challenging aircraft to learn to fly (and land) well are the helicopters. It took me a long time before my Huey landings weren’t a wobbly mess. And that Mi-8 VRS! It still occasionally gets me, though I’m much better now at slipping out before disaster. And it’s been a while since I’ve flown them but I never felt really comfortable landing the MiG-21, and to a lesser extent the F-5. Both aircraft are unforgiving low and slow: allow the sink rate to get away from you and you’re in real trouble.

So the first mission included with the Viper requires a strict Time On Steerpoint but I can’t figure out how to enter a time. I can access the STPT page and scroll down to highlight TOS but it I can’t enter a time. The manual doesn’t have any guidance, Wags mentions it in his Nav Introduction video so I assume it’s implemented. Any suggestions?

Can anyone give the file path for "F16C.lua"? The only file I have with that name is a payload file. EDIT: Nevermind. DCSWorld->CoreMods->F-16C. I was looking in the non-core Mods folder.

Then it isn't really a mystery, is it? No, Wags has never said verbatim "The Russian government won't let us". But saying, and I paraphrase because I'm not spending any more time on this, "Our development team is based in Russia and because of that we're under certain restrictions. We won't be developing modern Russian fighters in the foreseeable future," is about as close as you're gonna get. I don't call that vague or "prognostication and BS". Are the details more nuanced than that? I'm sure they are. Will you ever get to see the correspondence history and negotiations between ED and the interested parties in order to understand that nuance? Ha, no. Would eastern aircraft be outsold by western aircraft? Almost certainly yes, but two things can be true at the same time. ED has been more clear about it in the last year or so than they've ever been: Russia-based development team = no full fidelity Russian fighters from ED. To conspiracy theory about totally speculative alternative explanations at this point is kind of ridiculous.

Wags has actually talked at some length in other recent interviews (that I can’t be bothered to look up right now) about how ED will not be developing full fidelity 4th gen Russian fighters in the foreseeable future. It’s not a mystery: the developers are based in Russia. Russian government says “no”. It’s perfectly possible that that situation has changed in the last 6-12 months but I find it highly unlikely.

Yeah you want to know the truth? I’ve been here long enough, so no, I don’t think ED can do a lot of what they have planned. If they could they would’ve a long time ago. I just kind of accept it. There’s no point in griping and being snarky towards them. They know the state of the sim and they want to see it improved probably more than you do. If Wags says they’re working on it, then they’re working on it. If that work bares tangible fruit then all the better for us.

I think we all know by now that ED hit some major difficulties circa 2016 that delayed a lot of things. Hell, new clouds/weather were being talked about long before 2016. Maybe it’s time to drop the vitriol and accept there were issues and ED is working through them in good faith.

Looks much better than what we currently have that’s for sure. They’ve posted screenshots of WIP clouds in years past, hopefully they can reach the finish line this time.

It read to me like the F-5 was a personal wishlist item for Wags, not necessarily on ED’s to-do list. Yeah a little FM and radar refining would be great, but personally I’d be happy if they just re-scaled the cockpit so it looks right in VR.

I have to admit I’m more than a little confused by the multiple mentions of another new graphics and terrain engine. The development of EDGE and DCS 2.X took nearly a decade and were touted as a long term and versatile solution. I know there are still a lot of performance and lighting issues in 2.5, and overall graphics improvements have slowed considerably, so is ED really pivoting away from what amounts to their still-new engine?

I'd also love to see flyable logistics/transport aircraft in DCS. The problem as I see it though is map size. These maps start looking very small once you're doing point-A-to-point-B airliner style flights. There are very few circumstances where you'd even reach the cruise portion of a flight. It only really works if you're running helicopters as transports. That being said, I absolutely wouldn't be opposed to a couple of heavy lift choppers. Mi-26, chinook, or ch-53 would be rad.