Dudikoff

That's interesting since I find it much easier to land the Tomcat since you're in control all the time rather than that assisted PA mode in Hornet. The only times I had issues landing the Tomcat was when they messed up the drag or thrust levels in some patch so it was underpowered at landing so it took me quite some time to adjust. I don't see what the FBW discussion has to do with the F-14D, though. It only got the DFCS later on together with the other variants. I personally would love to see the F-14D as well which makes the Tomcat even better with HUD and MFD's and a digitalized radar. It's a pretty cool insight in what could have been.

Did they say they will add key shortcuts for jester menu options at all? You could add some custom Lua mapping in the input file for some jester menu combination.

I noticed the mission was at different time when flying it, but my concern came from the fact that after landing on both and ending the mission, the game menu would revert to campaign selection screen rather than load up the next mission (though, it does say two missions flown with 100% success rate).

The modern upgrades are focused more on high altitude operations which was not what the airframe was designed for. Plus, the documents on these are probably classified given the modern weapons on them. So, I'd personally prefer the original IDS. ADV would of course be nice to have as an extra for some fictional scenarios over the North Sea, though I'm not sure how fun would it be to fly those engines at high altitude.

I finished it twice, but thought it's the same thing and the briefing for next one looks the same so I gave up. So, there are actually two helicopter missions in a row or am I running in circles here for some reason?

Great, thanks for confirming this. Was exhausted for the last few days so didn't get a chance to try it out myself.

I wouldn't mind an early D without the PTID later scavenged from the retired A's and B's if they have data on those MFD's.

VKB doesn't have a throttle unit yet and the latest Virpil one has some issues (like no AB detent and some weird axis noise when the left and right throttle are passing each other). So, I'd get a TM Warthog as the software is pretty powerful and the price is rather affordable now. Plus, you could add those nifty MFD's to it. And if you need a better gimbal for the stick afterwards, you can always get a Virpil BRD base which can emulate the TM base so you could still use the TM Target software.

It needs to know the reference signal from the launching aircraft for comparison with the signal reflected from the target to be able to extract the doppler shift (needed for e.g. the speed gate function and distinguishing targets from the ground clutter, I guess).

Yeah, same here. I've checked these kneeboard pages quite a few times after landing and have yet to see any landing data or rating on them. Not sure what could be the problem.

T-55M/AM from early 80's have Bastion ATGM's fitted among other upgrades. Since they are guided, they are obviously more precise than the SABOT rounds at long range and being used against attack helicopters which outrange your relatively imprecise guns is only logical. But, with the limited optics magnification, I'm not sure what would be the effective range for engaging helicopters and also spotting them. And then there's also the issue of superior AI spotting, reaction time and precision in DCS, I guess. Didn't really try it for some time, but I remember in that A-10A instant mission, those BMP-2's were much more deadly than Shilkas which made absolutely no sense.

I guess you're lucky to have a GPU card with a heatsink where the fans are easily replaceable.

Awesome. I've been unable to progress through that mission as when locking the helicopters in PLM/VL modes seems to have caused the CTD's. Too bad there's no OB update this week, though, so it's another week of waiting for a patch.

Yeah, a map centered around this area would be perfect.

I could perhaps see a usecase behind the idea of the R-27P where your fighters are facing superior opponents so when you get locked, you'd launch a pair at the opponent which locked you up and then turn and run away hoping that the target will run into them while chasing you down. In that case, it theoretically allows you a longer engagement range than both the R (where the opponent's better radar, ECM and missiles allows them to lock and shoot first) and especially the T (with its limited lock range in frontal hemisphere), but I doubt its PK ratio would be high. With the advent of active guidance (i.e. R-77), there's even less sense to experiment with these. Regarding the R-27's in general, it's pretty much a given they're not using exactly the same sensors today as when they entered service. Like aircraft, the missiles have to be sent to depot for maintenance when such components are replaced and once you run out of the old stock, you're using the newer variants (e.g. with improved sensitivity and reliability).

I tried to provide arguments on how it works and why it won't make any difference to anyone with an SSD so to me it's like suggesting to check if the earth was flat or not. Anyway, you said you saw a tenfold improvement in the test and expect some difference in DCS and you have the Samsung SSD's,so why didn't you try it yourself already?

We can at least ask that any fictional additions be made optional so they can be enabled or disabled.

The RAPID mode has been available for 5+ years, but somehow nobody discovered its worth till now and all those reviews showing it pretty much useless were wrong. Yeah, right. The Windows already does file read caching if you have enough free RAM so adding another cache layer would seemingly do little more than waste your available RAM.

Again, that's because the small files the benchmark uses are cached in the RAM. This technology is nothing new, and when it came out, I've read some reviews and saw no real-world benefits (e.g. loading times and such) except in a few benchmarks. Reloading terrain detail on the fly? For PG, the main terrain file alone is 16 GB and the whole map is 32 GB worth of files. Not sure how much RAM you'd want to dedicate to cache the SSD reads to be able to fit these maps (i.e. you'd need 64 GB of RAM), but in that case why not just let DCS use it directly?

Come to think of it, I've never landed a plane in my life. So, all of them?

I presume it just caches the frequently used files and since it uses RAM, I guess it's only useful for smaller files. And if memory serves me right, when it came out it was mostly proved useless so I doubt it makes a difference in DCS.

AFAIK, we're not getting updates to the current version. The external model update will be for the newer variant with MWS and the cockpit I guess as well. I'd like to be corrected, though, as having both would be a better option for different scenarios. And yes, I'd also gladly pay for older variants of some of the other modules as well (F/A-18A or earlier C, A-10A, etc.).

Since the Igla missiles seem to be planned to be included in the updated variant (IIRC), I wonder if they can be mounted asymmetrically on one of the outer pylons together with Vikhr missiles? E.g. Like the early Ka-52 was shown with R-73 and Vikhrs (although, that was just a static display so doesn't prove anything). In that case, the outer pylons weapon selection option would I guess select the Vikhr missiles and the A2A option would select the Iglas.

So, that's a negatory. Got it.

Yes, all axis settings in DCS controls menu are per aircraft.