Dragon1-1

The problem I noticed talking to WW is that they're Chinese, and the person I was talking to was obviously using an automated translator. Leaving aside cultural differences, this makes the conversation awkward. I'd imagine a truly proficient English speaker might be hard to come by in China, and WW being a small company, they probably don't have any.

You forgot the hard part: finding a dev who'd pick up the Buccaneer. I imagine the Jag would sell, and I sincerely hope someone will pick the Harrier (any of them) up eventually, but other aircraft have a very low chance of happening now that RAZBAM is probably done with DCS (which is a pity, because they were also doing the Lightning). AFAIK, Harrier in particular was a problem because of its very much classified radar (and sure enough, the one we have is a radarless USMC variant). It's the reason RAZBAM gave for making a US Harrier variant. Specifically, they were unable to acquire docs for the Blue Vixen and Blue Fox radars. A British variant would require at least one of this, and even Blue Fox was apparently asking too much. I think the Marconi RWR might've been a problem, too. Sure, it's not every aircraft that's affected, but the Brits are very stingy with their military documentation. I imagine Buccaneer's Blue Parrot would be considered less sensitive than either of those.

I'm not quite sure where that value comes from, but either way, trying to peg a single maximum speed for a missile that lofts is not very useful. It might well be the maximum design mach, as in, the maximum that the airframe had been designed to withstand. This will invariably be a more impressive number than any speed that's observed in operational practice (though unless the missile is massively overengineered, it still tells you something).

It's worth noting that Syrians had proven not to be very competent equipment operators. I don't know if it's that Russians failed to train them, or that nobody with a brain would willingly serve in Assad's army, but it seems that in Syria, any system more complex than an AK has a very low combat efficiency. Russians aren't terribly competent, either, but at least they actually know how to operate their equipment beyond "mash the launch button and hope you'll score a hit". Such SAM systems are not a hands-off, fully automated affair, a lot still depends on the crew.

There is a real problem here, in that the dual target track mode in MiG-29S provides an STT lock warning for both targets, despite being more akin to TWS. The R-77 can definitely be guided in STT, but it uses the same datalink as in other modes. It's not a true SARH mode like what the AIM-54 does when fired in STT. A random presentation on missiles, especially if not translated by someone who knows exactly what they're doing, is not a good source, especially if the real FM states otherwise.

It could be that way in the real MiG-29. Electric trim is often imprecise IRL. It's also possible that it changes when wheels up, or depending on airspeed.

Been suggested time and again. It's unlikely to happen. An O-1E would be nice (basically a Cessna 150 with a different cabin), but even that is probably going to be AI-only, if it's ever added.

Right now we don't know what the resolution will be, but it's looking bleak. We're definitely unlikely to get one before there's a definite answer. Afterwards, if RAZBAM goes away, I assume the aircraft will be up for grabs. Perhaps the Red Star people would be interested in it, they seem to be doing a really good job with the MiG-17. I'm more worried about the Harrier. The F-15E is such a popular aircraft that someone will, sooner or later, step up, probably with an actual AI WSO. Any Harrier variant would be tricky to get right, relatively hard to get docs for (Brits are notoriously cagey about declassifying stuff), and a rather niche aircraft. Not sure about Mirage 2000, but as long as it keeps working and being sold, it could be fine, being the most complete and polished of the RAZBAM modules.

The DCS hitpoint system is really unsuited to simulating this kind of vehicle. IRL, the 30mm would shred the turret quite handily, but only scratch the paint on the hull. Still a mission kill, but it won't leave a smoking wreck.

This is the equipment database for another sim, CMO. Their standards for sourcing information is much lower than DCS, some values seem to have been pulled from Wikipedia. Being a high level command sim, they need much less information than DCS modules, and it doesn't need to be nearly as high quality to produce acceptable results.

Looks like HB reinvented the wheel with their in-sim web browser. This is not the greatest UI I've seen, but maybe we should remind ED it's a thing. They could develop this into something more substantial.

In my experience, people who think AI is hot stuff had either never tried to use it for anything serious, or their mental capacity is not enough to produce anything better. For instance, it can write sitcom episodes that aren't that different from the human-written fare. Which says more about sitcoms and their writers than about the AI... It can be a tool used to alter existing imagery and text. Used with care, some people had good results with it. It's not a revolution some people expect it to be, but it's not completely useless. It just shouldn't be used to generate "original" text.

Just hold the stick full back and give it some differential aileron if you're drifting. If your landing technique was good you'll slow down to taxi speed in no time.

Show me an AI that can generate a textured 3D model that's usable in a game. This task is orders of magnitude harder than making a 2D drawing, and training data is much more sparse, not to mention not easily extracted from free content. In fact, this is the very reason why 3D models are more often sold than offered for free. There's also no easy way to steal 3D work, since 3D previews are a rarity, and most models are showcased via 2D images. That's before you factor in very specific requirements for models to be used in a game engine. As such, I don't see LLMs ever being able to do much useful work with 3D. Sure, an artist could figured out some way to use them, but a lot of legwork will remain to be done by hand. There seem to be some AI model generators, but I'm not sure how they work in real world use cases. Even if they create passable models for static renders, they're unlikely to be easy to convert to something that can be used in a game. I don't call that top tier content. That humans have made similar slop doesn't mean it's worth anything. It may make it possible to churn those out quicker, but it's a long way from the top. As of recently, it's being used for SFX in a proper movie, and it supposedly shortened some work that's tricky to do the traditional way, but that doesn't mean an indie director is going to be churning out the likes of Avatar. It can be a good tool, but only in hands of an already good artist, used for speeding up some tedious technical bits.

That's hitting just about every genre. Kerbal Space Program community was kickstarted by incredibly simple art style of the early versions, allowing new parts to be made quick and easy, on top of a relatively simple game setup. Every time the quality standards went up, the number of new part mods shrank. Nowadays only a few are making top quality PBR assets. Art for modern games aiming for realistic visuals is extremely time consuming to create. Some UE5 games still manage to have a thriving modding community making assets for them, but even then, it's nothing like the massive modding communities of old. Now, we've seen a proliferation of games which deliberately forgo fancy visuals and use something more stylized, often making it easier to make assets, but it's not really an option for flight sims, which attempt to get as close to reality as they can, and graphics are part of it, too (see the endless discussions about spotting). And then, you get highly elaborate coding on top of that.