Dragon1-1

Well, since the DTC just dropped, you can do it from the sim now. In fact, at the moment, that's all that it's good for. Hopefully we'll get full functionality soon enough.

The way the things are going with the Phantom, I wouldn't be surprised if HB's next module actually tried exactly that... with all the performance woes that implies. I'm normally all for realism and detailed simulation, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, particularly in software development. I find that particular bit of boilerplate very amusing combined with the Huey, which proudly declares "Officially endorsed by Bell Textron" almost in the same breath. Many of our modules are, in fact, licensed from the manufacturer, and hence the "non-affiliated" part is rather dubious.

No, you haven't tried to backup your claims, you used AI. That's a big difference. At least I'm not pretending to use as a "source" something that's well known to produce outright fabrications, including fabricated sources. I admit I posted nothing, but what you posted is worse than nothing. If NATOPS says anything on how often Hornets are flown from land versus from the boat (we're talking actual flights, not time in a maintenance shed), I haven't found that page.

Call me when you've got a source that's not made up by an AI. The moment I saw this image I knew you were not being serious. I don't know why do you even waste time posting this junk. Here's a general hint: if AI tells you the sky is blue, you better go look outside.

Depends on how well you get along with him.

The vast majority of a typical US Hornet's flying career is done from the boat, seeing as they're carrier jets used by USN.

Am I missing something, or is TACAN missing from Krymsk? The F-5 can't use the RSBN system the airfield does have, I think it used to be able to a long time ago, but now it's not a thing AFAIK, and it wasn't realistic in any case. IMO, adding a unit-based TACAN station at the airfield would be both realistic and helpful. Unless that's been done and I just can't find the channel.

It doesn't change the fact that you can very much tell your WSO "keep the radar off until I tell you otherwise". Do not get hung up on "modern" design so much that you take control away from the player. Jester is not human and never will be, so manual overrides are absolutely needed. No matter how smart you think you can make him, you simply won't be able to make him actually think. Always remember, your code can be buggy, your design philosophy can be wrong, and no developer's intent survives the first contact with the userbase. Even aside from that, there will always be ACs out there (and no doubt have been IRL) who will want to tell their backseater "you're back there to flip switches, not to think". While real examples were probably not the most popular people at the squadron, so to speak, given Jester's limitation as an algorithm, this is a valid way to play that should be accommodated.

Ships are a well known weakness of DCS. No damage modeling, limited functionality, and limited AI. The U-boat is probably using AI designed for modern ship CIWS. IRL, they just dove ASAP, the subs' AA guns on either side are well known to have been completely useless. At least the deck gun was of occasionally of some use.

If you wanna be a real F-4 jock, you'll do your bombing in manual mode, with dumb CBUs and the pipper. Not even dive-toss, you can get serious about it no doubt, but for the vast majority of bombing in Vietnam, they dialed in the mils and flew the profile.

Then you obviously didn't notice I said "extreme crosswinds". Every aircraft has a point at which the rudder saturates. For the Hornet, it just takes a lot of crosswind for this to happen. Like I said, it's easier to land in crosswinds because unlike the Viper, it's got an actual rudder (two of them, even), among other things.

Because they were often manned by children? And even early in the war, when they were adults who did receive peacetime training, it was nowhere near as through or professional as it is today, not to mention it was done a lot faster than today. They simply did not have our teaching methods (some of which came about as a result of analyzing soldiers' performance in WWII), or even as much time, including practice on realistic targets, that a modern NATO soldier spends training. It might seem that real field experience, which they had plenty of opportunity to get, would suffice, but in practice, in a situation with multiple flak guns firing at a target, you don't even get any feedback on whether it was your shot that got the target or someone else's. Take a look at this guy's posts if you want to get an idea of what it takes to be a modern(-ish, actually ODS era) AdA soldier. He's got some great stories in general: https://old.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/t6z5wb/pfc_bikerjedi_shoots_a_missile_or_our_hero_is/ Now contrast with this interview with a WWII German flak veteran: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/flak-gunner-for-the-luftwaffe/ It's a real eye-opener, especially if you're familiar with modern training paradigms, which simply didn't exist in WWII era.

It's correct as far as our Hornet and this discussion are concerned. Their Hornets are modified to that end, their SOP is different as well. The export Hornet is not the subject of this discussion, because we don't know if their NWS is also set to come on automatically. It's very possible that it's not. Our Hornet's NWS logic is very distinctly carrier-oriented. It's not hard to take crosswinds better than the Viper, which has a notoriously high landing speed, small rudder and narrow undercarriage. Also, Hornet's strong and relatively wide landing gear allow it to absorb a lot more sideways velocity. You can ride it all the way to the deck using an angled approach and it'll be fine. The problem with using the rudder is that if you need anywhere near a full boot of rudder to get the aircraft to fly straight, it'll transform into a full boot of NWS when the aircraft touches down, which is not something you want even with automatic gain adjustment. Fortunately, the Hornet won't mind if you instead slam it down sideways, or if one of the wheels touches the ground a little earlier. So you shouldn't need large rudder inputs in first place, just let it straighten itself out. USN Hornets land the way they do because they're carrier jets with carrier flyers driving them. It's always safer to do the landings in a consistent way, and in this case, that means as if you were on the boat. Crosswinds are not entirely unknown on the boat, BTW, just typically smaller than on land.

Wrong. This video applies only to WWII flak. It does not address modern infantry, particularly BMPs firing their cannons like a radar guided platform, at targets they realistically shouldn't even be able to aim at, due to angular limits of their gunsights. You can replicate this easily with ZU-23, which displays none of the behavior WWII flak do, despite being equipped with a rather unsophisticated (by modern standards) AA gunsight. In fact, this very video does also display some problems with WWII flak, such as being able to aim Flak 88s at a Spitfire flying at 500ft, way outside the envelope. Germans at the time used dime delay fuzes on their flak shells, and those fuzes had a lower limit. It also displays accuracy of both heavy and light flak that seems more in line with today's highly trained air defense troops than with an average WWII-era emplacement.

Worth remembering: the Hornet is a carrier aircraft first. On the boat, you don't have any of those concerns that exist with aircraft primarily designed to land on a runway. So enabling NWS right after touchdown makes sense. Hornets come onto land relatively infrequently, and thus safe handling of extreme crosswinds was not a design parameter. Even then, they don't flare, so landing with pedals deflected doesn't pose as much a risk as you might think. Touching down at an angle isn't actually that much of a problem when you slam it down like the Navy does.

They're visible at night, at least for me. Not super-bright, but enough to make them out. Then again, if playing on a screen, with extra light in the room, this may be another matter (in VR, darkness is dark, to the point of actually being unnerving). Worth noting, those lights, like KC-135s in general, were designed for refueling B-52s. That's why they're arranged the way they are, the B-52 is flown from the left seat, and thus the throttles are on the right, so you've got vertical on the left and longitudal on the right. Also, the gashole on the B-52 is way behind the cockpit, so when the Buff driver slides into position, he's got those lights right in his face. If you're flying anything smaller, as we do in DCS, you're at a disadvantage trying to make them out from way over yonder. Fighters were always intended to reference the boom, the Thud had the gashole in the nose, while in the Phantom's the GIB had a good view of what was going on with the boom, and would either provide running commentary to the AC, or simply fly the ship during tanking. Of course, in the Viper or the Eaglejet things are rather different. Also, there was a story, recounted in the old F4.0:AF manual, about a Phantom driver in Vietnam who was getting gas from a tanker and couldn't see nothing. No moon, no lights, could barely make out the tanker, got his gas anyway, but it was a nervous moment. When his wingman had his go and formed back up he suggested to his lead that he raise his visor. So, refueling at night, with visor down, turned out to be quite possible, if not the recommended way of doing that.

Definitely not to change the lights, I wouldn't mind if the tanker was prettier, though. What we've got seem to be pretty close to reality, though. The sight picture is a bit tricky in the Viper because it doesn't have any good reference points like other aircraft do (the canopy bow tends to play a big role there, and Viper doesn't have one), but in other aircraft, it's always about picking a bit of the aircraft to aim with and referencing a spot on the tanker.

Honestly, all actual pilots I talked to (not many, I admit) said to forget the lights and just focus on the sight picture. Maybe at night (they do work at night, in VR at least), but what you really need to do is look at the tanker and figure out where you should be in relation to it. For instance, in the Phantom, I found the canopy bow should be about where the wings meet the tanker's fuselage.

In autorotation with no tail rotor, you do both. Dumping the collective doesn't get rid of all the torque, and it's also important to preserve main rotor RPM for autorotation. In this situation, chopping the engines will ensure they'll minimize torque delivered to the rotor shaft. Remember that otherwise, this could only be done by using the two power levers on the side of the cockpit, requiring you to remove your hand from the collective. The twist grip throttle on many other helos doesn't have that problem, so they don't need the button. And yeah, this is mostly for if you manage to get your tail rotor shot off. It's not exactly a concern in the most common autorotations (caused by losing both engines) and in most other emergencies, it's generally best to keep the engines on.

We should have a "prioritize higher/lower" choice, where we'd just brief Jester to bias his search (and Phoenix tracking) towards a specific type of targets. Just like with a human, if there's any ambiguity, you can tell a human backseater to rank targets in a specific way.

Iranian bases would be quite useful for Iran-Iraq War scenarios, so I hope they get added. They'll be needed for a lot of real scenarios.

For Reflected's campaigns, you don't need to touch Jester at all. Not even in Zone 5, which is more freeform and where comms helps sometimes. In those campaigns, he will talk to you. In general, he acts very human-like there. Also, even in stock Reforger II campaign, he will talk you on and even fire missiles by himself. In a campaign, there's plenty of ways to script Jester so he becomes more proactive. Jester comms are mostly useful in MP, and in dynamic campaigns where you'd need a very advanced AI to script those things. In campaigns, just about the only thing I did was control his scanning behavior. Between Jester scripting and TWS-Auto, you can really afford to focus on flying, instead of trying to do two jobs at once.

X-24 would like a word...

Hopefully soon (this patch or the next), Reflected needs to be able to start on Anytime, Baby! With Red Flag coming out, he'll need something to work on.

It could be drag values, drag modeling, the ejector (IRL, bombs come off with a kick, which needs to be accounted for), airspeed calibration errors that aren't modeled in our F-5 (but a bombing table would account for), or any of the other factors that affect the bomb and are different between DCS and IRL.