Dragon1-1

They'd probably would've had to pay for putting AI voices in their product, especially ones that would sound decent. OTOH, community SMEs are usually quite glad to do that kind of work for free...

Just tried the first mission, and it quit, with a message that it failed to load the .miz file for the actual task. I'll run a repair and refly later, is anyone else getting this?

Hornet should land at circa 700fps VVI, same as on a carrier trap. You're landing hard even by Navy standards...

Not at all. They claim that they actually have the required info on the F-35. I suspect half the systems won't be present (those that weren't caught on some video), but ED insists that they have enough to make the jet. That said, given the recent US track record with classified information, we could soon have all the data we'll ever need... Also, ED mentioned they want to make an early Super Hornet, but they want to get the Legacy out of EA first.

They will know if the parking spot itself is blocked, not if the path leading to it is. Any static outside the parking spots will be ignored. I suspect some statics may not block the parking spot correctly, too.

His "higher priority tasks" comment is a few months old. Chances are, the tasks he was referring to are done. We got a bunch of features like taxi directors recently. As for "it's complicated" comment, this might indicate the new ATC will be for singleplayer only. Remember that this one referred specifically to multiplayer ATC. Though with how taxi directors implemented automatic turnaround apparently with no regard to SP usability or immersion (no way to turn it off, either for players or AI), I'd be surprised if they didn't prioritize MP.

Well, looks like it's finally coming. Really looking forward to seeing how they did it. An actual military-style ATC in DCS should be really fun to work with.

That might have been the Winwing's intention, but the way they implemented it is bizarre, and quite frankly, it doesn't actually work right. You get displacement, a gap, and only then force sensing kicks in. The "fully realistic mode" (displacement only) is actually how the Viper does it, but on that, the "centering spring" is a solid metal bar that you can bend a little. I don't know how Winwing did centering in that mode, but much it's too light to be of any use.

Actually, if you have a proper (ground) TACAN station and the TACAN location of the target, you can try level bombing without a visual contact. Now, I don't know what the distance would have to be for the GBU to hit (ideally, we'd have a level bombing table for this), but it's perfectly possible to fly a TACAN radial that crosses the target and look at DME in order to put you on the release point. This would be actually be pretty similar to some of the bombing systems used in WWII, and would have a similar accuracy. Should be good enough for LGBs, if you get your speed, altitude and alignment exactly right.

Winwing's "force sensing" works nothing like it does in the real jet. It seems to be a weird contraption which deflects first, then allows you to ramp up the force after hitting the stops.

Anything featuring the old Carl Vinson carrier is now broken, because it has been removed. Changes to lighting mean that disabling NVGs makes the night missions nearly impossible (IRL, the helo would not be flying low in such conditions without NVGs, searchlight or not), and the way it's done is nonsensical and very frustrating for the player. Those are the biggest issues. As it stands, the campaign should be removed from sale, because several missions are impossible to finish, in particular the one where you have to deliver cargo to the Vinson (the carrier is gone).

It looks like this info is from some other game, right? Seeing as it outright states it takes some liberties with the modeling, I wouldn't trust its accuracy.

Agreed. Currently it can be "hacked" by blocking out the spots that would taxi to the blocked cat, but this is not exactly optimal.

The latter part is not unrealistic, just more work. It would be perfectly possible to create additional paths from every parking spot to every catapult. It's just a matter of adding switches to disable each cat (which the mission creator would have to select according to where the statics are) and switching the patching to the next option if the preferred one is blocked. Of course, actually doing that would require making a lot of paths, four for each parking position. It'd probably be a lot of work to make and test them, but given how patching works on deck, many would overlap. Patching around obstacles is a difficult problem, but on a realistic carrier deck, you won't have obstacles where the planes are moving about.

Yeah, low flying helos are right out, the Phantom is a very poor choice for fighting them. Sidewinders or gun, but both of those have drawbacks, and a well flown helo will bite you back if you try that. No 3rd gen fighter can be expected to do well here (sure enough, you don't hear many Vietnam stories of MiGs pestering the Hueys), the helo will get lost in ground clutter. Effectively fighting helos in a fast jet, even modern 4th gens, is far from an easy matter.

What you are proposing is a map beyond the limits of DCS engine. What I am proposing is to set your mission far enough away from any land that biomes of whatever else is there but water are not going to be possible to get to. Because that's what you'll be flying in the GIUK gap. Naval aviation vs. enemy ships. You won't even get to glimpse any land during a typical scenario. You can easily set such a mission on the South Atlantic map, plenty of water in all directions. Ground combat is another matter, but honestly, in most Cold War scenarios, everything would hinge on ships, anyway. Even if you could contrive a ground scenario not dominated by naval fire support, this is not a compelling enough argument to make that instead of several other more interesting locations. Tom Clancy naval scenarios that everyone seems to want from that map are doable on the South Atlantic. Should have said you want a Scotland map. I could even get behind that, been sailing across the Irish Sea last year. That's not exactly a "GIUK gap" map, though, seeing as it won't even include Iceland, because it's over 1000km away. Or, you could have Iceland, though there's barely enough land for an air conflict within its bounds. Maybe, with enough time, someone would make both. You seem to want the whole 1600km long gap in DCS, as a single map. This is not happening. Measure the distance yourself on Google maps, and notice the shape of the line. That rather pronounced curve is called an orthodrome, and this is how you know you would never be able to realistically navigate on a map that size without an actual, spherical map. It's not just about some islands being at the wrong angle, it's about the fundamental difference between navigating on a sphere and on a flat plane. Not to mention, the existence of horizon is kind of important at those distances. Those issues are already bad enough on the SA map.

There's your problem. On the Orion 2, throttle is Ry and Rx. I don't know what Rz is on that particular throttle (antenna elevation, maybe?), but it's probably set to near 100%.

Except no? Germany has cities (bigger than either of those maps, in fact), highways, landmarks, all that stuff. Water is water no matter where it is in the world. Of all the bad arguments you've made, this is probably the silliest one. Even the endless parade of maps set in the sandbox has something to set them apart. In the GIUK gap, you'll take off from the boat, do your mission feet wet, and get back to the boat. That's pretty much the scenario for it, US CVBG vs. Soviet surface combat battlegroup. Very nice for ship and especially sub sims, but for aircraft, way down the list. Only to ones that are almost 100% water. Just to be clear, I wasn't referring to ahistorical aircraft, I was referring to most modules and AI aircraft, particularly Soviet ones, that we have being physically unable to operate from a carrier or do AAR. This means they wouldn't get very far in, especially without a friendly airbase in the area. You might not have noticed how many miles separate those airbases. GIUK gap is huge. Distance from Falklands to mainland is about 600km. That's the largest DCS map currently available, and it already exceeds combat radius of most of our aircraft. From Iceland to UK? 1000km of nothing but sea. If you take a detour you can glimpse Faroe islands, not that there's a lot to see in there. If you want to fly for three hours with multiple AARs just to see something other than water, well, you can set it up on the South Atlantic map. In fact, Marianas has already been explicitly designed as the DCS' "mostly water" map. Also, GIUK gap is big enough that it'll be even worse than South Atlantic with regards to being just plain inaccurate. Geography of the SA map is skewed because the map is flat and the Earth is not, contrary to what some people believe. It's not too obvious because of all the water, but this is something you really want a spherical Earth for. Just like with Vietnam, you're thinking too big for this stage of sim development.

You know that if you want a huge swatch of water, you can just load up Marianas or SA, right? Or even Kola, it's got quite a bit of water around it. Naval aircraft we have in DCS are quite few in number, and Soviets barely used them, anyway. Ships in DCS are lacking, too. Most aircraft in DCS are land based, so a map that is pretty much only ocean would have limited utility. Notice how most of Red Storm Rising and Hunt for Red October involved ships and submarines. Realistically, any Soviet aircraft fought would be flying from land bases. The only Soviet planes to fly from a carrier were Su-33 and Yak-38. Nothing else.

Kola is fairly close to GIUK gap, but the gap itself is huge and very watery, so it's probably best left for the whole Earth map. After all, it'll mostly be endless ocean bounded by landmasses from which it got its name. Also, air combat there would be mostly the domain of carrier aircraft, with maybe a few land based ones from Iceland and UK if the fighting got close. Kola map has all we need in that region, IMO.

Many a Vietnam era Phantom jock had those thoughts, too. Especially when it came to the earlier versions, which were unreliable. The Sidewinder was a favorite for a reason, even if they still grumbled about its reliability, but that's more due to a hot, humid Vietnamese jungle doing a number on electronics. Also worth noting, the F-4E in particular has a tiny radar antenna, because they had to fit the gun in somewhere. Not sure how it compared to F-4D, but the USN Phantoms had a much better radar, and a bigger nose to hold the antenna (and no gun). All I can say, try looking up instead of down (radars of the era hate ground clutter), and maybe try to fiddle with radar settings. I hope Jester will be able to manage the radar in a somewhat more sophisticated way later on. In general, though, try to account for the fact you will probably get tally before you get radar contact. That's just how it is, and why the ACM radar modes are such great help. If you're flying the Phantom for air to air, you will be dogfighting, unless you're shooting down bombers flying in straight line (admittedly, the designers' intended use case). When USN figured this out, TOPGUN was born. USAF took a bit longer, but they eventually came up with Red Flag.

It's be hard to nose gear to hit first, seeing as the hook is at the back, so that's what the aircraft will pivot around. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that any attitude in which the nose gear is down and main gear isn't would result in the hook being way above the deck.

Welcome to the jungle (or rather, the aircraft that fought over one). This is just one of the things the pilots complained about in Vietnam. 50 or even 100NM range scale was the result of wishful thinking and testing in optimum conditions. Against a tiny Vietnamese MiG, it wasn't nearly that good, not that you were allowed to shoot it without VID even if you did get a lock. Now add random missile failures, and imagine those are your only weapons. You'd quickly realize just why they added the gun. Your only recourse was that the enemy couldn't launch at you from ahead, because PAVN didn't have radar guided missiles (nor was their radar any better), and all aspect heaters weren't a thing yet. The Phantom's radar is, like most radars on 3rd generation fighters, an FCR first and foremost. The 4th gens have no problem using their radars to search the airspace, but the Phantom's radar is primarily there to guide Sparrows, and its ability to search for targets is not impressive. At the time, AWACS and GCI would be charged with that.

I finished it (by taxiing out of the way before signaling) right before the update. I didn't check after the patch. It's possible it's been fixed.

Agreed, we could use a George in this aircraft. It'd make using the missiles while flying the helo so much easier.