Dragon1-1

Not true, a coaxial rotor like on a Ka-50 severely restricts you from certain maneuvers due to possibility of rotors crashing into each other. In practice, doing stunt flying in it is asking for trouble.

Yeah, except we're probably not getting the latest and greatest F4. Also, in 2025 they'll still be anachronistic, Serbia is expected to get them in 2029. You could have Rafale flying over Balkans in a mid-2000s scenario, too, especially if we get an early M model. We don't know what the module is going for, but it's quite probable it'll fit DCS' mid-2000s timeframe. A 90s map could easily stand in for a mid-2000s scenario, at that time the region was still picking up the pieces from all the wars, not building glass towers. ArmA3 is actually closer to Ukraine than DCS could ever hope to be (in fact, it kind of predicted the sort of drone supported infantry ops we're seeing there). 90s are a far better fit for DCS than the current day timeframe, because aircraft we have are a lot closer to that period than to 2025. Yes, it makes the research a little harder than just looking at Google Maps. It might require altering the satellite-derived textures instead of copypasting them. However, it is likely to make people actually buy the map.

Depends if we get an M or a C. Even then, the M is fully cleared to operate from US carriers.

The Balkans during the 90s are extensively documented due to the sheer amount of conflicts in the area. Pictorial evidence is plentiful from a variety of sources. There had been peacekeeping missions there, too, with associated Combat Camera deployments and attached journalists. More grimly, a lot of photos were taken as evidence in war crimes trials, too. The differences would be mostly in urban areas, too. Outside the major cities, changes are going to be subtle enough that using the maps from the period should suffice. There might also be noticeable changes in Italy. Making a 2025 map makes no sense, seeing as it's the period when the region has finally quieted up a bit. In the 1998 Kosovo War, nearly 14000 people died. The flareup in 2011? Four. It's mostly protesters with placards rather than armed militias. Yes, we can easily make up fictional military actions, but I'd rather see those that actually happened. That means no ugly glass towers or shoddily renovated railway stations, among other things.

Count the posters in the thread, then. The entire community had been using it to post news updates. I contributed a handful of entries myself. He started it, but if he simply stopped posting, others would have picked up the slack.

The autorudder doesn't actually change the FM, though, it just adds what is effectively a magic yaw damper. That one is meant for people without rudder pedals, which are far less common and tend to be rather more pricey than a T16000M.

Yeah, and the "easy" mode wasn't really easy even when it worked right. At least with FC3 aircraft, it basically took away a few controls, like trim, but otherwise did very little to make actual flying easier. It's far easier to learn flying properly than deal with a gamefied mode that nonetheless still has to conform to DCS physics. These things come from an era when a joystick with one hat was moderately fancy, and that hat was used to control the view more often than not. Back then, some consideration went into at least attempting to make DCS playable with mouse+keyboard, or with a really cheap joystick that had a shortage of switches. Fortunately, times have changed, T16000M and gamepads have become commonplace, and ED no longer needs to consider that a player might not even have a hat that could be bound to trim commands. The "game flight model" is therefore long obsolete.

Rich text file, actually, and it can be opened in Word, as well. It might not be associated with anything by default (used to be Write), but if you tell Word to open it, it will.

IMO, he really shouldn't have deleted the whole damn thing. He could have blanked out the first post to ensure roadmap isn't misleading, but the other content could have stayed. It's not like he had to do anything to maintain it. This thread was bigger than him and it wasn't cool for him to just delete it on a whim. He wants to take a break, fine, but that doesn't mean he's entitled to make the others' contributions into collateral damage. Maybe @BIGNEWY or another staffer could make an official newsfeed thread that would function the same, but not be at risk of being deleted like this. The roadmap thread was already premoderated in order to make sure only actual news were posted.

You should really consider doing a 90s reconstruction, because that's when the most interesting things happened there. If that's going to be a 2025 Balkans, I'm probably going to skip it. There's plenty of documentation for how it looked in the 90s, we really have no need for another 2025 map, especially since for most part, the only thing that got added was ugly "modern" architecture.

Libya alone is bigger than the entire South Atlantic map. Granted, most of it is quite empty, but even the coastline is very long. If that's ever to be a thing, spherical Earth is a must.

Tu-160 should be Mach 2 capable. Not sure if it is in DCS, though.

I meant you should get a GPU now and start saving up for a CPU+mobo immediately afterwards. Getting VR to run smoothly takes a very powerful rig.

It is correct, it's the A-10 picture that's unrealistically sharp. The Mav's seeker head is really not that big, its resolution is limited, which is what you see in the Viper. They should look at Mavs on other platforms, but boresighting is of unique importance to the Viper. It features TGP to Mav handoff, which compares images, not gimbal slew. While the Hornet and A-10 just point the Mav towards the same spot on the ground as the TGP, where it's locked independently afterwards, the Viper features the "handoff" mode, where after commanding point track, the image from the Mav's sensor is compared to the TGP and the missile is locked onto the same thing TGP is based on that. As such, if they aren't perfectly aligned (say, due to the distance between where the Mav and the TGP are mounted on the jet), the handoff will fail. This is why on a triple rack, you just need to boresight the first missile, since the distance between them isn't very big. Remember than D model Mavs are 80s era technology. This is not a mobile phone camera, but an IR seeker designed before Gulf War. Remember the state of your electronics back when you ran Windows 95, and then consider that the vast majority of tech that we use was made before then. The reality of the era is, pictures were blurry, displays were small, and many things that were marketed as "smart" were pretty dumb by modern standards. That's why the LMAV was such an advancement, buddy/JTAC lasing aside, not only could it use the much sharper picture from the TGP, it wouldn't be distracted by the "tactical bush" effect that affected other Mavs, as the human operator would keep track of what's being lased.

Start with the GPU, then look at CPU. VR has a voracious appetite for VRAM and AMD drivers aren't that great for it, so you stand to make gains there. However, since you're also going to be upgrading the mobo, I'd recommend you go with an X3D series Ryzen. The 14 series Intel CPUs had longevity issues, 12 series is fine, but it's also blown out of the water by more recent Ryzens. In VR, you'll benefit a lot from the expanded cache on X3D.

It's pretty crap, though, particularly when more than one person is talking (it doesn't tell you who said what). This is actually one of the few tasks AI is useful for. I haven't asked for a transcript, but I once got it to summarize an hour long video into a few concise bullet points. I'd expect it could manage a transcript, too.

I do hope they'll be better about making breaking changes to this one post-release. It made campaign builders wary of Sinai, and it'd be a shame if they were similarly slow to pick up the Balkans. Also, we could use more 90s aircraft and relevant or variants. Now there won't be any excuse for ED not to make Allied Force era hardware. Too bad about the Mudhen in particular, IRL it played a large role in the Balkans. I also hope we'll get CBU-94 someday, IRL it was only dropped from Nighthawks, but AFAIK it used a standard dispenser, so anything compatible with CBU-97 should be able to carry it. Could be very useful for attacking power plants in DC.

It ultimately depends on what you're trying to do. The MiG will usually be trying to intercept something over friendly territory. That means it can afford to go low, since ground forces are unlikely to be shooting at it. So what's the Phantom doing? If it's trying to CAP (say, to prevent friendly CAS from being splashed), it's at a massive disadvantage, because MiG will be in the weeds and the Phantom isn't that great at searching, anyway. If it's escorting, then it's a matter of keeping the MiG away from whatever it's protecting. The MiG will likely eat it for breakfast, but it might run out of gas or simply be unable to catch the strikers afterwards. If it's a mud mower of some sort... it had better have some escort, or it's going to have a bad day. OTOH, if the MiG is the one doing escort and the Phantom is an interceptor, it could try blowing through the MiG screen and killing the strikers, then hightailing it home at supersonic speeds. In any case, "unload and bugout" is only good when you can afford to do so. In most cases, it'll mean you just abandoned your mission objective. If you can accomplish your objective while leveraging Phantom's advantages over the MiG, great, but there's only a handful of fighter missions which would allow you to do that.

Even the SPO-15 (which is mostly modeled correctly in our MiG-29) could detect the F-14's radar at a much longer range than the F-14 could see anything on it. The simple reason is, an RWR needs to see the radio signal that has traveled from the radar to it, while the radar needs to see the signal that traveled from the radar to the target and back. However, with no launch warning for the Phoenix, seeing the Tomcat on RWR doesn't help much. That said, lack of AWACS at sea doesn't mean the Russians would be blind. It can be expected that the bombers would coordinate with surface warfare assets that would provide radar updates to them. The attempt to sink a US CVBG would likely involve a huge, coordinated salvo of ship and air launched cruise missiles. Aircraft would be working with their surface assets on both sides, and this would mean a huge bag of EW tricks in store for both of them. And then, underneath all that, you've got submarines sneaking around. Of course, my comment applies to ships, as well. You don't have to sink the CVB, a gaping hole in the middle of the flight deck is almost as good.

Wags mentioned it in the interview, they'd like to look into it at some point, but it's way down on the list of priorities. ED knows it's a big issue with ground units. Worth noting, there's a chance that it'll still cause some randomness. For instance, if the rounds gut the troop compartment, but spare the forward part where the crew are sitting, the BMP would still shoot back. It might even remain drivable. With spall liners everywhere, an AP round might just punch a hole. SAPHEI rounds aren't particularly common on aircraft, it's usually regular a mix of AP and HEI. The former punches a hole, the latter detonates on impact.

Hits, yes, but not penetrations. The angle means the round has more armor to go through and is more likely to bounce. That is modeled in DCS. As mentioned, DCS does not account the roof is just some 15mm of aluminum alloy. In fact, I don't know if there's more than a single armor value for the BMP-3. It might be surviving things it shouldn't due to simplified modeling. Also note, a single 20mm AP going through the infantry compartment won't cause the BMP-3 to explode into a fireball (though anyone sitting inside will have a bad time). In DCS, it won't take off all its hitpoints. That stuff is simplified to the point of inadequacy, strafing with 20mm in particular gets hit hard (30mm usually kills light armor reliably).

Worth remembering, the damage model for ground units in DCS isn't that great. In particular, IRL the top armor of almost all pre-2010s armored vehicles is paper thin. They're basically protected against small arms fire, maybe .50 if it's a particularly thick skinned vehicle, but not much else. Depending on the angle, the A-10 could punch through most tanks of its day with 30mm AP, as long as it hit the top armor. DCS doesn't model any of that, I'm not sure if there's any difference at all between where you hit, but even if there is some accounting for direction, the armor model is simplified, making top armor way too strong. I suspect that's in play here, realistically putting 20mm rounds in the side of a BMP probably shouldn't work, but they should go through the top no problem.

This is realistic, the submunition has a HEAT warhead about the size of a hand grenade. If it doesn't land directly on top of an armored vehicle, it won't do a whole lot, and it doesn't even fragment all that much. The visuals are fake because actually showing 247 distinct bomblets and corresponding explosion effects per bomb (meaning a 4-bomb ripple has almost 1000 of the buggers, and a fully loaded four ship of Hornets will dispense close to 8000) would likely bog down the sim.

Depending on the mission being flown, dragging and evading could cost the bombers enough gas to be forced to abort, not to mention in a coordinated operation, they wouldn't make the planned ToT and likely wouldn't be able to maintain formation. A supersonic bomber of that era would typically run in afterburner, so it wouldn't be able to keep doing it for all that long. Turning a bomber around at supersonic speed around takes a long time, especially if you're trying to maintain your speed. The interceptor's missiles don't need to actually hit the target in order not to be wasted. All they need to do is prevent the enemy from accomplishing their mission.

We've been seeing indications of that for quite a while now. Really looking forward to it. Will feel right at home in the sky with Eurofighter, the F-35 and the JF-17, seeing as India is one of the bigger operators. We really need a Kashmir map to run Rafale vs. Jeff and MiG-21 vs. Sabre duels (yeah, they've been for a while...).