Smashy

I just spent some time A/B'ing the release version (2.5.6.59625.1) and the current open beta (2.5.6.60720) and air radar contacts are definitely a lot more slippery in the beta. I set up a test mission with 4 Su-27s at 10/20/30/40 miles off my nose, co-altitude. They were set to just orbit their starting waypoints. I was in active pause. I'm not sure if this affects anything so I ran a couple tests w/o active pause and didn't notice any real differences. With the release version, all 4 contacts were solid all the way up until the notch and then they'd reappear after the Flankers were no longer beaming me. I'd lose 1 or 2 a few times but for the most part, radar contact was pretty consistent. With the beta version, I had a very difficult time maintaining radar contact with all 4 Flankers. The worst part was that different contacts were dropped at different times for no apparent reason. It could be the 40-mile contact heading away from me or the 10-mile contact heading right at me. It seemed random. I ran the test multiple times, moving my scan center around and altering PRF but could not find a way to achieve the consistency seen with the release version. I wondered if the Flankers had some magic ECM enabled so I modified the test to use MiG-15s, assuming they had no ECM. Same results. I then tried with 4 Il-76s and then saw behavior closer to the release version, but still not quite as consistent. So now I'm wondering if something was changed with the Hornet's radar, RCS profiles, or both. Perhaps the new AA radar behavior is a reflection of the Real Life (TM) Hornet but it could also be something that needs fixing. I'm ok with either, but the uncertainty is what kills it for OCD me. I'm going to be using the release version for now and dip into the beta to check out the new features every now and then. Not a big deal, that's why it's called a beta.

What do you mean by this? And what do you perceive in the Hornet? A constant cycle of lock, broken lock, lock, broken lock, ... until burn-through? I haven't had much time to play with the ASPJ yet but didn't notice any difference against an SA-6 or SA-10 when I tried it myself. I think I may have been too close and/or more than 70-degrees off boresight for the jammer to work effectively.

Yep, I've viewed the videos several times each. It's a good way to get a preview of the new features but I was looking for sources of information that provide more detail of how these things work as implemented in the game. A big part of the fun with the Hornet for me is trying to understand how each system works and how they interact with each other.

Up until today, I've been using the release version. The new features for the Hornet were enough to motivate me to switch to the open beta. I've been devouring all documentation I could find on the Hornet module and was wondering if any of the new features were documented anywhere? I'm particularly interested in learning more about the ASPJ and the SA format's new functions (TXDSG) and symbology additions. Will these features be undocumented until they get merged into the release version? If so, it looks like a bit of trial and error, Youtube and forum/reddit conversations will be the way to go.

I'm also learning the Hornet's various systems/sensors/weapons and highly recommend taking a bit of time to learn the mission editor. It's really not that difficult and should take less than 30 minutes to figure out how to set up a simple test mission for yourself. As with the Hornet, start small. Maybe just your Hornet and nothing else. Play around with waypoints and/or loadouts. From there, you can create test missions to go along with the material you're covering at that time by adding other elements. I've always been the type that learns best from doing and using the ME to set up scenarios where I can see how things work has been invaluable to my learning process.

Yeah, I can see how designating a waypoint as a target should undesignate the current target but losing current target designation by simply changing a waypoint seems like a questionable UI decision, especially since waypoint or waypoint target buttons are unboxed. I'm learning to adjust my expectations when dealing with 80s/90s UI designs. It's part of the charm of learning the Hornet. I just have to be careful not to interrupt the workflow of setting up a JDAM/JSOW attack with a careless waypoint change, which seems easy to do if you have created target WPs in the mission planner.

I'm reading and learning about JDAM/JSOW now and came across something that is puzzling me. If I have a target designated and change waypoints on the HSI or SA, the target becomes undesignated. This is happening with targets designated with FLIR, HUD/HMD TDC priority or AG radar. I am not designating a waypoint as a target, I'm simply selecting another waypoint with the arrow keys on the HSI or SA. Is this normal behavior? If so, I'll have to keep in mind not to do that in the future or I'll lose the target I worked to carefully designate. Perhaps this is not a common operation but when I'm learning a new sensor/weapon/system, I like to push buttons and twiddle knobs to see what happens as that usually helps me better understand what's going on.

Ok, I feel dumb. That makes sense. My mistake was comparing it to the squared-off diagonal throws on my Fighterstick. There's only so much to be done with curves and saturation. For me, it's a matter of finding a happy medium that will let me slew fairly quickly if I need to while still maintaining decent control with small deflections.

When I move the mini stick on my Pro Throttle to any of the diagonal corners, I notice that the X/Y values are ~70% of what full throw would be on either axis. For example, pushing the stick full aft would result in a Y value of 255. Pushing the stick into the down and right corner gives me a Y value of 180-190. I use the mini stick as the TDC in the Hornet and diagonal slewing of the cursor is sluggish. Is this typical of the Pro Throttle's mini stick?

Thanks for the additional info. Everything made sense except this. I still could not get this to work. Oh well, it's not a big deal and more like a case of "My arm hurts when I do this, doctor." Dr: "Well, don't do that then." I'm simply at the stage where I'm trying to unravel the various systems in the Hornet so I can have a better understanding of all the fundamentals of systems/sensor/weapons management. I enjoy understanding the results of all the button-mashing and knob-twiddling I'm doing in the cockpit.

After playing with the LITENING for a bit tonight, I found something that's confusing me. Everything works as documented until you assign the TDC to the HUD/HMD and start moving the cursor. Once you've done that, there is no way to get the TD diamond on the HUD to go solid again. Switching to ATRK/PTRK doesn't have any effect on HUD TD symbology. Once a ground target has been designated, I've also had trouble with losing ground stabilization with the target designated cursor the FLIR format (diamond reticle) after using the HUD to slew. It's not a pure snowplow movement but there is more drift than a true stabilized position. It can make refining target points more difficult. It doesn't happen all the time so maybe there's something I'm missing.

I just tried this and no luck. I think the only way to cue the FLIR is from a trackfile. I could be wrong but I could find no way to get the FLIR to cue off of a datalink target. While playing around with this, I found that I could cue the FLIR from a stale trackfile by putting the radar in SIL mode, setting trackfile timeout to max (32), doing one narrow sweep with the ACTIVE button, then designating an L&S. With the L&S, the FLIR would slew on to the contact with the RRSLV button on the FLIR page. It would lose track after the trackfile expired but I could establish a PTRK pretty easily after that. It worked a little under 20 miles. AZ/EL wasn't much use other than providing HOTAS access to the FLIR format. I can't imagine how this could be useful as it was pretty complicated and required a lot of HOTAS gymnastics. Also, I would imagine any sneakiness gained could be lost after that one radar sweep. I was like a blacked-out special forces guy who drops his flashlight while sneaking around and the light turns itself on as it bounces across the ground. Well, maybe not that bad. Still, It was fun trying to get this to happen and good practice for that HOTAS muscle memory.

It's all about what level of immersion the player is going for and what tasks help them get there. I did run through the cold start process multiple times to understand it and have downloaded @Bunny Clark's kneeboard page (thanks Bunny!) but I haven't cold-started the Hornet in a weeks. DCS is my big, open sandbox where I can take my box of toy airplanes out on test scenarios and fly like a jackass or fly as close as possible to my own perception of realism. It's all about having fun. For me, I like trying to understand everything I can learn about the sim but having to do everything by the book all of the time is the exact opposite of fun.

Ok, I'm not the most technically adept at this stuff but here goes... Is it possible that the AZ/EL format is capable of displaying IFF contacts that aren't getting painted by the onboard radar? Sort of like how non-military ATC systems work at airports. As @Mo410 suggested, an appropriate interrogation mode would have to be used. If so, I would think a filter based on IFF mode would be better than a range filter. But hey, it's the Hornet not the F-35. As I dig into the Hornet more, I'm finding various user interface/usability issues that have me scratching my head and wondering, "who decided to do it this way?". It's all part of the charm of the Hornet and I'm really enjoying learning about the plane and its systems, warts and all. At any rate, I don't think any modes besides Mode 4 is implemented in the Hornet module yet so all this might not matter anyway.

Good suggestion with TWS AUTO. I'll give that a shot and see how it works for me. I wouldn't burn too much time on the AA FLIR mode if you don't already use it. I was fiddling with it out of curiosity and to see if it worked as advertised in the various docs I've read. It works as described most of the time but I've only used it in controlled test missions. I thought it might be useful in setting up a sneak attack like the EO sensor in Flanker 1/2 but it's not that easy to use and can't imagine it being very useful in an actual combat mission. The helmet-mounted display and AIM-9X are much better at setting up and executing an attack without using radar. Still, the FLIR does have the advantage over the HMD/9X in that it can acquire BVR targets so perhaps more FLIR practice is needed.

I've been reading about and experimenting with the AZ/EL page in the Hornet and one thing I can't figure out is the purpose of the CIT range function (OSB 12, 13) and azimuth limit function (OSB 19). Is there a tactical or technical reason why I would want to limit the range or width of the FOV for IFF interrogations? It seems that keeping both options at their maximum values provides the most benefit in terms of information and SA. There doesn't seem to be a performance penalty nor does there seem to be any reason to do so from a tactical perspective. I mean the radar is surely putting out a ton more EM energy than the CIT interrogator, right? What am I missing? Perhaps something that is yet to be implemented in the AZ/EL format will help make sense of this? On a related note, I've found that keeping the "L&S INT" option unboxed and the "AUTO INT" option boxed to be the best combination when CIT range/azimuth are at their maximum values as the "L&S INT" option will perform an automatic 22-degree pointed interrogation of the L&S trackfile where the "AUTO INT" will do an automatic 140-degree scan interrogation and hit everything on the page. Other questions and observations after playing with the AZ/EL format over the last few days: I'm still trying to find the best way to use the AZ/EL page to contribute to SA. There's a lot of HOTAS'ing to fiddle with and a lot of information to digest/crosscheck when considering the ATTK, SA and AZ/EL pages. the AZ/EL is really useful in controlling the scan volume center of the AA radar, especially in RWS. I don't think the azimuth of the RWS FOV could be controlled before AZ/EL was available. it's slightly easier to cue the FLIR off the radar from the AZ/EL page. At least with the way my HOTAS is currently setup. it's really cool to have some kind of visual feedback when pressing the SCS to perform an IFF interrogation. Before AZ/EL, doing an IFF interrogation felt like a button press that went straight to /dev/null. How are you guys using AZ/EL? Any tips or tricks that you've found useful?

I ran into the same problem with the Hornet and a practice mission I had created with the ME. I found the solution to my problem in the forums here and thought I'd add to this thread, which was also returned in my search results. In my case, the mission file itself contained its own Snapviews.lua file. The file size of the problematic mission was significantly larger than the other missions in the directory. I unzipped it and took a look at the contents. I also learned yesterday that the *.miz files can be unzipped. I found a Config directory in there that contained a Snapviews.lua file that contained my older customized snap views. There's probably a way to salvage the mission but since it was a simple one, I trashed it and recreated it. I've read that there is a relationship between track files and mission files. After looking at an unzipped *.trk file, the corrupted *.miz file with the sticky snapviews looks very much like a trackfile in structure. Perhaps a bug where saving a track of a mission sometimes overwrites the *.miz file with the incorrect *.trk format? Since the file sizes are so different, the quick way to find these corrupted *.miz files seems to be to look for mission files with noticeably larger sizes.

I crossposted this question on r/hoggit and just added a follow-up there. Cut/pasting here in case another novice might find my results useful. I was able to scrounge a second 1920x1080 monitor and have been dicking around with MFD exports all morning and here's what I've found. This is mostly for the clueless beginner like me who might be doing some shotgun Googling. All testing was done with the Hornet. - when exporting right and left MFDs to a second monitor each as 800x800 displays to a 1920x1080 monitor, I'm seeing about 7-10% framerate loss while in-flight. Not huge, but worth considering if you're on the edge of what you consider tolerable framerate. With the instant action mission "On The Ramp" in the Caucuses, I get 20% framerate drop just sitting there not doing anything. - headtracking with Opentrack was unaffected. Both monitors that I used did not have any fancy whatever-Sync features. - changing "Res. of cockpit displays" didn't have any impact on image quality or framerate. I could see no difference between "256" or "1024 every frame". I still don't understand what this setting does. I also didn't spend a whole lot of time experimenting with this particular setting. Framerate loss is a thing when exporting MFDs, at least for me it is. However, I think the benefit of exported displays and Cougar MFD button rings will be worth the framerate drop. Time to go shopping.

Good find! Thanks for digging up this photo. This certainly would've been a good question for the F-86 episode at the Fighter Pilot Podcast.

My setup: i7-2600K 16 GB RAM AMD R9 290 OpenTrack With my current game/system settings, I'm getting anywhere from 30-70 FPS in the Hornet in Syria map with Free Flight or light training missions. It'll sometimes dip below 30 when flying near populated areas. I'm interested in getting the Thrustmaster Cougar MFD button panels to slap on a second smaller (11" 1920x1080?) monitor and exporting 2 DDIs to the second screen. Given my setup, what kind of framerate hit should I expect to take? While researching this, I also found some reports that TrackIR users were experiencing significant stuttering and head-tracking input lag when exporting MFDs to a second screen. Is this something specific to certain graphics cards and/or TrackIR's software? Or just head-tracking in general, including OpenTrack? I'd love to get a working MFD controller setup going but not at the cost of consistent head tracking or horrible frame rates. Any advice or user reports would be huge. Thanks and Merry Christmas!

Not really a question about the sim but about the Sabre in general. I've been reading the manual and Chuck's guide and noticed that the outboard pylons were capable of carrying 200 gallon tanks and the inboard pylons were capable of 120 gallon tanks. At first glance, it seems that it would make more sense to carry heavier load closer to the centerline of the airplane. Am I wrong about this? If not, what's the reason for this design?

Exactly the information I was looking for. Thank you! I really find it satisfying to learn about and understand these details. However, I can confirm this does not appear to be modeled properly as Joni mentioned above. I just ran a quick test. Notice the radar is in SIL mode but AGR is still being used to compute release point: I'm really having a lot of fun learning the Hornet but one of things that is really slowing me down is figuring out what exactly is wrong when I come across an unknown/undocumented item or something that contradicts documentation I've read. I don't know if: it's me doing something wrong not modelled yet incorrectly modelled outright bug error in documentation any combination of the above It's time-consuming to try to figure out these little corner cases that pop up every now and then. I'm still having a blast and these little nit-picks don't detract from my experience much, if at all.

I've been reading up on dumb bomb delivery using CCIP mode in the Hornet and one thing has been driving me nuts. Under the HUD altitude box, I've seen the letters "A", "B", "R" appear when an unguided bomb is selected to be delivered in CCIP mode. I have no idea what these mean. I've looked through the early release manual, Chuck's guide, Hoggit Wiki, various Youtube videos, searched forums/reddit and even scanned the NATOPS manual and haven't found any information about these letters. These images were grabbed from the Hoggit Wiki. For the most part, it seems "B" shows up when on a good profile for delivery. I've seen "A" show up when I'm nowhere near a good profile to deliver. I've rarely seen "R" and can't recall when that appeared. Anyone know what these letters indicate?

I finally got around to upgrading my 12+ year old PC and can finally run DCS at a decent framerate. It's been over 10 years since I've simmed and am looking for a good replacement for my gameport CH devices. I've been doing a lot of research and the devices from VKB and Virpil have really caught my eye. However, there are more than a few stories regarding support like yours that have me concerned. Wait time for order fulfilment is another factor. It's great that business is good for Virpil and I get it that every company has its pros/cons but I don't feel like taking a chance with their products right now, especially at that price point. I'm still looking at other options but right now am leaning towards an updated CH setup and save the boutique brands for the next upgrade. I hope you have continued good fortune with your repaired Virpil rig.