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But my point about the two eyes still stands. I am not arguing that the cockpit is the wrong shape from Heatblur. I am simply saying that with the handicap of viewing through a monitor, some adjustments should be made.

I mean. There is a MiG here somewhere...

I love the F-14, but a problem that became apparent on day one is the poor visibility from the cockpit. Especially to the front, with all the window frames in the way. But, is this really realistic? That we can barely see the guy we're in formation with or fighting in BFM? Or that during the final turn towards the carrier on a case 1 landing, we can't see the entire boat because of the window frame? In reality, a pilot has two eyes, while our viewpoint in the game is a single point (unless you use VR). With two eyes, close obstacles like beams, hud frame and such will become much less intrusive, as one eye will see what the other won't (as I hope every two-eyed person on the planet is already aware of). So I think it should be a possibility to make the cockpit frames a bit thinner or something to make up for the fact that we are one-eyed in the game. I know that the cockpit frames are correct shape and size compared to the original plane, but since we are one-eyed in the game, some adjustments should be done, in my opinion. For the purists, it should maybe be an option you could toggle. And, before anyone says it: I don't think the solution is that everyone MUST play in VR to be able to see out from the cockpit. A lot can't or won't play in VR for a multitude of reasons, including motion sickness. Currently, I can only fly the F-14 for a little while before I feel I'm getting tired from not seeing properly. So I hope this could be altered in some way.

Thanks for adding to the testing guys. It can only help ED to have as much information as possible! :)

I've tested this quite thoroughly, and the Mk-84 and Mk-83 fall short of the aimpoint every single time. I've made similar drops from multiple altitudes and speeds, and they always fall short. I won't share further track files, as I've already shared quite a few that show the exact same. It is not because of wind or just the inaccuracy of the weapon type, as they constantly miss in only one direction (short of target) I hope this will be looked at, as it makes the heavier bombs quite useless. PS: It wouldn't surprise me if it's a part of a bigger problem that could explain multiple issues that people are having with JDAM and GBUs as well. If the computer drops the bombs too early (way too early if the speed is high enough), then it could cause all kinds of problems, even for precision weaponry.

Did a final test. F-18 at 500 knots (200 faster than last), 10k feet and Mk-84. The bombs miss by a LOT. So much that I didn't catch their impact in the TGP, even at wide angle. Track added. So, higher speeds makes it much more evident. CCRP at 500 knots - misses by a LOT.trk

Yeah, in CCIP it was just a feeling as I kept missing compared to where I felt the bomb release was. And as there are a lot of human factors, your aim me be off and such. So, it's hard to show in a track. However, I feel the CCRP results are pretty clear: there is something wrong with the ballistic calculation for the heavier bombs, and it happens in multiple modules, so I guess this thread should perhaps be moved to the DCS general bug forum.

And, though I haven't tested, I assume the Mk-83 also falls short, but not as much. My findings: The higher the bomb weight, and the faster the drop speed, the bigger the error.

Yep, it seems it's an issue across multiple planes. Just tested A-10C and F-16C as well. The A-10 didn't miss as badly, but the F-16 missed very badly. And when i look at the replays, it seems that the aiming error gets larger with speed (which makes sense). The A-10C was only at 260-270 knots, while the F-16C was at 330 (if memory serves). This is probably a global issue, and not just an F-18 thing. F-16 CCRP Mk-84 Falls short too.trk A-10C CCRP Mk-84 Also Falls short but not as much.trk

The Mk-84 misses the most, so it seems to scale with the weight of the bomb. Can a mod change the title to include that this also happens in CCRP mode?

I realize that CCIP has too many unknown factors, as well as the human factor, so I tried out CCRP level bombing under similar "clinical conditions" (as in, same conditions for all: 10k feet, 300 knots, no wind) and the results are very clear: The heavier bombs fall short. Added tracks for CCRP bombing. This removes the human factor, as I use the TGP to designate the aimpoint, and can watch the impact on the TGP compared to the calculated aimpoint. Every flight involved 4 bombs (one on each wing pylon). All were dropped at the same time. Mk-82 straddles the target. Mk-83 and Mk-84 falls short. CCRP Mk-82 direct hit.trk CCRP Mk-83 Falls short.trk CCRP Mk-84 Falls short.trk

In my experience, it seems that the F-16 runs well for a good while, but if you play for a couple of hours or more, it starts to slow down. My guess is that there is some memory leak somewhere, but I don't know.

A couple of clips from the replay. I haven't been able to get the replay to work long enough to be able to do this before. It may be just placebo, but I think it works better when you spawn a working plane first:

TLDR: Flying the F/A-18C first, and then switching to F-14B in the same mission makes the replay work a lot better (but not perfectly). The long explanation: I have desperately tried to find workarounds to make track replay work for the F-14B. Because I love the plane, and I love doing airshows and watching them back from the ground afterwards. But, as all owners of that module probably knows, replay doesn't work... at all. The plane will not take off, nor taxi correctly if you watch it back in a replay. It's like it suddenly "forgets" to record certain control inputs or something. If it somehow manages to get into the air in the replay, it will suddenly plunge into the ground or something else that never happened. Anyway. I was experimenting with different hypothesis of workarounds: - what if I play with no weather - what if I wait a few minutes before starting to fly (maybe it takes a while for all the "systems" to come online) - What if I do a full controls wipe out (including flaps and spoilers and everything) before throttling up - What if I play without any external stores - What if I start in the air or ramp start instead of "parking hot" which is my usual way None of the experiments had any real success. Then I remembered someone saying that recordings from multiplayer servers are somewhat better (not that I've seen any examples of this, but all avenues have to be explored). So I tried setting the F-14 as a "client" plane instead of "player". I still played it as single player mission though. There was a moderate success: It did take off and fly for a while, but after a few minutes, it suddenly made a turn into the ground and that was it. So, finally I tried putting two client planes in the mission: One F/A-18C (that always works in replay) and one F-14B. Then I took the F/A-18C for a short flight and landed back on the airfield and then spawned into the F-14B with the "choose slot" option. In other words, I kept both planes in the same track file. The F-14B took off and flew for a multi-minute airshow with hard maneuvers and dropping flares and what-not. All without making any visible deviance from how it had happened when I flew it. I was shocked and recorded clips and did screenshots, desperately hoping I might have stumbled onto a workaround. Then after about five minutes of show-boating, I slowed down and did an approach and landing, and this is when the replay suddenly bugged out. The F-14 was way too high compared to what I had did, and also missed the runway by hundreds of meters to the right. It throttled down once it "landed" several hundred meters into the air and stalled into the ground with a bang. As in, the "normal" F-14B replay. In other words, it seems the replay works much better and for a longer time, IF you have a recording of a working plane first. It seems that "something" is deteriorating over time as you get into the F-14B. I hope this discovery can help ED / Heatblur figure out why replays still don't work on the F-14, when it works pretty much flawlessly on so many other modules. F/A-18C and F-16C works ALWAYS, even with other planes in the track or dogfights or whatever. PS: I am posting this in questions as I don't know where else to put it. Heatblur don't really respond much about the replay issues, even though there is a huge thread about it on their sub-forum. They keep saying it's a DCS bug (as in, not a problem with their module), so I post here, hoping we can figure this out. PPS: I hope I am not the only one desperately wanting this fixed. I hope ED/Heatblur also wants it fixed, despite the planned upgrade of the replay feature some time in the future. I can guarantee that there will be more YT videos of the DCS F-14B if this feature is fixed. And that can only be a good thing.

Added files showing what I mean. I tried as much as possible to make the situation identical in all three attempts. For some strange reason, the bomb pickle button didn't always register on the first try (different bug? or something I did wrong perhaps?). So on the 83 and 84 video I ended up dropping one into the ocean just to make sure the button would work when the pipper passed the target. Now, the bombs don't miss by that much, but enough that it's quite noticeable. And enough that I didn't damage the target with the 83 and 84, while the 82 destroyed it. And, once again, they always fall short, never long. PS: I usually don't do a -1.5 g push to enter the dive, but I wanted all the parameters to be as identical as possible (and the tracks as short as possible), so i didn't do a proper break into the target. But I've had the same results regardless of how I enter the dive. MK-82 Direct Hit.trk MK-83 falling short.trk MK-84 falling short.trk

Did the same test with the MiG-19P. taxi, takeoff, flying, shooting guns, maneuvering, flying under bridges, landing, precision taxiing to a specific point. Replay shows the exact same. Even if I play around with time accel when watching it. So, Razbam modules seem to not have this issue either, as far as I can see.

Just did a test with the F/A-18C, to see if it too gets replay errors if the track file is a bit longer. If the replay desync issue is a global problem (a DCS bug), then *all* planes should eventually start deviating from what originally happened. - Did a cold and dark start from Nellis - Manually set up waypoints from the HSI page - taxi to runway and takeoff vi multiple taxiways - 40 minutes flying via multiple waypoints - Flew some hands-on maneuvering as well as flying on autopilot. Did both rolls and loops to try to "provoke" the replay bug - TACAN approach to Creech and landing - Finally taxiing into one of the shelters at Creech and parking exactly on the centerline, to see if there was any deviation between reality and replay. Results: Perfect replay. It did everything exactly the same (navigation, waypoint entry, TACAN, light settings), landed in the same spot on the runway as when it happened live, and parked in the exact same spot in the shelter, within millimeters. Even when watching the replay with manual views and skipping time with up to 10x time acceleration, it still parked perfectly at the end. Conclusion: EDs own module is clearly doing something that The F-14 is not. Maybe the flight model or the flight control system of the F-14 does some extra layer of control adjustment between the stick/throttle inputs that is not recorded into the trk-file? (just a guess obviously, but I really hope Heatblur could figure this out). I think you should change the tag on this from [DCS bug] to [Reported] or something like that, because the problem is clearly related to the F-14 in some way. (there may be other 3rd party modules that have similar issues, but F-14 is by far the one I fly the most of the non-ED modules)

Just did a quick post-patch check, and replays are still not working. The F-14 is the quickest to fail replays in my experience. the other planes, you can fly entire airshows with takeoff and landings without it getting out of sync. Now, maybe in hour-long tracks you would get desyncing, but I haven't tested that. But in the F-14, the problems occur after seconds. I just did a simple test: taxiing around at Nellis for five minutes, following some random yellow lines. The F-14 didn't turn 90 degrees when I did, but instead about 45 degrees on the second turn I did... And then it got stuck in the sand. I know there was nothing in patch notes about this, but I still wonder if there is nothing that can be done to fix this feature? On this side of the forum, you say that the problem lies with ED. and on the ED side of the forum, they say that the problem lies with the 3rd party devs. So, I'm at a loss.

Yep, it is working for me too!

Yeah, no external lights yet unfortunately. btw, there is a rudimentary damage model now. You can lose wings and stabilators. It's not as invulnerable as it was at first.

The fixes to the F-16C are obviously welcome, but I am even more excited for the introduction of the Walleye to the F/A-18C. This will be fun to try out!

Did some more testing. And in Nevada, it seems that the bombs hit their mark fairly well, but in the Persian Gulf, I see the heavier bombs falling slightly short of the aimpoint.

My definition of fanboys in this discussion is people so anti-criticism that they don't even want bug reports in the bug report forum. And think people are "whining" for bringing up bugs and errors with the module that they are fanboying for. Such actions are actually hurting the thing they are so desperately trying to protect. They cause animosity against Heatblur (in this case) when it is maybe not deserved, as people with legitimate concerns or bug reports feel that they are being silenced. Fanboys try to downplay anything negative to such an extent that they feel like paid shills. It's aggravating and unnecessary, especially on a bug report forum for an early access module that NEEDS the bug reports to help development. But, anyway, in this case it turned out that Heatblur had seen the thread, and thought they had responded while they in fact had not. A mistake can happen, and I consider the matter taken care of. Once I've patched and tested, I will report if it works now, but other than that, I am done bumping this thread for now.

I've tried multiple times with different loadouts in the exact same mission, same temperature (20c) and no wind. Dropping with CCIP at a 25-30 degree dive angle and 450ish knots. The Mk-82 hits the target pretty much dead on. The Mk-83 falls a bit short (maybe 50 meters) The Mk-84 falls a lot short (maybe 100-150 meters) And it's always short. It never overshoots, which makes me wonder if this is a bug. Maybe the fall calculation is wrong for the heavier bombs. If it had missed sometimes too short and sometimes too long, I would expect it is just the inaccuracy of the weapon, but when it consistently drops short, I think it's something else. Has anyone else noticed this? It may be an issue on other planes as well (had similar results in F-16), meaning there could be something wrong with the calculation of the Mk-83 and Mk-84 across the board. did the atmosphere model change recently? PPS: I tried searching the forum before posting, but I only found an older thread regarding auto bombing mode, but that seemed like a slightly different thing, so I made this thread.

Thank you for responding. And I apologize that I got a bit heated in this thread. Loving the module means that we sometimes get frustrated. Will report back once I've tested the coming fix. Let's hope you've found the issue :)