Aquorys

I finally watched it! Despite the somewhat ridiculous mission and circumstances surrounding it, it was an entertaining movie, I had fun watching it. Either that, or from what I have seen in the movie, it seems to me that the mission would not have been that hard to accomplish if it had been done differently. Here are some of my random thoughts about that whole scenario: They successfully attacked the airfield with cruise missiles. Why not just fire a whole bunch of cruise missiles at the target using DSMAC navigation, or at least at the air defenses around it? Don't really need GPS for that. If the cruise missiles can't hit the target, hit the GPS jammers instead, then fly a B-2 over it and drop a JDAM. The bad guys' air defenses looked a lot like the SA-3 (S-125). I guess some jammers would have made that mission a lot easier. Okay, so for some reason, the bad guys don't have access to modern SAMs, but they do have access to top notch stealth aircraft. Probably bring some F-35s to the party or call the Air Force for some F-22 support, not for bombing, just air-to-air for a target CAP to level the playing field. If I were a bad guy, I'd probably use some low-altitude air defenses. Even limited to cold war era material, there are still ZSU-23s, SA-8s, SA-9s, SA-13s, MANPADS like the SA-7/14/24, they could probably ruin your day if you were going to fly through that canyon. Aaaahhh... all those possibilities!! Yeah, like virtually all other countries, unfortunately. Except the UNO. The UNO doesn't even write strongly worded letters because chances are it's gonna get vetoed by the country's government that was supposed to receive the letter, because that makes a lot of sense. Oh boy, the reality of politics... Yeah, I think it could have been. But anyway, just as with games like DCS, the most important aspect of movies and games is that they are entertaining, and it was. Plus we have something to talk about in the forums. Imagine how boring all the discussions would have been if the only thing we all could say about it were, "yeah, that's what I would have done too"...

Then would you please enlighten me as to how they spawn aircraft into a parking spot in real life, so they can do a stored heading alignment? Cause last time I checked, they just parked them there after flying them. It's almost as if there were a procedure that prepares an aircraft for running a stored heading alignment in its last stored parking spot before its next flight...

By the way, it would be great to be able to adjust the probability of random system failures, probably something like a range from unlikely, like a really well-maintained aircraft, to training-level, where there would be a very high failure rate. And maybe another switch to limit the failures per flight to one at a time for training purposes would also make sense, so you wouldn't end up with 4 different systems failing at the same time when you're just trying to learn how to deal with a single failure.

Nope Once they have chosen a target, the AI pilots will typically go full apes**t on it and happily kamikaze themselves into an overwhelming force of opponent aircraft and multi-layered air defense systems. They will try evasive maneuvers once something fires at them, but at that point, they are normally at a huge tactical disadvantage, so they get shot down. Alternatively, they might fly until they run out of fuel, at which point they will eject. However, there is an RTB on bingo fuel option in the mission editor that will probably fix that problem, it might not be selected on many MP server maps.

This problem appears to be reproducible as follows: Start the aircraft as usual Fly to another airport Perform a full normal alignment (NORM to 8 minutes/1x CEP) with the coordinates and altitude of the new location (confirm or type in) Select INS ALIGN OFF Wait ~10-15 seconds for the INS to shut down properly Shut down the aircraft, thereby removing power from the INS Restart the aircraft as usual using stored heading alignment The INS page will show the coordinates of the airport where the aircraft was originally spawned instead of the coordinates of the last full alignment that should have been stored. The resulting alignment is unusable.

This bug or a possibly closely related bug is reproducible with the following sequence Select MRM override or DGFT override mode Select ST STA OFF Exit MRM override or DGFT override mode Select ST STA ON The SMS page will now show OFF in the mode that was selected when ST STA was turned off, but not the other modes, unless the same procedure was applied. The A/A mode is not affected. Power cycling the mission computer resolves the problem. I suspect that similar behavior is triggered when the aircraft is shut down on ground power, and most systems, but not the mission computer, are turned off, and the aircraft is later started up again for another flight. The result seems to be that both, the MRM override and DGFT override modes end up with a non-functional SMS. When I last encountered this problem, power cycling the mission computer also resolved the problem when it was caused during shutdown on ground power.

FWIW, the 9X has an infrared imaging sensor, and as far as I know, it's the same as in the IRIS-T. The IRIS-T can lock onto some pretty funny stuff on the ground, regardless of having an imaging sensor. How would I know? Well, one of my friends who worked at an airbase for several years told me that they tried it with some quite hilarious items, and they were amazed by what they could lock on to with the IRIS-T. The missile doesn't care whether the target is in the air or on the ground, moving or not, and what kind of target it is, as long as the seeker can see the target, it will guide there and hit. And since that is even true for the most modern imaging missiles, it would be just as true for much older and less sophisticated missiles that just lock onto anything that's hot and big enough.

It all tends to be very arcade-like on the PvP servers. People turning and burning low, other people flying high, and generally everyone constantly flying on full afterburner from takeoff to landing, or I should probably say, from takeoff to respawn, all of that just isn't too realistic. A lot of it works on those servers, because noone is afraid to die, as it would be the case in real life. Half of the people never make it home, either because they get shot down, or because they run out of fuel and then just respawn. People do 9G turns with 2 wing tanks and external jammers, F/A-18s do 9G turns with no consequences, etc. Of course it can be fun, just don't expect it to be realistic tactics-wise. What would be really hilarious to watch would be a handful of WIC instructors doing a weapons-free BVR mission on one of those famous servers, like Growling Sidewinder's or Grim Reapers', etc. - and unfortunately that is never going to happen, because they would not give away their tactics for everyone to watch - but I promise you, if it happened, the skies on all of those servers would be clear very quickly and these guys would most probably all go back to their home base in undamaged aircraft.

That is pretty much all you can do anyway with missiles, because you're not getting much hard data on anything, since it's all classified. Not even the people who work for the company that makes them know that data, unless they are directly involved in missile development.

If you were looking at an image that is projected in front of the right eye with your left eye, that would create parallax problems. Depending on how that system is designed, you would either not see the markings that are projected, or if you could see them, they would not match with the outside world.

I'm not flying the F/A-18, but thought I'd just drop a note here that the radar simulation is just a rough approximation in all simulators - even the professional military ones. The reason for that is quite simple: there is not enough computational power available to truly simulate the radar waves and their interaction with the entire environment, and then all the electronics, filters and software logic that are used to create a radar picture in the cockpit. All of the simulations are just approximations that will feel similar and do similar things in similar situations most of the time, but technically speaking, none of them are accurate in any way. They're all guestimating and randomizing, and you'll find numerous corner cases where something completely different than in the simulation would happen in real life. There is no practical solution to this problem, simply because the technology that we have can't do it.

I'd recommend to just stop trying to optimize. The runtime of behavior of general purpose operating systems and software is just all over the place, the timing is unsteady, the performance is unsteady, things run in the background sometimes, etc. - it's just not worth it, it is what it is and there is not much you can do to make it better. The software just isn't designed to deliver steady performance, let alone guaranteed steady performance, so there will always be lags, freezes, fps drops, etc., it's just a result of how this stuff works internally. I guess my pain tolerance is just higher. I use an Oculus Rift S, and the only thing I can tell you to lift you up is that the Rift S is probably way worse than your G2, and despite that, I still play in VR. If I told you how many problems the Rift has, you'd probably love your G2. And it's not just random frame drops in DCS, where I have to take the thing off, set it down on the desk for 30 seconds, and then when I put it back on, it magically recovers to a normal frame rate. That thing has serious hardware and driver issues. Like, I frequently have to unplug it and plug it back in, because the driver can't find it. The driver would tell me that the HDMI cable is not connected, but the actual fix for the problem is to unplug and replug the USB cable. It has position tracking issues. It doesn't work in a dark room, because it relies only on cameras (yeah, noone has told those geniuses that gyros and accelerometers are a thing). If there is the slightest amount of moisture on my face, I can either use a hairdryer on both, my face and the headset, or it would just mist up every time I put it on for the next 25 minutes and I can't see anything. I have had it for about a year now, and the fabric that covers the foam is coming apart. Virtually everything is wrong with the Rift S. The hardware isn't durable at all, it's not well-designed, the software is total sh*t, none of the bugs have ever been fixed, their Oculus software developers just suck at getting anything done properly. But nonetheless: I pretty much always play DCS in VR. It's just so much more immersive, and it is so much more convenient to just turn the head to look in different directions. Concerning performance vs. visuals, I'd rather go for performance and other game feature enhancements than even more polished visuals. The visuals are fine, and spending a lot of money for new hardware just for even more visual effects that don't really do anything else than just look nice just isn't worth it in my opinion. Not sure what else I can tell you... I guess it is what it is for now.

Not implemented in DCS

Some of the reasons why modern active radar homing missiles are so lethal are that the emitting radar is very close to the target, because it's in the missile even if the ECM is effective against the missile's radar, missiles like e.g. the AMRAAM (and probably also the SD-10) can home in on the ECM emissions instead (less accurate, but often good enough to get the missile so close that the missile's radar will "burn through" the ECM at some point)

If the bandit is bugged on your fire control radar, the missile should "go get him", and the bandit does not need to be within the circle (the ASE circle) for that. If nothing is bugged on your fire control radar (the radar could even be turned off), you can still fire, and the missile should still "go get him", as long as that bandit is inside the missile's radar cone when the missile gets close enough for the bandit to be within the range of the missile's onboard radar. The bandit still does not need to be within the ASE circle for that, but it is sort of obvious that the bandit would have to be roughly in front of you for the missile to find him. If you'd do that, you'd call out "maddog" on the radio to let your allies know that you have an AT/LOAL mode missile in the air and they had better get out of the way.

Does it say "ARM" in the HUD? Are other weapons released when you press the WPN REL button (e.g., try with rockets)? There are F-16 checklists linked in my signature. You can download those and compare the switch positions after auto-start with what they should be before takeoff. Then it should just be master arm on, and either AA mode or MRM override, and they should just work. Also, maybe check the SMS page and various jettison switches.

I have not seen the movie (yet), but that reason sounds no less nonsensical to me as the GPS jammer one. I mean, who would look at the situation and go, yeah, I think we're gonna plan our mission so that we'll use aircraft and weapons that can't really do the job properly and break them in the process? Even just the idea that some part of a mission would require a 9.5 G pull seems unrealistic to me, now I really gotta watch that movie so I can figure out how they made that one up

сброс means reset, and as already mentioned, пуск means start, стоп means stop. The others seem to be acronyms, so no idea what they mean. I have seen пуск and стоп on the countermeasures system of the Ka-50 that I fly in DCS, but I can't read most of the stuff in the Ka-50. For most of the switches, I just know which one to flip and what buttons to press without knowing what the label on them says.

There are some fictional liveries for some aircraft in the base game, I remember using the tropic green, desert and HAF (Hellenic Air Force, Greece) liveries on the Ka-50 and the HAF livery on the Su-33, those are all fictional.

Not just that, but the original author probably used photos, just as photos were used in this thread. You don't know the light conditions when those photos were taken and whether or not the white balance was set correctly on the camera, or whether there was any post processing done on the photos. Also, normally none of the gamers' equipment is color calibrated, so it doesn't really matter, as it will look different on each gamer's equipment anyway.

Didn't watch the track, what Maverick model are we talking about? If I remember correctly, the only models we have in DCS for the F-16 are CCD or IR sensor equipped models, and those are fire-and-forget weapons, they should be completely independent of what's going on in the aircraft and track the target autonomously once released. So unless you are firing a laser-guided Maverick, that sure sounds like a bug.

I guess it was supposed to say "will turn red whenever the aircraft is inside the threat ring" or something to that effect. Cause the threat ring would be sort of pointless if the threat were not actually in it

Kinda sounds like real life. Not every F-16 has all the capabilities that were ever developed for some very specific variant of an F-16, because resources are limited and not everyone needs and wants to pay for everything. @RafaPolit In my opinion, the fact that we don't have every weapon on every aircraft only makes the in-game missions more interesting, because you will have to figure out whether you can do the mission or not, and if you can, then you'll have to figure out how. What weapons, what flight-path, what risk factors, etc. Or you might want to employ a combined force of different aircraft performing different roles. If you just wanted to be able to strike anything anywhere, you could as well just ask for a B-2 or F-35 module, or set up an AB destroyer to fire a crapload of cruise missiles... but then, where is the challenge, and what's the point of playing the game?

I guess the answer is, as often, "it depends". The following should work as a general baseline: For landings, you would typically want the landing light on instead of the taxi light, for the takeoff, again, "it depends". If you are landing at a civilian airport, the taxi or landing light should be on for visibility while taxiing (military aircraft are obviously not regulated by the FAA, but there is a reason they require it for civilian aircraft, so it's probably a good idea). Wing/tail is normally on. The wingtip and wing/tail lights are often kept on steady while the aircraft is standing still and being serviced by the ground crew (preflight checks, removing pins, etc.), and would be set to flash before moving the jet. The fuselage light only lights up the tail fin, so if you want people to be able to read the tail codes, turn it on. DIM/BRT is mostly a question of visibility during IMC operations (clouds, fog) and night operations, especially with night vision equipment, because that doesn't work too well with bright lights. Same for strobe lights. For combat, lights dark or covert, as briefed. Some squadrons will also keep the anti collision light off until some point during the taxi, others will have it on before starting the engine, everyone says something else, it seems there is no standard for any of this. Don't know of any document either, let us know if you find one Anyhow, it's DCS, so whatever makes the most sense in the game environment for the kind of mission you're on is probably what you should agree on among the members of your flight, so everyone knows what's going on.

I use attitude hold mostly when I am focused on systems, e.g. programming steerpoints, circling while identifying targets with the TGP. When I am just going from A to B long-distance, I level off somwhere at FL 300/320/340 and use altitude hold, typically with heading hold. PS: and I hand-fly larger heading changes, because the autopilot isn't smart enough to properly hold the altitude during turns