DarkFire

I know what you mean, but going from 95% to 100% RPM gives you exactly 0 extra speed. Have a read of this thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=147556 And this thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=165967 For a scientific analysis of Su-27 flight performance and why cruise throttle is between 83% and 87% RPM. AFAIK the Russian VKS uses 85-87% RPM as their real cruise throttle setting. The only times you need 100% RPM are if you're climbing to altitude or accelerating to Vmax with wet thrust.

As far as I'm aware the purpose was to give the Su-27, which is aerodynamically naturally unstable, the same pilot handling properties as a conventionally stable aircraft. I guess they could have designed the ACS to 'trim for 1G' in a similar way (as I understand it) to the flight control system on the F-15. I can only surmise that the intent of the designers was to make flying the Su-27 more familiar to pilots who begin their training on conventionally stable aircraft. Again my understanding is that the intent of the designers was specifically not to design the Su-27 to have care free handling. This also goes for the MiG-29. The theory was that while it's completely possible for the pilot to carry out manoeuvres that are suicidal or that lead to destruction of the aircraft, it allows very highly trained and experienced pilots to be able to get more out of such an aircraft than the same pilot would be able to do in an aircraft that imposes artificial limits on pilot input commands. Of course, this relies on the pilot being sufficiently skilled to know when he or she is at the limits of the capability of the aircraft, and how to avoid exceeding them. I'm not saying that this approach is better than the care-free handling design paradigm, indeed modern Su-27 variants (Su-30MKi, Su-35 etc.) also have the same sort of fly-by-wire system that modern western types have, to some extent, but these were the reasons why the Su-27 control system was designed in the way we see it in DCS.

If you want to practice refuelling jump on the Virtual Aerobatics server. There are always 3-4 tankers in orbits for you to train with and there's usually a few experienced M2000 pilots about who're willing to answer questions etc.

Ah yes, should have made this clear. I recorded the G levels by monitoring the point of destruction using the F2 view and watching a track file at 1/16th speed. I'm running each test twice to help reduce any anomalous errors.

Thanks for the link to your chart, I'd been trying to find it to compare with my figures. :thumbup: So far (I'm working my way down from 29,720Kg) my figures for the safety factor are slightly higher than the ones you got, but the difference is small enough that it could easily be within the uncertainty range. For example, at an all-up weight of 29,720 Kg (full AAM & ECM load with 100% fuel & gunpad) I was able to survive up to 8.6G load applied slowly, but the wings broke at 7.4G when applied quickly, e.g. an instant hard turn. My calculated theoretical maximum G was 4.68 so using the 7.4G break point I got a safety factor of 1.58. This particular test was run at 1.075M and 2,100m altitude at the point of airframe failure. Edited to add: I'd remembered your chart incorrectly. For some reason I'd imagined that the safety factor is a constant and somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5. Faulty memory on my part.

I'm still in the process of gathering data for what will as scientific a test as I can manage, but some early indications are: 1. Loads applied slowly are survivable, up to and including full stick pitch deflection condition. 2. Under any conditions (within the Mach 'danger zone') your AOA limiter will save you, provided it's given time to engage and do it's thing. 3. Gradual application of G-loads are safe. Shock loading the airframe is not safe. Compound loads (pitch & roll components) are less safe. 4. The 'safety factor' appears to have increased to roughly 1.5 - 1.7 (!!) though the safety factor itself appears to be weight dependant. Full test results to come in the next few days.

You should watch Bunyap's YouTube videos. He goes in to incredible detail with regards to systems, why things are connected etc. His channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCChA7JzaWoakPbvpmUzMH5g

Thanks. If something has changed it'd be useful to get a comment from ED. My tests were quite rough & ready, and of course MP can do weird things some times, but I think it's worthy of further investigation. I'll do some more SP environment tests tomorrow when I get in from work.

Well, this is interesting. I just did some tests whilst flying on the VA server. Standard DCS day, albeit with dynamic weather. I loaded 9 x smoke pods, full gunpad, full expendables and full fuel for an all up weight of 27,827Kg. Well above the Beti calibrated value of 21,400 Kg. I took off an accelerated to maximum speed at around 1,000m altitude. This was about 1,300 Km/h TAS or about M1.15. Well within the 'danger zone'. By the time I'd accelerated I was down to ~8,000Kg of fuel, so an all-up weight in the region of 26,400 Kg. Again, well within the danger zone. I carried out 4 different sustained turns, on each occasion gradually increasing the G load until I approached G-lock and then eased off. For each turn the G meter read a maximum G of between 8.5 and 9.5. At no point did I suffer airframe damage. Might be time to do a proper re-evaluation of the point at which airframe destruction happens. As an aside, I had the control position monitor turned on and as G went above ~8, the AOA limiter chased around the control column position. The effect of this was to create a sort of pitch oscillation which, at maximum amplitude, added about an extra G to the airframe load value. It may well be the case that the AOA limiter is actually to blame for causing airframe damage when carrying out high-G manoeuvres right at the edge of the airframe capability.

I vaguely remember this being a known bug from a while back.

The rest of your computer isn't too terrible. The two things that really stand out that could do with improvement are: 1. Graphics card. DCS uses a lot of video card memory and benefits from a good video card. Get one with at least 2GB of VRAM. 2. System memory. Again, DCS uses a lot of system memory. You'll see a noticeable improvement if you add another 8 GB to give you a total of 16.

I wonder if the wing destruction G loads might need looking at again. I was flying around on the VA server tonight and decided to deliberately break the wings. Having previously over-stressed the wings by a 9-G split-S (6000Kg fuel and equivalent of 3 x R-73, resulting in weight being well over 21,400Kg) I then took it to M1.2 at about 100m altitude (~1400Km/h) before sharply pulling up. The wings broke but not before the G meter went well above the 9G marking. I wonder if the wing strength has changed without it being advertised in the patch notes? Unfortunately TacView decided to experience a SNAFU and decided that when my wings broke the aircraft had in fact disintegrated whereas in reality I had enough control to be able to level off and eject safely. Going to have another look at this tomorrow to see if this is repeatable.

Something strange is definitely going on here. I also ran the track and saw the S-300 complex launch 3 salvos of 8 missiles each. For each salvo I saw: 1st salvo: 1 hit. 2nd salvo: 5 hits. 3rd salvo: 3 hits. Some very odd behaviour that I saw: 1. Of the total of 9 hits, only 5 cruise missiles were actually destroyed. This is very odd. Perhaps the proximity fusing isn't working on the 5V55R? The missile has a huge 100Kg warhead! Anything that triggers the proximity fuse should be obliterated! 2. The last salvo of SAM launches happened at very short range: the lead AGM-86 was about 19.5 Km away from the S-300 complex. Obviously the low altitude of the cruise missiles will reduce detection range etc. but I've always understood this to be the reason for the 30N6 tracking radar to be mounted on a 100 foot tower. 3. Looking closely at some of the missiles that missed, the ones that didn't self destruct and simply missed lost a lot of speed by the end of their flight time. If we look at the 5V55B missile, it's supposed to have a maximum range of 45Km, a maximum speed of mach 6.25 and a maximum G capability of 27. None of these stats were evident in the test I ran. Yes, these are of course ideal performance stats but something doesn't add up here. I wonder if what we're seeing is a combination of Cd being much too high for SAM missiles (as it is for every missile in DCS), thus causing them to lose far too much energy once the sustain motors burn out; poorly or non-functioning proximity fusing and faulty engagement logic.

If you're cruising around in the Su-27 you should be at cruise throttle setting. It varies between 83% and 87% RPM depending on altitude but 85% is always a good choice. Through no coincidence, unless you're flying at above ~8,000m this will always give you an IAS and a TAS that's effective for beginning combat in that you can carry out a maximum ITR turn which will then bring your speed down in to the best STR range for the Su-27. When I watch YouTube videos of people flying the Su-27, I really don't understand why so many people zoom around at 100% RPM. Unless you're climbing to altitude or accelerating for a BVR F-pole all it does is waste fuel. Roll rate will decrease with TAS for exactly the reason Pocket Sized explained.

No problem. To be honest a stick extension usually does mean that you don't need curves. I'm surprised since a 2 foot extension should give you smooth-as-oiled-silk control. I wonder if something else is going on. Is your stick fully calibrated under windows for example? That gave me problems for a while when I changed from Win7 to Win10.

You can specify input curves for all aircraft. Each aircraft can have its own separate input curvatures. It's heavily dependant on what you like the feel of, and what hardware you use, but most people use curvature values of between 15 & 25 for pitch & roll.

The roll curves will change as speed approaches and then exceeds M1. The controls will be stiffer above Mach 1 which will result in slower maximum roll rate. It is an auto-start but was caused by the engines being starved of fuel. The Su-27 has a gravity fed (as opposed to a pressurised) fuel system. So, if the G load on the aircraft is at or less than 0 (e.g. inverted flight or a hard nose-over) the engines will be starved of fuel. There is a small pressurised cache tank which supplies fuel when G is at or less than 0 but it has a tiny capacity. For an example, during inverted flight at sea level at maximum AB the cach tank will be drained in much less than 10 seconds. As soon as the cache tank is empty the engines will begin to spool down. If you catch it in time and restore G to more than 0 then the cache tank will fill and your engines will usually re-start due to ram air pressure. Hope all that made sense. If you watch actual video footage of Su-27s the pilots will never nose-over, rather they roll inverted and pull. It's also true that the Su-27 really, really hates negative G and especially negative AOA. Apparently the professional flight model that the DCS Su-27 enjoys has been tested and signed off by actual Su-27 pilots, so in that respect it's probably pretty realistic to the real thing. Try using input curvature for pitch and roll. A good setting for a normal size stick is somewhere between 15 and 25, but with your extended stick try between 5 and 15 for pitch and roll - should make the aircraft a lot smoother to fly.

^This. Files that have the .miz extension are missions. Put them where Feefifofum suggested. Other mod files such as skins should come with installation instructions, but for skins, extra units and other mods that affect the game play by far the easiest way to install and manage them is to use an application called JSGME. Check out this thread for instructions: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=98607

Fair enough, the odds should have been well & truly stacked in favour of the AD units in that case. I agree, try Weta's suggestion. I'm not sure how much depth the AD modelling goes in to, e.g. IADS track files for the more modern SAM units, but they definitely have electro-magnetic and I think optical LOS modelling which appears to be affected by buildings, at least the larger ones.

Not sure about the MIM-104 or S-300P, but with the short range stuff it may have something to do with the alert state of the unit and time-to-fire. Interesting that neither the Patriot or the SA-10 managed it though - I understand that both were specifically designed with this sort of engagement in mind, as well as aircraft of course.

I would literally sell my house & live in a tent to get a DCS-level Su-27SM... We can but hope...

This has been an interesting and informative thread up to now, but with respect this ^ is starting to sound like some sort of conspiracy theory. I'm done with this thread.

Ooh very nice! Definitely going to use these, thanks very much for your efforts!

I think that aircraft (AI or player driven) are entirely under the control of their flight models and that you can't adjust parameters using the editor in that way unfortunately. Edited to add: maybe ground arrestor gear is something that will be added when the grass airstrips are fully working, though I think it's likely that they're aimed more at the WW2 stuff rather than more modern scenarios. It'd be nice if ground arrestor gear could be included to simulate basic naval landing training. AFAIK the Russian Navy, US Navy, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm (if and when they ever get the JSF) and the French Navy all use such systems for this purpose.

With all the changes to the AI, sound, scripting system, aircraft models, weapon loadouts etc. etc. most older missions created using 1.2.x of DCS world won't work under 1.5.x. The more complex the mission, e.g. scripting etc, the higher the chance that it won't work. I'm afraid that unless simply opening them in the 1.5.4 mission editor and saving them again fixes things, it's likely that you'll have to start from scratch.