King_Hrothgar

Excellent news, thanks for the update.

How many MiG-21's has that one shot down.:P

The most important F-5E skins of all:

Don't have a VR headset and no plans to get one, but this should certainly be done. I'm a little surprised it is treated differently tbh.

I doubt that. The F-5's superior electronics and cockpit visibility combined with the MiG-21's lack of both will even things up a lot. Ultimately, I think we'll see three views based on three levels of skills. For opposing novice users, the F-5 will likely come out on top due to its more forgiving natures (turn fighting vs B&Z) and thus will be considered the better plane. In intermediate hands, I suspect it will be reversed with the MiG-21's radar missiles + overwhelming speed and climb rate advantages giving it the edge. And then finally with expert users, I think it will end up reasonably even.

In the mission editor, you can set it to one or two pilots. If set for one, it does reduce the mass. If set for two, it has two pilots in it regardless of how many players are present. If a player leaves the aircraft (without ejecting), then the mass stays the same. That seat is simply occupied by an AI passenger at that point.

Switch on the far left to the forward position, not rear.

Not likely. I have hopes for next month though.

I tried a few flights with someone on 104th earlier. Here are the results (by memory, wasn't taking notes): 1) I'm pilot, he spawns in back seat. We instantly explode. 2) I'm pilot, he spawns in, my wings explode a minute later while taxiing to the runway. 3) He's pilot, I spawn in back seat and try to blind him with IFR hood, apparently it never showed on his screen. We then exploded during engine startup. 4) He's pilot, I'm in the back. We turn onto the runway and burst into flames. Pretty sure there were a few more attempts, we didn't once start down the runway before exploding. Not sure what the deal is but likely lag related.

You've not played in MP much have you? Cause it doesn't work like that. The overwhelming majority of people who take gunner/copilot/whatever seats are trolls who jettison all the weapons and then eject/bail out. It's always been that way in MP games. Getting a cooperative 2nd player is exceptionally rare. It's cool when it happens, but it isn't the norm. The norm is flying the plane by yourself and rejecting all requests to hop into the other seat unless you know the person.

This really ought to be possible. It isn't a big deal with the L-39 I suppose, but we need that setup and working before aircraft with critical controls in both seats are added (thinking F-14 and attack choppers).

The issue with the R-3R and R-3S is countermeasure resistance. The actual missile flight performance doesn't strike me as unreasonable (bearing in mind most DCS missiles under perform). The gimbal limits on the seeker heads maybe also be a bit generous. I haven't looked too closely, but I've seen them track in ways that are a bit suspicious.

I wouldn't recommend the Hawk or C-101 either, they are using the place holder simple flight model and have been for over a year now. As for the L-39, it is complete minus a campaign and other ancillary stuff. The aircraft themselves are done. The L-39C is currently available in all versions with the ZA being limited to 1.5 currently. But I bet we'll get a 2.0 update next week that adds the ZA to it too. As for how enjoyable it is, I like it. It's a fun little COIN plane that's been used in countless little wars around the world, including Syria currently. It's no A-10C, but then it isn't meant to be. It's a simple plane with simple weapons.;) The Mirage is a pure fighter and if you enjoy that, it's a good option. It is very incomplete at the moment with the biggest issues being a lack of IFF and no radar slewing. But it does have a decent flight model (still being revised) and the overall quality is good. RAZBAM is also making steady and significant progress on it with each update released for all versions of DCS. I think they'll have all the major issues sorted out in the next few months. Very professional team they have.:thumbup:

A few years ago when I rented a 1970's Cessna 172, I was told I had to leave my smartphone in the car and dress in typical 1970's clothing before flying, because realism.:P

By that logic, no competitive full fledged missions are currently possible as we only have 1-2 study sim level aircraft from each of the periods represented (and that is not expected to change in the next 2-3 years as no one is developing eastern aircraft atm). As for introduction dates, I consider them irrelevant. What matters to me is what fought what and whether or not it would be fun to create similar scenarios in game. My previous post lists aircraft that can be used to create both realistic and fun scenarios, nothing more. That said, Saudi F-5E's served alongside USAF A-10A's in the 1991 Gulf War. Both were used for CAS. As for the F-14A. There are two options that are both realistic and balanced. The first is Iranian F-14's, which were terribly limited in operational numbers during the Iran/Iraq war. So those are easy to balance with highly restrictive numbers (think 2 F-14's out of 30+ flyable fighters). It's also worth noting the Iraqis had a handful of MiG-25's and MiG-29A's too. So same deal with them. If we're talking USN service, then the F-14's spawn with broken engines on an aircraft carrier 2000km from the the rest of the fight.:D

I'm pretty sure we have the Su-25A, A-10A, L-39ZA, UH-1H and Mi-8MTV, all of which are from the late 1970's to early 1980's. But maybe I just imagined those aircraft being flyable in DCS.:P

I do like having a variety of skins, my own wishlist is mainly Iranian ones. Should be fun doing Iranian F-5's vs Iraqi MiG-21's over the desert (NTTR).

All it means is it won't be viable on 104th's everything vs everything missions, but I don't think it was ever going to be terribly viable there anyways. I think the F-5's main playground will be in a proper 1970's to early 1980's server without FC3 fighters or the Mirage. I expect it will be sufficiently popular to become a permanent server with ground attack aircraft and choppers too.

It's the L-39C, only with way more firepower. The armament controls are also shuffled around a bit, took a few minutes to figure out how to make it work.

I just read that part of the manual. The AN/APX-72 is simply a military transponder. It allows other units to IFF the F-5E but doesn't do anything to allow or disallow the F-5E to IFF other things. It isn't connected to the radar at all. I couldn't find anything on IFF for the radar. I suppose it doesn't matter too much since all its weapons are WVR anyways on. But it is a little surprising as western electronics were generally better than soviet ones at the time and yet the MiG-21 has IFF.

Well, harriers should be FARP compatible. So there is that. Back on topic, thanks for the update and honesty Prowler. I'll always take a hard truth over being jerked around. In this case I'm not attached to either though, a harrier is a harrier as far as I'm concerned. :)

I think he's saying we need continent sized maps or bigger. I am not opposed to bigger maps, but I also don't think they are needed.

Agreed.

As a WW1 fan, I can say with certainty that I would not buy any DCS WW1 modules until the core game engine supports high fidelity AI flight models and high fidelity damage modeling for both player and AI aircraft. If those issues are sorted, I might be up for some DCS WW1 action but not before.

Let's hope not. FSX with modern flight modeling and hardware support would be a nice addition to our little hobby. But we'll have to see, I haven't paid any attention to that project so far. Very true. I'm an old hand at CFS's but I played WT for a bit while waiting for BoS to come out. A lot of people I flew with there ended up moving to RoF and BoS. WT may not appeal to us much, but it is a great introductory to flight sims for people who haven't played one before. No kidding, the hardcore won't either for the most part. An OR doesn't do you much good if you can't pay rent.:doh: Between the hardware and the OR itself, they priced themselves far outside the mainstream gamer market.