Laurreth

Ah thanks, that helps. Seems like Easy Comms is a bit inconsistent then, sometimes it picks up tuned radios, other times it doesn't. (Maybe it's something to do with approach/tower/ground selection for ATC?)

I have a mission just flying out of Incirlik (Syria map) with control on 360.100 AM. When I set COMM 1 to that frequency and modulation and then use either the quick comms menu or the specific COMM 1 radio binding on the throttle, radio options are still greyed out, and when I select one, COMM 2 automatically switches to M and tunes 360.100 AM. Most of the time I then see activity on both radios when talking to ATC. Am I doing something wrong? Is it an issue with the Hornet module, that specific ATC, the map, or DCS in general?

Switch an MFD to DAY mode, then go on to the reduce contrast to minimum. Reduce brightness to minimum. Now go to the FCS page because that displays the problem most clearly with its rectangular grid: The screen remains black for maybe the lower 75% of brightness as you increase it. At some point, "most" line art like the general frames suddenly pops in at relatively high brightness, but the inner parts of the grids are missing and text is "fuzzy". As you slowly keep increasing brightness, the inner grid lines pop in one by one and fonts become less fuzzy. Only at maximum brightness they will all be displayed. Some observations: Night mode appears to be behaving better Even just slightly increasing contrast seems to mostly affect the inner grid lines At minimum brightness that shows anything: Slightly increased brightness: Full BRT (everything shown): Adding some contrast:

The whole MIDS/Datalink business is, if not classified, still export-controlled beyond very basic levels and so ED can't use it. According to some videos and what friends did, the Viper at least has DED pages that allow editing link networks (looks like three networks, likely SURV, F/F, and VOC, opposed to five in the Hornet) and wing membership (with no equivalent in the Hornet), but I do not know inhowfar that's functional. The Hornet only has the very broken placeholder MIDS page and an UFC mode on the second press of the D/L button that for all intents and purposes does nothing; actual functionalit in terms of getting trackfiles from control sources magically works as soon as you enable TACAN or that second D/L page, and as far as I can tell, you can't change anything about it.

Alright, thanks to you. I'll do some more experiments to see what happens. I did expose the DCS port on the host machine, but didn't get anywhere. May be an issue with a new Windows install still using v6 privacy features in all the wrong ways. For CGNAT hosts it'd be useful if the master server supported IPv6 and hosts could straight up disable v4.

Is that a feature of the dedicated server only? I can't find any reference when hosting from the game itself, and the public server list also doesn't show anything about it.

I don't say that it's not a problem, and indeed the ranking probably shouldn't be so bothered about something very small running away very quickly. According to [citation needed], The F-16CM would, however, have a vastly more modern electronics suite than the end-of-life F/A-18C which was the result of a 1987 upgrade. The F-16CM in comparison was a child of 2002. In terms of consumer computing, that would make the difference between a cutting edge intel 386 and a late Pentium, and while the military might have had access to slightly more advanced parts or simply more of them, the difference would only have been more extreme.

I thought you were joking, but the textures for the M4 and the holder combined are almost 120MB compressed on disk, and for some reason there are two separate texture sets for guns; I guess someone's standards didn't allow for the pilot and CP/G to have identical guns.

With more and more ISPs supporting this now almost a quarter century old protocol, switching to CGNAT because they run out of IPv4 addresses, and thus making hosting games from home all but impossible or at least very painful, please implement support for IPv6. Dual-stack hosting should not be too much of a hassle. The alternatives like buying hosting or running to your ISP's support line with big googly eyes asking if you could pretty please have a "proper" IPv4 address are quit out of proportion in terms of cost and effort for the on-again off-again filthy casual who just wants to try some stuff with a few friends. Implementing and providing STUN/TURN servers also seems a bit old-fashioned.

The D/L page is now Link-4 on the first press and Link-16 on the second (the one with the AIC, F/F1, F/F2, VOCA, and VOCB options). At least up to the latest patch there was a "convenience" bug though where enabling TCN would enable Link 16 at least partally, don't know if that changed.

According to a 2020 "INTRODUCTION TO TACTICAL DIGITAL INFORMATION LINK J AND QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE" ("Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited."), "the transmission frequency of the terminal is changed for each pulse (77,000 hops per second) through 51 discrete UHF frequencies." I am so far not sure how those frequencies are distributed across the 960-1215MHz band, but the hopping pattern is derived from cryptographic keys and I highly doubt that it can be limited to only a chosen subset. It is very likely safe to assume that either the network in a given theatre is set up to reliably accomodate all participants, or that any participant conforming to specifications will be equipped to communicate across the entire potentially used band; otherwise, it would be near-impossible to have reliable encrypted communication. The one stated limitation is restriction to line of sight (due to the chosen UHF band), so it would be fair to limit range significantly if, e.g., an AWACS isn't available. That said, some fighters like the F/A-18C would be able to act as relays (source is the same document). (edit) This is of course a bit vague since "line of sight" only precludes over the horizon transmissions, not BVR communication. From the perspective of simulating such a system in an environment like DCS, I'd go for the "magic" approach and assume that it "just works" in its entirety. Otherwise, limitations like enabling TACAN on specific frequencies breaking what's otherwise a blackbox system must be documented.

The problem is probably that the slider will be centred at 50%, and your custom FoV does not correspond to that slider position; so as soon as that slider changes its value, the view will snap. What you could try is not use that custom FoV, and instead set the centre position of the throttle's Z axis to be a value corrresponding to your desired setting; double-click the axis row in the "Axis" view, and then, e.g., to still have the full range of motion, but different scaling on either side of centre. It's a bit annoying since you need to save and "save VPC device" every time to make the change active, but if you keep the software open, then set the slider to a good value in-game, and enter the percentage from the "Axis logical" line, it should work.

TBH I would take functionality over realism at some point; even if usable public information isn't good enough for a full-blown realistic implementation, Link-16 is too cool a toy to sacrifice. The F-16 seems to have a fairly usable implementation, and making the F-18 interoperable with that in a documented and accessible fashion would be great. Right now, most official datalink documentation seems to be behind a "not for export" wall which is unlikely to change before Link-22 or some other usurper gains widespread adoption, so waiting for that to change may take another 10-20 years.

To drop my few cents: the HUD on the FC3 F-15C is all but illegible in any daylight situation compared to the A-10C or the F/A-18C. You really need to zoom in a lot to make any use of it. It feels like it's missing a shader to make the single-pixel lines "pop". It's just bad, frustrating, not fun. Given the same position, one of the attached images (all taken by placing the aircraft in the same starting position, loading into the mission, and taking a screenshot without zooming) is strictly worse than the others with barely any contrast even against the runway, and that's about as good as it gets even if you fiddle with brightness and colour. And considering that FC3 is supposed to be a more "fun" or "arcade-y" experience than something like the F/A-18C or the A-10C, I would not accept rEaLisM to be an argument for the player not seeing anything on the HUD at daytime.

It looks like you have it set up as a centred axis, thrust will probably work better if you set it to "slider" in axis tune so it will map from 0 to 100% instead of -100% to +100%.

If you have more than one input device assigned to the axis, also make sure that you have the correct field selected before clicking "tune axis", or you'll just flip something else. Happened to a friend was super annoying.