LowGlow

I don't get all that fuss about alleged realism. As a new user you need to know which control is where, and therefore you need to be able to read the labels. Period. It already starts with the first few seconds of the first Tomcat tutorial, which asks you to execute test functions which you have no clue in which position you have to rotate the test knob to. That's frustration right from the start. No one asked Heatblur to redo the entire cockpit and making a shiny version of it, just to make some of those labels readable that are currently not. If really someone feels that a certain button should be that worn out to not be readable at all (for whatever reason), then Heatblur could do it like with the A10 where you can select between factory new / worn out. I don't buy that it would be that much work to just fix some cockpit labels.

Ah, it also has something inside the seat, OK, I missed that. I thought it would just change seat belt tension. OK, I can imagine that this combination really makes a difference to immersion for jet sims. I wonder if somebody also experimented with a G-suit solution.

Interesting, for me the HARM did not self loft, and I was somewhere between 5..3 nm away from target. I was very low, and in Tacview I later saw that the HARM retained the same low altitude and finally simply overshot the target and impacted behind target. That's why I changed my tactic in another attempt and made a pull up attack instead, which finally succeeded. Good that you mentioned the M-SEL button in your video by the way! Almost nobody mentions the M-SEL button in mark point videos. They always manually dobber or enter the newly created mark point number, which takes precious time in such close target situations. It's a tiny detail which makes a huge difference for me.

What do you mean with "movable flaps"? Something I missed in the demo?

Okay, I finally made this mission! No cheating, no landing, no rearming, no gun strafe, just HARM, and this video brought me on the right track, thanks! So I can confirm, it is really possible to solve this mission with exactly one HARM each to took down all 4 SAMs. As said the first 3 SAMs are no challenge. They can be shot down each with one HARM. The 4th and last SAM (SA-10) I took down like this: 1. Flying towards the SA-10 at around 19k feet. 2. About 20nm out the SA-10 started to fire at me, and I saw the rockets taking off by looking out of the cockpit. So I looked with the HMCS at the origin of the rockets' trails and created a mark point (by HMCS). 3. Then I immediately pressed M-SEL to select the newly created mark point as steer point and making it SPI. 4. Hard nose down to dodge the missiles fired at me, and retaining the jet at very low altitutude from this point on (e.g. 50ft). 5. Once the missiles were defeated, low level approach towards the SAM (which is now a stear point / SPI), using some terrain masking. 6. Few nm out to target, loft up with 45° until reaching around 5k ft, firing the SAM (POS mode). 7. Immediately returning back low and escaping the site. 20s later or so, the HARM took out the SA-10. Mission completed.

So that's a 3 DoF seat mover and addtionally it pulls harness to somewhat simulate pulling you into the seat under Gs. Interesting idea. The question is whether that harness system pays off. I mean for the price you can get a simple seat mover, just without the harness system. Will you keep us updated on your process?

Yeah, I see. So currently you can either choose to spend a lot of time, or a lot of money, or both. Either way, for me that's a high price while not even knowing how much it adds to my personal VR experience. Hopefully things become cheaper in future, but I'll follow how it evolves.

I have also wondered about this behaviour of the AIM-120 in DCS. To me it does not really make sense that when the AMRAAM switches from datalink guidance to pitbull mode, that it would suddenly acquire another target that's way off its boresight.

Well, if it's so easy to take the SA-10 out, then maybe try. The mission "HARM on the Range - Russian SAMs" comes with DCS. Like I said, I also tried low altitude attacks and finally shot the HARM from a very short distance onto the SA-10, doesn't work. Shooting 2 consecutive HARMs onto the SA-10 works. Whether that's accurate or inaccurate behaviour, I can't say.

Hmm, quite mixed opinions. But from what I got here, it's probably better to start with a simple butt kicker instead. I get it that a motion platform is especially useful for helis, but in case of fixed wings if immersion is somewhat limited to takeoff and landing, that doesn't really pay off in my opinion considering the prices of these things. Interesting though that there seem to be so many people having done motion chairs DIY. I guess that burns a loooot of time getting there. Doing the hardware, dealing with software stuff and what not. That's not really an option for me.

Oh, are these switches really implemented in DCS? I remember there was once a mishap with a real Viper where the pilot accidently flipped the wrong switch at low altitude and ejected, as the jet no longer behaved as expected by him. And it turned out later it behaved as expected, just that he cut off the FLCS.

Yeah, but my question rather was whether it was possible to shoot down those 4 different SAMs (different types and locations) in this mission with 4 HARMs in total, as this training mission was designed to practice shooting HARMS, not gun strafing or anything else. However from other people's responses, it seems there is really no way to shoot down the 4th and last SA-10 with only a single HARM left. Like I said, by landing and re-arming I can shoot down the SA-10 with only 2 HARMs easily, but that's not how this mission was designed. Anyway, so I guess this particular training mission was not fully thought through, or who knows, maybe there is really some glory trick none of us has discovered yet. If the orignal ED mission designer reads this, hint appreciated. ;-)

OK, I reproduced the trim issue: I tried the quick start mission "Nevada: HARM on the Range - Russian SAMs". After having shot the 4 HARMs auto trim failed. Nose would always pitch up.

Has anybody tried some motion platform with DCS? Is it worth it? Considering that these systems start at around 2500 bucks with 4 DoF, and going into absurd amount of money for 6 DoF ore more, that's a bit steap to just purchase one to see if it really improves immersion and which one to pick. And after watching a review of somebody having tested the Next Level Racing 4 DoF motion platform and stated that his cheap but kicker brought him more immersion than that this expensive chair kit, that made me even wonder more if such a purchase would make sense at all. I mean a 100 bucks subwoofer is more immersive?

Interesting. I never thought about the Viper's HUD refresh rate. The Tomcat's HUD refresh is horribly low (like 4 FPS?), but that's what it was in the real Tomcat I guess. even though I have never seen 4 FPS on Tomcat HUD tapes. What disturbs me more is that HUDs in DCS in general look somehow unrealistic in VR with any module. I don't know what it is exactly, but with a real HUD you can clearly visually distinguish the HUD lines spatially from other visual content outside. In DCS you can't. Is it uneven translucency with the real HUD? Is it the reflection of the HUD screen surface? It should not be the sharpness, right? Because real HUDs in jets are set to infinity distance as well.

With the Viper modules comes a quick start mission for the Nevada map called "HARM on the Range - Russian SAMs". In that mission you have to suppress 4 different russians SAMs with exactly 4 HARMs loaded onto the Viper. Question: Is there actually any way to defeat all 4 SAMs with only 4 HARMs? The first 3 SAMs are not really a challenge, you can easily put them out with one HARM each. However the 4th and last SAM in this mission is a SA-10 "Grumble" (S300) and that is indeed a challenge! Not only does it have a phased array radar (silent RWR) and a long range, but it also simply shoots down your HARM, no matter if you shoot from high or low altitude, no matter if shot from far away or very close to the target. The only way I can put the Grumble out is sort of cheating: landing, rearming, and finally shooting 2 successive HARMs onto the SA-10, in which case the Grumble is overwhelmed to track and shoot down both HARMs close to each other. But ... I find that cheating, because it's not what the original mission designer had in mind, was it?

@BIGNEWY Was this flight model misbehaviour accidentally assigned as wish list item? Or does that simply mean it is low priority for ED?

Awesome, thanks @BIGNEWY!

Ah, these were the ones I was searching for, thanks!

That more reads like "we don't want to see a problem here". Current behaviour with DCS is significantly different than those in the demonstrated videos, which even show a knife edge at high altitude and not even going to maximum rudder. In DCS you can't even hold a knife edge at low altitude, empty load out, yaw trim at maximum, rudder pedal fully pressed.

Yeah, I have the same problem with Autopilot enable binding. I am on DCS Stable by the way, not on Beta. I reported it one or two weeks ago I think.

I was actually searching for exactly that chaff/flare button before on the RIO seat, but I haven't found it yet. It should be somewhere on the top, right?

Looking at 6:40 it does not seem though as if they had more maximum angle on the rudder than in DCS, and looking at the actual Knife Edge, he was not even using full rudder either. Which makes me think, if the rudder have such a large impact on the real Viper, what could you do with this in a Dogfight if this was correctly modelled in DCS.

It happened to me bunch of times in DCS after jettison of bombs and tanks that I had to manually trim pitch, somehow the Viper kept nose up, but I couldn't redproduce it right now. Another thing I just realized, when you fly upside down in DCS, then pitch trim does not work. Is that correct behaviour?

In the Tomcat it usually was the RIO who was calling the ball on carrier landings, not the pilot. Any plans to implement that?