Temetre

T16000 isnt really smooth, its just not as bad as most other cheap sticks. Which is a pretty low bar. The kinda milimeter precise controls I have to do with a VKB would be near impossible on that stick. As long as you arent a god at flightsims I suppose? Someone always did the crazy stuff. Looks like the CH stick has at least seperate axises, that would be a big plus. Tbh from pure guess you sound like someone thats been playing flight sim for 10+ years and has refueled hundreds of times^^ Its mostly training after all. But refueling has such a high bar its a lot less accessible. I would bet its actually easier in real life.

If you find air-refueling easy, then you must be crazy xD I think an expensive stick is basically required. I got a VKB Gladiator, so that helps, but I wouldnt even want to try it with my old T16000 or so, thats prolly way worse than even the CH stick. Ive actually done my first F-18 refueling without a dedicated throttle, but that was pretty rough. Im going to try to get better, but IMO it would be very valuable to have an AI that can help with air-refueling, at least the post-contact stuff. Not everyone can afford the hardware, and personally I dont even feel very immersed trying to refuel. Thats one of the scenarios where the lack of perception and feedback just really hurts my experience.

Huh, thats interesting. From a lot of peoples talk I wouldve expected it to be planned for first half of the year or so. Now that almost makes me wonder if the module will even come this year. Or maybe just as as pre-christmas date.

Yeh absolutely this. Even with the F-18 i feel i can only somewhat reliably refuel when im in a top state of mind. F-16 i still wanna learn, im sure its gonna be bad xD The Phantom does scare me because of the stories about its rough handling tho. And it wont even have the F-16s FBW either.

Thought its only a chance of success if I know exactly where the enemy AA is and theres no air cover in the form of mig-21s or so^^ Hope the Phantom will increase that scope of viability a bit. I wouldnt mind that, at all!

Personally, I would love if we got the ability to make the AI do some of the refueling job. Like leave making contact to me, but have the WSO (aka Jester) keep the plane in position. Or just have an Iceman pilot do the entire refueling process. Refueling is just such a difficult process in some planes, doubly so since you lack a real field of view or depths perception. VR helps a bit, but you still dont got any feel for the plane. Even the quality of your headtracking or throttle can make a difference. The whole process just feels so rough and disorienting in games. And I feel like a F-4E might stretch the viability of refueling. Like, if theres a chance of failure, then you cant really plan missions around refueling.

Oh, I like how that sounds. So even on the Phantom-E, the Shrike is much more integrated than in our A-4E Skyhawk mod (which tbf has limited APIs to work off). So Ill take it pretty much as granted we get the Shrike. Hopefully the B-variant as well, to fight longer ranged SAMs. Ive only used it in the A-4E Skyhawk, not sure how realistic that was. But you basically had to aim the missile directly at the enemy radar to pick up the signal, was like a ~3 degree aim zone. I dont think you could even uncage the seeker. Got like 10~12 miles of range. Speaking about reliability, Ive only used it from near "perfect" conditions with the nav-computer. Had to know where the enemy radar was, and nav points were basically mandatory to get the ranging right. Attacking HAWK batteries I needed to fire from max range and then instantly turn to dodge missiles. In reality you probably dont got that luxury. I think IRL the shrike also had like one missile for each radar-band, so you needed the right misisle for a specific radar. The HARM with its fire&forget and sensor identification features are a pure luxury in comparision. Let alone the HTS pod, though the F-4G might have something similar.

Btw, do we have anything official on the Phantoms loadout and the AGM-45 Shrike? While its not the G-variant, I think the F-4E would be our first fully modeled cold war plane with anti-radiation missiles? I think the only other one is the A-4E Skyhawk currently, which is a bit limited in its ability to deploy it. Phantom also got the nav-computer thats almost required to use it effectively. Its also interesting that the manual lists the AGM-45B (page 202), which has a bigger booster and increases range from 16 to 40km. First used early 70s, but its hard to find any specific information. That would a quite welcome addition! edit: also im sorry but

According to some talks, might be up to 3 minutes with stored heading. Maybe theres gyro-oil warmup with two minutes added. Not the worst, but might be a plane for hot starts^^

Oh I agree, its a sad truth that developers cant be fully honest without some people getting angry. How devs cant give estimates, because theyre taken by a tiny but loud/angry minority as promises, and who treat delays like betrayals. No matter how much the dev presses that hes just giving internal estimates. But on the other hand, not everyone is that immature, and there is also giving too little information. I feel with the F4 Phantom its the other direction, we know so little that the few tidbits we got only create more confusion. We dont know whats going on with the project. Eg it would be nice to know if they think a release in the next 3 month is realistic, or if its at least 6 months, something in that fashion.

Idk why devs are so reluctant to give info tho. The current silence created more false expectations than a vague date or announced delay.

Yeh, an aircraft with missiles is fundamentally more dangerous than one without. Gotta consider that even when on the offense.

Cant really indentify the issue, but I noticed that marking points in the distance (>30 miles) with TGP had the point drift a lot in relation to the ground targeted? Mightve determined incorrect ground height. Thats in mission editor where GPS should be available. Maybe connected, not sure yet.

Oh I see, thx for the answer!

Probably some weird mix of being a light plane with strange aerodynamics, having a single powerful engine and the gear-setup/tuning. I remember reading about accidental take-offs while taxiing with the F-16 prototypes. Maybe its just naturally instable on takeoff, or the nose-gear is squishy to avoid going nose up during taxi, and that cases the side-steer while starting.

The big edits to the flight model already happened, didnt they? Idk if its was 6-12 months ago, but it made the Hornet more agile and speedy. I think also some ground effect, it became slightly harder to land on runways? Pretty sure they are still finetuning it though.

I got VKBs in a HOTAS setup, I would love if I could use their little "throttle levers" to control stuff like the 3-position switch on the F-18 flap selector, the F-16 autopilot switches, maybe landing gerar. Maybe I should check if external software like joy2key or so has the function, but it would be nice to have a way to do this ingame. At least for "big" stuff you commonly use. Or a function to set up axis to do action at certain positions, inside of the game?

Dang! Thats actually a great answer, I think thats it. Dirt, scratches and reflections dont go away by not focussing on them, but its becomes more of a "fog" effect, and your brain doesnt really register the dirt/scratches as an object and tries to look around it. Kinda like how youre not looking at the mist on a foggy day, even though it clearly limits your vision. Or how you can wear glasses, and forget that they are dirty. On a PC screen, there is no depths, so everything is just layered atop each other and nothing filtered out by focus or brain. I think thats one of those realism things where you cant fully replicate the real thing, because it doesnt quite translate to our setup. And even with a fully clear conopy its often hard to see stuff in flight sims, like other aircraft.

I hope not. Its probably not so bad in reality, but scratched canopys tend to be irritating on PC screens. Idk why.

A general question, since I dont quite follow the development, and Im kinda new: There doesnt seem to be mentiones of damage model or PFL(D) functions. Seems like currently you can over-G without damaging your stores or targeting pod. Is that still planned, even though it doesnt seem to be listed in the roadmap?

Oh, so thats what that switch is for (on better F-16 variant)^^ Aight thx, guess well have to weight for the Eurofighter and the wondrous MAWS Assuming the F-15E doesnt got some of that stuff that is.

I dont think youre not making a mistake, the radar is either bugged or unfinished. There is no way to improve it. For comparision, the IRL F-16 radar is less capable in its A2G functions, but in DCS its way more usable and closer to reality than the F-18s.

Tbh the Hornet ground radar seems kinda bugged in terms of visuals. It shouldnt look this bad, in reality it was used to identify vehicles, for example. The expand modes also dont seem to do much either. I do like the F-18 for its powerful sensors, and big, informative screens. But I gotta admit, the G-limiter really makes me miss the Falcon. F-16 you got like 8G even with a central drop tank, but I just flew a clean F-18, full fuel tank, and did a turn at 500 knot... the G-limit went down to 5.5... thats pretty rough man xD

Btw what are these sytems on F16 and F18? Never really found much evidence about that, but I also havent looked too much into RWR/EW stuff either.

Aw shame, guess its not gonna be all the big of a change. Makes me wonder how much pods are over/underperforming due to the lack of simulation. Sure we eg dont got digital zoom noise, but it seems like the IR image (and how it looks on our screen) is also much less detailed and clear than in reality. Technical limitations both benefit and hurt the pods usage. But reading up about the Sniper Pod, maybe theres a few thing it could bring? Apparently its lower drag and lighter, which is gonna be nice, especially in A2A mode and multirole missions. Viewing angle "backwards" seems bigger too? Im curious about the color camera, that could help with visibility issues and make orientation+identification easier. Especially TV-imagine would benefit a lot from higher zoom, but IR could be nice too for standoff ammunition/identifications. I wonder if the IR-image will be less noisy than in current pods? Apparently got a dual mode laser, maybe the stronger setting is higher range? Could help with logner ranged laser-guided munitions like GBU-39s or Mavericks (at least on the F-15E). If current tech trends are anything to go by, I would bet that the Sniper Pod can also combine TV image with IR highlights? Maybe even with the ability to indentify targets through image recognition, even missile sensors can do that these days. The ability to automatically scan for and select highlights seems quite logical for a digital system. Maybe that kinda stuff is classified or hard to reproduce though.