ThePops

The same bug exists on the Kola map.

With navaids there is a clear, and very important, difference between the physical ground based navaids and the instruments in the cockpit with their inherent merging, added calculations and so on of these navaids into much more abstracted navigation aid. The FMS in airliners is the state of the art today. It combines everything (GPS, INS, DME, VOR, ILS and so on) into an opaque and abstract navigational solution, by merging signals from all these technologies. Earlier/older instruments did bits and pieces of this merging and abstraction. A basic old fashioned "ILS instrument" is also a rudimentary merging and abstraction of usually 3 completely separate technologies (LOC, GP and DME. In very old versions the DME is replaced with marker beacons). The instrument itself can be seen as one single entity. The basic principle today is that GNSS is the primary instrument, while INS is the secondary/complimentary instrument. As an always working backup (GPS can be jammed and spoofed), there are only two acceptable solutions. One is VOR/DME, the other is DME/DME. The backup for precision approaches is ILS, but only with DME. Thus DME is essential. Without it, all commercial airliners would be grounded, with some exceptions. VOR/DME works basically as a TACAN. DME/DME use multilateration, all done by the FMS. Two DME stations are enough. The FMS finds out all by itself what stations and what kind of stations it uses at any given time. It would use DME/DME most of the time, but add a VOR station every now and then for instance, or use only VOR/DME for a period of time. All based on error estimation and available stations. The point is, there is no such thing as a VOR/DME "signal" or "station", in the same manner as there's no DME/DME signal or station. DME/DME is at least 2 separate stations obviously, and they are far apart. The output from the FMS is the same if it uses VOR/DME or DME/DME, or VOR/DME/DME for that matter, or GNSS (to some degree). A TACAN station has bearing and distance functionality. The bearing is similar to a VOR in overall functionality, but the distance technology IS a DME. There's no difference. It is the same thing. The main point here is that a DME is a separate thing. It's not "part" of any other station. It's not "part of" a TACAN (even though this usually is the case) or "part of" an ILS or a LOC or a GP or whatever. It's a completely separate entity, and DMEs are often installed as standalone units. A DME "for an ILS" may be used more often by FMS's doing RNAV than it is used for ILS approaches. The "part of" is a misconception, probably due to the way aircraft instruments are merging and abstracting for instance a VOR/DME or an ILS. Another reason for this misconception is perhaps the organization of frequencies/channels for all these technologies. This organization can be seen in the large table at the bottom here: https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Instrument_Landing_System_(ILS)_Frequencies and is well known to most here I think. It is used both for instruments and for frequencies for ground channels. In an aircraft, when the ILS is tuned in to 109.10, what happens is: The LOC frequency is tuned to 109.10, this is done manually The GP is automatically tuned to 331.4 The DME is automatically tuned to channel 28X or (1052 - 989) Obviously the ground equipment must also use these frequencies for that runway, or this wouldn't work. In civilian aircraft the GP and DME are usually never tuned to a channel as such. The GP is tuned automatic from the LOC frequency. The DME is tuned automatically from the VOR or LOC frequency. DME isn't used much in GA anymore, but the way a standalone DME was tuned was not usually by the channel, but by the corresponding VOR/LOC frequency. There are 200 VOR+LOC frequencies. There are 252 TACAN channels. The military has access to more channels than a civilian aircraft normally has. An FMS will tune the DMEs to whatever it thinks gives the best navigational solution without the pilot knowing anything. In that sense I think the beacons.lua files are a bit odd compared with the real world. I can understand TACAN, since this is two technologies merged into one complete system. For everything else, all that is needed is DME, LOC, VOR and GP as standalone units. A VOR/DME is simply a VOR + a DME. Any version of ILS can be made by combining LOC + DME and eventually GP, or no DME but marker beacons. There's no need to have a separate VOR/DME and a separate ILS with DME (with obscure channels), and one ILS without DME and so on. It's a pity the DME in DCS don't work. It renders almost all ILS'es useless. There are NDBs also, but that's really ancient. Then there's the Russian system which I know nothing about

Looks to me that AI taxiing problems is a DCS issue. The "I" in "AI" is way too low it seems . The navaids are lacking everywhere, or are a real mess. This is IMO also a DCS issue mostly. The DME is inop in all beacons.lua files on all maps, thus no ILS or LOC is actually working in any case (with an inop DME, these ILS'es and LOCs would be turned off. Marker beacons are from a long gone age). No mountain hangars in Bodø or Bardufoss, DCS also perhaps? Don't know. And probably worst of all, WHITE centerlines on roads in Norway... I mean, it's like having blue leaves instead of green. Not to speak of the lack of 20+ regional (and international) airports along the coast (clearly not a DCS issue though). Buuut, it's getting there, inch by inch. Every update includes something new and/or improved. These maps takes years and years anyway, no reason to complain or give up just yet. We can point Orbx in the right direction though.

This is fantastic Unbelievable I have never heard of this site before.

This is typically a result of one and/or two things. One is lag. There's some delay from stick input to aircraft response. The other is too much stick output compared with the manual stick input (too much amplification around the neutral zone). In real aircraft it's usually due to the aircraft not being trimmed in pitch, and your muscles aren't relaxed. I agree that DCS is not particularly good in this respect on overall, but it varies a lot from aircraft to aircraft. Tuning the curvature helps a lot. I have it at 25 as default all across the board, but more is probably OK as well. Haven't investigated further. In IL-2 I have it at "0.5", making the stick input/output roughly similar to DCS. The same for X-Plane. Even in WarBirds 25-30 years ago, this was a hot topic. It was the only flight sim at the time with this kind of tuning (that I knew of at least). Getting this roughly right was essential. It also had a smoothing algorithm. Back then, sticks used analogue potentiometers. They gave rise to spikes that had to be smoothed out. The trim in pitch is very important. Here DCS is just poor with too much trim output for too little trim input. It's almost impossible to trim the aircraft completely neutral at any given speed. It doesn't matter all that much for larger maneuvers, but when precision is important, as it is in a tight formation, this is essential. Essential unless you fancy unrealistically difficult flying Then there is the lag. This is a difficult thing. In a PC flight sim we cannot feel accelerations and g, we can only see what happens on the screen. There's always an observed lag between stick input and when we actually see much happening on the screen. The accelerations don't have any lag however, but the visual image(s) is perceived as "laggy", because that's how acceleration works. This is straight forward basic physics. The position S when you have a starting position S0, a velocity v0 and acceleration a is: S = S0 + v0*t + 0.5*a*t^2 We see only S, and therefore also v, but the acceleration, a, we have no feel for whatsoever. It is however super essential in real flying. That's what the "seat of your pants" is all about. One main "issue" is the t^2 (t*t). The position due to acceleration is proportional to t squared. When this is less than 1 second, not much is happening in terms of position. Let's say t is 0.1 s after an input that causes 5g. Then t*t = 0.01. That 5g is scaled by 0.01. This means that everything that happens in the first fractions of a second, let's say the first 0.5 s is hardly noticeable in a sim, but very much noticeable in RL. You can see rotations of course, but that's only part of it. A flight model will always feel a bit odd due to this. You react a bit slower than you would do in RL, and this can cause PIO. A Level D commercial flight sim must have 6 degree of freedom motion platform, so these things can at least in part be accounted for. If you only do simming, then I guess it doesn't matter all that much. Sooner or later you will get a "feel" for it. This is even more pronounced for RC flying. The brain is rather incredible this way. That "feel" isn't necessarily realistic or "correct" when compared with real life flying however. OK, enough FM rambling in a day

What curvature do you use on your joystick/rudder axis? Having said that, many aircraft in DCS are way over sensitive in the trimming (the tiniest of pushes on the hat causes to much action), making them unnecessary hard to trim manually.

This could be to lag and intermittency in the connections. Perhaps also poor smoothing code. In WarBirds in the 90s this was always a hot topic. The internet is much better now (no US Robotics phone modems anymore ), but not not that much better in fact. There's always lag, the information can only go so fast from one end of the world to another, and that speed is overall slower than the speed of light in a straight line (across the surface) between those points. The end effect is very much relativistic, not in theory but for real. A see B as B was 1 second ago, and B see A as A was one second ago. The problem is if that "second" varies a lot, then a good smoothing code is needed to interpolate/extrapolate. Another thing is FOV. To stay in formation, you would like to have straight (imaginary) lines to appear as "straight" on the screen. About 70-75 degree FOV would do that, outside that and things become distorted, fisheye effect for instance for 100+ degrees. This is also about practice, but it's definitely easier with a roughly correct FOV.

Thanks, will try that

Probably doable manually with lots and lots of work, but does it exists some merge tool for automatic merging of missions?

Perhaps I will give it a go But, this wasn't my point at all however. I know where to go for high fidelity and accurate airspace/ATC if that's what I feel like doing an evening. I don't even need to simulate it. My point was simply that it's a lot more to "fidelity" than pushing virtual buttons to start up an aircraft. Perhaps the F-35 will offer a different kind of fidelity? I mean, it's very far from being a museum piece, so something ought to be different? In 2-3 years we will find out I guess.

The (G)NS-430 is a first generation GPS navigator for GA. Today it is completely outdated. They are still around and people still use them, but that's more because they sold like hot cakes when they came and there are lots of them. However, you cannot use it for 90% of the stuff you normally would need a (modern) GPS navigator for. The NS-430 in DCS is in turn a very limited version of the real one. Modern ones typically have FMS capability, can do modern approaches (RPN), has wifi/bluetooth so it can be connected with a pad for much added practicality and so on. They are fully autopilot compatible also, and of course works seamlessly with glass and other instruments. However, all the capabilities are lost without proper database of the airspace, AIRAC/AIP.

Well, as pointed out, this "just flying" isn't very realistic in DCS. It's a lot more involved than following a route or just goof around and looking at F10. That's were ATC, (ground)radars and charts come in. With humans as ATC/radar it can be done very realistic I think, but it's a job better done by AI in general. Anyway, we are diverging from topic. My point was simply that I don't think any degrading of documentation requirements for modules is going on, whatever that actually means. Changing perhaps? I don't know. ED has been at it for a long time now, and it's reasonable to assume that they know much more than anyone of us what actually is important regarding "fidelity". More often than not, people just want to goof around for instance, and then this has to be fun. Then "fidelity" becomes 95% nice graphics combined with believable physics, not necessarily super accurate physics. Not every single module in DCS needs to be a museum piece with the usual museum piece discussions. There are lots of other aspects.

That depends very much on the time period. X-Plane and MSFS as civilian sims have always been current. You just download the latest AIRAC and charts from somewhere and all the avionics and procedures for every aircraft at every airport for every flight will be correct. The military got their own in addition, and now country also is a variable. These things have changed dramatically over the years as technology and procedures have advanced. These military procedures have never been made available to the public like AIRAC/AIP AFAIK. In a civilian sim this is very much what it's all about. A high fidelity Boeing/Airbus in a high fidelity airspace. The airspace and procedures are literally 100% correct, always. What about DCS? You push the correct buttons in the correct order to start up the aircraft, but from there on you fly in a pure fantasy environment. Ground radar was very much necessary for any operation at all for instance. It was a huge complex system. It still is, but very different from the 70s and 80s since aircraft has become much more autonomous in the last 10-20 years (also civilian aircraft). But, where are the ground radar operators in DCS? If all that was modelled and worked, would it make a better sim? It for sure would be much more realistic, but more fun? Perhaps, perhaps not. Dynamic campaigns are probably related to this. Is dynamic campaigns a good thing? I don't know. It smells very much pure game for it to be fun IMO.

IMO "lack of documentation" is just a way of saying this or that module is of low interest or low priority for ED to make, for one reason or the other. I would think economic priorities are high on the list. Third party developers are free to make whatever they want, but this doesn't change the economic reality. It's like a puzzle where you don't have all the pieces. You can always recreate a missing piece from scratch, fill in the blanks by digging around in obscure documentations in libraries at far away places, often written in a different language. Get hold of old books and pictures from sources that you first have to find and so on. Interpolate, apply some basic physics etc. It's very much doable, but it requires lots and lots of recourses compared to having all the pieces from the start. This is what archeology is all about for instance. In principle it's exactly the same as recreating an old aircraft, but recreating an extinct animal from a few pieces of bones is of course a thousand times more difficult. An oddball aircraft that few will buy, and at the same time has poor availability documentation, is not a good start. Someone has to pay for all the "missing pieces". That's what it mostly is about IMO. I also think there's a tendency to mix reality/fidelity with the feeling of accomplishment of "operating" a complex machine. This feeling doesn't really change all that much even if it's just a digital replica. The steep learning curve feels real, even if nothing is real in the digital replica. Just think about it for a few seconds. Cockpit familiarization is very much about muscle memory. You fingers, your eyes, your back bone knows where the buttons and switches are and how to operate them. This cannot be recreated without a 1:1 physical cockpit replica. Hence, in a Level D commercial simulator a 100% physical correct cockpit is a hard requirement (as well as certain minimum requirements for visuals, sound, movement and so on). DCS is a game and ED is a commercial entity. That's the reality. It's a seriously cool game though, especially for us nerds interesting in "older" military aviation tech, but it's still a game. I have no idea what the documentation requirements for modules are. I'm not sure if such a "hard standard" even exists. I mean, something obviously exists, but that something is nothing even close to the requirements of a Level D commercial simulator, not even a Level A, the lowest level. When it comes to basic aviation stuff (avionics and the corresponding ground equipment and ATC), DCS mostly completely off. Basic stuff that has been correct in X-Plane and MSFS for decades already (ATC for less time though). Anyway, I don't see how the F-35 will change anything. ED obviously has to do a harder job than for the F-5 for instance, but a whole bunch of people will gladly pay for it. All is good IMO.

Have to try this. Have only looked at the files for now since I have no idea how this RSBN works yet. Just a question, isn't there supposed to be one for each runway, or is the runway an optional thing? The navaids are still a big mess in the Kola map. ILS 25 at Bodø is flaky, no LOC approaches at Andøya, Banak or Bardufoss etc. Temprarily fixed all of them in the beacons.lua file and faked the DMEs with the portable TACAN (which didn't work 100% due to a bug making it impossible to just use the DME part).

Great Just a small thing. A column of VOR would be useful. The F-16 in DCS can do ILS, but cannot receive VOR bearings. Not sure which other planes have the same "feature".

Beacon TACAN Portable TTS 3030 is part of the ground unit in the category Fortification. It's made active by the command "Activate Tacan" (Advanced waypint Actions) There are two main modes, with bearing and without bearing (a flag in the advanced editor tag). With bearing everything is OK, it gives bearing and distance. Without bearing, nothing works. Both distance and bearing seems to be shut down. Clearly the DME part should work without the bearing part.

Indeed. There are several VOR approaches in the AIP, also for Bodø, Bardufoss and Andøya. These are all pretty standard, race track and/or procedure turn. I can't imagine they are nothing but identical to TACAN approaches except slightly offset numbers. A bigger problem is the mess on the Kola map (or perhaps DCS itself?) when it comes to VOR and in particular DME. Older procedures will typically rely on NDBs and markers. These are almost all gone now, also on the Kola map, so this won't help much.

Just tried several with the C-101EB (because it well set up with avionics). It looks like using DME component of a VOR/DME does indeed work at some stations. I tried only on Kola map due to easy access of AIP, in the west at least I think perhaps this is more of an implementation issue on the map itself. Perhaps also on the aircraft? A big mess for sure.

Slightly diverging subject. Is wet/icy/cold/slippery runways modelled in DCS? If so, is it a DSC feature, or is it per aircraft like icing on the airframe? Or perhaps per runway?

I think it is. It's not due to lack of info, but rather that the info changes a lot. This is especially true in the last 10 years approximately, when RPN was introduced "for real", although some places here and there got it earlier. This also lead to other changes. IFR was for a long time (several decades) about VOR, NDB, ILS and radar guidance, and it was the same for GA, airliners and military. The military also had TACAN of course, but it was nothing but a parallel VOR/DME system, and still is. Today the situation is more like: GA: A dedicated aviation GPS is all you need, both for enroute and approaches. Lots of older planes also have ILS/VOR and DME, even ADF. Today you cannot even get ADF for GA at a price anyone is willing to pay. ILS/VOR/DME is for special purpose or special interest (special purpose here includes obtaining the IFR rating, it's really old fashioned). A typical GA airport will have no radio navigation at all. All IFR is GPS based. Airlines: They got it all of course, according to airspace requirements and specific internal airline requirements, but since precision approaches are RPN, this will be used most of the time. Military: Don't know what exactly the F-35 has for instance, but any military aircraft also haveto be able to use the airspace in peace time. I would think it's very much like Airlines, GPS and INS rules, but I would be surprised if ADF was very common for instance. The point though, is that while VOR, ILS and ADF (NDB) is on the way out, very slowly in some cases, DME is not. That is, it's already gone in GA, but not likely to disappear at all. Stand alone DME stations are popping up. DCS is not about navigation of course, and I'm sure not many people will notice if DMEs are missing (I wasn't until Kola). It's just a bit odd though that the fundamental ABC of aviation does not even exist and at the same time people are urging for "high fidelity realism". Personally I'm more in the "get the basics right" category if I had to chose between a nice cockpit and correct approach procedure.

I have never really paid attention until lately. On the Kola map, the rule seems to be that everything navaid is a complete mess on all newly added airports, and doesn't get fixed until 1-2 updates later. It's really hard to understand why this is so, because all information needed about navaids is official and correct, and freely available in the AIPs. Anyway, reporting all these bugs, the issue about DME pops up. AFAIKS DME is simply not there at all (other than as part of the TACAN). The DME part of either a VOR/DME, DME/DME or TACAN should be available for both civilian and military aircraft. Perhaps a part of this is due to the fact that this is a bit messy also in real life ? NDBs have almost completely disappeared from everywhere, and ILS's are disappearing as well. De facto standard for precision approaches is today RNP (basically GPS, but it's a bit more to it than that). In a GA aircraft there are no longer any need for anything radio based when flying IFR. All that is needed is a GPS (Certified navigation piece, made by Garmin typically ). For commercial flights (airlines mostly) it a bit more nuanced. Here some kind of backup system and/or redundancy is a real issue, and the trend is to install more DMEs. DME/DME is much better and cheaper than a couple of NDBs. This is seen everywhere. NDBs are removed, DMEs are installed. A good example is Andøya (on the Kola map). It has no ILS, thus no precision approach it seems. This is of course not correct. Looking in the AIP, the precision approaches are RNP. RNP for RW 14 and RNP for RW 32. RW 14 also has LOC and VOR approach, while RW 32 only has VOR. These are all non precision approaches (for good weather), but the thing is, the requirement for all of them is DME. They cannot be flown without DME. The same goes for ILS anywhere. Today the DME is an intrinsic part of any ILS. A long time ago there were marker beacons, but these are long gone for most of it. Andøya has 3 DMEs, only one of them exists in DCS. DME is like a part of the plumbing that no one sees. Kind of ancient technology, overshadowed by ILS and later RNP/GPS, ADS-B, WAM and whatnot. The fact is that no larger airport would today be operational without DME, and the trend is more DMEs not less. DME should definitely be modelled in any map that is supposed to be contemporary IMO.

That's what happens in real life. When the F-16A came, it was merely a Spitfire on steroids. Soon it was modified for BVR, then much better A/G, avionics, radar etc. Modifications and improvement was done all through it's service life, and with variations from nation to nation. They all ended up like some F-16C+ or something. I think this is and will become even more evident with the F-35 due to its all digital nature.

Exactly, good point

Could be, don't remember any names. I worked as line crew in the F-16 that was used for testing for a month or two. There were lots of testing though, on and off over some time. Helping them download data, hooking up stuff with the missile etc and talking to these Kongsberg dudes, that's when I understood I had to get some real education to work on the cool stuff. So I ended up with a PhD in fluid mechanics/turbines