Tomsk

I've noticed that since the release of the new radar the ACM modes don't seem to work very well in the M2K any more. In particular, I've flown around for 20 or 30 seconds with an enemy plane sat in the centre of boresight mode, within 2 nm, and it just doesn't lock them. It does sometimes eventually get a lock, but it's incredibly unreliable. Same with vertical scan. My squadmates and I have been seeing this quite a bit in our dogfighting practice, is this something that other people have noticed?

There's certainly a lot of overlap: the viper and the hornet are both single seat multi-role jets of a very similar era. That said there are some cool things about the F-16 in comparison to the Hornet. Performance: the Viper is an absolute dogfighting monster: 9G capable and with a power-to-weight that is second to none. The viper has a higher roll rate and greater overall agility than the Hornet. If the Hornet is a Cadillac the viper is definitely a roadster: engine with wings. Ubiquity: it's used everywhere by very many nations, so there are loads of historical scenarios it fits in. Personal history: been a huge fan since BMS, have a lot of experience with it. SEAD: the plane has a big SEAD/DEAD focus, particularly the Block 50 with the Harm Targeting System: unique to the F-16. Avionics: I love the HOTAS for the F-16 and find it very intuitive, definitely prefer to the Hornet. Cockpit: love that no-rails bubble canopy. Air force: You get to pretend to be in the USAF and do USAF things as opposed to Navy things Looks: subjective, but it's one of my favourite looking jets. For me it's an obvious buy because whilst I was really excited when I heard ED were going to make the Hornet, I did find myself thinking: yeah but the one I'd really like is the viper!

Even flying in private groups (i.e. not public servers), we found that without IFF the constant "rayguns" can quickly fill all the available radio bandwidth in complex situations. The Viper releasing with a working IFF would be a huge win, even if that IFF is initially massively simplified.

I seem to recall that in another simulation involving the F-16 if you over-G the aircraft with stores on you can get hung stores that will not drop.

From what I recall, of the lengthy previous discussions on this topic, everyone agrees modern vipers do not carry more than 2 mavericks. Although as I remember it there was also strong evidence that 4 mavericks was used operationally in Desert Storm, so for certain scenarios their use might be realistic.

Loving the new unguided bombs academic video, seems the Viper is shaping up nicely. Something that I didn't see mentioned in that video, but which I have seen in various other F-16 simulations is the "post-designate CCIP" mode. This occurs when you are in CCIP mode but the delay cue is still showing, and you then line up the pipper with your target and press and hold pickle. As the delay cue is still showing you then get a short CCRP release onto the target, rather than a CCIP release. Pretty handy feature at times, and I vaguely recall that the A-10 might also support something similar. I'm curious whether this is indeed a real feature of the F-16, and if so is it one ED have implemented (or intend to implement)? EDIT: Ah just spotted this in the Mini Updates thread: Bet I'm talking about the "CCIP delayed release cue attack" :)

+100

Hi Miguel, glad you've found it useful. Yeah the static planes that are targets .. I was aware of this problem but I didn't have an easy solution. The problem is that without removing the static planes the campaign is quite literally entirely unplayable in VR. That said with recent DCS changes large campaigns have essentially become unplayable in VR no matter what you do, hence I've kind of stopped flying them.

Yeah I'm guessing the campaign has changed to schedule more flights. It would be possible to get the prune script to start pruning active flights, so that other packages (especially those with long wait times) are pruned, but that would be quite a bit of work so it'll take me a while. The whole thing is a bit weird really ... DCS behaves in the most odd ways. I've noticed that if you have lots of AC then you get really bad FPS ... until you pause the mission (using the pause key) and then look around. When paused the frame rate goes shooting up again. Somehow it seems that rendering the aircraft is not the problem, it's simulating them .. even if they are parked aircraft that don't move. It's very special, and something I really hope ED put some effort into fixing.

So the prune script only prunes ground units and static aircraft, it does not prune aircraft that have a mission to fly. I'm sure if you watch the mission play out, you'll find all those aircraft parked at mission start actually have tasks assigned to them and will eventually take off and fly their mission. The prune script can't easily remove those: they have missions they need to fly. Some missions have lots of flights scheduled at the same time as your flight, other missions have almost none. Hence why it can vary quite a bit.

Never mind then ... uninstalled and re-installed DCS ... problem gone ...

Hi, I've been getting back into the Mirage recently however I've noticed that every time I lock a target on the radar and then use "Target unlock/deselect" (Backspace) DCS immediately closes. It does not produce an error message, it does not appear to write anything into the log file, it simple terminates immediately. Can reproduce 100% reliably, doesn't matter if I use HOTAS binding or keyboard. Doesn't matter whether I soft lock or hard lock. Has anyone else seen this behaviour?

I like the early access model a lot also it lets us learn the plane a little bit at a time. The initial release Viper looks like it will be very capable, probably similar in capability to the M2K. That said something that would personally improve the experience for myself and my squadron a lot is if ED introduced fewer bugs during the process. We have observed that updates do seem to regularly break previously working features, which can make it challenging to run a squadron at times. Our last mission was a total bust due to the various bugs that have crept into the Hornet over the last few updates. Now obviously a certain amount of of this is to be expected, early access involves changes. However, as a professional in the software industry I know that it is possible to both innovate rapidly and also ensure quality and prevent regressions using techniques such as automated testing. With the obvious talent and experience ED has at its disposal I have no doubt they can rise to meet this challenge with the early access program for the Viper.

No you get it on airfields as well .. it's a flight model "quirk" in the Hornet, it has reverse ground effect.

Had the "no parking for this aircraft" problem, found a workaround: - Drag the aircraft group off the carrier, onto a nearby airfield. - Change the size of the group - Drag it back onto the carrier. - Profit.

Hehe, that's a choice though. When I converted the Mirage campaign to Hornet I did it Fox-1 only :)

Well just taking the Mirage campaign and converting to Hornet didn’t take me long: change the plane in the missions and fix a few Mirage specific triggers. Not a very professional conversion but good fun nonetheless. I can see why the missions in a paid-for campaign are locked, but still it’s a shame ... I’ve had so much fun playing campaigns which I didn’t actually have the aircraft for.

I converted the original Mirage campaign to the Hornet and enjoyed it very much (different feeling to doing it in the Mirage). I also tried this with the Red Flag campaign, enjoyed it in the Mirage but wanted to have a go in the Hornet. However it all seems to be locked out, all the mission logic is in a DLL rather than in the missions. Which is a shame because I would love to purchase some of the other Baltic dragon campaigns and edit them to be in the in the Hornet (e.g. Georgian War and Enemy Within), the campaigns look great but I don’t want to buy/learn another plane to play them. Baltic Dragon have you considered converting some of your campaigns to work with multi role aircraft (e.g. Hornet or Viper when we get it)?

I guess I would be that 'some' https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3919151&postcount=30 So firstly you're quite right, I don't have any military service and I have a tremendous respect for the knowledge of experts such as yourself and mvgas. I don't claim to be an expert in such matters at all. However, the PACAF document itself does say what an SCL is on Page 3, and in my mind it raised a question: why would this be listed if it simply wasn't physically possible? If the answer had been "because that can happen under these circumstances" with a good explanation I would have accepted that, but it seemed like a good question. I wasn't demanding to have JSOW, I was just curious. Particularly when combined with a photo dated 2000 showing an F-16CJ Block 50 carrying JSOWs, it seemed to suggest it perhaps was possible they were carried. You're right a photo has a history, but when it's the right version of the aircraft and does not seem to be listed as a test aircraft, it does raise a question at least. As much as anything I do this because I'm interested in the history, and want to know what was actually the case. It also seems it might have been a good question, because as I understand it, ED have decided based on other sources that the F-16C Block 50 did indeed carry JSOW by 2007. In the end, it can be hard to know for sure what really happened historically and it's easy for anyone to misinterpret the data. My hope is that together as a community we can build a better understanding, and I can improve my own knowledge in the process.

This really resonates with me as someone who has also chosen to support the Viper, also works in the software industry, understands some of the challenges ED face, but is also concerned about the sustainability of their business model. As a software developer I also have concerns about the complexity and sustainability of their code base. DCS seems to have a lot of regressions, indicating that automated testing is perhaps not where it needs to be. Although of course, I've not seen their code, so this is all just inference on my part. I am very excited about the release of the Viper, this is my favourite aircraft and for me the one I've always waited for (the Hornet being my second favourite). However, I feel in many ways the priority needs to be better shoring up the core. Fixing the many bugs and improving areas of the simulation that really need some love: stability, the AI, performance (especially with big missions), ATC interaction, carrier ops, basically everything that is not "new aircraft". I'm also really keen to see the development of exciting new engine features such as A2G radar, FLIR and a dynamic campaign. I hope ED can do it all, and part of my support for the Viper is that I'd like to see them make this happen: to see DCS become the full and rich sim it has the potential to be. However, like you, I wonder if the things that have been a bit neglected will continue to be neglected .. as their business model demands always releasing new modules to sell and they focus all their efforts on that aim. I can only hope these concerns are unfounded.

I'm quite sure the HUD delay will be realistic to a F-16CM Block 50 aircraft :)

Yeah it looks very much like Turkey at least does run Harpoons on their Block 50 CMs (CM = CCIP upgraded C). http://www.f-16.net/f-16_armament_article12.html in the 'Operational Use' section. That said, I think ED want to (certainly initially) restrict the capabilities to one specific version of the Viper (USAF/ANG F-16CM Block 50 as of 2007) so as to avoid modelling all of the systems that Vipers use around the world (hint: there are lots!).

Some versions of the F-16 did (particularly export ones) but as I understand it USAF F-16s never used the AGM-84 operationally (I guess that's what the US Navy is for ..). http://www.f-16.net/f-16_armament_article12.html

I can certainly understand this, I know our squadron will be simulating a lot of F-16s scenarios where the F-16s are not USAF ones and having the load outs available for those nations would be great. However ... I can also understand that from ED's point of view this is a massively slippery slope. How far should they go adding such features? The Viper in particular has so many different version and was exported to so many countries that the full list of all weapons every version has ever carried would be an awful lot of work for them to do. Then it has to be a much more expensive module to account for all the extra time that goes into it ... and that's not necessarily a good business decision for them.

"DCS F-16C Viper" is more consistent with the "DCS A-10C Warthog" forum title, which is also not the official name of the aircraft but rather how the pilots refer to it.