Frostiken

It's not my fault I shot the guy. I mean, if they didn't want me to do that, why would guns be legal?

Wait, what are we even arguing about? 1) Hotter things show up brighter on FLIR than things that are colder. 2) For things that are the same temperature, differences in thermal radiant coefficients means they project a different IR signature and thus, will be easily distinguishable by a FLIR sensor and contrast with each other in black and white. If you look at an aircraft at night (up close) with FLIR, especially if it's been running, you can make out the gaps in the panels, you cannot really read the tail number (the paint used for the number doesn't contrast enough with the aircraft paint). However, you can actually see the rigid structure of the aircraft. Due to the warmer interior conducting metal, where the aircraft skin is riveted on will appear brighter, giving it a sort of checkerboard appearance. Instead of appearing flat, you can see the ribs underneath. The engine retains a lot of heat and the intakes themselves will glow much brighter than the rest of the aircraft hours and hours after shutdown. PS: GGTharos, I saw the animals right away. Sure, they appear to be as "warm" as the wall behind them, but they contrast nicely with the GROUND, which is the problem in DCS. Also, Milene, if you're talking about image quality, that's a SniperXR which is way better than a Litening pod... Honestly, if we just tweaked the ground textures to be much more gray appearing, it would be at least a token effort until we get a more realistic modeling in a future module... Also, sorry for no pod pictures, hasn't come up recently :/

With realistic avionics guys redballing your stupid problems that are mostly your fault anyway, and angrily swapping out an LRU because you're too whiny to just take it :D

I'll also point out that all names, to include the DCC/ACC, are removed from aircraft when in combat zones anyway, as a result of the F-117A that got shot down over Bosnia where the media talked about the pilot as if he were dead, putting huge stress on the family. And the guy who was flying that plane wasn't even the one whose name was on the side :)

That's an interesting video - he's clearly buddy lasing, and you'll see that he's firing both lasers throughout the entire video even after the weapon impacts. It's hard to tell what that weapon is, but looks like, maybe, rockets. Sighting with the laser for a wingman without a TPod? Or maybe for a completely different weapon system like an Apache? By the way are you talking about the birthday cake? It's something kinda missing from the pod functionality, I'll agree.

Anyone tried using the pitot probe as a bayonet yet? :D

Nice video. While I'm not a fan of hip-hop or whatever you'd call that, it sure beats the hell out of the generic teenage angst-filled ragey screaming music. Also someone on here was actually looking for proof that F-15Es are engaged in ground-strafing missions with the 20mm - the second the last video is just that :) They also completely missed and the guys run away... As for duds... I honestly don't see why not as long as they're properly simulated. Simply make them a part of the random failures. And as long as a direct impact still damages a vehicle. I honestly have no idea what 492 pounds of concrete would do hitting the top of a tank, but I imagine it's going to **** it up pretty bad :)

You'd have to be dropping bombs at like 30,000 feet in that case. Otherwise there'd be no hope of the bomb even reaching the target since it would cut the corner to an extreme degree.

I think something got lost in the translation there...

To be fair, sounds like what I expected - a bullet hitting a thing. The supersonic crack is really where most of the noise comes from. Additionally they're not using HEI so there's no sound from the explosions.

You guys do realize you can set these 3-minute length YouTube videos to play from a certain timestamp, instead of just arbitrarily expecting us to watch the whole thing and find the sound you want to point out, right? As for DU, it is dangerous but not for the reasons you may think. The only real danger comes from the fine dust blowing around from an impact as it poses inhalation hazard, and being a heavy metal, it's not something you want to breathe. The radioactivity is extremely low and any dangers posed by that is going to be overshadowed by heavy metal concentrations in the lungs or kidneys. Fortunately the incendiary component of an API round comes from the fact that uranium is generally pyrophoric and burns when it's powdered so the actual amount of material that remains from a DU impact with armor (no promises when it hits sand) is extremely little. I would imagine most of the health threat related to DU may be more anything left on/in the remains of armor, as children are going to go play on it and put anything in their mouths. But then again, lead is also a heavy metal, and there's no actual evidence that DU poses anything more than a theoretical risk. On top of it all, the bleeding-heart whiners are going to cry about every weapon used in a war and how it can 'hurt the children' after it was used. If all we did was fight with swords they'd cry that broken bits of metal and cut children's feet so we should ban pointy things. Yeah no, shut up.

The Harrier is a cool aircraft but in terms of capabilities, it's just as gimped as the F/A-18C, if not more. Ultimately if you wanted to put in an aircraft for 'cool things it can do', I'd take the Harrier over the F/A-18 because at least you get VTOL coupled with carrier landings. And the only rational reason to want an F/A-18 over just about anything else is carrier ops. Or you just have severe brain trauma. It's hard to have an opinion on the F-14 because your opinion will always be influenced by Top Gun, unless you've somehow managed to never see it. That said I'm not sure I'd really care for it since it's effectively just a Naval F-15 which has exactly half as many aircrew. Yeah, no Phoenix missiles, but is that really a deal-breaker? Not for me. Unless you're talking implementing it in simplified Lock On style in which case, I'd be all for it... it just seems to make more sense to just do the much easier and straightforward F-15C. I did always like the F-14 as a concept but let's be honest, unless ED is making simulators for Iran it's not gonna happen.

Unless you're talking a Superhornet, I could not possibly find myself caring whatsoever about a sim for any of those aircraft :) I mean, Harrier? Seriously? What would be the point of modeling something as broken and useless (:D) as the F/A-18C, and then putting in something even more dangerous, broken, and useless (:D :D :D)? You know, for as resistant as you are about the F-15E in attempting to claim the -18 is somehow better, you do realize it has TF radar, right? :) Unless you imagine penetrating enemy airspace with TF capabilities, dropping 8,000 pounds of munitions and stand-off weaponry with more precision than any other aircraft in the world today, and then flying back out on one tank of fuel. Or providing CAS in Afghanistan to anything but the most desperate JTACs :)

1) If you look at the pod itself, there's two lenses. The center one may or may not have a yellowish hue, but that's the FLIR aperture. The one displaced to the side is the laser transmitter. 2) As mentioned, the flashing M means you're about to be masked. Masking should be determined by things like your loadout as programmed into the DSMS but I don't know if it really is in the sim. Masking exists so that you cannot shoot a high-intensity IR laser into your own airframe, or worse, your own munitions as it would risk detonation. Masking zones are always going to be a little bigger than the actual masked materials. 3) No, actually. You should only use the laser on PGMs when it's about 8 seconds before impact. You can completely ignore the bomb until then, and perform whatever maneuvers you wish. As long as the bomb can see the laser when you fire it it's fine. Do not worry about masking the TPod until you're in the sweet zone. If you use the laser too early, the GBU will try to 'cut the corner' of its trajectory arc and will always fall short. 4) Best thing to do is use the auto-lase with a setting of 8 seconds.

No. Force correlation is to target things that don't have a solid IR 'blob' like a building.

Muscle memory. Use this. DCS A-10C HOTAS Quick Sheet.rar

I was going to point out how the military could have curbed the costs by something called 'standardization', so instead of 100 Type A IFF units for airframe X and 100 Type B for airframe Y, they just buy 200 Type C that works in both... but like you said, I don't want to discuss anything.

You contradicted your own point with this one. In the 70s, military technology was way ahead of the civilian market. The home computer didn't even exist in concept, and computers, crude though they may have been, were making great advances. A lot of this technology carried over to the civilian sector. You can make a fine case for the exorbitant costs they paid then, but they were also paying outrageous sums of money for 1980s technology in the 1970s. It's 2011, and we're paying outrageous amounts of cash for 1990s technology in 2011. Your example of space technology is the same thing. The Apollo program, even the Space Shuttles were all designed using futuristic technology (at the time) so you're right, the cost went into developing the technology. There was, in many cases, nothing for them to build off of. It's easier to justify a $500,000 computer when nobody even knew what a transistor was. Let me put it this way, Ethereal - how do you explain the $4,000 toilet seats, or to use a more prudent example: the fact that the exact same waveguide clamp that is sold online for $45 can be found for sale to the military for a whopping $1,217? Keep in mind we're talking about two screws, two washers, two nuts, a bracket, latch, and spring-loaded locking tab.

To a degree, but the avionics and upgrades going into these aircraft even today is old, slow, and hardly the best we can do. 10-15 years ago the F-22 was cutting edge, but it took so long to reach active service as well as had an axe taken to almost every single aspect of it left it with laughably crippled capabilities compared to what it was supposed to be. While it's as much there was more room to grow in that time, it's also as much a factor of the military doesn't get to spend as much money anymore, and due to the skyrocketing pricetags contractors are putting on their toys we're facing exponentially higher costs for anything, and since we're not getting any more money, our weapons technology is still circa 1970s. Let me give you an example: The F-15E had a recent (relatively speaking) upgrade to its display processor and central computer. The old MPDP and CC were thrown out, and a combined unit called the ADCP was installed. The ADCP has memory and processing power that would've been laughable in the early 90s. It's really little more than a couple of processing units, two display drivers, and some storage. The pricetag Honeywell put on it was half a million dollars. This is 2005. My iPod has more functionality than the ADCP. Want to know the real joke here? The ADCP's memory is already full and the USAF wants to buy an upgraded version of it. With time, cutting-edge technology is supposed to become cheaper. Sure, in the 1980s, datalinks hooking F-16s F-15s and AWACS together were cool and nothing existed even remotely like that. However, 20 years later operating a giant 3G network in the sky should have become so mundane and cheap it shouldn't be an issue. Instead, the F-22 as part of the chainsaw action it got had its datalink capabilities crushed to almost uselessness, such that now we're spending even MORE money trying to restore basic functionality to it. At the rate we're going, by the 2030s Raytheon is going to be charging so much per missile it'll be cheaper to just ram the planes into the targets. Then Raytheon's going to go under and go 'Wow how did that happen? We only wanted $4.6 million for each missile!'

X:\DCS A-10C\Bazar\World\Shapes AGM-130.edm :D

Err, yeah, that was my point, the current A-10s are incredibly old. They're not quite the oldest airframes still in use today but due to their design and heavy use they've not endured quite as well. The USAF had to start up manufacturing for new wings since the current ones are cracking and falling apart in critical areas beyond the scope of even depot-level repairs. The saddest thing is the USAF doesn't even have anything even approaching a replacement for the A-10, so in twenty years they'll probably still be trying to keep them intact enough to use. To put it into perspective, us using the A-10 today is roughly the same as if WW2 were fought using Wright Flyers.

Well I think most people haven't used TARGET because it's uncharted territory... is it even fully functional yet? I'm not above scripting, I use it quite extensively on my CH setup, but I'm a total knob at trailblazing complicated shit like this :P

Full rudder authority is useful for departures from controlled flight though. You don't often need it, but when you do you will need all the control you can get - which you can't if you have your authority watered down because NWS is totally uncontrollable otherwise. Adding another axis and simply assigning pedals to both of them (is already possible with other axis - you can control your whole stick with the pedals if you wanted :D) seems a pretty simple solution to this. Additionally, consider times you have to fly without Yaw SAS due to damage or manual reversion flight controls.

As I mentioned, pulling a handle and pushing a button are two completely different body movements and there's no way that one can accidentally translate to the other, so your comparison to misfiring a gun is 100% invalid. If the fire handle was a button instead of a handle, I guarantee you that it would have a guard over it to prevent inadvertent activation. Because handles are pretty hard to accidentally pull, it's not a huge issue. However, this is a game where I left-click once to do everything. Left-clicking is the same motion as turning a knob, flipping a switch, yanking a handle, and scrolling a wheel. This fundamentally means every control in the cockpit is a button. Mistakes like this are not made in the real aircraft because measures are taken to ensure that it can't be inadvertently activated, be it switch covers, switch safety stops, or giant handles that you have to wrap your whole hand around and pull. None of these safeties are present or even simulated in the game, and at the very least changing the emergency handles to right-click activation ONLY would at least somewhat simulate an intentional action to pull the handle, as the left button, in the case of the UFC, means you're stabbing buttons with your finger. Go ahead and explain how a pilot could be poking something with a finger and then suddenly end up with a whole handle in his hand because he looked away for a second. Your comparison would be more apt if I used guns to do everything in life. Imagine if when I wanted to use my key fob on my car, I pulled out a little pistol-shaped device and pulled a trigger. Then I grabbed the pistol-grip handle and pulled a trigger to release the door latch. Then I pulled the trigger on the steering wheel to start the engine. When I shift gears, I pull a trigger on a pistol-grip gearstick to release a safety lock. When I get home, I pick up a pistol that controls my TV, and you have to pull a trigger to send the commands. When I start my microwave, I yank a slide and pull a trigger. Now, once I do everything in life by holding a pistol-shaped object and pulling triggers, how big a stretch is it that suddenly I'm holding a real gun and pull the trigger on it? Pulling a trigger in real life is a hard action to mistake, since it means you were: 1) Holding a gun, 2) Had your finger in the guard, 3) Had the gun charged, and finally 4) Engaged in a trigger-pulling action. None of these 'accidentally happen', nor do I keep guns lying right next to my pistol-shaped trigger-activated remote control (which is fundamentally all the UFC is). By treating the fire handle as a simple button, you are suggesting that pulling a giant handle is somehow reflexively the same action as pointing with my finger and jabbing a tiny gray button. By comparing it with pulling a trigger, you therefore must also put it in a context where everything I do is done with trigger pulls. So how does ANY of this apply to clicking on a fire handle which is overlapping a tiny button that you ALSO click on using the same action? It doesn't, which is why your argument is invalid.

I actually did a forward flip once, because my nose gear failed that completely :D