Frostiken

Hell yea surround sound.

I couldn't do anything with the radio menu.

I dont' get it.

I get the engine failure one quite often. Very dicey limping out with failing power - but that's what the override switch is for on the throttle :)

The formation lights are backwards, panel 116 L/R have the 'individual' light on it, and it goes aft of the rest of them... behind the flaps and directly beneath the vertical stab. There's a big ICMS part under it :P *NOW* you can complain about me being nitpicky :) :) :)

Trust me when I say you would never want to use an AIM-7 around F-15s in some sort of misguided understanding that they'll be able to tell it that they're not valid targets. :)

Huh? Dropping speed drops your nose, how the hell do you maintain AOA while using throttles? As you lose airspeed you *will* have to pull the stick back, otherwise the aircraft will drop its nose in order to try to maintain airspeed.

Can you tell me what you guys based the F-15E skin off of? It's really highly detailed but it's just really odd seeing it with all the panels numbered... never seen that before. Also, minor nitpick, but you also gave the Lakenheath F-15Es a gold tail flash - gold, or the 493rd, is an F-15C squadron - should be red or blue (494 or 492 respectively).

All the crew chiefs do is marshal him in and out of the spot. He has control of the aircraft for all of about fifty feet. Once it leaves its spot, the pilot controls it. I've seen plenty of times the pilots just sort of do what they want - they stop too late, pull into the spot at high speed, hell at one point some crusty old Colonel didn't like how long our ramp was and cut completely through the line. PS: At Bagram we had an A-10 heading through our ramp put its wingtip through the rear of the six truck :D I'll bet it didn't even lose a sortie :P Unrelated, but the funniest aircraft movement goof I've seen was when two F-15s got stuck on a taxiway because a C-130 was coming in the other direction. They just sat there about fifty yards apart... thankfully the C-130 can go in reverse :D

I suggest you get a program called CompareIt :)

No, it's just to excite people for the inevitable let-down when they realize ED isn't going to waste their time modeling a failure of an airframe like a non-Superhornet F/A-18. :D

Willie Pete is slang for White Phosphorus, ie: smoke.

Would be pretty pimp... what would happen if you ran him over or ignored him? :) Along with ground crews I'd also like a fully-fleshed ATC / ground traffic handler.

The hall effect magnets make it a little smoother to move around, which is nice. outside that, you still have variable resistance in the stick as you transit the axises (not as much as a spring which makes it smooth), but having used both, the argument that the hall effect's precision is noticeable is a stretch. I've attempted air/air refueling with both hall effect and potentiometer joysticks and it's no easier, and you will still need curves. In general maneuvering, it won't matter. The real value seems to be in the tactile response which just feels nicer with magnets. If you think it's going to be some sort of night and day difference control-wise, prepare to be disappointed. PS: Can we all stop using 'HOTAS' to refer to the TM Warthog? It's getting really confusing. HOTAS = your joystick setup, not the product :/

I fail to see why, when given the option of all kinds of different fighter aircraft to model, some of which have never had a sim at all, ED should invest resources because the graphics of Falcon 4 are 'kind of ugly', especially since at its core it would still be the exact same game. Given the advantages Falcon 4 has over DCS it would be stupid from almost every point of view to waste time and money making 'yet another F-16 sim'. DCS would have to compete with a product that is still actively supported, not least of all by the Falcon 4 community itself and even comes in free variants... and the last thing I want to hear is "DCS: F-16 should have X because Falcon 4 has it!"

Is the TM Warthog worth it? In a word, no. It hardly offers anything you can't do with much cheaper setups, you'll still have to buy pedals, the TARGET software and the 'default' controls for it don't really work together, and I've heard plenty of stories that the actual hardware is less than reliable including more than a few arriving to people on this very forum with defects (inop switches, LEDs that don't work). It does have some serious pros, but to say that it's "worth it" is a dubious claim. It's nice that it's made of solid metal and feels sturdy, but it's really just "nice". Though not having springs gives you a much smoother transition around the horn... Ultimately it's like this - the Warthog is $500, has no yaw features, and the microstick on it is the worst thing in the world and IMO completely lets the quality of the rest of the product down. The TM Warthog is like buying a really fancy car. It will never be worth the price, but you buy it because you can afford to have some luxuries. It may ride smoother, it may have a cooler built into the cup holder, but in the end, it's still a car that gets you from point A to point B along a road, and for $2000 you could buy a car that does the exact same thing. The single best alternative to the TM Warthog is to buy a CH Products setup which will run you about half the price ($300 is about the most you'll pay). Advantages of the CH setup is the amazing scripting ability and legendary reputation for reliability, though you have springs and potentiometers instead of magnets, it's plastic and a little big, and it's a single trigger / throttle. The throttle hardly matters, but you'll have to come up with a scripting solution for the trigger (these exist around here on this forum). PS: The microstick on the CH setup is far superior to the TM Warthog.

**** I would shoot rockets at that base just to see that again :D

Pew pew pew!

It's kind of sad when you look at those sims and think about the concessions that had to be made to work with the technology at the time.

F-16? What, were thirty eight sims in the last ten years not enough? "Hell No" to ever seeing an F-16 sim again - If Tom Cruise is the over-glorified irritating douchebag Hollywood image of a fighter pilot, the F-16 is the over-glorified irritating douchebag Hollywood image of a fighter aircraft. Viper fanboys would have you believe they won ODS, OIF, OOD, and WW2.

Mmm tesselated terrain - no more big blocks\!

I thought the Blackhawk's dubious history was mostly owed to the fact that it flies in some extremely dicey places. Whereas the Osprey just forgets to stay in the air.

Uh...

This is a somewhat 'known' bug, doesn't seem to be repeatable, just a very rare glitch that happens. Last time I saw this happen, a guy dropped two CBU-97s on one and it randomly died five minutes later...

Someone wanted an Osprey? :D I'd rather walk!