Frostiken

There's radio chatter on the Guard frequency? Guard is for emergencies :o I got my pee-pee slapped for accidentally broadcasting on Guard :p Additionally, this radio chatter appears to mostly be on the VHF AM radio, and some aircraft don't even have VHF radios... shouldn't this chatter be on UHF so it can benefit from, for example, KY-58 and Have Quick anti-jam? </nitpicks> :)

I'd make the argument that while you can say they're fairly 'generic' with a few exceptions, the F-15E is the superpowered version of the three, as it has the longest range, highest speed, largest carry weight, best radar, a built-in jamming and RWR system, and probably the biggest potential inventory of weaponry and other cool toys in the Air Force, everything from Small Diameter Bombs to recce ground mapping radar pods :D There is only a tiny list of things the F-16 and F/A-18 has over the F-15E. 1) Mavericks - the F/A-18 and F-15E can only apparently carry two Mavericks, and I doubt you'd *ever* see an F-15E carrying one. We have Maverick video lines but we don't even bother fixing them because we'll never carry one. The F-16 can allegedly carry 6, however I think for safety reasons it's limited to 4. 2) HARM - Both the F/A-18 and F-16 can carry HARM pods and missiles. While HARM makes SEAD missions fairly easy, it's worth noting that HARM is *not* mandatory for SEAD - in OOD, F-15Es were responsible for more than a few radar and SAM site neutralization, and youtube videos will reveal AGM-130 application against SA-10s. Still, HARM is its own advantage so I'll leave it. But hey, the A-10 doesn't have HARM either and it works just fine against SAM sites :) 3) F/A-18 can do carrier ops which many consider a huge bonus. Additionally, both are single-seaters which has its own developmental advantage. Then again, Janes F-15E did a two-seater back in 199X so... EDIT: I'd also like to mention a few other things: 1) Classification level for the F-15E is still pretty high on a few things, as it's still undergoing *very* active modding and upgrading. While the A-10 finally got the A-10C to 'modernize' them, the F-15Es in the past four years have undergone at least two extensive modifications. Naturally the scope and nature of these mods isn't open to discussion, but there is unfortunately a large amount of classification involved. The Suite 7 mod which adds even more hardware is already in the pipe. 2) The USAF may very well be in need for an F-15E simulator / trainer. I'll mention that the most up-to-date computer-based simulator I've seen and used by the USAF for the F-15E is made by Boeing, and it's extremely poor. There's no cockpit to hit switches, only bare minimum. No emergency procedures or anything, it's basically just a bare-bones drop-bombs-on-Vegas trainer. Given the active development of the F-15E I would not be surprised to see demand for a trainer program.

Thankfully very little seems to involve the bullseye in-game. In Falcon 4, wrapping your mind around managing bullseye heading, your own heading, and distances is frustrating as hell.

Unfortunately do to the nature of FLIR modeling in the game, it's much, much much harder to find contrasting heat bodies than it is in real life. In reality, in WHOT, trees at night would glow pale white, concrete would be a muddy gray, foliage would be mostly dark, and a tank in the middle of it would be glowing like the sun. The A/C-130 mission in COD4, as much as the game disgusts me, had fairly accurate FLIR modeling. I've heard ED is working on it, but the only thing I can suggest is making sure the resolution of your MFCDs is 512 or 1024.

Been playing more with SAM / MANPADs, and yeah, the IGLA seems to be one of the most powerful threats around. Even the AIM-9 has nothing on the IGLA as it's both easily spoofed (the IGLA seems almost impossible to lose) and runs out of energy quickly. Even with the AIM-9 hits the target it's no guarantee of destruction, whereas every time I get hit by an IGLA I take a tremendous amount of airframe damage. Typical damage seems to be the loss of an entire wing section, loss of control surfaces, and in at least one example, a single IGLA took off my right wing at the root, the entire tail empennage, and the right motor was KIA. I sincerely doubt that the IGLA, even under good conditions, has the power to completely tear off parts of airframe. In the meantime I was monitoring other airborne combat threats - I noticed that a MiG-29 could survive a hit from an AIM-120, if the AIM-120 even hit (typically it seems the AI will fire off half of its Slammers at a single target, because only one ever seems to hit). Against Stingers, they almost never hit their targets, typically just running out of energy. I think I'd rather take a bunch of IGLAs and strap them to my A-10 in lieu of the AIM-9s o_O

Non-functional. And I always use point-tracking unless I want to drop a CBU in the middle of a group... no real reason not to.

Choppers are too damn hard for a spaz like me.

Well in real life your response from the aircraft is MUCH different and you get far more feedback from it as well.

I was flying alongside an AI at 11,000 AGL, and told him to engage the tanks in front of us with Mavericks. He proceeded to corkscrew to the ground, got to 2,000 AGL, flew right into a bunch of BMP-2s, blew up and died.

Markpoints are considered a sort of scratchpad, and aren't really to be used for any long-term use. When a pilot is sort of 'making notes' he'll use markpoints, when he wants to give it some permanence he'll convert them to waypoints.

Odd considering in the northern hemisphere, winter is during parihelion putting you a good 3 million miles closer to the sun or so :D The size of the sun is fine, considering your monitor can't burn your eyes out of your head. It's nothing to do with the physical size of the sun and more to do with simulating the high intensity glare. Making it smaller would make it just as lame as every other game that lets you stare at it without problem.

Just because it *could* be put on an aircraft doesn't mean they bothered to spend the money test flying it, measuring jettison parameters, fine-tuning the whole thing, and programming it into the computers.

Right wheelbrake stuck?

Unpossible. For starters, the 'china hat' on the F-15E throttle is a toggle, not a temporary self-centering switch. In the F-15 it choses the weapons mode (guns / srms / mrms). Don't understand the 'right throttle grip is from F-15E' because it doesn't look like a single F-15E throttle grip I've ever seen... You forgot about the fact that we (2A371 here) wouldn't have to work on the radar at all, as AESA maintenance is all handled, for the time being, by civilians :D

For me? $500 because that's worth buying an iPad for :p

JTRS can always be on, it doesn't matter, it's just the JTAC datalink. Every time I ramp start I have to manually set DTS. I immediately set it and then leave it for the rest of the flight.

I've never seen the marker beacons...

I want DCS: F-15E for two reasons: Small Diameter Bombs AGM-130s :D :D :D

No, the point is the F-16 has at least two simulators that are still valid today. Allied Force has a huge following and is still getting patches. Different from, say, an airframe which had a sim back in the late 90's and that was it.

Someone sounds like a C-shopper to me.

And how does the markpoint know what the altitude is? :) DTS data!

I don't really understand the lethality difference. I got hit by an Igla and it annihilated my aircraft, and then you can see other aircraft take a Slammer and shake it off... I even think I saw a SU-27 soak a Patriot.

The big stinker for me is the terrain level of detail. Yeah, a flight sim doesn't need uber-detailed terrain, but at the same time, giant 100 square meter blocks angled around is a bit dated-looking. That or vividly detailed cities :p

Regardless, that damn DTS thing is vital to know. God knows why it's not default...

Manual release mode?