blkspade

Unless you think he was visually tracking you for a very long time, well outside of engagement range, the point at which began to maneuver to engage could be the very point at which he acquired you visually. He'd still need some means to determine you were hostile, which means he got you on radar early on, or got lucky when you turned out to be an enemy when he pulled up into you.

Assuming 45,000 ft of separation, that's 8.5nm. So vertical scan works. Along with the combination of clear sky and zoom, you'd be very much visible. That's not accounting for a possible talk on via TS. I frequently point my nose on vert scan going solely off of the TEWS, for targets I know are danger close and above me.

It should be noted you only can't be found due to the combination of not showing up on radar when slow/hovering and there not being kill messages. With that's fixed now, the other side has a concept of what's being attacked and when. Circling low with AIM9s selected, because you now know a ka50 is operating, tends to work pretty well.

The Russian RWR would be useless for telling you whats looking at you anyway. On missions that aren't EvW, the eagle/warthog RWRs are relatively useless without a radar to IFF. By the time you'd know its a threat, without assisting assets, its engaging you. At which point its already too late. What you need to be operating a chopper in a warzone is a CAP flight or air superiority. Otherwise you're living on a prayer.

Below a certain speed the choppers don't even show up on radar. When they do show up maintaining a lock isn't always possible. The low speed and low AGL results in low PK radar missile shots. You ultimately will end up close enough to use IR or guns. Most of the time I'll only bother them if they are in the immediate vicinity of an airfield I need to land at. Lets be honest, they wouldn't not kill me on the ground if given the chance.

The F-15 doesn't have a system to detect IR launches, I think it should cause they exist. The A10 has one, why cant the F15.

Isn't the radar range selection of the F-15 -63 functionally a power output setting?

Beside's needing to how to BFM vs a flanker in case things go sideways, there is the fact people go for guns on purpose. Also considering the current game mechanics, you're nearly always engaging at the edge of or inside visual range. Turning around quickly becomes a very bad idea if you don't have a wingman. Giving a flanker that possibly has ETs a 6'oclock low look while your attempting to extend is not ideal. If he is trying to beam you at around 8nm (considering that you're engaging at 10-12nm), you need to force him cold before 6nm or you're banzai. Else he'll come around in EOS, and give you a bad day. If he's evaded your 120s up until that point, and a generally high Pk 4nm rear aspect shot you're going in for guns (or 9s), or having to hope he's out of missile when you extend.

Look at it this way. In the KA50 an RWR would basically give you time to pray. If you're flying both high enough and fast enough to be detected/engaged by something with radar missiles, you're gonna end up dead anyway. This is particularly true if its an aircraft, and worse if they're AI. A lot of the time radar missiles will miss ka50s (the ones doing it right), so I'll fire an AIM-9 at them instead or guns. You're primary missile threat will generally be IR. You're limited closure rate is gonna put you pretty close, to far inside visual range before you're engaged.

If you're in 1.5, in the F-15 you just can't turn with the flanker.You can however out climb it by a large margin. If you get the AI to try and climb with you, it'll stall out with 10K' separation. At which point you can roll over and end him.

Now if only that happened in DCS... Currently one can know with absolute certainty when a bandit is blind on them while busy spiking a buddy. Of course this is only a problem for fighters that have to STT to engage.

Actually speaking toward that topic, something that is apparently modeled with the ground radar is being spiked when you aren't the target. Unless it just a random bug, you'll occasionally get a lock warning from friendly SAMs when there is an enemy around from what I'd imagine is a by product of being in the "beam". By that logic, fighters in close formation should likely get the same spike warning from other aircraft, when only one of them is locked.

I'd venture to guess chaff should still have some effect. Military planes have had to deal with things that shoot up at them literally forever. In fact I'm pretty sure it was initially introduced vs entirely look up scenarios. I'd almost expect chaff to be more likely lost in ground clutter than against the sky. That said from what I can tell both SARH and ARH missiles in DCS have the ability/chance to reacquire, but ARH are better. ARH can be notched, but if you fall out of the notch while it still has energy to the intercept, it will intercept. Marry that with the fact if it doesn't bite on chaff, its still trying to go to where it last saw you were heading.

I've seen this prior to 1.5, and obviously only happens online.

That's largely due to flight sims not having mass appeal in general. Of all my friends that are 'gamers' one of them likes flight sims and has a preference for civilian flight. DCS isn't a gamers game, and neither has any flight sim been before it. The combat flight sim is a niche with-in a niche, that safely assumes a large portion of its target demographic are people that would like to be doing these things in real life. Certainly at a much higher percentage than FPS players want to be actual soldiers. The Arma series isn't wildly popular either, and is pretty much the only thing that exists that you could form a worthwhile comparison of.

Since it seems to be common practice to make US and RU skins for modules, I can't see how the "Mig-28" wouldn't just be the obvious choice for the RU skin. As a side note, I'm pretty sure the DCS pilot's head explodes at -4G.

Is that with or without mirrors, on or close to the ground? I have a R9-290 at 1440P 2xAA and get 70+ except with mirrors on at the airfield. Mirrors on in 1.5 performs a little bit better than mirrors off in 1.2.

While it might not be able to catch it, I could imagine it causing a mistrack if fired closely in succession. I know 120s fired with less than 4 seconds of separation while accelerating can potentially cause the 2nd to collide as it begins to overtake. An ET leading toward the ER exhaust isn't too far fetched.

This does actually happen in sim. You can (and I have) shoot down your own aim9 for example. You can intentionally (or accidentally) target an enemy missile with your own ir missile head on.

The other controller, baring any stability concerns, is not going to be detrimentally slower. A SSD on it should still be faster than a HDD on the Intel controller. You can hook them all up but put your smallest drive on the "slower" controller.

There is no limit to acceptable risk with virtual lives, in open servers, with respawns. People already take way less risks in competitions, where first blood might not be drawn for over an hour in to the competition. I don't regularly take risks online accept when experimenting or bored.

Some people are arguing an unrealistic response to missile launches, but what is unrealistic about returning fire when you are clearly able to when most launches are not inside RTR. If you haven't completely caught your target off-guard, there is no reason to expects you'll get an uncontested tail chase against a bandit with active missiles. He's already got you queued up, and firing is apart of the defensive maneuver. I've mentioned before how bad it is to let an ET equipped fighter inside of 8nm if you're plan is to turn around and run.

Kills can be gotten with them and the AIM-7 for that matter, which for all intents and purposes has the same flaws as the R-27 with worse performance. On occasion I'll take the old school Eagle loadout on unrestricted MP missions and try my luck. They don't always hit when I'd like them to or think they should (RL kill rate of 37% reported from Desert Storm), but they don't always miss. I did this recently after the update mind you. Also keep in mind that Eagles are on both sides on the 104th server, and some of those Eagle driver are really good at using 120s while evading 120s. The 120C isn't some uber-god missile, but its naturally designed to have an advantage over SARH limited platforms.

Question. What is real? RL missile avoidance, a part from never being shot at, is basically exploiting the limitations of the design. What exists in DCS has a lot to do with limited public info to express exactly what missiles should do. This approximation comes with its own limits that Vpilots get to test way more than RL ones. Sure missiles may be updated at some point, but unless they are designed into perfection we are just sliding the scale to a new set of limits.

Ironically we are arguing why guns remain a realistic need IRL. As the 120 can be spoofed for the same reasons (more so to ground clutter).