PFunk1606688187

In reality you're not going to use a specific mark point or waypoint for every target if they're very close together unless you're dropping guided ordnance like JDAMs, and even then this isn't likely to be under the control of a JTAC on a CAS mission but instead as a planned strike. For CAS the JTAC is giving you a window for your final attack heading, so maybe 20 degrees wide or something, and thats supposed to ensure that you run in in such a way that you're not at risk of dropping on friendlies or flying into an enemy threat that can be avoided. Same goes with the egress direction. Even in modern CAS you're basically supposed to roll in and establish visual on your target and flying a tight navigational path to it isn't really part of it, thats why there's a window and not a single bearing-to. You leave the IP towards the target on the correct bearing and as you run in you attempt to establish visual contact and then maneuver to place your aircraft into the release envelope for the given weapon to be employed. Using the HSI to cross check that you're on the right final attack heading is good, but being head down on your attack run really isn't. Not only should you be trying to visually fly onto the target (at this point if you can see the target and you're not on the final attack heading already you're too close to be making a change anyway) but you should also be prepared to visually acquire threats to your aircraft like missile launches. Maybe you guys don't have trackir? With that its so easy to cross check a half dozen instruments in a second and go back to looking out of the cockpit it just becomes a reflex. Without that I can see how you might be more prone to keeping the view fixed to an instrument or cluster of instruments.

Well the HSI only ever points towards a navigational source, which when referencing a SPI would be your steerpoint. A steerpoint can be your SPI. If I understand your notion its to try and have your HSI tell you when you're flying towards your target SPI on the rough heading that the JTAC gives you for your final attack heading. This is very easy, all you have to do is set your target waypoint as steerpoint, ensure steerpoint is SPI, then set the HSI Course dial to the desired final attack heading. The Course Deviation Indicator will then tell you when you're abeam the correct heading to target and you should at that point turn towards the steerpoint. If you don't understand how to read the CDI you should check the manual. Basically in order to be on the chosen course to the steerpoint (or other navigational source) you want the arrow to be unbroken and pointing at your 12 o'clock.

FSX is one of only a few products I know of that you can use for realistic civilian multiplayer flight on a scale larger than just you and your buddies.

I think race sim drivers are very familiar with this mentality. Chasing the perfect lap is pretty normal in that community. In racing the difference bewteen good and great and immaculate is tenths or hundredths of a second, imagine how little you have to mess up to be off by the blink of an eye. Imagine how disciplined and perfect you have to be to be within that blink of an eye 3 laps in a row. Problem I see with most of combat flight simming is that most people get lost after learning the systems. They can figure out how to use a CDU but they have no guide towards how to actually fly the plane like a real pilot. FSX has lots of community input for this, but combat sims don't usually. This is mostly something you need to join an online squadron for and with the right kind of people you can start to learn to fly the plane how it was meant to be: an individual element in a greater whole. In all kinds of military thought the notion of "mutual support" crops up alot. Most pilots even flying with friends stall at that point, of how to do it, how to practice it, how to execute it most effectively. You don't have to do it as a total milsim of real air force behavior and standards, but most people I think aren't very good at finding their own stand in either. I got very bored flying the A-10C alone. Once I had people to fly with and a goal for flying with them that wasn't purely mission result oriented (ie. not just focused on blowing as much stuff up) suddenly it became a totally new game. Also, flying with others creates natural competition. You see how much better someone is at doing the simplest thing and you have drive suddenly to try to improve something you once thought you were not bad at.

I thought this was the whole reason we played games. ;)

I guess convenience would be a factor if money isn't. Looking at some people's sim pits I shudder at the thought of having to move with such an arrangement. I have a hard enough time not being OCD about where my chair is when I fly.

@Laurius More people use Facebook than the ED Boards. ;)

Debatable. We just had a thread on this.

There's probably a good essay to be written on the pitfalls of trying to engineer a wonder project that can do everything and cost less and put it all into a single airframe. Or, to be more of a tease, what if they'd gone ahead with a naval F-22? How would that have changed the design process of the JSF?

How long are you willing to wait?

Radar and anti-Radar technology doesn't iterate like that.

I wasn't sure if I read that right, are these going to be aircraft flying under the authority of the USMC and/or RN or are these airframes intended for those bodies that'll be flown by Lockheed test pilots? Either way, it'll be a grand bit of PR.

Except for the A-10. ;)

Its not really the SSD, its the ram that'll do it. DCS' minimum requirements say 6 Gigs. I was at 4 and it would take me more than 3 mins to load, then a quick upgrade suddenly it was 90 seconds or less. Even so, the right settings for the right ram. The minimum settings you can set will oblige about 6 gigs of ram for decent operation, not cause you're using all of it for DCS but for the overhead needed for Windows. So you don't NEED more than 8 gigs as long as you set your preload radius low enough. The 16 gig SSD master race just like to talk a lot of baloney. 16 gigs and an SSD are nice, but not necessary.

I do appreciate the condescension. Thank you very much. I don't know why I have to be so careful about wording anything like this. Its Saitek, its a new product, its pretty obvious there are going to be teething issues, especially since its paired with the launch of a new programming software. Its pretty obvious my intent if you aren't out to dismiss it. Yes its mostly for the complainers but its also true in general. I find it obnoxious for people to hop on the bandwagon of praising something and being defensive about things like the bugs. You yourself said you didn't experience a problem, like thats supposed to mean something. Why would you say that? It just smacks of being dismissive, like the bugs aren't an issue. My "sage advice" warns that bugs are likely while your response appears to dismiss the credibility of such bugs being even real using a pretty common fallacy. If this were a discussion of a bug in the open beta someone posting "well I haven't seen that bug" is pretty obviously irrelevant. The complainers complain too much, but the satisfied customers deny too much as well. Every purchase is a risk. Every purchase of the first 300 units is a much higher risk, especially if its an iterative step forward.

Yea and some people have had issues with the programming software and some have had to RMA their units. This is a discussion thread about the X55, why is it only useful for owners to talk, or is it just people who say "positive" things? If anything I'm telling the complainers they shouldn't complain because new products are never perfect, so you wanna get in on the ground floor you should take all glitches in perspective. No it isn't. Its very basic consumer judgment. The first release of anything is going to have flaws, bugs, or some issue like perhaps availability. Getting hyped up for a release then being dismayed that your Amazon order was cancelled from lack of available units is part of that. I'm not saying don't buy anything right away, I'm saying if you do you have to be prepared for a setback, even if its a minor one. Something as simple as a software or driver problem could make a person's experience less than ideal and with it being a brand new product with only 300 out there its not likely you're giong to find a lot of experienced users with solutions for you. With only 300 out there you may be one of the only people who experience that particular problem and you may be the originator of the solution, or at least the first complaint. With a budget stick from a company that probably doesn't have the best customer support I wouldn't be keen to break in a new product without at least some experienced community support. That's a preference, but honestly its not flawed logic to suggest that a new product will have flaws. The deciding factor is whether you're willing to gamble on experiencing one and have the will or patience to live with it. The reason I say a supercar would be the excepetion is because they may only ever make 300 of them, and when you drop $300k+ on something the company usually dances on its head to solve any problems you have. That and having super cars usually means having to accept persistent teething problems and expensive maintenance. In general Saitek has major quality issues with even mature products so with a new one if it bothered me I wouldn't want to face that. There's nothing bad with wanting a mature proven product over a brand new one with no pedigree.

Planned obsolescence.

I dunno, how much wisdom does it take for people to remember that its probably not a good idea to be there for the first release of anything like this? I would never want one of the first 300 of anything, except maybe a supercar.

If its supposed to be a bloody top secret project or something, why would they fly it in the daytime? With cameras everywhere these days... seriously.

Days of Thunder.

The only fighting that takes place below max speed is the kind you hope not to get into. Beyond that, if one is to consider some arbitrary combat speed as a fraction of the total max speed then still the Spit IX should be inferior since if you in any other craft lose 40 MPH in the first turn, you're still 40 MPH faster than the guy who had 40 MPH less than you at the merge.

How about coasting to a stop using the full length of the driveway? Then there's leaving a 20 second interval between you and the guy in front of you when the light turns green. And who can forget the way your last relationship ended when she witnessed you driving down the highway waiting for a gap to open in the traffic before a merge at which point you cried out "1's tipping in". When your mom thinks you REALLY like pickles. Lastly, after getting into a fender bender trying to explain to your insurer that your vehicle is Code 2.

You're conflating the intent or attempt to camouflage to no particularly defined degree with the state of being actually camouflaged. Yours is a noun, what I was discussing was the verb and how it relates to a practical degree. UCP is a perfect example. It was an attempt at camouflage, but in most cases it failed to adequately camouflage infantry in Afghanistan, hence they changed to Multicam. UCP was not very camouflaging even if it was a camouflage material. Whats relevant is discussing the plausible conspicuity of typical military materiel, particularly aircraft and vehicles, in this or other sims and how it relates to real life. A tank in the open is still just a tank in the open, even if its painted green, which is different from being under a camo net laden with natural vegetation to help it blend in while being emplaced in or near a treeline or copse. The thing is there are no tanks in DCS that are done up that way so when we're talking visibility and whats realistic we're not talking about the practical kind of camouflage you'd actually see in real life with real people dressing it up. In this game we've got issues with seeing things which are poorly camouflaged and how effective real life camouflage is and how well executed it is isn't much important, so when we start getting into the semantics of what the word camouflage means its just a waste of time. You cannot see from the air in game what you would see at the same alt in real life, camo be damned. The whole "there are pictures where you can't see vehicles" thing is just a red herring because if you saw that picture through real eyes and then through what I guess you'd call "DCS Eyes" the real eyes would still find the vehicles, if at all possible, more readily for already clearly articulated reasons.

Whichever one is most OP when the game comes out.

Its hardly the same as camo nets and twigs and all that good stuff they do when they want to hide. Infantry dug in are pretty much impossible to spot with the naked eye when its done right, but nobody would say they're "camouflaged" standing in the open just because they have UCP on. Vehicles stationary in the middle of a field with no nets or shrubs on them, even with relevant paint, aren't what any commander would call "camouflaged" either so its a bit simplistic to just say that. You're just generalizing the broad definition of the word, but its not like that statement is relevant to the specifics. I can spot vehicles in an open field just fine in DCS once I enter the critical range where the pixel resolution allows me to see them nearly as well as a real person would see them from further away.