PFunk1606688187

I propose the United States abandon CATOBAR and instead develop a fleet of ships carrying extreme wind velocity fans that blow near hurricane winds over carrier decks allowing any airplane to be used for VTOL. Incidentally, that A-10 vid aptly demonstrates the difference between airspeed and ground speed.

Is there any reason why the F-35 has the canopy bow that the F-16 and F-22 don't?

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that EDGE will be released first.

In the real aircraft does the LASTE system account for the bomblets I wonder?

LdAUakDHz2w Well apparently space does start at 50 000 feet, or thats what they used to say, and yet even at 70 000 in that video its hard to tell if they can see stars despite how dark the sky is.

The real life definition has already been provided, but its sim equivalent functions as pressing some keystroke to receive a locked view in the direction of whatever you've told the game to padlock for you. To padlock a missile means your view is locked with the missile in its centre, as it would be with anything else. Edit. ninja'd

There's also the fact that the VVI lags heavily when pulling high G turns so you can't just fly by it, you have to have some sense of what the plane is going to do so that you can unload the wings somewhat near your intended attitude. The HUD is much better at telling you whats going to happen in low G or unloaded states. Consider this. The HUD doesn't tell you your bank angle. If I want to fly formation with someone and we have to do a standard rate 30 degree turn to keep that formation, the HUD isn't going to help you ensure you're on that. Meanwhile the guy following me has to keep his eyes on me and fly without instruments.

This is probably part of why the A-10's HUD is not considered a primary instrument. You have an ADI and a VVI next to each other right below the HUD. I also think that maybe the F-16's HUD actually is considered a primary instrument itself. Not sure on that, but I know that the book says you shouldn't fly exclusively by your HUD in the A-10.

Well this is basically the written rule versus the principle argument. The thing that people like myself are trying to say is that padlocking has a nature which is very different than custom loadouts or respawns. It directly improves the performance of the pilot in a way which is external to the capabilities of the aircraft. On paper its supposed to represent the pilot staring at something without looking at his controls, but in practice people will use it more like an avionics suite that doesn't exist on the aircraft. All those other possible "cheats" don't really do this. Also, most of the other things you mention are not terribly unrealistic in the actual operation of the aircraft at the critical moment of action. I'm all for conceits that speed up the downtime that real pilots experience, and most people see these as helpful in getting people to the action faster. Once you're in the midst of the action however, this is when something being a cheat just fundamentally changes how the game is played. Custom loadouts or not, TARS or not, doesn't really change how target acquisition works. Padlocking however does. You can say all you want about "well if the server allows it" but thats not really the conversation. The OP obviously is talking about it being cheating in the context of its principle nature as interpreted by people, not whether an admin is allowing it. Arguing it from that perspective is basically trying to change the conversation from being about padlocking to being about what you define cheating as. The question is simply - is padlocking an excessive deviation from the realism most of us are trying to get out of the game? This thread is clearly not about server administration, at least not primarily.

The naissance of CRM?

Then why did you bother to enter this discussion? Yeesh.

When I finally cracked this nut I looked back on my mission data and it said I was connected for over 2 minutes. It makes sense if you think about it. The maximum fuel flow of these booms is limited with fighter sized aircraft so the rate of refuel is a lot closer to Probe and Drogue speeds than people probably think most of the time. It really is one of those things that just clicks though. Its extraordinary when you realize it. I thought I'd clicked a few times before, then I realized everything I was doing wrong. Now I pretty much never disconnect more than once or twice unless the tanker is following retarded flight path with constant turns back and forth.

I don't see how that would be true. Certainly not having CCRP would limit your ability to use JDAMs but all the rest could easily be delivered manually, so long as they weren't WCMD. Fact is that the weapons themselves haven't changed that much since the 80s in terms of their complexity. The only really big change I can think of is the JDAM which requires complex positional and inertial data linkages for release, something the A never had anyway. Now, its not like dropping Mk82s is impossible just because somebody made a computer that made it easier. Granted not having the CCIP would be the biggest set back for 95% of pilots, but there'd be a courageous few who'd no doubt learn to bomb manually as it was done for ages before LASTE and all its counterparts. As far as I know pilots still learn to do it manually, at least thats what a 21st Century US NAVY manual on bomb delivery implies. And of course lets not forget that there's nothing stopping you from using the Mav, and the gun is still considered the primary weapon. So get good at manual delivery, work up some tables for your Mk82s and whichever CBUs you get, and really get used to map reading. :P

Could you describe this better? I have a hard time imagining such a technologically backwards bird as the A-10 having anything remotely similar to a button that tells you where stuff is based on no actual sensors but instead on a contrived awareness of the game world based on it being a sandbox run on your computer. :P I just don't agree. Certainly having a Trackir is an enormous benefit to situational awareness but it in no way actually benefits the player like the padlocking feature does. I still have to swivel my head and use a good scanflow to maintain my SA and even if I were to put my head facing a threat that doesn't mean I actually acknowledge its presence. The padlock not only points you at it but it also gives you positive feedback, ie. its certainly there because it wouldn't point if it weren't. However, knowing something is off your left wing doesn't actually help you know where to look specifically so Trackir is a convenience more than a full blown advantage to this degree we're discussing. The padlock is basically a handicap for your SA. Trackir is just a boon to efficiency in the cockpit, allowing you to ditch the POV hat in favour of using your noggin'. Its a grand improvement, but still it doesn't really stop someone with good reflexes from doing the same thing mostly with the POV hat. Padlocking a missile in a BVR fight would certainly feel like a cheat if I weren't doing it back. Padlocking anything would be frankly. I notch his radar, but its all good, he can just use padlock to track me anyway. I don't care how you rationalize it, its a game changing Situational Awareness tool. Maybe once we have an F-35 module and we understand how its new systems work better this would start to feel more realistic, but as it stands if the mind doesn't know squat and the computer's special SA button gives it to him for no effort, yea I don't think thats really anything similar to the other conceits we use like FOV zoom or Trackir. Its just so gamey. You can say everyone can take advantage of it if it were turned on, but there are certain things that game away the fun of realism. Unlimited consumables, external views, and any other crutches, but mainly what padlocking does that fries my mackerel, is it eliminate one of the single most enormous and foundational aspects of realistic combat flying - maintaining situational awareness. That as much as systems management and ordnance delivery matters, much more really. For all your muscle memory using CCIP or your recollection of the correct parameters for a dive bombing run, if you can just snap to it and see it you're defeating one of the principle obstacles real pilots deal with: actually knowing wtf is going on around them and maintaining this awareness as they navigate the complex string of actions and decisions necessary to accomplish the goal as the situation mutates and renders your SA from even 2 seconds ago all but useless. Now I'm not saying people are padlocking tanks and stuff, but if you could you'd basically overcome the need for a targeting pod most of the time unless you wanted to use PGMs. But versus missiles one of the key aspects of countering the threat is establishing a fix on it as quickly as possible then evaluating the action necessary and responding to in the short time til it has you. I can't imagine how much stress from the RWR beeping at me about a Missile Launch would be sapped away if I leaned on the padlock every time I flew. It makes me think of when I fly with friends and we're trying to find stuff visually, and you realize that the one guy who always knows where stuff is is using the F10 map.:doh:

The way I see it, you have two things in hand. #1 Imperfect representations of true to life visual acuity and their corresponding visual cues. #2 Game conceits which allow you to compensate for #1 but which are themselves imperfect owing to their unrealistic design and imbalanced overreaching nature. Using in-game FOV adjustment (aka Zoom) to compensate for the fact that the monitor does an extraordinarily poor job of representing a real pilot's perspective and visual acuity as well as his panoramic FOV simultaneously is not a cheat. Its probably the best compromize with the least damaging "cheat" quotient. Using padlock is a notion that goes back to the old days of simming, probably before we even had joysticks with HATs we could use for snap views. I think its cheating. Its not just compensating for the human's lack of visual acuity, its representing situational awareness outside of the human player's. Rather than the human being able to see the missile and then track it himself using Trackir or some snap view, the game is letting you off the hook, letting you put no effort into finding it except via a quick button press. I find things like padlocking give me bad habits. If I wanted to fly a WW2 game with padlocking enabled, why bother checking six and changing my flight path constantly to clear my baffles when I can press my magic eye-radar? I'll argue til the cows come home about zoom being perfectly fine, but I don't dig it when it comes to padlocking. Thats a conceit too far in my opinion. That said, the bloody smoke effects ought to be better, even more aggressive than in real life if only because nobody flies around at normal human FOV when in the cockpit.

If you use the RCtrl-Enter overlay to track your stick calibrations it should be pretty obvious whether or not your rudder is off center or not. I've also noticed the taxi light being off center when I turn NWS on when powering up a new aircraft, but I suspect this is just something in the game or something like the nosewheel being slightly off center and it doesn't center until you begin moving, since with NWS turned off the nosewheel doesn't turn with rudder, but it probably has some mechanism that locks it when it hits centre, but I'm not sure how it would achieve this other than with the wheel itself centring under normal movement to catch whatever latch there is to lock it, and since ground handling of aircraft likely would have this wheel unlatched for the purpose of pushing it into a parking space its likely the wheel wouldn't be locked when you turned it back on, even if it appeared to be nearly centre. The other thing to note is that the nosewheel light is offset with the wheel carriage, so it'll never be properly centred, but you can tell if its pointing forward.

Are you a motorist by any chance? I don't think cars going at any speed will remain straight for without any corrections if you drove them to thier speed limit for a distance of a few miles. Its something they often don't explain to people I guess, because we just know this. You drive a car you hold the wheel, you unconsciously correct the drift, but most of the time nobody has to tell you to do this, and people don't go over the science behind why, you just drive and spend all your time worrying about burning out the clutch, or if you have an automatic finding a song I guess.

Well for one flying a high fidelity sim without a joystick is kind of like trying to unscrew something without a screwdriver. You're going to be fighting beyond the normal issues a new guy has. New people fight the airplane because they have no idea how it behaves and how they should be flying it (depending on how experienced in simming they are). Using a keyboard is just inadequate. You'll never move beyond a certain degree of competence without a stick, unfortunately. Best compromise if you can't get a regular joystick is a USB game controller from a 360 or something. I'm not sure what you're saying isn't in the level position though. The aircraft? Your view? Your view should be controllable with either the mouse or the numpad for snap views or just panning. If you mean that the aircraft never flies level its because aircraft don't fly level, except at one particular speed, altitude, and power setting. To make up for this you trim. Trimming is one of the most basic concepts of fixed wing aviation (and much of rotary). You trim the aircraft to fly stable at a particular speed, alt, and power setting and as this changes constantly you continue to trim constantly. Trim buttons are in the settings menu, but I forget them. Under the controls, use the drop down menu to look for the category "HOTAS" and you should see the Trim hat controls in there. If its something else you're going to have to describe it.

It looks like some kind of experimental torpedo from Star Trek. I half expect to find a picture of it in the Enterprise shuttle bay with Mr. Data scanning it with a tricorder.

I don't think the offset of the wheel has anything to do with it. The only thing the nose wheel would have to do with it is if its partly turned off centre when you start the roll and as such the slightest left or right bias leads to a big difference at takeoff roll. This is why you steer the wheel at all times. Its not like you can just set it straight and leave it. Its just like a car, if you don't steer the wheel it'll start to drift.

I also believe that asymmetrical payloads will make you tend to veer off as well, and most payloads are not perfectly symmetrical if you have a TGP on.

If you use an analog input for your rudder you should put a curve on it to make your steering easier.

Well I still use the TGP even if I don't use it for lasing during weapons delivery. It really is a wonder-tool. I just use it less for search and more for acquisition, tracking, and establishing identity. Its still integral to a clean JDAM strike. Also, when you want to roll in on a T-55 and hit it in the ass with your GAU the TGP means you don't need to get nearly as close to know when the ass is on your 12. Still, finding it in the first place I tend to leave to my "binos".

Well I play with people who fly everything. Last mission I flew online with friends involved: 2x A-10C 2x Su-25T 1x Su-25 1x Ka-50 1x UH-1 So there was lots of need for old school coordination rather than "cheating" with a datalink. Overally smoke and verbal descriptions makes for a fun match and forces you to put eyes out of the cockpit rather than focusing on your crutches like shared waypoints and the TGP. When we first started flying these ridiculously mixed missions I'd try and get the Ka-50 to give me L/L waypoints for their position, which works most of the time, but its easier to just get a visual map reference, along this road, by that river, past the bridge, before the next town, whatever, and then mark stuff with smoke. The key to coordinating via GPS waypoints is to have the mission extremely carefully planned ahead of time (as it would be in real life most likely) so that we have agreed upon waypoints for the expected path the mission takes us. The fixed wing might have its own course, but there's no reason you can't have the Rotary waypoints as well so that you can use it as shifting bullseye. "Ka-50, whats your position" - "Uhh, Waypoint 3 at 244 for 9". Its also pretty hard to miss the fight when a UH-1 is using his Miniguns. :P I'd carry 14x WP every time except that the TGP has stolen the pylon that you would use it for.

I usually take a pretty realistic loadout these days. 2x AGM-65D (maybe 4x if I feel like its all I'm gonna use) 2x Mk-82 2x GBU-38 7x WP Rockets (for marking stuff for my friends) 50-70% fuel TGP ALQ (If I want to really be authentic despite its utter lack of utility) This isn't realistic by Enduring Freedom standards, but COIN is just weird anyway. If I don't take any iron bombs I'll take 2x CBUs but never more because of the drag. If I take 4x mavericks I'll probably only take 2x bombs, maybe then I'd double up on WP so that I can mark more stuff. I still like my Ms-82s because they're so flexible provided there isn't an enormous threat below 10k.