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PFunk1606688187

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Everything posted by PFunk1606688187

  1. In the context of PGMs dropping on a waypoint makes the process more user friendly because you can slave a TGP to the steerpoint, drop on the steerpoint and regardless of masking your CCRP symbology will be correct. Even if you drop in some other mode or are buddy lasing the ability to slave the TGP to the steerpoint generated SPI allows you to not have to worry about the TGP LOS becoming stabilized on a different point than the one you intend to target. TGP generated SPIs are slippery so you can lose time, become more heads down focused, and in general lose SA trying to make it work if something goes wrong. With a slaved SPI generated by a steerpoint that doesn't move you have peace of mind so you can focus on being heads out of the pit, spying for threats, managing SA, and in general focusing on things other than the sensors for the attack run. You might be able to make the argument that you should be good enough to avoid these issues but to me thats under-utilizing the potential of the systems. The whole point is to lessen pilot workload and lower task saturation. Most of the DCS A-10C pilots are probably far more heads down than they could be with a more relaxed process. For sharing a SPI via datalink I find the use of the TGP generated SPI is beneficial but once I'm going for an attack I'm going to generate the waypoint as a reference most of the time and almost always when employing PGMs. Its just more sensible and costs almost no time using the correct systems and ensures a near 100% successful attack. It costs a bare few seconds to make a waypoint from a TGP generated SPI while having to reattack because of a failed attack is costly in terms of time and security. The more attacks you do the more jeopardy you're in. In general I find that sim pilots do the exact opposite of what real pilots do with the same tools. Most of the upgrades for the C are designed to make a pilot more heads up, more eyes out, more focused on flying without having to fiddle with switches. Most sim pilots tend to over focus on sensors in a heads down mindset and bugger about with the TGP slew mid attack and weld their eyes to the MFCD. The TGP is for finding a target and generating coordinates and sensor data. Once you have that there's no good reason to be looking at it. With a steerpoint you have 100% peace of mind that that SPI is staying where it should. With a TGP generated SPI you have to actually look at it to be sure, and so be more heads down. Thats a nono. This is mostly concerned with Bomb on Coordinate style attacks. In a more Bomb on Target style attack, ala CCIP, I'd be more interested in using visual references to target with a waypoint only pointing me in the vicinity of the target, but thats a whole other can of worms. And as always, read the signature.
  2. Thats why its a good idea to deliberately drop on waypoints. TGP LOS can be occluded or masked whereas the terrain database works no matter the aircraft's attitude, or even range to the target.
  3. I find the concept of the single role label for the A-10 puzzling. It has quite a few missions it can do, and has done. People who say its a CAS only bird probably know absolutely nothing about its history, like yourself I presume. Its funny you talk about tabloid language, but using the single role moniker makes you sound like you're doing just that.
  4. If you'd just stop turning "can't see very well" into "can't" and "zoom works only so well" into "don't use zoom" maybe we'd see some actual understanding form here. Mis-characterizing the expressed perspectives of other people however seems to be the fatal flaw in this dialogue. It honestly seems like where some say "its too hard" you read it like they're saying "I can't see anything" I'm honestly befuddled by this impasse. You seem to think everyone is speaking in absolutes when its clearly a question of degree. And with respect to displays, no they really haven't improved that much. In many ways CRTs are still far superior than most affordable LCDs when it comes to contrast.
  5. I actually think that Ricardo's Horse of War is legible at lower than High settings. I have my textures on Medium and I have no problems reading my cockpit.
  6. Roll and pull. Hardly a more basic concept in flying a (combat) aircraft than using the lift vector to direct the aircraft. That the DCS manual makes absolutely no reference to this speaks to its weakness as a basic flying instructional. In fact the only reference it makes to entering a dive actually describes pushing the nose down but this is referring to out of combat flying where you're making gradual descents. With respect to ordnance employment tutorials the game's narrator simply tells you to enter a dive without explaining how. Roll and pull. Simplest way to understand it is to think of pulling the thing you want to dive at through your roof (or pull your roof through the thing, whichever is easier to conceptualize). Thats where the lift vector is pointing and thats where the aircraft wants to go more easily.
  7. Sadly the tutorials are miserably inadequate in terms of teaching you how to actually employ ordnance. It merely describes how to use the systems correctly in a general sense. Its akin to explaining how all the switches and knobs and trigger on a sniper rifle works without explaining any of the art of how to actually handle a rifle. There is much art to CCIP bombing and handling of an aircraft in combat in general. You won't find the tutorials giving you any help there. The manual doesn't even adequately describe how to enter a combat dive. I presume many poor souls began their careers trying to get into 30 degree dives by pushing the nose down.
  8. Depends on what we're talking about. Out of the box FSX isn't even close. Some of the third party developers however do a very respectable job with flight models by using external simulation. There are plenty of holes in the flight model for the A-10, things that are probably or definitely not right. On the whole though its easily the best combat aircraft flight model ever. However I'd be confident in stating that the PMDG 777 has greater total systems modeling than the A-10, but thats like talking about 95% versus 99%. That's a very very very small sector of FSX add on aircraft that could even enter the conversation. Like a half dozen at most. On the whole its just not even a worthy comparison though.
  9. If you pulled up earlier, like when Betty told you to, you'd be able to make it with time to spare no matter your speed. :smartass:
  10. Oh I'm being calm. This is a purely conversational tone, I'm just a know it all. ;) But I never (meant to say) always go buster, just go buster anytime you think you'll get shot at, or something very near it. Andy Bush in his old articles on SimHQ when talking about the Fulda Gap tactics said something like Think 300/300 and you'll be fine. That meant 300 knots and 300 AGL. 300 knots with a decent loadout is gonna be at or near full power. I guess I should have clarified bad guy country as being where he has teeth, not the entire AO as described by some guy using MS paint on a theatre map for the briefing. There are always pockets of bad airspace and good airspace, even over the red line. If you're near the bad stuff and you're saving fuel so you can stay out for an extra 45 minutes you're thinking backwards. You don't literally want to spend 100% of the time inside a possible SAM WEZ. If you don't have a spot you can regroup at within 2 minutes flight time at 300 knots you're in a bad kind of way in my estimation. Then again virtual pilots have weird priorities since we don't have to worry about dying.
  11. If you're in the midst of an attack run in which you are most vulnerable while carrying ordnance that leaves your drag profile at its highest for the mission then yes using max power is basically required in order to maximize your potential for survival. A-10 engines spool up real slow. A-10 engines are thrust poor. A-10 gains altitude like a pig. A-10 gains speed like a pig. A-10 burns speed like a pig. A-10 is a pig. For engine wear the engines are pretty robust. They apparently used to make jokes about memorizing the bold face procedures for dual engine flameouts because it was basically unheard of. Again, in bad guy country in the middle of a highly vulnerable period on an attack. There's also the fact that there's an automatic engine governor that ensures the plane never flies beyond a rated maximum which is well below the full power output of the engines. You don't run a mission 100% of the time in bad guy land likely to get shot at, you stage it around safer and more dangerous airspace. Thats either/or lateral versus vertical. Kosovo would be an example of a vertical distinction between safer and more dangerous whereas your traditional 80s Fulda Gap or Iraq war scenario is more like the lateral type. If you're flying real low you need speed to ensure you can pop up and still have enough jam to be evasive. If you're higher you still need more power because the engines produce considerably less thrust the higher you go. If you're orbiting or holding while planning an attack or reconnoitering from further out, ingressing or egressing or taking comms for the 9 line etc then yea you set engines to something more fuel efficient. If you have a reason to be slower, like hitting a certain speed for a certain type of delivery, yes pull power back. If you're in a dive greater than 45' yes pull them throttles back. Otherwise in the most dangerous part of your mission the A-10 needs every bit of thrust you can wrench out of it. Loaded for bear a typical realistic drag profile will give you a hard time hitting 300 KIAS at buster. I know for a fact most people around here fly anything but a realistic drag profile. Most people fly the airplane so fat and draggy you'd be lucky to dodge one SAM without ripping the wings off. For hitting fuel windows thats easy, you have bingo/joker fuel loads and then you have basic airmanship to stretch it out for your window at the tanker. Beyond that the bingo numbers exist to ensure you can miss that window and still make it home, if we're talking real life here. Take the A-10 up to Angels 29 and enjoy the scenery on your slow flight home at 170KIAS. Whats the line I read somewhere, somewhat relevant, G limits for the airframe are only relevant if a future flight is likely. ;) Basically if you think its likely someone is gonna shoot at you why are you not getting as fast as you possibly can? If your RWR is lit up with lock tones and you're flying right at it or near it or there are enemies within a few miles of your why are you saving fuel? If you're getting shot at when you think its safe to fly at more fuel efficient speeds why does your intel suck so bad?
  12. And you keep failing to comprehend that max zoom is a compromise that severely degrades the ability of a pilot to scan and to maintain situational awareness of even where he's looking. There's no ability to maneuver the aircraft while spotting easily since you have no stabilization of the view and with such a narrow field of view you have no reference to the canopy or other terrain features to provide a sense of position or to use as a reference. Its a tool, but a mediocre one in its current form. I would settle for gyro stabilization and a much higher max zoom factor when dealing with the issues of ground target spotting, something akin to 10-12x or whatever it is that they said they had in Kosovo.
  13. More like fibres of aluminum or aluminum coated glass cut to different lengths. Contrary to what DCS would have you believe, it does not look like a rice cracker dispensed out of the rear of the aircraft.
  14. A Hog driver knows of no such concept.
  15. Yes. 100% this. Semi is only useful if you program around the known limitations of the rather crude CMS logic. Missle evasion: A concept far too alien to most in these parts. Angels 16 is no place for an A-10 in a threat rich environment that include short to medium range radar SAMs. Not without robust SEAD support anyway, which DCS doesn't have. Doesn't work. Sometime back in probably the late 50s or 60s or whenever they fleshed out the guidance in SAMs to never allow them to guide towards the ground. This doesn't work in DCS, though it used to due to it not being modeled correctly. Its been fixed as far as I know. Breaking LOS to the radar guidance works but simply flying a path towards the ground doesn't. There are systems however where you can fly beneath their ability to launch. I forget which but it usually involves being below 300 or even 100 AGL. Some have no such engagement floor. This should be your response 99% of the time. Against an SA-19 its all you can do since countermeasures are useless in DCS versus SACLOS guidance, ie. optical. If you don't do this as a matter of course when you're inside bad guy country you're already making mistakes and they haven't even shot at you yet. Actually when the missile gets close you're supposed to do a radical out of plane maneuver to try and make a last ditch attempt to evade the missile. Basically you're meant to gain visual with the threat, perform prescribed evasive maneuvers against the missile while ejecting the correct type of countermeasures and if you observe that the threat is still on an intercept course wait til about 2 seconds to impact (or something like that) and do your "here goes nothing" maneuver. In general threats can be rather easy to evade if you use the right stuff against them and don't allow yourself to be engaged too close to them. DCS makes this easy because SAM logic is stupid. They always lock you well outside of max firing range and always fire at max possible range. This means that you're almost always at the worst part of the WEZ for the threat. MANPADS often get a pass on this due to them often catching you as you gain LOS to them well inside their WEZ where they were masked before and also due to engagement range being so short that even max WEZ leaves you with little time to respond. The goal in missile evasion is to force the missile to fly the most energy inefficient path to you. Some types will simply miss you period if you fly the right path. The SA-19 can easily be defeated simply by flying an ideal 3/9 line evasion constantly banking towards the threat enough to maintain that 3/9 perpendicular path. The missiles will simply go aft of you harmlessly. The worst thing to do though against them is turn you 6. So many times in Tacview I've seen myself evade 2 of 3 because the first two were when I was beaming the threat and the last one hit me as I turned my 6. Missiles primarily use solid fuel boosters and motors and accelerate to their maximum speed within a few seconds of launch. From then on its pure kinetic energy propelling them. The goal in the evasion is to force the missile to burn off as much of that energy as possible. Basic math tells us that you gain a proportionally greater advantage the further it is from you when you achieve that ideal flight path. They will then have to pull many more Gs to achieve lead or pure pursuit (depending on the guidance) and even if they continue to track you to the terminal point its still important because the less energy the missile has the more likely your last ditch maneuver will be successful. If the missile is basically spent by the time it reaches you your desperation barrel roll could do the trick handily. Basic generic process for threat evasion: -Receive launch alert (visual/verbal/RWR/MWS) -attempt to visually acquire -simultaneously maneuver the aircraft to beam the threat (3/9 line) -use correct countermeasures if applicable -perform correct maneuver if applicable -observe response of missile -if missile continues to track perform last ditch maneuver within a few seconds of estimated impact Needless to say you should be buster the whole time. Performing radical maneuvers early after the launch is actually bad for you because as you lose speed and energy the missile therefore has to pull fewer Gs to maintain its path and so has a greater chance of hitting you. I also can't stress enough how important it is to find the missile visually. The RWR can't tell you how long to impact or how close it is. The MWS doesn't always detect launches either. Programs: http://www.476vfightergroup.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=45 Tacview examples: http://www.476vfightergroup.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=313
  16. There's plenty of high threshold skill demanded in flying the A-10, but its made enjoyable by the predictable and easy to use airframe. The A-10 doesn't like to stall and it handles beautifully at low speed. Its a real pig up high. The systems are incredibly easy to use when you learn them. They're complex but simple. You save a huge amount of time and effort doing things with the systems compared to the Black Shark. High threshold skill still exists for traditional bombing and gunnery techniques but thats the beauty of the A-10, you can use it like its the 21st century just as easily as pretending its still the early 90s. The A-10 is weakest against other threats due to being speed and thrust poor. This just means being smarter but its not like the Black Shark where you can just hide behind a hill to defeat a missile.
  17. Its not about all encompassing single solution that will fix everything. This is why I get frustrated. This is about a concept that should ameliorate the issue and afford virtual pilots the chance to fly with a bit more grace, ie. not slamming the FOV slider up and down between spotting a dot and managing to cross check instruments or make necessary changes to systems ahead of an intercept. I'm not talking about IDing or spotting being one and the same, but the issues of why they're both harder in DCS are basically interrelated. Its all down to pixel resolution. No matter how much we change the quality of the engine such as with EDGE giving us better constrast and the like you're still looking at pixels being too small to be noticed to a believable extent. If you look at the picture I posted of me in Wedge formation you can see that at default FOV the other aircraft, at broadside, is something like 4 pixels wide and 3 pixels high. Thats at 1.5nm. Contrast or not thats hard to see and thats well within a comfy easy to spot range. When it comes to aircraft doing things to make it harder to spot well you are forgetting that lateral movement does more to advertize position than moving slowly. If anything its aspect that'll hide a small fighter craft at extreme range. If you're broadside you're broadside which means you're showing off more of yourself. Light conditions, contrast, glare, etc, that will all influence how easy the pixels are to spot against the background but they're still minuscule and so you end up with a lack of granular resolution to that fine modern and surely improved EDGE rendering. Scaling offers a compromise to that shortcoming. Its a compromise with absolutely no set in stone requirements. How much scaling, to what degree, in what conditions, is all up for grabs. Its merely a question of whether its an approach to take or not. Its an open concept, its not fixed and close. This whole "10 year old solution" thing is really closed minded in my opinion. No doubt DCS uses plenty of 10 year old concepts. You're not going to tell me that what DCS does well that had its naissance in LOMAC is an inferior solution. Compromises to the all to fuzzy concept of realism are not one stop shops. They pile on. Zoom, improved contrast through engine rendering, and yes perhaps scaling, can all combine to offer a better package compromise for achieving usable and convenient realistic performance for players. Take sim racing. Narrow field of view is a hassle because you lose lots of side situational awareness. You can't see your mirrors even if the narrow field of view offers a more realistic and accurate representation of the track. One solution is of course virtual mirrors. Its not very realistic (ie. floating mirror overlays aren't in real cars), but it represents a compromise to give you some of what you lose by shuttering yourself into a narrower window. One solution working with another to achieve a better overall result. Thats what its about. Not perfection, just chipping away at the mountain of things that a virtual pilot has to overcome that real pilots don't. Its not about underestimating how hard it is to do the job of fighter jock. Last thought I forgot to stuff in the above, I would be content to leave scaling inapplicable to ground units. I would however prefer if ED gave us gyrostabilized binos. We used to be able to increase the minimum FOV but that got patched out, probably inadvertently, and so spotting and analyzing ground units is harder than ever. I don't think scaling is as badly needed as it is in the A2A environment. In fact the improvements in ground textures in newer generation maps should be greatly improve the ability to spot ground targets and then associate nearby landmarks to keep that area easily understood until you go in for the attack itself. This kind of thing is obviously unavailable in the sky where the big blue is a big wide nothing. No, I'm not arguing to argue, its about breaking through what is apparently basic misunderstandings. Its this kind of characterization that frustrates me so, accused of not being open to new ideas. I'm very open to new ideas. I could however very easily argue you're very closed to old ones. When in the end the CON team for this discussion are apparently suggesting the PRO team are saying things they're not (scaling will fix everything, those who want scaling refuse to use zoom or say it doesn't work, we don't want anything but scaling) it seems to me like you're just skimming what we're saying and inserting your own biases. Seems, the impression, not necessarily your intent, but thats how miscommunication goes. In this we are very much in agreement. I'm on a 7+ year old rig right now. I'm going to be upgrading for EDGE but my monitor is the last thing I'm looking to dump my monies into.
  18. Oh nonsense. At extreme range its not going to make that much difference glancing away at most 2 to 3 seconds at several miles, especially if you're turning to intercept or vice versa. This is why high FOV matters, because you have a picture and a whole sector that you can associate with part of your canopy or a heading or bearing or whatever. It means that in a few crucial seconds you may look away you can reacquire because you know the ballpark to look in. Even at high speed the change in position isn't going to be terribly great at longer range. Obviously the rate increases the nearer you get but as things get bigger that should help. Its like talking to a wall. Its not about making it easy, its about making it possible. Its about making it possible to continue seeing it since using zoom makes re-acquiring a very difficult to spot object basically impossible. Whats wrong with 10 year old solutions? Most of what works gets iterated into better versions. If there's a new way to overcome the basic limitations of monitor resolution (which is a problem that has itself not much changed since the 90s) you'd think someone woulda thought of it. Again, talking to a wall. Who said don't use zoom view? I can't help but use zoom view. The problem that you don't seem to understand is that its a compromise that creates its own problems. Human vision only has a very narrow part at the middle of our focus that can give us that high level of detail, everything else is basically blurry. However the composite image of the central focus and the blurry bits that fill your peripheral vision allow you to more readily associate what you're seeing. Take the basic concept in dive bombing. You use canopy references to line up with the thing you're trying to bomb in order to arrive at a point in space that allows you to roll and pull into a correct dive angle. In DCS this is impossible without being able to see both the target on the ground and the canopy references. It must be done basically at default FOV. Maintaining visual with a target in the sky is essentially relying on the same thing. You need to use elements of your canopy to track where stuff is. I know that I'm in correct wedge formation when my lead is within a certain area aft of the canopy bow. Being able to see that at a glance is useful, having to zoom way the hell in is not because I lose that reference. Its the same with tracking a target you see in the air, you associate a part of your aircraft with where it is, at the very least a quarter of it, and so its easier to find it again 1 second later when you go back to look after glancing at an instrument or whatever you do when you're not padlocked. At high zoom anything you can reference is gone, the field of view is so narrow that if I'm looking near the target but a little high or low I'm never going to see it. At high zoom I also have a very jittery view with TrackIR, its very hard to scan smoothly. Zoom is not a panacea, its a compromise solution that offers its own downsides. I use it, I will always use it, but its got its own baggage.
  19. I can watch airplanes flying over the Burrard inlet and Vancouver harbour from ~3nm and further from my window. Its damned easy to see airplanes at that range. They're the size of Cessnas and float planes. Depending on conditions it varies how easy it is to see but when conditions are right its easy to look out the window, see an airplane at 3nm or greater, look away, look back and reacquire easily. Part of what makes this easy is wider FOV that makes it easy to associate the picture with where the dot is and rediscover where it is generally before the blatantly visible dot is homed in on. Its even pretty easy to determine aspect since blobs look ovoid depending on the aspect. Aspect and light and contrast and all that jazz are relevant but under ideal conditions its bloody impossible to easily see anything in DCS. Case in point, a typical wedge formation from the wingman perspective in my DCS. That's 1.5nm spacing give or take. I know where I'm looking. I still have a hard time seeing him at default FOV. Whats default FOV? The FOV that the devs say "here, play at this FOV". Its also the one that allows us to use our cockpit easily and have spatial awareness of where we are looking. Spatial awareness is part of what makes it easier to keep track of hard to see dots. If you have to zoom in you lose that spatial awareness and so you have no way to easily reacquire if you look away. Its one thing to know what part of the sky my buddy is in and then use the zoom to try and get a feel for his aspect etc, its quite another to not know he's there and try to find him. He's broadside to me in one of the largest single seat tactical aircraft you'll ever encounter. When you can barely see your wingman in standard formation how are you supposed to cast eyes out of the formation to see beyond it?
  20. For the purposes of brevity in practice Laser means the thing that paints a target for guidance. Pointer means the laser pointer that'll get the 40 foot cat tromping through downtown Baghdad to go nuts.
  21. Silver bullets are not what regulations and standards and procedures are about. Adding a 2 person cockpit rule certainly degrades the capability of someone wanting to bring a plane down. Now instead of having an opportunity to just flip a few switches and hum to himself as he sends 150 people to their doom he has to be more overt, he has to face another person and perhaps that will in some cases, many cases, perhaps most cases deter or alter the chain of events to allow those 150 people to survive what would otherwise be a hopeless plummet into a mountain.
  22. EasyEB its obvious you're a total hack fraud since you apparently don't realize that since irony radars aren't real they can't be jammed. If you had half a wit you'd realize that fake radars can be deprecated by whatever means the originating commenter desires and as such that is the one true way to describe it. Sincerely Longbottom Smedley Snarkworm III, esq QC. Mrs.
  23. You guys are being silly. This is a sim that calculates aerodynamics on the fly. They could do that just fine if they wanted. The question is if the labour is worth the product.
  24. Passion is probably the cornerstone of what makes the simming community tick. Its no digression in my opinion.
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