Cake

So, maybe this deserves a thread where we can discuss 2 crew procedures for common scenarios. The module is the airplane, how to use it isn’t necessarily all on the manufacturer.

I think there is a built in braking action modeled into DCS that somehow affects all the aircraft. Every jet I’ve flown taxis always along pretty briskly just with idle thrust. I can’t directly compare DCS to real life, but I’d be surprised for example if the F-14 quickly stops on its own with no brakes in RL as in DCS. Maybe this is what is happening with the YAK.... perhaps it’s not specific to that model but of DCS itself. I’ve flown the real Yak, but don’t have the DCS model. The 182 you have, is that a Katmai or Petersen SE260? I used to fly one of those - cool airplane.

Same boat 1TB nvme sad and 48Gb ram, my CPU and GPU are usually just below 50%. Doesn’t matter what ai do with ASW on off or 45.

I was thinking marshaling at something like 250 knots so sweep forward or auto? Looking forward to an experienced answer!

I don’t know the official answer, but I would think it would be whatever is most fuel efficient? High aspect ratio wings forward?

I shot a 9 straight up the tail of an Su-25 and it still took more canon rounds to finish it than an undamaged F5. It seems a little underwhelming, but it could be totally accurate for all i know....?

Is there a technical obstacle that prevents VR from working with multiple GPU's, beyond the fact that they simply aren't supported? Would it be possible to have VR drivers written that take good advantage of multiple GPU's?

The advantage of moving civilian sims to DCS is the flight and systems models could be at a higher level. This is appealing. The disadvantages include things mentioned like limited world size, too basic ATC system and insufficient infrastructure. This might not be so appealing to developers. I would be very surprised if ED turned down a skilled civilian developer who wanted to bring a DCS level Boeing or Airbus ..... Imagine a full blown 767 with its associated tanker version? ... I think the better explanation is that DCS as a system needs some more things to make it compelling to develop airliners for. Someday, DCS will hopefully cover the earth. ATC will be realistic. Fixing these things would benefit us, and perhaps they will make the DCS environment broaden to more possibilities. I think the argument that airliners and other civilian aircraft have no place in DCS world is a little like saying houses, casinos, bridges, and non combat boats don't belong either. Seriously? DCS primarily simulates aircraft, not cars and gamblers.

With many 3D silulations we are stuck with choosing between quality and performance. The old sacrifice of frame rate for eye candy. I think since LOMAC, the strategy is that eye candy sells and other things play second fiddle. In this case, a key ingredient of combat success, namely situational awareness, is lost in the translation because what should be visually observed often isn’t. There are so many things right with DCS. The flight models, the systems, the feel. The visual representation of other aircraft at anything but very close range may be DCS’s weakest point.

Maybe Dassault is changing its tune as it recently collaborated with a developer for a Falcon 8X module.

Exactly! Jester is great. My refueling in the f14, pretty rough.

It could be worse, we could be fighting Klingons.... Scratch that, it would be about the same :)

Could we get an option for him to not keep cracking the same lines over and over during refueling? Maybe only use those lines once a flight? I would be nice to be able to get useful stuff, like fuel state without repeating the Luke Skywalker stuff over and over again. He needs to be smart enough to realize his likelihood of going for a swim is directly proportional to how much he distracts ME from the task at hand! Maybe a little logic that after a couple attempts he realizes its time to let you focus? Either that or a HOTAS button up front to eject the back seat only?

You sir, have hit the nail squarely on the head. There are two potential issues when simulating spotting. The first is not being able to spot when you should, if you looked at the correct area for a target but couldn't see it. The second is being able to see targets in the sim that would be impossible to see in real life. So, if it HAS to be one or the other, which problem is worse? I fly for a living and while I had 20-10 eyesight for much of my youth, it's not that good anymore. I can still spot a large fighter at up to 10 miles. For example, not that long ago I spotted two F-15s on an intercept at 9 miles beam aspect to me. They were easy to spot because they were descending to engage a target so there was a lot of relative movement. From this distance I could even recognize the type as soon as they rolled into a steep bank. If ATC hadn't given me a vector I probably would have never scanned my 3 o'clock so closely and spotted them. 20-20 vision is way below average for fighter pilots. I remember seeing an interview of an Israeli ace who explained part of his success in being able to spot enemy fighters at up to 25 miles, when most of his fellow pilots would't see the same aircraft until 10 miles. He probably had 20-6 or better vision. I personally think the problem of not being able to see stuff that should be obvious to a fighter pilot's eyes that are in fact looking in the correct direction - remains a huge issue in DCS. It's clearly a problem to many here, and trying to explain it away as "spotting is difficult" doesn't do it justice. Sim pilots face enough difficulties with the man to machine interface, like trying to hold a mouse cursor over a knob and spin it while flying the airfraft with a stick that feels nothing like the real thing and usually offers no feedback. It's generally easier in a real cockpit, minus the weather, physical demands, and other risks. Flying sims well is enough of a challenge with controls that can never approximate the feel of the real thing. Given these challenges, it's a little unfair to make spotting so much harder than it is in RL. it would be better to make sure "simmers" see everything a virtual Chuck Yeager would have seen than to make it impossible for a large segment of our base to struggle so much. "Tricks or cheats" really are the lesser of two evils. So, if Jester says, MiG-21 2 o'oclock high and you look in the right section of sky, it SHOULD BE somewhat easy to spot it when you look in that area. In RL, aircraft to be spotted are IN FACT VISIBLE whenever the atmosphere and weather do not obstruct them. The question is individual, are your eyes good enough to acquire it? Nineline is right in saying that spotting aircraft is hard in RL. It isn't impossible though, I know what my 20-20 vision in real life can spot. How does DCS compare? I'd say in RL I can spot stuff at four times the distance I can in DCS, so flying DCS makes me feel like I have 20-80 or 20-100 vision. Not the feeling I want. The thing that sparked this thread was the F-14 air to air training. I did these missions on my somewhat high end system with RIFT. I had jester start a STT on a MiG23 and visually acquired the MiG in the HUD diamond at something like 8 or 9 miles. After closing passed something like six miles, the MiG vanished (without changing aspect) from inside the diamond, only to reappear around two miles. This is silly and completely diminished the experience. The F-5s were almost impossible to spot, despite Jester telling me they were dead ahead. Any trick or cheat would be vastly superior to this. I love the RIFT, but man, it's hard to see another fighter taking taxiing onto the runway from the same airport at less than half a mile away...... I think our DCS programmers are talented enough to come up with a solution that makes everyone happy. It just needs to be made a high priority.

I've gotta say that I think this is the smoothest flying jet in DCS. It just feels so right, even is dissimilar formation. And when you decide to go ballistic? Only tried this once, but did a supersonic climb from the mid 30's to 96,250 ft, straight up! Flamed out both engines and I loved the effects when I was able to re-light just below 20,000 feet. So cool!

Thanks for doing this. I love flying on this server. I'm glad you guys are addressing the problems in the runway environment. I just thought I'd add that I think we'd have much less problems if pilots just observed a little better practices in the airport environment. The most obvious one is the tendency for many pilots to always use the nearest departure runway. I notice this even when the winds are nearly 20 knots straight down the runway, some will just takeoff downwind when there is already people lined up to takeoff or land in the correct direction. We all want realism and to start the jets, but we're too lazy to take an extra two minutes taxxiing? This is sort of silly I think. Pilots in RL rarely ever depart with more than a 10 knot tailwind. That would really have to be an exceptional circumstance. It's also not uncommon to be crossing the fence when landing and have someone take the runway right in front of you - without ever seeing if the approach is clear. I don't mind the low passes, but when they are downwind heading opposite what should be the active runway they cause many more problems. Also, it would be nice if more were on SRS and provided a little info on intentions. My experience is that the aerobatics online SRS server is more used by people who are flying combat on a totally different server, and then they'll be on the airport frequency for wherever the most frequently used aircraft are based. Again, thanks for this. I see a lot of "professionalism" on this server. I think this is the one big exception.

Please move this where it belongs, under FEATURES.

I think it’s context sensitive.... so, it’s only available at a certain point during startup??? I wonder if you’re missing something.... maybe try the auto start and it should be available when you see the message “ waiting for alignment”

As always I still have much to learn, but this Tomcat is a dream to fly. It’s so stable and smooth in the pattern - IMHO, way easier to fly from the break to landing than the Hornet. I’m thinking it rewards a light touch at slow speeds. To me, it feels the most like a real airplane of the jets in DCS along with the L39.

I find it amazing we have Hornets without ILS capability. It’s just such a fundamental solution and something that seems like it would be incredibly useful if going somewhere other than the boat. I guess you could just slap in the 430 and associated hardware and you’d be all set :), with extra VHF radios to boot.

I’d take VR in its current state any day over a 5k flat panel at double the frame rate. While VR is inferior for spotting and identifying aircraft, the feel of flying and sense of depth, closure, speed and spatial awareness make VR the better experience for me. I’ve tried going back to track IR - it’s just a giant step backward.

Stuff like the TACAN is positioned in a place where it would be simple to look down and see in the real plane, but you are right In VR with no zoom it’s nesrly impossible. I can read the airspeed on my RIFT, but I confess it should be a little easier, just a glance should work rather than needing to focus and lean in toward it.... I think with experience you get the info from airspeed without needing to read the precise number.... just by the design of the scale.... I gave up on the tacan and made jester tune it!!!! Oh yeah, I was unable to turn heading or course knobs. They seem to not function...

Those are in the SImple radio program settings...

I pretty much only fly DCS in VR, and this made the tutorials difficult. 1, The tutorial instructions time out and disappear before I can methodically step through the process. These should be more persistent (i.e., they should remain to the space bar is pressed or ll steps are complete). 2. Even with a 1.6 PD, some of the panel is difficult to read the labels on switch and knob positions. In particular, the master test panel is difficult to tell what position the switch is set to.... It's even blurry in the manual, so maybe a little sharper on the cockpit artwork here? In the end, I ended up switching to the autostartup because I found it too difficult to see certain things I needed to in the cockpit (as compared to the Hornet where it is no problem to see just about everything clearly. Personally, I'd prefer a little cleaner / newer art approach for the cockpit - I want to simulate the F-14 when it was newer, not worn out, but I can't fault your approach as this is a design choice. I think a newer cleaner feel would help somewhat with #2 above. So, given that, I think a few things should just feel better maintained. For example, a few of the cockpit displays have a glaze on them? I've flown some pretty old aircraft and if it looked like that we'd find a way to clean it up. I think also part of the problem is, with a real display, it's easier for the brain to ignore this than in a simulation where the display is itself on a display. All in all, I think the worn look makes tasks like the startup more difficult than it needs to be. The primary instruments and controls aren't an issue at all. Well, with one exception.... The AoA indexer light covers seem too worn and the lights appear way too dim. Didn't find any major faults with the sim iteslf - Just these subjective things. The Tomcat was a pleasure to fly and I can say that after over 8 hours of flight time and as many landings, carrier traps, and formation I could cram into a day. Oh, I also had an issue contacting the tanker. Other radios worked fine, but couldn't get tankers to respond.

I think it's much easier to fly the Case 1 pattern in the Tomcat than the Hornet. I haven't been using DLC and the thumbwheel though. For me that just confuses things.