Cobra847

Thanks for the report! We'll investigate as a priority.

Free for all in DCS. Saratoga, Forrestal, Ranger, Independence (CV-59 - CV-62). Reason for the forrestal: Somehow more iconic for the Tomcat era, but also more exciting gameplay (deck is much smaller). Bigger challenge = more fun. :)

Dear All, Since our last development update, the team has been working hard towards the completion of the final items that we listed in our March update. We're making strong progress on all of these, and we're doing our utmost to try and complete as many high quality features for the F-14 as we possibly can. Later today, the team will be meeting to plan the last major push in features and development tasks required for Early Access release. There may be some quiet in the next month or two as we hunker down and crunch hard - but we won't rest until we are satisfied, so take it as busy silence in preparation for the coming rise of the phoenix. All in all, we're incredibly excited to begin to reach the end of the beginning. Now that the aircraft becomes more and more feature complete, it's time for us to start going in depth on content. We're always been committed to ensuring that we launch of products with as much free, high quality content as we can. This includes e.g. campaigns and AI aircraft, ships and other assets. The F-14 will be no different - it will ship with two campaigns; one for the F-14A and one for the F-14B (A+). Work has begun on these, but they will not be part of the Early Access release. Early Access will however have Single Missions, Multiplayer Missions, Training Missions and Instant Action available from day one. The objective of creating the F-14 campaigns was to create two separate opportunities for realistic gameplay that broadly exposed the player to the aircraft’s strengths and weaknesses, while taking inspiration from real scenarios. DCS currently offers two combat theaters that are suited to the suited to the F-14: the Black Sea map and the Persian Gulf map. We felt it was important to offer an included campaign that could be played by any DCS user who purchased the DCS: F-14A/B. For these reasons, we chose the place the F-14B (as the F-14A+ operating in late-1990) in the Black Sea Map for its campaign. The F-14A will have a historically-based campaign that takes place in the Persian Gulf Map – taking direct inspiration from real deployments and combat events in the theater from 1987-88. This closely matches the timeframe of the module itself and the aircraft as equipped. Below are overviews of the campaign storylines with the background leading up to the start operations. Effort will be made to include historically accurate airwing compositions and squadrons as part of the campaign. Besides Campaigns, we're working hard on both announced (Forrestal Class) an unannounced extra content (aircraft & other units) for the F-14. On full release, we believe it will be one of the most comprehensive packages available for standard DCS pricing. Enjoy the read! Click the images to read!

This is a priority fix.

Thanks for the reports!

Your giftcard is valid for anything on the HB store - it is not a Tomcat voucher. If you feel so inclined, spend it on the Viggen, a shirt or even the Tomcat peripherals coming to our store later. Or any of our unnanounced products. I believe we're just about hitting the double digits in terms of major and minor updates in 2018 alone. There is unfortunately not enough manpower to dedicate towards delivering more meaty updates until we are in our prerelease PR cycle. The recent INS update, for that matter, are things implemented into the simulator. Not things we would want to do. We try to only talk about things that we know we will deliver. Making long winded posts about unimplemented or pipedream features is pointless. I think your reservations of our "handling" of the F-14 are woefully at odds with the quality of the product that we will deliver. In my opinion, that is all that matters.

The issue for us is that none of us have a ffb stick, so we are programming in “the blind“. We will try to fix this asap.

Yes, the fix is in. :) I actually confirmed it in the changelog itself, but failed to post here seperately. Glad to hear it has dramatically improved the issue!

Yes - of course - all flight control surfaces are modeled and their appropriate hydraulic, aerodynamic (and other) effects :)

DCS: AJS-37 Viggen Changelog for 2.5.1 Beta Critical Performance Fix: Variable frame-time issues (microstuttering) and degraded graphics performance in Viggen significantly improved. TERRNAV on/off switching fixed Fixed an issue where some missiles (primarily RB-15F) would miss their target Corrected excessively slow trimming reported by some users. Resized HUD textures for better performance Corrected clipping (non pure black) alphas on edges of HUD textures. Overall weapon accuracy for bombs improved. Rocket improvements available shortly! Altitude calculations corrected for new atmospheric model in DCS. Implemented wheel brake axis for both toe-brakes. Various stability improvements Various memory issues fixed, most noticeable in restart cases where switches would not reset to default locations. Fixed master volume knob rotation - should not cycle anymore Updated Caucasus quick missions

The framerate variance fix should be in this one, but I can't confirm at present.

a changelog is coming

Indeed! You also receive these instructions per e-mail after purchase. :)

We have a fix in progress for this. :) We're currently tweaking the reflective parameters for the raycaster.

Yes :)

As mentioned in our Christmas update, the Viggen will be completed in 2018.

****** AJS-37 Viggen Spring Sale + Viggen Shirt! ******** Spring Thunder! Today we’re kicking off our spring sale for the AJS-37, and upon popular request, we’ve (again!) brought back our limited edition AJS-37 pre-order shirt! Sales will last for a week until midnight CET on Sunday the 29th of April Grab yourself a bundle for even more savings! DCS: AJS-37 Viggen -- $29.99 ($59.99) AJS-37 Viggen Shirt -- $19.99 ($24.99) DCS: AJS-37+ Viggen Shirt Bundle -- ($47.99) ($84.99) As always, thanks for your support and stay tuned for Viggen and Tomcat development news! Purchasing and flying the Viggen helps us keep our team running! Heatblur Simulations http://www.heatblur.com

Unleash the Mjolnir! We've been working with Eagle Dynamics to update the simulation of the BK-90 for the Viggen. It will soon correctly dispense bomblets and work properly in Multiplayer.

Dear All, Just wanted to give you a quick heads-up on the Viggen and our current work. This week we've squared away a major performance issue with the Viggen which was causing unstable frametimings. While your framerate (going by counter) is seemingly equal to other aircraft - the frametimes themselves could vary wildly by as much as 6ms from frame to frame. This could be "felt" if not entirely seen. We've now fixed this issue and frametime variance is down to expected values. This may have a bigger impact on those of you with lower end GPUs. The biggest systems push of the last few weeks and months has been with correcting some of the aircraft's most egregious bugs; such as weapon delivery innacuracies. Some of these issues have cropped up as part of a change in the core DCS platform; which required us to go back and revise some of our modeling. The list of implemented fixes is not particularly long due to correction complexity, but should have significant impact on your enjoyment of the aircraft. Once the next patch is ready to launch, we'll go into more depth and discuss our roadmap for Q2 of Viggen. Primary areas of focus for Q2 include the manual, new art, and new content. Thanks for the support! Heatblur Viggen Team

Dear All, As mentioned previously; one of our main goals is to release the F-14 as complete as possible. One big item that we’re beginning to fully square away is the navigational systems, and in particular a new simulation of the inertial navigation system. The navigational systems tie in heavily with elements such as the TID and CAP, and we’ll go into more detail on these aspects in the future. Enjoy a technical, physics based update on the navigational systems below, written by F-14 developer Krzysztof Sobczak (Ph.D Physics)! Introduction A good combat jet should provide the crew with means to navigate without external navigational aids or guidance. The way to achieve it is to equip the aircraft with an inertial navigation system (INS). An INS system measures and integrates sensed inertia forces (acceleration) and rotational velocities to calculate aircraft position and linear velocity. A good navigation system can precisely guide an aircraft on a route to a mission objective hundred or thousand miles-long, and then back to the home base, safely and reliably. Such a system is even more important when an aircraft is designed to operate over the ocean, far away from any ground-based TACAN or visual references. The INS used on the F-14 is a multi-unit Carrier Aircraft Inertial Navigation System (CAINS) designated as AN/ASN-92. As you have already discovered, this system is the centre of this development update. AN/ASN-92 features The AN/ASN-92 INS is the primary navigation system on the F-14 and provides the crew and the other aircraft systems with: Current latitude and longitude; Attitude; Heading true and magnetic; Own ground speed and ground track; Ability to store and display three waypoints, a fixed point (FP), an initial point (IP), a surface target (ST), a home base (HB), a defended point and a hostile area; Range, bearing, command course, command heading and time-to-go to a selected destination point; Calculated wind speed and direction; Calculated magnetic variation; Continuous monitoring of the status of the unit, and in case of failure inform the crew with advisory lights and appropriate acronyms displayed on the TID; Backup navigation modes in case of partial system failure. Although from the crew member’s point of view, the INS is used mostly for navigation, it is also essential for proper operations of other aircraft equipment. For example, the attitude is necessary for the radar. The attitude and the own position are required for some weapon delivery modes, particularly for long shots. Even more distressing to the crew, a complete failure of the INS renders weapons such as the AIM-7 inoperable. The same information is used for data-link operations - when using erroneous INS data, own tracks and targets received from cooperating aircraft will not match and result in false contacts being displayed on the TID. These are only a few examples, and the INS data is used whenever aircraft position or attitude is required. Construction and principles of operation AN/ASN-92 is built from multiple components, but there are two particular components which constitute the core of the system: the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and the navigation computer. The IMU is a three-axis, four-gimbal, all-attitude unit containing two gyros and three accelerometers. The gyros and the accelerometers are mounted to a platform that is free to rotate respect to the base (aircraft). The four-gimbal system provides gimbal-lock free rotation and uses torquer motors to correct platform attitude errors. The gyros sense angular rotation about their sensitive axes and are the source of information about the aircraft attitude. They also stabilise the whole platform and keep the constant orientation of the accelerometers respect to the ground. Two accelerometers are used to measure acceleration in the horizontal plane; the third accelerometer measures vertical acceleration. The sensitive axes of the accelerometers are orthogonal. The sensed acceleration signal is integrated in the computer and used to calculate aircraft velocity and displacement from the initial position. The attitude of the platform is also corrected continuously to account for the effects associated with the Earth’s rotation and device inaccuracies. This design is widespread for gimballed inertial navigation systems. It was used for the F-14, but also for the Space Shuttle and many other aircraft of the era. Below, you can find a sketch of an IMU from the JA37 flight manual – this model is almost the same as the model used for the F-14. An INS device like the AN/ASN-92 requires a high precision of measurements of the acceleration and the attitude, because even the smallest inaccuracy can result in a significant error when accumulated over extended time. Consider an example: the inertial platform is slightly tilted from the nominal position, let’s say by 0.002 degrees. Then, the horizontal accelerometers are no longer parallel to the ground, and this means that they start to be sensitive to gravity. If not corrected, this gravitational component is interpreted by the navigation computer as a horizontal acceleration. If the wrong attitude is kept constant for one hour, it will result in an error of the measured position of over one nautical mile. It is a significant inaccuracy, and it comes as a result of such a minimal alignment error. The accuracy of the INS degrades with time – usually the longer they operate in the navigation mode, the higher the error they accumulate. INS alignment procedure An INS device must be prepared before it is ready for navigation. This process is called alignment. Before the alignment begins, the RIO has to input aircraft coordinates and altitude. Upon selection of the alignment mode, alignment routines are read into the computer and the first stage – the coarse alignment – is initiated. The platform is levelled using the accelerometer output, and the initial rough estimation of the aircraft heading is performed. The second stage – fine alignment – uses the precise measurement of gyroscope drift to calculate aircraft’s true heading. This is possible because of the Earth’s rotation and utilises the mentioned before Shuler tuning. At no point of alignment, is the magnetic heading used, and the whole process relies only on the sensing of the non-inertial movement of the platform within the 3d space. For shore-based operations, the whole alignment process should be finished within 8 minutes. It is possible to pre-align the aircraft on the ground, which allows for a quick-reaction response. This reduces the alignment time to 2 minutes but requires aircraft to be tied down in the alert position. Carrier-based alignment is slightly more complicated than ground alignment because the ship is constantly moving. Thus, to support the process, ship’s INS data is transfer to the aircraft using data-link or deck-edge cable. The carrier-based alignment process should complete in 10-12 minutes. In case of the ship’s data being unavailable, ship’s true heading and speed have to be manually entered by the RIO. Performance A fully aligned AN/ASN-92 INS, in accordance with the requirements of the navy specification, for the latitude of 45 degrees North, should provide the following performance: 3 arc minutes for heading, 2.5 arc minutes for pitch and roll, Position error rate of 0.75nm per hour (CEP), Velocity error of 3 feet per second. All values stand for standard deviation and assume a normal distribution of the error. The RIO can decide to finish the alignment and switch to the INS navigation mode at any point after coarse alignment criteria have been met. However, a premature selection of the navigation mode will significantly degrade the navigation quality. In-flight alignment of the F-14 INS is impossible. In case of an in-flight INS failure or a takeoff without proper INS alignment, two additional backup navigation modes are available. They provide dead-reckoning navigation using attitude information from the IMU or the AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference Set), airspeed from the CADC (Central Air Data Computer), stored wind data and magnetic variation. The RIO can improve (restore) the precision of the INS in-flight by updating the aircraft position: With the radar by locking on the known reference point (waypoint); Using TACAN signal and known coordinates of the TACAN station stored as a waypoint; By overflying a visual reference point; Using data-link, either when flying in close formation, or by hooking a radar track of the cooperating aircraft. Updating the aircraft’s INS position in flight may introduce a greater error than before the update, and the accuracy is limited by the precision of the method used to update. Thus, updating has a greater usefulness when utilized as a backup navigation method when navigation stability is significantly reduced. Simulation Designing an INS (IMU) is an engineering challenge, which requires consideration of such problems as calibration, alignment, Earth’s rotational motion, inertia forces, thermal stability, analogue-digital converters precision, all different types of correction which have to be applied to keep the device precise over extended time, and many more. Simulating an INS platform is very similar - it is a complex undertaking. At Heatblur, we decided to develop an entirely new mathematical model to simulate the AN/ASN-92 for our F-14. We included all the potential sources of errors contributing to the final precision of the device, and recreated the characteristic behaviour of a gimballed INS platform. The result is a set of algorithms providing an authentic representation of the AN/ASN-92 in DCS, yet optimised to have almost no impact on CPU performance. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, below, you can find a plot which is the result of a test run of our simulation of the AN/ASN-92. In this example, the aircraft was parked, and the initial misalignment of the IMU was equal to 0.0005 degrees - i.e. it was relatively low. The figure represents the magnitude of the INS calculated position error as a function of time. As you can observe, the rate of change is not constant, and there are periods when the magnitude of the error decreases. This oscillatory behaviour is a known effect, described by German engineer Maximilian Schuler in 1923 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuler_tuning). The theoretically predicted period of this oscillation is equal to 84 minutes. In our model, those oscillations come as a natural product of the simulated physical processes. Finally, as you can see, the aircraft does not have to move for the IMU to accumulate errors. From the functional point of view, our simulation of the AN/ASN-92 is an authentic virtual representation of the real unit and contains all features described above. Most of them are already implemented, and the final missing bits should be finished within the next weeks. You can expect that your INS will: Let you navigate to any destination point; Drift and will not be 100% accurate; Communicate with other aircraft systems and simulated INS inaccuracies will affect their performance; Require proper alignment; Use stored heading alignment method reducing the alignment time to less than 2 minutes if the appropriate checkbox is selected in the mission editor; Sometimes fail and force you to use the backup modes. Test flight results To conclude this update, we would like to present to you a record of two test flights which we performed using our F-14 in DCS. We took off from Nellis AFB, climbed to 12000 ft, flew to Creech, then hit the dirt and turned to Groom Lake. After a zoom climb over Groom Lake, we descended back to ground level and flew straight to Lake Meade, crossed it to the Hoover Dam, passed Boulder City, and then back to Nellis. The whole route was almost 40 minutes long. Before the first flight, we let the INS run the alignment until the “fine align” status was reached – it took a bit less than 8 minutes. The second flight was preceded by a partial alignment, stopped after 4 minutes. For both flights, we recorded the true aircraft position and the INS calculated position. We loaded the exported data to Google Earth and prepared graphics comparing the true flight path and the INS-sensed flight path. The error of the calculated INS position at the end of the flight was equal to 0.4 nm for the fully aligned case, and over 4 nm for the 4 minutes long alignment. If you want to take a closer look at the results, you can download the recorded flight paths and open them in Google Earth: Fine alignment: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yIxMxDje2LvJVWy7nMqvBaA6hnUHwDQx 4 minutes alignment: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BxSRVz7vwguzHpY5ROM3ZHA6QqRaxZKE Many thanks for reading! We will return to the AN/ASN-92 in one of the next development updates when we take a closer look at the practical side of using the navigation systems of the F-14. As always, thank you for the support! Sincerely, Heatblur Simulations

We're in no way diametrically opposed to something like an FC module; but the issue with "downscaling" a full fidelity aircraft (and in fact, any complex jet aircraft for that matter) is that you need to abstract away a lot of functionality into "compiled" commands. Systems like the radar in particular require a lot of fine commands and tuning to use effectively. Simplifying such a system is out of the question; so you'd have to try and "compile" together commands or sets of commands which could still allow you to use the radar yourself. Much of the same goes for many of the other functionality. That said - flying the F-14 isn't hard from a systems learning standpoint. In fact, with JESTER, you don't even need to know how to lock targets or use the radar. In many ways, it's easier than using an FC level module for this reason.

You need to turn shadows to the low setting at minimum. :)

Intermediate. Sometimes we delay big changes for major patches, but not something like this.

There are no seperate Viggen patches. We can only ship changes together with DCS.

I'm working on a Viggen update. We've been focused on solving weapon inaccuracy issues, adopting to the new atmoshpere model, and solving performance issues (which we just managed to today!). The manual is now also reaching completion.