WHOGX5

No, the problem is that ED lied to us so they could take our money, then leaving us hamstrung and transitioning to a doctrine of gaslighting DCS F-16C customers by going "you knew what you were getting yourself into", "you shouldn't have bought EA if you can't cope with it", yada yada yada., completely ignoring all the assurances they themselves made before launch. Yes, everything is subject to change but I think we can all agree that putting an entire module and its customers on the back burner isn't what's commonly intended by the phrase "subject to change". I mean, ED must have known for sure that the F-16C was the most awaited DCS module of all time. It is after all the most numerous and widely flown fixed wing military aircraft in the world. It was easy money. Fast forward to the present day: profits have been made and now ED is adding a broken weapon system, five bug fixes and some localization changes every quarter so they can say that the F-16C module technically isn't abandoned. Then, that they decide to prioritize pouring resources into the Mi-24 and AH-64 is just icing on the cake.

Did some ACM training just after the last patch dropped before I even knew that anything in regards to countermeasure effectiveness had been changed. There were several situations where we noted people using proper IR defensive maneuvers and throttle management which have been effective up until now in conjunction with appropriate countermeasure programs which have also been effective up until now, yet the end result was the missile impacting the defending aircraft leaving us leaving us quite baffled. It's worth noting that this training was conducted with AIM-9M's, not the AIM-9X with its increased flare resistance. So to summarize, there is no doubt in our minds that something definitely changed in regards to flare effectiveness.

It's coming up on three years since last time I posted in this thread. At this point I don't even care about the template. A mere response from Eagle Dynamics would suffice.

The difference is that people can load unrealistic loadouts that are possible. Like the triple-rack mavericks on the A-10C that would never be used in real life because of wheel wear and such. I'm completely fine with that as it's a real world possibility. The difference here is that it is physically impossible for a 2005 USN/USMC F/A-18C to utilize a litening pod on the cheek stations. It's the same as putting MK-84's on your wingtip rails. It's not unrealistic but possible, it's unrealistic and impossible. That's the difference. If this sort of stuff doesn't matter, why even pretend to model a specific lot or a specific timeframe of F/A-18C? Just call it F/A-18Z Death Hornet, give it a 2nd millenia timeframe and do whatever you want with it. But that's not what ED's outspoken goal is and that's not how they market DCS nor the F/A-18C module.

No. Best thing to do is to approach the target in CCRP and when you have a visual on the target, press MSL STEP on the stick to switch to CCIP. Then when you've dropped your bombs you press MSL STEP again to return to CCRP and you're TGP will move back to the target. IIRC you can use MSL STEP in A-G mode to switch to GUN as well as CCIP and CCRP.

IIRC Eagle Dynamics doesn't have any speedometer-programmers assigned to the Viper atm, only weapon-programmers, so I wouldn't expect a fix until the F/A-18C is out of early access.

Dogfight mode is still very buggy. What you have to do is press TMS up when you're looking at the target. If it doesn't lock, keep spamming TMS Up until it does. If you press TMS Up before you look at the target it will take much longer for the lock to actually acquire. It's not realistic, but it's what we have and it's not gonna get fixed anytime soon.

It would be nice, but the 510th and 555th fly the Block 40 afaik so it's probably not going to happen considering ED's attitude to authenticity when it comes to the F-16 specifically.

You can set custom detents using curvature in your throttle axis tune. Just rescale everything so the detent ends up where you want it. It's not as straight forward as in the sim that shant be named, but it's a relatively quick workaround.

I'm not sure I completely agree. Describing the DCS F-16 as WIP would imply that there's actual progress being made... I have bug reports I posted over a year ago, pretty much just after EA release that would probably take about 92 seconds for an 70 IQ programmer to fix. But ED doesn't care. Instead we get new shiny weapons that are broken beyond comprehension months after their release. Whoop-diddely-doo. I have already accept defeat. I gave them my money, and they bamboozled me. I don't even bother reporting bugs anymore, like what's the point? F-16 is basically abandonware and it's not like it's gonna get fixed in the foreseeable future.

So what you're saying is that we shouldn't discuss this on a scientific basis using actual performance charts, but rather look at youtube videos and try to interpret the turn rate visually? You don't need an MSc in aeronautical engineering to read a simple performance chart and you don't need to be a test pilot to fly in a simple circle according to those charts and measure the deviation between the two. You keep saying 'I think this' and 'I think that', and then you "prove" your hunches with youtube videos of dogfights? What is your goal? To convince us with your gut feeling as the main argument?

And even better, imagine having a solution like that integrated with DCS. Being able to download mods via the DCS menues, activate/deactivate with checkboxes, create different presets, getting updates pushed, etc. Would make things a whole lot easier than moving stuff between folders depending on if you do IC or non-IC friendly stuff.

There is a software called WeaponsDeliveryPlanner which lets you create a loadout an get all the important weights and drag indexes. I think it can even give you rotation speed and climb profiles, though it wasn't made for DCS so it won't be super accurate, but it'll get you in the right ball park. Alternatively, you can calculate your loadouts manually using the HAF F-16 NATOPS. It takes a while though as there are a lot of variables that will affect your drag index (the drag of a weapon on one pylon being affected by what's loaded on the adjacent pylon, etc.). Once you've calculated everything for a loadout though, you can just save it somewhere and after a while, every loadout you use regularly will be accounted for. Whichever method you decide on using, always leave a good amount of margin though as the DCS F-16 flight model is still in early development and not very accurate.

I have no idea where those textures are located. It's worth noting though, that it's not just the textures that change, but the entire pilot model. It's the same post-ejection model for all NATO aircraft so chances are that the model and textures are located somewhere in the root DCS install, probably in the Bazar folder. It's not much, but I hope it helps.

We're like the kids walking around with Nokia 3310's playing snake while all the other kids are sending selfie MMS's on their flip phones.

And please ED, if you overhaul the comms system, please go absolutely insane with the callsigns for longevity. Add 100+ of the most common real life callsigns and we won't have the issue of people using different callsigns for human and AI interaction respectively.

Honestly, I don't even care about a planning tool at this point. Just put an .lua file somewhere in the Saved Games folder that doesn't get nuked after each patch and let the community develop the tools to use it like we've done with everything else. A lot of things like countermeasure programs and screen setups don't change between flights. We'd only need a software like CombatFlite to edit and export steerpoints to the .lua and we're able to do everything we need to do.

I don't know about the USAF, but the Swedish Air Force had turnaround times of about 10 minutes for complete refueling and rearming of a combat aircraft while in a forest somewhere, with 6 ground crew. I'd imagine the USAF would get somewhere close to that during an actual full scale war at a fully equipped airbase.

When it comes to utility helicopters there really isn't a better choice than the HH-60G. It's old enough to have available documentation and it's new enough to be extremely capable. It is all-weather capable with GPS/INS, forward looking infrared and weather radar. Sling loading, hoisting, aerial refueling, etc; it can do all that stuff. It's even capable of shipborne ops with folding rotorblades. It can perform any roll from transport to CSAR and spec ops insertion. I dare anyone to find a helicopter variant that is more or equally capable with the same amount of available documentation and access to SMEs.

Don't think so. But as far as I know, in real life pilots never land with night vision goggles. You always flip them up and do a regular ILS landing instead.

This. While other pilots can give and receive bullseye calls left and right, us viper pilots have to do some form of eyeballed trigonometry to figure out a very rough area where something might be. Either that, or interrupt AWACS with a "Hey...., Magic...., could we get uhh, a BRA for that last bulls call?"

The F-14 is a decent SCAR/FAC(A) platform, but I wouldn't call it "very good". It has antiquated link functionality, different functions in different cockpits reducing the ability to share the workload between pilot and WSO and antiquated avionics giving poorer situational awareness in general. That's the strengths of aircraft like the F-15E, F-16D and F/A-18D/F, that pilots and WSO's can share workloads and they also have advanced avionics and datalink functionality giving them amazing SA which increases their ability to coordinate. I can teach my children to ride a bicycle through a discord stream too. It's still not as effective as being there. If I'm actually in the cockpit myself, I can look at information I need to look at when I need to look at it in order to help the trainee, rather than telling him to "look at that thing. no, not that thing. below that, yeah. zoom in a little. yeah, thanks", then he looks back and he's flying through a forest somewhere. They're not completely different.

I can only speak for myself and those that I fly with, but the F-16D would increase our combat capability a lot. It would give us the perfect platform for SCAR, FAC(A), mission commander, etc. Those roles could also be performed by platforms like the F-15E or the F/A-18D/F but we don't have those in DCS unfortunately. And as I mentioned previously, our efficiency in training new pilots would increase by magnitudes. Trying to teach someone something advanced and avionics heavy is a PITA at the moment as we either have to do it as their wingman or via a stream of some sort. Neither is nearly as efficient as actually being there in the pit.

Unable to watch the track at the moment, but I've noticed two things that mess with D/L Having units with A-A TACAN set to 1-36 or 64-99. It seems like being on red team degrades your D/L even if you have an E-3 on your side. So see if any of these apply to your situation and see if changing them fixes things.

On a related note to this topic: Would it be possible to save even more space by having the base textures set in a common folder as in @Megalax's example and then create some sort of decal layer with transparency for the names for each individual aircraft?