esb77

Really this all argument boils down to, "which plane misbehaves less when I try to rip my stick out of it's base?" The crankiness is based on the premise that in DCS the F-15 is excessively idiot friendly while the Su-27 is a bitch that will kill you if you don't court it with champagne, caviar, and fine chocolate. There's a grain of truth to this. American engineers are a bit more inclined to pamper the end user (and also to assume that the end user is an incurable idiot). Mostly though, this is a matter of how the idiot resistant features in the respective planes work. In the F-15, it's largely based on the idea that if you try to tell the plane to do something excessively stupid, the plane is either strong enough to take it or just ignores your stupid inputs. This translates very well into a computer game. In the Su-27, if you start being excessively stupid in similar ways, the plane starts trying to swing a stick around pretty hard to get the pilot's attention. Specifically, the control stick. There is some limiting of execution of control inputs, but mostly it's a matter of alerting the pilot through the flight controls rather than overriding the pilot's control of the flight. This does not translate well into a purely software based representation. It would work much better as output for a force feedback stick coupled with a force feedback stick that has some pretty strong actuators. ED isn't being unfair to Flanker users, the Flanker users are just failing to upgrade their input hardware to be fully compatible with a Flanker simulation. I'm saying that from a position of the Flanker being my favorite plane (at least until the Hornet comes out). If everyone built and flew from a full fidelity pit with a properly calibrated FFB stick, I don't think there would be much griping about the Flanker being unruly around the edges of its envelope. The flight models are a continuous WIP for ALL the modules, and probably everyone posting in this thread knows that. For the simulation improvement, sure the F-15 model might be able to use a more realistic damage model for g overstress, but not nearly as much as the cranky Su-27 users need to get better input hardware. The Flanker communicates to the pilot by swinging a stick at them, if your stick doesn't do that then if you want a better Flanker simulation then you need a more lively stick.

I just flew the mission in the latest version of DCS 1.5, and aside from a spectacularly bad approach and, well I'm not sure if I should call it a crash or a landing (crash-landing maybe), there were no issues. I'm definitely out of practice for a crosswind landing where the crosswind component is more than 40 km/h. A few comments on the mission in its current state: Some of the altitude changes between waypoints were insane, well outside of what the aircraft is capable of. That said, as pilot, your responsibility is to review the flight plan before takeoff and if the waypoint locations or altitudes or speeds are clearly crazy you should either edit them or plan to ignore them. The HUD steering circle was all over the place, especially at long distances. I ignored it and flew the waypoints by following the HSI. Blindly following the steering circle would have produced poor to disastrous results. There was only one "fly into the mountain" spot that I saw, and I was a bit off of the course line so that may have been my error. There were however 5 or 6 places where if you don't anticipate the turn you'll get awfully close to the hillsides in the river valley, especially if you don't know how to make a coordinated turn. Some of those turns are also 60 degrees or so of bank if you don't want to get close to the hills. For the AI and autopilot in missions you can set waypoints to "fly over" or "turn before" and it looked to me like these were supposed to be "turn before" based on their locations in the river valley. The smart option is to just ignore the waypoints beyond "is this the right river" and fly down the valley VFR manually cycling the waypoints if you don't get close enough to trigger them. If flying a Su-25 and the tower tells you that there is a 13 m/s crosswind on the runway it would be a good idea to divert to a field where the wind direction and runway direction are not almost perpendicular to each other, if you have enough fuel. There was no fire but I trashed the tires and the gear and ran off the runway by about 400 m. I should have at the very least done a go around, but really I should have diverted to Mineralnye. So my advice is: Look over the flight plan before you fly. If you see something that looks dangerous or foolish, change the plan. This is a chief responsibility of a pilot. If instruments are telling you do things that seem foolish, cross check with other instruments and use your judgement. Just because the HUD steering circle indicates that you should fly into the side of a mountain does not mean that it is really a good idea. (Note, for night and IFR flight conditions you really need to know and check your flight plan, when instruments are all you have, you need to be sure that your waypoints don't lead to controlled flight into terrain). Check the waypoint number in the HUD and in the counter window on the HSI, if the automatic turnover didn't trigger because you didn't get close enough to the set waypoint because you were flying a safer course then just manually cycle to the next waypoint. Right Ctrl + `. The pilot's job is to be intelligent and spot potential problems long before they happen so that they can be completely avoided. Do that, and this mission is quite easy.

To perform CCIP bombing the impact point needs to be within the HUD. In general in the Russian FC3 aircraft you want to be at about 3000 m AGL, 450 to 600 km/h airspeed, and then dive at the target with low throttle at a dive angle of at least 30 degrees. Ideally release and pull up by around 1200 m AGL to avoid all danger of self frag or controlled flight into terrain. You can push it a bit lower with a smaller bomb like a FAB 100. For low level CCIP bombing you'd either be using the submunition canisters or retarded bombs. For those the key is high speed and low altitude. On the order of 750 to 800 km/h and 100 to 200 m AGL. For the retarded bombs it's important to factor in wind direction, as they can drift a surprising distance on the way down. You might try the tutorial missions for the Su-25T and the Su - 27. I know the Su - 25 ones cover CCIP bombing, and I think the Su- 27 ones do as well.

Keep in mind that you are creating an illusion of level flight. In reality, if you roll 90 degrees you're basically skydiving while wearing an airplane. You and the airplane are in freefall, and preserving the illusion doesn't last long. In the video he only holds a full edge on position for 4 or 4.5 seconds. There are a bunch of things that contribute to maintaining the illusion from the airshow audience viewpoint. Lack of visual references. They're looking up, ideally enough so that any ground references are in their peripheral vision. This makes it hard to see that the plane is not truly flying in a straight and level path. Viewing angle. Again, being high enough in the field of view gives you an edge. By forcing the view to be at an angle from below, the vertical rise and fall of the airplane creates less angular displacement for a ground observer than would be apparent to an aircraft flying straight level, and in line abreast formation with you. Starting with a positive vertical velocity. If you're climbing at 5 m/s when you roll fully 90 degrees, then it's going to take a second or so before your vertical velocity drops to zero and you start falling. Assuming of course that you make your roll in a way that doesn't bleed off that vertical velocity. Slight upward yaw. The side of the plane will generate a slight amount of lift this way and your engine thrust vector will also have a slight upward component. You'll still be in freefall, probably faster than a skydiver in a wingsuit, but every bit helps. Not really rolling the full 90 degrees. Keep it at 80 degrees and pull a slight turn, and you'll get a bit of upward lift, but it will be very hard for ground viewers to detect this. Short duration. Typically it is only done for a few seconds. The one in the video was pretty long, and it lasted about 4.5 seconds. At the end of the day, level flight while rolled 90 degrees is an illusion. Seventy million dollars is not enough to buy an exemption from the laws of physics. Edit: Forgot to mention that extra altitude also helps, the farther up you are the longer you can fall before they start to notice. If you just want edge flight, and don't care about pretending to be in level flight, then just start at higher altitude, keep airspeed up, and hope your fuel system pickups are still submerged. If you're having trouble with not enough yaw to keep the nose level or slightly up you can on twin engine planes throttle down the upward engine to give it a bit more nose up yaw.

To expand a little bit on visual approaches, try setting up a good instrument approach at a field with the HUD ILS. If you get on slope and stabilized nicely, either pause the game, or take a screenshot. Now you have a pretty good sight picture. What you want to do, is try to pick out the point on the runway where you'd like to touch down. At 15 km, this may be hard to see, and you can just substitute the near end of the runway. Now look at your cockpit, and find a feature like a bolt, a scratch, a cable, or some other fixed part of the cockpit that lines up with where the touchdown point appears on the HUD/Canopy. Memorize this feature. Then in the future, when you want to be approximately on slope for a visual approach use 1000m AGL(runway) at 15 km out as a starting point, then line up your memorized marker with your desired touchdown point, and keep it there as you fly in. You can download a free copy of the FAA basic airmanship manual, and read up on the correct procedures for landing a fixed wing aircraft. It goes into more detail. For that matter, the manual has a lot of info on good piloting in general, and includes quite a few diagrams. It's surprisingly well written for a government document.

I forget the full list of conditions for which the IR scanner automatically turns on/off, but if you see the IR targeting information on the HUD, then yes. The difference between the radar and IR modes on the HUD are fairly small, but at the least you should have a 2-3 letter code indicating that your EOS system is active, and I think that you'll probably loose range information on the HUD. At least if you only have your own aircraft's radar to work with. It gets a bit more complicated if you have AWACS support or datalink from other fighters, because they can feed you range data. I can't remember if when you have AWACs the range comes up on the HUD or just on the HDD. We should probably both go read the manual pages about that.:) There are differences, but they're small and easy to forget if you don't practice on regular basis. If I want to be sure I'll be lazy and turn off everything, and then turn on an EOS only mode, if I reacquire then I know it's a good EOS signature. That's not the best way to do it though.

For further reading try using the forum search feature and "1.5.5 missing texture", the thread is several pages at this point.

I threw together a quick test mission for the Kh-25MPU and the Kh-29T. Targets were a single OSA for the MPU, a column of M1A2 Abrams MBTs and a tanker ship for the Kh-29T. Kh-25MPUs I had no problems with. No changes as far as I can tell since 1.2.4? when the missile aerodynamic models changed resulting in much shorter (and in most cases more realistic) effective ranges. Remember, a max range launch will only hit under very unusual circumstances. Effective range is usually a great deal less than max range. Accuracy left something to be desired, but in the past my experience has been that 2-4 MPUs fired per kill is not unusual. They may have been changed, but there wasn't enough difference for me to be sure if they changed or not. Kh-29T appears to have undergone a change in target acquisition. On the tanks the Shkval would lock the tank at ranges of up to about 12 km, and at 11 to 9 km the cockpit voice system would give launch authorization, the HUD would give launch authorization at 9 to 7 km, however the missile would not fire. When using launch override after the voice and HUD range tape indicated a valid target lock, the missile would fire, however it would not guide to a moving target. Definitely a bit odd to get two systems telling you that you have valid launch parameters, but not being able to launch successfully. However, the voice system and HUD are both aircraft systems, and for a fire and forget missile what counts is whether or not the missile's guidance system has a good lock. Not sure how the Su-25T deals with Shkval target locks vs. munition guidance system target locks when dealing with fire and forget munitions. When targeting a stationary tanker ship with the targeting box set to 60m, a valid target lock was achieved at about 9.5 km and the Kh-29 launched and guided properly. It's worth noting that the Kh-29 is designed primarily for large and stationary targets, and in some past versions of DCS it has been difficult/impossible to get it to guide on moving vehicular targets. This seems to be a reversion to behavior similar to those versions. I did some further testing with the Kh-29T. With a stationary tank as a target on a high contrast background (Sochi-Adler aircraft parking area), The Kh-29 locked at about 10 km, and fired at about 9.3 km guiding successfully to target. It would appear that the guidance has been changed to be more realistic for older (1970s - 1980s era) TV guided missiles. They have a reputation for difficulty with guiding on low contrast targets and/or locking on high contrast non-target objects (for instance locking on a bush or boulder instead of the APC the pilot wants to destroy).

If you don't have an EO system with high resolution and zoom, for example in the Su-25 and the A-10A, you have to use other methods to deal with air defenses. You can stand off using the Mavs for everything, and just accept really high munition costs and low kill numbers as the price of safety. You can send a wingman in ahead to bait the air defenses, and target the ones that shoot. The downside is that this is hard on wingmen and you may run out of them pretty quickly. You can go in and bait the air defenses yourself, but this is risky, and it forces you to fly with a light load. You can go in using terrain masking, make one high speed pass while popping countermeasures, and then run for safety. Extreme high altitude attacks might also work against AAA and short range SAMs, but without the wind correction function of the A-10C DCS module accuracy is likely to be poor at best for the unguided munitions. You can use the mission editor to throw in a SEAD flight ahead of you in single player missions. You can have a JTAC call the targets for you. This involves either some moderately complex scripting in single player, or a JTAC slot and a player willing to be a JTAC in multiplayer. There are probably a few others that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Coordinating will give some pretty good returns in both turn rate and energy retention at low speeds in the Su-27. The problem is that where in a real plane you'd FEEL sideslip, we only have the gauges in DCS, so it's not very practical to coordinate and have eyes out of the cockpit at the same time. I think probably the ideal procedure for DCS is to coordinate your turns if either of the gauges are in your field of view, but don't change zoom or look into the pit just for the sake of coordinating. In general there are more important things to be looking at.

In the CCRP mode the previous poster described you don't actually need to dive when selecting the target point, it's just a quick way to designate the target and get the plane lined up for the bombing run. You can select the target by just slewing the target designator box on the Shkval and then fly to the HUD cues. In respect to the windage corrections, as far as I know the Su-25 has no windage compensation for standard bombs and rockets. The A-10 C has windage correction for unguided munitions (if you learn how to set it up correctly, which involves knowing what the wind conditions are).

Didn't do anything for me in a release version of 1.5, but I assume that in the developer's versions alpha/beta it opens up a text console window for debugging while the program is running so you can see the result of changes and/or control settings as you try to duplicate a bug reported by testers. You'd typically use it to type code or commands in if you were testing. Say for example you wanted to test a Level of Detail function. Instead of having a model at a fixed point and flying or using camera commands in the normal interface to see if the different meshes are being switched properly, you'd have a console window open and input something like let TestObject1.LOD = veryfar let TestObject1.LOD = far let TestObject1.LOD = med let TestObject1.LOD = near to run through all your level of detail settings. That's not actual code, but it's the sort of thing that you'd use a console window for. Think command line computing in general, DOS, Unix, late 1970's computing in general (but without the reel to reel tape drives or punch cards). If you ever make your own 3rd party module for DCS you'll probably get to know and love/hate the console, but otherwise it's not something you'll ever really need.

So I spent some time looking at the fuel system diagram and the fuel system sections of the manuals codefox linked. Based on that, I strongly suspect that operating burners for takeoff drew down the engine feed tanks below the minimum combined engine feed tank level, which is 900 lbs of fuel. The external tanks feed into the internal wing tanks and internal tank 1. They do this with bleed air pressure that is not available until after gear are up. From those tanks transfer pumps feed the engine feed tanks. Because of a check valve, as long as the engine feed tank pumps are operating it's improbable that the externals could feed directly to tanks 2 and 3. From the engine tanks, some of the fuel is sent to the engines, but some is diverted to the fuel system radiators after which it cycles back to the internal wing tanks. So there was heavy draw from tanks 2 and 3, but the feed flows would have been split up into 3 to 7 streams (depending on what you want to count as feed) that had some detours to go through before arriving at tanks 2 and 3. So operator error is a plausible explanation, as is a modelling error. Without knowing what the normal flow rates (or pump outputs and system head loss) are it's not really possible to tell for sure. I'm guessing the F-15C module doesn't let you operate the fuel gauge selector? I don't fly it enough to know without checking. The feed tank fuel levels would be the ones you'd really need to know. In general if the low fuel warning light comes on then it means that you're down to a 600 lb margin above the combined engine feed tank minimum. If you kept the burners on after that lit up, you probably drew down the engine feed tanks too much.

FLOW RATE Where the plumbing is routed doesn't mean much if the output rate of what is feeding the engine is greater than the input rate from the external tanks. To know if there's a problem you first need to know the fuel consumption rates of the engines for the flight profile you flew, then you need to know the max rate that the external tanks can output, then you need to know all the internal flow rates once the fuel is in the plane's internal system. Then you can look for problems. To answer, "should I have had flameout due to lack of fuel," you'd also need to know the tank contents for your starting point. Impossible to tell without the relevant documentation. From an engineering standpoint though, there's no reason that you'd need the feed rate of the external tanks to be greater than the consumption rate of the engines at AB, Mil, or even cruise. As long as the externals get emptied before the plane reaches the point in a "normal" flight plan where the pilot might want to jettison them, then they have enough flow rate. Flow rate has a cost in mass, power, volume, and money. So in a lot of ways aiming for the minimum practical flow rate is optimal. A military jet is probably more likely to have excess flow rate capacity than a civilian design, but you shouldn't automatically assume that the excess capacity exists. That's why this sort of thing is included in real aircraft manuals. It's stuff the pilot really needs to know before flying. There'd be a chart or table where you could look up tank capacities and transfer rates, and calculate what engine throttle settings you could handle pulling from different tanks.

The Kh 58 and Kh 25MPUs are primarily meant for stationary medium to long range SAM emplacements. Kub, Buk, S300, Hawk, Patriot, etc. For a short range radar SAM such as the Osa or Tor, they can work but aren't always reliable. They're really not meant for AAA units such as the Shilka, Tunguska, Vulcan, etc. A lot also depends on how good your launch parameters are. A shot from the edge of the envelope can even miss a stationary Hawk search radar by 5 to 50 meters. For a dangerous short range target like an Osa, Tor, Tunguska, or Roland I might use several 25MPUs just to stay out of the dangerous portion of their envelope, but in most cases with things like MANPADS or AAA you're better served using something like a Vikhr. The HMMWVs and Bradley Linebacker units also basically use modified Stingers and count in the AAA/MANPADS category in terms of using Vikhrs in preference to ARMs.

In some ways the Su-25T is my favorite, just from having so many hours in it. It takes ridiculous amounts of abuse and still gets you home. Despite people calling it fat and slow it can pull out surprising amounts of speed and agility if you treat it right (hanging the heaviest possible munition on every pylon and trying break turns at 250 km/h IAS is not treating it right). I like the L-39 because every time I fly it my flying in every other fixed wing becomes noticeably better. It makes me a more disciplined pilot, not quite sure why. It just likes being flown in a more professional manner? Mi-8. My favorite heli. This despite the fact that I have a talent for expending the entire payload without hitting a single target. Giant gobs of excess power and a cockpit that I find friendly. It sounds silly, but one of my favorite parts is performing engine start-up from the flight engineer's seat. Also the only helicopter that I have successfully landed more than one time while flying backward, without a tail-boom, and in excess of 50 km/h (it was not pretty, and I still don't know how I managed it). Su-27. I've loved Flankers since I was a kid. A fully modelled version would be a dream come true, but in the meantime I'll take what I can get. F-18C Hornet. The only reason it's not at the top of the list is that it's not out yet. Combined Arms. The Inta Humar MP missions that VF-113 put together were great, and live air defense can be a lot of fun. The post mission tank battles were also a blast. For mindless pleasure in DCS it's hard to beat a firing range mission where you use a Shilka or Tunguska to turn a fuel convoy of tanker HEMTTs into smoking ruin. Or using a Bradley to do the same to a bunch of Urals. A-10C. I would like this plane more if I took it less seriously. As in not trying to have all the checklists filled out correctly. I also run into issues with not having enough inputs on my HOTAS. It feels too much like flying an office instead of flying an airplane, but I'll revisit it if I ever get around to a serious input hardware upgrade, I have fond memories of the Hog from a long ago "sim." Ka-50 has the same issues as the A-10C, but I like the twin rotor design. It would come ahead of the A-10C if I didn't have a strong preference for fixed wing over rotorcraft. I also have the Hawk, Huey, Su-25A, F-15C and TF-51 which I fly on occasion.

Well, that's a matter of the F-15 pilot either having terrible Situational Awareness or not knowing the aircraft well enough to be able to hit the control bound to "dispense chaff" in a timely manner. Or possibly both. If you know where the missile is and you know where your countermeasures buttons are, then you really shouldn't be taking R-27s or R-27ERs to the face in DCS. At all. You also shouldn't be taking them from above, from below, from the sides or from the rear.

You can select dynamic or static weather in both SP and MP missions, it's part of the weather options for the mission editor. I make a lot of MP missions so that I can choose between multiple aircraft/vehicles at the start, and in a situation where the MP mission is running on the computer you're playing on, there's no apparent difference between MP and SP weather that I can detect from experience with copy-paste mission creation where I make MP and SP versions of the same mission and run them on my computer. The interesting question is what happens if you're a client with high ping to a MP server? Even if weather is handled the same internally between SP and MP, the difference between 0 ping and lots of ping might produce a significant effect, just as it can for aircraft and missile positions. I've never really seen the effect, but I typically look for MP servers with 200 ms or less ping in my connection. What sort of ping do you usually get the Virtual Aerobatics server SinusoidDelta? Is it stable, or does it fluctuate a lot? Does the problem show up for you on severs where you have a stable connection at less than 100-150 ms ping?

I like your location description zantron . :thumbup: So if we're simming then Soviet forces should be doing most of the heavy lifting in Europe and work on Combined Arms vehicles and improved infantry should be the primary focus of development for DCS WWII. Not to mention that the Normandy map should be put on hold until the Battle of Stalingrad is done. We're all keen for the DCS World T-34 full fidelity advanced tank model right? ;) Hmm, actually that would be pretty cool.

In the interest of research I tried 4 m/s and 8 m/s crosswind takeoffs offline and then got on the Virtual Aerobatics server to test taking of there (Kras-Pash). While the F-15 does seem to be touchier than the Su-27 or Su-25 when it comes to crosswinds, I had no issues taxiing at 4 m/s crosswinds. At 8 m/s taxiing again was no problem, but the weathervaning and roll are potentially dangerous if you're not expecting them. It only starts to show up around 50 kts IAS though. I should note that my latency to the VA server was only 50 ms. If the single player/multi-player difference people are seeing is due to latency issues, then it's possible that my latency was not enough to cause a noticeable effect. In particular, I wonder if wind forces are sent back and forth between server and client and maybe people are getting "gusts" of wind force when the server and client synchronize? At any rate, I could not reproduce the effect that the thread is talking about.

I've misplaced my copy of the Su-27 manual (and it's EASC myrmidon's translation which I occasionally have trouble deciphering the technical terms in Spanish), so I should ask if anyone with a copy that they know they're reading correctly knows: In the transsonic range where the Su-27's structural limits are the easiest to exceed does the control system trigger the stick feedback warnings before the aircraft reaches a dangerous level of loading? If so for what aircraft weight(s)? After all it's possible that the designers assumed that the pilots would combat maneuver only in certain speed ranges and therefore only need the warnings in certain speed ranges. At the speeds and weights where the Su-27 should be fighting to maximize the advantages inherent in its design it's just hard to overstress the plane short of flying into something. So what's the envelope of, "acceptable mild airframe abuse," that actually triggers the stick to, "fight back," against a pilot trying to fly into the suicidal part of the flight envelope? If people are serious about playing the realism card on either side of this argument that's critical information to have.

If at proper combat loads and speeds, it's not much of a problem. So in a sense, this is an issue that is entirely solvable with Russian style piloting (be a competent professional instead of a Westerner who thinks that the laws of physics only apply to other people). There are a couple of reasonable complaints though. In the game design sense, the FC3 modules are supposed to be a bit more forgiving for people who would never normally be allowed to touch the controls of a flying aircraft in the real world. So it's a bit out of place if the FC3 version of a plane has some parts of the envelope where it's even more likely to crash than the real thing would be. In the realism sense, most accounts of the Su-27 describe the control system as having a force feedback element that while possible to override, makes it almost impossible for the pilot to inadvertently overstress the plane in large parts of the flight envelope. So clearly in terms of pilot friendliness there's a bit of a gap in realism for both documentation of what constitutes safe operation, and the flight control system's ability to warn about or prevent going past the point of catastrophic overstress. Personally, I could probably live with just better documentation, but a little work on the control interface would be appreciated by many. "You can kill yourself by abusing the controls, but you have to work at it and it shouldn't come as a surprise," is the end state that I think would be a good place. Though the, "no surprise," part could be contingent on having read a revised manual.

Well, for Bluefor you have all the various flavors of HMWVs, and for Redfor you have at least one armored car, and the truck (Kamaz? Ural?) with a ZSU-23 on the back. So there are soft armed vehicles in game if you want them. Not as fast and light as a technical, but DCS really aims more at high intensity warfare than at counter-insurgency.

However, a great deal of aircraft information, such as g limits for various aircraft masses and speeds are not included in the DCS manual. That's one of the reasons people have been snapping off wings a lot lately. We're missing aircraft information that if it were absent in a real aircraft, law would require that the aircraft be grounded as unflyable (at least in the US). The pilot's manual is considered a critical flight system, and it is required to have the information needed to fly the aircraft safely. The DCS manual is missing almost all of that information. Fortunately, that information is available here on the forums, though it helps a lot if you can fluently read either Russian or Spanish.

I've seen this behavior for sure in the Su-25T, and I think maybe also in the A-10C. I would guess that the model for the Su-27 works similarly, though it generally flies with much lighter munitions and pulls harder turns than the ground pounders, so the effect might be harder to detect with it.