esb77

The problem is that you didn't define proficiency. Are we talking ability to accomplish mission objectives. Are we talking would pass a flight test with a qualified instructor pilot doing the grading? Are we talking good enough to meet the standards of a first world military force? Depending on the standard the lack of a zero option is pretty significant.

The problem with the performance data approach is that the data points available are actually pretty sparse. The bulk of the flight envelope is interpolation between those data points, and will give poor results if anything interesting is going on in terms of aerodynamics. A math modeler or engineer would tell you that this sort of model is adequate for, "well behaved regions of the flight envelope," where a high degree of accuracy is not needed in the output. It's the cheapest and easiest sort of model to build, but in most respects accuracy wise is going to be the worst option available unless you stick to the very strict constraints on where it produces good results. The blade element model that the AFM/PFM uses the physical attributes of the plane that can be filled in more accurately and more fully than is the case for most performance charts, and then if the parameters are pretty accurate and the aerodynamic model is good, you have reasonably good output over all or almost all of the flight envelope even in varied conditions. Basically ED is using the best model possible given the current constraints on user computing power, available aircraft data, and financial constraints. A full CFD would give more accurate results (with accurate aircraft data) but that's so computationally intensive that even aircraft manufacturers limit their use of that sort of simulation. I doubt most of us are ready to play DCS at one or two frames per day for the sake of accuracy.

Most or all of the manuals for the ED aircraft modules recommend linear response curves for X, Y, and Z axes as being the best simulation. However, it's important to consider that a plane is not just a FCS software package, there's also a physical interface. So unless your stick is the same length as that of the plane being modeled and gives the same proportion of command input per unit displacement, the linear curves may not be the most useable setting in DCS. For a modern FBW with a pressure sensing stick (like the F-16) there rather pricey mods that you can add to a TM warthog or similar stick, where the linear axes might be a very accurate representation. However, for most of the aircraft modules in DCS World a stick with a longer handle than most gaming sticks and a smaller maximum angular displacement (but greater physical displacement from center) would be the number one thing on the wish list for a better control interface. You can get handle extensions for the TM Warthog, and I think also maybe some CH sticks, that at least partly solve the, "my control stick is too short," problem. Still imperfect though, because the degree of the stick's maximum angular displacement is designed around the assumption of not having a long handle. In practice a lot of virtual pilots find that adding 5-25% curvature to the pitch and roll axes depending on their plane and the traits of the controller that they currently use helps a great deal in making the planes more easily controllable if aiming for high precision and accuracy. Unless you custom build yourself an exact replica of the stick on the plane you're interested in, and custom software for its control response, having the input-response data from a real plane is going to be of limited use in improving your sim experience (If you do it post plans, cause a lot of people in the Sim-pit subforum would want to try it if your method fit their budgets). The more practical approach is just to play with the axis curves until the plane feels good to you with whatever stick you happen to be using.

All of the more modern MBTs in DCS can survive multiple hits to their frontal turret armor. To be sure of a kill you need at least 4-5 direct hits with 120 or 125 mm rounds. On the other hand with the Russian 125 mm AP rounds it's also sometimes possible to get a single hit kill with a frontal aspect shot on an M1, but it is not reliable. Hit from the side or the rear though, and 70-110 mm RPG or cannon rounds from the Russian APCs and IFV will often produce single round kills, especially if you hit the rear of the hull and set the engine on fire. I think engine fires are probably easier to start and more lethal in DCS than in real life. It's all about employment. If you shoot the strongest part of the tank, it's much more likely to survive than if you shoot it somewhere else. As long as your ground units have something heavier than anti-personnel or anti-aircraft weapons, they should be able to kill M1s effectively if they're in an advantageous position. Getting the AI to fight intelligently on the other hand, is often an exercise in frustration unless you're willing to do a lot of work.

A bit of clarity on the Mercury LLTV pod and the TV guided missiles. The Mercury pod enhances what you can see on the CRT display in the plane's cockpit, but does nothing at all to enhance the ability of the camera in the missile's seeker head to see in the dark. So it is basically of no benefit at all with the TV guided missiles. For the laser guided munitions, the missile will do its best to fly to the location being illuminated (or ride the beam if it's a Vikhr), and so the visibility from the LLTV pod is very useful. However, sometimes the improved visibility isn't enough to make the plane's computer happy with getting a lock. In this case, just stabilize the target box with respect to the ground, and then manually slew the center of the box over the target. It works just as well as a lock, though you have to keep slewing to stay on a moving target. Also be aware that the guidelines in the manual are not perfect when it comes to sizing the targeting box. Often vehicles recommended to be targeted with a 10 m size will lock much better if the box is sized to 8 or 9 m. I normally center the box on the target and adjust until the box is just a few pixels wider than the image of the target on the Shkval screen. It's a noticeable improvement over just using the recommended sizes.

You've got a mission briefing and a map, right? So make a flight plan. Where would you put AAA or SAMs if you wanted to shoot down an aircraft attacking the target? If those places offer good concealment, either have a plan for not going in until you've got them neutralized, or consider a route that involves mostly going around their area of engagement. Often the campaigns put air defenses in sub-optimal spots. Compare to the Inta Humar combined arms multiplayer missions where the ground forces players try to maximize the sneaky and evil when it comes to shooting down the F-18 pilots (there's a mod for the F-18s). Often in the campaigns it's actually a bit easier than it would be with a multiplayer tactical commander who's well prepared and serious about scoring aircraft kills. The nice thing is that the AIs are completely unable to plan, so you have a 100% planning advantage when going up against them. Remember to use it. Unless you run out of gas, are under time pressure, or might run into more serious threats along the way, there's no reason not to go around the long way if that will get you behind a target without overflying air defenses. With the Ka-50 you can fly right above ground level so using terrain LOS can be very powerful. Just remember that while trees screen AI units from your view, the trees are transparent to them and can be fired through as well. You need either ground or buildings if you want to protect yourself with cover.

The beauty of the drop tanks is that you can lighten the plane by a ton or two in just a few seconds. That's a lot faster than going to AB and using fuel dump, which are the flanker's only options if it gets into a fight overweight on fuel. Either system works fine if employed properly, but the Soviet design tends to put a heavier load of planning and error free piloting responsibility on the pilot. If you know how far and how fast you're going to go before you engage, then the inability to dump fuel weight rapidly isn't a problem. You just better not be wrong when you make that estimation and fuel up the plane. With the Eagle your margin of error with that same estimation is close to two tons. You still want to be right on the first guess, but it's a bit more forgiving if you're not.

No, this is about vertical angle. The antenna placement for the Berioza does not allow it to "see" at steep angles up or down from the aircraft's midline. If you bank steeply you will loose radar threats pointed at the belly of the aircraft. You also won't pick up anything pointed at the top of the aircraft. I thought it was + or - 30 degrees, but I haven't looked recently, it may be 45. A different limitation of the SPO is that the angle markers are much finer toward the nose of the aircraft. If the target is directly ahead of you the RWR can tell you that with high precision. If the radar is to the side or behind you, it's more along the lines of, "to your right, or behind you." If you want to know exactly where to the side or behind, you either need datalink from another aircraft on the Flanker's HDD or you need to turn until you're facing the target within about 45 degrees. To summarize: the RWR can't see at steep angles toward the dorsal or ventral sides of the aircraft, so if you bank sharply toward or away from a target that is not directly in front of or behind the aircraft you may loose that contact on the RWR. In the lateral plane of the aircraft, the RWR has 360 degree coverage, but the heading information is most detailed within plus or minus 45 degrees of the nose of the aircraft. As always, if you wish to master the systems in DCS aircraft it is highly recommended that you read the relevant parts of the manuals.

If you hang a bunch of larger heavier missiles on a plane you've got less range, less endurance, and less maneuverability, at least until you fire or jettison them. I'm not sure it makes much difference in outcomes for the virtual pilot community, but it's something I would expect a real military pilot to at least consider when doing mission planning. Avoidable mass and avoidable drag are normally, well, avoided, unless there are compelling reasons do otherwise.

If you want to practice for the eventual release of DCS F-18 without having FC3 and the Su-33 you can work on that with just the Su-25T and F-15. Practice air to air refueling with the F-15, it's a different system but the same sort of precision formation flying skills are needed whether you're using a boom or a basket. With both planes practice precision landing. Pick a point on the runway and practice until you can get the wheels down within 5 m of that target at least 9 times out of 10. Ideally you want a fairly high sink rate, fairly high AoA, and fairly high throttle setting, though without a tailhook there's a limit to what you can do in that vein without bouncing the plane off of the runway. Load up the Su-25T on the heavy side and you can plunk it down pretty hard without bouncing or breaking the gear, so maybe a better practice plane in some ways than the F-15 is for the classic Navy landing. The drogue chute can also be used as a tailhook analog of sorts, though the throttle requirement is reversed. Full throttle for hook, idle for the chute. If you want to get the DCS Hawk, I'm not sure if they have tailhooks or carrier landings implemented for it, but a Hawk variant is what the USN uses as it's jet trainer. So that's what you'd normally learn your landings in if you're thinking about the F-18 module in the future. Whatever planes you're using it's never a bad idea to work on improving the degree of precision with which you can handle the plane. Getting on one of the aerobatics servers and finding people to practice close formation flying with is another way to work on the skill sets you need for carrier ops.

If you have bad habits in terms of piloting and abuse the Su-27 you get to reap the full consequences of your piloting mistakes. The aircraft will not intervene to save you from your mistakes. If you turn the stability control off and don't bother trimming, it can be a bit of a challenge to control. In particular, excessive nose down stick inputs tend to be unrecoverable errors. With the stability control on, I find it no more difficult to control than the Su-25 or 25T. The two problems I see people having a lot are: 1) There's no G force felt from the sim, so if you don't watch your instruments or have a lot of experience with the PFM it is VERY easy to use too much stick forward and get into trouble dropping the nose. 2) The Su-27 behaves so well all the way out to its limits that people get surprised when they go over the limits and things go bad. Reading the manual and practice flights where you gradually and gently explore the plane's capabilities are the solution for this.

The Mig-21 module has much more detailed systems modelling because it is a study level sim. In terms of air combat performance, the F-15 is superior in pretty much every way. It was designed to make planes like the Mig-21 obsolete, and did a pretty good job of it. Overall the deadliest plane in DCS right now is the F-15. The Su-27 is also pretty good, but there are design choices and armament limitations that give a well flown F-15 the advantage at the start of the vast majority of engagements. On the multiplayer servers though, the greatest determinants of air combat success are pilot skill and teamwork. The FC3 planes are: A-10A, F-15, Su-25, Su-25T, Mig-29, Su-27, Su-33. The EDGE graphics engine (aka DCS 2.0) will be released whenever Eagle Dynamics is done developing it. That means as fast as they can do it while meeting their quality standards without driving everyone working on it insane from stress. The engine is distinct from the Modules (platform vs content) so while many good things are supposed to happen roughly when 2.0 comes out it's unlikely that the planes that are dominant in any particular mission role will be displaced in the near future. They may get peer-level competitors at some point though.

There are navigation devices. There is an inertial nav system that requires waypoints to be put in during mission building. There are also gyro and magnetic compasses, airspeed gauges, vertical velocity meters, artificial horizons, and altimeters. All of the instrumentation needed for IFR flight is available, and most of the key instruments have backups. Navigation skills are a fundamental piloting skill, and the basics should be learned before initial flight training is completed. It is not possible to be an effective combat pilot if you are not yet an effective aircraft pilot. If you do not have the skills to navigate in real life using a map, compass, rate of travel, and a clock, then I recommend finding an instructional text and a great deal of practice. In addition to pilots, surveyors, hikers and sailors need to understand the basics of navigation, so educational materials are widely available in most languages. For finding targets, in a sim you use methods similar to real life. First, you very carefully study the mission briefing for information on the location of enemy forces. If the information is incomplete, you look at the map and consider the goals of both friendly and enemy forces. With that information it is fairly easy to locate the most likely positions of enemies. Vehicles normally travel on roads, cross water using bridges, and if possible use hills, forests, and buildings for protection from hostile forces. If the mission designer did a good job, this will be true for the DCS mission as well, and in most cases that means there are very few places that enemies want to be, so it is easy to predict those areas. In some cases the mission designer will do a poor job, and targets will be in strange places. In those missions you must do a visual search, and it helps a great deal if you are flying as part of a team with several people searching at the same time. Often the easiest way to find hidden forces is to see them shooting at a wingman flying over them.

I don't believe there is a nosewheel steering control for the Su-25 or 25T in DCS. That said, absent pilot inputs, it's pretty stable while rolling unless there's a strong crosswind, in which case the large vertical stabilizer will catch the wind and push the nose of the plane around. It can be countered with a combination of counter rudder and roll, the manual has the exact procedure. It does take some practice to get used to, and it helps a great deal to have a pair of pedals or a control on your HOTAS that allows rudder to be assigned to an axis control with fine control resolution. With the keyboard strong or variable crosswinds can be difficult to correct for. Lots of practice, and small gradual control inputs are the key if you have good input hardware.

Performance varies depending on conditions. Performance benchmarks without specific test conditions and procedures are pretty much meaningless. Combat ready planes are not as fast as planes modified for setting performance records, and planes modified for setting records are usually not suitable for taking into combat. The problem with Wikipedia is that it typically does not distinguish between operational and record setting configurations. A manual for the aircraft is a much better guide, and will have charts for different payloads, temperatures, and altitudes. In many cases the pilot is expected to calculate the additional effects of barometric pressure and humidity on their own. In general if your thrust to weight ratio is more than 1:1 in a 4th generation fighter it's probably because you're out of munitions and extending for all you're worth. A nice time to have that sort of power, but hopefully not something that's categorized as a normal flight condition.

I remember what you're talking about, no idea where it is though. There was also someone who built a simple hall effect stick out of some scrap wood and a large dowel that was friction based instead of sprung, and they found it very useful for some of the more trim intensive aircraft. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=134618&highlight=wood+stick+hall is the wooden stick project. Couldn't find the other one.

I use a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X, that's about 2-3 years old and extremely difficult or perhaps impossible to get high precision with. I use the default settings, which is linear axis for x, y, and z, and deadzones of 0. I didn't get the Su-27 until after the PFM was released, and most of my experience in DCS has been with the Su-25T (at least 300 hrs), and the Mi-8. I have the Huey, A-10C, and Blackshark, but don't get around to flying them much. I use trim in the Su-25T (via autopilot), and in the Mi-8 with the trim button, but haven't bothered using the trim in the Su-27 because even with modifiers my single hat button is at capacity with more important controls, and I prefer to fly HOTAS, so no keyboard trimming. My stick is sprung so that I don't find holding trim manually a problem in terms of effort, so the only time it's annoying is when I want to fly with both hands off of the controls (to take notes for instance). I find the Su-27 to be very flyable. It likes to nose up at some speeds, but with manual stick you always have enough stick forward authority to nose down enough to get yourself into serious trouble if that's what you want to do. So at no point is there uncontrollable uncommanded nose up, the available nose down authority greatly exceeds the pitch up so it is always possible for the pilot to counteract it. It has control traits that may not be what you are used to, but those traits are consistent, and therefore you can learn to fly plane. This is true with the FCS on or off. Flying, or even fighting with the Su-27 is no worse than learning to hover in a Huey or Mi-8. It's just a matter of unlearning bad habits you may have from the SFM, and learning how the airplane behaves currently in the sim. There are a couple of special comments I'd add. Turning off the FCS. Turning off the FCS in flight is a suicidal piloting error. Even when you do it "correctly" it is an extreme high risk action that should be avoided if at all possible. Airshow demonstration pilots and test pilots are know for their great aviation skills, but they are also known for their high rates of fatal crashes. Flying with the FCS off the entire flight is possible, but it GREATLY increases the pilot workload and reduces the margin for pilot error to almost nothing. With the FCS off, almost every piloting error can become a fatal piloting error. That's why turning it off is such a stupid thing to do. If you fly an error free flight, it is possible to fly and fight with it off, but the increased workload and risk of fatal pilot error is so high that attempting to do so is not rational. Nose down inputs. The Su-27 has a great deal of responsiveness in negative pitch, and no safeties to prevent pilots from doing incredibly stupid things with that ability. In real life a strong negative pitch input will create zero or negative perceived G forces on the pilot. This is very easy to feel, and for most people it is an extremely unpleasant sensation. In the real plane no special system is needed to handle this because the pilot can sense sharply unloading the plane very easily, and will be highly motivated to avoid it if at all possible. In DCS we lack this sensory feedback, and this is a key reason that many virtual Su-27 pilots are making unrecoverable errors from excessive sudden nose down inputs. Keeping a close eye on the accelerometer can save you from many crashes as you learn the Su-27. If you always keep at least +1 G you are much less likely to have problems.

The Russians are retiring the Su-33 in favor of a carrier Mig-29 variant. It has nothing to do with weight or performance, it's a unit cost issue on a tight budget. India is buying the Mig-29 for their carriers, whereas the Su-33 has failed to sell with any export customers. That means that if Russia switches to the Migs enough will be built so that the per unit cost will be much lower than staying with the Su-33, where the only customer is the Russian Navy. It's a performance loss, but the Russian Navy, while a strong blue-water navy, is not carrier-centric in the way that the U.S. is. That means that wasting excessive money on their naval aircraft hurts their capabilities in areas like submarines and guided missile ships, where their strengths lie.

A few physical traits of the Flanker to keep in mind: The fan is only 905 mm. I suspect that the nozzles at full open are close to this wide or even wider. That's going to be a huge loss of exhaust velocity and consequently thrust compared to when the nozzles constrict. It's designed for unimproved strip operations. This means that at the very least the tires are likely to be built in a way that creates significantly higher rolling resistance (the price you pay for durability and high flotation), and it's possible the mechanical resistance in the bearings is greater if they have a higher surface area to cope with shock loadings from a rough strip. Combine that with 25 to 30 tonnes of load, and the rolling resistance might reasonably soak up all of the idle thrust. My impression is that most high bypass turbofans on commercial passenger and cargo planes either don't have variable nozzles or even if they do, don't constrict anywhere near as much in terms of proportion as the Flanker's do. Plus having a bypass ratio 5-10 times greater than the AL-31 is going to produce a large performance gain in terms of thrust at low speeds, you'd expect the passenger planes to have a greater proportion of engine thrust available at idle than a Flanker.

Also depends on the developer's personnel resources. It's worth remembering that the skills needed to make a high fidelity aircraft for DCS are for the most part not the same skills needed to produce high quality missions and campaigns. If a software developer is going to hire someone who has the skills for mission building, it's nice to have some idea of how to generate the revenue needed to pay that person's salary. Now that there's a system for paid downloadable missions and campaigns it may be easier for the various developers to justify spending work hours on that sort of stuff now.

The Mig-21 is still in service in many parts of the world, and certainly older models of the F-15 could reasonably expected to see them in combat. Even for the variant of F-15 in DCS now, it would have served in a time when many Soviet units hadn't been fully equipped with Mig-29s and Su-27s but still had late model Mig-21s active.

Visibility adjustment is complex, and aside from scale in terms of angle in field of view at a given distance and graphics rendering issues, the lighting and atmospheric optical properties play into it too. Sometimes a passenger jet at 39,000 ft is more obvious in real life than an A-10 at 2 nm in DCS. Other times you know where the plane is in real life because you can hear it and extrapolate out the flight path, but due to lighting and particulates (or water vapor) you just can't see the thing despite what are VFR conditions. It's a challenging problem from a physics modelling and mathematical perspective and from a computational workload standpoint. Right now there are problems where you can't see when you should be able to, but a lot of strategy goes out the window if you go too far in the other direction and give everyone X-ray Eagle vision.

Normally the default binding for the throttle goes to the throttle axis (z axis) in a stick or HOTAS. Try going to the Options page in DCS World> controls> Su-27, and then under axis assign clear the one that assigns the throttle to your joystick's broken throttle. It may be easier to find if instead of going to axis assign you just scroll down to check all of the engine and throttle keybinds and make sure none of them are bound to broken controls on your stick. In general it's a good idea to check all the keybinds before using a new module, or if funny things are happening after an update.

The best way is to go to the options menu and configure the controls. Make sure you have the Su-27 selected as the aircraft. You can see what the default keybinds are there, and rebind them to the ones you customarily use if you wish. I'll also note that in most missions where you have to do a cold start the throttles default to the minimum setting at the start of the mission.