Zabuzard

It is Jesters job to operate the radar, not the pilots. The pilot also has no controls for the radar in their pit. You can read about details here: https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/radar.html But the tldr is that you, as a pilot, do not have to bother with the how at all. You fly the aircraft and Jester finds the bad guys for you. There are of course options in the Jester Wheel to nudge him in a certain direction or change a few settings. That said, it is important to understand that, in contrast to the F-14, the Phantoms radar is not a search radar. You wont be flying around in multiplayer, scanning the entire air space 100nm ahead of you, gaining full SA. At the time you realistically spot a bandit, they are already at around 25nm and you just have a few seconds until there is a heater coming your way. Everything is happening very fast with this radar. You spot the guy, you lock him, you shoot your Sparrow (which might miss, but forces the guy to go defensive) and then you are already merged and can shoot your Sidewinder or go for guns

Someone could mod Jester via the API to do it. We will not provide Jester flying (or Iceman) at initial launch. Cheers

Not for the manual, as that unfortunately causes the PDF to crash. You can find high res shots featuring almost all switches pinned on our Discord and social media accounts though :)

Yes :)

That is correct. The HB UI tech is a key pillar of our future modules and will also be essential for improving the existing modules. In the Phantom, at launch, it will be whats running the Jester Wheel/Menu, Jester Dialog Q&A, Crew Chief, integrated manual, grease pencil and the virtual browser. Further, it will be the key to certain planned future features such as inspecting wear/tear, aircraft status, the character customization and to enhance navigation and campaign maker capabilities, just to name a few. It doesn't stop there though, we may also utilize it in the Eurofighter which has quite complex MFDs that are otherwise more difficult to create with the regular tools DCS offers.

It will be made available with the release of the Phantom :)

A full changelog of any change is available once the Phantom is released. GitHub never forgets, full history is available.

Could you be more specific, which section/chapter/text is unclear and needs more detail?

> "vanilla" F-4E is the 45-MC This is a placeholder line. Best is to not take it literally yet.

the gun camera is a separate device unrelated to the avtr. the gun camera has to be installed first, it's mounted on the glareshield and takes about 1/3 of the forward visibility through your hud. the gun camera system will be made available later after initial release

yeah, there are pretty much 3 logic issues in the pod from which one got fixed in a upgrade: - when u laser, the pod will reject the measured slant range if it differs from the manually computed slant range (based on baro alt and tgt alt entered in panel) by too much. this is a safety mechanism to not throw the pod completely off when u accidently lase against ur wing or similar (masked), since the pod does the "stabilization" math based on the slant range. however, in certain situations this measurement difference could lead to rejecting ur accurate measurement. there's a button to force accepting the laset range and pilots for into a habit of hammering the button all the time. this got patched later and the pod will autoaccept laser range if the target is "forward" (around 0 deg pod pitch) - the pod can't handle the logic for the controls above 0 degrees (looking up), they invert and calculation is bad - the pod can't handle targets that are computed to be above u. this can either happen bc u attempt to attack uphill or bc u entered a wrong tgt alt on the panel or bc ur barometric altimeter is set incorrectly regarding local pressure. in this case, the pod pretty much freaks out. it tries to move the camera to the computed invalid position and the immediately throws the pod into memory mode since it's outside of gimbal limits. attempting to leave memory mode will instantly kick it back in again. this was called the "idiot mode". in the heat of the moment, they usually disabled the ins integration to the pod, which regains full control but without stabilization

Kindly read the note-box here: https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/dcs/recorders.html#airborne-video-tape-recorder

You will receive another email explaining the procedure once its ready.

It will be persisted in your track files, yes. We are planning for later during EA to add a way to inspect the values for players as well. Details on that at a later point.

Kindly check the manual. You can check an option to use the "Reference aircraft". That will cause the Phantoms to spawn with "perfect" values. However, they will of course still be subject to the system while you fly them. If you think you have to constantly fly high G turns without correctly stowing your pod, you have to live with a pod that is only half as good as it used to be. Thats the consequence of flying outside of intended parameters and misusing things.

Id like to add to the topic of maintenence and "swapping out" worn parts, that this is up to the mission designer and scenario to decide. What if your Phantom was created in a factory very late in a long war where the enemy shut down your supply of new parts and the tolerance for the jet has been reduced heavily. What if the jet was captured and used by a country that can't just replace tiles and has to work with what they got. The wear/tear system also tries to capture this aspect to give mission designers more options. And it might for example be highly relevant beyond fictional scenarios if we decide to perhaps make a WW2 prop plane in the future (just an example). Ultimately, no two Phantoms are absolutely identical. There are very subtle differences and you can feel that. Im aware that the wear and tear system and it's exact effects are vague and hard to grasp at the moment. Thats why we want to explain it later in more depth, for example in a video.

For now the state is not persisted. But we are aiming at adding such options for dynamic campaigns and similar. Right now, you can set the initial stats for spawn in the ME and from there on, it reacts to how you fly and other factors. You can check our manual for some details (chapter DCS > Mission Editor).

Our performance benchmark is the Tomcat. The simulation depth isnt necessarily what drives your performance up, its mostly other things like detailed models and rendering. Or simply mistakes in the code like too many radar or laser raycasts that cause issues. Even your fridge can run a billion math computations per second already.

Yes, everything under our control is subject to wear/tear, generally speaking. That includes stores like the pod. Missiles also to some extend (mostly when it is about the interaction with the plane - not so much when it already left the rail). Yes, the pod has several components that are subject to the system (iirc around 30) and it can overheat and also melt. And then there is of course also combat damage.

I personally can't really elaborate on real world usage; however, I can summarize the modes quickly to give an overview. Lets start with the loft/toss modes. You got 4 of them: * LOFT - toss your bomb at a lower pull angle forward. * Timed Over The Shoulder - toss your bomb at a high pull angle (above 90°) * Toss - the same, high angle. But this time you designate the target by clicking Bomb Button right above it, instead of over the IP * TLADD - similar to Loft, but meant to be used from low level and with drogue weapons Next, we have a set of more basic modes: * Timed Level - you compute a timer for a preplanned alt/speed etc, fly over the IP, hit hit the button and the timer runs down. Keep flying straight and level, bombs go away. * Direct - you hit the button and bombs go away immediate, simple. Could also be used for manual mil-bombing * Offset - you enter the target on the computer by means of an offset to the IP. Once over the IP, press the button and the plane guides you towards the target and auto-releases. Last but not least, your bread and butter methods of accurate bomb delivery: Variations of Dive Toss: * Dive Toss - the classic. Dive, put nose on target, WSO "locks" the ground return. Pull up and auto-release * TGT FIND: same as Dive Toss, but the target is designated by the Pave Spike TGP. This is probably the most flexible way. Put the TGP on target, hold bomb button and auto-release as soon as there's is a solution. Pretty much like CCRP * DIVE LAYDOWN - like Dive Toss, but for high drag bombs. You pull out level and fly straight until ballistic solution * LAYDOWN - like Dive Laydown, but without the dive. also for high drags. You precompute a certain mil setting based on alt/speed. Fly that profile level. Once the target is under the pipper, press and hold bomb button and keep flying straight, auto-release Technically, with the Pave Spike, there is another backup bombing mode called "Release On Range". There, bombs release as soon as the measured slant range goes below a set range threshold. In practice, most people will likely use Dive Toss and TGT FIND (if they have a Pave Spike), and Dive Laydown for high drag bombs. The four toss modes are a lot of fun, but obviously fairly inaccurate. Offset can be interesting if you have very bad visibility on the target area. Timed Level can be good if you drop a whole trail of bombs or cluster ammunition, as it allows you to just release level from high altitude with no visibility (above clouds).

Just a guess, but after you are done with a tank on the right side, you usually want to use a tank on the left next to ensure you are not creating a massive imbalance. So perhaps that was their thought when placing the left-side options next to the right-side options and vice versa.

yes. its also deeper than that. a lamp isnt just one component, theres multiple things that come to play for each individual lamp in the entire cockpit and all of them have their own wear/tear

Thanks for the report. This will be a 2 second job to adjust and if it prevents some people from feeling unpleasent reading it, why not. Not a problem at all :)

Jester will be able to leapfrog your flightplan on his own. The details of the interaction will be explained later on the manual.

In fact, the Phantoms computer can only memorize one waypoint (TGT2). You can however also use the numbers currently entered on the panel (TGT1). So you can at any time toggle between two coordinates. What they usually did was using the memorized TGT2 for the "next waypoint" in their flightplan, manually updating it when they were close ("Leapfrogging"). And using TGT1 for any point of interest, reference like bullseye, or for a quick divert.