scaflight

I highly approve of this format. It doesn't matter if one side always wins. I didn't play F4:AF for the suspense of who'd win the war, but to see if I'd always emerge the victor of the battles. Which I didn't heh. Superbly good initiative and thank you for putting time into this, and for making it available to everyone!

My stuttering only began after I downloaded the freeware A-4; it was fine until then. For me it's mouse only. Numpad camera movement is fine, inside and out.

I think the pilot-crew chief/ground personnel relationship is oft overlooked in these combat simulators. Only recently have we started to appreciate ground personnel's importance in carrier operations. I am glad HB will continue to expand on this. I personally would be thrilled to see people rummaging around beneath my aircraft. With walkaround, I am not so sure. The A2A Comanche for MSFS includes a very detailed walkaround which no doubt serves both the simming and the sim/RL student pilot very well, imparting important routines and lessons. Especially when those walkarounds let you check for things that may become a problem during flight (getting rid of the water in the fuel tanks. Stowing baggage properly. Feeling for free mov't of flight surfaces. And one day, checking for icing.) However as I read the "USAF Series F-4E" flight manual of 1979, pages "2-3"pp., the pilot conducts only a visual inspection of the exterior. To my mind an in-game inspection only has value insofar as it lets the player DO things (as is the case with the A2A Comanche), ie with influence over the parameters of the flight. I should be making an impact. If we had CAMPAIGNS reflecting SQUADRONS and WINGS (with a roster of personnel and equipment), where my precious aircraft "703" is for the moment in the hands of the most rookie crew chief, then yes I might want to have a reeaaally good look for the wing lock indicator + a myriad other things before getting strapped in. But I do not find it appealing to hunt for mistakes that will never be there. I hope this is not too far off topic or veering into discussion territory.

... damnit. I tried to quit you. I really did.

This looks brainshittingly awesome, dude. L o v e it

Guar. An. Teed. Buy.

Out******standing. This looks awesome!

I think you are 100% right in your observation. As I see it, ED should have bundled these with the core game. Yak and L-39 would make DCS properly wholesome. ED and Lead Pursuit are virtually the only developers that've struggled with this. In Microsoft's FS series and other flight sims, you've had the luxury of fairly high-fidelity aircraft that range from simple trainers to more complex multiengines. They include less and more advanced training courses, they rate their missions in terms of difficulty, and they narrow them in scope. I don't think these civilian-focused developers choose those airframes because they want some arbitrary selection of "small-to-big", but because, as many of them as experienced pilots know, you have to learn the ropes. The Su-25 is clickless and a far cry from a good learning experience. The TF-51 is absolutely not the first aircraft you'd like to learn to get the basics of flight. Simulators exist because we can't access the real thing, be it for lack of money, for fear of our own lives, that we lack prerequisite knowledge, or it's in other ways inaccessible. It's gotten to the point where DCS modules are so complex, they could do with their own simulators because they are in fact inaccessible. This point is probably not something that resonates with many daily/weekly users of DCS, because they -do- have that prerequisite knowledge. But, as anyone who's first experience with DCS was the A-10C knows, that was a damned high threshold. Many are the ones that've given up before even switching MFDs, and those people were potential customers for all these other modules. It's ok to say that no, the threshold should be 'this' high. That the learning curve should be 'X' steep. But it doesn't make a ton of sense to say that and still produce separate trainer aircraft modules.

As an owner of trackIR and ergonomic masochist, I'd love the (option of a) more realistic model.

You're treating a tournament or election model like market analysis. Hungering for winners like that puts the cart before the horse. You don't know which aircraft to field in the first place. The Viggen would never have featured on anyone's radar and be selected away rapidly, despite a development studio having superb access and insights. Different developers have different interests and fields of expertise, and ED has their own overall strategy with the game. A poll isn't to empower players to steer development (imagine if they chose the F-35, nigh impossible to research adequately to ED standards), it's to show product preferences that developers can use to help guide them. What I propose is not choice, it's collection of data. The analysis of that data goes beyond which aircraft ends up with the highest rating. And to salvage this to keep on topic (since I've no response from Growler yet): I'd love an O-2A. I'd love a Cessna 152. I'd take a 707, with or without military equipment.

So, Prowler, or any other DCS developer out there... why do you run these polls like you do? They seem to be really poor at giving you a notion of interest. There's no methodology behind them to speak of. Are these just personal initiatives of curiosity, or do they form part of a strategy on part of your company? If you teamed up with ED, I think you could make a poll that would get some really nice data from the forumgoers. First you make the poll available to all forum participants, instead of just those on your subforum. Say there's an active pop-up or a boldly advertised poll near the banner. Maybe promise X dollars' worth of modules in a lottery, drawn from all submitters. It's important to reach beyond your part of the forums, because if you only ask those who already frequent your forum, at best you're gonna learn that those who love your module A also want modules similar to A. No shit -- that's why they're here to begin with. The Cessna/Sukhoi/Bell fans are over in another forum. To make this really worthwhile, you gauge people's interest in -several- aircraft. They should come in random order, feature a relatively simple and not overly beautiful picture, and be associated with a questionnaire that asks people how interested they'd be in buying that module. For that questionnaire, a standard index of 5 values (sure to buy! / considering buying / indifferent / not interested / will never buy or be interested) makes for easier statistical evaluation of the data. You introduce the questionnaire with a profile section that asks very general questions: "check the modules that you own"; scale of 1-5 how interested are you in flying "fighters", "attack aircraft", "civil aviation", "support" etc. Scale of 1-5 what is your favourite era or generation of aircraft. Prop or jets. The questions they encounter here, and the way they answer them, will frame their later answers so it's best to leave things relatively open. You follow that section with the main section, which is just one page at a time with one of the aforementioned aircraft and corresponding index question. You have a button at the bottom that says Next, another button that lets them conclude and submit their poll, and some text that says this is aircraft 1/100 (or whatever number). Before this section you've told them that you'll reward 50 answers with a potential prize of (say) 50 EUR worth. If they hold out until 100, they are in a lottery for 100 EUR. Etc. Keep incentivising people to go to the next aircraft, both seeking the reward of a lottery as well as finding out what the next proposed aircraft is going to be. ("oooh, is my favourite plane going to be in here! If not, I hope they have a box at the end where I can fill in my own proposal! Well shit it's not appeared yet and I'm at 130... might as well click another 20 and potentially win 150!") Analysis is not the hard part; anyone with IBM SPSS and a few weeks of statistical knowledge can give you at least SOME valuable data, granted the methodology is sound. Online polling has a lot of shitty downsides and can also invite abuse. You negate the first by employing someone who has a bit of knowledge. You negate the latter by say, making the poll only accessible through forum accounts to negate the worst spam/scam effects. I'm surprised there hasn't been more market analysis from ED so far. I'd really like to see some activity in that area.

He means you are depending on a logical fallacy -- relying on authority (yourself and your practical experience) -- to dispute the point of EAT wiggle room. Which in and of itself relies on the interesting notion that for a standard of conduct, there exists a standard in a manual that should be preferable and holds authority over a standard in practise. I think he has subscribed to this notion as a philosophy to suit his practise, but that'd be me speculating on his motivations. It's all kinds of epistemological philosophy up in this forum now...

You can create your own custom views already, in case you were not aware. But I guess a predetermined one from HB would be nice!

Am I reading that right, that it should be impossible to launch flares with flaps lowered?

Considering the Phillips head on the rivets and other inconsistencies with my own theory, I think an Aviat Husky can be a reasonable guess. Not only that... As I studied the preview icon yesterday, I was looking for the long dark stretches where the wings will fit. The icon just didn't make sense to me, unless the aircraft was texture-split at the top (which isn't the case, since Right side is so near the top). Or, unless the aircraft has high-mounted wings... I'm a lot less certain of the Zero now, especially since I can't get good closeups of the rivets in question. But I also can't find a way to match the rivets with the Husky. Even allowing for rivets yet to be placed, we can see clearly the sheet (as it would appear on a right-side up aircraft, facing right) that is fastened: .. and I don't see that on the Husky.