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Thanks for the comments everybody. Believe me, it's even worse watching it back knowing it's my own footage. The second clip and its overlaid text is a little misleading because I don't have the footage from before that clip starts. It makes it look a little worse than it actually was, but only a little. What scaflight mentioned with mapping the stick is exactly what I had done when I first started flying it and offline it worked well enough. However, that doesn't cut it when you're playing online vs. F-15s and Su-27s and every second counts. I spent a few minutes this morning with a completely new set of control bindings and I now feel a lot more comfortable. Things like having the IFF and jamming filter bound are incredibly important when playing online. You don’t have the time to waste clicking things in the cockpit. I've also moved all the radar commands such as high angle, beam, and radar on/off to much faster to reach places. I ran through the hardest version of the target practice mission several times after that and I even though I'm not fully used to these new bindings I can immediately tell that I'm already much quicker and make much less mistakes. A lot of it comes down to experience and practice, and that first night online was a rude awakening to how good I thought I was operating the weapons under pressure. Still, I am pretty proud of myself for having maneuvered myself into kill shots on three occasions. That I fumbled with the controls is unfortunate, but that's the easily correctable part if you ask me. Oh, and about the canopy frame, I never realized how restrictive it was until those online fights. Your forward view is really limited, and you have no rear visibility at all. I had a hard time keeping track of targets because they would get lost in the armored canopy. It can be helped by putting your head up to the glass, but it's something I need to be very wary of. Despite getting shot down more than a few times (and flying into a mountain or two) I had a boat load of fun. I'm out of town for the rest of the week, but I can't wait to give it another go when I get back.

So, here were my results. I didn't get any kills, but all my losses were attributed to me fumbling with the controls or some other kind of systems error on my part. All things considered, I'm surprised with how well I did. I somehow managed to maneuver myself in for a kill on three separate occasions (first one wasn't recorded) and it's only because of my own inexperience that I didn't secure a kill. What this really proved is that I just need more practice with the minutiae of the MiG-21's weapon selection but more importantly I need to rebind a lot of my commands because I spent far too much time bumbling around in the cockpit. I'm also finding that for whatever reason LNS included next to no toggles, so I'm quickly running out of space on my X52 to put all these switches. 4mA74e0RIrw

This thread has me really chomping at the bit to try this myself. I love flying the MiG-21 but I never thought to try it online because I figured it would just be cannon fodder. However with all these videos you guys are putting up I need to try this myself. Looks like a lot of fun.

I've noticed that when I'm in TWS or RWS with a limited scan zone, the radar does not follow my cursor. It only happens when I manipulate the radar cursor using the "TDC Slew Horizontal (mouse)" binding. If I use the normal keys, the radar will follow the cursor correctly.

As much as I love the F-104, it wouldn't be a fair fight against a MiG-21. The huge majority of Starfighters can't even carry a medium range radar missiles of any kind. Only the handful of Italian F-104Ss were cleared for Sparrows. F-104 would be even less "relevant" in DCS than the MiG-21 is. The F-5 is better as direct opposition to the MiG-21.

A lot, actually. This page is full of them.

This would be the ultimate DCS module.

Reading MBot's posts on the subject has me convinced that it was made that way it currently is for a good reason. Regardless, I see no reason why this shouldn't be an option for people who want to use a more realistic system. I have brakes bound to a digital button, so I may not like how that works out a realistic system but I'd be curious to try. If it doesn't, I'll just go back to the current simplified system.

It looks to me like somebody edited in the very ugly default Photoshop lens flare.

You actually can hit a maneuvering and evading B-52, you just need to make sure you're in a lag pursuit that way the missile follows the bomber in such a way that it won't need to turn too hard. I've been wondering about this ever since I saw the missile do one very specific (but fun) thing. I launched the missile without any lock whatsoever. Predictably, the missile didn't know what to do so it just flew off into the sky unguided. 2-3 seconds after launch, I locked a target in front of me (and from the missiles POV about 40 degrees to the right and below) and to my surprise it started to home into my radar lock. It self-destructed before getting near the target, and it probably wouldn't have been able to turn sharp enough to hit anyway, but that caught me off guard. By my understanding of what a beam-riding missile is, the Kh-66 should have been nowhere near the radar beam and thus would have no direction when I got that lock. It would seem like the ingame version acts more like a dumb SARH missile than it does a beam-riding missile.

While messing around in the Kh-66 training mission I got to wondering if I could use those massive air to ground missiles against other airplanes. They’re beam riding missiles so in theory they should be able to track anything the radar locks onto, right? I mean, what do they care if that lock is in the air or in the sea? A radar beam is a radar beam. If you’d like to try this yourself, the mission file is attached. It's your MiG armed with two Kh-66s, two R-60Ms, and very limited gun ammo. It's not particularly challenging, but it's fun to use Kh-66s as anti-bomber weapons. Beam Rider.miz

When the visibility range is set to low, the textures on the Kh-66 get messed up. This only happens on low. When set to medium or high, the Kh-66 renders fine. Looks like bad UVs on an LOD model.

I've wondered this myself. I was under the impression old Soviet missiles produced a hell of a lot of smoke. BypnhFI7HGY

I only sat in the sim once, so I don't remember the specifics of what it had beyond what I can see in the picture. I know it swapped out the test equipment on the right most front panel with the knob that was supposed to be there, so I assumed it's more up to date than the AA-1. I do remember the sim was missing things though, but it's been too long for me to remember what.

That bottom picture of the OP is of the AA-1, a pre-production jet that has things that both shouldn't be there or things that are missing. Pictures of the sim that Lockheed takes to shows are the best you're going to get of the production cockpit.

I registered to ask that specific question. I've been learning air to air refueling in the F-15C and I can't get the fuel meter to show more than 10k lbs in the mission I've set up where I start with ~30% fuel. At first I thought I needed to switch tanks to feed into somehow, but I can't find any buttons to do that. All I could find was the fuel gauge selector which I'm pretty sure selects what you're looking at, not any actual flow mechanics. Something else I'm wondering is if this is easier in real life. For one, I'm surprised the trim is actually too sensitive to be of any use in refueling, and second, does the F-15C really not have any altitude or airspeed autopilot? Those two, and being able to adjust those two while activated, would make this a whole lot easier. I've heard DCS refueling is scripted, but is that true anymore? I saw an old tutorial video where the guy said to let go of the controls after connection but that seems silly and wrong in my experience now in FC3.