captain_dalan

Difficulty rating should not affect plane performance, certainly not acceleration or climb rates. And MiG-21's (count the F-5's here) and especially MiG-15's always severely overperformed when controlled by the AI. This has largely to do with their flight models, that is the laws of physics they follow.

Sorry for bumping this, but it has been marked as missing tracks, though tracks have been provided on two occasions.

That shake is there to save your life, least you disregard it and depart the plane

This! I think many here would prefer the status quo (of absolutely borked missile guidance and dynamics) of the previous decade for the sake of perceived balance, fairness or what not. ED is working on it. It's working on it after endless years of passiveness. Give them time i say. We'll get there.

Thanks. I only ever evaluated the 4x4 configuration Ps wise, up to mach 0.8 at sea level and 5000ft and those match the published data down to the T

Wait, they aren't letting F-14's on MP servers at all these days? I thought this was specific to the e-sport jocks.

There is a contextual menu for Jester, that tells him to switch either from P-STT to PD-STT or vice versa. Maybe if you map that to a key binding, you can do quick popup checks? Just speculating here, i was never in your situation. My Jester auto switch to P-STT is disabled and i always start with a PD-STT, eventually switching to P-STT when very close and closer then that, i'm in PAL, PLM or VSL-High/Low and those are all pulse modes.

This is a topic that was on my mind for some time, not so much as a request, but more as a question for people that flew them. In the past i was never considering the impact of filters on visibility in general, as i could neither afford nor needed quality lenses for my sunglasses, and spending most of my outdoors in late afternoons or evenings, i never needed them either. But in the last few years that changed, and i did start paying attention. My first issue were a G15's and though i was highly skeptical at first, they do seem to effect contrast on bright sunny days. The last example was yesterday morning, as i was driving to work on a cloudy morning with a B15 filter. Again, significant improvement in contrast and thus spotting. Both example involve non-polarized lenses. But, as @Swordsman422 said, those aren't the topic of this thread anyways. So my first question is to any people around here that flew the F-14's (maybe @Victory205 can chime in), were the visors on the helmets used by the F-14's crews standard grey? Or were they tinted in any way? My second question is, does implementation of filters matter in DCS? When i was playing around with reshade i actually did adjust contrast, sharpness and hue in order to experiment with what made most sense to me, to emulate what i felt was closest to my own impressions. But then DCS changed the lighting model and the performance hit was significant for my machine, so i stopped. As i understand it now, the standard gamma of 2.2 should represent unmodified view through a clear and transparent canopy, so i try to adjust it accordingly within my screen's capabilities. Right now, i find the setting of 2.1 to most closely match most lighting conditions i can test on my latitudes and longitudes. But some kind of visor options would be cool, if for nothing else then for role-playing reasons. Heck, i might even program one for me in reshade, if i had any idea what the effects of having it should be.

Please don't misquote me. I never mentioned anything about acceleration, neither in the current version of the FM, nor the October-November patches. Especially not for a clean bird.

BIO is not the only one saddened by the start of this video, i almost shed a tear too....

Aye, checked that myself this afternoon as well. No joy. While the above mentioned procedure did work this autumn, the AI will no longer use the Phoenix, neither in my own test missions nor in the instant actions that involve BVR. This was recorder back in august:

How do you make the AI F-14's engage at all with a Phoenix? For as long as i can remember in all my missions, they would wait till at least 30 miles away before they even consider launching and more often they get into Sparrow range before they do?

Ah, that's why assumed more love would be given to the Naval jets, namely J's!

They never did. Unfortunately the AI for the HB F-14 has been borked since the start. There used to be a workaround for your wingmen, i think it started working from this autumn, if you ordered them to engage from 50+ nautical miles, they would actually employ AIM-54's, but order them from shorter ranges and have them as independents and they will ignore the Phoenixes. ED has been notified, but so far there have been no changes.

Look i understand that not all of us are created or trained equal and life has been harder to some of us then others. Just because i can do it without any stick extensions and 16000+ DPI on my old CH Fighterstick, doesn't mean, everyone can. But i would advise most to at least try. But not try for the sake of trying. Try until you palms sweat and fingers blister. And then, and only then, if after weeks or months of idle effort, you still can't do it......then try adding some curves. Just be aware of the pitfalls that go along with them, so when you hit those, they won't come out of nowhere and you don't feel cheated....

Thanks mate! I don't have Photoshop so i used Gimp for this. But if i start doing skins more often, i may have to get Ps! Sharp eyes! Yeah, i see what you mean, the metallic shine threw me off there i didn't notice it. Thanks again! Is this better?

Hey, didn't you guys fly navy versions!?

After all these years i still find it hard to understand why people would chose to fly a plane that needs over a mile of runway to land!

Bolded by me. I must disagree with this statement. While it is true that increased resolution around the center helps with precision flying, the statement that the extremes of the axis don't require such precision are true, ONLY if you fly the plane as a makeshift airliner or a carpet bomber. Try aerobatics or BFM or heavens forbid, SAM evasion jinks with such curves, and the steeper they are the most likely you are to rip you wings off (at worst) or depart the plane due to excessive pitch (at best) If you can find away to have two separate curve settings, one for AAR and one for regular use, then go for it. But even this will require you to rewire your brain for two distinct plane behaviors. IMO, it's much better to be patient and develop fine motor skill instead of take the easy route and develop bad muscle memory. But ultimately it's your choice. If you expect to never have to violently maneuver the plane, then curves will not hurt you. Just don't try pulling the stick even slightly at mach 1.4 or above.

Sorry, something went bogus with my previous post. First thing's first. All credits where credit is due. This livery wouldn't be possible without the works of @Reflected and @Tomcatter87 who allowed me to use their works as a base and who's art has inspired me to make my first dip into DCS skin making. This is supposed to represent a 1977 F-14A, NH 202, buno 159861, block 90 from VF-213. The high-viz template is based on Reflected's high-viz liveries, from 1975-1976, with the white underbelly being adjusted to more closely resemble the photos i found for this bird. The nacelle fins are repainted from scratch. The tail art and the crew helmets are taken from Tomcatter's VF-213 early 80's livery. The blue surface on the rudders and the top of the stabs is a result of much trial and error while experimenting with DCS lighting. The fed blue didn't work for me. While it resembled the F-14D VF-213's from the 90's it just didn't 'jive' with the 70's photos. The buno is composed of digits taken from other high-viz skins by Reflected and shuffled in the needed order. The Kittyhawk markings on the wing gloves and the base of the vertical stabs are taken and adjusted from Reflected's Vark livery. Unfortunately, i could not a photo detailed enough to see the names of the crew that flew this bird on that cruise, so i kept the Tomcatter's crew bellow the canopy. It was my original goal to paint the NH 201 (the one on my DCS profile cover), but i just couldn't find a photo detailed enough from this period. I must say, only now do i understand the passion behind making liveries. For several days (more exactly nights) i found myself staying up till 4AM either researching the plane, or fine tuning the look... and no matter how much you fine tune it, it's NEVER just right! But i had to say when at some point, even though i'm not 100% pleased with the work i did. I mean, i'm definitely keeping the work for personal use AND for future modifications, but the ever critic in me will never consider it to be "good enough" . So what do you guys think? Is this worth sharing and publishing? Once again, all my thanks and full honors to the original creators who's work i based this on! Keep flaying, keep painting and clear skies! Cap D.

It will be real fun to slide off the carrier when it changes direction...

I did some tests last night, and decided to try and eliminate the human factor so i set the missions in the following manner: 1. AI F-18C VS AI F-16C; 2. AI F-18C VS AI-F-14A; 3. AI F-14A VS AI F-16C All planes clean, set to roughly same time in burner Veteran AI level. Only let the AI fight two times for every setup. The F-16 seemed most consistent. Tried to stay around 380-390 knots in all fights. The F-14 mostly tried to stay around 250-260 knots but i two fight actually went for a high energy strategy and kept its airspeed above 420 knots, while periodically exchanging energy for position. The breaks were very sloppy though, with choppy excursions above 6g. The F-18 was the poorest show of them all. In all fights it just bled off all its energy and tried to do a sustained turning fight at 150 knots, which gave him no more then 1.5g available at most times. Only on occasion, usually when the bandit would go into a dive and the Hornet followed, would its airspeed rise to 200-ish knots and somewhat improve its turning potential. All planes seemed to prefer to be at 20 degrees AoA for the most time when engaging in a turn, which feels a bit off to me. As usual, no snapshot attempts were made, so high AoA insistence makes little sense. Anyways, no further reports for now. Happy weekend and Merry Christmas to all!

Ballistic F-16.trkTacview-20211225-223911-DCS-F-14A NTTR_Dogfight_F-16C NO PYLONS 70 percent fuel both.zip.acmi Here is my track and the corresponding Tackview. I don't know if it'll work as it's a Tomcat track. This time around the AI Viper only went down to 90 or so knots CAS. Still perfectly controlable over the top. If memory serves, he did this twice, the second time, did cost him his life.

For what is worth, on Caucasus, in the carrier quals missions, i actually get 3-4+ FPS after the latest patch, but that may be ED optimizing water rendering?

I would actually prefer if it didn't! I mean, if it did, then sooner or later it would reach its theoretical maximum and then we'd end up with flying the same AI again and again. I prefer diversity. I will try to save a track the next time i do the training BFM missions. The above snapshot was taken from an F-14 flight, so that is broken by default, i doubt it will be of any use. Unless you can use the tackview file?