Wizard_03

I said I like the SA in the hornet for me. I didn't say it was better or ineffective in the viper. I personally prefer the hornet and its large displays. I can barely see the Gameboys In the viper lol The hornet doesn't have to choose between a third tank or a jammer. And between the wing tanks and the center tank. I'll take the center because it's 9G rated in the viper, so I don't need to drop it once the fight goes WVR but it's unfortunate I don't have that option realistically because I pretty much have to lug around a jammer pod. So after dropping my tanks I've got a pretty short legged bird. Hopefully the base I need to land at is right under me. Hornet has fuel for days compared to the viper and that drop tank situation is a big factor of that. Internal jammer is plus, no way around it. Realistic counter air missions usually have a patrol or long ingress segment and fuel becomes a big deal in those situations. But this is DCS so you can just take off fly for 5 minutes and get into a fight.

I doubt it, the hornets ITR is still significantly better, it's dangerous in a guns fight. It's a death sentence with SRMs Improvements in G onset and acceleration won't change that.

It's primarily a defensive system anyway. In the wild the hornet is suppose to have a prowler or growler nearby to do the offensive stuff. The podded solution on the viper can do a little of both. But it's all or nothing, you have to carry the pod in any realistic AA situation because they didn't end up putting an internal jammer in like they wanted too. So your stuck with an overall better system in the viper but you get the weight and drag penalty as well even if you just need it to protect yourself after you take your shots and turn cold. Plus is has to take up a fuel or weapon station. Which is already a big concern in the viper. But both aircraft are very comparable however. I wouldn't say that the hornet is better or the viper is helpless I just prefer the hornet, and the big screens and little things like having RWR nails on the radar page and other small Quality of life stuff that help me build SA faster, that I personally would trade some of the vipers speed and acceleration for. A bigger and I think very important advantage the hornet has is in it's strike capabilities. Both aircraft can self escort but I think where the hornet really shines over the viper is in the ability to carry a bigger and more flexible strike package. The USAF doesn't really use the viper in all the missions the USMC and USN use the hornet in, the USAF has the F-15E for a lot of the strike stuff so it's not really the US vipers fault that it hasn't been developed as far as the hornet has. But it can carry more further at the end of the day. Which is something to consider as pure AA is not as desirable as multirole theses days but I digress.

Performance wise: F-16 better at BVR F/A-18 better at WVR For AA in general the hornet has much better sensor fusion an on board jammer, and is much better at sorting and classifying contacts and providing more SA in general. Personally that is more attractive to me then hucking amraams a little farther and faster. Because at the end of the day the F-15 is still BVR king. The viper just does it a little bit better the hornet. It's not decisive, SA is is. Imo

They've stated we aren't getting a specific RW configuration but one with all the features that they can find enough data for. So it won't be locked to a specific nation or capability set. Which is a first for DCS as far as I know, as they have fudged/stretched equipment weapon sets a little before on some aircraft but never stated up top that one will not conform to a specific time and nation, i.e. Full Frankenstein. So We'll see how it goes over. Anyways cockpit looks fantastic! Can't wait.

It should, he is describing a game exploit.

I said May have been used in Bosnia, they were tested with the pod and fishbowl for certain. It's not unrealistic, it flew with that Config.

Not true, they Definitely had the pod before D, they even had it before sparrow hawk B(U) models.

There is evidence that the config we have, Fishbowl + LANTIRN was actually used in at least one squadron and may have saw action in Bosnia. They for sure tested the pod that way on A birds (We know that), with the same Input switching method jacked in through the TCS feeds the exact way we see in game. But going forward All LANTIRN birds got PTID and a digital bus for GPS PGMs. So it may not be completely unrealistic per say. But its not really representative of how it was Ultimately implemented Fleetwide. It may have been a quick sort of "Jerry Rig" to give the jet PGM capacity for that conflict, or it may have just been a testing config its unclear. So its kind of a case of yes and no. So you don't need to concede anything. lol

ED isn't the public, Its a safe bet they have the EM charts or we wouldn't have the product to begin with. The vipers are in fact available, and wouldn't you know it, its very close. There's work left to be done but it actually is quite close right now. There's some drag issues and G onset problems at the moment, its underperforming by a few degrees in the turn rate department up at high altitude. But Hardly: " not done within 1% or 2% in any way" as you said, and It's getting better almost every patch. The bigger issue IMO is the mountains of confirmation bias over on the viper forums, hoggdit, and youtube. That the Viper should just outrate everything it encounters because that's what they have heard regardless of what the charts say. In fact There are bits and pieces of data on the EPE hornet that ARE available that seem to contradict that but If everything else in the game is super accurate I don't see why they would suddenly forget about realism with the hornet. That's just me. Also the margins by which the FM on the viper are still WIP are not enough to make you loose in a dogfight, nor will having it be in its final state be significantly better then where its at right now. 1 or 2 degrees more above 20K is not going to suddenly make the viper the dogfight god people make it out to be. In any case, the other issue people like yourself have a hard time with the fact that ED takes a long time in early access and you also seem to have a better understanding of how long it takes get things like the FM done then the people actually doing the work. So with that mindset your going to be disappointed no matter what they or I say, Because its unreasonable, your welcome to be critical of them I certainly have been, but at the end of the day I don't understand what benchmark your comparing them too. Is there some other company with a more accurate hornet and viper simulation that took less time? How long should it take to tweak a FM within reasonable accuracy to the data?

That will probably never happen as the actual EM charts for our hornet are not available to the public. As for the comments from real hornet pilots on this forum and others that aren't SMEs for ED they have so far all turned out to have never flown the EPE hornet in the first place, never mind the stripped down no pylon, low fuel state configs of the EPE hornet you see on youtube, which are completely unrealistic. And even if they had they couldn't comment on specific data points. So I wouldn't hold your breath. ED's Flight modelling for other aircraft such as the F-15C, A-10C, F-5E and others, have been verified as more accurate then military sims by their respective SMEs and both ex and active duty pilots, and are often within 1 percent error of their respective data sources. So personally I think ED is pretty trustworthy. Perhaps More so then open source Devs for the other three letter sim that aren't paid, and using an incredibly old game with significant limitations in the exact areas that you are interest in. I won't even get into non combat sims, they also have repeatedly have said both FM for the hornet and viper are not complete and under active development. So its kind of Apples to nothing right now anyways. They also have zero reason to make one of their products intentionally worse then another with regards to realism. Especially the newer one. Is the FM perfect, probably not, nothing is perfect, but is anything else out there even remotely close, absolutely not. I would love to see a competitor to DCS make a better FM and provide proof of that, but that fact is there aren't any right now and It took ED literally years and they didn't start from scratch at that. SO before talking about the FM make sure you actually have evidence that its wrong and why its wrong because their are literally mountains of data and man hours that go into it from people that do have data and are privy to non-public sources, otherwise leave it to the full time engineers that have made it their profession. Some of which have worked for other game studios that made study sims of the hornet in the past.

Awesome news!! Thanks HB

Be Careful, because it can also turn into team attack mode since you don't get IFF responses with IRST.

Thing about the F-14 is you also have carrier ops, two seats, and a significant A2G PGM capacity. In addition to A2A and fleet Defense. A FF USAF/ANG F-15C won't have nearly as much "gameplay" potential. Even from an AA perspective the F-15C is much more specialized. It's the best, and it's only the best. That may not be enough for ED, it is for me.

What are we doing about the IFOLS spotlights?

PM bignewy they evidently think it's right.

Based on what? According to NATOPS the throttles are back driven when either mode is engaged THEN moved to capture mach in cruise or on speed in approach mode respectively. So in other words power is cut and brought back when the button first gets pressed.

@1.54 ATC initialization zeros out the throttles. So this is expected and correct behavior.

Would it be possible to get a separate jester keybinds for designate and laser always on at some point? Its kinda clunky having to designate from page 2 of the menu same story for buddy lazing someone else's weapons, I'd be nice to have those binded so we can use voice attack. Thats my only notes. Great work otherwise. I never thought dropping LGBs would be easier in the tomcat then hornet

If you have Supercarrier you get the high fidelity comms with the Forrestal. Thanks HB

IFOLS is too bright, I can hardly see the meatball with gamma at default setting, because the green lights are blinding. Can even see it from the side of the ship way outside the grove on the downwind leg.

The yellow stripes for the Landing areas and all other deck painted lines no longer appear in the Mission Editor. They do however Appear in game. 100 percent reproducible for all versions of the SC, repair and meta shaders/FXO delete have no effect. Restart has no effect. No track as the problem occurs in the Mission editor and not the game. Thanks!

well done! Thanks for all your hard work.

Your still down an aircraft for the next day. It's a tactical loss, maybe it's not a strategic one. But either way the squadron is down a fighter. Quite a bit worse then a few panels. Why not bring the jet back in good shape for the next fight so you can win the war. Rather then get into the logistics of repairing or replacing jets aka the mathematics of defeat? Your making a big assumption that there's a big reserve of jets you can draw from and that losses like that are easy to replace. Don't need to pull the paddle to win in the hornet. Don't need 12Gs to win the eagle. So why do it? Cause more damage to the aircraft then the enemy? Nevermind the possibility of GLoc, nevermind the fact that most of the fighters in the game can STILL out rate you even with the paddle. Nevermind that SRMs don't give a hoot about how many Gs you can pull. Nevermind that over stressing the jet can infact damage control surfaces and cause major flight control issues, possibly resulting the loss of jet anyway. If your gonna die sure yank away, that F-15 pilot did. But why are you in situations you where that is life or death if you don't? That F-15 pilot was a student. What's your excuse? The hornet is more then capable of beating everything in the game without the paddle. The true strength of the jet is it's low speed controllability and nose pointing authority. So why are you not fighting the jet too it's strengths?

https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/f-15-incident/ So here is the result of a 9G aircraft pulling 12. 2.5 million dollars and a unspecified number of weeks/months where that aircraft is unavailable. So did you win? or is that aircraft wreaked just the same. For a certainty it's no longer available for combat during the current campaign, maybe even the war. (In this case the jet might just get scrapped as it's old and didn't have much life left in it anyway) So is that acceptable? I don't think so. That's what we call a loss, or if you did manage to get the enemy too, breaking even.