Aries144

LOL! Socks! Hahaha. I'm getting this funny mental picture of what your work space is starting to consist of: pictures of the F-14 and thousands of newspaper and magazine page clippings with the words "Tom" and "Cat" circled in red lipstick covering every inch of your walls... Merry Christmas to you and the guys Cobra! Get some rest and enjoy your families. :) When there's something I want that's taking time like your F-14 or Star Citizen, I just put it in the back of my head. I don't think about it. That way, when it does finally become available, it feels like a surprise gift instead of a long impatient wait.

First off, the angular relationship between 8 feet at 1000 feet vs 8 meters at 1000 meters is, of course, the same. You were exactly correct SinusoidDelta. I'm tired. :) Second, thank you very much for finding that video! You've just given us the parameters of the test and a valid original source to present alongside our findings! For a Test First off, if we can somehow get bullet hole textures to show up on a target model, this will be much easier. If we can't somehow get bullet holes, we're going to have to use a target that cannon shells will pass through without bursting, place the game camera next to the target, slow down game time as much as possible, make every canon round a tracer (or otherwise visible), elongate the tracer objects to keep them visible long enough as they pass through the target to record, record the "impacts" on/through our target to a video, and use video editing software to advance through the video frame-by-frame to mark each impact point on the target. People we need: Someone who can make and texture models for DCS and adjust them as needed Someone who knows how to hack the game to modify the A-10C to make it a more stable shooting platform on the ground (If we can't have bullet holes) Someone who can make every cannon round a tracer, slow the game time down more than currently possible, and possibly elongate the tracer models/effects to allow more time to mark them Someone familiar with video editing software and willing to go frame-by-frame through a few minutes worth of slow motion impact footage to mark all of the outermost hits Things we need: 1. A way to accurately measure distance in game. The most desired range would be 25.4 meters, as that is the shorter of the two distances used in the test video above. Other ranges could be used, we'll just have to convert the results so they can be compared with the ranges used in the video. Closer ranges should make for a more accurate test and are preferred. If the TGP is used for ranging, we'll have to adjust for the range error caused by the difference in range between the TGP mounted on a wing station and the gun's muzzle. This can be figured close enough using known dimensions and/or a little measuring with photoshop. 2. We need 2 indestructible, immovable, target models. If we can't have bullet holes, we need a target a bullet can pass through instead of exploding on. One 8 mil x 8 mil target with a "circle" texture that touches all four sides. (8 mil square with circle on it that touches each side = 8 mil circle.) One target about 16 mil x 16 mil. The bigger target would be placed behind the smaller target to record shots falling outsize the 8 x 8 mil target. Once we know the range we're going to shoot the target from, we can then make the target dimensions match 8 mils at that range. Since we can look up its dimensions, the tail of an aircraft parked next to our target in-game or in a model editor should be good to establish scale. 3. We may need to experiment with ways to immobilize the A-10C testbed. I don't know what's possible here, so I'll suggest hacks to increase mass and stiffen suspension or perhaps to over-weight the aircraft with ordnance and/or place a blocking object behind it to limit rolling and vertical stringing due to recoil. 4. If there is no way to get bullet holes, we'll need to record the firing with the in-game camera at a distance and angle that makes the points at which individual cannon rounds pass through the target as clear as possible. (No need to mark hits falling in the center 75% of the target circle.) Or, someone with a connection to ED can simply tell us what real world values the numbers for the Da0 in the shell table lua equate to before I go stark raving mad, burst out of my apartment making airplane noises, and doing this in front of my neighbors: :pilotfly:

Weird. I'm using an MSFF2 and I don't have this problem. Just flew the A-10C today with no issues. Hope it gets sorted out soon man!

Public math?

Interestingly, although not exactly "free-floating barrels," the Museum at Hill Air Force Base has an M61a1 20mm cannon display which mentions that "dispersion patterns could be modified with the use of barrel muzzle clamps." It looks like purposefully changing dispersion was designed to be an option! The next questions are: Was it ever used operationally? If so, was it a pilot's preference sort of thing? A unit level decision? Etc. Until we have specific information, I think the "barrel muzzle clamp" has to be set aside in favor of what facts we have access to. The clear information we do have is that the unmodified gun's accuracy requirement is 8 mil, 80%. This means 80% of shots fired in a test must be within an 8 mil diameter circle. This implies that a larger dispersion would be a failure which, under normal circumstances, would require repair.

8 mil is an angular measurement, so "8 mil" is 80cm in diameter at 100 meters, 4 meters in diameter at 500 meters, 8 meters in diameter at 1000 meters, etc. 8 mil is always 8 mil, no matter what distance you measure it at. It has a relationship with meters similar to how MOA relates to inches. The M61 Vulcan cannon has an accuracy requirement of 8 mil, 80%. If more than 80% of fired rounds land outside of an 8 mil diameter circle during maintenance tests, repair is required.

ETA: Testing has revealed that the Extreme Spread of the F-15's M61A1 cannon current in DCS is over 20 mil, with 80% of rounds passing within a circle 8 mil in diameter. The contention is that this may be due to a misinterpretation of the confusing figures used in documentation. The video below shows an M61A1 mounted to an aircraft being test fired on the ground at a target with an 8 mil circle. 99% of rounds from a 100 round burst fall within an 8 mil circle. The speaker states that observed performance was between 99-95% within the 8 mil circle during all tests. The current in-game dispersion is larger than that seen in the video, and may be due to the difficulty of interpreting the rather vague published text on the matter. The linked video below appears to be conclusive, however. This US Airforce video at 4:15 shows an M61A1 20mm cannon accuracy test. I wish to state that, in the course of investigating in-game performance, I found that the cannons in-game perform almost exactly as the most common sense interpretation of the accuracy figures would suggest (i.e. 80% of rounds passing through an 8 mil diameter circle for M39 and M61A1 cannons and 80% through a 5 mil circle for the Gau-8 ). ED has done excellent work in making the current system conform to the real performance of the guns to what I believe was the best of their knowledge. I mean only to present this video as evidence because it seems to indicate that the current interpretation of the data is incorrect.

Testing has been performed which indicates that the extreme spread of the A10's gun is currently 17 mil. All sources indicate that the gun's precision should be 5 mil, 80%. Currently, far more than 20% of rounds are landing outside of a 5 mil diameter. The best compromise, considering DCS' current limitations in precisely modeling shot distribution, would be to use a Da0 value of 0.0005 in the shelltable which would result in an extreme spread of 5 mil in game. This better reflects the performance of a factory new gun than does attempting to model the minimum performance before maintenance of 5 mil, 80%. See the tests performed in this thread + the video of an m61 cannon being precision tested.

There's an issue with the HUD affecting the ASL and A/G gun pipper range scales that is fixed by manually replacing two .lua files. See this thread.

Thank you Zeus! It's really good of you to put this out there so we can enjoy these fixes before Wednesday! I'm getting a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of this module!

It's my favorite aircraft to fly. I'll sometimes just take it out in an empty map to fly through the mountains and land on runways and roads. WVR fighting the Mig21 is tremendous fun, especially in multiplayer. The F-5 loves to fight down low. The flight model and systems damage modeling really are a lot of fun to experience. Example: I once took a hit which shut down the hydraulic system that handles lowering landing gear. Upon returning to base, I discovered on my downwind leg that the gear weren't coming down. Gear handle down, no gear lowering noise, no green lights. A part of my memory flashed to the emergency procedures and remembered the emergency gear handle. I pulled that, heard a *thunk*, but saw no green lights. Ah! I remembered from the manual that you have to "rock" the aircraft to get the gear to lock down and go green light. I rocked the wings right, then left and saw the left, then right main gear lights go green, respectively. Now the nose wheel... positive G? I pushed forward on the stick, then pulled backward- green light nose wheel. Alright! I did all this on my downwind in a hurry, then turned final, landed... and discovered that the non functioning hydraulic system also controlled my brakes! Meep! I hit the landing chute, rolled to within inches of the end of the runway, and finally came to a stop. Having to spontaneously deal with emergency procedures like this is a real blast and really makes the aircraft come alive. Every aspect of the plane is fun- even the Realistic Battle Damage . ;) Now, onto some irritating (and hopefully temporary) issues: The RWR is not currently modeled accurately, which I think may come down to difficulty in finding the obscure technical documents in a foreign language and then having to translate highly technical terms for which their are seldom direct translations. The main issue with the RWR you'll notice is that you have to map the RWR "search" button onto your HOTAS and frequently switch it on and off. If your RWR has the "search" button lit and something locks your aircraft, you get a single quiet "beep" and it disappears from your RWR! This leaves you completely unaware of the threat unless you happen to hit the "search" button again. If you turn the "search" button off, the RWR then only shows things that are actively radar locking your aircraft and nothing else, lol! The other issue is the shot pattern of the guns, which is also probably an error caused by the difficulty of having to translate and make sense of technical documents in a foreign language. The only sources anyone here has been able to locate indicate that the guns should have a worst-case shot pattern diameter of "8 mil, 80%," meaning that the worst the guns can shoot is a group where at least 80% of shots fit into an 8 mil diameter circle. If they shoot larger than that, it's time for maintenance. Currently the shot pattern is about 22 mil in diameter. The F-5 (22 mil, should be 8 ), F-15 (22 mil, should be 8 ), and A-10 (17 mil, should be 5 ) all display this issue with gun shot pattern being about 3x larger than any source states.

Steve Davies and Beamscanner, Thank you very much for your contributions! I hope Belsimtek is able to take this and improve RWR simulation.

This will fix it. Swap the X and Y axis. Your stick is pulling to one side because takeoff trim is set and it's pulling to the right rather than back. ;)

I'd love to see the logic for SAMs updated to better reflect actual Soviet training. As things are, a SEAD missile is a near certain death sentence for a SAM. I'd like to see SAMs shut off their radars and move when detecting incoming missiles. I'd love to see SAM AI turning radar on for a brief moment then off, tracking optically, launching, then using radar at the last second to guide the missile into the target with as little exposure as possible, like the Serbians did with the SA-6 in the 90's. Would also like to the some variant of the SA-2 eventually. ;) The Russians make some amazing SAM systems. I want the SAMs in the simulation to better represent the excellence of Russian and Eastern European SAM training!

Just a heads-up: It's really pretty easy to get the throttle timed with the afterburner detent of the Warthog throttle by making custom curves for the throttle axis. I do it for all of my afterburning aircraft and it works great. Basically fly in a mission, put the throttle up to the afterburner stop, go into the control settings, axis setting for the throttle, set to "slider," set custom curve, wiggle the throttle at that afore-mentioned max dry thrust position so that the "dot" is set to where it activates, then adjust the left-most curves downward until the afterburner only activates after the throttle passes the afterburner stop, but never before. Then adjust the rest of the curve until the line is as close to straight as possible. Done! A specific afterburner setting would be nice, but the above method really isn't that hard, and IIRC it's pretty close to the same for all aircraft.

CptSmiley, Please accept our sincerest thanks and pass them along to your crew! Bang up job sir! Do you guys ever stop to eat?! ;)

The problem fixed was an FPS hit when the cameras weren't even being displayed. An FPS drop is normal when cameras are displayed. ;) You and me are going to have to upgrade our video cards soon. The graphics improvements coming in 2.5 are probably going to push the 970 over the edge, especially in VR.

Thanks Zeus! Do you guys ever stop to eat?! ;) Keep up the outstanding work!

I've made a report on it. Basically, it looks like they're glitchy right now. Minimum deploy altitude for a straight and level release should be 500ft, IIRC. They operate on a fusing option that allows the pilot to select to have the bomblets burst from the container at 1.2 seconds after release or 4 seconds after release. The "PR" (1.2 sec) and "OP" (4 sec) settings on the fuse select switch in the Harrier should eventually give you this capability. Sometimes they deploy properly, but the bomblets do no, or very little, damage. Sometimes the bomblets never deploy and the whole thing just plops into the ground. Drop height doesn't seem to matter. Totally random, as far as I can tell.

I love you.

I find that rearming reloads the water tank.

Flew some more with the Mk20s and here's what I found: Dropping Mk20s in level flight at 500ft AGL in mission editor and online with a couple of friends. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It appears to be random. Fuse on the armament panel was always set using the fuse switch on the left with the knob at the right set at "norm." Both fuse switch settings were tried with no difference in effect. Deselecting and reselecting the bombs on the armament panel won't resolve the issue. Sometimes the Mk20 operates normally, sometimes they will fail to deploy and the whole canister crashes into the ground. Sometimes the bomblets deploy, hit targets, but do no damage. Finally, when the bomb does work, the bomblets always overshoot the point on the ground they were aimed at by 100+ meters.

I think he means he only gets tones for "nails" and not "spikes." I've noticed this too with aircarft radar locking onto the harrier. There should be a constant RWR tone when a radar has locked onto the aircraft. In real life, every different type of radar has it's own unique "nails" and "spike" sounds from the RWR, but I don't think DCS can simulate this.

ETA: Flew some more with the Mk20s and here's what I found: Dropping Mk20s in level flight at 500ft AGL in mission editor and online with a couple of friends. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It appears to be random. Fuse on the armament panel was always set using the fuse switch on the left with the knob at the right set at "norm." Both fuse switch settings were tried with no difference in effect. Deselecting and reselecting the bombs on the armament panel won't resolve the issue. Sometimes the Mk20 operates normally, sometimes they will fail to deploy and the whole canister crashes into the ground. Sometimes the bomblets deploy, hit targets, but do no damage. Finally, when the bomb does work, the bomblets always overshoot the point on the ground they were aimed at by 100+ meters.

Is it possible you missed the knobs just right of the right MFCD that activate countermeasures? They won't fire if those knobs aren't on the right settings.