Phantom12

I noticed on a flight yesterday I could trim and when I let go of the stick it would not end up over the little diamond in the controls indicator. Trying to engage Alt Hold would immediately cause pitch breakout and disengage itself. If I put the stick over the little diamond (zero force position?) in the controls indicator I could engage Alt Hold but letting go of the stick it would pull itself away and past the pitch breakout again. Unless I misunderstand what the little diamond is I thought stick forces should be balanced at that point. Ill try and replicate and post a track later today.

Thanks, glad to know its not just placebo

Ill be the first to admit Im no expert, not even on paper. Im always happy to be corrected or take advice from people whove been there and done it for real like Victory and yourself. My intent wasnt to lecture anybody and I hope thats not how it came across. Most of us lack alot of the fundamentals required to understand and implement the quick and dirty advice one usually finds online. I know Ive been trying since I was 10-15 years old to make Phantom tactics learned on the history channel work against MiGs in various simulators, and usually met with fiery failure. Just wanted to add that, unless Ive misunderstood something, from a pure Energy perspective flying the same turns with the nose up doesnt gain you more than it would horizontally. If the F-4 shifts to flying in a way that it can exploit superior T/W then its definitely worthwhile. If I read the charts I mentioned earlier correctly I believe 3-5G climbing turns should over time give an F-4 an energy advantage vs the MiG-19. A 6-7G climbing turn probably would not.

So I discovered some odd behaviour that I was able to replicate a few times and I think its possible its a bug of some sort. After an airstart the FFB forces are very light, and then at some point something causes a change and all of a sudden all of the forces noticeably increase, as if something turned up the gains midflight. Best I could track down it seems to happen when the airplane exceeds 24-26 units AoA the first time. After that the forces are turned up and remain consistent. Its most noticeable in Pitch but it affects roll as well. I dont believe its a bellows issue as Pitot heat is on by default and I don't think I flew high enough or long enough for icing to develop. There werent any failures shown in the post flight log either and I dont think i Overstressed the aircraft. Not sure if its a DCS FFB bug or an F-4 bug (and hopefully not a hardware issue on my end) but Ive included 4 tracks below. I restarted DCS a few times and replugged my stick etc and was able to replicate it fairly consistently. In the later tracks I started with a sustained 500kt turn, to check the forces required, then did some sort of roll or high AoA maneuver. Once AoA increased past the value I mentioned above I could feel the stick instantly get heavier. Afterwards I flew another sustained 500kt turn (without retrimming) to check the forces again. In most of the tracks below the point where forces increased happens right around the time I fly the rolls and level off. I fly the MT version of DCS and use a sidewinder MS FFB2 stick. F-4 FFB late activation.trk F-4 FFB late activation2.trk F-4 FFB late activation3.trk F-4 FFB late activation4.trk

Of course the AI can be beaten by cheesing it when they give up or tricking it into doing some weird move that gives up all its advantage. But theres not much to be learned there, and it really doesnt mean much of anything if one can do that. Nor is it helpful to train tactics for fighting one particular airplane against another that behaves entirely differently, where different tactics are valid or necessary. Im not sure what coming in here and telling everyone its easy and we all suck really contributes either... Anyway, as for the 45° topic. Theres generally no magic to be found in vertical maneuvers. If you don't have a Ps advantage you wont find any gains just by doing the same turn you would horizontally but in the vertical. Going up or down makes a difference that is worth understanding, but its not that simple. The angle chosen can also be a matter of which weapons are involved as well, as a pure zoom climb can make a nice target for heat seeking missiles. Robert Shaw's book "Fighter Combat" explains all the details better than I ever could so I wont try to explain more here.

It came up when I googled it but try this one https://discord.com/invite/dogfighters Ps is specific excess thrust. It is a measure of an airplanes ability to increase its energy state, either by climbing or accellerating (or both).

I use lower gains with blending on, as it seems the forces increase when its on as compared to off.

I also use an MS FFB2 and have settled on the following for now: Blending on, gain 200% on both axes and no curves or saturation in the controls section. I have the max force limit off but i dont think it should make any difference for FFB. Grover said that blending shouldnt change anything either but it does seem to change the gains somehow. I left it on as it "feels" better and as grover mentioned it doesnt decouple the real and virtual stick for FFB like it does with the spring sticks. Idk if those are the "best" settings but ive played around with gains and options on and off and a few different curves and thats what I think I prefer at the moment. I understand grover will do a write up on the flight controls and their implementation so unless I learn something new in there that changes my mind I think ill stick with these.

The AI most certainly cheats. Although it is often well hidden and some airplanes are worse than others. The FC3 planes are apparently the best, I can say that the F-15 AI feels about right and the F-14 seems ok as well. The MiGs are at the worse end of things. Usually they dont exceed absolute limits when it comes to STR or ITR, they just gain energy a bit faster and lose it a bit slower than they should in the parts of the envelope where the player would be accellerating/decellerating also. The MiG-21 is particularly egregious however, the Ace AI can overperform by at least 2 deg/s STR. On top of that as has been mentioned they have superhuman controllability at low speeds and freakish awareness of where you are and everything you do. Of course you can still trick the AI into doing something bizarre and giving up advantage but its not good practice and doesnt help you learn much of anything. Half the time they just give up and fly away at some point too. Anyway were getting off topic though.... Havent done as much dogfighting as id like to yet as im still fiddling with settings and bindings. But ill add to my comments above that if its true that the F-4 has a slight STR or Ps advantage in some conditions that would permit cautios use of slightly more aggressive angles tactics against the -21. A patient opponent can then be forced to bleed energy to counter, at which point the F-4 should switch to energy tactics again. Otherwise if he doesnt start spending energy you should end up with a position advantage relatively soon. Of course the F-4 should still refrain from getting slow, and not try to force things to happen too quickly by spending all its energy at once. From my aerobatics so far I think one would want to retain at least 350 knots or more in order to get the nose up vertically if you need to. Even at that speed it can get squirrely if you mishandle it over the top or on the way up. The recommended 450-500 for loops is much better if you want to fly it over the top of the loop rather than doing a rudder reversal or tail slide. I kind of suspected that might end up being the case since the charts I had seen were for a real F-4 at 5000ft and the DCS MiG-21 at 0ft. I think much will depend on how much fuel and weapons the F-4 is carrying at the merge. Obviously 12k lbs of gas and 2000lbs of sparrows make a big difference between a fully loaded F-4 and an empty one. The MiG-21 only carries about 5000 lbs of fuel internally. ContactLight has just posted an EM diagram for the DCS F-4E in more comparable conditions than the RL charts I saw before release. At a glance things seem good for the F-4. Keep in mind this is for a clean F-4 with 50% fuel vs a clean MiG-21 with what seems to be about 80% fuel: The F-4 has an equal or better STR to the MiG above 300 kts. Above 350 its a definite advantage and between 4-500 kts it gets up to almost 2.5 deg/s. The MiG has equal or superior ITR at all speeds up to corner speed of about 380 kts in the F-4. The slower you get the more advantage the MiG has in this case. Above Vc the F-4 might have a very slight edge, but this only counts if you believe MiG-21 pilots in DCS arent willing to over-g the airplane at high speeds... The F-4 has a thrust/Ps advantage over the MiG-21. Especially the case at high speed medium G turns. There is even some advantage over the MiG-19 in this area. I highly encourage anyone who is interested to go check out contact lights charts for themselves on the DCS dogfighters discord. They are well presented and made directly from the DCS flight models, which takes alot of the guesswork out of working with the IRL charts.

It was more reliable for me to go to the backseat and hit the button myself... not sure why but the wheel didnt always work.

My understanding is still that you can turn the whole thing off with the right settings if you so desire. Not sure why its an issue. And like Hiob says its really a separate issue from what we are trying to discuss here.

I could swear I felt it while flying this morning. Otherwise it was buffet induced stick shake but it came on pretty much exactly at the AoA it supposedly should and increased in intensity up to 30 units or so. Whatever it was wasnt there when I flew just now. I haven't actually heard the shaker sounds in cockpit yet either... I know the real one could be hard to feel with buffet going on as well though.

Turn FFB and Blending off. That is exactly what you are looking for. You will probably find it doesnt work well overall, hence why blending was implemented. If there is still an issue make a bug report or at least another thread so you can stop derailing this one. Anyway I just did a long flight and noticed one more difference for FFB sticks between blending on and off... The stick shake from the rudder pedal shaker at 23.5 units didnt seem to be present with blending on, but Im sure I felt it earlier today when I was trying all the different options out.

Its definitely some sort of bug and not something to be tuned out. I have occasionally mistaken it when hitting gusts or wake turbulence, but usually its very noticeably different. Its sort of just random jerking of the stick/spiking of the forces during maneuver. Theres no fancy software for the FFB2 that I know of like for the Rhino either. Its more of a nuisance in the end as you can avoid it with a bit of patience.

Sidewinder FFB2. Not sure if the same issue exists with the Rhino, or if there is an interrupt like the sensor on the sidewinder. Just thought its worth mentioning for troubleshooting.

Theres plenty of warning before departure, with the aural tones, Rudder pedal shaker (stick shake), and buffet its more than telegraphed. The feel is ofc very different to the F-14, generally the displacement is much less and IRL I imagine they flew more by feeling the forces at high speed than by deflection. That video I posted above mentions 6G for 1" of travel. I feel basically the same as Hiob said. From everything I can see I dont think the model is incorrect in any way, and I hope you dont take my comments more negatively than I intended them. The model certainly seems very detailed and thorough. Mostly I just wanted to find the right settings for me and understand what a few of the options do. Although it might not be 100% realistic in terms of how forces scale to one another, an option to boost the forces a bit at lower speed might be one compromise to allow users that want to to get better handling with the comparitively weak consumer sticks we have. Also maybe its worth mentioning in the special options description that the blending doesnt apply to FFB. I (and probably a few others) only turned it off initially since the description made it seem like it would do things that were not necessarily desirable for an FFB stick. Also RE the pumping thing mentioned before: I know that DCS FFB effects sometimes spaz out... For me it happens most with the F-14, and more often when I hit fly before the mission/textures are properly loaded, or leave the stickytape over the sensor activating FFB before FPS has smoothed out. That has also given me some weird erratic pumping or similar. Its only fixed by restarting DCS, or waiting till the mission is properly loaded to start flying.

If you're using a spring stick the virtual stick moving on its own is by design. You can try blending off but the airplane will likely be exceptionally sensitive at higher airspeeds and difficult to contorl/prevent over-g. Anyway its not related to the FFB issue. Grover already mentioned that system is disabled for FF sticks. At low speed the blending is probably not active, but in that area Longitudinal stability is fairly weak.

Changing load factor and airspeed will move the zero force position. Thats how the bobweights and bellows work. The video grover linked above is a good overview.

Are the default settings what you use/recommend using for the Sidewinder? I also use this stick. The 3D printed DIY kits for the Rhino seem like a very attractive way to go if one has access to a printer. But I havent taken that step myself yet either. https://github.com/protomaker964/Rhino-FFB-Clone-3D_Printed

Theres no volume control yet. You can play them in the cockpit though. Its a bit "hidden" as Q3ark says.

Yeah the bellows and bobweight forces are definitely modeled and you can see the Zero force position move the way it should in the controls indicator. The stick very easily falls fully forward for me on the ground but perhaps its because the sidewinder only generates very small forces in general. If this model turns off as soon as you start rolling I guess its not a big deal though. I guess the default gains are changed somehow with the blending option on or off. Idk why else it would feel so different if it isn't applied to FFB sticks. Anyway thanks for taking the time to explain it to us Grover.

Im not seeing any effect from the Offset or resolution override settings either. Override maybe changes the size of things in the box but the box stays about the same size and is cutoff in about the middle of the cockpit. Im on a Rift CV1 fwiw. Edit: Setting the checkbox in VR settings to use system resolution (or whatever its called) and removing the offsets and scaling fixed it for me.

Its normal that the forces are pretty light in the landing patter/approach speeds. I believe this is correct for the F-4. Stability and stick forces decreased alot in this area. I tried some stick curves of about 10 like victory suggested in his post. They seem to help with blending off, but not necessarily with blending on. Also blending didnt really behave the way I expected it to. Commanding a constant force in a decelerating turn the virtual stick didnt seem to move at all. FFB forces were higher than with it off though...? Unless the gains change with airspeed or the blending only kicks in at supersonic speeds where the forces really increase Im not sure whats going on here? Not sure why the FF forces would be higher if the blending isnt active yet. Edit: Grover posted as I was writing this. @Super Grover Thanks for responding. Ill definitely check out that link. I understand that the big change in forces is expected. So far everything ive seen in the FM in that regard makes absolute sense and seems to be working very well. Is the "friction" effect reduced at higher speeds or just less noticeable since the stick isnt thrown around as much? If its the red diamond in the controls indicator I guess its the latter. I guess you could apply some constant friction on the ground to mimic this but I see how it might hurt things with the limited amount of force available in a consumer stick. I guess the AFCS thing is placebo on my part. If stick force blending is ignored with FFB sticks I guess that explains what I wrote above. But the feel and at least the magnitude of the forces are definitely noticeably different with those settings on and off. Is turning those off only recommended for spring joystick users who (for whatever reason) want to fly without the added feedback/with 1:1 displacement?

Riding the donut/solid tone is much more than a sustained turn at 4-500 kts. Its more like 10-12 units.

On older missiles holding the ARR button will uncage the missile but it also blocks tone from the headset. Its intended/correct that way, was mentioned in the discord at one point but its not in the manual yet. Tripped me up the first time too before I remembered.