Donut

You seem like a man with good taste. I have the Tomcat, Hornet, and Viper....do yourself a favor and get the Tomcat and never look back. I love aviation and all aircraft, but for the virtual aviator in us, the Tomcat is incredible to fly and experience. It's that good and makes me smile every time I fly it. Oh, and change your avatar...

1. It's possible a map located in Europe could be used for both modern day and WWII, but that would take a tremendous amount of work and time 2. A map consisting of populated areas as depicted in the screenshot would not be low overhead and high performance. 3. A map in Europe could be well suited for multiplayer matches, depending on the location. For WWII, you would need parts of Germany. Modern day would need parts of Russia. This is not easy to fit all in one DCS size map. 4. It would be difficult to have a DCS size map in Europe that could satisfy this requirement, at least with realistic scenarios for both WWII and modern day. 5. This would not be a new part of the world.

While that looks to be a new map, it doesn't seem like it would fit the key elements listed by Wags...

I grew up on Long Island, New York (Home of Grumman) in the 80's and then lived right outside of Oceana Naval Air Station in the early 90's. My love for the Tomcat started with the Final Countdown and Top Gun, and then I was fortunate to see them fly everyday right from my yard. For me, there is a sense of nostalgia and it's brings me back to my childhood. I have always had a fondness for naval aviation and Grumman aircraft...Hellcat, Intruder, and especially the Tomcat. The F-14 is an incredible aircraft with a lot of character, history, and it's own culture. Everything about it is just exciting and fun. Heatblur has done an absolutely incredible job with bringing the legendary Tomcat to life and has only increased my affection for it. It continues to make me smile as it did when I saw it fly when I was younger. I finally get to live my childhood dream of being a Tomcat pilot...even if it's only virtually.:pilotfly:

The release of the F-16 has shown us that the current business model cannot work and is unsustainable. Releasing extremely early access, subpar products just to keep income coming in, while neglecting fixes and improvements to the core program and pre-existing modules is not good for anybody. I don't know if a subscription based business model is the right answer, but I think we can all agree that something does have to change. It also needs to change quickly...there is competition on the horizon, while maybe not direct, it is still competition in the relatively small community of flight simming.

My i5 7600K overclocked to 4.6GHz bottlenecks my 1080 Ti in some situations...for example, in the Hornet and Tomcat (worse in the F-14) on the ramp or carrier deck surrounded by a few aircraft, FPS drops into the 50's with GPU usage significantly dropping as well. I have even bumped my overclock to 4.8GHz but it still bottlenecks at times. I don't know what kind of CPU it would take to prevent this.

And this is why two versions should not exist. What is the point? ED doesn't have enough staff or resources to support everything they are currently doing. One version will just simplify things for everybody. No matter how ED explains it, having the two version will never make sense. It is also arguable as to what is considered a show stopping bug. There is very little if anything in the F-16 right now that isn't either bugged, incomplete, non-functioning or just incorrect...personally, I find all that to be show stopping and unsuitable for a "stable" version, no matter how you define it. To be honest, the F-16 isn't ready for the open beta either, but that has already been extensively discussed. All that ED has done by releasing the F-16 to the stable branch, is show a subpar product to a wider audience.

An interesting question... However, according to the BUNO 159437 in the cockpit, it's an F-14A that served with VF-142 and VF-32. I don't see any reference to VF-84. The cockpit we now have is that of an F-14A considering the level of wear, the BUNO number, aircraft data plate, and the missing digital EGIT. I too am wondering why Heatblur decided to do this instead of modeling an F-14B cockpit from the start? I am curious to see how the current cockpit will transform into an actual F-14B cockpit. Would a new BUNO, digital EGIT, correct data plate and less aging/wear be all that is needed?

Really looking forward to what the next update will bring to the Tomcat! Are additions/improvements to the over wing vapor in the works? It seems right now that over wing vapor exists in only high AOA/slow flight conditions. In reality, I have seen numerous air shows and videos that show the Tomcat producing over wing vapor in a variety of other situations, such as high speed/high G flight.

The F-14D was a real aircraft and still very much a Tomcat...if you are going to represent an aircraft at the level that Heatblur has, it would be a waste and diservice to not represent all variants. The F-14D was arguably the Tomcat at it's best and would bring a lot of great things to DCS and virtual Tomcat pilots/RIOs. Also, the F-14D represents a specific time period that some virtual aviators can relate to more so than the F-14A or F-14B.

I learned to be a much better virtual pilot by flying the Tomcat...I also learned how incredibly talented Heatblur is and that such a legendary aircraft deserved no less than the masterpiece that they have created. By far, the Tomcat is the best simulated aircraft that I have ever seen in my 30 or so years of virtual aviation. The high quality, level of detail, and immersion is absolutely incredible. I continue to smile each and every time I fly it. I have had it since day one of release and it just keeps getting better. +1,000,000,000 for the F-14D and A-6E....the last thing DCS needs right now is the Super Hornet, in my humble opinion of course. Seriously, the Tomcat deserves to have all variants represented...I really do hope the F-14D becomes reality.

I would gladly "pay to play" as well. The base game should not be free. They are also working on a free map, which should also not be free. They put a lot of hard work and resources into all of this, and they should rightfully charge for it. However, "pay to play" would require a faster development process for modules as well as the base game and also not letting something like the F-16 release happen again. The status quo could not continue.

I tried all of your suggestions...increasing shadows lowered FPS even more. Turning MSAA off had no impact on FPS, only made everything look worse. Through all this, I have noticed that shadows have the highest impact on FPS. If I leave terrain object shadows set to flat, and lower shadows from low to flat, I get a 20 FPS increase. Unfortunately, flat shadows in the cockpit looks terrible and ruins immersion. Thank you again for all the help. I may fiddle with things a bit more, but the FPS I am seeing may just be reality and my expectations on perfomance needs to be adjusted if I want to maintain a high level of graphics quality. My main concern was to make sure that the FPS I was seeing based on my settings and hardware was normal.

Great stuff! So what made you crash onto the deck? Did you just run out of airspeed? Wow, incredible story! I would love to have a former Tomcat pilot looking over my shoulder...oh, the things I could learn! Question about the wing sweep during the carrier break...is it an actual official in the manual Grumman/Navy procedure to manually sweep the wings aft, or was it something that the pilots themselves decided to do?

Are you using monitor or VR? I tried doing this but did not see any improvement on a 1440p monitor. Maybe I will try again.

Thank you for the feedback everyone. It looks like the FPS that I am seeing is normal then. Well, it's time to stop worrying about all this and just fly then!

Great stuff everyone! So it seems the best strategy is to get slower and maximize the Tomcat's turn rate and radius. This makes sense because the F-16 has a significant advantage in regards to flat out acceleration and rate of climb that the F-14 just cannot hang with.

Along with the FPS drop, I have noticed the stutters too...1/2 second or so, random as far as I can tell, but frequent enough to be noticed every flight. All up to date here, installed the latest Nvidia driver that came out yesterday...no improvement in performance.

I upgraded to the latest Nvidia driver that came out yesterday, made no difference unfortunately. I always make sure to do a clean install of each new driver and of course do the ceremonial deletion of the fxo and metashader folders. I am all out of ideas on my end... I haven't flown the Tomcat in a few months since flying again this past week, but I don't remember FPS being an issue before. Sure, FPS in the Tomcat has always been a bit less compared to other aircraft, but this past week is the first time I have ever seen FPS dip into the 50's in any aircraft, in any situation. I have kept all the in game and out of game settings the same. The only things that have changed are DCS, Windows, and GPU driver updates. Maybe this is just the new reality for DCS and the Tomcat...does anyone else out there have a similiar system? What FPS are you seeing?

Thank you so much for the help. I tried your suggestion but saw no change in FPS. I also tested FPS using an empty mission...Tomcat starting on the runway at Nellis, looking straight ahead I get 82 FPS. That seems really low for an empty map... Same starting location at Nellis but with 15 aircraft scattered up and down the ramp, FPS drops into uppers 50's. I tested the same scenarios with the F-16 and saw around 100 FPS on a clean map and a drop into the 80's with aircraft. I really don't remember the Tomcat being this FPS hungry at first. It has been a while since I last flew the F-14, so who knows what has changed with DCS. I normally use a frame rate limiter to limit FPS at 60 for a smooth TrackIR, but I noticed my FPS dropping below 60 for the first time ever, hence all this testing and investigating on my part.

Here is a screenshot just after I landed on the carrier. I used the Caucasus Case I Instant Action Mission. You can see my CPU and GPU usage as well as my FPS being 56. I have also attached a screenshot of my DCS settings.

Thank you for the help... I tried both of your suggestions and FPS stayed the exact same. I see the changes take effect in game, but in the same scenario(Defend the Fleet, in cockpit looking straight ahead) there is absolutely no change in FPS. CPU limited at 4.8Ghz? That is terrifying...

I reduced them to 512 and there was no change in FPS. I tried setting both shadow settings to max, one at a time and both together, and noticed no change in FPS. This is all very strange. I made sure to exit DCS and delete the fxo and metashader folders after each graphics setting change. I wonder why I am not seeing any change...either a decrease or increase in FPS. There is no frame limiter being used and I see the FPS fluctuating. I am using the mission Defender of the Fleet as my test and looking straight ahead in the cockpit, my FPS is in the mid 60's and will drop to the high 50's when I look to the left towards the tower. My FPS is the exact same even with trying the above graphic setting changes.

Well, of course turning off mirrors will improve FPS, but it would be a shame though if I could not enjoy the Tomcat to the fullest. With a 4.8GHz CPU a 1080 Ti which I have overclocked, 32GB of RAM, and an SSD...I didn't think I would have to turn down anything to maintain 60 FPS at a minimum. I already have shadows and MSAA turned down.

Excellent post and extremely well said. I agree with every word and it completely represents my thoughts and feelings about the F-16. Hopefully ED is reading this and can take some constructive criticism. We all want ED and DCS to be the best that they can be. The F-16 is my "enough"