Bearfoot

Hi, I received a couple of team kill warnings, but I am 100% sure that I did not! One team kill was even before I even shot anybody down! In all other cases I checked and double-checked and am certain that I got my "blues" and "reds" straight, have labels on, etc. etc. What gives?

Flying the Tomcat exclusively for the last .... I dunno, ever since it came out. The Tomcat is the only one I've loved enough to keep trying AAR till I got it. First time I connected and stayed plugged in for even halfway, I could not wipe the smile off my face for a week. Anyway, I think the tanker makes a difference. The KC-130 is the easiest. The KC-135 is more challenging for a number of reasons --- the "box" is much smaller, the dihedral of the wing as opposed to the straight of the 130 is disorienting, the fact that the pod is so far out leaves much less in your visual field to glom onto for your stationkeeping, etc. The Viking is incredibly difficult for its smaller size. All of this straight and level with no turns. Have not figured out the whole turning thing yet.

Sorry, you must have missed the memo: there is a global pandemic and the world is in lockdown. You're welcome. (And just wait till you find out that developers are human beings with family as well!)

What a waste of time, space, electrons, and life.

Is an upgrade available for those of us early adopters with Rev A?

? I thought we were talking about VR? If you are getting 120fps in your VR now, then not only you have nothing to worry about with any module DCS throws at you over the next decade, you probably should lend your machine to physicists to let them run their models in yoru spare time. Speed up science 10000x! OTH, I was getting 160+ fps easy in 2D on my 4K 4 years ago, with all settings maxed out. In VR, I learned to live with 45 fps.

No expert. But I've found that what (sometimes) works for me is (1) Focus on defeating his first shot(s) on the merge Defeating IR missiles head-on is relatively easy: cut throttle, pump flares, pull up (still pumping flares), bank and roll while still pulling up and pumping flares. That is: do a high-G pull barrel roll while pumping flares. Now when I say "pump flares", I mean pump them out furiously like your life depends on it, because it does. Not 1 per second. But 5 or more per second. (2) Your Sidewinders are relatively not so maneuverable and need a good window to hit. Your gameplan after the merge is to maximize separation that allows you a clean shot without needing for either yourself or the missile to pull too much G. Against the AI, planning for this is pretty easy, because they are so predictable: doing these constant large vertical loops, I try to catch them as they are going up (though often this is a tail chase situation, which means I have to be closer) or as they are beginning the lower porition loop. For the latter, you have to give the missile a LOT of lead. (3) Honestly though, after the merge, it sometimes is easier to maneuver for a guns kill than a missile, even if you have it. Your gameplan has to include staying really close to deny the other guy an opportunity for a missile shot then (assuming he still has some): it's a "grab them by the belt and hang on" type knife fight then. (4) The help train for this, you might want to keep labels on at first. This will let you see the missile launches at you and track them, so you can tell what it takes to defeat them. (5) The most common way I die in a fight like this is not on the merge but right after. I am greedily trying get nose on for a missile shot by pulling a high G turn (either in the horizontal or the vertical), and he fires at me before I can get there (those pesky Aim-9X's). I am caught at the top of the loop or wallowing like a pig in the mud and have no energy to defeat the IR missile he sends into my face.

Nope. The worn look has nothing to do with FPS. The Tomcat is not, IMHO, any more demanding that the F-18 or for that matter any other module I have. And, in fact, much better than many others. To me, the most demanding module is the Spitfire (the props are a HORRIBLE fps killer).

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: And this is why we (or at least, I) love it!

I have an ancient machine (i-4790K, 1080Ti, 16GB). I use a Rift S. I am happy enough with the VR performance of the F-14 in SP, across campaigns and missions of all sorts of complexity. In MP, things get jerky sometimes, but honestly cannot tell whether it is due to machine performance or net lag. But, of course, I would always be thrilled to get a optimization and performance improvement. Here's the rub ... There is no such thing as a free lunch, and I would honestly prefer the HB effort to be invested in something with faaaaaaaar more rewarding yields such as (hint, hint) a flyable A-6 or features on the carrier or existing F-14 such as the LANTIRN etc. Here's the other thing ... I think that the DCS VR implementation is an ED responsibility, and not only is there a cap on the amount that HB can do to improve things, but the improvement-pet-unit-effort on the ED side would pay off a lot more. And, to be cynical, I suspect that by the time the improvements roll out we'd have all upgraded to better machines anyway! But the final thing is, I agree with all the above comments --- two branches of code for this complex a product is ridiculously insane, A maintenance nightmare that would kill the developers (figuratively) and lead to the abandonedware death of this module (no more new features as every update cycle requires code being shuttled back and forth, not to mention bug fixes being from the 666th level of hell). And all for so little benefit ....

Cannot believe that this is getting people riled up! I guess humans are drama machines. I like the weathered cockpit. It means I am strapping on a working bird not a showroom queen. There are no showroom queens on the carrier. The last time this was, um, discussed, the consensus from folks who 'Been There, Done That", was that everything was spot on ... EXCEPT for the rust. Rust would apparently never been allowed to stay on any part of the aircraft. But everythiing else, from the wear to the scratches to the faded labels, etc. all ring absolutely true. Sure, a pristine bird is "authentic", in the sense that every airframe once looked like that. But by the time it gets to work on the carrier, from day 2 onewards, it NEVER (I'm told) looks like that. And sometimes it looks a lot worse. There are some great photos showing working Tomcats during the Gulf War tthat loooked like they just came out of mudfight. Shortage of water ...

Ah, wonderful! Thank you!

I believe this mechanism, by providing for a mature way to handle the discussions that often degenerate to the same few people brutally banging their heads against the same wall (i.e., screaming past each other), and often "infecting" multiple threads with the same argument, is the single best way to dramatically improve the general atmosphere of the forums as well as saving the blood pressure related medical bills of the forum participants. I suspect that moderator headaches and blood pressure and stress will also reduce once people start using this feature. Basically, it allows individual forum users to simple block or ignore other individual forum users: they do not see their posts or responses. They can still interact indirectly on the same thread (e.g., if a third user, who is not ignored or blocked by one or the other, quotes the ignored/blocked one), but it really still goes a far, far, far, far, far way to help!

:thumbup:

Performance is measured in terms of lack of stuttering, ghosting, dropped frames and nausea. The resolution is the pay-off for the performance penalty. The Rift S has better performance. Even after dropping the Reverb down to the Rift S resolution. You can never really get to the Rift S to Reverb resolution, so I your reference point is fantasy. And while the Reverb at native resolution looks good, what's the point if your machine cannot run it? The OP's cannot. Referencing a meme in a low-effort attempt at a witty comeback: B Not really understanding the meme: C- Tepid delivery: C- Thanks for playing. Ok, back to your headset (or is that communication classes?)

This is really the best solution. People's ideas of what is acceptable performance vary (crazily), and if you can make it work for you to acceptable levels on your hardware, then it's a no brainer: Reverb any time. And, if not, you might even think the difference in image quality might be worth investing the another $3000 for a new machine to run it!

Really, it does. Perhaps on hefty machines they run comparably. But I can run the Rift S at 1.7 PD with no complaints on my ancient wimpy 5-year old machine and 1080Ti. The Reverb (even with no PD and AA) was a no-go. FPS touched dropped below 45 often enough to be nausea-inducing (and this for someone flying VR in CV1 for years without any issue), and the ghosting and stuttering artifacts were too annoying. The Reverb delivers a great image, but on not just low-specced, but anything short of frontline heavy-specced machines, delivers a bad experience. BTW, you should not call things you disagree with "lies". Whether or not you are wrong (and, in this case, you ARE wrong). You inject unneeded antagonism into the conversation, elevate the level of aggression, degrade the level of discussion, and, from a personal perspective, come across as brattish/ immature.

:thumbup: Frankly, if you spend 99% of the time in the cockpit looking out as I do (as opposed to F2 external views), then I would not argue with you if you told me that the Rift S gets you 99% of the way there!

For me, the difference in price between the Rift S and the Reverb is not $200. It's $3200. Because I need to upgrade my computer to run it. If I had the hardware hefty enough to push the pixels, I would have stuck with the Reverb --- no doubt. But I could not stand the shuddering, ghosting, and borderline nausea inducing frames I was getting with the Reverb. So I stuck with the Rift S, that was delivering a relatively superb performance on admittedly ancient hardware, with little to complain of at the zoom ranges i was at 90% of the time (cockpit view and WVR and beyond). If I am going to sink $3000 into a machine, I want it to run the next generation of GPU's and headsets. The 2080Ti can barely (and that, arguably, depending on subjective whims) run the Reverb adequately. If I already had sunken costs of a current gen CPU, 32-64GB with a 2080Ti, then sure, the Reverb would be the way to go. Right now, the Rift S gets me 90% of the way there (ON A 4-YEAR OLD MACHINE!!) for $400. Like I said, the jump from CV1 to Rift S was like entering a new world. The jump from Rift S to Reverb? Not so much most of the time. What do I mean by that? I've previously reported on the my impressions of the resolution differences in detail, saying while one is clearly better (the Reverb), the difference was not that big a deal. After more experimentation, I realized that the issue is a little nuanced than that ... At close viewing ranges (e.g., cockpit view) it's almost the same, so much so I could not really care whether I was looking through the Rift S or the Reverb. As moderate to far ranges (e.g., WVR/BFM distances and beyond), I don't know if there really is a difference to be considered. I can make out presence, identificaiton, aspect, etc. of the bandit with equal facility, and I really don't see how anyone can care about anything else of units (like aesthetics) at this range. Of course, the world and the landscape come at this range, and again, the differences if there are subtle enough not to fuss about. The real differences between the Rift S and Reverb only become apparent to me at this weird intermdiate medium-short range --- principally when admiring the external view of models at the default zoom in F2. So, when I hit F2 and am viewing the bottom of the Tomcat in flight at the default zoom in external view, I instantly and easily could make out the text of the maintainer's name in the Reverb. With the Rift S, at that default view and zoom I knew there was some rank and names there, but needed to zoom one step closer to make it out. Ironically, at that one step closer zoom, while the Reverb remained crisper, again we are back to the situation where the Rift S is "close enough". So it is only at the medium-short zoom/ranges (closer than WVR/BFM but further than cockpit view) that the extra clarity of the Reverb makes a big difference.

The change in lift is not due to the wings or slats or anything else moving. I tried to make clear this when I said, "Even without the latter (for e.g., by locking wings forward), locking wings in a sweep helps in that it buffers the change in lift for the change in speed"), So, once again, for those at the back .... Change of speed => change of lift. That's the aerodynamics of the situation. Even with the wings/slats locked into a particular configuration. Wings on auto. Wings not on auto. Wings locked forward. Wings locked fully swept. Wings locked in bomb mode. Slats manual or auto. The above holds. What changes across all of this is the relative quantities of the response, how much the lift changes for the corresponding change in speed. For a a given change of speed, with wings swept the corresponding change in lift is much less than the with the wings LOCKED forward. This makes the whole business easier to manage, as compensatory corrections are much less. Maybe a third time? So: NOT talking about auto. NOT talking about slats moving. NOT talking about wings changing sweep based on speed. Just talking about the relationship between lift and speed for wings fully forward vs back (whether 40 deg, 50 deg, 55 degs, or whatever). Wings swept back makes compensating for change of lift as you try and maintain the same relative distance easier. I'm not sure how a video can help any more ...

I've had a CV1 for years. Tried the Rift S and the Reverb. The jump from CV1 to Rift S was phenomenal. With the CV1, I could not read anything with zooming in, and even then I often had to squint. With the Rift S --- I am in the cockpit. If I would characterize my experience in the CV1 as having to make lots of sacrifices for the 2D experience (compared to my 4K monitor), with the Rift S I would say --- no compromise (sure, the resolution is less, but I do not miss it). The Reverb is definitely better in terms of resolution. Absolutely and consistently so, but in many circumstances, only subtly so. Nowhere near the leap from CV1 to Rift S (even if linear pixel resolution might indicate otherwise; as I have said before, perception scales logarithmically, not linearly).

From the available docs, it does not look like there is any restriction on the type of AI unit that can lase. So, it seems like a "yes" to your question? Have not tried it myself ...

Looks like this might work. Does not seem to be a way to control which targets get lased (beyond the class, e.g. "vehicle"), but don't suppose that this will be a big problem. Once again, @ciribob to the rescue!

Sweep definitely helps me. For two reasons: (1) the higher AoA makes it easier to keep sight of the tanker (2) as you are nudging the aircraft forward or back, the changes in speed have less effect on the change in lift Note that (2) above is relative to wings fully swept forward. This is different from auto, which has the wing profile changing depending on speed. Even without the latter (for e.g., by locking wings forward), locking wings in a sweep helps in that it buffers the change in lift for the change in speed. So, while not denying that there are many who find it a breeze to refuel in any wing configuration, I think the swept wing config is definitely easier. These two are not mutually exclusive concepts.

The JTAC/FAC approach replicates the CAS mission. What about laser designation by AI units without that process? E.g., a preplanned LGB deep strike with (simulated) special forces designating targets? Or an AI spotter (in a helo or another aircraft). So no troops in contact, no 9-line. etc. Is there a way to set that up in a mission?