Pocket Sized

I feel like we're never going to see a truly accurate maverick seeker simulation from ED or Leatherneck. In DCS mavericks will only lock on non destroyed buildings and living ground units. Because the Mav is purely optical, it shouldn't give a damn if it's looking at a tank, tree, or a square painted in the sand, and lock anyway.

Unstable open beta is unstable.

I like the solution you came up with for the ultra stronk brakes. Question: Because this is a simple flight model, does it have the sluggish/delayed pitch response of the MiG-29 and Su-33? Like, at medium/high speed there is a noticeable delay between input and response, especially when switching between positive and negative G. From what I've seen this is something inherent to the SFM, but I wouldn't be surprised if you guys figured out a way around it.

^^^^^ Same goes for infinite fuel.

With SPAK off, the plane will tend to oscillate in pitch and yaw after maneuvering due to the aircraft's inherent lack of stability. SPAK damps out these oscillations.

Accurate rate damping requires variable gains AFAIK. We'd need a dev to confirm though

Exactly. The elevons are moving a lot because the control system knows at such low airspeeds lots of deflection is needed for any correction. Maybe in the real plane the gains stop increasing below a certain airspeed to prevent this? It would make sense, and I believe it's what most aircraft do (ie the F-16 doesn't flail it's control surfaces when it hits a bump in the taxiway, but they do move a bit)

The SPAK gains change with airspeed, the very slight disturbance from the engine pulsing (also a bug that's being looked into) is enough to make the elevons visibly move because the gains are very high when stationary. I didn't read this from a manual or anything, it's just how these control systems work.

In automatic mode the engine's max RPM decreases greatly at high altitude, leading to a large loss of thrust. Bug is in the fuel control code.

When airspeed is zero SPAK will command full deflection to try to compensate for any disturbance or stick movement, as the gains are effectively set to infinity.

That's likely a core game engine issue.

Is the Viggen supposed to accelerate stupidly fast at high altitude? Like, I'm pretty sure it beats every other aircraft in the game at 12km accelerating from 0.9 to 2.0. Also, the climb rate in zone 3 doesn't fall off as much as I'd expect at high altitudes, but that could just be a misunderstanding on my part.

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My favorite thing about the Viggen is that it strikes a fantastic balance between capability and ease of use. You can get a lot done, but you really have to stay on top of the aircraft. (For instance, the Rb 05 is very accurate but only if you practice with it a lot, Bk 90 is totally OP but only if you take care of the navigation system, etc)

I wasn't saying it's bugged, it's just abysmally low compared to other A/C. It's totally what I was expecting when I saw the afterburner combustion chamber is like 4x the size of the core engine. (And the core engine is a turbofan, which means on its own it will produce less thrust than a turbojet of the same size) The manual mentions that 0.9M is optimal cruise speed at 10km, but I guess that's hypothetical as there is no way you're reaching 0.9M in dry thrust, much less at 10km!

Wright flyer, various prop fighters, Concorde, lots of interesting stuff. Especially loved the Bell X-1. What a weird looking yoke design!

The version we have either wasn't capable of carrying it or never used it in service.

...nor is it the correct behavior. The stall should be characterized by a mushy, gradual dropoff in lift, not the insanely sharp "fall out from under you" feeling we have now.

My only real complaint with the Viggen as an airframe is the core engine. I mean, it's awesome because I can happily fly a 200+ nm flight on the deck but sometimes I just go to full MIL and watch the airspeed ever so slowly climb, only to lose it again in the slightest of turns. The lack of power also makes high altitude cruising interesting (aka impossible above 8-10 km with a clean airframe in my experience)

The pitch "instability" isn't a bug, and the Viggen certainly isn't the only aircraft in DCS to exhibit it. It's due to low stability margins at low AoA. When disturbed, the plane will try to return to its trimmed AoA because it's positively stable, but there's a small deadzone near zero AoA in which the nose will wander around even with extremely small inputs. That's where the SPAK system comes in. It dampens those wandering tendencies and makes control response more linear. Same goes for the dampers in the F-5, and the Control Augmentation System in the F-15.

With SPAK on, it tries to achieve a certain yaw rate proportional to pedal input. I don't know if this is realistic or not, but it makes the rudder ridiculously sensitive in flight because it takes a LOT of rudder deflection to create any steady yaw rate. Either the real thing uses lateral acceleration as opposed to yaw rate, or the desired yaw rate is much too high per inch of pedal movement.

I was going to mention how the decreased steering angle could make taxiing difficult but... you know, reverse thrust.

I have a small obsession for flight models and the Viggen flies exactly as I expected it would, I am really impressed. The pitch/roll/yaw is heavily augmented by the autopilot to make the plane feel more snappy. At low speeds especially the outer elevons and rudder are working like mad to keep you stable. Sometimes they don't have enough authority to damp large movements, which leads to some unexpected behavior at times. Turn off the SPAK to feel how the base aircraft flies, its certainly a handful!

Step 1: Climb to 10km absurdly fast with zone 3 Step 2: Accelerate absurdly fast with zone 3 Step 3: Watch as your speed soars up past Mach 2.5 and Mach Tuck kills you Step 4: ???? Step 5: laugh

Read the "known issues" thread.