PeaceSells

You can't be serious, the moment labels are allowed in the server there's no point in playing without them, you'll be at SERIOUS disadvantage. No matter how unrealistic DCS current view system is, seeing enemy labels behind obstacles will always be more unrealistic.

You are putting yourself at an unrealistic disadvantage, in real life you have both more FOV and more magnification at the same time (with naked eye) then with a typical PC monitor. Zoommig in and out at least lets you access more realistic FOV and magnification, although only one at a time.

Please take a look at this short video I recorded while low flying the Ka-50. I have to move my head sideways away from the HUD, to be able to see the trees in front of me without the HUD blocking my view: I see two reflections there: one is from the green emitter below the HUD, making a big round green stain around the center of the HUD. It was there in 1.5 too and it looked cool then, but now it interferes with your notion of distance from trees (which are green too) and makes low flying on those gorgeous forests kinda painful. The other is supposed to be sunlight (I think), however, the Ka-50 cockpit is very enclosed and it's impossible for sunlight to enter from behind (or any possible angle...) and reflect on the HUD and reach your eyes. If the HUD was a mirror, all you would see is your own face and the cockpit back walls... I know all these reflections are supposed to look cool, but... sorry to say this... they don't... Would there be any plans of toning down these reflections? Thanks for the attention!

Does Blue Flag use labels now? It's been a while since I last played multiplayer, but I don't think it used labels. EDIT: never mind, just saw Ciribob's answer now...

I think he loses the life anyway, because IIRC the life is lost when you take off and regained when you land back and restore it via the menu... am I right?

Given the source, there might be an agenda but the report contains some interesting info just the same. Also refers to an infrared subsystem on the missile. But this part below makes me wonder if this success rate was against targets flying in straight line:

That worked, thanks for the screen shots and explanation!

Don't worry, no insult taken. Please take a look at the screen shot from mission planner of mission 5, the last mission I flew. The only red aircraft shown is my own (doesn't count). When I flew it, there was least: one flight of red MiG-29A, one flight of red MiG-29S and one red AWACS. None of them shows in the mission planner, but the blue flights do. It's been like this for every mission up to mission 5. Can't say about the rest of the missions, cause I didn't fly them yet...

It's a nightmare for people without color blindness too.

I'm trying the Heavy Sky campaign for the first time and so far I've played around 3 or 4 missions. One thing I noticed in these missions is that in the planner screen you don't see the allied flights, but you see detailed info of the enemy flights, with all their wayponts, etc. For example, there's this mission where you have to protect allied strike aircraft from interception by F-14's. In the mission planner there was no allied aircraft, but all the waypoints of the enemies. I then took off, flew my route and, just before intercepting the F-14's, I had the pleasure of seeing them being annihilated by friendlies. Later on Tacview I saw that it was an allied flight of MiG-29's that I had no clues was operating in the area. I think it would be cooler if I didn't know the exact number, type and waypoints of the enemy aircraft, but knew the friendly's instead...

^^I believe so. All that you described is how I think it works, but I'm not sure.

You're right. Never noticed that before, but it does have a limit that doesn't change no matter how much you dive.

I would invest in finding ways to enhance ground war, in order to bring a full-fidelity armored vehicle module, like a tank or an AA vehicle. That would be the next step in a battlefield simulation.

1. Almost all servers I know allow FC3 aircraft mixed with high-fidelity aircraft. Servers want as many players as they can get, and FC3 aircraft are popular... 2. I wish it was that simple... 3. FC3 cornerstone? I might not be a veteran on ED sims, but as far as I know DCS was created for the Ka-50 and the A-10C initially. Then they brought in the FC aircraft from the older games to allow the veteran pilots in and to increase variety. Someone more experienced can correct me if I'm wrong... Anyway, have you seen any other FC3 style module be released since then? 4. That's very dependent on the individual aircraft. Some are WAY more complicated than FC3, and others not really. The Huey IMO is simpler to fly than FC3...

^^ which part of the it's not the current philosophy of DCS to develop low fidelity modules anymore is so hard to understand? Different games have different target audiences and realism games are extremely rare, not the other way around. If their philosophy is to dedicate all their resources into developing high fidelity, please don't try to change that. Not to mention the harm this does to fair multiplayer. No, just no.

With the announcement of the F-16, the F-18 and the F-14, plus the F-15 that we already have in FC3, we'll have all of the US 4th gen fighters. Come on Russia, get with the program here!

Not sure I understand you. Both the radar and the IRST are vertically stabilized, we always knew that. That doesn't prevent looking down, it just means looking down is controlled by pilot, and not by aircraft movement. Additionally, the down view of the IRST is blocked by the aircraft's nose, but the down view of the radar isn't, we also already knew that. What we're discussing here is an additional limitation of the IRST, which seems to propositally prevent it from looking down, even when the nose is not blocking it (when on a dive). The radar also doesn't have that.

None. Don't get me wrong, I love FC3 and I fly it a lot. But the high fidelity aircraft is the step forward, not the other way around. AFAIK, ED's evolution went from Flaming Cliffs to the high fidelity modules. Not to mention it wouldn't make sense to make the same aircraft twice, one high-fidelity and one FC3. Also, you should really include the "none" option in your pool. The result you will get will mean nothing without the "none" option.

Crap. That explains why in multiplayer I can never find anyone with IRST when I'm flying higher then them, even though I know they're there. Have to stick with radar or go low... I wonder, is it intentionally not allowed to look down in search mode because ground heat would prevent it to find those targets anyway, similar to old generation radars that can't detect contacts below?

So I did some testing, went on a dive after another aircraft below me and, as you say, I couldn't seem to get the IRST sensor to see him in any of the times I tested. It seemed like the sensor was limited on the horizontal plane as you said. But, if this was true, you wouldn't be able to lock enemies in dogfight modes when diving after them, would you? And it turns out you can... I repeated the same test, now using the radar instead of the IRST. Went on a dive after the other plane, my radar searched and found him. I then locked him and "transferred" the lock to the IRST - turned IRST on and radar off, while maintaining the lock. The IRST kept the lock while looking down, so it's definitely not limited on the look-down (which we already knew from doing dogfights). The only explation I can seem to think for this is that it's limited on the look-down only when in search mode, but free to look down in dogfight modes or when it already has a lock. The other explanation is that it's a bug... Do you have the MiG-21? Does the radar behave like this? Does it have dogfight mode? Does it "look-down" in dogfight mode? Does it keep the lock when enemy is lower than you?

Is it just me or something has changed in the last updates? I might be wrong, but I think I used to get 8-10º AoA around 240 km/h (aircraft very light, no missiles and about 2000 kg fuel), now I guess I get that AoA around 280 km/h... Anyone else notice any difference?

You know on the right part of the HUD there's the elevation indicator for the IRST (and for the radar antenna) and also an indicator of HUD vertical position. When these two are aligned side by side, it means that the IRST is searching the HUD area (AFAIK). When you lower the IRST elevation, it's indicator goes below the HUD indicator and you know it's scanning now an area below the HUD. Since the IRST sensor is mounted above the fuselage, its down view in level flight is blocked by the nose of the plane, so you you can't scan an area much below the horizon in level flight, and this limit is shown by the IRST indicator not being able to get more than a few degrees below the horizon (AFAIK). But when you take a dive, the IRST should now see more below the horizon. And this is what I think is the bug: the indicator of HUD position goes below the horizon, but the IRST indicator is still limited exactly as if the aircraft was still in level flight. You can't align the two indicators when diving. I suspect this is a bug, because AFAIK, these two indicators are there so you have an idea of where the IRST is scanning, is it scanning the HUD area, below, or above it? Please take a look at the video I recorded to better illustrate. You can see I take a dive at 00:10s, the HUD indicator goes down, but the IRST indicator can't align with the HUD anymore, no matter how much I use the knob to lower it. You can't see me moving the knob, but you can see the -14 indication, showing I've lowered it to maximum.

Doesn't it transmit "weapons ready" once (or once in a while) and it's ready until transmit "weapons not ready". Wouldn't be this how it's done? Does it need to route through the electrical model or just through the "weapons ready" or weapons not ready"? Because I always see the weapons in DCS either shoot or not shoot, never seen they work in a "degraded" state. Same with laser, radar, etc. Even if it would work in a degraded state, say 50%, I don't think it would run through the electrical simulation everytime you shoot... I don't mean that at all... My point is if you press the trigger and don't see delay (delay due to pinging to server and back is very noticeable), then it can't possibly be checking with server. It's physically impossible. I'm talking about multiplayer the whole time... I guess that's the same, but in the case of cockpit switches it's not critical that the switch is flipped without any delay (unlike the trigger), as I understand it.

It doesn't really matter, lots of crucial stuff about multiplayer can be concluded by a player just by playing the game. The delays, when exactly they occur, do your shots come off from your gun or do they appear to come off from the empty space where you were some milliseconds ago? Do they fly in the direction you aimed or to the side? Do enemies die instantly when you hit them or is there a delay? Among other observations... No offense intended, but simply as a player you should already know the answers to many of the things discussed here just by observing these "details". You guys need to wake up.

That's an abysmal simplification. There's much more info than just a vector. Some also have different degrees of physics simulation. But AFAIK, you typically don't transmit every variable about you over the net. For example, if you have a physics simulation, you probably don't transmit the forces, etc. acting on you, you only transmit the result (your position in space, for example, which is just a vector) which is what's relevant to others. Are you saying that in DCS you keep transmitting to others the dynamic factors and forces acting on you, instead of the end result that's actually relevant to others, like position, damage, etc? I wouldn't think so... No, no... that's inverted. All the stuff you described do happen, but not on that order. Your shot goes off instantly when you press the trigger, no checking with the server at this moment, so no delay and no misalignment. You shoot in the direction you aim on your own machiche. Now if you're going to hit someone or not is another story. Because that someone might be there on your machine, but on the server he could be already somewhere else. That's when the delay happens, because you don't use the location of the enemy from your machine, you wait for the server to tell you if you hit him or not. This might seem not very different from what you described, but this difference is crucial for real-time combat games. What you described might be fine for MMORPG (I have no experience with MMORPG), but not for real-time combat simulations/action games. You can test this by yourself, join a DCS server (or another real-time combat game) and fire your gun. See if there's any delay between squeezing the trigger and your bullets flying off (miniguns aren't ideal for this test because of the spin-up time).