Mfezi

I know I'm a little late to the party but I just completed the Ultimate Argument Campaign. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. But more specifically, I think this campaign is a fantastic advertisement for DCS 2.5. It is not very intense and therefore the missions really give you the opportunity to enjoy the scenery and the setting. I think if I quickly wanted to show someone what DCS was about and what it looked like, I would pick one of the missions from this campaign (that Su-34 escort through the mountains would be a great choice, for example). In fact, some missions, like the one where the squadron relocates, is pretty much a sight-seeing trip. There is excellent variety in the type of missions and you pretty much get to use everything that the DCS Su-27 is capable of using. As I said, none of the missions were particularly difficult and the air combat was relatively low intensity and probably relatively realistic for this type of low intensity border conflict. However, they certainly were not boring and what the missions lacked in intensity they certainly made up for in variety. I enjoyed the slightly imperfect Russian translations - they gave the campaign a little extra element of authenticity. I do speak Russian, but of course with the subtitles it is not at all a requirement. I would also recommend it for relative beginners - the FC3 Su-27 is pretty easy to learn (also nice if you want to take a break from one of the complex modules) and if you do what the briefings say you need to do, it is unlikely you'd get stuck in this campaign - unlike, for example, the Mozdok campaign that comes with FC3. Anyone who hasn't played it yet - give it a go: Personally I think it was very much worth the few bucks that I spent on this campaign.

Thank you, but my experience with FLIR and infrared sensors in general is not based on watching YouTube videos. As I wrote in that post, the glowing white surface of the aircraft itself is a very clear indication of the FLIR sensitivity range used in that particular video. The brightness of the exhaust emissions prior to afterburner activation, especially from that aspect, is another. The first of these two statements is already addressed in my previous post, but briefly once again: IR sensors do not measure energy, kinetic or otherwise, but infrared radiation. Since thermal radiation is mostly emitted in the infrared band, it is a useful indication of temperature, although it does also get influenced by the relative emissivity of the various objects in an image. When processing an IR image for display, the user or designer of the system sets the upper and lower bands of the temperature range of interest. Anything above that upper limit appears completely washed out, regardless of how much hotter it is than the threshold temperature. In this instance, we already know that upper limit is quite low, since the entire surface of the aircraft glows white throughout the video. Anything with a higher temperature or, more accurately, anything emitting infrared radiation above that upper threshold, still appears white, no matter how much higher its level of infrared radiation is. On your second point: No, this is not how the yield of a nuclear explosion is measured, even though I did note that you sneakily changed flash "size" to flash "duration". Your addition of the word "accurately" is quite ironic, since accurately estimating the yield of a nuclear explosion is notoriously difficult and all methods that are used suffer from a very high level of statistic uncertainty. In fact, this is not limited to nuclear explosions - the energy released in any explosion is usually quite difficult to calculate accurately. One of the methods used to estimate the yield of an atmospheric nuclear explosion is via a bhangmeter, but this sensor works in the visible light range and is specifically "tuned" to the characteristics of an atmospheric nuclear explosion (i.e. it works by assuming the explosion will follow the characteristic double pulse visible light emissions typical of atmospheric nuclear explosions). Before that, they used to measure X-ray emissions which usually comes out in a single pulse of which the intensity does correlate somewhat with the yield of the explosion. The other methods commonly used are things like neutron activity analysis, infrasound or blast size scaling (again measured in the visible light range or measured from the damage on the ground afterwards) or fallout analysis in cases of fission explosions. For underground explosions, they normally use seismographic analysis to estimate the yield of the explosion. What I have never heard of, is using either the size or the duration of the flash on a saturated infrared image to estimate yield "accurately". If you can cite a scientific paper that uses this method, I would be very interested to read it.

Emu, the amount of heat produced does not determine the size of the flash on FLIR. It determines the intensity. In the video from the original post of this thread, the FLIR is set too sensitive. It is very obvious: In the first 20 seconds, the F-15 is completely white and you can clearly see the engine exhaust before afterburner is activated. This is in stark contrast to most infrared videos that I have of missile tests, where the target is a dark grey prior to missile impact. Some FLIR systems will auto-adjust the temperature range, but in this case the aircraft is still bright white in the section of video following the impact, which tells us there was no adjustment over the span of the video. The result of this overexposed imaging is that you cannot measure the relative intensities anymore. White is white: The heat generated by the aerodynamic friction on the airframe only is enough to saturate it (first 20 seconds), making the airframe appear white in the image. The afterburner saturates it to white. The flares saturate it to white. The impact saturates it to white. The relative size of each of these contributors simply signifies the extent of the heated gas surrounding the source. The amount of heat generated determines the intensity, but that you cannot measure anymore on this video because it is saturated.

I've been following this thread with interest. I've worked in flight test most of my adult life and over the years have been present during more than a few missile tests (mostly air-to-air, but also a few ground-launched missiles). So I went through some of my videos to remind myself again what different types of impacts/detonations looked like. Each one is usually unique in some way or another, so I couldn't find a video identical to what we saw in the original video of this thread. However, I did find a few direct impacts against target drones where the missile had an inert warhead and where the burn had been fully completed prior to impact, which at least gives some reference for what a pure kinetic impact look like on infra-red. Unfortunately, I can't post these videos on YouTube for obvious reasons. They do look very similar to the original video: The kinetic impact between the missile and target drone usually generates more than enough heat for a pretty spectacular flash on infra-red - not unlike what we saw in this video. Following the flash, we also see most of the hot fragments continue in the direction of original missile travel rather than the wider radial spread that you normally see following an actual warhead detonation (I say normally, because there are of course different types of warheads). In this video, the F-15 is almost completely white from the start of the video and the afterburner and flares both cause a lot of saturation on the video, which tells me the FLIR is at a very sensitive setting - more sensitive than what we would normally use for testing. With that type of sensitivity, a pure kinetic impact should generate more than enough heat to result in the type of flash we see in the video and screen grab. Furthermore, in this video we see that the motor was also still burning at impact, so at least some of the flash may be caused by the (presumably) last little bit of fuel flashing off, causing an even brighter and slightly more prolonged flash. Combined with the lack of damage to other parts of the aircraft, I have to say my personal opinion at this point is that what we see is a direct impact with no warhead detonation. According to this video, if it was indeed an actual warhead detonation, it happened extremely close to the target aircraft. Even a tiny warhead at that type of proximity would normally cause a lot of damage, especially in the form of fragment holes on the surrounding fuselage and vertical tails. So, without further information I feel it is unlikely that what we are looking at is a warhead detonation. Not impossible - as I said every impact I have seen has been slightly different - but based on the video and the damage shown in the pictures, it looks to me like a pure kinetic impact combined, possibly, with a little bit of combustion of whatever amount of fuel was still left in the missile. I wouldn't speculate on why it may not have detonated - there can be a whole myriad of reasons. Besides my opinion on the detonation or lack thereof, I do not think we have nearly enough information to make a final conclusion about the type of missile or exactly under which circumstances it was launched. Emu seems very sure about all the evidence he has posted here and that this evidence is enough to draw very specific conclusions from, but I have worked on enough military accident and incident investigations to be extremely cautious of any evidence that includes something in the line of "a well trained pilot would never..."

Maybe just a small thing to point out, since I am one of the people who responded with a definite "NO!". The question was not whether ED should develop fictional maps or whether users should be allowed to develop fictional maps. The question was whether you, personally, would buy a fictional map. And, in my case, there is no doubt at all - I have absolutely no interest in fictional maps and therefore I would under no circumstance put money down to buy such a fictional map. Yes, other people may have various reason to be interested in such maps, but to me there is zero interest. I would also like to respond to the second part of the quoted post, which came up a few times in this thread, namely that maps may as well be fictional if you haven't personally been to a certain area. This is a slightly strange argument for me - a great part of the attraction for me is the very fact that I can "explore" places that I haven't actually been to myself, but that I find interesting for various reasons related to the real-world location. Without that real-world connection, regardless of whether I have actually been there myself, I lose interest immediately. I completely understand that other people enjoy sims in a different way, but the topic of this thread is a rather specific question to the individual. As I said, this has no bearing on whether ED should or should not develop fictional scenery, but my answer on whether "I" would buy any such scenery is a pretty firm and inflexible "no".

I fixed it. It seems there was actually a change in the directory structure, but it wasn't obvious. For example, in my logbook file there was this entry: ["campaign"] = "./Mods/campaigns/Su-27 - The Ultimate Argument/en/en_UltimArgSu-27.cmp", Looking through the actual directory structure, it seems they changed it and the line should be changed to: ["campaign"] = "./Mods/campaigns/Su-27 - The Ultimate Argument/UltimArgSu-27.cmp", Note the "en/en_" that had to be removed. Another example: ["campaign"] = "./Mods/aircraft/Flaming Cliffs/Missions/en/Campaigns/Su-27-Fortress Mozdok.cmp", Had to be changed to: ["campaign"] = "./Mods/aircraft/Flaming Cliffs/Missions/Campaigns/Su-27-Fortress Mozdok.cmp", Note again the "/en" that had to be removed. I'm surprised so few people had this issue. Maybe most people just re-started campaigns anyway?

I have the same problem. Went from 1.5.8 release to 1.5.8 OB to 2.5. My profiles and logbooks are fine, but all my partially completed campaigns say inactive and I lost my progress. I would really like to fix it rather than to re-start these campaigns.

It is pretty well known that ozone in large concentrations provide slightly higher combustion temperatures than O2, as for example also described in this article. However, the article considers ozone concentrations of 500 ppm, whereas the highest natural concentration of ozone in the atmosphere is more in the region of 5 to 8 ppm by volume and at ground level it is in the region of less than 0.1 ppm in most places. So, I doubt aircraft will see a measurable performance improvement at those concentrations.

I'm from South Africa and I have actually spoken with several pilots who faced the MiG-23 in Angola while flying the Mirage F1. This was a pretty even match-up, since the Mirage F1 and MiG-23 were not only of the same generation, but had many similar characteristics. At the time, the Angolans (the pilots were actually almost exclusively Cuban) had a big advantage in that the R-60/AA-8 had a limited all-aspect capability unlike the missiles available on the F1CZ at the time. Anyway, the South African pilots that I spoke to all had huge respect for the MiG-23. There were several engagements between Mirage F1's and MiG-23s, but most ended inconclusive for a number of reasons - usually missiles that didn't track or didn't explode (from both sides). One engagement, however, did not end so good for us in that one of the Mirages were damaged quite badly by what is assumed to have been an R-60, which resulted in - well, you can read the story directly from the pilot's perspective here: https://saafmuseum.org.za/arthur-d-piercy-27th-september-1987/ I think anyone who is interested in the MiG-23 will find his account of that engagement fascinating.

NO, absolutely not.