bfr

I know its a little bit my fault, but you did clearly state 'cleared contact'

I've got a Virpil throttle and a VKB stick and zero genuine 3 position switches between the pair of them (2 position momentary is not the same thing). Had CH stuff prior to that, again none. The only HOTAS stuff I can ever remember having one (and it was literally one, on the throttle) was on an old Saitek X45. By all means support 3 position, the irritation is that in some instances it'd be nice to have alternatives (which a fair few modules offer) rather than have to jump through hoops a bit to support a 2 position momentary or 1-2 discreet buttons to achieve the desired outcome.

It also irks me how bindings for things like 3 way switches are often created under the assumption you actually have a 3 way switch to map it to when the majority of HOTAS on the market have no/limited support for them.

Very interesting read and really looking forward to this when it finally gets made available.

Landing gear was uprated for the naval versions and i think also some aerodynamics changes. Plus DCS/Heatblur would have to add bridle support to be able to launch from a boat (but will come when they do release a navalised version).

I can't really fault the handling of the SE in a strike context. Certainly wouldn't say it has ever felt floaty and I genuinely find it a really easy and mostly carefree jet to fly (you can literally bend it if you pour on the Gs too rapidly but otherwise very forgiving and goes where you point it). I can't compare it to an F14 in a strike role as I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times i've dropped bombs from a Tomcat. In more general terms it doesn't feel like its going to try to kill you if you push it too hard in a manoeuvre like a Tomcat can.

Yes, the conformal tanks are a bit of a killer when it comes to drag. Obviously the base aircraft without them is pretty nimble. And yes, lighting the burners and showing a clean set of heels is my preferred tactic for getting out of trouble in one.

My take would be that it handles pretty well with a lot of bombs. One thing you might appreciate over the Viper is the handling is much better with some bombs dropped i.e. because most the load is closer to the centre then you're not needing to trim laterally anywhere near so much (you do get a pull but not nearly as marked as when all the heavy things are all on your wings). Agility wise when clean though the Viper is much better. Energy bleed is much more pronounced in the SE in my experience, even if you're on low fuel loads (if you don't win a close-in fight in the first couple of passes then you're in a stalemate at best unless the other guy screws up).

Oh I normally use them as they were intended. Its just fun to try something daft/inadvisable every now and then. In all seriousness, i'm quite looking forward to when a truly seaworthy variant arrives down the line.

Meh. I've stuck an F-15SE on a carrier and even got it back off again. OK, the pilot blacked out on touchdown, the nose gear had 'issues' afterwards and I had no payload and a thimble of fuel in it, but it had to be tried.

It would be very 'what if' as the airfield at Mount Pleasant didn't exist until a few years after the war. Although I think UK Phantoms were able to use the runway at Stanley post-war as a stop-gap.

Ah yes, I forgot you could slap another 6 on the centreline if you ditch the centre tank. And yes, it would indeed manage to make a particularly spectacular hole. With AIM-7s I suspect BVR is often going to be little more than foreplay.

Strike Eagle might carry a slightly smaller load of Mk82s (15 v 18 on the Phantom?) but would probably place them slightly more accurately (and definitely so once 500lb JDAMs are available to it). As you say though, A6 & A7 will be a significant quantity bump on both if you want to fully load them.

Ah yes, forgot about those. Not a weapon I've used much.

That's going to test one's coordination I bet if you're flying alone, having to maintain line of sight to the missile and target, feed in corrections and also maybe dodge ground fire.

Yeah its been broken quite a while I believe. I can concur its broken as I had a bit of a Viper refresher this evening and even the JDAM training mission asks you to change the mode and it doesn't work in that (GBU-38 in that case).

Certainly i've seen that intermittent flashing happen on certain maps but generally around sunrise/sunset rather than dead of night (Persian Gulf is quite bad for it).

If you're using a ripple mode then did you remember to set the release quantity to 2? Is it any different with different release sequence options set? e.g. 1/STA should (I think) release one bomb per 'pickle' press per station selected (so 2 bombs in your example)

And in the context of the first post it should surely also be Eastern.

Ah yes, I see what you're getting at. Whilst both were set as described then the Antialiasing dialog (set to DLAA) gets greyed out when you select an upscaling option other than 'Off'.

One other thing that suddenly jumped back into my mind from briefly playing around with DLSS. Has anyone else observed like a weird effect if you look in the external fly-by view? Almost like what i'd describe as that 'motion smearing' effect you used to see in Star Trek when a ship goes to warp. It kind of showed up around the tail and wingtips a little at the start of a fly-by and then sorts itself out after a few frames as the plane approaches and passes the camera, before starting again as the view resets for another pass. This was on a 3070 with DLSS + DLAA enabled and 0.5 sharpening applied.

Are you on OpenBeta or Stable? It'll only be available on OpenBeta for now. Yeah, another 3070 owner here and i've switched to DLAA too as i'm happy with the quality and frames. DLSS frame rate seemed better but I wasn't happy with how legible the cockpit text was.

I'd swear it seems to end up at about that kind of speed anyway if everyone is hammering it at once, irrespective of what your connection is capable of.

Just hoping that if they do release it today that the infrastructure holds up better than for the F15E release!

19th is a Thursday, not Friday.