bfr

Sometimes I preorder early, sometimes I leave it very late (like the F-14). Generally which depends on personal cashflow and how certain a purchase it is (e.g. the AI back-seater for the Tomcat put me off that until i knew more). Like you say, every module has usually come with at least a couple of days notice of actual rollout. Although that obviously requires you to check forums etc quite regularly to keep on top of things.

The AGM-130 is shown on the jet in the launch trailer (at about 0:50 and 1:16 and 1:24) but very much fleetingly. Like you say though, it doesn't mean it'll be available on day 0.

How does the difference in the legacy v newer UFC play out? Is the older one that shown in the videos that are a bit like the F18 horizontal multi-segment text displays and the new one more like another MFD in your face?

Glad to be corrected but I don't recall any other module release committing to an actual release date when the pre-order went up. Besides, its not all within Razbam's control anyway (if I remember right they have to submit it to ED for QA/QC and then of course it has to be rolled into the DCS update cycle).

Assuming the release date hasn't slipped too (I doubt delaying one necessarily automatically means the other is delayed) then yeah, absolutely no big deal that I don't have to hand the cash over for another few days.

I haven't yet tried in an F-16 but i've landed a Hornet and a Viggen on the longest straight of the Yas Marina F1 track in the PG map. One to have a crack at tonight I guess, although I haven't got high hopes as I could barely stop the Hornet in time (Viggen much easier with the reverser). Like seemingly everyone else i've done the carrier landing in the F-16 since the hook was added. Managed to get off of it again too with a full deck run-up (was on about 20% fuel and only carrying a couple of winders)

Yes I remember that too but the 'Acceleration Pack' F-18 was far from a study simulation of the aircraft (the features you allude to were very much standard MSFS autopilot fare) and its not a feature i've ever seen in any serious reproduction of an F-18 (DCS or the VRS F-18E in MSFS).

The devices are largely fine (had Pro Throttle and Fighterstick, although the stick has now been retired) but I binned off the CH software ages ago for Joy2Key given the amount of times it'd play up.

Which pylons are you trying to add it to? Having just checked then Walleye is available to me on stations 2 & 8 and your menu looks like what I see if I try to add bombs to stations 3 & 7. EDIT: Or as Harker said, check you've not got historical filter applied.

I have found Tacview can fail to record properly if its not the first thing called in export.lua though, so worth checking that if you have other stuff installed that uses export.lua and Tacview is not writing files.

Or at the very least please clarify when it was changed (it clearly has been at some stage) and why.

Looks that way, yeah.

Cool having just fired off 4 of them at the same coordinates with some mix of flight profile and all 4 hit with a CEP of about the area of a handkerchief then i'm inclined to agree with you. These things are now WAY more accurate than they were when they were initially added to the sim. Found this thread where people were complaining it wasn't pinpoint accurate, which at least makes me think we're not imagining it wasn't always right on the money every time

Now its not a weapon I use often but I am I right in thinking that when it first got added to openbeta (and I was tinkering with it to see what it was like) it wasn't nearly as accurate (without terminal phase help via TV link) as your demonstration suggest?

For A2A you could use a live round, just don't actually fire it. Even if a captive carry missile was simulated you'd probably need to do your own debrief with something like Tacview to decide whether the shot was likely to hit or not (you could remap your 'pickle' to 'mark event' I suppose to pinpoint when you simulated firing). I kind of get wanting real world training weapons to be simulated but i'm with others that i'll just set up mission scenarios where i'm almost ready to run in (just leave enough slack to set up weapons and means its easily and quickly repeatable when I inevitably cock something up, and for heavier A2G ordnance also means I get to experience flying repeat passes with asymmetric loads) and use live rounds instead.

That was the weird part, nothing untoward stood out in the log file but I was getting weird behaviours from Tacview. Initially I had the 'discard if <10s' option set and it was discarding flights well over 10s. Then it was writing empty files once I set it to always save. For the record the only other item in export.lua is related to the DCS UFC android app.

Would I be right in thinking TacView gets a bit funny if it isn't first item in the list in export.lua? I've had issues the last couple of upgrades (most recently to 1.8.7, which was initially saving 1k empty files) and flipping it to the top of the list seems to fix it. It wasn't logging anything untoward though when it was 2nd in the list and doing funny stuff.

And that's always been the shortcoming in DCS that it doesn't really model system damage to ships right now. You don't need to send a ship to the bottom to take it out of the fight, probably just wrecking systems like its radars or propulsion would really knock it down a peg or two.

Can't say i've tried an un-arrested Hornet carrier landing but I did manage it once in a Viggen (many died before the successful attempt though)

Cool, i'll give them a try. Deadzones i've generally managed alongside curves in-game up until now (although one plus with the VKB stick is that it needs minimal dead zones anyway versus the CH stick, which always had slight centring precision issues for me).

I ditched the CH software as it just became too flaky with lack of support. I ended up using Joy2Key as I still wanted to be able to have multiple profiles per aircraft like you could in the CH Software via modes (generally set up 1 each for A-A, A-G and 'normal' flight). Whilst I had a Combatstick & Pro Throttle as a pair originally, I replaced the Combatstick with a VKB Gunfighter/SCG. The Pro Throttle I calibrate in Windows, the VKB I use their software (although its extremely rare that it needs recalibration). Tweaking the Joy2Key profiles for the new stick was quite easy.

Since 2.7 update.... Spent 5 minutes playing with the ATFLIR pod. Spent the next 20 minutes just skipping along the top of cloud layers. Jaw dropping.

I'd recommend watching the preview/update video that Wags did which details the procedure.

As far as I recall then there is no in-flight update of guidance. SEA radar just provides range and bearing data to the missile pre-launch. Once launched its own its own.

The seeker needs what you're targeting to have decent contrast in the video screen to lock. When the contrast is so-so then you often need to coax it back onto the target mid-flight but the relative size of the target and then image contrast should improve with reduced distance to target and it should eventually lock on.