Jenrick

Don't forget that real trim in an AC is designed to minimize the force required on the stick/yoke to easy fatigue while flying for long periods of time. Real world you get the AC level with external reference cues (ie the horizon) in day time (and the instruments at night), and then trim to reduce force on the stick. Real world, you'd level out, trim to something comfortable and make very minor corrections to pitch with the stick almost without thinking about it. Sort of like when you drive, you get in the your lane, and you stay there without having to really think about it. Why do you need to fly hands off for long periods? You're not taking sextant shots, updating charts, etc. You're in a short range high performance fighter. One of the biggest transgressions sim pilots make in real AC (and I know from personal experience) is paying WAY too much attention to the instruments over what's outside the window. If I can see the horizon and we're level do I need to stare at the ADI? Conversely most simmers have little trouble picking up the instrument scan required to fly IFR.

So I was playing around with Nav point bombing tonight. If you have your nav point set directly on the target, and you follow procedure you're pretty much guaranteed a shack. Pretty dang accurate. I'll mess with radar bombing tomorrow, as I have only taken a cursory look at it so far

On a fixed target you can do a radar or nav point bombing run using standard non guided bombs. Not precision in they way we think of it now (LGB/JDAM/etc), but for an area target (say warehouse complex, port etc,) it would work reasonably well with a good flight plan. -Jenrick

I use a little forward pressure on the stick to keep the nose down until I hit 270 km/h. Then I relax it and the Viggen flies itself off the runway. I had the same issue you're talking about till I changed it up a little. -Jenrick

I worked in the gaming industry for a few years (Acclaim Entertainment, QA Lead). Language localization done poorly is easy. Done well is hard. Good voice acting in the first place is an actual commercial product that costs money. Bad voice acting can be worse then no voice acting at all. So if you're hiring talent in a non-English speaking area you have to find someone who can actually do voice work AND speaks the language. That's hard, really hard. What you usually get is someone who doesn't speak the language, and you try to fake it. To a native speaker this is incredibly apparent, to everyone else it sounds great. Secondly the script needs to be written by a native speaker of the language you're trying to localize. Idioms, terminology, where sentences and phrases naturally pause, etc all are extremely difficult to do well without a native speaker. Computer or dictionary translations usually fail badly at being correct. Unless you have a native speaker (or a really fluent non-native, and I mean really fluent) on your dev team how do you review your scripting? Language localization services are big money business in the gaming industry, and they need to be as it's not cheap to do anything close to a good job. -Jenrick

MULT is the # of stations that will deploy ordinance QTY is the # of bombs that will drop from each station So QTY 2 MULT 2 will drop 2 bombs from 2 stations for 4 bombs total. With the intervalometer not working currently, all 4 will pickle off close to each other. With it working it SHOULD space them out to the given interval. So for example if have 3 MK 82's on 2 different pylons, I can drop QTY 3 MULT 1 and clear one pylon completely, or QTY 1 MULT 2, and drop 1 bomb from each pylon. QTY 2 MULT 2 would be 2 bombs from each pylon. -Jenrick

The Harrier currently is more then "playable" and realistically has about the same functionality as a real world A-4 or A-7, plus a kinda working targeting pod. If you step back from dropping PGM's on everything and do some bombing the old fashioned way you are really only missing the intervalometer for weapons release spacing, and the ARBS being able to following a moving target (so an early A-4 in that regard). So feature complete, heck no. Still a heck of a lot of fun to fly and fight, absolutely. -Jenrick

It's not impotent, not anymore so then an F-86 vs a Bf 109, or say a F-14 vs an A6M2. Yes both of the prop jobs turn better, but I still know which jet I'd prefer to be in. If you play to the other guys strength you are doing it wrong. You don't turn against a fighter that can out turn you, and you try to avoid it with a fighter that has parity with you. The opponent can climb better then you can, then don't get in that match up. The F-5's advantage is the big E, energy. It has an almost 400 knot top speed advantage, so you use that. Have a higher energy state at all times. They can't climb with you, or dive with you at that point, meaning you can extend at your leisure dictating the fight completely. The Mig is 100% defensive, all it takes is one mistake and they are yours. All you have to do is not make a huge glaring mistake (like getting slow or being pulled into a turning fight) and you can do it as long as your fuel lasts. For boom and zoom you come in at a significant E advantage, whether that's climbing with the throttle in full burner and being 200 kts faster then the other guys Vne, or dropping in from up high like a hawk on a mouse and diving away 400 knots faster then they are. If you come in with a comparable energy state you aren't booming and zooming, you are walking into a knife fight (bad plan). If the Mig is already throttled up, then don't play until you have a E advantage, throttles up (burner if needed) on and extend until you get speed/height/both. IF (big if) you can catch them at a major E disadvantage (say bouncing a Mig on final, where they are low AND slow), then you can successfully pounce without needing to already be at high speed, though you still need to have HIGHER speed and altitude so you can trade both of those to make room to escape. Make no mistake a good (from way higher, and way faster) boom and zoom is straight up premeditated murder. Done correctly the other guy has almost 0 chance of escape, and should never even see it coming. It is by far the least "sporting" method of shooting an enemy down with guns, it is also incredibly effective. A fighter is meant to be good at killing enemy aircraft, not at providing a sporting contest to allow the two pilots to measure their stick and rudder skills. Treat the F-5 as a less pointy F-104 in this match up and you won't be far off how to win it. -Jenrick

Boom and zoom is what you've got. If you are initiating a head on pass, real world you screwed up in letting the the bandit get co-altitude and his nose around to face you. For DACM it's good to do this occasionally to see how to get out of it. I'd start out practicing from a classic 6 o'clock ambush. Either high or low. Come screaming it at the speed of heat, one pass, and hopefully their smoking wreckage is the end result. Once you get that down (which due to a lower closure rate isn't as tricky as other options), switch to 3/4 attack (7-8 o'clock and 4-5 o'clock) then directly abeam, moving to quartering from the front and finally, head on. Practice high and low, co-altitude teaches you nothing but bad habits and is exceedingly rare in practice. Head on is the hardest due to the massive closure rate, you have little time to setup, stabilize, and engage. If your initial engagement didn't work, extend, extend, and extend some more. You want to create enough space via your speed to be able to setup in you preferred engagement geometry again. You'll probably end up with a head on pass (particularly with the AI), but you should be able to dictate an altitude advantage at the least. In furball, pick a fresh victim, and go for it. -Jenrick

Make sure Force Feedback is unchecked in your settings. -Jenrick

You might skip hitting clr, no clue why it would change anything, but I never do that and it works fine for me otherwise. -Jenrick

I toss out that far more people would be happy to have a dogfight between some variant of the F4 and some variant of the MIG-21, then there are people who would be bothered by the fact they aren't variants that faced each other in reality. -Jenrick

I have no clue where people are getting the idea the FM isn't affected by wind. It takes 2 minutes to setup a scenario to test it, and see that that's completely incorrect. Moderate winds drive me crazy trying to get attack rocket attack runs in with the L model. -Jenrick

Also flares, I haven't tested them lately to see if they're working in 2.5, would cause a CTD in 1.5.8. -Jenrick

Agreed, interesting read. There is definitely a different feel to the 2.5 FM over the 1.5.8 FM. I feel as confident in 1.5.8 as one using the keyboard for the rudder and collective can. In 2.5 it's a LOT different, and in general "twitchy'er". To the OP, you are in 2.5 or 1.5.8? -Jenrick

Just to provide a little more info on the Zuni, as noted they are a 5" rocket. The name Zuni has only ever referred to this system, the LAU-10 is the designation for the 4 round launcher. The F-8 crusader actually just stuck them on the Sidewinder rails in a two packs (2 rockets per rail), I don't recall the designation for that off the top of my head. The Zuni has a MUCH larger warhead then the Hydra series of rockets. The M151 2.75" rocket HE-Frag warhead contains 2.3lbs of Comp B explosive. The Mk 63 5" rocker HE-Frag warhead contains 15 lbs of Comp B explosive. The general description and effect of a Zuni rocket is air launched 155mm artillery shell, were the 2.75 is about an 81mm shell or so. Iron bombs carry far larger amounts of explosive though. Even the lowly Mk 81 carries 96 lbs of tritonal (which is functionally the same as comp b), which is almost the full weight of a Zuni rocket (motor and warhead). The Mk 82 carries 192 lbs of tritonal. Blast effect, hands down it goes to the bombs. The actual effect on target is going to depend on fuzing, burst height, etc., but in general the larger and heavier cast bomb body is going to create larger and heavier fragments that will travel farther. A HE-Frag rocket body will create more numerous but smaller and lighter fragments that travel a lesser distance. Pretty much the same effect you see between an HE artillery shell and a hand grenade. The Zuni is frequently cited as being far more accurate then the Hyrda (large rocket, larger motor, better aero?). In Vietnam for the SEAD mission Crusaders would put a pair of Zuni's in a flak pit or an SA-2 sight (individual launcher pit) and consider it a mission kill. Hyrda's are shot in at least half pod salvo's (quite often a whole pod), just to ensure they got enough rockets in the general area of the target. Even with all the whizbang computers in the AH-64 Apachge, Hyrda's are considered area effect weapons, and in general at least 6 pairs of rockets should be fired at a given area target. Also DCS's damage model really nerfs Hydra's even more. A HE-Frag Hydra has a 5m-25m casualty radius (troops in cover vs troops in the open), which is largely the result of fragmentation. Which DCS doesn't model. Land a Hydra a few meters off a juicy soft target like a transport truck, no joy, it's probably not damaged. The end result is need to use far more rockets than you should need to destroy soft targets. They really don't have an advantage against soft targets compared to any of the AC cannons currently in DCS. Against hard targets that a 20mm might not do damage to a Hydra can potentially cause a kill with a direct hit. Zuni's are accurate enough to shoot a single rockets and get direct hits with, negating much of the issue with the lack of fragmentation. TL/DR: Zuni vs Hyrda- WAY bigger rocket, with WAY bigger warhead, WAY more accurate Hydra vs Zuni- Carry WAY more of them (but you'll need them as they lack all the above) -Jenrick

One thing I found helped with that is to change where you're creating your missions. Give your self some good terrain to work with, buildings and valleys to hide in. I was setting my stuff up in open country where I really didn't have a lot of places to hide. That changed things dramatically for me. -Jenrick

I know that awhile back the sight was changed to have more similarity to the Thales T100. Currently the piper on the sight is at the identical elevation for both weapon systems, thus giving the rockets an approximate aim point of .6 NM or about 1100 meters when fired from level flight at about 450 m, or in a shallow dive from that altitude. The US FM 3-04.140(FM 1-140) Helicopter Gunnery, details the 70mm Hydra rocket as being most effective between 3000m-5000m. The SNEB is slower then the Hyrda at burnout, but I'd guess the optimum engagement distance is still probably longer then 1000 m. Ideally the sight would be adjustable, just as the actual T100 is, allowing for adjustments based on the observed impact of the rounds. I get that this is probably a little more functionality then you'd probably like to spend time putting into the sight itself. At a minimum would it be possible to have the rocket reticle shifted so that the center point is the 3000m impact point? Thanks!

I'd imagine the countries used an ATC model similar to the US, meaning QNH, and the pilots had charts with field elevations (or just asked the controller). -Jenrick

I'm not using 2.5, but normally that error shows up when you have more then 2 types of weapons loaded. No clue is that's a real world limitation of the stores system (I haven't bothered to research it). Try it with just rockets and see if you get the same issue. -Jenrick

IIRC default controls is LALT+L, move your view point around and the beam comes on after that. -Jenrick

IIRC that's on hold until ED/DCS gets incendiaries in general. it's on the list, but not until ED adds it to the actual engine. -Jenrick

IIRC currently com1 and com2 are swapped. Try dialing in on Com2.

If you read the manuals, the Harrier doesn't actually allow for a ton of inflight changes to the weapons. Most are ground set, and also most of the weapons the Harrier carriers, don't have a lot of fuzing options to begin with. Regarding the MK20, PR is 1.2 second from release to burst, OP is 4 seconds. Yes dispersion is modeled for the rockeye based on burst height, altitude, etc. -Jenrick

PR gives you a 1.2 second delay from release to burst. OP gives you a 4 second delay. DCS does model the field size based on when the rockeye bursts, ranging from a lawn dart of no burst to a giant very loose field. -Jenrick