RShackleford

Did you read the second half of my post? Literally just explained that whole concept within your quote lol

I wasn't saying to you personally that you were scoffing it, I was just saying to everyone in general that it shouldn't be scoffed :thumbup:

I'm going to say with nearly 100% certainty that they don't land with NVGs. Air Force regs don't allow you to take off with NVGs and also state they must be taken off prior to final approach fix. It isn't like DCS or other video games where you see everything minus an inch off the sides of your monitor being blacked out, NVGs are basically just used as another sensor and the FOV is basically the same as looking through empty toilet paper rolls taped an inch from your eyes. Very low FOV, and then you also get zero depth perception which even though already greatly reduced at night, makes it even worse with NVGs on. I don't remember what thread it was posted in another forum here but someone mentioned that turning off the lights on the carrier makes no sense since it is such a radar and IR significant target that it wouldn't matter to have lights on or off, so no reason for NVGs in that regard during combat operations either if that argument is made. Basically as far as landing aircraft goes, NVGs make it even more difficult than just landing at night without NVGs.

It will hold its own very well, since most DCS fights (no missiles) go into slow speed nose-pointing fights. I don't know specifically how it does against the Mirage but in DCS the Mirage has insane low speed nose-pointing capability... maybe more than it does in real life. If you go defensive, you will need to jink really well to not die and hope your wingman comes around to kill him. If it is 1v1 and you're defensive, you are going to have to do some really unpredictable BFM mistakes to hope they make a worse BFM mistake to gain an advantage on them. F-18 has great low speed nose-pointing capability, so don't scoff it.

This is very true. How people think that these missiles are tested on drones flying straight and level is pretty funny. The tests done at Combat Archer and Combat Hammer are how the 3-1 Shot Kill is published. The data gained from maneuvering aircraft with normal countermeasures and electronic countermeasures has brought the original AIM-120A to the modern AIM-120C7 we have today, with major differences just between even the 120C1 to 120C7. Even with politics involved, the USAF and USN has a large interest in having the best missile they can get.

There's tests done on these missiles at farther ranges with much higher PK. Combat is different, yes, and things will go down to make it a lower PK than an AMRAAM guided until terminal portion. The DCS ranges where AIM-120s are useless is laughable though. The drag and guidance is completely unrealistic, only guaranteed kill in DCS is guns but even that might not work because the lag is so bad in most servers because WE STILL DON'T HAVE DEDICATED SERVERS IN DCS.

The range on both the AMRAAM and R-27ER are both highly inaccurate in DCS. Kinda hard for ED to get realistic info on either, but range should be much higher on both. DCS missile mod fixes it a lot but since it doesn't fix the trajectories that the missiles actually take, you won't be able to max perform either missile. Real life F-15Cs can "fox 3 short" on targets 2-3 times the range that DCS shows you max range on a non-maneuvering target, but the drag models on missiles in DCS just stop anything like that from happening. Against experienced DCS pilots, you just do one shot of BVR to hopefully make the enemy maneuver and you go straight towards WVR, rather than the real life 2-3 leaves of launch and leave until you go BANZAI and launch and decide if it comes to that. In public servers you'll still have success by shooting a few AMRAAMs in ~5 second intervals in a crank then flowing cold right away. Can try to go hot after that but there's a decent likelihood of getting shot down by someone you don't see. There's a lot of good DCS pilots who will sneak up on you through the mountains, which can make it fun. Guns only in DCS is still the most fun

IRL, the F-15 scope gives you both. I wish it was like this in game. Bullseye would actually be better than just BRAA at a minimum because it gives GCI/AWACS a better air combat picture when people give "targeted" and "fox 3" calls. If I could choose one, it would be bullseye, but another limitation of the DCS F-15 is that it gives BRAA on your PDT rather than where your cursors are. It's harder to target into people when your cursors aren't showing any BRAA info, just info to where your target it. Only disadvantage to this is during maneuvering your finger might slip on the TDC and bring the cursors off the PDT, but you can quickstep to your PDT easily using the coolie switch and it hooks the cursor back onto the PDT to give you accurate bullseye and braa info again. I've pretty much given up on BVR DCS stuff because the radars and missiles are so poorly modeled, but flight model is best out there so I do a lot of guns only stuff for fun now. Falcon BMS has a better modeled AMRAAM if you want to get into that, but there's no good multiplayer for it.

IMO the cracks and such you see in earlier versions of DCS are way overdone. The image from sslechta shows how overdone the cracks and reflections on them are. If 2.5 did away with them I will be happy lol.

Maybe politically driven, but prone to failure or pricey? No. Price is about the same and becoming even lower with each lot as 4++ gen aircraft like Eurofighter Tyhpoon and Dassault Rafale being about the same price point. See what the price quote for Rafales that Dassault is giving to countries trying to buy it. Much higher, but that price is also including some mandatory support for it. Prone to failure? I don't know what this is coming from. What failure? F-35Bs maybe having issues with STOVL? Only US and Britain even wants F-35B and it is a very small niche. Everyone else wants F-35A, a standard fighter jet that is also stealth with awesome data fusion. Politically driven I can kinda agree on... I think most people would prefer three independent designs for aircraft in the services here. Doesn't help that each congressman wants a portion of the development/manufacturing in their states, so that odds on cost. The price doesn't change too terribly by different states manufacturing different parts but it would have been better to have different designs for each service. There might have been more cost involved with that since each service would have to fund design competitions between Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman, but maybe final designs would be cheaper. That's beyond me. Current F-35 isn't hurt too badly by the one design for three services though in my opinion.

And you have an internal cannon! Can't forget that.

Yes, "smart" refers to it being guided, but in other smart weapons such as JDAMs you can change fusing options because it uses fmu-152 fuzes, in which you can change the arm time, delay, and if it has a dsu nose kit for prox fuzing you can turn it on or off as well in flight. But then there's great weapons like the GBU-24 which can hit pinpoint targets with four modes based on which type of target you're hitting that all have two modes within those options based on altitude... but it has to be set by aircrew preflight with screwdrivers. I think I need to look into CBU more, it isn't often used but might be a thing in Korea if that kicks off. Just would be surprised if the CBUs are set on the ground vs being cockpit selectable, since they are mounted on 1760 bus pylons.

What parts can you not do? Fuse changes for nose or nose/tail should be cockpit selectable, is it just the CBU settings that can't be changed in the cockpit? Thought it was possible since it is technically a "smart weapon" that is mounted to pylons with a MIL-STD-1760 bus. I don't really have any experience with CBUs though because they aren't used.

From flying F-15Es, it has a considerable effect on getting supersonic. I've only been super a few times flying it around 120 hours or so, but there isn't often a reason to go that fast in the majority of those flight hours since only a few have been tactical intercept/defensive counter air sorties. Doesn't hurt too much for subsonic acceleration but it just isn't a good shape for transonic speeds. It isn't as bad in -229 engine strike eagles because there's a lot more thrust there (and GE-129 equipped SA and SG models have even more thrust) but seeing as there's no plans to re-engine C models it will hurt their performance a lot. I can see putting CFTs on if their goal is to extend loiter time for DCA type sorties because two CFTs gives about 1600lbs more gas than two external tanks (2 CFTs and 2 externals brings you to about 31.5k lbs of gas), but I don't know if that's the direction they're actually going to go. Also don't see the racks of AMRAAMs being helpful for it as a "missile truck" since they currently hold enough AMRAAMs for multiple launch and leave rounds before bandits get too close for that tactic anyway. Their current 6x2 loadout is enough to shape the picture for F-22s to cleanup as it is.

Might not make a difference in DCS. They could potentially model it in VR but I'm guessing it is easier to just leave it to be displayed on both eyes in your VR headset.

What makes you think 6th gens aren't already being developed? Not built yet (as far as we know) but there's definitely 6th gen concepts on paper by now.

Yeah I understand it is a different and newer system, my point was just that DCS has a somewhat single type of RWR on F-15C and A-10C even though they're very different systems. Would love to have some of this functionality though for sure. Hopefully they can get enough open source data on the ALR-67 to implement it.

Very far, but remember that it is very difficult to find targets in SAR unless you have pretty decent coordinates to start with. There are modes for seeing movers but it involves doppler effect, so just like how a bandit can notch to break your lock, if the vehicle is moving perpendicular to you then the radar won't pick it up because it can't filter the radar return differently than the ground. Generally you go in with a set of coordinates for the target area of something like a building, map the target area starting from large maps to small, then designate on the intended target. Vehicles aren't really a pre-planned target that you use the radar for. This is only really useful for GPS denied environments, otherwise for a pre-planned strike you just drop a JDAM on CAT I coordinates given to you by intel and call it a day. It's also useful for GPS denied environments in updating the mission nav computer by mapping then updating off geographic features with known coordinates. Don't expect to be jumping in DCS F-18 and using the A2G radar to find targets often, the TPOD is still going to be your primary means of finding targets and designating. It offers something new and it will be helpful for finding convoys as long as you're approaching them from the right axis to avoid doppler notch, but unless you're in a hardcore sim community that makes strike missions complete with top-down target imagery to go with it, you're likely not going to use SAR mapping after trying it out a few times and will go back to the ATFLIR.

My guess for DCS F-18 is that it will look and perform the same as the F-15C and A-10C RWR. Symbology and function for DCS F-15C RWR is quite different than what the TEWS on a real F-15 does and looks like, which is understandable because it's all pretty classified.

I don't know a lot about the MK-20 fuzes, but with normal CBUs it is normally cockpit selectable height adjustment that I don't think is in DCS AV-8 yet but you can mess with in A-10C right now. Other than that, the MK-82 AIRS should have selectable fuzing for nose or nose/tail. Selecting nose means the bomb will arm but the chute won't deploy so it will perform close to a normal MK82, nose/tail means the chute will deploy for the high drag option. I haven't tested the fuzing options in DCS to confirm if that works with A-10C or AV-8, since pretty much all the time I'm just using JDAMs and LGBs. For now I just use N/T for everything in DCS. Usually just N alone should fuze the bomb and it will detonate on impact but the aircraft holding the tail solenoid closed won't have any negative effect so doesn't hurt to have it selected as well.

It's displayed on the visor but it's actually just over where the right eye sees through the visor, so right eye only. I think F-35 has it both eyes but for 4th gen like F-16, F-15, F-18, etc. the display is only on that one part over the right eye. Not sure if it is aircraft specific for what is displayed on the visor, I imagine it is. In F-15s it will show pretty much all the HUD info plus a cross for center of the display, heading for where you're looking (with the top heading bar where the jet is pointing, bottom has just the numbers for your heading) and degrees to the side you're looking. Can also put on horizon crosses to 90 degrees left and right which is useful for flying tactical line abreast, just put your flight lead where the cross is and you're perfectly in formation as long as your headings are the same. Only real cockpit customization you have is uplook bias for AIM-9X stuff, displaying the horizon crosses, and when the display blanks (always on, off when looking at HUD, or off when looking inside the cockpit.)

Why are the only options either lose or obliterate? It will have a slight advantage in both but not obliterate.

Show of force or strafe... or incompetent piloting/doctrine of Saudi pilots. They are by far not the best pilots of western aircraft. Pleasantly surprised by Singapore eagle pilots from my experience, I imagine Japan and SK has good pilots too. Don't judge any aircraft based on its use in the middle east because it it always a mess.

I'm excited too, would love to experience navy ops. If it is accurately modeled I assume it will be a small community with how difficult carrier ops can be. Have experience with others who can barely manage basic formation... if this shows an indication of how carrier ops will go, it will be a fun show to watch. I did some Su-33 carrier action back in LOMAC days but not really since then and I did okay, so it must be easy :smilewink:

Can see it being user input error, as most of the time when pulling the high AoA like that in game I'm defensive trying to defeat gunshots so not really looking at the AoA in the HUD. Eagle does some visible shaking in the game which helps at the high AoA but it doesn't quite replace the different levels of buffet feeling you get from the actual jet, surely. I still believe some of the high AoA maneuvers I mentioned earlier aren't as effective as they should be based on tests with other guys telling me when they are pulling the trigger to cue me when to start, but I might just have to practice it more in DCS.