av8orDave

Hey all, Do any of you F-14 experts know if there is any way to get Jester to enter MGRS / UTM coordinates as a waypoint? It looks like you can do so with Lat / Long, but I don't see any way to enter MGRS. Am I missing anything, or is there any other way? Conversely, is there any way to get the DCS default JTAC to give you a 9-line with Lat / Long rather than MGRS? Thanks in advance for any help!

That is awesome news if accurate.

I think the most commonly cited number is that it had 147 air to air kills in Vietnam, so yes, it was capable. Were there gaps in it's design? Probably. Were there gaps in how it was employed? Probably. Still a capable fighter. I'd have a hard time making a case that it wasn't the best fighter of the Vietnam War. Another consideration when thinking about how effective the F-4 was in Vietnam was that the missiles it employed objectively sucked. The AIM-7 had multiple issues, with the motor frequently not firing at all. Most stats show about a 7% - 8% hit rate. The AIM-9 fared slightly better, but still only hit 10% - 15% of the time. There's probably no need to even discuss the AIM-4. I think the biggest flaw with the F-4 is that the aircraft was built around the concept of using air-to-air missiles as it's primary weapon, and those missiles were at a very early and unreliable stage of their development, and when they didn't work, the F-4B, C, and D had no other weapon to fall back on (ok, maybe the -C and -D had a poorly-boresighted gun pod on occasion).

This is a big consideration. If you look at loadouts used by the A-6 in Vietnam, for example, they weren’t carrying 12 or 18 MK-82’s because they were bombing multiple targets… they were carrying them because they’d have to ripple them off over a half mile area to try to hit anything. You don’t need to do that with precision weapons, eliminating the need for massive loadouts.

Nope, didn’t change my mind about the F-14. No surprise that a career Eagle driver prefers the Eagle to the Tomcat. Did you think that he’d come on and say “you know, the Eagle sucked and the Tomcats always owned us”? The only real “objective” feedback I’ve ever heard about the Tomcat’s shortcomings when compared to the Eagle were that it lacked an effective way to positively ID an aircraft in a busy airspace environment, while the Eagle’s NCTR capability allowed for a better ability to ID aircraft. This has been a widely reported story about the F-14 in Desert Storm. My experience has been that when it comes to DACT/BFM, whoever is currently doing the talking had the better aircraft.

Just as FYI, GBU-24s in the Tomcat currently won't kill an ammo dump. I tried V/T for mechanical with INST electrical, V/T with DLY 1, and V/T with DLY 2 and it still doesn't do anything. Just sets it on fire. A delayed fuze works in both the Hornet and F-15E.

I hope it helps and works! Good luck. I agree, having to start up and uncheck the VR box is a pain.

Well that seems like a major gap in the AI implementation.

You’re missing the point, I think: You don’t need the box checked to run DCS in VR with the “force_enable_VR” shortcut. Uncheck the box, leave it unchecked, and use the “force_enable_VR” shortcut when you play VR, and the non-force enable shortcut otherwise. That is the point of the “force_enable_VR” shortcut.

Can George target objects other than units?

Yes, there is a way. This is how I run DCS; I use my "force_enable_VR" shortcut when I'm flying VR, and I use my regular shortcut when I'm not. You need to un-check the "VR headset enable" selection in the DCS options. The "force_enable_VR" shortcut should still force the VR startup, while the regular shortcut will not.

Does anyone have any F-14 photos suitable for use as desktop wallpaper? Everything I can find online is super low-res. Thanks!

Yep, I should have included that. Bloom effect isn't doing anything to help the cause.

Some thoughts are below. I'm sure you'll get plenty of "advice." Here is what works for me: 1) Turn anti-aliasing to DLAA, and upscaling to DLSS. 2) Turn sharpening to 0.5 3) Terrain textures can be High unless you don't care about them 4) Shadows can theoretically be high 5) Turn flat shadows blur to off and Civilian Traffic to off 6) Turn clouds to low; some will disagree, but in VR the visual improvement from low to med to high is minimal but comes with a performance hit 7) Turn scenery details to 0.5 8 Turn preload radius to 60000 9) Set pixel density of 1.3 in DCS 10) Very important: Once you start up the game, hit Ctrl - Numpad 1; this turns off ASW, which will drive your FPS to 36 (with a TON of ghosting) anytime your system can't maintain 72 FPS 11) Finally, I'm getting better performance and visuals out of Virtual Desktop than I am out of the link cable. If you're interested in VD settings, glad to share but not going to type it all out unless you want it. Good luck. Just as some commentary, you'll see conflicting advice about ASW (some people think the stable 36 fps is worth the crazy amount of ghosting), conflicting advice about whether to set pixel density in DCS, Oculus Tray Tool, Oculus Desktop Tool, OpenXR Toolkit, etc;. Setting it in the DCS settings is what works well for me. Additionally, I get a nice performance boost from using MBucchia's QuadView Foveated Rendering tool, which does work in fixed mode with the Quest 3 and provides a nice improvement in FPS.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I’m not using OpenXR Toolkit.

It isn’t just tankers. Radio 2 isn’t working at all, best I can tell.

Looking for some help from ya'll: If I take the Quest 3 off to step away for a minute while DCS is running, when I come back and put the headset back on, it shows the timer/hourglass thing, no image, and eventually DCS crashes. Is there any way to get it to just pause and remain on? Thanks!

As in literally using no waypoint? Ok, here goes: 1) Select JDAM as weapon in VIS mode 2) DMS up to select HUD as sensor of interest 3) Hold TMS up to get the aiming cross on the JHMCS display 4) Look at the desired target with the cross and hit TMS up short; you can then slew the TD box around with the HOTAS controls 5) TMS down will undesignate 6) repeat on your other target Having said all of the above, getting a JTAC 9-line, entering it as a waypoint, and going from there is definitely the better method.

Oh man the metroliner! Cool plane. If you're having to fiddle around that much, you're probably seeing a bug. I just tested a mission out of curiosity, and I input MGRS coords from a JTAC, got HUD and JHMCS cues to find it, input another set of MGRS coords, again got good cues to find it, etc. No issues on my end. If you move the TGP or radar around after selecting a steerpoint, you have to cursor-zero it for a new steerpoint, but outside of that, it's pretty darn straightforward. I actually find the F/A-18C switchology much more difficult to work with.

This is really an interesting thread in my opinion. I find the Viper to be by far the easiest jet to work with on air-to-ground. Here's why: - In the F-16, pull up the TGP page on an MFD, select the steerpoint you'd like on the UFC, and the TGP is looking at the steerpoint. Make the MFD your sensor of interest, move the TGP to the target, and TMS up and boom, you're good to go. Doesn't get any easier. - If you're working off of a JTAC 9-line, you select waypoint 21 - 25 on the DED, enter the 9-line data, convert it, then select the waypoint and boom, you're good to go. Where are you getting sideways?

Agreed, I see the same issue. GBU-31 V3 does no damage to the ammo dump regardless of fuzing.

So to directly answer your original question: - The F-14 can only guide Sparrows at one target at a time, but multiple Sparrows can be fired at that single target. Firing a second Sparrow at a single target won't trash the first missile. - The F-4 can do the same. It was common practice in Vietnam due to the low reliability of many aspects of the Sparrow. Sometimes the motor wouldn't fire, sometimes it would fail to track, etc, so pilots started launching a couple to try to up the likelihood of a successful shot.

Where'd you get the idea that the F-14 can't guide multiple Sparrows to the same target? To the best of my knowledge, nothing prevents this. It just can't guide multiple Sparrows to different targets simultaneously.

Great review! Out of curiosity, what are your system specs?

I'm seeing the same thing, and coincidentally I have very nearly the same system (Ryzen 9 5950X, Vengeance Pro 64GB DDR4, 2TB m.2, RTX 3080). Getting 90 FPS in Persian Gulf, 60 - 70 FPS in Syria. I was getting really consistent framerates in Syria prior to 2.9.