bies

Early F-16A were whole lot lighter, Block 1-10 weighted 7 tons empty, about 2 tons lighter empty weight than our late Block 50. And maneuverability is more about wing loading, not T/W. F-104 Starfighter had fantastic T/W for its time with big wing loading and that's why, regardless of its T/W, it had terrible maneuverability. And all F-16C were nose heavy carrying much heavier (and also much more capable) APG-68 radar and other avionics. Another thing is F-16A could fight on full afterburner way longer than fuel hungry GE engine later variants which had to use it to compensate for mass increase. Real pilots flying them:

Original "B" would be great, it entered service in 1961, together with all other faster/higher generation of fighters like F-104, F-106 MiG-21, J-35, Mirage III.

It looks like F-4's flight control system was quite complex for an aircraft which entered service in 1961, i guess it's a challenging task to code all of that.

Oh, now i know. Yes, that would be awesome in DCS.

What means 20mm or 40mm sparrows?

DCS Cuban Missile Crisis.

Isn't Tomcat to receive pilots in cockpit in the very next patch? Maybe it would be beter ask him to make a pilot mod for some other aircraft without pilot on a horizon, like F-5E or Mi-24?

It is whole lot better to model slightly earlier radar win reasonebly realistic way, that modern as totally unrealistic and made up, having nothing to do with real counterpart.

One thing to add, when it comes to the title: simple rudimentary Cold War IR sensors on aircrafts like F-101 Voodo, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-106 Delta Dart, J-35 Draken, MiG-23M, MiG-25PD, F-8 Crusader, F-4B Phantom, F-14A Tomcat, MiG-29A, Su-27S etc. - had totally different capabilities compared to PIRATE FLIR/IRST used by Italian, Spanish and British Eurofighters. PIRATE works similar to radar, capable of detecting and tracking multiple targets with incomparably greater range due to sensitivity order of magnitude greater compared to Cold War IR systems and big advances in computer technology. It works like TWS tracking some 500 targets at once computing their positions, coupled with helmet sight, possibly identifying them etc. Details are obviously strictly classified.

Thanks, this older videos were both accessible and informative at the same time. Many newer ones are often either extremally scientific or needlessly sensational for total amateurs without any knowledge.

A-7 Corsair, it's well into the developement with many milestones reached when A-6 is waiting in line for its time when HB is focused on finishing F-14, Viggen, releasing F-4 and helping TrueGrit with Eurofighter.

Pilot's body looks awesome, fingers crossed for the update!

Practically any aircraft on this list would be awesome.

Is Kola Peninsula being modeled as 1980s with numerous Soviet military bases still online?

Today i've heard my virtual Hind mate for the first time. He has such a nice calm voice. Great job ED recording his lines!

It works perfectly, thanks.

Hi, are some newer DCS modules not supported? I use my pad without problem for most modules, but Mi-24 or Mirage F.1 causes some error:

Last time i've heard an interview with F-22 USAF pilot. He stated F-16, due to its small size and crosssection and blended wing-body shape is notoriously hard to detect from the front when intake is masked by the nose - even for cutting edge F-22 radar, incomparably more advanced and sensitive than our 35-15 years old conventional mechanical small antenna F-16 and F/A-18 radars. This is obviously classified technology, but older mechanical small size antenna radars were far from perfect detection devices we have right now. With ED implementing more and more phanomena influencing radar operation our radars will have even more limitations then there have right now.

So we are waiting for curved DCS Earth map

Probably historically relevant either A/E from Vietnam war and operation in Kambodia or "F", final variant with powerfull engines and higher flight performance used from mid 1970s, through 1980s, taking part in El Dorado Canyon operation, up to Gulf War 1991. F-111F being the best variant overall and F-111A/E being the best in relation to its timeframe opponents/interceptors/SAMs capabilities. Both would be equally exciting.

You would like to have additional controls for single soldier, like FPS, inside DCS, to walk armound, shoot personal gun etc., something like Call of Duty? Do i understand correctly? Well it would be nice, an ultimate experience, but i guess it's absolutely impossible from technical standpoint, it's not a matter of intention. Imagine DCS map is 450,000km² when Call of Duty map is like 25km², 18 thousand times(!) smaller. There is a reason for that. Theoretically you could add a few commands to lie down, shoot a gun etc., but compared to typical FPS graphics quality, number of details inside 18 thousand times bigger map, detailed animations, weapon parameters, infantry AI, physics of every single infantryman bullet, gun, recoil, gunsight. Now add reasonable number of infantryman, like what means even 100-200 soldiers inside 450,000km² map - total emptyness, then armored vehicles, artillery, tanks, support weapon, all reasonably detailed to have reasonable experienced. Technically impossible. It would overhelm NASA supercomputers. Operation Flashpoint / ArmA serie tries to take the best from both worlds compromising both of them as well. But it is not even close to DCS when it comes to aircraft enviroment, you are circling around crossing the whole map in 20-40 seconds of straight flight and it has significantly smaller level of detail than typical "small", "staged", linear FPS at the same time. Even balancing DCS scale to accomodate both jets and helicopters offering attractive experience stretches the engine to the limits. Let alone reasonable experience around single infantryman.

There is an interview with Lt. Col. Fred "Spanky" Clifton, experienced aggressor pilot, with 500 hours in MiG-29 alone and way more than 1000 hours in different NATO jets. He was one of the members of MiG-29 evaluation program. He conducted a lot ot mock air combat flying MiG-29 against whole lot of different NATO fighters evaluating many different tactics from NATO and Warsaw Pact syllabus. The whole interview is long and very interesting, he was praising MiG-29 for many things, helmet sight, performance etc. but IRSTS absolutely wasn't one of them: https://jalopnik.com/how-to-win-in-a-dogfight-stories-from-a-pilot-who-flew-1682723379 In short using IRSTS like a radar replacement with cold war technology aircrafts like MiG-29 and Su-27 is not realistic at all and when ED release weather component influencing all IRSTS/FLIR sensors it is going to be usefull only in a very specific situations for which it was designed to be used, like high altitude, good weather bomber interception during extensive radar jamming. Such IR sensors were being used since 1950 for this purpose in most interceptors like F-101 Voodo, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-106 Delta Dart, J-35 Draken, F-4 Phantom, MiG-23S, F-14A Tomcat, MiG-25PD, MiG-29, Su-27S/P - in short in any fighter planned to be often used in an interceptor role. In tactical fighter variants like F-4E, F-14A they very often dismont it, replacing it with different more usefull sensor or avionics. (Modern PIRATE Eurofighter's sensor is totally different beasts according to the pilots, but this is basically very advanced FLIR, aided with modern fast computers, capable of detecting much smaller heat emisions and tracking many targets at once from relatively big distance, not simple infra red sensor. But is is still prone to adverse weather compromising its parameters.) BTW: "nerf" term has nothing to do with DCS since it is made for realistic representation, not artificial balance "buffing" and "nerfing" sensors to equalize different aircrafts for the "MP win rate".

Who knows, when it comes to this examples light grey fighter F-15 seems realistic and beneficial. But Maybe Razbam will surprise us later on? Current Harrier is made by Razbam and the only 3rd party considering making different variant like Falkland War Sea Harrier is also Razbam. Fighter Viggen - Heatblur, having Swedish coders and gathering big amount of information for Viggen module, contacting with Swedish military, if they woundn't be able to make fighter variant nobody else wouldn't be able as well. Super Hornet, considering Boeing refused even the oldest one with basically identical avionics as our 2005 Hornet, it would be completely pointless to make just a new external 3d model and FM and repeat the whole 5-6 long years of extensive work of bunch of experienced ED developers... Just to repeat all the rest for some 3rd party copying the whole ED work. Tornado, i guess it would be British Tornado, like GR4, but British are refusing to model anything even remotely recent from their inventory, let alone fairly recent Tornado GR4, some developers said in the interview they refused GR1 and refused 1980s Sea Harrier old Blue Vixen radar basic parameters. Just British policy i guess, it's not an accident we have 0 British modules more recent than WW2. And GR4 was a virgin variant anyway, with long range standoff missiles, subsonic with dismounted ramps in air intakes replaced by steel rods, with 2 sensors below the nose disturbing airflow for the engines at higher speeds, with disabled terrain following radars. Just bunch of classified electronics and airliner-like flight profile. In most cases it is just far more reasonable to make completely different airframe.

Making different variants of the same airframe by different companies would be really bad idea for 2 reasons: 1) Lack of uniformity. Many identical systems, shared between different variants, would be made in a different way only because two different 3rd parties would use their own, different approach to model such IRL identical systems. They would even look a bit different externally and internally is places that should look 100% identical. 2) Wasted parallel work time. Some 50% of the whole work of both 3rd parties would be wasted, wasting whole lot of time for nothing - external 3d model, big parts of the cockpit, gauges, logic of different shared systems, hydraulic, sensors, devices, avionics etc. - already done by other developers being work on again for no reason. Big amounts of wasted parallel work, wasted manhours. Different variants are great, but not being developed by different 3rd parties.

2000s digital avionics, glass cockpit, GPS Apache or Warthog obviously have nothing to do with 1980s damaging whole atmosphere. There is already many 2000s servers if i want to fly Apache or Warthog. But looking at current DCS modules being developed right now 1980s late Cold War is going to be filled with biggest amount of period correct full fidelity flayable machines among all periods; A-7E, Su-17, A-6E, MiG-23MLA, Tornado IDS, F-4E, Bolkov 105, early Kiowa, Kfir. We already have F-14A/B, MiG-21bis, Mirage F.1, F-5E, Mi-24, Mi-8, UH-1 extensively used during 1980s. Most FC3 MiG-29A, F-15C, A-10A, Su-25A, Su-27S. No need to take 2000s digital / GPS 2000s modules making the server generic like any 2000s server. I suspect it might have something to do with many period correct modules are still being work on. Great idea creating this server and such setup. Keep up!