bies

I like the "other game's" VR head restriction, it works good for me and it gives me no nausea or other negative effects. I know both options are compromise: nausea for some guys vs. "cheating" by looking outside the cockpit and immersion breaking.

It was worth to wait for the reworked external model, it looks great. Can't wait to seat inside the cockpit.

Post Desert Storm and fall of the USSR i agree, but it's true to all of air combat, both A/G and A/A. Near zero risk, hendicapped opposition, mud hut bombing with GPS self guided bombs or LGB, loiter an hour on station, refuel, loiter another hour, release JDAM from 20,000ft to kill few helpless terror guys, RTB. During its prime F-15A and C performed super exciting MiG hunting air superiority missions shooting down over 100 enemy aircraft in air combat in all out wars during 1982 battle over Bekaa Valley Lebanon War and 1991 Desert Storm Gulf War. Eagle scored all MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-29, Su-7, Su-17, Su-25, Mirage F-1 and even a few helicopters including Mi-24.

Exactly. And it was not even true as F-15 was not completely a single role. USAF wanted it to be like that (USAF just wasn't stupid to use such expensive aircraft to drop some bomb and get shoot down by accidential AAA hit), but politicians forced McDonell to make it compatible with dumb bombs CCIP and it had the capability. But the "not a single pound for air to ground" remained. So F-15A or C had not smaller A/G capability than i.e. Su-27S, MiG-29 (which ED wants to do), F-5E and similar aircrafts which are allowed to DCS. And as you said there is lot of pure single role A/G modules. There is a great book about the F-15 written by the real F-15 pilot, commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing Douglas C Dildy "F-15 Eagle Engaged The World's Most Successful Jet Fighter" and he described how this forced A/G requirement influenced F-15 fire control computer and dynamic launch zone calculations. Edit: Oh, and IIRC Matt didn't say "we won't do F-15C because it was pure A/A" , but he said something like "being pure A/A it had to give first place to multirole F-18 and F-16". And that's the difference. But obviously word of mouth started to distort the meaning with time.

I use it in IL-2 to have important aircraft engine regime limits. In DCS i use kneeboard for similar purpose, it can be edited similar to IL-2 cockpit picture.

Block 30 - the first Big Mouth from 1980s and Desert Storm - has the best T/W, acceleration and climb rate. Better listen real life F-16 pilots who flied all the different F-16 variants, not Forum Theorist. Pilots called F-16C "lead noses" due to heavy radar inside the nose deteriorating maneuverability, but offering better detection parameters.

Is there even such a thing as "competitive players" in DCS now? Maybe I'm picking on, but this sentence sounds a bit cockily. I could imagine "competitive players" in WW2 warbirds, Korea or Cold War jets when you actually have to have the skill - which take many months - and most things depend on the pilot, the things he is doing manually, putting the thing on the thing, firing guns or some simple rear aspect position requiring IR missiles, controlling an aircraft by manual flight control system etc. Hell even late Cold War like Tomcat you have to work hard and really know what you are doing to make a good use of the raw radar system. Or support Sparrow/R-27 missile all until the hit. But how could the AMRAAM exchange be a competitive activity? What is to compete about here? It's all too simple to be better than the other guy. You accelerate, press the button before MAR and run. You have roughly 50% chance to win. I've been doing that for slightly more than a year, sometimes it was more fun, sometimes less, but i would never name it a competitive activity. Or maybe it's not even an AMRAAM exchange, but as @Sajarov said, the swift and effortless execution of the 1980s MiG-29 with totally different era AMRAAM armed 2007 F-16? Developers are modeling what they are allowed to model. Remember all the details of the AMRAAM and similar modern missiles are classified. What man can find on "Wikipedia" or other publicly available www pages is mostly BS, speculations or insignificant parameters.

Yes, FM will be revised. But it won't be same drastic change, more like fine tuning I guess. It's FM is already done true to the NASA wind tunnel tests report, ED is doing a great job. F-16 we have right now is simply very late variant post cold war block 50 CCIP around 2007. According to DCS it weighs some 9000kg empty... It will never be as maneuverable as early F-16A in BFM which was more than 1/4th lighter with exactly the same wing and airframe. Different era, different purpose.

What an irony, F-16 has been designed together with "The Fighter Mafia" as an ultimate dogfighter and the second smallest amount of people like it's BFM performance... I guess we need to wait for some early lightweight F-16A with pure maneuverability to show who's the boss in a knife fight.

IIRC Nick said in the interview they have a very talented guy coordinating AI work. On the other hand i doubt any advanced AI FM can be implemented right now before the multithreading because the main core is already hard pressed with calculations.

Realistically after the USSR collapsed and symmetrical opponent disappeared nobody was going to pay for the new high performance aircraft. Even an F-22 has been barely saved, drastically reducing the orders and chosing only the cheapest options, resigning many capabilities etc. It's changing now with the new symmetrical opponent rises, this time it's China and we will see some new high performance aircrafts in the next decades. But overall the period from 1991 fall of the USSR/the end of the Desert Storm untill ~2017/18 definite rise of China - is the most boring and stagnated 25-30 years period in history of military aviation since WW1. Zero even semi-symmetrical advanced technology conflicts, just a mud hut bombing of helpless opposition, old 1970s/1980s airframes upgrades until they are simply badly outdated, no symmetrical opponents just the US dominance, all advanced programs either severely delayed and trimmed down or completely cancelled.

+1

With all respect, I'm not even going to say you are wrong, but instead i'll say you cook that up. Without the data which we'll never see, we can never say one of the two very similar missiles is more maneuverable than the other If anything, real life pilots talking about the Meteor missile, stating it's lot MORE maneuverable than AMRAAM because it still has the propulsion in the final phase of the interception, when AMRAAM has reduced maneuverability because, except the first few seconds, it just glides to the target without any propulsion. And having the thrust even right before the impact is a big deal.

My opinion about the Superhornet in DCS is as follows, only very early Block would be available in the future (if anything), from around 2005 just like our legacy Hornet. Avionics of such early Block is close to identical to legacy Hornet. The only significant difference would be the longer legs and added pylons (added drag) at the cost of highter speed bleed rate in the turn due to increased drag, not worth. And I like the more proportional legacy Hornet look more, plus it's more zipper airframe, nimble, faster to respond. My opinion about the Superhornet as a real aircraft is, such medicore upgrade over the legacy Hornet two decades later (instead of fielding new cutting edge airframe A-12) has been accepted only because the Soviet Union collapsed and the US Navy budget shrinked and performance ceased to matter nearly as much as when US had the real opponent. In many ways it was a downgrade of an F-14 the Superburg was meant to replace. Compared to the leap USAF did from the F-15 to the F-22 at the same time is an eye opener. Superhornet did well guiding precision munition bombing helpless or nearly helpless opposition, but it wouldn't be an optimal solution for some serious air combat against an advanced and competent opponent. Too slow, too draggy, too low thrust to weight, to high speed bleed rate in the turn, too slow acceleration, to low ceiling etc. And even then it's biggest advantages - by far - would lay in it's modern advanced electronic warfare capabilities, which would be omitted being totally classified and impossible to model in any public simulator.

As long as there are real relevant aircrafts like MiG-29A, Su-17/22M, Su-25A, Su-24, MiG-27, MiG-25PD to name just the Soviet ones, possible to model in realistic way, with real documentation, with SME input and cooperation, with license etc. - making some unrealistic guesstimated prototype, working completely different than the real aircraft, would be a mistake. I remember the Mi-28 in the "Apache vs Havoc" game, i liked to fly this helicopter in the dynamic campaign this game had. But it was obviously totally unrealistic with just some extremely simplified declassified Apache systems, symbology and logic working on a Soviet-era CRT monitor...

For me the Hind. It requires more effort, it's more engaging, pilot is manually flying the helicopter, gunner is looking for the targets and manually aims the missiles. I love legacy mechanical devices like the Hind's map with cursor and Doppler sensor. Or simple fan. Mi-24 behaves like a helicopter, with tail rotor. And it looks badass, both exterior and Soviet green cockpits. Ka-50 we have is practically a prototype, a few of them were built and tested. Mi-24 on the other hand is serially produced legendary helicopter built by the Soviets in thousands and used in many real life wars all around the world. Plus i like 2 seat aspect - if i want to play solo Petrovic my friend is doing the job, but when I want to fly with the friend we jump into the helicopter and look for the bad guys. Ka-50 is way different, way easier. It has GPS navigation so you always know your perfect position. Missiles are automatically guided with auto-track. You practically always fly on autopilot even on semi-manually director mode, you rather tell the autopilot what to do than pilot the helicopter. But it is fun as well in a different way. PS: Both have this nice atmospheric Soviet vibes, Hind more for sure since it's a Cold Wars legend, but Ka-50 has been designed during 1980s, fall of the USSR simply didn't allow them to finish the project.

I've noticed at this point we have practically Zero proper Cold War maps, 2 WW2 maps and 5 post-Cold War. Any proper Cold War map would be massive improvement of the current situation where all 1950-1990 modules have to fight over modern day cities; Korea, Vietnam, Fulda Gap, Northern Europe East / West Germany, GIUK, Iraq, Libya - anything.

The West / East Germany Cold War would be the best. But Fulda Gap 1980s and Desert Storm are practically the same aircrafts. It's only a few years difference, i see the first Gulf War as the last final battle of the Cold War. Only after the Gulf War things changed for the worse, Soviet aviation collapsed completely reduced to a small fraction of the former power, AMRAAM turned the air combat upside down and made merge way less probable and less needed, low level bombers like F-111 or A-6 has been retired in a few years, F-14 and F-16 were practically turned into a bombers, training level and risk have dropped in the NATO and practically collapsed in Russia. All ambitious western programs like the F-22, Eurofighter, Rafale had been delayed by a decade and Soviet/Russian like MiG 1.42 was terminated completely. An era of helpless mud hut bombing begun.

That's what I call a low hanging fruit. Having all of this work done making the final step and full fidelity module out of F-15C would be relatively easy. Just like ED plans to do with the MiG-29 9.12 But unfortunately now we will have to wait for the F-15E first, not to inter interfere with RAZBAM F-15E sales.

According to US Navy 4th generation airframes, regardless of upgrades, will not be survivable in 30 years. Too short legs, no weapons bay, big RCS, big heat signature, low electric output to support the new electric devices, too slow, no supercruise... Super bug has been developed, instead of the new high performance navy fighter, because Soviet Union collapsed and nobody needed the new and expensive advanced high performance "Tomcat of the XXI century". Raptor for the USAF has been nearly cancelled as well.

Very dangerous yet necessary job. Respect to the guys doing it back then. And training to do that in case of "round three in Europe". Overall Tornado GR.1 / IDS in DCS attacking Soviet / WARPAC targets in Europe would be a blast. One of the most tense type of missions i can imagine. Flying at 200ft in bad weather, possibly at night, over the enemy territory, with INS, drift, moving map, avoiding detection, SAM, interceptors, dodging AAA and attacking using simple aids to aim the bombs.

Just three basic variants like F-14A GR95, F-14A GR135, F-14B: F-15A since 1975, the lightest and most nimble, the best nose authority, 7.5G, tempramental PW100 engines (with VMAX switch!) and initial analog weapon control panel. This variant together with F-16A decimated Syrian air force in 1982 over Bekaa Valley. F-15C since 1979, enlarged internal fuel volume, 9G full envelope and overload warning system (over G!), digital central computer PSP, slightly improved radar. F-15C MSIPII since 1985, upgraded avionics with TWS, NCTR, RAID, built in ALQ-135 ECM, improved RWR, improved radar, digital weapon panel. It's what we have in FC3 right now as low fidelity, used in Desert Storm, later integrated with AMRAAM and used to the late 1990s.

I hope MiG-25PD can be done after the MiG-29A. Fox at definitely has it's own character and quite a combat history in the Middle East. It would be like MiG-21 on steroids with nearly everything being bigger and more powerful. Very similar cockpit as well.

For the Iraqi forces we will have practically everything in the future; flyable MiG-21bis, MiG-23, MiG-29A, Mirage F.1, Mi-24, Mi-8, Bolkov 105, Su-22, L-39 + AI MiG-25, Su-24, IL-76 Ground assets: AAA: ZSU-23-4, ZU-23-2, ZSU-57-2, Bofors 40mm SAM: SA-2, SA-3, SA-6, SA-7, SA-8, SA-9, SA-13, Rapier, Roland Tanks: PT-76, T-55, T-72 Armored vehicles: BMP-1, BMP-2, MT-LB, BMD-1, BRDM-2 Artillery: 2S1 Gvozdika, 2S3 Akatsiya, BM-21 Grad, SS-1 Scud ZIL-135 Truck and many more. For the Coalition we will have FC3 F-15C MSIPII and analog A-10A, F-14A and B, A-6E Intruder, A-7E Corsair, OH-58D + AI E-3, E-2, AH-64A, AH-1W, F-117, B-52H, EC-135, S-3A (F/A-18C, F-16, AV-8B, F-15E maybe could kind of mimic Gulf War legacy variants without Link16, JHMCS, different engines, LANTIRN, AMRAAM, GPS guided bombs etc? But it can be impossible to limit their avionics and systems in the game.) Missing Tornado GR.1 with JP233, F-111F, EF-111, F-4 Ground assets practically everything except for M1A1 Abrams. There are M60A3, HMMWV, M113, M2A2 Bradley, LAV-25, MLRS, Hawk, Patriot, Roland, Vulcan etc. All of that in proper Cold War / Desert Storm variants.

It's always a compromise. You can't obviously see the eyes since pilots wear glasses, googles, visors but Heatblur's F-14 level animations when pilots look around the cockpit add lot of life, realism and authenticity. Especially for the bubble canopy planes where the pilot is a big and very well visible part of the aircraft.