BlackLightning

You may or may not wish that Napalm was simulated in DCS, but I think that you shouldn't write disrespectfully about child soldiers, victims of Napalm, etcetera. I hope that someone edits his/her posts. I don't know what you have been through in your life and I don't consider myself better than you. My grandparents have been soldiers and they explained me that people should not joke or even talk without respect about certain subjects and I agree with them.

Other things to consider, IMO: -if we can’t have pilotable modules, at least we could have civilian AIs. -There are situations in which civilian and military aircrafts interact with each other; these ones come to my mind now: -military planes escorting politicians flying on civilian planes, - military planes warning and, if necessary, attacking, civilian aircrafts flying over areas where they should’t fly. -We could experiment/train by doing things like trying to escape a fighter while flying an Edge 540.

Reading the General Design and Systems Overview chapter in the F 14 online manual I’ve pleasantly noticed that there are links from some words to the chapter in which they are explained and that after having visited the linked section we can just go back to where we were reading by pressing the back button of the browser. I hope they’ll use links a lot because I consider it pretty user friendly.

Congratulations to those who are building full scale models for an immersive experience. I would actually just like to know know some dimension that I could use as a reference for my field of view level. Sorry but I haven't read the Whole thread, it's so long by now... . Sometimes zooming in is useful, but I'm afraid it's not realistic. For instance, if I know that the diameter of the airspeed dial was, let's invent, 10 cm, I could place a ruler on the monitor, measure the dial and keep the field of view so that the dial measures 10 cm, because if I did that in the real aircraft, I would get the same result. Having the dimensions of rudder pedals, for example, would not be useful because they are supposed to appear smaller due to perspective; what I see on the monitor should have the dimensions of what I see on the instrument panel. Am I right?

I wondered the same thing. It seems to me that it closes when you open the throttle past a certain point. If we knew for sure what makes it disengaging, that would help us with the awareness of its status. Unfortunately, many of us don’t use mirrors because they lower the FPS.

When dogfighting close to the bandit: “Show me your pilot’s shit!”.

Confucius said: «I hear and i forget, I see and I rememeber, I do and I understand.» First of all, personally, I think that, in order to learn procedures, it's instrumental to practise them. I can read a manual or watch a video, but usually, unless it's something simple, I need to practise what I'm trying to learn in order to understand it and learn it properly. Of course you need a source of info to know what to do... I think that video has its pros and cons. One of the pros you guys haven't mentioned is that you see the buttons and knobs being activated in the cockpit and so, even if you didn't know/remember where the doohickey to control something is located, you can learn it fast. Honestly, when I read manuals sometimes I struggle because I don't know what they are talking about and I have to go back to the controls/instrument list chapter to see where the doohickey is located and maybe there is a picture showing a cockpit with numbers aside each dial and the list of descriptions doesn't fit the page and so I have to read the descriprion in the following page, go back to look at the picture and then go back to the chapter where they mentioned the dial. I see mainly two ways of learning an aircraft for myself: •I study the manual like I were about to have an examination and move to the next chapter only when I know what I've studied by heart. This feels more like a professional approach to me. •I watch videos and familiarize with the airplane; I just learn some reference values like rotation speed etc., then, after I've got a decent grasp of it, I read the manual to find out details. And, in either case, I practise. EDIT: And thanks @Victory for his work.

Ahah, that's the spirit! Actually, I was just downloading the installer at that low speed and now I've just downloaded the update much faster. Mmmh, I don't know whether I'll start the download of the F14 today if it'll take that much.

I didn't notice the part about the need for the Open Beta in the pre-purchase page and I didn't switch to OB, so I'm doing it now, although the download speed is like 50-100 times slower than usual; I guess ED's servers are very busy for the release of the F14. There was a warning on the pre-purchase page; I can't deny it. I just think that, considering how everybody is excited about this new awesome module and considering how quickly people started to pre-purchase in the first day in which it was possible to do so, HeatBlur could have warned people better, for instance by writing in bold "make sure to have the OB version" in the first post of the thread whereby they published the release date. Not a tragedy, though: I will just start using it another day.

I have a FTTC connection that usually lets me download @ 10 MegaBytes/second on average with peaks up to 14 MB/sec. I'm upgrading from Stable Version to OpenBeta to get the F14 and the current download speed ranges from 100 to 250 KiloBytes/sec.

All this questioning of the Harrier has given me a problem. When I downloaded it I was aware of the fact that I am quite ignorant about navigation, systems, communications and weapons. You know, when I read you people stating that the 1993 model of a certain aircraft had the XYZ type of a certain gizmo I always envy your knowledge and I wanted to learn, possibly living that stuff. Since I am not the kind of guy who should be a soldier in real life, I thought that using this simulation of a modern aircraft would have been a good way to learn something while having fun. So I bought it and used the Pocket Guide, Chuck’s manual and, more frequently, tutorials. The problem is that when I do things a little complicated like using laser guided weapons or CCRP I often miss the target and take too much time to release the weapon or don’t manage to do things properly in general. At first I thought that after all this is a study sim and probably it was my fault. However, I’ve read so many times comments about bugs in the systems and features still WIP and therefore i wonder whether the fault was totally mine or, at least in part, of the simulator. Since learning like that is frustrating, I’ll wait until it’s completed and fixed and in the meanwhile I just do things like some ground strafing with the gun, CCIP bombing, aerial refuelling trials and operations with the nozzles like short takeoffs.

Thank you for the tool. I guess one should become used to estimating the values by gut and/or to making an instrument from some modern glass cockpit calculate them for him, but in the attachment you can see my method for doing it properly (but way too slowly).

Thank you for the video. Does the wake turbulence of the tanker affect the refuelling much?

As far as I kow, Heatblur has never written anything false about the release date: "target of December, guarantee by Winter" is still possible. On the other hand, when you want something badly and you know that maybe you will get it tomorrow, then tomorrow you will wake up and check whether it's available. After days in which you realize you can't have it yet, it starts feeling frustrating. I'm not a salesman, neither a coder, but IMHO as a consumer I think that if you are planning to release something on date X, then the range of dates should have its beginning closer to X than its end. I also guess that the stated range of dates affects the motivation of the team who is working on the product and I can't know whether the choice has been good in that regard. Dear Heatblur, it must be tough to work hard and then have that hard work questioned; after all, usually not all the satisfied customers contact you to tell you they are satisfied, but all the unsatisfied will. Customers satisfaction and perceived quality can give some headache and I think that release time is part of quality. There are cars whose interiors are refined, whose doors close with a nice sound but have problems from time to time: the perceived quality was good but the actual reliability is not and yet a Youtuber who reviews the car will describe a good overall build quality. I've heard rumors of companies that decided to save money on the final quality inspection of their products, deciding to leave it to the end user: if it's faulty, they will replace the product and the user will think "what a great company, they replaced the product right away". If you had delivered the Tomcat in April after having said that you were expecting to release it in May, maybe people would have been happier than now... who knows.

No, he/she does not‼

I've read the latest news and they say that there is wake turbulence in the Open Beta: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/news/2019-02-01_LunarSale/. There's a video, too in Wags' channel: I have the stable version; I'm looking forward to trying it.

I have them, too and they are my first pedals. I've used them for only some hours and so far they are satisfying to me: I keep their rubber pads clean and they don't slip when I press/push the pedals, they are precise and accurate, they slide smoothly. They are included in my FCS Flight Pack with throttle and stick. Mine are connected to the TWCS throttle via an RJ12 cable and the throttle is connected to the computer via USB, but I've seen an unboxing video in which they show an included RJ12→USB adapter for the pedals bought independently.

Thank you Victory205, I appreciate that I've just read an explanation by someone who flew the real airplane. Yes, if I got it right: a rule of thumb to begin flying the F14 is the following: the higher the AoA, the more rudder is needed to roll the aircraft and we can estimate the AoA by considering the amount of buffet. Therefore, the higher the buffet, the more the pilot needs rudder to roll. I think I get this, too: by looking at pics I've seen that the engines are lower than the dimensional center of the aircraft and I guess that they are even lower than the center of gravity. So, when thrust is increased, the F14 will pitch upwards. Well, this behaviour sounds more common; I think I've experienced this (but not in real life) with Flaming Cliffs 3 jets.

@12:48... I didn't expect it either: I have never considered that missiles produce jet wash, too. After all they may be small but they are very fast, so that makes sense. I'd like to see some aerial refuelling and formation flying, too and hear/read consequent comments about the jet wash. I'd also like a demonstration of how to use the controls to manoeuvre the F14 in which we can see how the pilot is supposed to use the rudders. Thanks to Jabbers for the video and congratulations to Heatblur for the amazing work.

Usually, when I learn something from a tutorial I like to double check; in the case of their tutorials I watch other people's tutorial, I read the manual and so on and as far as I can tell they usually don't give misinformation; sometimes Cap just wonders «what's this gizmo?» and another one answers «I think that it's used to...» instead of giving a certain answer. I have not researched thoroughly about this like checking 1000 pieces of info and stating that X% were right, Y% partially right and Z% totally wrong and I don't think that I should either: those who make allegations should be the first to prove what they say before anyone has to defence oneself or others (basically I am extending the principle of presumption of innocence here). And it doens't seem to me that they misuse a serious simulator for arcade purposes: they just introduce people to the aircrafts in a comfortable way. For instance, they show you what you have to do to just arm the guship and shoot something and this is especially useful when you are a layman and you may feel frustrated by using other sources. Cap behaves just like the guy who sits in the cockpit for the first time and has to start somewhere and they guide that guy to do stuff. That said, I agree about the fact that they don't seem suitable for a pre-release bugged version, but I hope to see their tutorials when the F 14 will be released. By the way, I also wish Cap to heal completely and to have the strength for withstanding all his sufference.

Thank you very much again, Jaguara5, that's exactly the kind of detailed answer i was looking for. So now I know what to do: I'll start from Batumi loaded with missiles and I will fly towards Tbiliasi and shoot down people with only guns: my kill ratio will pass from 1:7 to 7:1!!! You know what? Just for the sake of precaution, I will land somewhere and get some BVR missiles. Ahahahah no, don't worry, I am just kidding; actually, I will make sure not to enter the guns only space unless I have only guns. Happy new year!

Thank you for the reply. Could you please be more specific about the words in bold? Is there a certain area identified by coordinates or by names (for example: between Gaudata and Gelendzhik) where it is forbidden to use guns? Or is there an entire dedicated separate Caucasus map for that? I'll explain why I'm asking: I am afraid that those few times in which I hit and killed someone using a missile it was because I had just entered the guns only area and killed someone who was not able to shoot a missile back to me. Ok, this makes sense to me. Thank you!

Hi to everybody. I played a little in this server in 1.5 until 2.5 happened and then I haven't been able to do so till recently, when I upugraded my GPU. My kill to death ratio is something like 1:7, but I like this server a lot and I have a lot of fun! It's far better than fighting AIs placed in the mission editor because I am facing humans... I don't know exactly how many they are right now, where they are heading to, how good they are and so forth. And maybe a missile is travelling to me and I don't even know! Let me take a glance to the side! Very exciting! I just don't like it so much when there are too few people and I have to wait much for an encounter: let's hope more people join us. I have two questions: What does it mean that there is a guns only area? Is it an area on the map where it is forbidden to use missiles? When I shoot a missile I don't think about where I am, honestly, and I don't know whether the target has only guns. Why aren't there radar guided missiles and their countemeasueres chaffs?

I actually know very little about how computers render evey frame in real time, so I just thought that a higher level of detail is likely to need a better rig, but i may well be wrong, hence I asked.

It really looks like an amazing module, congratulations. I wonder the same (read my signature and you’ll understand why). Is it goong to need higher requirements than the other modules?