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Well, there´s been at least two real life Fighter Pilots in this thread alone who tried to help you understand the difference between a computer game and real life (something close to 100% of people here do understand) and why one sentence, torn out of context, might have led you to such a mistake. It´s not our job to make you understand and instead of choosing to learn and broaden you knowledge you chose not to. So far I have "read checklists" with enough comprehension to fly safely and professionally real-life military and civilian aircraft for decades - and to be amused by individuals with zero RL background making bizarre comparisons between Computer Games and Real Life

The "no" was to the idea of "Real Life Flying being different to Computer Gaming" as being airframe specific. That difference exists for any airframe. I´m absolutely sure that I´m not the only one flying real aircraft - never thought or said otherwise. And of course there are a lot of differences in flying different aircraft like those you mentioned - I don´t understand your question? "Thus I still think that AAR per se is not always harder IRL than in a simulator." - Without going into the semantics of what "harder" means (sts) one can easily imagine somebody playing DCS with a keyboard and 10fps, that will definately not be easy. But that´s beside the point: The Discussion was about somebody thinking that "if one can do it in DCS you can do it in real Life" and such ideas of comparability. The answer was and is: Nope. Being able to do fine in DCS (or any Computer Game for that matter) doesn´t mean much IRL.

Of course Sim can be harder than Real life - but only for those, who can do it in real Life and find it comfortably easy there. Of course it is "harder" for _them_ in a Game - as it´s a different thing. It´s faulty logic to interpret this as a statement like "if you can do it in a Game/Sim, you can do it in real life". Also a quote like "FYI, the T-38 and so on does not teach flying. " is another huge misunderstanding of Aviation and Gaming you´re showing. There´s quite a reason why T-38 starts with a Contact Phase and why almost everything done in T-6 is done again in T-38. A high performance Jet flies rather differently from a T-6, one learns all that while flying the T-38. And a lot more as the envelope expands dramatically. The T-38 in fact teaches very, very much of flying. No, you don´t always need/do Sim-Lessons before going to the real Tanker. The first time I refueled from a KC-135 was from - the real one. That´s a bit airframe specific as ours didn´t have a fancy Dome-Visual - but it´s nothing we need anyway. At this point in training we´re flying fingertip comfortably which is more complex than following a tanker. It´s just about getting to know the sight picture (and getting used to CG-changes). Sims and VR are a Training-Tool for very specific parts of Training. They hardly replace any real-world-flying, they add to it. The huge Difference between a Computer Game with it´s Limitations and Real Life is obvious to almost everybody here and anywhere else.

You misunderstood. It's not about real life to Sim, that sme success doesn't surprise me. It's all about your misconception of the other way round: Sim to Real Life If you really think handling AAR in any Sim makes anybody without RL Training "ace real life AAR" (in any jet), you're just warping reality. As you clearly stated you have no experience in a real military fighter, so you can't do a comparison. I have, Kirk has, all my fighter pilot buddies visiting me and enjoying a round of DCS have - and there's no discussion about one thing being a (enjoyable) Home Computer Game/Sim and a huge Gap to real Life Flying. Also you misunderstand my EL Buddies saying stuff like "Viper is so easy to AAR", etc. It's from their point of view, they don't seriously think anybody without real life experience in fast Jets could do it without seriously endangering everybody. We tend to downplay things to the public, it's a mistake to take that literally. Don't take it personal, but: In the end this is really not a discussion we can have as you don't even know what you're comparing. If you think you could hack it in real life because of dcs - do so. I've had a 10year old kid in my Cockpit yesterday after the flight and he seriously thought he could learn flying that airliner from memorizing some buttons. We say "absolutely", but we're not seriously believing it for a second. If you do - go ahead, I don't care. I've seen enough real world experienced GA and Airline Pilots struggle landing/handling a fighter in our professional, military full motion sims. I've seen enough people struggle in professional airline sims despite gazillions of MSFS Hours. You can believe those who actually know what they're talking about - or live a phantasy. Just don't tell anybody with RL Jet Experience, he will laugh. And speaking of difference due to me being from Europe (did my military Jet Pilot Training in the US): I'm just phrasing it more politely than my American buddies would do...

No, I never flew the viper. But I think you take them too literally. Of course everybody needs some time to adjust to PC-Hardware, 1G-only-environment etc - which is why the irl learned mechanics don't work right away. That's normal and leads to "Dude, having trouble here which I don't have in the real jet". That doesn't mean the real aar is anyhow easier - just a different thing. The step to pretending the jump from a known PC-environment to a real aircraft is anything but a way bigger and harder switch is pretty obviously a misconception. You can be as proficient in dcs as you want - you'll never "ace" real life Aar without learning it irl before. There's some benefit from training in dcs, switchology and maybe sight pictures - but that's it. It's a bit like saying "drive need for speed on a PC and you'll be able to drive a fast car well" - there is a tiny amount of truth and a huuuge amount of exaggeration in that sentence and it's mostly said for entertainment purposes.

I´m curious: In your experience - with which aircraft do you find it harder to do AAR in the sim compared to IRL? Because that statement obviously holds very limited value without having experience with the real one.

I´m pretty sure that whoever wrote that funny text has never flown a real military fighter. It´s not about translation, the whole lingo is as off as are the statements given. I trained and flew with dutch Viper Drivers, they´d never mix up commonly used concepts like names, terms, visibility, ergonomic aspects and avionics the way that fake-quote does. The Floggers radar was never praised, their whole concept of GCI-centric intercepts obviously not a testament of what some people on the internet think air combat for them looked like. Their RWR-Gear was bad, training minimal etc. Anything can kill you and complacency has no place in Air Combat - but the internet is attaching a value to the Flogger the real military aviation on both sides knew never existed. Which is, as I said, also what our very own Flogger-rated Pilots said. Their strength was in the numbers employed, not the individual capabilities. Yeah, logistics were one reason - but by far not the dominant one. Way more important was their uselessness - bad avionics (radar and RWR-gear were a joke), minimal Range/Endurance, whole different design-concept (point defense fighter), extremely bad visibility, bad flight characteristics, yada yada yada. There was nothing those two birds offered in 1990 that other jets already in western inventory couldn´t do better. They were used for some time for intel gathering, quite good training - and that´s it. Radar in the HUD (when you want to call those two birds´ rudimentary radar-hud-interface that way) is a bad idea - and only partially usable if the radar supplies as little information as theirs did.... Swing Wing might be nice in some Air-Mud tasks or for getting long times onstation like for the big Cat - it´s not an advantage in the air-air world. Well, for the adversary it was always nice to get a huge signal in the sky about the others energy state - and the swing-restriction under G was helping anybody fight a flogger - but I digress... Oh, and there´s way more layers of complexity IRL than "get to M1.5, shoot, kill" - gosh, what easy our job would have been were it as simple as that

Guys, don´t fall for such fake Internet-Quotes. That "Leon van Maurer" is only quoted in various Forms on some Internet Forums, there´s nothing more to it. No reference to his name, no facts, just some made-up Quotes by - well: somebody. There´s enough official books out there referncing the real trials with Floggers in the US and why pilots didn´t like the Flogger at all. The fake-Quote posted above is full of rather obvious BS and some Sentences in it which make an real military Aviatior burst with laughing. For a lot of former Military Fighter Pilots of my time (and before) that Jet was a pretty well known and studied potential enemy - and no, it´s systems and performance were never considered anywhere close to newer systems - and worlds apart from that ridiculous Quote. Germany has detailed experience with using F-4F, MiG-29 and MiG-23 at the same time after the reunification. There´s a reason the Mig-29 went out of Service way before the Phantom did and the Flogger was way worse than the Fulcrum - as suggested by our data and confirmed by our former east-german Pilots. Keeping Floggers in Service (except for getting to know them) was never even on the table, for good reason. edit: That Quote is so funny... Like every sentence is. Nobody in RL mil aviation calls it the "Fighting Falcon" - but a sentence like "I thought I was piloting the best fighter, but when I later sat down in the Cockpit of a russian plane I realized, that I was wrong" had me in tears If you ever just sit down in a russian Fighter of that time you´ll immediately notice the ergonomic and visibility nightmare it really is. And this is even true from my point of view, as a former Phantom-Guy (not an Ergeonomic/Visibility dream itself...). The other sentences are about as funny as that one.

No, it isn´t airframe specific. I have flown civilian GA airplanes, different military Fighter Aircraft, pretty big civilian Airliners as well as their simulated Versions (professional and recreational/PC-based ones): So far I have never ever experienced any Simulation that is more than a good rendition of certain aspects of real Flying, sorry. It doesn´t really matter if you´re looking at Cessna-type-of-aircraft which you "master eyes closed in front of some Home Computer" and then fly for real at your local field or an Airliner you train on in a professional, full-motion simulator and then fly for real or you enjoy DCS in VR and compare that to real-world-flying in a Fighter Jet - it doesn´t get beyond a certain percentage of the real deal. There´s thousands of impressions, factors, nuances, feelings, "there is no restart-mission if you hit something" etc in real life. Best analogy I can come up with (sts) is that even the most high-res, 3D "Visual pleasure for adults on some screen" is faaaaar from the experience with a real human being That´s about the distance we´re talking here - which still leaves a lot of fun in DCS, don´t get me wrong! Just don´t forget about the huge gap between Reality / Real world flying and Simulation / Computer-based-Entertainment.

Actually all Airliners I know have a Heading Reference Switch to toggle True/Mag - which also affects the HSI, displayed Heading etc.While you normally use Mag there´s cases (high Latitudes, NAT etc) where True is used.

That´s why I wrote "on the deck". Even the F4 could/can fly supersonic at sea level, with the mentioned 4xAim9 and 2xWing Tanks and internal fuel on any ICAO Standard day with max AB. Plenty of jets can do that (Hornet is one of the Exceptions, if I recall correctly). I don´t know where the myth "no super at low level" comes from, but it´s 100% wrong. If you can get your hands on a -1 check the performance diagram for "level Flight Envelope" - you will be suprised... At high level it´s rather easy to push beyond M1.0 with stores. The F4 will go beyond M1.6 at high Altitude with the above mentioned loadout. Most of the times I flew above M1.0 the jet was not clean.

It´s getting a bit much OT here, I think. The (wrong) statement was "they _can´t_ go super with stores", which is just false for a lot of military fast jets. The question of a tactical use is a very different one. There are cases where a dash "as quick as possible" is not a bad idea and for the Pilot it´s really not that interesting if it´s M1.0+ or M0.999 - he just cares for his situation in relation to a threat. Running into fuel problems later might be the lesser of a problem... Also operating limits (be it speed limits, release limits, G-Limits,...) really are just for when you´re in training / planning to use the jet again. If you need to be fast as there´s a really bad guy in your six you just run with all the speed you can get and don´t care about limits.

There´s plenty of jets capable of supersonic lowlevel flight even with (certain) stores attached. For example F-4 with 4xAim9 and 2x Wing Tank could go super on the deck in max AB - other could do it, too.

Of course VR is better and I haven´t done it in ages in 2D on some computer, I´m only playing in VR. Having done actual AAR in real life I still feel there´s a bunch of factors not really simulated (or simulatable...) on any home computer. In real life there´s a bunch of aerodynamic effects and influences you don´t get to a comparable degree in DCS. You can use 100% of the booms range of motion and nobody will abort your refueling for obviously poor performance. You can fall of the boom in any direction and there´s no damage to either boom or aircraft. There´s no rough air throwing you around - you´re always sitting at 1G somewhere. You´ll never get blinded like the sun can in real life. The psychological difference between a Simulation/Game and using real aircraft with real value and real people is "worlds apart". Tanking in DCS for a few minutes might make your wrist sore - that´s nothing compared to how you sometimes feel while doing that in a real jet. In the game if you can´t hack the tanking it isn´t really a problem. In the real world your mission is in danger, your peers are watching and might be getting into trouble due to your f... up. I could go on and on, but you´ll get the point Yeah - it´s a good simulation, it feels pretty comparable, you´ll see the same mistakes you usually do in real life, but still... it´s a game. Without getting too much off-topic: you can fly nice patterns in DCS in VR, doing all the right things and procedures. Take a (rear) seat in a real jet and you´ll instantly see and feel the difference. Just like some other form of "Entertainment" which can be had in front of a computer - if you tried the real deal you know: it´s just not the same...

No, it isn´t.