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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.

While I do understand what you mean that "problem" only occurs because you skip all the stuff that´s done while the INS aligns in real life. I know it´s not really necessary in DCS, but IRL there´s stuff to do while the INS alignment is running. Some of those checks are done in coordination with the crew chief. In the F4 some of the checks are Speedbrake, Flaps/Slats, Flight Controls, Stab Augs, Air Refueling Door, Hook etc. For example you´d deploy the Flaps, check Elevator Aft/Fwd, Rudder L/R, Aileron Left and hold it there. Then you´d engage the Yaw Aug and (with the help of the Crew Chief) check if the rudder kicks a bit as required. Then you go Aileron neutral and switch off the Yaw Aug. Now you´d do the same with "Aileron right". And so on... I do hope the manual will include all/most of the checks done in real life - there enough so you will initially not be able to squeeze those in while the INS aligns. In other words: the INS will wait for you... Of course it´s really up to each player if those checks are done - but they are never skipped in real life.

Well, this is really off-topic, but anyways: Yeah, I´ve talked to a bunch of people who got danger-close support by A10s - very happy customers. And while time-on-station, loadout etc are important the most important thing still is the ability and training of the crew. There´s really nobody within the fixed-wing community who does more CAS than Hog-Drivers and nobody who is as proficient in that field. Just like about anybody with a radio can do emergency CAS there´s a huge difference to a trained/qualified JTAC. It´s really the same in the air - while a lot of platforms and units can do CAS to some extend (hell, even the Buff guys pitch in here) there´s a huge difference to a qualified Hog-Driver. CAS is really training intensive, you just don´t get to the Hog-Drivers level of proficiency by doing this half as much as they do. Which is why this discussion never ever exists in real military aviation and saying "hogs are bad at CAS" is probably among the Top3 things to show how little one knows about real military aviation. Having flown a different jet with a very different task I remember that as early as during UPT we got to experience the Hog-Communities focus on that stuff and I have never heard anybody from any other weapon system (fixed-wing) claiming they´d be as good in that field. There´s really no discussion IRL.

That must be a typo. The A-10 Community was and is King of the Hill in terms of CAS. That´s their primary mission, they do this all the time, the platform is good - within the RL military aviation community you´ll never find anybody who doubts the A-10 bros to be very, very good at CAS.

A bit late, but anyway: As pointed out in this thread the F-4 Gunsight (LCOSS) was rather rudimentary compared to later systems and it wasn´t a HUD. In the F-4F (ICE Version) one could use the LCOSS as a "poor man´s TD Box" as the Sight indicated the position of the aquired Target when in an Air-Air Missile mode and locked to a target (and within the rather small field of view of the LCOSS). As the ICE Changes were mostly radar/ins/databus/weapons computer I imagine the older F-4E to have the same ability, can´t say for sure though.

As pointed out by GGTharos and others: There´s a reason the saying is "Jack of all Trades - master of none". Part of it is due to the platform but mostly it´s about the training. Any dedicated Air-Air Unit spends 100% of their time training Air-Air - and they need all those hours to reach and maintain the highest level in their field. Even given unlimited funds -> hours a squadron would never be able to train each task to the same, high level. Any multirole Unit has to divide their Flighttime into very different areas - it´s a huge differrence when you have 200hrs per year and pilot and split that into Air-Air, Strike, CAS,... vs being in a pure Air-Air squadron using 200hrs to fly Air-Air. No multirole unit ever pretends to be as well trained as any specialised unit _in that area_. Platforms aside, A10s are great at CAS because they spend almost 100% of their time doing that. The light grey (F-15C) were "King of Air-Air" because that´s all they ever did. Dedicated SEAD-Units might even fly the same jet as other units do - they´re still way better in that area due to their training. Training matters big time. Any combination of very different tasks (Air-Mud, Air-Air) is a compromise due to limited resources. And that´s where the first quoted sentence is missing the point a bit: Desert Storm deployed a very well trained western Alliance with several single-Task Masters (like the F-15C, but also F-4G Wild Weasel, Tornado, EF-111, F117,...), their coordination and experience being boosted for decades by superior training (Red Flag is a pretty famous training revolution) to a level higher than seen by any "combat experienced" iraqi crews. Again: Training matters. For the capability of the Mudhen: It can do Air-Air but it´s made for Air-Ground, reflected in training and the very jet itself. To quote Toro, a real Mudhen-Driver: "If you want an A/A mission with an aircraft that excels at that mission, go C model. If you want a dual role aircraft that is designed to excel at A/G, go for the Strike Eagle. The Mudhens can't BFM for <profanity> against the Vipers and Eagles, but the other guys don't get to rage into a threat zone at more than 500 knots, less than 500 feet, blacked out, at night." (https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/topic/21493-single-seat-or-strike-eagle/?page=2)

Hi MudMoverGSH. I agree with your view on FF as mentioned in your first Post. There is some gain in realism - it´s just not as big as with aircraft where one can feel airloads on control surfaces. Also your point on HOTAS vs FF is spot on from my point of view. In the end it´s all personal preference, I guess (I´d recommend a good HOTAS Setup and some sort of jetpad/buttkicker - most feedback in military jets come via burble from the wings impinging on the stabilator/airframe and you feel it via the structure/seat, hardly via the stick. "Pull to the light tickle", "mice vs elephants dancing on the wings" etc are all in reference to that.) On the trim: Moving the neutral position would mean moving the stick if nobody held it in the desired position, yes. As the pilot usually holds the stick you just feel the forces change. Example: you feel the jet being nose-heavy. Now you start trimming back, the neutral point is shifted and therefore the forces at the current stick position change towards "tail heavy" - compensating the prior, unwanted "nose heavy". At the right trim amount you can now let go of the stick and the jet remains trimmed with the stick not moving when you let it go. It´s a bit cumbersome to explain, sorry That system/logic is widely used, even in airliners (talking non-FBW and usually aileron trim only. Pitch trimming is done via moving the stabilator). There you could trim the aileron while the autopilot has control - which completely masks the trim change as the autopilot is "the hand on the stick" in that case. If you´d now disengage autopilot you´d suddenly get back an out-of-trim aircraft and you couldn´t see that before as the yoke doesn´t move (That´s why manually trimming control surfaces with a moving neutral point is forbidden and results in an EICAS indication).

Well, then just work with us, this is not a contest. I´ve given multiple quotes above, including the official "Handbook", the -1. It says: "This provides the same pitch response (constant G) for a given stick deflection regardless of airspeed." And it says "Because of the automatic trim feature, the stick force required to maintain a desired g does not change with airspeed or configuration change." Also there´s a huge difference between "stick position" and "neutral point", as explained above. This system of changing the neutral point as rather common - I´ve flown military jets and airliners with a similar system. The constant stick force per G is explicitly mentioned in the system desciption I linked and quoted above. There´s even a graphic representation of it. So clearly just saying "it´s wrong" doesn´t cut it. So don´t get defensive but explain what´s wrong from your point of view.

Can you be more specific as to what is wrong from your point of view? We were only talking about pitch trim, not T/O Trim or Aileron trim. It moves the neutral point. Stick position only depends on where the pilot puts it. He trims (if required) to not have to fight the out-of-trim. This is achieved by moving the neutral point. Nobody said that. See the pictures and references given above. The -1 is pretty clear on this. The only question really is as to how much the manual trim needs to be used in Flight IRL despite the obvious effort of the FCS to keep this to a minimum.

Yeah, that´s correct as per the system description when using manual trim. It resets the neutral point, thereby changing the (unwanted) forces at the current stick position. Changing the position of the neutral point is just a way to changing the forces at it´s current position (trimming required out-of-trim stick forces away). Obviously the stick would only move during manual trim if you´d let go of it. IRL you have the stick in your hand and notice a continuous, unwanted stick force due to being out-of-trim - and therefore you´d trim manually. So the stick doesn´t change position but the forces you experience while holding it at it´s correct position change (there´s a ton of "sts" in those sentences... ). My question would be how often this is required in Flight in a real F15. The system desciptions all point at a rather automatic trim system with little manual trim input required. Not "none", but rather little.

@Rainmaker: So, are the references provided incorrect? They explicitly mention: "Remember, the Eagle flys at essentially a constant stick position for a given g." (https://www.f15sim.com/operation/f15_flight_control_system.htm) "The combination of feel trim, variable mechanical advantage, and series trimming gives the pilot, as near as possible, a constant stick force per G and keeps the stick pretty well in the same place in the cockpit throughout the flight." (https://www.f15sim.com/operation/f15_hydro_mech.html) Stick-Force per Deflection and per G: https://imgur.com/a/qnyrpD0 "This provides the same pitch response (constant G) for a given stick deflection regardless of airspeed." (TO 1F-15A-1, 1-28) "When airborne, the flight control system automatically trims the stabilator without affecting stick position to compensate for changes in trim caused by such things as changing speed, operating flaps or speed brake, or store separations." (same) Manual trim does move the neutral stick position - but that should happen when there´s an out-of-neutral position not covered by the automatic trim so the resetting of the neutral point should bring it back to where it was/should be while in-trim... That´s why I think we´re really saying the same. "Pitch response to stick input does not vary appreciably with airspeed, altitude, engine power, or configuration change" (6-1 of the Dash 1). That sounds not at all like the varying stick forces you get in your local C172 or any aircraft with unpowered flight controls. The Phantom, for example, has noticably different stick forces at different speeds (because those forces are introduced artifically by a speed-dependant system), the Eagles description doesn´t sound much like that.