Raisuli

Admittedly we have made a little progress. I did an A2A refueling followed by a 1 hour, 500 mile, 38 waypoint formation flight tour of Syria with an AI F-14A as lead (practicing my formations) followed by five minutes of A2A refueling to get some gas followed by realizing a landing with 15,000 pounds of gas in an F-18 is really hard on the brakes. Should have dropped the tanks, but I'm also practicing A2A refueling. This is where I started with flight sims in 1981:

Study level has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with fidelity of the model being created. Therein lies the rub; it's hugely expensive to create full fidelity, which limits what the producers can create, so they need to create wisely to recoup that investment. I'm one of the people who would rather have newer technology that's going to hang in better with a wider variety of opposition in my study level sim, but I'm also not trying to replicate a specific time period. For those of you who are 'early cold war' you honestly have my sympathy, because there are far too many of us who like shiny. Even if they model a B-24 I want the J with an Emerson nose turret, because that's what my dad served on. F4U? Give me the -4. P-38? Sign me up for an L. I like late war monsters! This is an aircraft that is in service sixty two years after its introduction and thirty one years after they stopped producing them. In aircraft years those things really are dinosaurs, and the technology changes since it was designed are simply nuts. Trust me I can relate, being something of a dinosaur myself. I remember Neil Armstrong walking on the moon...

Taiga rather than sand Trees. Swamps. Ice. Snow. Did I mention no sand? Mosquitos. The real kind. Bigger than the one in DCS, and a lot more dangerous. Can't wait for a real Mosquito to start stabbing the life out of that wooden monstrosity. Played a role from about the beginning of time to the end of it, which makes it practically perfect for every plane in DCS. The possibilities are virtually endless. There are some beastly air bases around there It's not a desert. It's not a thin strip of not desert surrounded by desert. It's not a delta of not desert surrounded by desert. When this comes out it will probably be my go-to, if only because there's not a trace of bloody desert anywhere near it. I swear, I will never pay for another map that is mostly desert. Probably not if it's even a little desert. Beach...maybe. We'll see.

Sweet! That gives me enough time to up my skill level on some existing mods. Might even be a good enough (virtual) pilot to do the Phantom some justice by then, and with three extra years of development it will be awesome! Incidentally, since you're so sure about this, what do we get if you're wrong?

So...phaser pods and photon torpedoes in the early release? Awesome! Feature Creep. Yeah, I get that. HB's F-4E is really just "Hello World" with a few extra 'features'.

Knowing what something is and knowing how to use it aren't quite the same thing, particularly in a game where the population density and consequences are greatly reduced. There's a reason pilots (and drivers) need licenses Not saying you're wrong, but just because something is easy, and obvious, for one person doesn't make it easy or obvious. I'm not a pilot, and I keep learning things people take for granted around here... I still remember having to do some trig to figure out what altitude I should be at what distance from the runway (and I'm still almost always high or low), and how to calculate TOD (because why not roll inverted, or just push, and go straight down?). I kind-of understand departure and approach plates just from looking at them so much, but actually following one? HA! Case III? You want me to what on which radial at who distance? And be at some certain point on a map when? HAHAHAhahahaha!

In defense of rules based server behavior, without attributing motivation to behavior, it's worth noting that in any public setting we do expect certain behaviors. People drive on the correct side of the road (whichever side that is). They stop at red lights and stop signs. They smile and say hello, or at the very least show some restraint and respect when encountering other people. On a server you're with a whole bunch of people you don't know, so you expect the taxiways to be used for taxiing, and people to use the correct end of the runway, or not damage the carrier by trying to land a Viggen on it, or look aft to see if (I'm) in the groove before taxiing into the landing zone (yeah, happened to me, but the guy immediately apologized). The people who don't? I try not to attribute to malice (or some unspecified neurological condition) that which can be explained by ignorance or greed. Meanwhile, just like in the real world, people are people and all kinds of things that seem silly to one person are perfectly acceptable behaviors to someone else. The chances you're going to 'fix' all behavior on a public server is asymptotic to zero, so apart from venting, which does feel good sometimes, I'm not sure what the argument resolved. Well, other that I did a bit of venting when I was on public servers, so I can't fault anyone for that, either. If you want honesty I think most of the problems with public servers is education. It's not an intuitive step from flying in your own world with no rules, especially for people who don't even know the basics of proper flight procedures. <edit> Fixed an egregious probability error </edit>

Mover is a freaking fetus. We're still not even sure if he's a viable fetus yet. That's how young Mover is. I do know his commentary on requirements for 'pilot' are a lot more lax than back when I took the flight physical. Qualified for NFO even with the crappy eyesight which surprised the heck out of me. The eyesight would have (probably) relegated me to riding on busses, though. Now I have 20/10 distance vision; former RO on the Nimitz took care of that 30-something years after that physical...

Ha! Interesting what people notice, because I paid no attention to the sound. I can't even tell you what it sounds like, and I flew it last weekend! I'm not saying it isn't important, just that it's not important to me!

I have one set up in a hardened shelter and take it out for a spin now and then. Can't seem to get the TACAN to work, AIM120s won't fire, and forget about GBU-24s, but otherwise it's a really nice change of pace. It's just plain awesome at Pyramid slaloming and can do maneuvers that would make a quail puke. Apart from which if you can manage energy in this thing a 'real' combat plane is a piece of cake. Probably the scariest bit is the difference between the external model and F1 view...where does that extra guy go?! Sorry you have buyer's remorse; that always leaves a bad feeling, but it can be quite a bit of fun for what it is.

No, the worst are the customers who wouldn't recognize a clue if you wrapped it around a LART and beat them over the head with it, then demand you fix their internal computer/networking problems because obviously it's all your software's fault they can't do anything. There is nothing in the (computer) world scarier than "my <insert relationship here> knows a lot about computers...". It's the people who think they know what they're doing that cause the most trouble. The second worst are the entitled gamers. I simply require HB to write their code to my specifications, which might change at any given moment. That seems eminently reasonable to me.

Deal. Come to think of it I've never taken off on a taxiway or landed a non-carrier plane on a CV on a server, but that was a full stop. Nice to know the rules.

Hula dancers? Tiki bar? This might be my new default start location!

Please pardon the potentially off-topic interlude, and maybe this belongs elsewhere, but the other obnoxious time is switching from F10 to F1 views, which can take several seconds. The sound immediately goes back to F1, but the map stays up long enough that more than once I had to wonder which way I would be pointed when I finally got the cockpit view back... Not sure if that's the kind of thing that will show up on a track; maybe an OBS video?

A switch would be nice. Seems like the commentary, particularly when it's time to work, is a Hollywood construct in the first place, but it a pilot/RIO pair would come to terms about cockpit discipline in the air. We should be able to restrict Jester to job-related comms and squelch the commentary. That doesn't seem overly difficult from a code perspective; just need a flag on the sound files, or even a sort into folders. Like everything, all it takes is time and the right place on a priority list. I'd like to think they'll go back and improve Jester once they get Clown written.

You found the secret indoor pool nobody on a carrier is supposed to talk about.

Zu-23 on a truck bed in a moving convoy; Sergent York would be green with envy. Pop a maneuvering F/A-18 at Maverick ranges with no trouble at all. Maybe they were popping me, because I'm an incoming fire magnet.

I use it out of pure stubbornness. It does seen the lightning is a better product overall, and maybe I should switch back. Far as I know the hornet is the only machine that uses ATFLIR and that would make it a RHSC in the time dominated world of development white boards. Besides, on those rare occasions when I drive to the seedy part of the airbase, desperately hoping nobody I know is watching, to engage in a sordid liaison with an F-16...

I've run into this with hot starts, so no helmet alignment. Haven't lost much sleep over it because it is, as they say, close enough for government work and I had any interest in reporting bugs here beat out of me years ago. I can set up a track for this easily enough and test it against a freshly aligned HMD.

So, I've found force trim is not my friend in a ground effect hover, or any kind of hover, really. It's really not my friend when it comes to anti-torque/rudders, and will take me for a serious spin sometimes and I end up full-boot to get pointed the direction I want to go. I can hold a dead hover at a fixed altitude if I use the auto modes, otherwise not so much. Working on using auto to get me stable, then turn it off and try to maintain that, and if I don't use the force trim I drift around but not wildly. All of which tells me force trim isn't what I think it is. Casmo needs to add a new item to his checklist after getting massively frustrated in the AH-64: Go get a book (currently SPQR by Mary Beard) and read for a while.

When I say 'I suck' getting shot down isn't the part I suck at. I could give master level classes in falling to earth in flames. Icarus was an amateur compared to me. So I do look with some awe at the youtube videos where people actually do well in MP. In the mean time I work on skills in SP, where my demise isn't met with glee by the score-padders.

Back when I tried on-line it would take about as long to cold start and get a mission plan together as it did to take off, fly into the TO, and get shot down. Then I got smart and stopped flying online. I did a cold start on the F-18 a few weeks ago just to see what had changed, but otherwise don't bother with it. It's very, very tempting to take those controls off the simpit because I simply don't use them enough to bother with it and I can interact with the aircraft by mouse the once or twice a year it might be necessary.

There's a can of worms question. There are a few things that might be possible to put in user files that would make updates more pleasant, but based on behavior ED doesn't consider it a priority.

I did get a rather unexpected bolter doing night time foul weather landings in mode 1, but nine times out of ten I'm in the wardroom sipping port when the LSO comes in with his whiny diatribe about my entirely hands-off approach. Hey, that's my carrier, and if I want to sip port in the wardroom I'm allowed.

I stand corrected! Says the guy with more than a few beauty shots as background screens. Of course those are environmental and exterior models, but that's a fuzzy line and I'm not wise enough to draw it. That will have to be left to the people who do this for a living.