Nomad

That's because they don't fight in RL as we do in the sim, and in the sim the paddle switch is very much necessary. If you fight any competent F-14, 15 or mirage without it, they will dumpster you. Not modeled in DCS, so irrelevant atm. Also from my understanding, using the override on a Hornet is not likely to cause such effects immediately, which is all you would care about in a DCS dogfight, so even if it was modeled in, it would still be a common practice to pull on that paddle 24/7.

Not another one of these pls. Show some real proof (charts etc) instead of the usual "I saw that this plane beats that plane on discovery channel!!" kind of nonsense. And btw, even then it won't tell the whole story because rl Hornet pilots don't use paddle switch for combat, but we do in the sim.

Except that it doesn't, so why don't you look again?

Event: 1v1 Squadron Name: Lonewolf Teamspeak/Discord: you can find me on Splash One or DCS World official discords. Contact person Discord ID: THD#3335 Aircraft Selection: F/A-18C Pilots: Sweden - THD

You need to sustain a bit over 8g for that turn which is quite a bit more than the 7.5 the hornet gives you. In fact I just tried this, and at anything faster than 380 it just keeps accelerating.

Btw, if you aren't already doing so, I would highly recommend to use the mission from here to measure turn rates, especially the sustained rate one, as it has a script which tells you if you are maintaining the flight parameters well enough for the turn to be counted as "sustained". You need to use the paddle for that, and the testing done by Pamenchan is without, which is correct if you want to compare the performance of the dcs planes to the rl charts/popular opinion.

You can get a very good idea of most of those things by just paying attention to certain details in the video.

THD Lonewolf Sweden 135ms F/A-18, F-16 Blue

The first bullet point (aspect angle definition) is in fact correct, just uses slightly different wording, while the diagram is wrong, the blue and green angle arcs should be around the target instead of own aircraft.

I assume the little numbers below the contacts are their altitudes, yes? This is a big plus over the Hornet because it gives a much better total global picture compared to only having that info on a single contact.

Oh but this was not aimed at you, but more in general, at an arbitrary forum poster who would find themselves unhappy about the performance of some aircraft and wants to let the public and developers know. If one wants to produce useful data, it is always best to stick to the most reliable measurement methods. That said, you contribution is welcome, although I kinda wanted to wait and let Hummingbird work it out on his own. ;)

The real lesson here is that it is always better to measure things as directly as possible if one can. You want to argue about turn rates? Measure the turn rate. Yes, they might be using the g load in rl, but it is most likely because it is much easier to just record data from an accelerometer than to determine an aircraft's exact position and velocity vector 10 times per second. But since DCS is a computer program, and we have full control over what happens and what information we receive, there is no reason to not do things in the most convenient way possible. TL;DR: use the goddamn rate mission.

Incorrect, what it shows is the vertical component of the force that acts on the sensor in aircraft's coordinate system. In simple terms it show how hard the seat is pushing up on the pilot's butt (but not his sides or back). When you are in a vertical climb, he is resting on his back instead while his butt takes zero pressure, hence you get 0G. Be in a climb that is anything else than 90 and you will see numbers on the G-meter. Same applies for bank. Hey, you can do a simple problem: find out what turn rate your plane is doing in a straight and level flight. First answer that using common sense, and then use the formula and see what you get.

There is another thing as well. For any non-90 degree bank angle your G readout will have a vertical component due to gravity, which will result in a higher readout than you'd get from just the turn acceleration. This will make it seem like the turn rate is higher, so you want to correct for that too.

Sigh... I guess I'll give up on trying to have you figure it out and just explain. Look, when you have a digital readout of a variable that's normally continuous from, say, DCS infobar it will be rounded, in case of our infobar the Mach number is rounder to the nearest hundreth, and the load factor to the nearest tenth. This means that a reading of M 0.65 for example is in fact anything between 0.6450... and 0.65499.... Same applies for the G number. Now if you plug in the min and max possible values in the formula you can see the interval in which the end result (your turn rate) can vary. ϵ_1 = 4.6499999 * 9.81 / (0.645 * 340) = 11.9 deg/s ϵ_2 = 4.55 * 9.81 / (0.6549999 *340) = 11.5 deg/s As you can see, the final result can vary by about 0.4 deg/s. You can write it as 11.7 ± 0.2 deg/s, or ≈ 12 deg/s, rounding to two significant figures as your Mach and G numbers. And this is just the measurement uncertainty, and doesn't include user error, such as failing to stay in desired flight parameters, and will likely lead to even bigger errors in the end result. This is something you can't ensure properly, which is why you were told to use the turn rate check mission, which not only provides you with assistance to maintain a good turn, but also calculates the turn rate directly from the change of your direction. If you want to have the G load logged, it is easy to modify the script, it's sitting inside the mission file. That said, there's still going to be some errors since the limits you have to stay in have some leeway (otherwise it would be way to difficult to do it) so ideally you should do a bunch of experiments around the same speed/g load, record the results, calculate averages, confidence intervals etc. Some work, but if one cares as much as you do, then why not? ;) P.S. There are better ways to do the above math, this is just more instructive. You can read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagation_of_uncertainty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significance_arithmetic

Indeed, if this ends up being close to what real pilots say about g-tolerance, it's going to be great and probably the biggest "buff" the Viper can get. If on top of that they also let it sustain 9.3g as some people claim it should, it will certainly be quite competitive.

You need to be careful with stuff like this, sometimes it could appear to match but only due to luck with the numbers you are given. Let's say you added a bit of extra thrust in your example and are now pulling 7.5G instead of 7.3, with the rest being the same (TAS = 564 knots = 290 m/s). What bank angle would you have? ϵ = Gg/v => ϵ = 7.5*9.8/290 = 0.253 rad/s = 14.52 deg/s (old turn rate = 13.75) bank angle = arctan(14.52 * 564 / 1091) = 82.4 degrees, which on the digital readout that rounds to the nearest integer (like the DCS infobar does) would still show "82". No, the numbers are just rounded off. While the steps are indeed "quantized", just like anything digital, those steps are nowhere near 0.1G or 0.01M (you'd feel very noticeable "bumps" if it was like that). Check for example this picture of the modified turn rate mission output, the really long numbers at the bottom are coordinates from which most other things are calculated, and I have the M number show 6 digits:

Would love to just discuss numbers, but it is difficult to do so without occasionally having to question the competence of people who don't know how to work with experimental data properly and use arguments such as "my 13 ± 0.5 result is clearly larger than 12.9 on the chart, so the flight model must be changed!" I mean, how else is one supposed to explain? Thanks for cleaning the thread up though.

So the fact that you are getting a 4 figure result from an obviously rounded off 2 figure measurement does not bother you at all? You don't deal with experimental uncertainties in astrophysics or what? No, the funny part was how you copied the derivation of the formula symbol for symbol from that website without any particular reason, you could've just said "ϵ = Gg/v". This answer is not complete (and incorrect), you should check what I wanted you to do again.

Congrats, you managed to copy a formula from a page on the Internet. Now tell me, given the precision of the measurement results (G and M you get from the infobar) the game can provide, what would be the uncertainty in the result and how would you report the result correctly. E.g. given M=0.65, G=4.6 from the infobar, what is ϵ? And the above is assuming you can actually manage to hold the flight parameters static enough without assistance, which I doubt because it isn't that easy. Using the rate check mission gives you that assistance.

At slow speed where it turns like a brick. While the 14 can match the 16's best rate while needing less speed and thus having a smaller radius, which does matter and you know it. Could that be because they don't routinely over-g it like people do in dcs? There's quite a bit difference between going 450-500kts and having an ability to pull 10g to trade speed for angle and still come out of that with a nice 350kts versus having to start at those 350kts because otherwise you will just overshoot if the opponent does anything. And btw there's plenty of articles written by pilots where they say that Hornet's nose authority is a very strong point, you just choose to pretend they don't exist. So why don't you stick to discussing the F-16 alone? There's enough documentation available for it, unlike the 18, to analyze, so that you don't need to base your arguments on "some pilots say that 16 is better than 18 in dogfights, but it isn't in game, pls nerf thx". To even do this you should at least try to understand the reasons the DCS Hornet is stronger in BFM compared to the real one, and protip: it isn't because it "might" (don't even have detailed documentation, so essentially unconfirmed) be turning some 0.2 deg/s faster in a sustained turn. It does seem like the F-16 is underperforming in certain aspects, but to show this you don't need to compare it to another aircraft, in fact even ED themselves explicitly stated that they don't take such comparisons seriously. Use the available data for the F-16. This is wrong in more ways than one: firstly the methods you use are prone to producing errors because there is nothing that forces you to stay within set flight parameters, you should use the sustained turn rate check mission instead. And second, you convert two different two-figure measurement outputs into a three-figure result which is an incredibly amateurish mistake, because you should know that since school, if you paid attention. This alone makes me doubt about you having any background in the subject beyond the aero for dummies course you linked. Show me some real documentation about the 18, similar to what we have on the 14 and 16, not just some random report which contains 2 data points. Send through PM to not violate forum rules. I prefer to read proper textbooks when looking into something even for hobby purposes, in this case I have this one. So don't need your link, but thanks for your concern. You though, should read up on significance arithmetic and error propagation, or better yet stop skipping science classes to play DCS if you're still in school.

How about not going for it unless you know you'll hit, then you won't have to deal with all that falling down like a rock stuff and further unpleasantries? Also, there's more nuance to it than pulling on the stick until you're at 50 knots, you know. And do I need to mention the slight differences between DCS the video game and real life and how that affects the decision making? Also, how is DCS Hornet's FM bad now? Because you think it's off by 1% from some chart? (let's assume it's real). Yeah, horrible FM, ED should totally rework the whole thing from scratch.

F-14 also has a very good ITR and small turn radius, while F-16 has neither. These are the reasons it does so well, not just STR alone. You do care though, otherwise you wouldn't be constantly comparing the two, posting in every 18 vs 16 thread and demanding changes on the basis of "this plane should beat that plane because I read that somewhere on the Internets". It does turn slightly faster, but not by 1.1 deg/s. 2019-11-20 20:53:38.567 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: Counter, Alt(m), GS(km/h), GS(Mach), Turn Rate(deg/s) 2019-11-20 20:55:06.236 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 0 4489 876 0.756 12.7 2019-11-20 20:55:43.139 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 1 4519 927 0.801 12.8 2019-11-20 20:56:57.777 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 2 4561 1206 1.043 10.1 2019-11-20 20:58:55.718 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 3 4598 939 0.812 12.6 2019-11-20 20:59:53.584 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 4 4571 968 0.836 12.7 2019-11-20 21:02:37.962 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 5 4572 849 0.734 12.3 2019-11-20 21:02:57.849 INFO SCRIPTING: TR: 6 4587 813 0.703 12.0 This could be specific to the Hornet, or something general like how DCS models the atmosphere. Too lazy to check if the Viper's performance matches right now. Could also be that the "12.3" figure is fantasy because there is no proper document about F-18 performance, just random stuff from the internet that people assume to be true. You impress me more and more, not only do you have the ability to highly accurately predict the performance of any aircraft by doing a quick calculation on a napkin, but you also only needed to go through an "aerodynamics for dummies" course to do that! Do you happen to have 180 IQ?

Let's put it this way, if I pull hard, shoot and hit you, who cares how slow I am after that?

Wowzers, an entire 0.2 deg/s! Which is a whole 1% of difference!!!11one. This is obviously a conspiracy because such things as measurement errors, differences between individual aircraft (in rl), and slight and acceptable modelling deviations in DCS could never possibly combine to create a difference as enormous as 1%. We should boycott all ED products until the Hornet's turn rate is adjusted to 19.2 because this will change everything and it will get absolutely dumpstered by the Viper in a dogfight and order will be restored. I think you should have a chat with Boeing, Lockheed Martin and all those guys, because I believe they are still wasting their time testing this stuff with real airplanes and wind tunnels and such, which is obviously retarded because it takes you five minutes to easily calculate it on a piece of paper.