fat creason

Pretty much.

I stated in the post above that the chart I included was at 6.5G sustained. Alright, here's a chart at 5000 ft showing turn rate and G. Same loadout and weight as above (8000 lbs fuel, 8 missiles). At ~330 KIAS it can sustain 16 deg/sec at about 5.5-5.8G. However, it can sustain something like 7G near Mach 0.8, albeit at a slightly lower turn rate. Hope that adequately addresses this point. Again, this is false. Some basic research (like the first hit in a Google search) would reveal this. Additionally, there is no difference in the inlet geometry between the engine types, just a slightly different AICS ramp schedule to accommodate the different airflow requirements of the two engines. The point of your posts in this thread is not clear to me. The only "hidden G limiter" in the Tomcat is the pilot's ability to not GLOC and/or structural failure of the airframe. It would be beneficial in the future for you to do some basic fact checking before you start typing. It's my expectation (and most others?) that you do your homework before you can have a meaningful discussion here. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.

@Mistang If you look at the excess power charts it's very clear the F-14B can sustain turns way beyond the 6.5G "limit", with 8000 lbs of fuel and 8(!) missiles. It's hard to not call that a "realistic load" (I assume you really mean useful load here). It has more than 300 ft/sec (equivalent to 18000 ft/min climb energy!) of excess power while holding 6.5G at Mach 0.8 at sea level, meaning it has tons of extra power to climb, accelerate, or add more G above 6.5 while maintaining speed. It isn't until about 8000 ft @ Mach 0.85 that it can no longer sustain 6.5G. That excess power also increases dramatically as weight and drag from those stores and fuel is reduced. I'm not convinced you really know what you're talking about here. This is also false. The F110 is far more advanced over the TF30, and it has nothing to do with inlet geometry.

Read the rest of this thread please. Then post videos that demonstrate your claims, otherwise this post is meaningless. Thank you for your concern!

No. It will be in changelog when it is....or maybe I'll leave it out and see if you guys even notice

Please read this thread if you haven't: TLDR; there's not much we can do regarding control input. It's all handled by DCS and we have no ability to influence what we're reading from the input layer.

You're right, but the point is that the infobar is showing you a TAS speed that doesn't include winds, which is misleading since it's not showing you the airspeed the plane is actually "feeling". If I'm waiting on the runway with a 25 knot headwind, the infobar TAS currently says speed is 0 while I really have 25 knots of extra wind over the wings. That's incorrect and that's the issue. It's not reporting the speed of the aircraft relative to the airmass which is the very definition of TAS.

In that old post I said that ED doesn't provide any FM tools, which is true. I didn't say we lack a test system or tools. Those tools still take large amounts of time to run and set up, so the statement about test coverage gaps is still true when time is a very limited resource. The main thing the tools provide is the precision and repeatability needed to properly analyze the FM to determine what changes need to be made. You can't do that by hand-flying. The infobar "TAS" shows a speed that is (TAS - winds) which I refer to as "inertial speed", so technically not TAS. If you have zero wind, it displays actual TAS since TAS = inertial speed when wind is zero. It does not show groundspeed, you can check this by flying into the vertical and seeing that the speed does not decrease. Groundspeed is also not inertial speed, inertial speed being a term for "actual true movement speed of the aircraft in the simulation".

TAS is the speed of the aircraft relative to the airmass through which it's traveling, which obviously will include the wind's effect on the airmass relative to the aircraft. If your aircraft speed measured relative to a stationary object is 200 knots and you have a 200 knot direct tailwind, your TAS will be zero since the airmass and your aircraft are heading the same speed and direction. Read this for more explanation. Groundspeed is just your speed across the ground (XY) plane. If your flight path angle is 90 deg (flying straight up), groundspeed will be zero. Obviously wind will affect groundspeed too. If you're flying perfectly level at 200 knots TAS with a 50 knot perfect tailwind, your groundspeed is going to be 250 knots (airmass speed = 50 knots, your speed relative to the airmass is 200 knots, 200 + 50 = 250 knots). That's why you always want wind over the deck or runway (headwind), it increases your airspeed to allow you to fly at a lower speed relative to the runway or carrier deck, making it easier to land and easier on the tires, etc... Think of an extreme headwind case: a 150 knot direct headwind aligned with a runway. Your TAS is 150 knots but speed relative to the runway (groundspeed) is zero. If you're on the ground and pull back on the stick you're going to climb and will look like you're in a hover. If you're in the air, your landing approach will look like a VTOL aircraft.

As long as the only value being used from the infobar is TAS and you have zero wind, you're ok. I just checked and confirmed that "TAS" in the infobar is definitely not showing groundspeed, but it doesn't account for wind so it's technically not actual TAS. In @captain_dalan post you can see the F-15C seems to be displaying EAS on all of its speed indicators. I'm not super knowledgeable on the F-15 but it's probably wrong, I've never seen an aircraft display EAS. Also brings into question the Mach indicator readout, if they're using (EAS/SpeedOfSound) that number is going to be way off compared to TMN. Keep in mind the error increases with altitude and speed. If you're low and slow, the numbers will start to converge and the error decreases. If you're on the deck at 250 knots with standard day conditions, IAS/CAS/EAS/TAS are all going to be within a few knots of each other. Mach 1.5 at 35000 ft is a totally different story.

Huh? I'm fairly certain this is the first time I've mentioned them, but I've also never denied their existence. They're a semi-recent development. The need for them arose when performance in the automated test system didn't match what we were getting in-game. I now suspect that might have been due to stores drag mismatch in the offline system, but the scripts are a nice-to-have for verifying things in DCS itself. When I'm done making changes I'll post videos of these scripts in action along with some data over-plotted on the EM charts. Now to further erode confidence everyone's in the infobar. IAS in the infobar should be completely disregarded for any technical uses; IAS data that comes from the API is the same as the infobar number and it's incorrect, especially when supersonic or at high altitude. The F-14 CADC's IAS output is correct and matches the chart posted here. Even the infobar's TAS does not match TAS that comes through the API nor TAS coming from the CADC prior to error additions. The difference in TAS between the infobar number and the value coming via the API seems to be wind speed, which means that the infobar "TAS" isn't accounting for wind. TAS from the DCS API and CADC generally agree, as does Mach number. In short, all data displayed in the infobar is garbage unless you have 0 wind and only then is TAS valid. See why it would be a joke to reference the infobar for FM development or testing? Now everyone should be even more skeptical of any user supplied FM test reports here. Your most accurate way of measuring speed will be the F-14's speed indicator, good luck reading it when hand-flying a stabilized level flight turn test while buffeting at 15 AOA!

I'm not sure you guys are understanding a lot of what I've been saying. The idea that we're tuning the FM by hand-flying maneuvers while staring at the infobar for TAS (and then busting out a calculator to figure out TMN) is amusing. Ain't nobody got time for that. The FM is not off because we forgot about the infobar or have been using some erroneous source. The FM is not off because we're using a bad value for airspeed. We know exactly how fast we're going (assuming DCS output is correct) and we have much better ways of getting that info than staring at the infobar, hence the reason it's ignored in the context of FM development. However for most of you here, the infobar is the only source of "truth data" so you guys are stuck with it, and it's wrong at least for IAS until ED fixes it. I've never bothered to compare the infobar TAS to the sources available to me, but it's probably correct since it would be really hard to screw that up. Most of the charts in the F-14 manuals are against TMN and KIAS. The charts use KIAS because KIAS (and IMN, not TMN!) are available to the pilot in the cockpit. Keep in mind the charts are all estimated values from flight test. A majority of F-14 FM testing is done via an automated test system that doesn't even launch DCS. Secondary testing is done in DCS with scripts that perfectly fly certain maneuvers to spot check the results of the automated test system, and then we do a little bit of hand-flying to check further. Hand-flying in terms of development and testing of the FM is borderline useless, it's very time consuming and cannot give accurate or reproducible results. Unfortunately for most on this forum that's the only way to test, so take any FM performance tests coming from non-developers with a huge pinch of salt. Unless a user is posting video proof of their testing methods along with multiple results demonstrating repeatability at the same test point, be very skeptical of the result being posted. All I'm saying is that the amount and type of hard data available to users is far more restricted than what's available to developers. Folks using "IAS" on the infobar have a bad source of information and shouldn't be using that to check FM parameters. You can use the airspeed indicator in the F-14 cockpit for KIAS, but that too has its own errors which we modeled to be accurate to real life and those errors are not reflected in the charts to my knowledge. If you want to look at the infobar for TAS and figure out what TMN is, go for it, but we don't do it that way because there are better ways of getting that information.

TAS and TMN on the infobar are likely to be valid, it would be pretty hard to screw that up (although nothing would surprise me at this point). The problem I'm talking about is the IAS labeled value in the infobar and HUD/instruments of some modules, it's actually EAS or something else that's not IAS. F10 view "TAS" might also actually be groundspeed. Like @Victory205said above, the performance charts are against Mach and IAS since that is what's available to the pilot from the cockpit. I'm going to make sure the IAS from the cockpit is correct, someone smarter than I (@Super Grover perhaps?) did the CADC so it's probably good . If you're checking EM charts or something you can probably trust the infobar Mach number.

The number you're seeing labeled as IAS in the infobar and various HUDs/gauges isn't IAS though, it's EAS or something else that's definitely not IAS. TAS and TMN are the only numbers I'd borderline trust there. I didn't work on the CADC in the F-14 but I'll be checking to make sure we don't have the same problems as the modules in the post above. Pretty sure we don't but will verify to be certain. You definitely don't want to be using infobar airspeed when testing F-14 performance, go with Mach number or the airspeed in the cockpit itself. Infobar may as well not exist when I'm doing work on the FM.

This is a good question that I have no answer to, other than to take the infobar with a big pinch of salt. At the very least, it's not displaying IAS. That reddit post lays out the evidence that many of the HUDs and the infobar are all showing EAS which is mislabeled as IAS and F10 shows ground speed, not TAS. Most FM charts are going to use IAS, CAS, or Mach number. The infobar true Mach number is probably accurate since that's super easy to compute: TAS/SpeedOfSound. TAS is going to be the easiest of all parameters to measure since it's the inertial/physical speed at which an aircraft is traveling + wind. As you go to EAS > CAS > IAS, the "accuracy" of those numbers comes down to the "correctness" of the modeled errors being added. Things also get more complex at supersonic speeds since the equation to compute CAS from dynamic pressure breaks down.

No one at HB uses the infobar as far as I know. I wouldn't trust the infobar much at all, read this if you haven't seen it. Most of the FM tables in the F-14 use CAS and Mach number because CAS is an analog to dynamic pressure. The infobar shows EAS or TAS (or maybe even groundspeed, who knows), neither of which are very useful for FM work. There are several "truth data" sources available to developers via the API. I can compare multiple values for IAS and Mach number, none of them agree completely. I'm currently doing some digging to figure out which is the most correct.

That may just be a side effect of how inputs work in the SP track playback mode. That's not really my area of expertise, but if we ever look at any more replay related stuff it's all going to be very very low priority. If you need perfect track playback for anything please use the server method mentioned above.

I've never done it myself but I'm pretty sure you can run a server and a client on the same machine, some HB devs use that method to test certain systems and MP features.

When the discussion directly involves engineering and project management, it seems appropriate, does it not? If you feel "alienated" even before talking numbers and having technical discussions, how can we have any meaningful conversion about problems with a mathematical model of an airplane?

If you turn down the OAT in MSFS 2020 you can take a CJ4 supersonic (LOL), but I guess we're the ones with the "FS-98 flight model" Also if you think good/realistic ground interactions in flight simulations are not complex, you're insanely naïve. They're often more complex than the FM in many regards.

What would those be exactly, since you seem to have specific knowledge of this? The ground handling is a math model that's unique to every aircraft and must be done via an interface provided by ED, meaning super custom ground handling is not exactly possible. We have to work within the bounds ED has provided when it comes to ground interactions (as well as hook physics btw, which meant that hook skipping and missed traps weren't even possible for 3rd parties until this week, but somehow it's HB's fault that it's not already on the F-14). It would extremely naïve to think that all we do is just copy and paste a fix from ED and that's it. ED does not send out a weekly missive to the 3rd parties telling them what got changed in the past week or how DCS changes will impact us. I have no idea how you can arrive at this conclusion if you read my posts above. We can't fix everyone's pet issues all at the same time. If everything has high priority, then nothing does. If you can't have priorities nothing will get done in a timely manner. This is literally project management 101. Maybe you've never worked on a complex project before. It's just unfortunate for you that the priorities of a vast majority of DCS users and developers don't exactly match yours. Ground handling is probably the very next thing I'll look at after the in-air FM changes, so saying it's not something we care about is simply BS.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that there's a difference between a $60 game and a $15,000,000 trainer, and that even the $15,000,000 trainer has flaws.

I don't know what to tell you man, you asked a question and weren't prepared for and/or didn't like the answer. I'm not dictating priorities to you, I'm simply telling you that we're going to work on it and giving reasons why we haven't worked on it yet. It would be foolish to think that even one DCS module has no flaws, doesn't "fudge on realism" in some respect, and perfectly "flies by the book." Are you busting out landing roll-out charts for every plane and checking them down to the last foot? If it's wrong is the whole module unplayable to you? If something like that makes a module unplayable, you should never even look into the radar, EW and weapons implementations in most modules, you'll have a mental breakdown. At the end of the day this is a PC game, I know how the sausage is made behind the scenes and DCS is definitely more on a game level, not a military simulation level (I've worked on those too). You'll get the "realism" (to the level the DCS can provide it) you so desire eventually, it just can't all be done at once because we don't have the resources to do that. Of all the flaws in DCS, the F-14's ground friction issue strikes me as an odd hill to die on.

We realize this, that's why we're going to take a look at it...eventually like I stated above. The current ground handling was a compromise from the early days of carrier ops to prevent deck sliding (remember the Tomcat was in development before the Hornet came out and before DCS carrier ops were even a thing). A lot has changed since then. The ground handling stuff is very time consuming to work on as well, so we can't just fix the FM and this at the same time.

Do you think ED should rename DCS to Digital Taxiing Simulator? How much time do you spend taxiing vs flying? Not sure you read my post, I said we would look at it eventually. Not touching the F-14 because you don't like how it taxis is absurd IMO, and it currently doesn't diminish quality to the point that it's literally unplayable. Up to you I guess. Don't see how that means we have a "funny way of measuring quality", it's more of a resources problem like I said above. If you get hung up on things like that I'm surprised you haven't just deleted DCS from your computer entirely. If we didn't care about quality my answer would've been "The ground handling is fine as-is and we don't care/we're not going to look at it any more." We think taxi behavior is important, but it simply can't be as important as the in-flight portion of the FM. Therefore we have to spend more resources on the portion of the FM that matters most before we can move on to other things. If everyone was playing Digital Taxiing Simulator perhaps my answer would be different. I tried to explain why, does it make sense now?