Squiffy

Both for me since the Cougar is quite old and had pot metal gimbals. I'm not sure if the Warthog has been updated since release but the quality is a step above the Cougar at least. It integrates pretty easily too with the old stick parked out of the way in front of the throttle and beside my left desktop speaker. It was also easy to copy and paste my maps in the controller menu within DCS. Just open the aircraft menu and find the stick columns. Copy from on to the other.

Been away for a while, but recently got the F-4 and am now getting acquainted. I can emphasize the tips here about fighting in the vertical. The Tactical Egg was a great concept to mention. I remember a book, years ago in high school, that analyzed the dog fighting tactics that won success in Vietnam. (Air war over Vietnam? A coffee table book with great illustrations). The rolling scissors and vertical rolling scissors were the name of the game. Both ways of integrating the vertical into the fight to take advantage of the thrust advantage, and a-stall disadvantage of the Fishbed. Farmers were even more challenging in a gunfight. I can say for a fact that the SFM has some serious flaws. Namely, the table entries for airspeed, alpha, theta and so on... as you approach Mach = 0. The numbers never go to zero, which for lift is impossible. At Mach = 0, Lift = 0. I confirmed this with my brother who is an aerospace engineer. And yes, he is a spacecraft and orbital mechanics specialist, so the UFO and Sputnik analogies apply. I think this may have been done to avoid limit problems and undefined errors in the math as you go to zero, but it should not be hard to update the tables. Just bang in a couple more rows to taper the performance off to "accelerated stalls suck" and "50 cals have higher muzzle velocity and less arc drop at 4G+." It's not hard. I also look forward to the fixing of the padlock feature. Call me a baby, but even with TrackIR, it is helpful, especially fighting in the vertical. I also got a new Warthog Stick and LOVE the brand new gimbals and sensors!

Fantastic! I hope the SFM mods can be implemented. I bought the MiG-15 recently and need to set up my controller profiles. I wanted to see what dogfighting is like in the same ship. AI still seems to have an advantage but my old stick is worn and needs to be replaced.

Yup, See my post below in FM Changes: How about AI model? Last time I checked, the FM matrix had a fault where lift was greater than zero at Mach = 0. This is impossible and can explain some of its Sputnik-like performance. This may have been done to avoid limit/infinity errors in the AI but it is still impossible in reality Sure it was great in the vertical and climb with it's Rolls-Royce derived engine. But at Mach=0, Lift=0. I can take a look later as I have upgraded to 2.9 but I think I would rather buy the F-4 than FC 2024.

How about AI model? Last time I checked, the FM matrix had a fault where lift was greater than zero at Mach = 0. This is impossible and can explain some of its Sputnik-like performance. This may have been done to avoid limit/infinity errors in the AI but it is still impossible in reality Sure it was great in the vertical and climb with it's Rolls-Royce derived engine. But at Mach=0, Lift=0. I can take a look later as I have upgraded to 2.9 but I think I would rather buy the F-4 than FC 2024.

The camera controls are vital for gunnery in high g maneuvers. I ALWAYS push my camera up several clicks so I can see over the nose. This helps a bunch in deflection shooting in turns and in the vertical. In fact, I usually ignore the reticle and use tracers arc (rope a dope) and hit sprites to track my target. I have the index finger stick on my old TM Cougar throttle set to move the camera up and down. It works great. You will find that MiGs will climb away as soon as you get in the saddle behind them in recent AI. I have not fully updated because I want to keep my shell mods for muzzle velocity, bullet life and effective range. These mods help a bunch to and give a little more realism back to the historical reach and accuracy advantage the Sabre had with 50 cals instead of cannons. Especially in high g turns. Incidentally, check on your g suit settings in the Luas for Sabres and Migs. Should not exist in Mig 15s or be significantly less than 1.0 . Interesting finds there too. Case in point, old Mig 19 lua, since been fixed. It was outrageous.

Yes, great info. The 15 and 17 had massive fences and the airfoils were much thicker than the 86. I think this lent to the climb rate of the 15. But they look very agricultural and tractor like. Kind of a less than ideal solution for their high speed swept wings. But that's probably just my Amerikanski bias showing through. And remember, North American also had a winner with the laminar flow wing on the 51.

That makes me curious. I also saw a radar gunsight update in Big Newy's "newsletter" recently. I am tempted to try it but I don't want to nuke my finely tuned muzzle velocity mods in my old Beta module I've been hanging on to for so very long. The "Sputnik climb, scaredy cat" tactics of the AI are another reason why I don't update.

How do you like it? I just won one in a raffle, but I find it a little restrictive. I need to test with my new highspeed cable. Wifi was like a slide show. I also have a 48 inch monitor with TrackIR 5. Aside for the 3D gauges, I'm not sure the Quest 2 will be worth it. I have a well worn HOTAS Cougar set up so maybe VR stick and throttle could improve upon that, but I kind of doubt it. What do you think?

RIP. Selig sind...

After many hours fighting the Ai MiG-15 in the Sabre, I can say that knife fight, dash and reverse, style fights are the way to go. Even in the Sabre, you want to be more the 2 miles from the Mig before you try and reverse turn and remerge with him. That's how long it can take to turn around. keep your speed up and energy fight as usual. If you scissor and slow and force him to overtake, he will just stand on his tail and climb away from you. Firing early in a head on merge from 1 mile plus usually wounds him enough to close in. Also, a separation more like 4 to 5 miles is good to turn and remerge.

texture2 zipped F-86F_Cockpit_Texture2.rar Spec file was too big even zipped. I just blanked out the reflection zone for the lamp.

OK, trying to tint the ILS back went a bit too far. I didn't screen shot it but it was pretty dark even going to a 240,240,240 gray. I guess I went the wrong direction. Stock works fine and my clear edit works too. 240 gray was like regular sun glasses. I didn't get close enough to anything to see much but I could also tell the the lamp reflection got worse somehow, maybe because it was reflecting from somewhere else. My texture2 fie is already blank and i can show you, but the lamp still shows on the cockpit hood from outside. Not sure whats happening there. need a few days to look into it. crazy busy at work and short handed since january. lots of doctors appointments and i need to chill out. feeling better thank god but another test on the way. getting old sucks. here are some screenies. lamp on hood

Hmm, interesting. I just edited the lamp file to remove the gray circle below the lamp texture on the norm file. I edited the alfa to fully mask the reflection (rather than dither the reflection with the gray filtering on the alfa layer) and it works for me but is not completely gone. That's why I think the gray circle below the lamp on the norm may be another level of filtering. Maybe low light level or something? I will load and test now. The dive lines are somewhere else. The cockpit texture 2 was the first one I edited. I completely blanked it out, norm and alfa and it still showed on the external view of the cockpit dash. It may still reflect off the gunsight glass and that is another reason to remove that last gray circle on the lamp norm. i will load and test now and post back.

Thanks again. I can edit the channels with DXTBmp. That's what I've been using. I realize there may be another mask and filter on the same texture, just below the portion I blacked out. If you look carefully, you can see a dark gray circle below where the main reflection texture is placed/filtered on the alfa layer. This may be allowing the reflection to persist depending on how the texture is used and mapped. I can re-tint the ILS file with a lighter gray - off white and see how that goes. usually 128-128-128 gray is the transparent color used in masks. That is how it worked in CFS3 and is standard in DDS afaik. Shades lighter and darker allow more and less transparency. I'll check on it tomorrow.