Snappy

Really interesting bit about the exchange flying in the Viggen, thanks a lot! I wonder what he means , when he wrote the swedish pilot flew a hands off 4 degree approach , with his hands literally on his head? 4 degrees is probably the approach descent angle,ok. But I thought the autopilot couldn't do approaches in the Viggen? Or was that changed in the JA variant? Regards, Snappy

The keyboard keybinds for HUD brightness increase and decrease do not seem to work. I also tried deleting them and assigning different keys to them. Still the HUD brightness doesnt change. Even after pressing them for a long time. Only method to adjust HUD brightness is via the clickable brightness dial below it. Regards Snappy

Yea, well, sorry but that is no solution. If the target is not maneuvering , you don't need a lead computing sight all. The very purpose of it is to provide a lead calculation for you. It's literally in the name. It cannot compensate for erratic , constantly jinking targets no, but in this case the target is flying a steady horizontal and very predictable turn at a constant low G. Ideal conditions for a lead computing sight.

Ok, yes, fair enough, I can understand that line of thinking with the purchase salvaging. Thanks for explaining . Hmm no really good way to go about it then. I don't have the answer either. Personally I decided not to buy anymore from EDs own module lineup , until they improve a lot on product bugfixing and core. I'll stick to 3rd party with better track records. But everyone gets to make their own decision of course.

Attached are several short tracks with a practice F-14 target set up to fly steady horizontal 2.5G circles and me aiming for the radar target dot with the gunsight in ANT mode and the target locked on in radar and within effective gun range. Still the rounds pass behind the target. 2.5 G is not much of a turn.If you want to score hits you have to aim further in front of the radar dot. The problem doesn't get better with even higher G turns of the target. If you would aim for target center mass (like you see on guncam photos, with the pipper squarely on target center mass) the rounds also would pass behind the target. Mission file is attached, in case its needed to play back tracks. Kind regards, Snappy F1RadarTGTgunsV1.trk F1RadarTGTgunsV2.trk F1RadarTGTgunsV3.trk F1MirageGunsFighter2.miz

Well then you can still wait with future products ,until they are available via 2 week trial to see if they meet your personal expectations- Again, the A10C-II, is not only product , nor the first product of ED that stayed feature incomplete and bugged for a long time after initial release. I just brought it up as an example, because Shlomo made it sound a bit like - "it was just an update and updates are different to module releases"

What kind of argument is this? A-10v2 was also „just“ an update to an old module. The buyers are still waiting for the promised ARC-210 radio for it after 2 years. Just got delayed again.ED still hasn’t completed that simple „update“ after 2 years of release. That might have told you something. Anyway, I agree ED could do a lot better, but again, it’s not the first time and if you keep buying unquestioningly into their modules without waiting for reviews, don’t be surprised if their modus operandi doesn’t change and you have buggy and feature incomplete software for longer periods of time.

Understandable, but why did you buy into it in the first place? I mean, its really not the first time ED did a incomplete , buggy and rushed rollout of a module/update and sometimes I do wonder why people are still so fast to throw their money at them unquestioningly after EDs track record , instead of waiting how good/complete it actually is in release state and how much bugfixing attention it gets from ED. Low price or not .

Uhh but that’s feet, not meters .You’d need about 2000 more .Not sure I follow your take off performance calculation anyway . Probably would need to match your smoking habits for that.:) Not to leave you empty-handed , I found this old video from the german armed forces . Its in german, but you can at least use the autotranslated YT subtitles. Ignore the cheap attempt at Top Gun vibes, but it gives a few interesting glimpses of the F-4s radar screen at work while scanning for /locking a target and the gunsight in action, plus some short but nice air combat maneuvering training scenes .

Hey, yes I have that Image too . It’s a nice one! The Problem is currently in the Aerges F1 , if you fired with that sight picture, the rounds would miss the target and pass behind it

Hi Ivan, thanks a lot and sorry for my late reply. For me it isn't really working.I tried replicating your picture with and F-14 as target and the pipper on its center mass.The gunsight seems to compute insufficient lead still. I will wait for the upcoming flight control update Fausete mentioned, to see if it helps getting more the nose more stable for steadier pipper control , right now the pitch still seems to want to oscillate slightly , for me at least. After that and I will probably file a bug report for the gunsight if there is still no improvement. Thanks again for all your detailed answers with those interesting pictures here! Kind regards, Snappy

That was my initial impression too, that the gunsight in ANT does not provide calculate sufiicient lead , even if you aim to put the pipper on the radar dot/square (which itself may be in front of target or on its body) . I will do more testing when I have some quiet time for that.

Hi Ivan!, thank you very much for explaining things in such detail and also for sharing these guncam pictures. I really enjoy your posts! One question for my understanding, regarding your first pic, the one with pipper on the F-14: If this was a steady sight picture and the pipper had stayed steady for one second already and let’s say instead of the targets left displacement, you would be in the same plane of motion, so the target would be along your gun centreline. If you now pressed the trigger , would you expect to score hits? Or is the pipper too far aft on the Center of the target aircraft body?Would it be considered a valid shot? thank you very much again for sharing from your experience! kind regards, Snappy

@IvanK, thank you very much for your detailed reply&the interesting pictures ! Fair enough with criticism of steadier tracking ! When I have the opportunity I will try again and try to fly with a steadier pipper position. I don’t doubt what you wrote , but was really suprised about the 30% hit rate under steady perfect tracking. I have to look it up again , but I think I somewhere read about the criteria for valid gunshots during Red Flag in the 70s and it required only very few frames of tape with pipper on target. That seemed to imply, if the pipper was on the targets the rounds were going to hit. @fausete Thank you. I’m not at home at the moment, but I can check in the next few days , but I’m reasonably sure , I was a lot closer than 1600 m in my tracks. I will try to do another run with steadier pipper control , but I still feel the gunsight in ANT is calculating an insufficient lead value under steady conditions.Would be really nice if you could check it. Especially since it is supposedly able to provide accurate solutions under IMC( the mentioned blind shooting) I don’t see this happening with the current implementation. In a few days I hope to have a better example track. Kind regards, Snappy

New short track, with the pipper aimed on the orange radar target square (which btw is not necessarily always in front of the target, sometimes it was on the target body or around wings).Still the rounds fell short. F1RadarTGTguns.trk F1MirageGunsFighter.miz

Hi @IvanK , thanks for the info. Posted 1 minute ago Hi @IvanK, thank you for your input. However in its current implementation, the ANT setting doesn't seem to work very well/ accurately, let alone for use in IMC/blind shooting. Or I'm seriously misunderstanding something in regards to symbology. Could you kindly take at the attached track? I also attached the mission file in case you need it for the track to work. Its a canned setup, the target is flying steady 3G left turn-orbits and I tried to zero out closure rate . I flew as accurate as I could,trying to put the pipper center on the target when firing. Still of all the bursts , all rounds fired except a single one, seemed to fall significantly short.They did not even hit further aft of the pipper position, but missed target completely. In my understanding, it should've been optimal radar solution conditions, with constant target G, no target plane of motion change and zero or little closure rate. Am I doing sth wrong or is this a bug? Thank you , kind regards, Snappy F1MirageGunsFighter.miz F1Radarguns.trk

Ok thank you, but then how does GYRO receive range and rate as mentioned by AERGES in the changelog?

Sorry to bring this up again, but just to confirm, the "ANT" position is the one providing more accurate gunnery solutions because it gets radar information? I initially thought so, but I'm confused because of the the following lines in the change log: DCS Mirage F1 by Aerges Optical Sight: “ANTENNE” (“ANT” aka “blind shooting”) gunsight mode is implemented. Increased the gunsight accuracy in “GYRO” mode with target range and range rate available. "Blind shooting" makes ANT sound more inaccurate, like its missing radar information. On the other hand "Increased the gunsight accuracy in “GYRO” mode with target range and range rate available" sounds like GYRO position is fed range and rate info frome the radar. Just would like to know how its implemented in the AERGES F1 right now? I made some tests with both , and neither seems to be very accurate unless you are super close to target already already.

Hey Jaguara!, Thank you very much for your quick reply! Now that is most interesting! So it calculates an optimal intercept patch for you. I also replied via PM. Thanks a lot, Snappy

Hi, been away from the F1 a while and just got back into it lately. I understand the radar-assisted gunsight has been somewhat implemented by now , however I do not know what this icon (I marked it in blue on thepicture) on the HUD represents, it seems new and I couldn't find it in the manual. It looks similar to the gun pipper , but with only two lines extending left and right. Kind regards, Snappy

Bump - the threequel.

Thank you both! Interesting that the R550 training round does not feature the forward canards of the live missiles.Would have thought they’d strive for accurate aerodynamic properties as well.But maybe the effect is minimal.

Slightly OT, but was is that is that thing under the left wing?! Also on the wingtip, which missile is that? A magic variant or training round of it? kind regards, Snappy

Hi Cobra, it’s a nice move (serious here, no irony!) of you to chime in here and explain. And while you and your team do have my sympathies for all the difficult additional issues you are facing this year, I can still only echo @Spirale‘s point: It is your decision what you prioritise and time and time again the Viggen gets the short straw. I very much get that you run a business and that other considerations influence your decisions. But still I can only repeat it and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way, as a Viggen customer, this is a really disappointing trend and it’s been that way quite a while. It’s not like this happened only once or twice with the lopsided updates /development (from what is available to us customers, not your internal builds). It was many many update cycles. That plus the (by now ) very stale assurances from you and/or IronMike that this will change and that the Viggen will receive more development soonish leave a bad taste for a customer. Because, I’m really sorry to say, by this point I don’t believe them anymore and you have lost my trust in that regard. I do believe you have the intention and want to improve the Viggen, but in my personal opinion you would need a serious ,conscious and lasting change in priority and task assignment if you really want to stop disappointing Viggen customers and get this done . Of course you could also keep up with the current coffee drip drip strategy and the Viggen will only be done in a decade or two. But in this case I would advise against putting out further Viggen development assurances/update announcements, because it’s just making things much much worse from a trustworthiness perspective , even if I’m sure they’re not meant that way. But it’s your train set in the end. All that being said, I do you hope you personally and the Heatblur team is safe and ok because I know you and them were facing various different difficulties ! My best wishes for you all . regards, Snappy

Yes I agree, while I appreciate the huge amount of work going into improving the Tomcat, these lopsided updates have become an annoying trend. I lost count of the many HB announcements along the lines of „next update will see chunky Viggen changelog, all hands are on deck to push the Viggen across the finish line and deliver announced features, etc etc.“, only to get a another update with a big Tomcat changelog and nothing or next to nothing in the Viggen department. Latest example, Cobra‘s post from 21st sept: “…so we focused on shipping a larger update for the F-14 and Viggen in the October patch.“ I will wait until the actual update changelog but I remain quite pessimistic,that this „larger“ Viggen update will not make it into this last October 2.8 patch.. Though it may not reflect the actual internal situation at Heatblur, from a Viggen customer perspective it often feels like the Viggen is the black sheep, that always has to take the backseat at family events. Regards, Snappy Also pretty sure sooner or later either Cobra or IronMike are going to chime in and assure us, that the Viggen is not on the backburner and that HB is very much committed to it and that it will receive significant work in the future, but at some point this just rings hollow in the face of patch after patch showing something else.