Harlikwin

In game they don't. And AI sees through them too. (kinda a big deal for WW2 stuff). Also so do optically guided AAA, as of course any IR manpads. Also targeting lasers go right through them as well. IRL of course cloud cover was a major tactical issue. In DCS, well... I guess its not that important.

Yeah, but it gets complicated fast. And klash is somewhat right, while the basic principles are known, alot of the necessary details, like say transmit power, or antenna gains, are not and those are rather important. Same on the SAM side, though ED could at least improve how the early single digit sams work since that documentation is out there and it would remove emberassing DCS isms, like flying the SA-2 into the ground because in DCS it uses Prop nav whereas IRL at low alt it would use a 3 point mode etc. I mean if you got the antenna gains for the ALQ-131 along with the TX power, duty cycles and the PRF's it can handle, post em up. (this is obviously a joke, since he doesn't have that)

Lol no. The G has a whole DC to daylight EW suite built into it, no F4E has anything even close to that. Even the F16 HTS was inferior in capability compared to what the G could do.

Yeah, they did a bunch of comparison testing, mostly in Helos. It was generally said the 5A was not suitable for fast jets. I assume the Cats eyes were considered at least marginally more suited since they projected the image holographically and didn't block normal vision as much, even with gen2 tubes.

Yeah the history of LANTIRN is pretty well known. The other stuff less so. Especially nite hawk, which is sorta a sad story since it mostly suffered from the company being sold/re-orged etc. I've seen dates for Nitehawk in the early 80's on 18A's which I very much doubt, aside from testing possibly. Seems like it would have been late 80's like most of the other systems. And then there were the various updates to it, as it initially lacked a self lasing capability. Its PVS-5 or 5A not SA. The PVS-5 stuff does date back to the 70's for helos, hueys/transport stuff mostly, I'm not aware of anyone that trialed it in fast movers. ANVIS was mid 80's, the first Gen3 tubes IIRC were built in 82-3 at the whopping 1 million each price tag. Plus their lifespan back then was absolutely terrible. PVS-5's were used in the Falkland's by helo crews with basically no training that led to a regrettable and largely preventable accident, though it was ascribed to a middle of the night bird strike rather than the much more likely spatial distortion/loss of SA. Here is one the "mid-era" PVS-5 setups, they figured out pretty quick that cutting away the face mask was the way to go. null

Yeah in general USAF development for NVG's was in the testing phases in the later 80's. Mostly because they saw the issues with the earlier Gen2 stuff that the Army was doing with helos, terrible resolution (28lp/mm or worse lol), bad MTF's, bad spectral response etc. By the time the first gen3 tubes came around you had alot of that fixed, but it also applied alot to the Gen2 tubes as well, aside from the spectral response and gain. I actually have several PVS-5 sets that were modded for night flying over the years and at least the very late ones don't compare too badly resolution/MTF wise to early gen3 tubes, but again, in the very dark dark there is no question. In a sense it looks like the navy was pushing stuff out of testing earlier than the USAF tho, but with inferior tubes and systems. It would be interesting to see stuff like accident rates for those units back then. The helo rates were so bad they basically developed an entire sylabus for when it was just permitted to fly with them, and even when you did you had to employ pink lights. Plus the USAF was all about thermal and especially stuff like hud presented thermal etc. As was the navy and marines. And you obviously see that in the early 80's in the early forms with the LANA pods, and then nite-hawk, and the Harrier navflir. Or for the USAF with the LANTIRN development.

Thanks for putting that up, finally I have the unicorn photo.

You think clouds blocking IR missiles and visual spotting for AI would also be a necessity. But well....

I wonder if napalm will actually damage/burn our concrete trees.

Its always the hedgerows, always a problem. Filled with snipers quite often as well.

Thanks for the write up. Its interesting but I've never seen a picture of the Cats Eyes in use on a jet anywhere (including your post) (and your pics/links have that as 1991 set). They are literally a legend in the communities I know/talk to, literally no one has ever seen them/heard of them beyond "some guy said". And they must have been Gen2 tubes in 86 which makes it even more interesting/dangerous that they were using them and again, likely without LIF's. The FOV on them is only 30 deg as well, but since they are look thru it matters somewhat less. But again literally one or two squadrons using them does seem to make it a unicorn item. It makes sense intruders would use them since its a 2 man pit, so one guy could conceivably fly using "normal" instruments and the other guy would use the NVG's (this is how it was done in alot of helo's in the 80's).

I mean if they were using ANVIS they were using prototypes. Simple as that, also likely in non NVG compatible pits and likely without LIF filters. If you have more info on that I'd love to hear it.

The core issue though is the really bad overall damage modeling in DCS along with various weapon effects.

Yeah, I think an AI G would be cool. I mean the AI EW/SEAD code is pretty simplistic but it would be cool to have them for period correct SEAD/DEAD.

No fast jets were using NVG's in any sense in the 80's beyond some very early testing. Q3 of 89 was the actual authorization to produce ANVIS on an actual production basis, and the first OMNI contract for ANVIS was in March 1990 (Omni2) for 10k units split between ITT ~6k tubes and (Varian/EOS) 4k tubes. There was T&E being done before then but it was very limited and no one was going to war with those goggles. Fun fact the Very first Gen3 tube cost the US taxpayers over 1 million dollars, (Anvis prototypes used 2 of them). And NVG's weren't really in common use in the USAF till the later part of the 90's. For Europeans and other nations not really till the early 2000's for the most part if at all. The US army was ahead of the curve compared to the Airforce and they were generally homicidal enough issue early Gen2 kit to helicopters crews that generally did a good job kill themselves in sufficient numbers that they helped formulate most of the requirements for the Gen3 tech that was developed. But continued to use Gen2 systems with severe restrictions on illumination levels that were required. I won't cover the even more suicidal Russian uses/experiments that I'm aware of, but they made the US Army look amazingly good. But I'll give them points for bravery. For DCS purposes, NVG's aren't simulated past a fuzzy green screen effect, so it mostly doesn't matter, and ED can't even get the color right, nor the fact that sparklies don't really exist except for light starved environments, which don't actually exist in a cockpit. But for historical accuracy, the phantom shouldn't have NVG's at all.

We already have a few. Galinette from razbam did a fantastic job on the M2k and SE. I'm sure HB has a good coder too. I look forward to adding Aerges to the good radar model list.

Yes basic radar behavior for pretty much any low PRF pulse radar (aka Mr Cyrano) is the following High alt vs high alt target, basically little clutter, and should give the best performance. Low alt looking up, reputedly usable, both the South Africans and the Iraqis managed to use their radars in this sort of regime to get kills. Though there should be issues with sidelobe clutter from the antenna. (modern planar arrays have pretty low side lobes, Cassegrain designs like the mirage used have significant side lobes in comparison). Higher alt vs lower alt target, lots of main lobe clutter, but minimal side lobe clutter, target not resolvable unless using techniques like MTI. And MTI may or may not be very good depending on the implementation, this is where alot of detail will have to be, you have to contend with non-perfect cancellation because IRL it wasn't and then you likely still have further issues like blind speeds and so forth. Again, reputedly Cyrano was not a particularly good performer according to pilot accounts in this specific regime. Low alt vs Low alt. Basically the same as the High alt looking down case due to stronger ground clutter from the main lobe, and then of course the famous side lobe problems that antennas of the type used on the Mirage were famous for suffering from. So it should be mostly useless in this situation. Currently what it looks like we have is the FC3 radar with a sparkly graphic. Given what razbam has managed to achieve with actual physics based modeling and correctly modeling high/medium PRF PD processing for their radars, I'd hope Aerges can at least do the same for the Cyrano IV though modeling a low PRF MTI radar will be quite different.

I will look forward to videos explaining how the backend works like razbam showed.

How about a challenge to develop a better radar model than what Razbam has in the M2k/F15.

Yeah as you say there are plenty of variants. But data for later ones or more modern ones tends to be fairly sparse, and the overall lack of any sort of standards for how sensors are modeled in DCS, i.e. (razbam Great, HB/deka ok, ED poor at this point, other 3rd parties pretty bad) doesn't help the situation. And LOL on your F14 comment. You realize the F14D had literally the best Air to Air radar developed in the 20th century right? That was still better than most radars most militaries are running today?

Or use too much Duct tape

We like to call those "skill issue" players.

Please enlighten us on the Canadian nuclear weapons program? Were moose of unusually large size involved. Also, we must know if Red Green was.

99% sure you can strap an LGB to any airframe. Maybe the migs can't lase it themselves but that would be an improvment.

Yeah I was just saying, since its impossible for ED/3rd parties to do FF versions anything red and modern, well, FC3 level is better than nothing. But I guess at the current time thats a no-go. Yeah Ka-50's ala BS2 were built and flew some. Not many, but they did exist and did fly. The BS3 upgrade not so much, that was my point. IDK, frankly I think more devs should just fill out the 60's, 70's and 80's since thats not restricted and its inherently balanced. Instead of chasing "modern" stuff that is hard to model, and even when its in DCS its questionably implemented.