LanceCriminal86

In case the link didn't work right, skip to 36:08 I've been looking to pics forever, but found footage instead. From above timestamp on is a Grumman film of ACEVAL/AIMVAL, including footage, interviews with crew, sideburns, and moustaches. The ACEVAL/AIMVAL crew were made up from VF-1 and VF-2 folks from the first cruise primarily, who were attached to VX-4 for the exercise. Roger Ball! has a pretty good section about the prep work as "Hawk" Smith was XO at TOPGUN at the time and helped prep the Blue Team Tomcat crews and the Navy/Marine side of the Red Team as well. Big things to note in the vid, the pilots are wearing VTAS II helmets, and you can see the sensors along the edges of the canopy rail. These allowed for them to use the PLM on the throttle to get a lock while up to apparently 40 degrees off the nose. The F-15s in the exercise had them as well, but as seen neither the Navy nor Air Force chose to continue their use afterwards. Apparently cost being a big factor, the weight/bulk of the helmet being secondary. The third factor is that apparently VSL-HI mode gave the F-14 80-90% of the capability of VTAS without the need for the extra gear. Other big discussion, TCS. Especially during the workups per Roger Ball! the Tomcats were absolutely flaying the F-5s alive because they were fighting as they actually would have, hammering them from far off by using TCS to get their VID and then firing. Ultimately ACEVAL/AIMVAL is what triggered the AIM-120, the desire for launch/leave because the F-5Es with AIM-9Ls could still get face shots when the Tomcats and Eagles were forced to get visual ID and guide their Sparrows all the way. Oh, and I found this coffee mug that just might be related to someone who was part of all this and CO of VF-2 around '82 and then CO of TOPGUN when Top Gun was filmed. Guess I have to do some Farris VX-4 ACEVAL/AIMVAL skins someday:

The Phoenix absolutely can maneuver, the issues here in DCS is that we're trying to fire on fighters at extreme ranges, fighters who are aware of the missile before they realistically should be (all AI reacting at 10m apparently), and the simple reality that a fighter has a lot more capability to evade a missile than say, a bomber might. And even with the cruise missile tests, cruise missiles aren't evasive as far as I know, they're just fast. Expectation management is the key here. If you want to kill something that you know has the ability to turn and accelerate quickly, then make sure your missile is going to be fired with the parameters to help make that happen. In reality, as repeated often here, the fired missile whether it hits or not is going to make your target react, which should give you and your wingman the time to press your advantage. If they turn and run, mission accomplished. If they don't, then you continue to press them with follow-on shots. The hard part especially right now is the AI wingmen. Well, just AI in general. They're just not going to be able to do that kind of coordination until ED does some more work there. Having AI get into optimal firing altitude/speed for their weapons, being able to command a high-low arrangement, using the datalink, all that. There's also no "early Iran-Iraq War Iraqi pilots that have never encountered the Tomcat/Phoenix" who are going to just not know what hit them. The AI notch super perfectly, chaff is a dice roll, yadda yadda.

Ah yes, the brick that can't hit fighters. About 7:20 shows a 54C shot against what apparently was a maneuvering F-4S drone.

It's not necessarily that it's a "snapshot" 1974 Phantom, it's just that the "early" will be the earlier serials that received the slat kits, but not TISEO or the later features. They'll have the upgraded RWR versus the APS-107 but retaining the old 107 antenna housing, have the later gun shroud, and as said the pod. Those jets were used through the early 90s in the reserves/ANG like the 110th in St. Louis. In similar vein the "later" one will be the SNs from 71 or 72+ that had TISEO and got the later upgrades, and had slats at the start.

Understandable, it's happened quite a few times through the thread already. We're going to cover most of the common USAF schemes first along with some of the exported models, and over time more will be added as reference photos and such are found for specific jets. Once the public template comes out I'm sure folks will go wild with fictional schemes, anniversary jets, commemorative schemes, Tiger Meet, demo jets, all that jazz.

It would appear you didn't read that this is for F-4E liveries, for the Air Force and countries that operated the F-4E, which those Phantoms are not. Now, the Thunderbirds might eventually be seen, but the Blues wouldn't even be considered until a Navy Phantom is produced which is years down the road.

It's not like the JFK launched the '89 Libya shootdown jets [F-14A] or strikes following the Beirut bombings [A-6E, A-7E, F-14A, Syria map] and did a ton of Med cruises [Syria Map, Suez Map, Caucuses even], or exercises in the North Sea and North Atlantic [Kola Map] like when the Tomcat went overboard in '76, or, in her last cruise carried VF-103 on their last Tomcat cruise [F-14B, PG Map].

..... That's what I said. What I'm saying is that after asking for exactly that, on the ED side it has sounded like for you to pick stuff out of the module manager it's also tied to the actual store, or something along those lines and it had already been asked about in the past. And they don't want a bunch of livery packs in there, even if it's the 3rd Party devs supplying them free or paid. I wanted to see if we could do dedicated packs for cruises, themes, air wings, conflicts, etc. but it sounds like something else will have to be supplied to manage "official" extra liveries, or those curated by a 3rd Party.

I do, and I have yet to see the issues I knew of on the existing body pointed out by those talking about being disjointed by having the "new" body in first person but different external body. And I'm saying this with about 95% of the era correct flight gear in a pile about 5 feet away from me.

That's been asked about and apparently they don't want to do that, having livery packs as "DLC" that 3rd Party devs can offer up. I guess they don't want to jam up the ED Store with livery packs or something, but IMO that makes a lot of sense versus having to install 3rd party livery DL/management tools of some kind. The problem right now is we're caught between those screaming about HDD space, those screaming about more MODEX and dynamic MODEX, and those screaming about non-historical skins, while yet others share passion in wanting more cohesive offerings of skins to wings, cruises, and ships. Can't make everyone happy, but at least right now SSDs are cheap. The existing 1988 Tomcats from VF-31 and VF-11 for example will be great for Kola because that cruise was exactly there, doing TEAM WORK '88 and practicing flying from Fjords and launching strikes and intercepts. But, we'd still need to get a few more in there unless we get more going on the dynamic MODEX front. Adding Saratoga would mean needing to add some VF-74 and 103 in, plus adding to the A+ skins. Same with Ranger and Indi, plus A-6E skins for the AI jets across each. And of course trying to fill out the Supercarriers with cruises that fit the Tomcat and the regions we have in DCS, which finding photos for have proven a huge PITA.

Unless you have borderline detail autism you're not going to notice the differences in the current body versus the new one. I don't think most as of this moment can even point out issues with the existing body, and the HGU-55s aren't even on the radar yet. They're not coming with this update, this is just the body you see in the cockpit of yourself, not even the other crew member or from F2 view. Trust me when I say nobody pokes Cobra more about the HGU-55s, texture/visual updates, or optional animation arguments for various bits of the jet and pilots than I do.

"Engineering" That's only one part of the equation. The Art was mentioned elsewhere, and requires more than just a little bit of adjusting for the older 80s 135-GR. I wouldn't guess that's going to happen before October as it appears the cockpit pilot body is the focus. After that though, a lot of art stuff that still needs to get done will probably come in a big push. The 'early' exterior model with gun vents, adding the ALQ-126 blisters for all 3, fixes to the TCS and removing F-14D bits, things like that. There also would be the replacement of the existing exterior pilot bodies with the new one, adding the HGU-55 helmets for 90s+ skins, and whatever bonus visuals we get like vanes or swappable TCS housings. Those may stretch out over a longer time or they may just gun to get it all done in one big swoop, who knows. But yes in typical fashion, dev states what they are working on, and everyone immediately bypasses it and asks about X Y and Z instead.

You're all wrong, the F-4E will finally roll out exactly like this:

I've heard that due to budget cuts the sounds will be replaced with that of a Saab 9-3 Viggen.

I uhhh, guess that means I need to clear my calendar because we're going to have a lot of pilots to update.

The MK60 was simply an alternate supplier motor early in the procurement of the AIM-54, subcontracted by Hughes.

I think he'd been working on some revised glass to be less scratched/grimy and representing newish jets, it could be a side effect of that.

Unfortunately it's my fault. Every time I refer to the Drakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkken I add another 'K', and as a result they've been adding to the release date. At this point we may find ourselves in the WH 40k universe when it releases, or at the least early Battletech.

As far as I know the main things changed from older blocks were the added jammers by the intakes and beaver tail. Perhaps the added weight and change to the beaver tail adding the antenna resulted in some changes in balance. I'm trying to see if there were any other system differences but not really seeing any. If anything would more rearward weight perhaps prevent it from snapping over? Maybe the weight of the ALQ-126 antenna in the tail ended up being far enough back to tip that balance just enough.

The F-4G is becoming the new F-14D

Well this thread should be dead now, officially...

Why would the pilot or RIO know the missile's speed during the shoot? They'd need to recall their altitude, airspeed, target alt/airspeed, closure rates, angles, all that. There's so much more to this than someone off the cuff saying "sure it was Mach 5 capable" when even NASA documents showed that the missile wasn't quite hypersonic and they would/did make changes to get it to be hypersonic. They used the Phoenix because they believed it had the potential and there were stocks of them available, not because it already was a 5+ missile. Now if you find the guys from PMTC, VX-4, Pt Mugu, etc. that were actually doing Phoenix testing and could recall shot profiles and they got to see the instrumentation and after action reports, that might hold a bit more water. Because fleet pilots got to shoot missiles sometimes, but that doesn't necessarily mean "test fire" and "testing" for the purposes of gathering data. Just because I went and qualified at the range doesn't mean I can tell you the actual muzzle velocity my M16A2 was laying down, round per round, from a random batch of M855. They only gave us a general number and instructions for how to make and log our adjustments. The guys testing the ammo and developing it at Aberdeen or Dahlgren are the ones to tell you the velocity, BC, chamber pressure averages. The guys shooting them might tell you what their holdovers/DOPE was and how it did in the field.

Or actually not if you read some of the recent comments and updates. But hey I'm just a guy that paints jets for them sometimes. What would I know. They have said the earlier jet, body, and AI A-6 are on the shorter term schedule, as in upcoming months.

It may not be a full rework, but at the least it may impact existing mappings and textures. I'd expect to see it potentially around the early model external revisions since changes had to be made there anyways, which are forthcoming. A good bit of the prep work/research is done but the rest has do be done in the model.