FalcoGer

I did buy it, and I hope for a good product of course. But I think you should reserve your happiness when you finally get to blow stuff up in the thing.

I wonder why they weren't used much. As opposed to the laser guided variants they're fire and forget, aren't they? Seems like you'd want that capability to fire over a ridge/building and then dive instead of waiting for impact. Sure you can't get a radar lock on infantry, but a hellfire is a waste for that anyhow.

The arma 3 editor is a good example on how it could look. You can place things both in 2d (ie. map) and 3d. Some things are only shown on the map.

Some of the key binds have special key binds that turn an option off when the key is no longer held down. An example would be the auto pilot mode switch for the A10-C. This is presumably because the Thrustmaster warthog throttle sends a separate and continuous "button" for the up and down position but no button for the center position. I would like to use the thrustmaster warthog throttle for other aircraft too. For example I use the EAC switch for master arm in most planes and the radar altimeter switch for laser arm. However most key bindings don't have that second, special option, so I have to toggle the switch twice to toggle the switch in the aircraft once, because it toggles only on the pressing part. I propose the solution to the problem: Don't have those special key bindings and get rid of them. Instead every single key binding has a selectable option (for example make it a checkbox) that toggles the binding "on release". This option should not be in the key binding itself, but rather in the key press you set up for the switch. This ensures that all bindings can stay as they are right now, only expanded by default with the on release option off. In my example I would set "Master Arm - ON" to the button press. Because the button press is continuous it will stay on. Then I set "Master Arm - OFF" to the very same button, but check "on release". So when the button is released (ie. I put the switch back into the off position on my physical device), the continuous button press is no longer a thing and the on release key event fires, putting the switch back into the off position. This requires that the same button may do multiple things, so long as on release is set on one but not the other key binding. To go along with that I would request that all switch positions have their own keybindings, all switches have a toggle key bind and all switches with more than 2 states have a cycle up and cycle down key bind, with the option to wrap around or stop at the highest/lowest position. The generation of those key bindings could reasonably be automated by labeling switches, switch positions and switch categories in metadata. Doing this would allow the greatest freedom for setting up our input devices in any combination we desire.

I'd like to see some markers on the canopy for the lift vector in particular (ie. right over the pilots head), possibly other important positions or angles, too. A little transparent chevron will do, or a line or anything. It just really helps in BFM.

I'd like to move all the "wow, great job", "that looks amazing", "look at that, is that xxx we're getting?", "when does it release?" nonsense to a separate thread. close this down to those superfluous and useless comments and have it pictures and news from the devs only. Because in 11 pages of posts there are about 5 posts with actual pictues in them. Once done feel free to delete this comment.

It happens 100% of the time. You can literally take any black shark track where the thing actually flies for more than 10 minutes and has the ADI turned on and uncaged. I fly multiplayer only and there are no track files. Besides that it's not my job to invest time in reproducing bugs that are easily reproduced by the steps outlined in my bug reports. That's EDs job. Unless of course they want to pay me.

What I'm saying is it can be done one step at a time. Not that it shouldn't be done. Do the easy stuff first and quick, then work on the more complicated stuff over time. Anything is an improvement over what we have right now.

I just flew straight and level after resetting the damn thing and literally 30 seconds later it gave me 10° climb when my nose was 10° dive. 1G the whole time.

That's ridiculous. As if the CCP/PLAA would have need of DCS to plan their attack on Taiwan. They have their own simulators, they have their own maps and they have their own intel. DCS is sketchy at best when it comes to anything other than air combat, and even that is really not that accurate but more of a guestimate of real platform and weapon performance. Besides all that it'll be a decisive victory for china in any case. They can just shell Taiwan to bits with artillery and send a massive amphibious landing fleet. Also wouldn't it allow Taiwan to plan a defense against the chinese? Wouldn't caucasus allow russia to plan to take over georgia? Wouldn't the persian gulf map allow iran to plan an attack on oman? This logic is ridiculous. DCS is a consumer product. I'd love to see the south china sea/taiwan and the korea maps. Besides all that Taiwan is defacto it's own country and many nations across the globe do recognize that. Are we going to label everything to appease china now just because they're butthurt over it otherwise? Are we just going to say the south china sea belongs to them because someone scribbled a line on a chart? I for one am not going to give in to their "soft power" bullshit. Taiwan is Taiwan or republic of china and not part of the PRC. I don't get this whole political nonsense about being careful what you call who. I can say the sky is yellow with purple stripes and green dots all year long. Doesn't make it so. In any case whatever map you look on Taiwan will be labeled Taiwan except those maps produced and sold in the PRC and I don't see why ED should do it any differently. Maybe they can label it "Rogue province of china" in the Chineese translation or something. Nobody cares.

I reset it and flew again for like 30 minutes. It was pretty windy and I did some light maneuvering. But surely it isn't supposed to end up 60° climb and 170° right roll after that. It's just ridiculous how unreliable this piece of crap is. You might as well leave it caged and not use it, at which point you might wonder what the point is in having the thing in the cockpit at all. The main ADI works fine and never drifted any noticeable amount for me. Why is this one so garbage?

You fly around for a 10 minutes and the next time you look down the standby SAI looks like that. It's completely worthless.

Sometimes you get placed in a cold jet on the catapult, hooked in and with the wheel chocks on. Sometimes even on catapult 3 or 4, blocking the landing strip until you started up. In the F18 I was placed on the catapult on multiple occasions (multiplayer) and the wheel chocks are on. Asking the ground crew to remove them results in an "unable". Saluting results in the deck crew signalling ready but then nothing happens, even at full throttle. You can not unhook yourself from the catapult in anyway. So now you're stuck on the catapult forever until you get a new jet. You should not be placed cold on the catapult. If you're placed on the catapult (hot only please) it should not be with chocks on. There should be an option to abort the launch at any stage and have the crew unhook you.

The bug tracking in this forum is horrible. It's managed purely by tags and searching for anything being reported already is nearly impossible as every bug report uses different wording. You can not filter for reports that have specific tags (such as resolved) and any duplicates are not linked together so information isn't collected but strewn about and the forum topics get blown up instead of relevant information being merged into one thread. There needs to be a better system. Ideally - 1 issue = 1 thread. Multiple reports of the same thing get merged in. - multiple tags on: what is affected, if and when it was fixed and state of the fix (won't fix, correct as is (TM pending), fixed, investigating, needs information, etc) - search by tags and text, allow filters by tags (ie. filter out fixed) - internally linked to version control to allow working on specific issues and creating test cases to prevent regression (I hope you do use version control and unit tests...) This will allow better experience for everyone involved. People reporting bugs can easily find if their issue exists already by searching for the affected system (for example tags "TWS" "F-18" not:"fixed"). It will also allow users to keep track of the state of bugs better. And the developers can create pull requests directly linked to the issues they are supposed to fix and work down a list of issues.

When moving the cursor on the radar screen to the border it's supposed to switch between A3 and A6 settings or set the range to the next higher/lower value. This works in RWS, but in TWS nothing happens when the cursor touches the border.

Of course I'd love to see more details like ship ECM, smoke, chaff, flares, etc, but DCS is just not focused on that stuff. I'd love if we could just blow them up properly next spring rather than having a complete overhaul like the ATC that's been promised since 2018 or maybe even sooner (I forgot) and never got anywhere since.

Right now naval combat is in a weird spot. Some developers opt to model damage after mission kills (JF17, Viggen) while others (stock AGM-88, AGM-84D) model after sinking. Modern warships are quite difficult to sink and the bigger ones require multiple heavyweight torpedoes to break their spine. What's the job of an anti ship missile then? It's not meant to sink a ship. If you have a look at You can clearly see that the ship is still floating after having been hit with a harpoon. The point is that this ship is not going anywhere, nor is it shooting any more weapons. It's a mission kill. Yet in DCS system damage is not modeled for ships. While visually parts of the hull can be missing, it's impossible to destroy the actual systems. This can easily be verified by shooting a tank gun at a ship at various parts. You can't destroy the radar, guns, arm launchers, much less so the older russian models' missile tubes. Any single hit against those delicate systems should be an immediate failure. Where does this leave us? We're stuck shooting dozens of harpoons to kill a ship. While this might be realistic in terms of sinking a ship, it's complete nonsense. On the other hand 3 or 4 hits with an RB15 will sink almost anything while it's warhead is even slightly smaller than the harpoon's, which is also nonsense. ARMs are completely useless with their blast fragmentation warheads designed to take out delicate radar equipment, not massive ships. What we need is individual components and systems on a ship that can be killed. It doesn't even need to be anything complicated. Just place some points on the ship to indicate where systems are located and add a radius around the impact point of various weapons that would knock such systems out. Obvious candidates are: Radar (S&T), Engine, CIWS, Guns and missile launchers (Arm and VLS). That would leave the largest of ships with around 20-30 points that need to be checked whenever a weapon hits, which will take up almost no cpu resources at all. Later this can be expanded upon with visual damage (ie. broken models of components), hit points, things being able to be repaired by the crew over time (unless completely destroyed or infeasible to be repaired of course) and more. But even the simplest system would be a massive addition to naval combat. Please take a few days to implement something like that.

Excuse me, but I vote for realism too. It's far more realistic that airplane from year YYYY where the manual states that it can carry M151 rocket pods would be able to carry M151 rocket pods, just with a different thing in the tubes in a mission where the next plane over on the ramp can do just that. There is literally nothing stopping anyone from doing it. And it was designed to do so. The only thing that needs to be done is updating the manual, which by the way, I have read.

Because ED is lazy and thinks the current version is good enough? I don't know, nor can I find out.

That A10C from 2005 would be perfectly capable of mounting and shooting APKWS with no modifications whatsoever. Heck, you could shoot the stuff from the 1980s one as long as you got someone on the ground lasing for you. And there is the problem. All clients would need that modification to play together, where it should be default. It's hard enough as it is to get everyone to have the A4-E mod. How does giving a new weapon system to the aircraft but not another, completely different one, make it a fictional aircraft? The most modern version of the F16 can mount all the weapons the previous versions can. Heck you can mount AGM-45s on the F16 still, no one ever does it. We won't ever get the AGM-45 for the F16, nor is it needed. Does that make it fictional? That's not valid reasoning. Modern F16 will not fly with AIM120D very often. They want to use up the old stuff first. The Ds will go on F22 and F35 first because they want those platforms to have the best possible survivability. What I mean to say is there is no need need to write new software for an aircraft, which will take years. The need is to write an approximation and simplify. It's not like DCS simulates air molecules going over the wing, or simulating radio waves with quantum mechanics to get an accurate representation of radar. Heck it doesn't even simulate the cables in the aircraft. Either something is working or it isn't. The rest is a complex, but not nearly realistic logic circuit that determines what happens when something fails. There is no need to simulate the oxidation of fuel in a rocket motor. You have 2 numbers. Fuel remaining, fuel flow rate and thrust produced and that's all that's needed for a rocket motor. 3 numbers and a more or less simple equation that takes 15 minutes of research and 2 minutes to implement. The hard part is getting the correct figures. Software updates for an airframe are basically free (as in 10 minutes of work) for ED in terms of allowing existing (in DCS) weapons to be usable with platforms that got them later. It's not offensive to me that DCS is a simulation. It's merely a fact that it's much simpler code than actual software for an aircraft. And not everything is simulated. It's mostly an emphasis on flight models, avionics and logic, not actual physics, electronics and systems. There is no electric current running to your MFD to turn on the LEDs, It's just a texture. There is no processor in your FCS system, it's just a black box that just works as long as the logic dictates that it does (ie. no damage, power, hydraulics available). As such it's easier to write code and details on real world systems are not necessary. You need only to know what it does, not how it does it to implement it in the simulation. And it still would be able to fire APKWS just as well as anything else that can mount an M151, even with an old radar. I'm not saying, change the systems around willy nilly. I'm saying allow the weapons to be mounted that CAN be mounted and that we ALREADY HAVE. When new modules are released with new weapons that may be deployed on other, existing modules or maybe even new weapon systems individually, then phase them into existing modules as they can be used in the real world. For example the JSOW was developed for the hornet. The F16 can use them. Allow their use. APKWS was developed for the A10C2, allow their use on the F18, F16, A10C, A10A and UH1, as it is possible to do in real life. I think the harrier had something it could use, was designed and tested with IRL but was never deployed with. I don't have that module and I didn't look into it anymore and I forgot. Kinda bummed me out though. I'm fine with the 16 unable to fire 4 HARMS, so long as that's what the real thing is like. As I said I want things to be as the real world is. And that includes allowing weapons that can be mounted to be mounted. As I said that makes no sense. If someone sticks an APKWS on an A10A IRL tomorrow suddenly that becomes realistic while before it was fiction. The lovely thing about DCS is that you can make your own scenarios. The stock standard campaigns are, as far as I know, all fictional. 90% of the missions in user files are fictional. We can do stupid stuff, like simulating what happens if the Yamato goes up against a Burke. We can do anything we want. And if the aircraft can carry something, then it should be able to in the simulation, even if in the real world it never happened. Also... I don't care about liveries. If someone wants to fly their jet with Rainbow Dash and "EQUESTRIA DEFENSE FORCE" written beneath on the stabs, by all means, be my guest. Personally if it's night I pick something dark. If it's day I pick something blue beneath and browning green topside if I'm over land, and over the sea I pick something blueish all around. I don't understand why people want all the different liveries, I prefer function over graphics, and terrain graphics over textures on my jet, which I don't see that much of anyway. Just takes away precious development time to draw logos on the same old gray that's everywhere that could be spent on something functional. We get an F16, USAF. 1 Livery is enough. Why we need the 120th Seosan livery on it? I have no idea. If people want that, but not get all the KF16 avionics with it, some of which are actually pretty cool? Whatever. Also just because the mission time doesn't affect anything right now, doesn't mean that's the way it should be. And last and again. I'm not asking for every conceivable weapon system to be implemented. I'm asking that if a new system comes to DCS that can be used on other platforms that don't yet have it, it should be added to them as well. Because the WORK IS ALREADY DONE.

I'm a bit confused by ED's loadout choices. Some platforms have had testing done successfully with some weapon systems and are fully capable of using them, some where even designed to use them from the very start but never used them operationally. And for that reason we don't get them in DCS. The reasons cited are such as "It adds too much workload to implement the weapon systems / future weapon systems that are being added in the future to existing platforms..", "Not accurate for platform in era." Such reasoning is nonsense though. The weapons are already implemented. All you have to do is allow their use on the relevant pylons in the config files. In the case for APKWS for example they were developed to be fully backwards compatible with anything that can mount the M151 launchers without ANY other updates. Since the APKWS already exists, no programming, modelling or texturing effort is required other than allowing their mounting, which is a 2 liner as far as I understood from mods that do that very thing. I agree that it adds, possibly unreasonable, workload to implement totally new weapon systems, especially if a weapon already exists that fills the role. But really, how many come out in a year or two? A new upgrade to an existing weapon already takes ages. The AIM-120D is still not the standard missile. Mostly you get bigger boom, longer range or faster flight, maybe a smokeless motor if you are indeed so lucky, software updates for new flight profiles, better sensors. Most of the specifics are of course classified, some of them not relevant to DCS at all. As such approximations can be made or such new weapons or upgrades can be ignored or put in as low priority. The second argument is also nonsense. We fly F18s from 2000s, A10s from 1980s, A10Cs from 2010s and if the mission designer is being ridiculous they can just as well put in the Bismark and a BF-109 in the same scenario. That's of course nonsense. You have a date in your mission. And anything that was put in service before that date and still exists is valid to use. Anything that was added to the capabilities of a platform after it's design should be available to that platform. Some may argue software updates to the aircraft need to be made to launch such weapons. That may be true, but we're not dealing with an aircraft. We're dealing with a simulation. Paste a new text to be displayed on the MFDs and add a ballistics table for CCIP/CCRP (which already exists for that weapon of course) to the aircraft and you're good. If such software updates were available, then even a 1980s aircraft would've gotten them in a mission set in 2020, allowing them to use them. Then there is the other issue. Some platforms were designed, from the very start, to use certain weapon systems. They were flown and tested successfully with those munitions, used them on the training range. But they were never fired or carried in any operation. ED decided not to include that capability because it's not a common loadout. I think that's nonsense. If you were a commander and you would have need of that weapon, you would use it. I believe if it can carry it, it should be able to. Anything with a MK82 capable pylon should also be able to mount a GBU12 just the same, even if it never carried it, or were possibly designed to carry it. After all it's the same bomb, with a guidance kit strapped to it. In other words, what is realistic? Is it 'possible in real life' or is it 'was done in real life'? I believe it should be be the former. Because if it wasn't done till to day someone might do it tomorrow. And suddenly 'not realistic' became 'realistic', which is of course nonsense. As such the only sensible thing to say is realistic is 'possible to do'.

What do you mean customizable? ED (hopefully) will do it realistically. If you want squeakyball sounds with your gun you have to mod it, which shouldn't be too hard of a thing to do.

Wouldn't it typically be the other way around? Some high flying drone lasing a target for the apache and the apache shooting a hellfire over a mountain?

Can we have the 'barber poles' on the speed tape on the PFDs? There should be red tickmarks marking stall and overspeed speeds on the speed tape on the PFD. Those speeds are marked on the hud, but not the MFD.

The weapon mode selector knob has 2 positions for computer assisted bombing. LABS and Computer. What's the difference between the two? The A-4E Community guide doesn't include the computer position. What's the difference between the two? When do you use each one? How do you use each one? Is there a more updated and more in depth manual for the A4? I have HECLAK's guide, last updated 4th June 2019