Rick50

Sure, sure. But... does that make for compelling gameplay? Do you think that will generate sales to compete with the Hornet? Viper? Hind? Picture it: 9 hours of game play... resulting in some splashes of water, RTB and land. Three weeks later a popup tells you a mine you dropped sunk a fishing vessel... meanwhile, the other modules have flown 9 separate action-packed missions, 'splosions, enemies bounce you and you dive and extend. Which is going to get the sales, and which will sell 50 units?

Is it? I haven't heard what the map size will be for that map....

So I drove by the CF-5 today... and was blown away... durn thing changed color on me!!! From overcast morning when it looked like grey with medium green (as my memory told me), to very bright afternoon, where it was lighter shades of grey!! I don't get it. How does green turn grey in high light levels?? Is me memory failing me? Poor eyesight? Sneaky Canadian Ninja paint? Early Stealth experiment gone wrong/right? A tear in the spacetimecontiuum ? Too many midichlorian tachyons in my coffee?

YEa, a Tucano without the Super! Somehow the basic Tucano looks even nicer with that beautiful bubble canopy! No guns in wings though...

ok well not sure why he brought up the Hustler then, but anyway... Thing is, my post does highlight at least one reason why the B-52 is kinda silly with today's map sizes. I'm not saying such a plane couldn't be FUN though, for shorter missions even on these tiny maps, but it wouldn't be realistic if you can't overlook pure realism. I do think I understand the appeal of the B-52, but I think the best route would be for a free mod, and aim for a single crewman to be able to do the mission alone, with some compromise between realism and "playability". Buy a large civilian throttle quadrant, a flight yoke, turn on the rear radar guided defensive gun, and fly some cool missions! But to expect a business to put it's future in the prospects of a pure realism B-52 is to not understand the effort required, nor the market reaction. Not your reaction, but the reaction of "most players".

Back in 1996 when I first heard of the program that became the F-35, it was called the JSF, Joint Strike Fighter. The big "feature" they were marketing it as, was that it would be INEXPENSIVE both to develop and to manufacture each plane. Clearly they let things go wrong.

I say you'll need: • The R-60M air-to-air missile. Because you'll need to shoot down the SeaHawks and Hornets that will be eyeballing you LONG before you can detect the Perry! You'll also need lots and lots of Chaff, to keep the Standard missiles from blasting your airframe into thousands of pieces. Then load up with a heavy load of "luck", because without it the mission is not happening!

I think they said that not every wpn will be available in Early Access, that some would have to wait until later.

HUh?!? Most DCS maps are roughly 500km by 500km. B-52 has an unrefueled combat range in excess of 8,800 miles (14,080 kilometers). Soooo... you take off... then fly circles. Around the very edges of the map. For 7 laps. At some point you drop yer ordnance. And when you are truly bored to tears of just sitting there, looking out the window for another few hours of circling the map, you land. Add 7 more laps if you do air tank refueling. How many very long hours is that? It would be like using a main battle tank... on an indoor pistol range. Or starting up a Littlebird, in your barn. Edit: ok I just checked. During the Vietnam war, B-52's were stationed at Andersen AFB in Guam, in the Mariannas Islands. They flew bombing missions to Hanoi in North Vietnam. Unless they were battle damaged and leaking lots of fuel, air refuling was unessisary. They could (didn't but could) have flown direct to Hanoi, then south to Saigon, then to Darwin Australia and back to Guam without landing. Or, more realistically, they could have flown direct to Hanoi, (well, avoiding China's Hainan Island of course, don't wanna start another war by navigation accident!) and returned with 1/3 fuel remaining. LEt's put this in context of DCS maps: you take off from Dover in the Channel map, fly to the furthest point in the Caucasus map, then fly down to Abu Dabi in the Persian Gulf map, and fly home, still have enough fuel for 4000 kilometers when you land. And that's if you count all the distance and fuel burn in between those maps. Or how about the other way around, you do a mission only on the Syria map with your B-52, take off from the furthest point to the furthest you can pick a target. And when you return, you need to dump a great many tons of fuel, because you only burned 18% of fuel capacity.

That's a nice looking scheme... I had no idea Iran had Tucanos!

Yes, agreed. Not sure how it would work, but things like this have been done before, and with newer tech, fancier tools, it's not just doable, but likely the best way to do this. Also agreed on it's neighboring nations too, as you say, important for that conflict for several reasons. I think one major things that's needed from ED, is perhaps development of new advanced tools to actually MAKE new maps quicker and easier. I've no idea what's in place, so take this with a truckload of salt. But if an awesome tool could be made to help speed up the seemingly labor intensive nature of DCS map making, that could go a VERY long way to helping to ensure the long term viablity of DCS world and it's many modules! Maybe a simplified tool for amateur freeware terrain mod makers too...

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.... But yes, I agree, enough sand dunes for now, let's see about getting some grass, some trees and maybe We want... a shrubbery!

If I get the chance I'll go see it this weekend, see if it's received a new re-skin!

Dang these all look great, amazing for a model not even created for DCS in the first place, but for FSX a long time ago!

oh riiiight, I have seen that from the side, just not from the "top" view! By the way, the CF-5 near where I live in Calgary has some other scheme, it seems to have medium green and medium grey, so the result is not like either of those you made, but something kinda in between. I've not much idea of the history of the CF-5 or it's paint schemes. Here's a pic https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rear_shot_of_a_retired_CF-5_Freedom_Fighter,_Calgary_Museum_of_Regiments_-_panoramio.jpg I drive by it usually around once a month, somehow I seem to remember it being slighly darker than the pic above, I think the pic was probably taken on a very bright sunny day! wait... no.... I think it got repainted in a different scheme while on the stand... geez I'm gonna have to drop in at the museum and ask! Oooh poor me, having to go talk fast jets again IRL... I guess I'll also have to experience the drudgery of seeing the Seafire, the CF-18 Hornet, the Sabrejet and CF-104 Starfighter (in bare aluminum and the painted markings from the early years )there too I suppose... I know, twist my arm! I guess I'll have to park next to the T-72 as well, maybe see if they've added more armor displays.

Wow, what a mod!!

Nice! I've never even seen a pic of the top livery before, wasn't aware it existed!

Sweeet!!! Looks nice! "Year of the helicopter" indeed!

Interesting, thanks for the info!

Usually pre-orders preceed the Early Access by just a few months. Example, the Hind MI-24 was offered for pre-order in March, and now that Wags has started his familiarisation training videos, it's likely that EA Hind is comming in maybe two months, possibly less. Considering that the HIND is fairly simple compared to a Longbow Apache... I think it's going to be a while before we see an EA of this, and a pre-order just months earlier. Yes, I realize it seems to be developed in parallel teams, but I'd be surprised if Apache is offered EA by the end of this year 2021. Could happen I guess, but I think it's more likely 2022!

Right now there's an issue with Turkey wanting to aquire both Stealth and anti-Stealth. They want F-35's. And they want S-400 SAM system. Russia is all for Turkey buying both. But the Pentagon says "oh no. You get ONE or the other, not both". Why? Because S-400 has an advanced powerful radar system, with lots of software. And a constant internet connection to Russia. The radar onboard, even in peacetime, is collecting data. If they can regularly have F-35's flying close to their fancy radar, they will eventually figure out how to early detect the F-35, what it's stealth vulnerabilities are, what it's strengths are. And one day a bribed airman may well remove the reflectors... giving Russia and it's S-400 dev team all the data they dreamed of. So you use the transponder to allow ATC to help keep you and other traffic safe. And you use the reflectors to keep the enemy guessing as to what your real RCS values really are. Now.... I'm not sure about TCAS and ADSB in mil jets though... hmm Is that system to help get precision data for assessing training BFM engagements, or Red Flag and the like?

Er... well... I don't think so. Not specifically debris. I think generally, if you are talking about anti-ship missiles, or gravity bombs, the fuzes are designed to only work when they encounter the conditions of hitting something fairly solid, meaning the high deceleration of hitting a ship's hull, dry ground, or something solid. I'm not talking about delays or prox fuzes though. But that if it's meant to destroy a ship hull, it should only activate if actually hitting something roughly as solid as a ship's hull, not tree branches on a tiny island. I don't think the designers are very concerned about debris from other explosions, but rather about safety: what if it misses intended target, it ought to not explode then if it's wildly different than a ship hull. Also consider that an anti-ship missile is generally not intended to blow up on contact with the outside of the hull, but rather penetrate through the hull and wait to be int eh middle of the vulnerable decks, with pipes, power cables, data lines, radios, petroleum lines and such. I dont' believe designers think that debris from earlier hits is a significant issue to design for. As for AAM's and SAM's, I don't really know. Some seem to use short range RF signals, I think one even uses laser rangefinding. I don't think the fuze system does target discrimination in those, it's up to the SAM operator, the fighter pilot, the guidance/tracking system to select or reject targets. I know the 9X has the ability to reject some flares as decoys and maintain lock on the (presumably) enemy jet. And the Amraam likely has similar decoy rejection abilities too for ECM and chaff, but I've no idea how well or poorly it might handle that. A lot of fuze types are meant more to help prevent warhead detonation when too close to the "shooter". In army weapons for instance, there's usually an "arming distance", where for a set distance/time, the fuze isn't even actually fully armed. Meaning, if you accidentally fire your 40mm grenade 10 feet (3m) in front of you, it won't detonate at all. That's all about safety in "unintentional discharges", and/or overzealous gunners.

Sorry but is this confirmed??! Boeing isn't just letting Raz make a representation of the Beagle, but they are ACTIVELY HELPING??? Providing current documents? Helping in describing all the modes, display pages, detailed flight profile details, fuel burn estimates used for mission planning??? I guess that's possible... but I think I'm skeptical that the Pentagon and Boeing would be that helpful with details that would be of great interest other nations.

Just because you can find documents on open servers, that don't appear to you to be "sensitive", doesn't mean the US Pentagon will agree with you. ED people have stated in the past, that just because someone posted documents, doesn't guarantee ED or other devs can use that document without having rather severe consequences. One dev even spent time in jail recently over possession of a publication he thought was surely ok to have. I think it was over a manual covering something about the F-16 Viper. My point is that just because you and I found a manual at a site, doesn't guarantee it's useable by a dev team for a pay product.

Consider that map size is a major factor. Syria map is roughly 500km by 500km (might be off a bit now with Cyprus) Vietnam is about 1600km from top to bottom, although not all that wide. Just Saigon to Hanoi is 1170km . Considering that Vietnam has billions of trees to render, is quite hilly and mountainous, that will add significantly to the computer's ability to process and render. However, maybe making two separate maps, South and North, and then in distant future combine the two when PC's don't choke on it, good idea. This would enable long range missions to Hanoi for Phantoms and other heavy fast air. while also giving things to do for the Huey rotorheads in the South! Kabul is 450km from Khandahar. The whole nation of Afghanistan would fit in a 900 x 900 km box. So... large-ish, but by the time such a map is ready for public testing, it could be manageable by people's game boxes by then. Kuwait city to Mosul is 900km alone. Including nations other than Kuwait to an Iraq map becomes quite large. See the Afghanistan map Libya is 1500km by 1500km. Really quite large area, might have to wait for new tech. Korea is a more manageable 1000km from the top of North Korea to the southern tip of South Korea. But... this becomes more realistic if you only pick the center, where we'd expect a war to actually occur. Massive amounts of terrain details though, lots of trees, lots of huge urban areas to render. All these proposals are interesting and of value for this kind of game... but the terrain sizes you wish for are beyond what DCS can do with good framerates in 2021. Thing is, any such projects started today will likely take 2 years to complete anyway, and by then, DCS players will have more computing power to play with. Unless krypto kills gaming dead...