Rifter

Wait... 1. 1980s 2. Nordschleife 3. BMW Let me see... ...I remember something... ...oh yes, here we are:

First of all - thanks a lot, MBot! Interesting lecture indeed. To be a little more precise, the paper selects this one scenario from a whole spectrum of scenarios without calling the remaining scenarios into question. Quote: Before discussing the role of the Navy in a conventional global war, it must be emphasized that the Navy serves the U.S. government across the entire range of conflict possibilities: from peacetime presence through strategic nuclear war. And it contains a political component because it is a response to accusations from US politicians at the time that the US had no sensible national strategy and also the role of the Navy within a national strategy was questioned. Quote: Those who say that the United States has no national strategy are simply wrong. The national strategy is constructed upon this foundation: deterrence first, but if this fails, then defense as far forward as possible, worldwide, in conjunction with our allies. From my understanding of the paper the US Navy was by no means solely committed to being able to wage a global conventional war; at best, it was limited in its ability to deal with other scenarios to any extent. The underlaying scenario has an assumed war commencing with a Soviet attack in Southwest Asia, and then spreading to Europe and Korea sixteen days later. At the same time, the meaningfulness of the military implementation of the strategy according to the scenario is questioned. Quote:What troubles the Navy is that this scenario can be used to influence planning and programming to an unwarranted degree. Actually fighting a global war against the Soviets the way the scenario depicts would be very unwise. So the paper is apparently intended to show the Navy's basic ability to act based on a fictitious scenario, without excluding other scenarios. It is not possible for me to clearly deduce from the explanations what role the Navy would have played in a conflict at that time and what role it would not have played. About the Baltic Sea the paper is very clear - that should have been handled by the West German Navy and Naval Airforce. Will take some time to read all of that. Thanks again for sharing it, MBot! Sidenote: I still have your old "Suppression Fire Script" from 2013. Used it a lot in the past. Not sure if it still works, have to try it.

The settlement density of Germany is for sure a huge challenge for the present map technology of DCS. It will unfortunately limit the expansion of such a map in way, that it will leave a lot of people very unhappy. So if ED decides to block carriers from being used on the Caucasus map you would be one of those who would say: "Given the unlikeliness of US carriers in the Black Sea this finally respects reality!”? Now come on, don't be such a spoilsport. I see it pragmatically: If the water is navigable, then it is feasible. My reality limit for a carrier task force would therefore be the Baltic Sea. North Sea is fine. Black Sea is unlikely but technically doable. By the way, since I don’t have the Sinai map: Is the Suez Channel navigable for carriers?

Oh, I’m old enough to remember that time and I experienced this in Germany in particular, which would have been simply wiped out in any possible version of a full scale conflict. That war would not have been about moving carrier groups around on the planning table. That war would have been about preventing the Soviets from occupying Germany at all costs. Nuclear landmines (Atomic Demolition Munitions) were intended to stop the advance of enemy troops. And thereafter the warhead size for the nukes used would have been gradually increased. So what do you guys want with those NATO plans? While I am quite sure that there were no specific NATO plans to employ carrier task forces in the near of German coastline, I still don’t put any weight into that. Those were just plans. I mean...P L A N S ! We all know how big plans work out in big scenarios. They don’t. Therefore I will happily and carefree and with a light heart use a future Fulda Gap map with carriers. Provided there is a bit of sea. Not even for a millisecond I will vote to keep the sea out of this map just because there were no concrete NATO plans for carrier deployments for Central Europe. Our assets in DCS are limited anyway and I want to make use of them as much as possible.

Off course not. It primarily addresses the military assets of that time and describes rough directions (like securing Baltic approaches). We are not talking about a historical war, about which everything is known, including the use/place of specific assets. Cold War never became a hot war (thank God), so all we have is the former line up of military assets within NATO. Sometimes I have the impression that everything that is not known from official sources or doctrines is automatically dismissed as nonsensical. DCS is a sandbox game. Why wantonly exclude something? ED will do that for us anyway. Our job here is not to restrict things. Our job is to demand. Looking forward to it!

Well, German “East Sea” and Baltic Sea might not be the place for carriers, since those shallow waters make operations with larger aircraft carriers rather unfeasible. But German North Sea is feasible.

At that time 9 US carriers were dedicated for NATO purpose. Further 6 carriers could additionally be deployed. NATO doctrine for that time was 'all in'. Especially for the naval forces, since Warshaw Pact naval forces were seen considerably stron­ger in its assets.

Helgoland + Düne. So we will have 1 airstrip for the start on this map. That's not too bad...

Uh... excuse me, Mr. President? That's not entirely accurate. https://archives.nato.int/force-comparison-1987-nato-and-warsaw-pact

Roger that! Just as an addition to clear up any misunderstandings: The top of my grip has a height of 30cm (measured from the gimbal). Basically I shifted the original grip upwards by one grip length. With the resistor mod the forces are doubled. The FFB-forces at the new grip position roughly corresponds to the previous unmodded state. The new grip (B8 replica from old joystick) is very light (all plastic) and the extension is a short aluminum pipe with 16mm diameter. I consider this to be the maximum change without losing the original properties. From this it can be seen: The FFB2 is rather weak-chested, even with resistor mod there is not plenty of headroom to handle long extensions and heavy grips. About that old app which came originally with the FFB2: That piece of software just adds pre-tensioning by applying engine forces before the grip is even moved. You can do the same with simFFB which still works fine. You have to deactivate FFB in DCS of course, because control has to remain at simFFB.

Wow - that’s a quite long extension. Is that aluminum? My FFB2 looks very similar to this mod: I slaughtered a vintage Thrustmaster Top Gun joystick from 1996 in mint condition to get a B8 grip (probably cost me a few karma points). I also applied the resistor mod which is important when using an extension. However, there is zero deadzone on it. As soon as one of the axes of the gimbal moves/rotates, the potentiometer of that axis will create a signal. As long as there is no dying potentiometer there should be no deadzone. Therefore I'm still a bit confused by your observations on your device. When you say you have 15-20mm deadzone, than you mean the top of your extension? How much movement is noticeable at the gimbal? When I played around to decide how to best mod the FFB2, I also realised that too much weight for the grip and the extension creates some issues. Especially a cranked extension shifts the COG away from the joystick centre and creates a moment on the gimbal. Did you try a with an uncranked shorter extension (20cm)?

Since I read this again and again and it sounds kind of generalised: Of course a lot of those devices are worn out. I had a whole collection of them and kept the best devices. But even with the most scrappy ones I had no game breaking dead zone, perhaps 2 or 3 mm deflection per axis on the mechanical side. But even then the device should convert every hint of movement into deflection, regardless of the wear and tear of the mechanical parts, because the sensors don't care about the wear and tear. On the other hand your not the only one complaining about sloppiness around the centre - could you quantify your dead zone in mm? Just to give me an idea, what we are talking about?

Given the overall scenario... ...we need Dynamic Campain!

Never needed varying collective input in the DCS Huey - not even during hovering (in terms of constant input corrections). I set exactly what I need for collective, and that’s it. Only need to regulate it, when slowing down or accelerating. If you do decide to use the collective constantly, like it is perhaps necessary in other Helos and you are used to that kind of varying input, than you end up in an endless correction loop.

The M-2000 radar shows false contacts. Contacts with overlapping ‘V’ symbols correspond to actual aircrafts. This is not always very convenient to use but it is a detailed reproduction of the real radar behaviour. But if you think this is hard, wait until you find out about the option to use raw radar return data - it will be even more difficult to identify your contacts.

Although there are usually no limitations for the number of type ratings a pilot can hold, there are strict limitations for commercial pilots concerning the number of different aircraft types they are allowed to fly as part of their commercial pilot activities. Aviation regulators around the world believe that a commercial pilot who would fly many different types of aircraft would no longer be able to safely handle the different emergency procedures (regardless of the age of his brain ).

Will at least be 8 - 10 kg.

This is not the place for gender esthetics. Will report this instantly to the forum management! Edit: Just checked the size of the FFB-Base and possible weight. Goddammit - we’ll need a longer thing for the thing between our legs!

sarcasm /ˈsɑːkaz(ə)m/ Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken or, with an undercurrent of irony, by the extreme disproportion of the comment to the situation, and is largely context-dependent.

There is no adjustment possible from the mechanical side. The actual centering is done by tensioning the two axes via the two motors. Just as a sidenote for those who are toying with the idea to get a FFB2 or already got one: Lots of units are simply worn out. I had a whole collection of FFB2s which I bought systematically on eBay to find a good one. The good ones actually have no deadzone at all. On those every micro movment on the stick is translated into deflection. BUT: Since the gears and transmission parts are made mainly of (durable but not wearfree) plastic material, there will always be an inherent and noticeable amount of elasticity when operated with high forces. Also sensor resolution is only 10 bit (equals to a resolution of 1024 datapoints per axis) which is considerably lower than modern joysticks. With the well known resistor mod the stick forces can be safely doubled. The two ffb motors are oversized and built to survive WW3.

Disconnecting/connecting the USB plug should always reset the FFB2 to default settings, no matter what went wrong within an application. Never had a persistent issue with the FFB2.

To be fair, this statement was neither made literally nor should it be taken literally. Of course, this was a statistical statement. And the Germans Mig-29’s win rate in dogfights amongst NATO partners was actually significantly high at that time. Of course, it was absolutely part of reality, that the Mig-29’s lost fights. But it was not a 50:50 game. It must also be clearly seen that the successful series of Mig-29 dogfights took place in a rather narrow time period. On a larger temporal scale, the hard-to-beat Mig-29 was itself just a statistical outlier. But within that time period, defeating a Mig-29 in a dogfight was not an everyday occurrence.

In professional static driving simulators (car and truck industry) increased sound volume is used to compensate shortcomings of the simulator. There is even an expression for that kind of exaggeration, it’s called “creating surrogates for missing sensory impressions”. So it doesn’t seem there is anything wrong with cranking up sounds in a simulation if that helps for the immersion or usability. But perhaps these “realism-fanatics” are just smarter than those industry jerks, who knows?