Notso

I had this too when having the tanker locked up. I undesignated with NWS and the TD box stayed there flashing. I finally had to go standby on the radar to get it to drop the lock.

Interesting. I was trying out SC for the first time yesterday. I made the inbound call and see you at 10 call. But never made any ball calls. Totally forgot about that:doh:. However, I did occasionally get some LSO comm on some passes like: "Power! Come right for line up, you're a little low"...... But not on every pass. I assume that the LSO talks only by exception if you're off parameters and not correcting, right?

Yep, I sent my wingman to the tanker and he beat me to the left basket. So I had to go over to the right side. If you are already on the left, the wingman will go to the right. I found that tanking on the right side was soooo much harder for some reason. Probably 100% mental on me since I had never done it before.

That's interesting. My experience has been completely the opposite of yours. But I think it's just a personal perception thing. Everyone sees things like that differently. I've flown in lots of big $$ sims from the FSI and other airline sims to full 360 domed simulators for fighters. In all of them to some degree - I felt like the altitude & speed sensation has been realistic. Especially close to the ground such as on an approach or flying a low level. Yes, I agree that the large aircraft cockpit sims like FSI have far less of an altitude sensation because you're looking out of small windows. But even IRL at 30K cruising over terrain, there is not much of a sensation of altitude either IMHO in the real large jets. Stuff moves by very slowly. VR, in my humble opinion, gets as close to those 360 deg FOV domed fighter simulators as you can get without paying $30M.

OK, fair enough. So for something like the Mudhen or the F-18D, you're saying that most people would be fine not having any AI for the WSO and just either fly with a Human WSO or just fly single seat and run everything themselves? I'm just trying to gauge where people's hearts and minds are on these modules should they ever come to pass.

FIFY. Agree with all the rest. :music_whistling:

Dear Mods, A suggestion is to maybe have a sticky thread dedicated in each module subforum that address commonly asked questions. For instance, the one that comes up over and over is how to AAR in a specific a/c. Or how to do JDAM TOO in the Hornet. So maybe have a sticky labeled How to do AAR or JDAM or TWS and such. Just a thought to have single source threads that addresses questions asked over and over again.

Good advice here: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=4413973#post4413973 Also @Juice posted some good youtube vids that are very helpful.

Understood. What you should normally do IF you use the speedbrake is to open it about a 1/4 open. Just a quick hold and release just to get it out into the airstream and add a bit of drag. And then leave it there and don't touch it. I was playing with the supercarrier for the first time last night (very cool btw) and had to go tank up so I could continue with approaches. I was struggling to stay on the boom on the S3 as I've been out of practice. Tiny throttle movements were getting me into too large of a correction because I was REALLY light (like 1500lbs of gas and clean). And then I remembered my own advice to crack open the SB. Duh! What a huge difference it made. I was able to get on the basket and stay there with no issues for the rest of the offload. It also goes to show what a perishable skill this is. Constant practice is required no matter how good you think you are at something.

Agreed. And I can't emphasize how much better using VR makes the entire experience. Its so much more natural with you have the depth perception cues.

I didn't mean for this thread to end up being about the F-14 or Jester. It was just an example to start the discussion. What I'm really trying to get at is what would be the ideal solution in a perfect world on how to implement a two seat fighter in DCS. Of course, the ideal solution is to have two live people manning the cockpit. There is no doubt there (I think). But for those times that a live person isn't available to fly the other cockpit - 1) would you prefer to just fly it and do it all from the front seat or 2) would you want some level of AI to attempt to make the F-15E module more realistic? Because option #1 is not in any way realistic. That is simply not how the Strike Eagle is employed. Sure you can fly it around and do most things from the front. But you'd better get the crew chief to turn the power on the TGP, the TEWS, and the countermeasures in the backseat before you close the canopy or none of those toys are going to work for you. So if Option #2 is what you want, then the next question becomes - how and what? How would it be best implemented and what would you want your AI WSO to do? Do you want the AI WSO to just do only what you tell it or do you want it to do things on it's own?

This is a great feature indeed!! Quick question though..... does it only apply to Ai aircraft or does it also apply to player aircraft and limit the weapons available to load? For instance, an F/A-18C from Desert Storm is not going to have AMRAAMs or JDAM or LGBs. Does the time setting limit this as well?

Yep, I started on Steam for the exact same reasons - because that's how I bought everything else. I eventually migrated to non-steam standalone and it seems to load slightly faster, but I have not seen a massive jump in performance. Maybe a little, but I still have to use Steam for VR since I'm using a Reverb and it requires Windows Mixed Reality to run. So maybe it would be faster if I had a different headset. Yes, you can do OB on both Steam and Stand-alone. What I like about stand-alone over Steam is it seems that you see newsletters and announcements easier and it's easier to pre-order stuff that is not available on Steam. Also, I think that stuff arrives in both Stable and OB sooner in stand-alone (SA) than it does in Steam. Overall, my experience with SA has been slightly better than running through Steam. But not significantly so. It's not night and day by any means. Also the transition was a piece of cake. It moved all my modules over from steam with no issues. Follow the instructions on the sticky and it will be easy. Oh forgot to add.... the one thing I had to do was manually copy any missions I built and control stick profile settings from the steam directory to the standalone directory. So make sure to copy anything over you want to keep before deleting the Steam files. Or just keep the Steam directory, it won't hurt it to stay there.

Thanks WAGS! I am assuming you are NOT running VR on those settings, correct? If you do run VR at times, what settings do you run VR at on the same machine? I ask because I have pretty much the same exact machine spec and no way can I run VR at all of those settings maxed like you have.

That's interesting. By "shared cockpit", do you mean two live persons flying the module together?

I'm not completely sure what you're suggesting then. While it's true that everything can be run from the front seat in the F-15E, that's not the way it's done IRL in that jet. That's what makes the F-15E able to do things better than it's SS counter-parts. So are you saying that the "Jester" like controls to have the backseat do stuff is not needed on the Strike Eagle module? I guess what I'm asking is: Would you folks that buy it want it to be just essentially a Single seat jet if you are playing SP or even MP and didn't have a live person to run the backseat? Or would you want some sort of AI that fills the role of the WSO when a live one isn't available to fly with you that day? And if the answer is yes to the AI, what would you want it to do? Personally, if were unable to have a real dude playing WSO, I would want some sort of AI to do some of the basic roles such as: - Automatically change the radios to the next Freq - get the TGP onto the target coordinates from the JTAC - Take SAR maps of PP targets - Load coords into PP and TOO JDAM/JSOW - guide LGBs onto TGT and lase at the appropriate times - Guide GBU-15s and AGM-130 TV weapons to the target - Track moving vehicles - Keep sight of a bandit(s) in a BFM or ACM fight - Dispense chaff/flare at appropriate times - Check six and call out threats / missile launches - Sets up the TACAN and ILS for instrument approaches to the appropriate airfield - Sets up the steerpoints for the mission - Others tasks that I can't remember right now..... Of course, for those that just want to fly around a glorified single seat F-15 and do it all yourself, you should be able to turn off the backseat functions. But at that point, why bother with the Strike Eagle when you're missing out on what makes it so capable compared to similar jets? Edit to add: To the list above, the question then becomes - would you want those things to happen automatically - as in AI functions? Or would you simply want a voice-activated virtual WSO to do those things only when you tell it/enable it. If the latter, I could see some keystroke functions working well with Voice-Attack.

My impression is: It feels about right compared to IRL. I have very little reference to compare to other commercial games/sims.

I've been pondering this question for a while, especially with news of Razbam's F-15E Strike Eagle on the horizon, as well as talk of other two-seat fighters such as the F-4 or F-18D and such being much desired. It seams to me the 2nd cockpit is what makes these offerings unique and special and brings additional capability over their single seat counter parts. However, in a simulated environment where having a real person play the role of the WSO might be cumbersome at times with real life scheduling and time commitments and such - how does the DCS community see that additional role be best implemented? I've never flown the F-14 in DCS, but several people have told me that "Jester" in that game is not much more than a glorified voice activated task list. If I'm wrong about that I apologize in advance. I'm not meaning to throw any spears at that module. But the question is how best to implement the "backseater" into the game if a real person is not available to run the systems? Given the current state of AI in game is shall we say lacking, I would think that some good thought would need to be put into how to do this and make it effective. Or should these modules require a real person only and not use AI at all? Thoughts?

Ah, Ok. That makes sense now. Thanks.

$599 USD ;)

I don't know about toggling the speedbrake. That would make for far greater changes and make it less controllable than fine throttle control would. However, I have found that like IRL, just cracking the speedbrake a bit - especially if you're light and/or clean will make the throttle control a bit easier. I find that if you're clean, that bit of extra drag will make the inputs easy to control because it causes you to need a bit of extra throttle input. It's hard to explain, but sometimes the throttle movements needed on a light/slick A/C are too small. YMMV

I'm fully aware of that. But that's exactly my point, why would someone want to fly a competitive MP environment that is constantly changing and usually more buggy? I would think you would NOT want then entire world to be different every couple of weeks. By stable - I didn't mean from a system stability POV. I meant from a game stability aspect... as in not constantly in flux. Although, I suppose some view that as a competitive advantage if they can master the new toys sooner than the next person can. <shrug> Whatever, I have nothing against it. I just don't understand the mindset I suppose. Enjoy.

This too^^!!

And see, I don't get this at all. Why would the MP community be on OB? That makes ZERO sense. The entire point of OB is to test and find bugs and roll out new products. Why in the hell would you want that in a MP environment where things are buggy and nothing ever stays the same? How do you plan a big "war" when entire systems and weapons may literally change overnight? I would think Stable would be the obvious choice because at least you have a bit more stability and less constant change. It's not that Stable is bug free, but at least how TGP and Radars and weapons deliveries aren't going to change every two weeks as new OB things get added to test. I think people have totally lost the entire point of what OB is. I have zero issue with people who choose OB. I do myself at times. But in a competitive MP environment, it seems like it's built in chaos. Just saying.

AAAAHHHH, that actually makes sense now. So the Pylon itself is storing the coords and not the bombs. The bomb then takes the coordinate of whichever the pylon is set to - TOO1 or 2 - at pickle. If that is correct, I think I finally grok this.