Youda

Just to clarify, i didn't originally want to talk about flight models and their correctness. I was asking if there's a reason one would take a Viper into dogfighting competition and how it should be played. So far i only saw one very abstract theoretical concept, but without any actual demonstration.

Would you mind showing me in a duel some day? What you write is easy to say but much harder to do when using jets with TWRs so high that they can climb vertically and with precise radar gunsights with which they can easily snipe you from 1 km below. Also, if you add any kind of Fox-2s, even the early rear-aspect ones, this automatically goes out of the window.

Sorry, but i kinda disgree here. Of course better stats are not autowin, that's absolutely true, that's what i love about it. And in low level competition the skill is the dominant factor. But at the high level, where both pilots know very well what they are doing, small differences start to be important. I just can't imagine anyone taking a Viper and making it to the finals and winning it, for that he would need a lot of luck. My room-mate plays LoL and this phenomenon is very visible there too. At low level you can see pretty much all the champions being used and there aren't any differences in their win ratio. But at the top level there are only selected 10-20 that everyone uses, because anything else is not up to the task. And it's the same in DCS. Why do you think the finals of Folds of Honor 2020 was dominated by Hornets and there was only one Viper? It's not a coincidence. 2019 was all about Tomcats, because people learned they can abuse Gs and flaps without any consequences, which wasn't allowed now. Now, i'm absolutely not saying that we should change aircrafts' flight characteristics to balance them against each other, this is a simulator so realism is the number one priority. But given the number of independent pilot reports that say Viper was known to out-rate things, i have slight doubts about the correctness of the flight model of either the F-16 or some of the other aircrafts.

Oh, how kind from you. You can hate me, you can call me armchair wannabe warrior, but i like the e-sport aspect of the game. I like BFM duels, competitions and tournaments. It's my way of enjoying this product. That's why differences in stats, even little ones, do matter to me, because they determine the tactics you're gonna play against your opponent. You should learn some respect of people with different views than yours. Not everyone plays DCS to study flight procedures and prepare for flying in a real life.

But, you know, we have dedicated dogfighting servers and dogfighting competitions. Dogfighting is fun and we love doing it, regardless how little sense it makes.

You say you were loaded to 20,004 lbs, but the chart is for 22,000. Why so?

Guys, don't use TacView or the ingame indicators to measure your turn rate. They often show quite different numbers and you never know which one to trust. The best way is to simply make 4 full circles with stopwatches and then divide the 4*360 degrees by the number of seconds it took. This will also average out the small errors in speed and altitude you make while trying to hold it.

Even next Christmas would still be great. At least they acknowledged the problem and showed some intention of getting it right. Unlike Gaijin that denies everything, indirectly tells you that you don't know anything about it, and then silently fixes it 2 years later without mentioning it in change log, so that they don't have to admit they had it wrong.

Forgot about the Mirage, that one is possibly beatable in rate too. But the JF-17? No way.

This may look like a bad joke, but it's a serious question. Is there any reason to pick the current F-16C into any kind of dogfighting competition like Folds of Honor? Because i just can't see any. I created myself a simple performance test map and did some basic flight tests with different aircrafts and i can say the following. F-16C Has a hard G limit of 9 that cannot be overriden and the FCS will usually stop you already at 8.7. Has a hard AoA limit at 24 degrees that cannot be overriden. Sustained turn rate is kinda disapointing and the bleed rate under 400 knots is rather high. F-14B Has a theoretical G limit in manual of 6.5 Gs but practically you have to exceed 18 Gs for the wings to snap off. Has no FCS AoA limit, it can spike up to 45 degrees and with some practice you can maintain 30 degree turn. Max sustained turn rate is simmilar, but at much lower speed and therefore lower radius. F-15C Has a theoretical G limit in manual of 9 Gs but practically you can make it turn 12 Gs without any consequences. Has no FCS AoA limit, it can spike up to 45 degrees and with some practice you can maintain 30 degree turn. Sustained turn rate is slightly higher at all altitudes and all but the lowest speeds. F-18C Has a FCS G limit of 6.5, but that can be overriden to reach 9.0 and sometimes even higher. Has no FCS AoA limit and can keep turning up to 40 degrees. Max sustained turn rate is higher everywhere except above 20 000 feet and above 400 knots. Mig-29 Higher G limit, higher AoA limit, higher sustained turn rate. Nothing to discuss. Only little bit less stable and harder to aim with. Su-27 This is the only jet i feel i have some chance against. Its FCS limits the Gs and AoA quite a lot, you can override it but then you're risking ripping the wings off or losing control. It has actually lower sustained turn rate, but on the other hand it is super-maneuverable. This is the only fair BFM opponent for the F-16 imho. I would really love to fly the F-16 in BFM, but i just can't find a reason to, because there seem to be better alternatives for just about every possible tactic. The only advantage to the other aircrafts is that it can accelerate faster in a straight line, but that's not really useful in a dogfight. I won't go into arguing whether this is realistic or not, because i don't have enough info. It just feels little disappointing that the F-16 with such a strong public reputation as an excellent dogfighter is actually rather poor here in DCS.

Where pls? This is indeed true. With current flight models, at sea level with same percentage of fuel the turn rate goes as follows: F-18 > F-15 > F-16 Fun fact: If you put just empty pylons on the F-16, its STR decreases by ~10%. If you put pylons on the F-18, its STR stays the same.

@Dragon1-1 Where can i find those pls?

Right now, both. The Hornet can reach extreme AoAs, only surpassed by Su-27 and Su-33, so it has amazing low speed pitch authority, and is therefore very good in 1-circle, the only downside being its roll rate under those high alphas. But at the same time it has one of the best sustained turn rates in DCS, higher than F-14, F-15, F-16 and comparable to Mig-29. This is kinda questionable, but it's how the plane is currently modeled. The only disadvantage is its FCS G-limiter that is set to 6.5 Gs by default, but it can be easily overriden to reach 9 Gs. So basically whatever you do, the Hornet will do great, unless you exceed speed at which the G-limit will start being the major limiting factor.

If you look at the chart, in the upper left corner it says F-16C and in the upper right corner it says engine F110-GE-129. From that i asume Block 50.

Well, this is becoming interesting. https://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14939 I've never payed attention to the drag index before, but some of those tables in that thread indicate we should probably remake all our F-16 tests with corresponding stores that make the correct drag. EDIT: Or not. I launched DCS and loaded the F-16 with 2 fuel tanks, its weight increased to 36k pounds and even with empty internal fuel it still had 29k pounds. From this, i don't any way how to load up F-16 to have a drag index of 50 and weight 26k pounds at the same time. Either it must be some error, or they count with something else that i'm overlooking.

Alright, this is little off He shouldn't be able to do that. But regardless, you can defeat it this way, it always works.

It's the only thing we have. But i can do some tests with the playable Mig-15, i guess its performance will be much closer to the reality than the AI one.

Every new generation of combat planes tend to me less maneuverable than the previous (well at least until missiles were invented). Mig-15 outturns F-16, Meteor outturns Mig-15, Spitfire outturns Meteor and Nimrod outturns Spitfire. The reason is wing-loading and wing shape, due to requirements on equipment and speed. The old planes didn't have to carry radar, various sensors, electronic countermeasures, external weapons and so much fuel, and they weren't required to reach Mach 2.0 to stop nuclear bombers. Wing loading values for the planes mentioned above Nimrod Mk.II - 65 kg/m2 Spitfire LF Mk. IX - 151 kg/m2 Meteor F Mk. 4 - 199 kg/m2 Mig-15bis - 240 kg/m2 F-16C - 431 kg/m2 This together with wing aspect ratio has much bigger effect to sustained turn rate than TWR. Just because you have crapload of thrust does not mean your plane will turn well, F-4 Phantom is an example. It's because induced drag increases quadratically with lift. That means if you double the wing-loading, you need to quadruple the thrust to maintain the same sustained turn rate. Mig-15, despite being older, is simply superior in this regard and it's no wonder if it wins a turnfight. And available charts confirm it. As you can see, the F-16 can match the Migs turn rate, but it has to go around 520 knots, while the Mig is completely happy sitting at 260 knots with half the radius. You go any slower and the Mig starts winning. So the conclusion is, if you encounter a Mig-15 in the F-16, either boom&zoom or extend, turn back and shoot an Aim-9 in its face.

That's all understandable, but why can't we simply have a choice? Also "just buy TrackIR" is not really an answer. ED themselfs claimed in their promo video that such things are not required and the game is fully playable with just keyboard and mouse. So it would be nice if they lived up to their promisses and made it little more mouse friendly. Also, this is not true. In most jets you have important buttons on the side-panels so you can't fully control your plane without looking around, there's just too much to fit in a single field of view.

The current control scheme is pretty unfriendly to users without a Head Tracking or VR Headset who want to look around with mouse. There are 2 separate modes for the mouse - freelook mode in which the mouse is used for looking around and cursor mode in which you can click buttons in the cockpit - which you can toggle between with Alt+C by default. However during a fight for example this is pretty uncomfortable and impractical, because you have to constatly switch the modes back and forth. And it doesn't help that now one click is not enough, you have to double-click. Why can't we simply get a mode in which the mouse controls the view and there is a cursor that stays always in the middle of the screen, so that you chose which button to click by actually looking at it, instead of moving the cursor across the screen? Simmilarly to how it works here This would mean you would need just one mode and there would be no switching, because you would be able to look around and click buttons at the same time.

Never mind, i figured out it's an existing file in DCS World\Scripts\Aircrafts\_Common\Cockpit However that didn't quite produce the effect i wanted, now i can freelook and have a cursor for clicking, but the cursor moves too, which is kinda impractical. But thanks anyway.

That sounds awesome, but where do i put it?

Hello. I haven't played DCS for awhile and when i came back and installed the updates, i noticed a breaking change in view controls. I have neither head-tracking nor VR headset (yet) so i use mouse for free look. In previous versions i was able to use the mouse for both the free look and clicking the cockpit by toggling between those with a "Force cursor to show" (default: Alt+C). It was not ideal, but it worked. However with the newest version the Alt+C shortcut added a third mode, which is moving around the cockpit (strafe left/right/up/down), so now i have to press Alt+C (which is also binded to my mouse middle button) two times to switch from free look to cockpit control, and two times to get back to free look. This adds so much overhead for me that it's impossible to do in a fight anymore. How do you guys do it when you don't have a head-tracking and you need to look around and click cockpit at the same time? Why don't we simply get a view mode, where the mouse is used for free look and the cursor always stays in the middle, so that you chose which button to click by looking around instead of by moving the cursor across the screen? Same way as how it was done for example in Doom 3 or Quake 4 when you aproached some control panel.

Yes, i know. But it worked until 2.5.6 (28.05.2020 according to changelog). Note: I'm using stable, not open beta.

They all do the same. Pressing the "Transmit UHF" or "Trasmit VHF" just pops up the main communication menu, same as the \ button.