Syndrome

This suggestion to gimp the F-16 flight model even further gave me an idea. Instead of putting the jet into permanent semi CAT III mode, why not just go into CAT III mode during AAR? Hey guess what? Going into CAT III kinda works. It's a big improvement anyways in terms of tamping down PIOs. I'd bet you could add more significant negative curves for dogfighting, and then put it into CAT III for AAR and flatten the curves back to something more baseline, without having to go into the settings.

I've been flying this jet for a year (my first fast moving jet), and seems you figured out in a day what took me that entire time of fiddling to realize. The FLCS is unfortunately clumsy, laggy, and seems to be hampering the flight model performance. The best analogue in DCS is the FFB setting in the Gazelle which makes the stick act like a binary step-wise function if FFB is toggled on in the misc settings. Unfortunately there is no toggle for the F-16's force sensing inputs in DCS, nor for the laggy control surfaces of the FLCS. So the result is a jet that handles like a fish out of water. And yes, AAR with the FLCS is a nightmare. Adjusting the curves makes matters worse. EDIT: never one to give up. I tried giving the curves a -5 curve for the pitch and roll. It helps a little without causing escalating lag induced PIOs in AAR. The control surfaces still feel unstable & wobbly and like they're adding resistance to my inputs and excess drag from oscillating even with slight movements. The wobble in the stabilators can be seen in the F2 camera view.

It's not device "input latency". Or monitor monitor latency. It's a delay of the jet's control surfaces via the FCS. You can hit RCtrl+Enter to see the actual input registered by the game and compare that to the F-16's lagging control surface response. It's like the stabilators and flaperons are moving through turbulent molasses.

Sorry I missed this. Thanks for posting, gonna try it out. I clearly have a lot to learn too.

Indeed, but as we all know, it's not really that easy. DCS is a very good simulacrum, but a 100% accurate simulation? Many of these jets are still in military service today, so they will always have to balance simulation and simulacrum for a variety of reasons. If you asked that pilot that question, they would be obligated to say essentially nothing. I think the one above said as much as can be said when asked directly. Like us, they are clearly a fan of DCS if that helps to clear up their meaning though. It seemed pretty obvious that they meant the F-16 rate fighting and AoA in particular was significantly under performing in DCS. So maybe they said too much. Even if they can't make it 100% accurate for security reasons, I really do hope that they address the issue enough so that it takes a rightful seat as a competitive rate fighter when they bring the FCS out of the WIP stage.

To be fair, the video you posted is from Growling Sidewinder who just happens to be a nearly flawless ace, and his opponent was really good too. So the advanced techniques he used to survive the multiple snap shots from the F-18 as well as the sheer luck of getting to the ground with his opponent going slow enough to deploy landing gear and then panicking and giving up the hornet's turn rate advantage aren't going to apply to the vast majority of situations that most Viper pilots find themselves in vs even average pilots in the multiple craft with better AoA and STR (pretty much all dogfighters in DCS). He should still watch the video though, if only to understand that it's not entirely hopeless going guns only vs a competent Hornet driver, if you're really good and you get lucky.

"what do you expect? It's a video game" -Former F-16 pilot on a recent DCS competition stream when asked about why the DCS F-16 can't win a straight up rate fight in DCS.

The F-16 is a "rate fighter". In DCS this means you need to run away, fly around the entire planet at Mach 1.6, and then reappear behind the bandit when he least expects it. Simple. Elegant.

Yes. I have the kosmosima on a 100mm extension with the normal monstertech mount. It's more enough to eliminate the need for curves on the Gazelle, so it should be more than sufficient for any other aircraft in DCS. The main reason I didn't get the longer mount is because it would have required me to lower my particular desk seat to extreme degree and move it (and hence myself) back significantly from the desk in order to avoid rapping my knuckles or stick against the desk/mount when pitching forward.

Grab some base transducers, a mini amp, and a 3.5mm line splitter for your PC speakers. You'll know when the afterburner is activated. :punk: ...but so will your downstairs neighbors.

Hmm, I'm gonna have to agree with those people. I've had the gunsight calm down enough while I was on a target's six that there should be no chance of missing, with them dead center in a nearly stationary reticle with a good lock, and still the bullets will fly either over their head or behind them or sometimes even to the side. So I guess you just have to either guess like a WW2 pilot or try to put the tip of the cannon almost flush with their nozzles and pull the trigger. Given that the jet is a very good rate fighter with excellent nose control, accomplishing the latter is really just a matter of time and fuel. But it is kinda crazy that it's much easier to land medium range A-A gun kills with the A-10C, which doesn't even have a radar gun sight. As for the mirage video, I recommend that you slow down the video to 0.25x in the youtube settings. You will the see the clouds change position each time that the gun ribbon does. It's a low FPS video, about 24 FPS (eg 24hz). Not nearly as low FPS as the 9hz HUD reticle in the JF-17. I would be seriously happy with a 24hz reticle, though I fear that as you say, it would still be a rough guess, and not reliable. I really appreciate your responses btw. Hopefully someone at Deka can chime in and give a clue as why my LCOS/SSLC polling rate seems to be so much lower than some other people even when they're playing multiplayer? My SS gun ribbon is perfectly smooth btw, no stuttering whatsoever.

Thanks, I really hope so too. It's a great module, and I suppose somewhat still usable with just missiles and A-G, but without guns I'm kinda defenseless if I run out of ammo. I managed to shoot off most of an F-16's tail and I ran out of bullets while he was still somehow trimming out the damage with one stabilator to fly around and still effectively energy fighting me. The video you posted is recorded replaying at 30Hz. That's not HUD jitter, that's the whole video itself. You can see because the entire HUD as well as the targeted jet are all updating at the same rate as the target strip. In the video I posted, look at the altitude marker on the HUD. It's buttery smooth. The only thing that is jittery is the LCOS and SSLC reticle itself (yes it happens with both LCOS and SSLC). I timed it. It's actually updating at a paltry 9hz. Maybe this was budgeted to cut down on CPU cycles? Maybe it's a bug? But it also makes the reticle useless. I have tried using it with 2g planar lag pursuit shots and emptied the entire clip from nose to tail of the target and hit nothing but air. Eventually I figured out that this is probably because the midpoint of the two polling locations that it bounces between appears to be lagging the target by almost the size of the reticle itself at anything less than point blank range. The fact that some others are not having this issue made me wonder if I have a wrong setting in the MISC or special options menus? Or maybe a driver incompatibility. My driver is pretty new. My setup is relatively modern: RTX 2070 with 32 GB ram and a 9600 processor. DCS has it's own SSD. No bottle necking in afterburner. The issue is the same in VR as my monitor.

It's definitely not shaking from G forces. The HUD just has a really low refresh rate for some reason, maybe from some toggle in the settings? You can see the same juddering from 1g to 6g. The physical distance between the polling updates for the reticle just gets bigger at higher G. If you play the video below at 0.25x speed, you can see it's very clearly the same level of low refresh rate judder at all levels of G forces.

The first video is single player with 180+ FPS with no vsync. And a solid 60hz with vsync. There is no lag anywhere except in the HUD reticle which seems to be running at 20hz at all times. Yet the reticle is bouncing all over the place. Growling Sidewinder's video is online multiplayer, and he has a very smooth reticle that is refreshing its position at least at 60hz. The only reason his reticle bounces at all is because his jet is shaking violently at lower speeds.

My LCOS and SSLC are both bouncing all over the place when I have a target locked up. It's about to give me a seizure. And hitting a target that doesn't take up most of my FOV is next to impossible. Yet watching Growling Sidewinder's latest video with the JF-17, his gunsight is perfectly smooth in both LCOS and SSLC. So am I doing something wrong? Do I have a bugged install of this module? Any suggestions?

Yup. This setting is way more important than curves settings because unless you turn off FFB in the MISC settings, the effective resolution on your curves will be a stepwise function. Stairs rather than a smooth curve or line. So controlling your Gaz in a hover will be both lurchy and twitchy. Turn FFB off and your inputs will be as accurate as your hardware bit rate resolution and smoothness allows. Eg if you have a 10-bit stick with an extension, then curves aren't even needed if you turn off FFB.

When tracking a target via LCOS or SSLC, the reticle bounces all over the place requiring you to be within point blank range to secure a hit.

The biggest changes in input is had from unchecking the box for Force Feedback in MISC options. This changes the input from binary buttons to analog. Not sure why. The 40% and 25% saturation setting is a separate and lesser issue. It's optional and adds enough delay in the inputs to detect the miniscule inertia in the current FM, but it's not necessary. Also, please stop lecturing me about what Polychop should do. I'm not Polychop. I'm just a random guy trying to help fellow simmers get by until they patch the FM. Yup. Every helicopter pilot I've heard talk about it emphatically says that you need to keep hands and feet on the controls at all times, I kind of doubt that the Gazelle is the exception. There is more than one issue with the Gazelle though. The input bugs are separate from the FM issues. You can fix the input bugs by altering the settings. This won't fix the FM issues that you mention unfortunately.

The Gazelle is the first module I bought for DCS, and I've owned the Huey for almost as long. I have countless hours logged on each. I've experienced the issues you're talking about for most of the time I've owned it. Before i made the changes to the settings, the 2 choppers seemed like completely different flight models. The Gazelle was twitchy with seemingly binary inputs like a crappy Arma RC chopper, where the axes acted like buttons instead of analog controls, and it seemed to fly on rails. I've made the changes suggested by Polychop about a month ago and it completely changed my perception of the issues with the Gazelle flight model. There are still other issues with the flight model as many real pilots have suggested, but the ones you talked about all but disappeared after i made those input setting changes. Now the differences between the 2 FMs is mostly the masses, the relative TWR strength, the more dramatic inborn oscillations of Huey, the agility, and the possibility for VRS, which I've never be able to encounter in the Gazelle, and the Gazelle's apparent lack of sufficient inertia. Otherwise, the models and inputs behave very similarly. Yes, here I agree with you. I find the overly zealous marketing about "realism" for many DCS modules to be somewhat off putting especially when it is clearly at odds with RL experience or evidence.

You could try the fixes above and realize you're mistaken and that the FM right now isn't the biggest issue, it's the input bugs, and that the FM isn't that different from the Huey with the fixes above. Or you can wait for months or longer until the input bugs are fixed and the FM is reworked. It's up to you. Was just trying to let you know about a shortcut. I'm not going to argue with you over something that you can test for your self to see if it's true.

When's the last time you flew the Gazelle? 1. There is definitely a pendulum effect in flight. You cannot leave the stick centered in a bank turn without swinging to the other side (eg crashing into the ground). 2. You cannot just lean forward and center the stick and maintain speed. The Gazelle is front heavy so it naturally pitches forward and will either speed up or slow down to 65knots with zero stick deflection depending on whether you're starting from a hover or from a very high speed. 3. If you have FFB enabled, the inputs become quantized and twitchy as hell, and in that case yes you can center the stick deflected and get the input bugs you mentioned. Sounds like at least half your issue. It's a known input bug, not a flight model bug. The solution is to untick FFB under MISC options, and controls become completely analog, update properly based on current cyclic deflection, and are buttery smooth. 4. It also sounds like your pitch and roll might be over saturated. Adjust Pitch saturation to 40% and Roll to 25%, and then you will require proper large stick deflections for big aerobatic maneuvers. Not saying that the Gazelle FM couldn't use some serious polishing and more nuance, but most of what you say above is either fixable with a little tweaking in the settings, or is no longer true.

Gazelle was my first DCS module. I still don't understand the hate it gets. A lot of complaints are from people who have FFB toggled on and a the pitch and roll axes over-saturated, or who still think you can fly it upside-down for more than a quick moment without the blades snapping off or the engine dying. The only bad thing I can say about the Gazelle is that it runs out of ammo pretty quickly compared to the other choppers in the game. But currently it's the only one that can reliably shoot down fast movers, and it's extremely agile. Tbh, I didn't even know the Kiowa existed, and the main reason i might get it is because it seems like an updated more modern Gazelle. I'd much prefer to get something like the Apache in DCS, but that's a different thread.

Ka-50 is awesome. One of my favorite modules. Only requires 1 pilot, so it makes sense that they went with it first. What I'm confused about is why they went with the Mi-24 Hind first instead of the AH-64? They're both 2 seaters, and the Hind seems like a step backward in time. Not that it's not a cool chopper, I'll probably get it too, but imo, the biggest missing element in DCS is definitely the Apache. It would be extremely popular.

It sounds like you're looking for the Gazelle. I wouldn't pay too much attention to the criticisms. If you disable FFB the inputs become buttery smoothe, and if you also desaturate the axes curves for pitch and roll then it becomes very easy to achieve a stable hover. But to respond to your request, it's easily the most acrobatic helicopter in the game by huge margin. This alone makes it very fun to fly. Fwiw: I own all the choppers except the Mi-8, and that's only because the Mi-8 looks to be even less agile than the Huey or the Shark. That being said, my favorite Chopper is the Ka-50 for A-G ground pounding and CAS, and the Gazelle for tooling around, aerobatics, and A-A. The Gazelle is also fun for A-G with a nice variety of loadouts, but it has a pretty limited ammo count compared to the Ka-50. While the huey is everyone's favorite, and it does seem very realistic, it's also the one that I fly the least. I find the controls to be the most frustrating and with the least versatility of weapon loadouts and viable targets. The controls are always pushing new pilots to induce oscillations, so learning the cyclic is something of a constant wrestling match, at least to start. It has a fantastic FM, is fun to try to get a stable hover going and the daka daka guns are viscerally satisfying, but beyond that I haven't found much practical use for it yet. Also, if you can wait a bit, the Kiowa Warrior looks like it will be the 2nd most acrobatic helo in the game. Looks like it's a bit delayed though. There is also the Hind, but it looks like it might be similar to the Ka-50 in terms of agility. So it may not quite fit your criteria, but it will likely be fast.

I think you're right about the spying and pricing. I guess we'll have to wait and see how serious they are about having real identities. From what I know about data mining they can predict what you'll do next and how to best sell the ads to modify your behavior before you even know what you're going to do (get divorced, get cancer, take a loan, buy a car, or have a bowel movement) all without knowing your name. One thing they might need a selected small set of real names for though it's test their behavior/influencing models in a tighter lab. In that case, yeah they might crack down hard and not care how much VR business they lose