britgliderpilot

Afghanistan? Interesting idea . . . . Primarily a Hind, Hip, and Frogfoot sim, I guess . . . there's definitely no air combat or Western aircraft, which will annoy some members of the community. Would require a hell of a lot of work to implement, and I'm not sure if high-res satellite mapping (essential to create the map) is available for Afghanistan. And ED already has an idea of where they're going. It'd be nice, but chances of it happening any time soon are zero.

Whoops, I think I may have got confused. Voice warning and EKRAN are two different things, right? In that case . . . no idea. That suggestion for homing on an emergency beacon sounds pretty cool . . . . don't know if it's possible, but I'll enquire.

Don't know about English translations - does the EKRAN not currently have subtitles? Someone did mod an English cockpit for one of the Russian jets, and the same should theoretically be possible for the Ka50. It'd be a lot of work, but the bonus for this aircraft is at least that every switch and dial is described in the literature . . . not much more research required! English Tooltips are optional, remember :) I believe the beacons are fixed. But there's an awful lot of them . . .

HOTAS. Having all those buttons, switches, and hats at your fingertips makes flying so much easier it's untrue . . . A HOTAS will be pretty much essential for Black Shark, too. Just make sure it's got yaw control on it . . . . X52 Pro is probably the stick of the moment.

Oooh. That matt black paint scheme looks badass. Want it.

Yeah, I said that. Check again ;) A lot of the "other" threads got deleted, though. There's been a fair few . . .

Most of the threads have been deleted because they eventually descended into flame wars and chaos - which is a shame. There are capabilities that just aren't modelled in Lomac (some of the radar modes), there are some areas that have been shown to be inaccurate (thrust at altitude for one has been accepted by the devs and is awaiting the next patch), and there are capabilities that are still open to debate. AMRAAM range is a big one. The general opinion seems to be that it should be better. The problem is that the way some of this stuff works is - or rather, when Lomac was being developed, WAS - classified. Without accurate real-world information and performance data, creating an accurate model is pretty difficult. To put it simply, it's pretty much true that the F-15 isn't modelled to 100% accuracy. But then neither's any other aircraft, it's just that it seems more obvious on the F-15. That or the people flying the F-15 make more noise about it ;) It's still fun, and squads still do fly the F-15 effectively and well.

Mmmn. While I accept that the mods do a difficult job in often difficult circumstances . . . . I've been on the forums most of the afternoon and didn't see anything remotely offensive. I'm not a mod and can't second-guess them - but I haven't seen anything that suggests Cali should have been banned at this time. C'mon, chaps - did someone's finger slip, or is there a reason behind this one?

. . . . . where did Cali go?!

You mean the control options? Some changes have been made, you'll have to wait and see for details though.

A flight sim will never quite measure up to a first-person shooter in terms of the detail you can fit on the ground . . . . simply because the areas a flight sim must cover are much, much bigger. Armed Assault, for example, has fantastic graphics at ground level - but you try flying over it in a helicopter or a fast mover, and see how much visible range you have with the fog cutting it out. And even then it slows modern systems to a crawl . . . . In terrain with fifty million trees and countless pylons, buildings, rivers . . . well, the memory requirements alone if at modern FPS level would be beyond the abilities of current bleeding-edge graphics cards. Efforts are underway to ensure that Black Shark is a definite improvement over FC in terms of the ground terrain - some of the testers have suggested their own improvements, and TekaTeka (known for his scenery tweaks) recently joined the beta team to see if he can work some of his magic into BS before release :) So the graphics in Black Shark will be improved over Flaming Cliffs, but it'll be an incremental improvement rather than a quantum leap. Some improvements have been investigated and discarded (Speedtree, for example), some are still being investigated, and some more will probably make into products after Black Shark. The good news is that flying low down in a helicopter you don't need anything like the visible range you do in a fast-mover - if you're flying the Ka50 you can turn the visible range right down for more FPS without losing any sense of immersion :)

I don't imagine it's the weight of the chaff and flares that's an issue here . . . . and like AirTito, I'm rather inclined to believe Paploo when he says there's something a bit off. Have no idea what it might be, though. GG's Easy Flight On suggestion might be a possibility, I guess.

No, the flight modelling is hardcoded. Interesting . . . Nothing obvious like fuel load or reduced/realistic G switches? Lag perhaps? Which aircraft were involved?

Crossposted: . . . . and? :D Shutting down both engines won't help if a fuel line is ruptured. I don't know if that's the way they've modelled it, or whether it's an oversight . . . . worth asking for, I guess :)

. . . . and? :D Shutting down both engines won't help if a fuel line is ruptured. I don't know if that's the way they've modelled it, or whether it's an oversight . . . . worth asking for, I guess :)

You might find this hard to believe - but that is a simplified early version of the engine startup ;) AirTito posted a description of the correct, full startup procedure in this thread: http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=21419 If you're in a hurry, you can be up and away in the Ka50 in a couple of minutes. Once you know where the switches are, you can flick them a lot faster than he's doing :)

The only startup video I know of has the simplified "press one button and both engines start" sequence. It's a bit more complicated than that . . . .

. . . As you correctly point out, it'd have to be rather carefully done :P However, I've heard a little bit about what modern systems guys can do with their magic boxes, and I remain confident that if you handed BAE Systems or similar a blank cheque, the boffins could write the code to make it work ;) And you can always substitute lots of little radars for one big one, of course. Do clever enough things with those and it might even simplify matters. All true - it's still a fixed system as envisaged so far, and as such is always vulnerable to long range weapons. So it wouldn't be terribly useful or survive very long . . . but it'd still be possible to build it. And the F-117 carries JDAMS these days, too.

It's part of the plan for the direction of future simulations from Eagle Dynamics, mentioned in a Russian interview. After the Ka50, the plan is apparently to upgrade ALL the mudmovers to the level of modelling that the Ka50 will have (the implication being an AFM A-10, possibly using some development/research from the Air National Guard A-10C project). After that, a similarly detailed F-16 and MiG-29 have been mentioned. But bear in mind that this is a LONG term plan - I think Wags' sig still says something about saying your plan out loud is a good way to hear God laugh . . . . ;)

Now that's a good question. It's a passive radar receiver, so I'm going to have to guess signal strength of the emitter in question. The rate at which emitted energy decreases with radius from the emitter is subject to known laws of physics - if you know the energy being emitted (*COUGH*espionage*COUGH*) then it's all very straightforward. My physics is a touch rusty, but I think even if you don't know, it's still possible to work it out as long as you have a known range of ingress into the emission range and readings of signal strength at both points. Think you might need Brit_Radar_Dude for that question.

That may be true - but the fact remains that the 25T is an overweight, underpowered aircraft with tricky avionics. No matter what you do, you simply can't duplicate the turning performance of the A-10 in either of the 25 variants. The A-10 is infinitely more nimble, has fire-and-forget missiles, and many more advantages besides. I love the challenge of flying the Su25T - but if I was to fly any mudmover into battle (which is to be considered unlikely ;) ), I'd prefer the A-10. But hey - if you love a challenge, then there's good news ahead with the Ka50 . . . . grin. If you prefer the simple life . . . . I guess you'd probably better hang on until Tank Killers!

The reflected energy is scattered in as many directions as possible - that is, the energy that IS reflected, rather than absorbed by RAM. With a sufficiently sensitive and widespread receiver array and a central processing unit, it's absolutely possible to detect a stealth aircraft from this scattered energy ;) If a load of tiny returns are all coming from the same spot in the sky, it rapidly becomes just an issue of software and processing. It's been theoretically possible for a while, and while to the best of my knowledge nobody has yet done it, for a country with sufficient know-how and funding it wouldn't be THAT much of a challenge . . . . Thing is, nobody's yet felt the need. Shrug. - Monotwix: The point of the F-117 wasn't that it's difficult to pinpoint; rather it was that by the point where it was detected there was no longer sufficient time to get it locked up and to fire :) From detecting an aircraft, to locating it, locking it up, and firing a guiding a missile inevitably takes time - particularly in the Soviet system. The F-117 would, in all probability, have been detected by Soviet radar at close range - but the key point to understand is that it would NOT have been detected by Soviet radar in time to prevent it dropping it's weapons (i.e. if it was detected, lock and launch could not have been achieved before bombs away). And that's what mattered. Against a sophisticated system, the same still stands - but very few truly sophisticated SAM networks still exist. Modern stealth in the air-to-air role follows the same principle; you're not invisible, but you won't be detected until long after you've fired . . . by which time your shot may already have struck home.

Mmmmn. I'm not sure AFM on the A-10 would be a pain . . .

Hmmn. That's a good point, well made ;) OK then - if your budget allows, sounds a good plan!

Errr . . . . why? I don't know of anything that actually makes use of it yet . . . Googling a quick benchmark shows that the quad-cores actually perform WORSE than the similar dual-core chips, simply because the software doesn't know what to do with them yet. Yep, an overclocked Core 2 Duo, 2Gb RAM, and an 8800 is the way to go for speed at the moment. The exact model of all of the above may vary depending on your budget ;) 22" TFT? Nice, but make sure it's a good one. Don't forget TrackIR and a decent control system - it's no good spending all that cash on a fast PC if the eventual input devices hamper your enjoyment of the game! And who suggested that 74Gb of hard drive was enough? Aim for a minimum of 400, you'll use it up in no time . . .