Speed_2

Again you show that you have not put any thought into this and do not understand what I am saying. Are you implying that you think that because the combined area of North and South Korea would be 494km square, then the Falcon 4 Korea theater, among the smallest of the Falcon 4 theaters, would only be 494 km square?!?! It's got sea, and parts of China, Japan, and Russia in it as well. From DIRECTLY measuring it, one can see that it's around 1000km on a side. Secondly, you are again ignoring the more important fact that the DCS theater is UNFINISHED, and even though it is 800km of the side, perhaps a third to a half of its land area is not populated with objects. Third, you have never ever flown Falcon 4 online if you think that the dynamic campaign is of no value in multiplayer. Any campaign mission can be flown online, and people can even play as the opposing side. Finally, there is ALOT more to consider than just how well the aircraft is modelled. DCS no doubt models the Ka-50 better than the F-16 is modelled in Falcon 4. That alone makes DCS worth playing. However, Falcon 4 has MANY other simulation advantages and features that DCS does not have- for example, while the radio is more realisticly modelled in DCS, what you can DO with your radio is vastly more realistic in Falcon 4. Multiplayer integrates SEAMLESSLY into Falcon 4, and ANY flight can be flown in multiplayer. The dynamic campaign is not "one little thing", it adds ENDLESS replay value. Flights are organized into PACKAGES, and the AI aircraft actually (usually) try to do their jobs. There is a persistant world, even in tactical engagements (single missions). You can jump into ANY F-16 or even non F-16 in any phase of that aircraft's mission. Seamless integration between the 3d world and 2d world... and the list goes on and on. Some of the versions of the Open Falcon mod are even addressing the areas where DCS trumps Falcon 4, such as a 3d clickable cockpit, avionics modelling, radio modelling, etc. In the end, neither DCS or Falcon 4 is necessarily a better sim than the other, as each has its pros and cons. That's why I still fly both! I mean, I gotta do SOMETHING else when I get tired of flying the same DCS mission for the tenth time...

The problem I have is that while Black Shark overall is still a great game, once you get past learning the chopper and weapons systems, the rest of the game seems a little too shallow in comparison to other sims. With only scripted missions, you have to go hunting for new missions to fly in multiplayer on the internet, or create your own. The scripted missions are also limited in scope, as we are pretty limited in our trigger options. There are some content additions- such as new theaters, new units, new triggers, new AI, some new mission dynamics- that would vastly improve the depth of the game. A dynamic campaign would be a very welcome addition in later modules of DCS which simulate aircraft that are less SOF, CAS, and FAC oriented (and we need FAC dynamics in DCS badly, dynamic campaign or no!). Also, I'd think that in 2009, we could work decent FACs and special forces mechanics into a dynamic campaign. Think outside the box people! The good news is that this is still a game that is very much being developed and added to, so I would imagine we will eventually see many and hopefully all of these problems and content issues addressed.

Wow, I don't know what to say... ummm... maybe first of all, just because the map is 800km by 800km, you don't have to fly 1600km. Secondly, this is not "Super Turbo Fighter-Bomber 3" or "HAWX" or whatever god-aweful arcade "sim" is currently popular. This game is supposed to be realistic, and most REAL flights are long. If all you want to do is go around and blow crap up, you picked the wrong game. Long flights MUST be included to be a realistic simulation. People who complain about long flight times usually have no business playing a realistic flight sim (though it depends on the exact nature of their complaint...) Finally, even if you would get bored by long flights, or have the much more legimate excuse of simply not having the enough free time available, most sims have a time compression option available to still simulate a long flight but allow you to do it in a reasonable amount of real-life time. The couple times I tried out TC in DCS it didn't work very well- the computer slowed down terribly! I donno if that issue is specific to just my machine, or if everyone has it.

Well, I stand corrected! It is a huge surprise to me that other theaters are being worked on for DCS- this is the first I have ever seen it mentioned! That fills me with hope for this sim :)

Well, a MAJOR shortcoming of DCS as it stands right now is we only have a SINGLE theater, and it's quite a small theater at that. It's a decent size for choppers, but it's just not going to cut it for fixed-wing aircraft. If you measure it, it's something like 800x800 kilometers. The SMALLER Falcon 4 theaters such as Balkans, Korea, Israel, etc are over 1000 km on a side. Side by side, DCS doesn't seem too bad compared to that, but that is not considering that a vast amount of the DCS theater is not populated and finished! Then there are the larger Falcon 4 theaters that are 1000nm (about 1870km) across (Desert Storm theater, Iran, Afghanistan, etc)! Now, Falcon 4 is just a single game. Look at other flight sims- Janes F-15E. Released in 1997. Theater size? Again, about 1000nm on a side, if not larger- they fit Iraq, Iran, and surrounding countries on a single theater! So compared to every other flight sim I have ever flown (excluding Longbow 2) DCS is seriously lacking in theater size. So where did all these theaters for Falcon 4 come from? Modders, of course! There are TEAMS of people who will not only create these theaters for free, but have fun doing it. Furthermore, while some theaters may have stability issues, you can uninstall or just not use a theater, and it's all the same aircraft. No modifications are made to your basic F-16. So while I see where you are coming from,the arguement that "mods work so well with Falcon 4 because it's the well-known F-16" doesn't hold as far as theaters go. There is another reason your arguement doesn't exactly hold true with DCS- no real improvements are necessary to the Black Shark's avionics or flight model, both of which are the best I have ever seen for any kind of military flight sim. While some of the needed changes to DCS require source code eits, DCS could vastly benefit from modders adding new theaters and units! As for what's a quality addon- well just release the addon and let the users decide! ED, if they released some sort of theater builder or mod builder software could even have a user agreement that any addons that are created by modders for DCS are the intellectual property of ED, and could take ownership of a theater or addon they like, and begin officially supporting it.

Obviously, you have never heard of Falcon 4, a game that was released in an unfinished state, and abandoned by its creators in an unfinished state. When the source code was leaked shortly thereafter, the game was finished and bugs were patched by AMATUER modders modifying both the executable and databases. It kept the game alive and Falcon 4 is still the most realistic (overall) jet fighter sim. So, really, your concern that you'll be fighting "spaceships" is just silly. You know how we are stuck with just ONE SINGLE theater in DCS? Well, in Falcon 4, we have about a DOZEN theaters to choose from- all but one of these created by modders. Oh and adding new theaters and planes to Falcon 4 does not require making source code edits- you only need to create new data files. Modders vastly improve the quantity of content in a game, and can also improve the QUALITY of content in a game. Your second point- that we don't need more ground troops- is also wrong. There is a vast number of types of ground vehicles that are not present in the game. For example, towed artillery, large caliber AAA guns, many different kinds of tanks, infantry ATGMs, etc. One thing that we desperately need to simulate realistic ground battles is crew-served weapons, like fixed machine guns, motars, infantry launched ATGMs (where are the Javelins?!?! HELLO?!?!, rockets, etc).

Yes, DCS desperately needs FAC interaction- both AI and human controlled FAC interaction. No matter how realistic the avionics and flight models are, the simulation itself is not very realistic without FACs, especially after we get DCS A-10. A simplistic way to create packages, and for the AI to actually follow them, is also needed (like in Falcon 4). Not much of a "Battle Simulator" without these features...

No, sorry

God, I hope so.

Yea, I agree. However- you have to be VERY careful. Why? Well, the AI is ALOT better at finding targets than we are. One of the primary and most important purposes of the co-pilot/gunner is to find targets. If you make the AI co-pilot gunner as good as AI helicopters seem to be at finding targets, you'll be making the Apache hugely easier to fight in than the Ka-50, and flying in the co-pilot gunner position will not be done in multiplayer flights very much because a human co-pilot/gunner would be so much worse. The AI co-pilot gunner should be comparable or slightly worse than a decent human co-pilot/gunner if this is going to work correctly.

Remember Janes F-15E? To do the two-seater there in a mostly single player game, Janes allowed the player to operate everything while the game was paused- you could operate the radar, switch radar modes, slew the LANTIRN, etc. I'm wondering if something LIKE that would be necessary to allow single player DCS Apache? Either that, or they'd have an interesting AI challenge for making a good co-pilot/gunner. The necessity of a team of two folks that work well together to fly the Apache would create a new dynamic in MP flights that I don't think has ever really been there before in any game. It would be so, so cool!

Well, the Apache sure would be sweet in multiplayer with its front and back seaters! Mi-24 would only be cool if they included an Afghanistan theater with it that we could create A-10 missions for :)

Perhaps I was a bit harsh, but it appeared to me that you are arguing that simulations are meaningless. Sure they are meaningless if they don't match real life, but they do here, and the Air Force has spent over 20 years making sure they match real life. When I see people, no with little to no experience in a field whatsoever, doubting and ridiculing stuff that is accepted and known science and theory, it generally touches a raw nerve in me. The stupidity of it ticks me off. While you were not exactly doing this, you don't seem to have any experience specific to VERY foggy conditions, and a few of the things you said I know for sure are just not correct, or at least, not EXACTLY correct... there are shades of correctness and incorrectness. BTW, it's no longer my job. In fact, it was only a co-op engineering employment for a year, but I learned more than enough about THIS particular question to answer it with certainty. I also learned that I did not want to work for the government! I turned down their permenent job offer and went into graduate school instead. As far as being arrogant, sure I am. I have too much faith in my deductive abilities and think I know everything. However, ALOT of people are this way and won't admit it or just don't realize it- you probably are this way too. What I'm doing here is simply saying exactly what's on my mind without sugar coating like I do on every other forum I frequent. While there is an amazing amount of very useful information on these forums on how to fly DCS BS (which I DO try to contribute to when I feel I can make a useful contribution), there can also be somewhat of a hostile attitude. I think it's because people here just speak their minds and tell you exactly how they feel.

Frederf, do we know of any IR missiles that purposely have a LOAL mode built into them? It's an interesting concept. I do not believe that the seeker heads on older missiles using a scanning IR system would have a large enough field of regard to reliably LOAL, maybe I'm wrong on that, but for sure, some of the new staring focal plane array systems should have a better chance of pulling that off reliably. I think I've read stories of Sidewinders (9Ms are scanning IR systems) locking on after launch, but it seems more like a freak accident kind of thing. Anyway, yea, that's a cool concept for getting around a thick layer of clouds, or even, defeating moderate fog by getting closer to the target and locking on when it finally becomes trackable. Your missile would have to be carefully fired for its initial unguided phase so that the target was right in front of it when it could finally acquire it though- or it could have radar and datalink-based guidance to dependably put the target right in front of it when the seeker got into tracking range. Isn't that how the R-27ET (you know, the IR-guided Alamo) works?

That's a pretty ridiculous position you have. That the models could be so far off reality is impossible considering that MODTRAN has been in development for something like 20 years or more. There have been COUNTLESS scientific papers on it, and real life data take to validate its predictions, many refinements to make it even more accurate. In short, MODTRAN IS very, very close to reality. The US military and scientific establishment didn't spend millions of dollars and 20+ years developing a model that could be wrong on such an INCREDIBLY basic question of whether fog will reduce the effectiveness of IR. Despite your experience you have, YOUR experience DOES NOT include the effect of fog on IR systems. Just because it was a little foggy outside and your system was able to hit a target doesn't mean the system performance, such as detection range or tracking range, was not degraded. It was only NOT degraded to the point of uselessness. It WOULD HAVE BEEN if you had been socked in under very foggy conditions. Don't forget, I also tested IR systems too, but with the specific goal of trying to determine the LIMITS of their performance- something it sounds like you didn't do. Sounds like you were just testing if they would still WORK. If your target is sufficiently hot, and the fog isn't too bad, they will still see the target just fine. But if the fog gets thick enough, you're looking at attenuations on the factor of many tens of dB over just a km, and you won't see didley squat. Finally, IR systems stop tracking things when the fly behind thick clouds because they CANNOT SEE through clouds. If you don't know that, then you do not have the experience you claim to have. I've seen plenty of IR videos of aircraft flying around/through clouds. After all, one of the projects I was involved with was a large aperture IR system being used as a target aquistion and tracking adjunct system on radar guided SAM system. Clouds are opaque. Now, a thin cloud layer can be seen through, but the vast majority of clouds aircraft might flight behind- like cumulous- are thick. Now sometimes, it can appear as though the IR system is still tracking the target, even when it is behind a cloud and invisible on the TV image being returned from the sensor. That is because the tracking algorithms will continue to move at the angular velocity that the target had JUST BEFORE it dissappeared behind the cloud. The system is not actually tracking anything.

No, clouds are completely opaque- clouds are very thick fog :)

Sure, IR works in light and moderate fog, never said it didn't. The simple fact of the matter is, it will NOT work in heavy fog. You can't dismiss my OWN experience on this subject either, which was to test and simulate IR sensors under different weather conditions for the US Army. That IR is heavily attenuated to the point of opacity in heavy fog is a simple fact, and many, many sources can back this up- for example, the article just linked by 26-J39. Furthermore, all your live fire experience that you claim to have is of no use in answering this question if you never live fired under heavy fog, which is the scenario I am talking about. No matter the level though, fog attenuates IR. It doesn't penetrate fog like radar does. Fog will reduce detection and tracking ranges for IR systems, and heavy fog will make the system useless. I'm not sure there is really an arguement here, maybe just a misunderstanding. What you describe as having experienced in no way contradicts what I am saying. You say you witnessed an IR missile being used under foggy conditions- there is not a problem with that PROVIDED that the fog is not so heavy that it does not reduce the target signal so much that the target cannot be tracked by the missile! Secondly, you never fired under heavy fog conditions where IR is rendered useless. The reason I have been considering heavy fog this whole thread is because heavy fog was seemingly implied by the original poster.

Excellent article! Good find.

Actually, a noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD) of only 0.1 degrees K is quite aweful, I tested systems that are down around 20mK or even better. Even if you had an INCREDIBLY hot delta T of 500 degrees K, which you WON'T with a helo (this is more like looking up a fighter's tailpipe), that energy is attenuated by 30 dB per km under that maritime fog scenario I found (keep in mind, that was, by far, the LEAST attenuation). 30 dB is a factor of 1000 PER KILOMETER. That means a target 2km away will have its IR signature reduced by a factor of a MILLION- 1000 times after the first kilometer, and then that 1/1000 of the original signal gets attenuated by another factor of 1000 over the second kilometer. So now that very hot 500 degree delta T is now 500K/1000000 = 0.5mK. Since the best NETDs I've ever heard of are only around 10mK, that signal is now 20 times below the noise level. Nothing can detect that. Thirdly, your missile will have large pixels- in fact, missiles like the Stinger only have a SINGLE IR detector that is rapidly scanned to form a psuedo-image. No matter how hot your source, if it is angularly smaller than the IFOV (field of view of a single pixel) then that delta T will get averaged out over the entire IFOV of that pixel. Since hot sources tend to be small, either due to range or due to the fact that heat transfer only allows a very small spot to get really hot, then you're typically spreading that very bright spot out over an area, reducing its effective signal. Finally, how the hell is anyone supposed to aim a shoulder launched IR SAM at a target that they cannot see visually due to fog?! So I don't care how much of a guarentee you are giving. The fact is fog can, and does quite often, get bad enough to defeat the best IR imagers ever designed. Now, sure, you can use IR under sorta foggy conditions. We're talking about pretty thick fog here.

I did a quick google search, and here's a link to an webpage that shows an attenuation (in dB) vs. wavelength plot for IR energy under three different fog scenarios- look on the second page of the .pdf: http://www.systemsupportsolutions.com/whitepapers/KorevaarJan02.pdf As you can see, the IR energy is heavily attenuated. Note that while the "maritime fog" scenario looks like not very strong attenuation, that is ONLY relative to the continental fog and cumulous cloud scenarios. According to these plots, in mid-wave IR, the attenuation for maritime fog is maybe 30dB/km on average across that spectral window. That means that the signal power will be reduced by a factor of 1000 after passing through a kilometer of maritime fog. Obviously, you aren't going to be seeing very far in midwave IR under such conditions. The long wave IR is even worse. These plots also show an interesting peak in attenuation starting around 3 microns and going to perhaps 12 microns (off the edge of this plot). I believe this is due to the attenuation of IR energy specific to water vapor- but I don't know for sure. While the overall trend in attenuation is that the smaller the particle and the longer the wavelength, the less the attenuation, this is an overall TREND, and as I already mentioned, specific substances can absorb heavily in specific bands. That said, I could swear that I remember running some simulations where IR was less heavily attenuated- but still heavily attenuated- than visible under foggy conditions. These scenarios seem to show the reverse. It may be due to different assumptions about the fog in these specific simulations.

Fog is very much an issue for IR sensors. While IR can penetrate fog better than visible, fog can very strongly attenuate IR energy. Exactly how much attenuation depends on the size of the fog droplets and the exact IR wavelength. If the droplets are on the order of the size of the wavelength or larger, you're in trouble. Considering that long wave IR is around 8-12 microns, and you can often FEEL fog droplets against your skin, IR is usually attenuated pretty heavily by fog. There are other considerations also besides just particle size vs wavelength, these are more complicated and often specific to the substance doing the attenuation. To make matters worse, the Igla would probably operate in the 3-5 micron range, meaning even worse attenuation by fog. In short, the Igla should not work in very foggy conditions.

Well, he's got the South Ossetia Obstacle Obamanation and Batumi Ba-Rock n' Roll, and would release one of these obstacle courses just to be fair, but he can't stop waffling over which "course" is best :music_whistling:

Alright, since you put it nicely :) I guess what I was worried about was no different than any problems they might have with integrating various DCS modules, as it seems from the info released that LO FC2 can be viewed as a survey-sim addition to the DCS series...

Well, if this is the first and last major content patch for LO FC2, then that's bad news. If compatability with DCS is kept, and no new patches that add the DCS content into LO FC2 are created, then essentially DCS is in a feature-freeze as far as vital changes go. I see three possibilities: 1) DCS is only compatable with LO FC2 for the period of time before significant content for DCS is released 2) DCS goes into essentially a feature freeze (except for new aircraft)so it can keep compatability 3) DCS and LO FC2 will essentially be the same game, so any DCS changes will be easily and nearly effortless integrated into LO FC2. Obviously, I hope 1) and preferably 3) is what is really going on. As DCS stands right now, I can't see how an A-10 module that included only a new aircraft and graphics updates would even be acceptable. As an example, the mission system and how flights are organized in DCS works well for Ka-50s, but I can't see it working too well for an A-10, and it would be totally unacceptable for, say, an F-15. Another example- you'd need ATC for a realistic A-10 sim, the ATC right now in DCS as I am familiar with it doesn't even do traffic control (correct me if I am wrong). MANY more examples exist, but to go over them would be going way off the topic of this thread.

Well, another thing that has me a little worried about this change is that I don't want the developer's desire keep compatability with Lock On to get in the way of improving realism and adding new features to DCS. DCS, while great, needs a massive laundry list of improvements, many of those in AI, interface, and mission structure, and that's not even mentioning some of the in-game realism that needs some tweaking. Those might be hard to integrate into Lock On as well. I guess it all depends on how similar the code is.