Pyroflash

TIR is the single most important piece of equipment that you will use. Aside, of course, from a simple joystick, throttle, and rudder capability. Though, if you have the money, and enjoy this stupidly expensive hobby, you might consider upgrading to a TM warthog, and some decent rudder pedals. It does make a world of difference when you compare it to, frankly, mid range equipment like the -52 Pro.

Pain. After two years of using an X-65F, I bought a Warthog. I haven't looked back since. Honestly, it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so darned jittery with sensitive control settings. It also desperately needs a setup like in the F-16, where you can tell exactly what direction your inputs are going before you move the plane.

Cool!

One lucky, rich, company, and they use them exclusively to train the USAF in DACT tactics.

Also, I would change the motherboard and CPU to Intel. AMD CPU's are inferior across the board. I would recommend an Intel I5-3570K CPU. It will run you only around $250, and is pretty top of the line (The real top of the Line procs are the Sandy E's, though you are looking at around a minimum of $700 for the proc/mobo combination) until the new Haswell procs come around. The motherboard is really entirely up to you. Without knowing what kind of performance you expect from it, I can only really suggest that it be a Z77 based motherboard. I also recommend ASUS or Intel as brand choices. That, with, as others have said, a slightly more powerful GPU, will have to pretty much set as far as smooth flying goes.

No one wants your English crumpet barges.

It seems that the ejected shells are being ejected from below the barrel, and not the ejection ports. 1. start up a mission with a P-51D. 2. Slow down time in-game. 3. fire guns. 4. Observe the location that the ejected shell casings appear. It is well below and in front of where they should actually be popping out of. I did a quick search before posting this and did not find anything. Sorry if this has been brought up before.

Still working. In this world, I wouldn't take a news hiatus of a couple months as a sign of things going wrong. Now if they don't do anything for YEARS (I'm not naming any names here. FighterOps. Okay, sorry, couldn't resist), then that may be a sign that development has halted. The main reason for this is that a great majority of the work isn't visual related. So most of what they are doing right now is probably code related (yeah, I know there are some who will say they want code shots), and they are probably not willing to show that. So really, until they start ACTUALLY FINISHING stuff, there really isn't much to show. Give it time, the company hasn't given up on DCS, and they just (r.e. a few days ago) released new shots of the T-2 development (An aircraft, which, mind you, they have stated will be their first release.), I wouldn't count them out quite yet.

GTX 680, or wait for the 7 series cards. They are fantastic. Like others have said, in your situation, I would sooner get a new Ivy bridge processor because you are most definitely going to run into a largeish CPU bottleneck if you upgrade your GPU right now. However, that is not to say that you shouldn't upgrade. If you upgrade your CPU, you are also going to run into a GPU bottleneck, albeit a significantly smaller one than you would have to deal with given your current processor and a new graphics card. TLDR; Get a new processor, if you have money left over (it's gonna cost you around $6-700 for the CPU upgrade given that you are going to have to buy a new mobo as well), I would go for a new graphics card. Possibly a GTX 660 or 670.

When you talk about dogfights, you are analyzing two things, turn rate and turn radius. If the hornet can drag the viper into a super tight, low speed engagement, he can still turn while the viper is stalling out. However, the viper can actually rate faster than the hornet, at least in a sustained setting, so while the hornet holds the ability to regulate the engagement, the viper still has some wiggle room because he can bring his nose around faster. This is actually very similar in some respects to what an eagle pilot has to deal with against a flanker. Likewise, a hornet has no control zone when it comes to fighting a viper, so the viper is going to be limited to medium aspect snapshots, HAGS, etc. From what I understand though, the viper should be coming out on top. At least the viper pilots I know seem to be pretty confident about their training against the F-15's, while the hornet pilots, well, let's just say they aren't very happy when the eagles come around.

Also a key point that seems to be missed here is that if your RADAR's detection limits are independent of where inside the box your TDC is located. All it does it show beam height at a particular range, it does not actually affect what your RADAR is doing. Also keep in mind that for a elevation reference, at 40nm your RADAR has a beam height of roughly 40,000'. So if your elevation is pointing down to where the top of your beam cone is at 20,000'; 20,000' of the beam is actually below horizon. Also because of inherent limitations with RADAR resolution at longer pulse beamwidths required for extreme ranges, you will likely have troubles picking up small targets at ranges of over 80nm. Even if you do manage to pick up a fighter, your RADAR will not be able to distinguish other nearby targets from it, so beware of more enemy aircraft than you initially see. As the gap lowers however, your RADAR resolution will increase, and you will begin to see a more accurate depiction of what is actually there. It would also behoove you to learn what the different lines mean on the RADAR screen. They help a lot for quick references.

26 to 39 thousand feet is the contrail level in DCS. ATM, there is no way of affecting this,and this will hold true regardless of changing conditions.

try copy pasting the product key right from the download page.

TIR 5 is definitely an improvement over the 4, but the 4 is perfectly fine if you don't want to spend the extra money. However, one thing is certain regardless which one you want to buy. You will want to have the optional Track Clip Pro. Otherwise, the 5 has a higher resolution than the 4. This being its biggest selling point. There are other, more subtle improvements, however they will not have as big of an impact as this.

DCS does not have a monogamous relationship.

Uhhh.. IRIS is making an F-14A dude. All you have to do is wait.

No, but you won't really notice it anyways. Your brain will adjust for vibration, so you won't really notice it.

Eh, a C-17A might be better for strategic airlifting. For tactical stuff though, a C-130H would be the bees knees.

Approach AoA in the F-15C is 5 degrees AoA (left side of your HUD in approach mode). The actual speed varies depending on your load. Touchdown AoA is 11 degrees. Also, try not to use your rudder when correcting errors on landing. It can result in side loads (these are terribad for the aircraft IRL) and induced roll (which you'll have to use ailerons to correct anyways). In the long run, you'll find it easier to use your ailerons to do most of the corrections. The only time you will want to use your rudder on landing is for slips and crosswind landings. Also, welcome to the life stealer, the time eater, the magical, wonderful, painful world of DCS.

I agree, Plus WWII boats would be a lot more plausible than modern stuff which is all but witch magic nowadays.

That somebody is going to make a pacific ocean map? Hey, you can't claim that one is in any specific time period. Unless you start taking time sensitive temperature readings and spectroscopic analyses of the water. Hey, that's a good module idea! How about DCS: Science!

The IFF transponder is a completely separate system from the RADAR. In the case of the F-15C, it is sensor fused with the RADAR, however, it is not always accurate(i.e. there have been cases where an F-15C has locked up an unidentified target, and it turned out to be a friendly). In the case of a multimode AESA RADAR, a RADAR subarray can indeed act as IFF interrogator, however that is not such a system as we have, or are ever likely to have in game from any of ED's products. Possibly this could be introduced with some 3rd party guesstimate platforms like the AN/APG-77 and CAPTOR. However, the AN/APG-63(V)1 we are likely to get with the MSIP Eagle does not do this. However, yes, the above two are correct in saying that this is a different system entirely from NCTR, which is what you are talking about. NCTR has been around in the Eagle since ~86'

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they have been developing both of them for quite some time now. That's the beauty of parallel development cycles. You don't cement yourself into any one thing at a time.

I'll buy it when it comes out, until then, I could care less. This is almost worse than speculating on the release date of ED products.

yeah, but bms is free, and lets face it, someone is going to make a dcs sopwith.