Pikey

Until now the DCS ecosytem has lived in the 1-5m2 Radar cross section limit for the purpose of detection by radars. F-35 has, if you are willing to accept the data provided, an rcs three decimal points to the right of that, which render most of the existing in game air radars blind. We dont model the birds and the bees, but this is what an F-35 is, in size. The 90's SAM's in game will be useless, as far as I understand. The Airborne radars, are at least disadvantaged to the point where weapons first launch are a total surprise. In fact, BVR is a bit pointless in F-35 vs anything in DCS currently. DCS is an ecosystem where we want to do more than be a cockpit simulator. I do not accept that it is, currently. Those that like to learn a sequence, thats your game. However, there are thousands, that enjoy having some kind of match, or dare I say it, a 'game', scenario or structured event that goes beyond process. My ask is that ED consider the tools needed in which we can incorporate a module like F-35 seriously now and reserve developer cycles for that in the months ahead. Specifically: Dynamic RCS that exposes F-35 bay doors, gear, aspect to less favourable conditions. Some kind of air AI adversary(s) that can also behave more stealthily, and not just detect, tunnel and fire. (Preferably Russian origin) A suite of 2-3 Surface to Air Missile systems of more current technology that have a better detection chance (Preferably Russian origin) Red Coalition AWACS/GCI networks and systems with up to date detection capabilities. It doesn't have to be a completely seperate two-tiered game, but it will need something more to bridge that gap. The F-14 was an interesting example showing how a module could perform in a mixed technology environment, but the gap between 1m2 RCS and 0.0001 RCS and an AESA is a void that ED needs to fill else the F-35 module won't be able to "play a game" with anyone except the pilot and the systems.

This thread assumes secret systems, features and kits haven't been simulated before. They have, there's nothing new in another platform with secret stuff. ED simplifies and extrapolates all the time. From WW2 where the plane is not available anymore (FW190) to RWR behaviour, to sensor performance to weapons like AMRAAM. If this comes as a surprise, I hope your reality and immersion remain intact, but F-35 isn't changing anything significantly. This is what ED does, its its magic trick. It makes the simulation immerse and you feel its real. THose that can, will advise, those that know know better will attempt to bend their reality to whatever works for them.

I think the Jag offers something different to cold war and I'd love to see it with all its warts!

There's so many versions either side of the Night Attack I'd love to see. The Sea Harrier is my personal favourite but even the II+ is probably more popular for the younger crowd using the Top Trump style of weighted qualities.

Oh my goodness. This has been the longest wait for the last jigsaw peice to arrive. A type 42....I'm kindda overcome, I was organising my Falklands mission for tonight and you released this a few hours before. I'm so greatly thankful of folks like you and all the people in this community who continue to keep these dreams alive. On behalf of so many people, thank you Sir, for your efforts towards this. You win the awesome award for this week. Thank you!

Detection is AI only. There's nothing the game signals when you see something in your MFD's or lase. Some people did use model arguments to figure out where things point, such as a gazelle vivianne site and the Kiowa disco ball, but thats it. Search for the Gazelle recon mod, its as close as you can get.

Forgot to add: Base capturred events return the name "H". It looks pretty ugly so it could use a filter view.

Since this is a public report, I can add my endorsement right up here. - It's made mission creation for public servers a nightmare because you have to set your airbases up by warehouse, dynamic settings and such. This added 100+ H's to the drop down "Copy to" button in the mission editor. So you can't use H as a name in the UI either, let alone scripting. You HAVE to police the warehouse contents for multiplayer, its absolutely neccessary. - It's made the existing "Copy to" command issue even worse, in that the defect that prevents 'Dynamic cargo' and 'Dynamic spawning' checkbox is not copied with the warehouse contents. So you need to copy that manually 100 times, or start editing miz files, mission table and warehouse tables with some automation. - It's made these helipads unuseable for scripting since they are not unique by name. We cannot tell a player to fly to "H", or pick "H" from a menu full of 100 H's or use "find by name" type lua functions. - Because of the above issues, MOOSE has had to exclude H airbases from the AIRBASE_SET class so we cannot access or use them in any mission. Thats impacting around [redacted] unique players a month just for 4YA.

Saying this with the full knowledge that an in game option is required and desired... but... You can try Franks FLIGHTCONTROL class in Moose, its just a line of code that you can copy and paste from the link there. What it does is stop the AI from taxiing by literally blocking them with a static of your choice, then doing the same with in bound traffic and managing it all in script, allowing batches to cyclically revolve betweeen landing and takeoff better than the game does, which can get stuck in a cycle of allowing an AI to begin landing then a new plane spawns in and cancels it because the ATC engine rule always prioritizes departing traffic which can causes AI to stack up and then run out of fuel. Ive used it successfully to keep traffic from not building up when using AI for things like intercepts which are on demand and unplanned. BTW I watched the BMS demo, I thought it was great but it didnt handle DCS's use case whereby DCS also has a great demand oinline for cyclical ops reverting very frequently by players interfering and prioritizing themselves through traffic. And ATO system can plan ahead, much of online play in DCS is "Join in progress" and people aren't waiting for atakeoff slot, they are going now. There's simply no crossover for these two types of play. Unless DCS does get serious and actually land on misbehaving peoples heads. People gotta learn one way or another, but this is th emain issue catering for two types of play...those that will use an ATC system and those that will ignore it!

Well maybe there should be a better way to describe what the ATC feature is, since there's plenty of counter-points offered in this thread which no one corrected talking specifically about CTAF and the lack of need for air traffic control, from the player perspective. It's reasonable to assume, for some, that ATC is a player feature only, that projects the voices and requests in the in game radio menu. In reality, you and I are agreed that its so much more, that its principally the undelying way in whch both the player and the AI are deconflicted and scheduled around airbases, which I defintiely know to be required in order to have servers that run reasonably for more than a few sortie lengths. Possibly that message is lost to many people in communication when the acronym is used so freely. To quote Bernard Shaw, "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place". That man gets more right as the internet age progresses! Back on topic, I'll have a look at the links and get up to speed. The ATC system (AI underlying system) I haven't discerned any change in for as long as DCS World has existed, its always had interesting quirks. The AI system has a couple of things added, like pairs landings, but not much I can see at least. The valu ein getting this system working is that players can fit into AI's schedule an dnot have collision or causes AI to just spin in the air until it runs out of fuel, which is important to servers.

I'm so torn about ATC, I can see some passionate viewpoints on each side, I just feel like this is a huge undertaking for the relative imapct which might be why the job keeps being pushed back (I don't know, so dont infer anything). There's a critical peice that I feel slots in, before ATC, that anyone who writes missions for servers understands the impact of: The AI simply cannot handle airbase operations over time. Sure it works in principle and the ATC system is quite rudimentary but there are things people in this chat don't see, such as the way it breaks and the way departing aircraft are always stopping aircraft that are holding, and these can stop and casue airborne pile ups and complete stops of the airport to the extent where it simply becomes more important to fix that before any ATC system would reliably work instead. The other things that make no sense are the design of taxiing, which is always placed to the furthest point from the landing point to go through the longest routes, for reasons that are beyond my comprehension and serve to cause pile ups and issues. And also the AI is still holding its parking spot for its lifetime so I found, which leads to refusals to land. For Single player play, to have an immersive ATC system relies on having an AI that behaves. There's no point in implementing new voices on the back of AI that can't behave. Complementary to that is that the terrain system that provides the taxiways and parking spots must support the AI, there's always a lower level. So... lots more to do before ATC is even sensible in my understanding.

FWIW exactly same, also works great. To note, if people are wondering about general "placement and setup" then the box it arrives in is perfect with the Moza AB9 on top of that and a 20cm extension from Virpil is exactly at hand height. I would add though, that this puts it in collision with any standard desk height (its about on the trigger height - ouch) With 20cm stick and on the box, its got considerable forward and rearward displacement you need to deal with by bringing it away from the desk. This will make you want to cut holes in your chairs.

Mine arrived too, must have been a batch, when I asked last week they expected one on 17th, so looks like we are in sync. Ive been grinning for the last two hours. I actually feel the droop of the Spitfire control surfaces when theres no airflow. Ive been rebinding everything all morning, which is painful, because I wanted to try every module out. Too much to talk about. Too many settings. Too busy, bai!

Came here looking for the same thing!

The no listed brand SATA SSD for your F drive isnt keeping up, regardless of what it is. You can use a small NVMe drive for DCS like a Samsung 980 and it will be such a huge difference you will be surprised. With the amount of data that DCS shifts from disk to memory with the likes of these huge textures in the scenery, its just so easy to miss how important disk speed is when you need to run a 100GB terrain followed by unit and plane textures. Also make sure its plugged in a different sata controller, sometimes they conflict in the same lane and run at half speed, or it might need trimming.