Bushmanni

FYI returnToRoute isn't intended to be used with paths that use onroad type WPs. The script assumes straight path between WPs to calculate the return point on the path. I don't know how the script will handle onroad types but I would assume you will get some kind of problems. You should at least put the onroad WPs close enough each other so that the line between them stays close enough of the intended route.

Make a dive from high altitude to the deck with full afterburners so that you get about 1.4M at sea level. The plane should start oscillating in yaw axis pretty violently at that speed (looking it from big screen is uncomfortable). I had 2-3 Sidewinders on wings but otherwise clean plane when I discovered this. Also rudder use will start a decaying oscillation above 1.1M but it seemed to become self sustaining only above 1.2-1.3M.

It starts from closest point along the path, not just closest waypoint.

I'd like to know if it's viable to zoom to read MFDs and gauges with better clarity and to visually search for targets. If it's possible without screwing up your tummy or getting some other nasty side effect then Oculus might be functionally superior to a big 3D TV screen.

There was an announcement few monts ago about technology that allows combining multiple laser into single beam using phase control. You need that to prevent destructive interference where waves cancel each other out. With that you can use cheaper low power lasers to get high enough power output for destroying missiles and stuff.

Yes, 10nm holds for Mach ~1.0 @~20k bandits. If the bandit is higher and/or faster than that then you need to start evasion sooner. Also if you are at high altitude and at low IAS your turn capability will be poor and you will need to start turning earlier. For example 1.0M at 40k makes you pretty much a sitting duck so it's better to trade altitude for speed before you need to start evasive maneuvering.

Your speed management wasn't very good as you were often trying to turn at very slow speed while corner speed turn would have been better but fortunately your enemies were even worse at it. When defensive you should use your energy for defense but when you are behind the bandit you should try to optimize your turn rate until you can pull your nose to gun solution (then you bleed speed to end the fight). Corner speed isn't magic solution to every turning problem but in the basic circle flying turning contest it will help you to drive into the enemy six (or at least keep him out of yours). It would do you good to read about pursuit curves and some basic aerodynamics. Check the pdf behind the link. You were able to keep your eyes on the enemy really good. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2110584&postcount=20

Missile fired from R_aero forces the enemy to just make a shallow turn instead of going defensive. You need to be the first guy to fire a missile from a range that forces the receiver to go defensive. 10nm shot is something that can be relatively easily trashed with aggressive maneuvering and/or notching but otherwise it's going to be deadly. Basically it's the shot that forces the enemy to go defensive. You can hope for a lucky break and leave the fight after this but if you really want the guy go down then the real fight starts from here. Surprise is important as it multiplies your chances of getting a kill but don't sacrifice SA for it as SA keeps you from getting into unfavorable situations and getting shot down. What I'm saying is to not try to sneak upon enemy using RWR and having radar off as your primary method like many n00bs like to try. It's better to learn to use radar and proper tactics than to try to be sneaky as the sneaky tactic only works on people who can't use either. Only when you have tally or by some other means know exactly where the enemy is it's sensible to approach radar off. In those situations it's usually the smart thing to do provided you have made sure there are no surprises in the neighborhood.

If you get shot down by a radar missile while there's nobody else around there's nothing else to do but teach him how to tell friend from foe on the radar screen and HUD. If you get shot down while dogfighting with an enemy then you need to tell them to not shoot Slammers into the merge. If he shoots you down with a heater then you need to tell him to use radar to check the identity of the target before firing. There's really no way to tell who you are besides comms but the moron needs to learn to use his radar.

Trying to get a clear answer for an unclear situation is pointless. They will tell us when they have something to say. Or would you rather have news every week about stuff that gets taken back with 90% probability.

Infantry should advance if there's no enemies in sight but otherwise they should shoot the enemy until it's dead. Infantry should also move more as individuals and keep moving until in contact instead of stopping if front guy makes contact and stops. Even better would be if the individual soldier could retreat in cover (retreat along the route of advance until no LOS to the enemy) if the enemy starts shooting back and then randomly peek, shoot (or wait the enemy to reappear for a while) and then get in cover again until the enemy is dead.

First of all there's no point having radar off unless you approach from side or rear. In that case you would be out of his radar cone so you can make a stealth approach when your radar is off. But if you can see him in RWR he likely sees you with radar already and having your radar off in this case just makes things harder for you. ECM is only useful against targets that are farther than about 28nm (this range depends on the radar you are working against) away by preventing them knowing range to you or locking you. They can still fire missiles in HOJ (home on jam) mode but there's not much chance of those missiles hitting you as long as DCS missiles are like they are. When you get within burn through range you should turn ECM off. Against 31 you could use ECM and if that doesn't get you close enough then try notching. Notching is a maneuver that makes you invisible to radar. Basically you need fly perpendicular to the radar beam at lower altitude than the radar is. You can find more info with search about notching, how to use it effectively and work against it if someones uses it against you. There's also existing threads about BVR where this post would have been more appropriate and where you will probably find all the info you need.

GG, would you recommend doing the practice scenarios as described or modifying PADS in some way for simulator F-15? I have a suspicion that there might be some compromises to get safe real world training tailored for T-45.

Public servers are bad for learning BFM as what you need is to repeat over and over the practice scenarios 1vs1 with minimal time spent setting up the fight. You might find someone there to train with though. Build a simple MP mission in editor with the planes already at correct starting positions and host your own server.

In Shaw's Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering, energy tactics is described in general as bleeding the bandits energy with certain maneuvers by inviting him to trade energy to angles and when sufficient energy advantage has been gained, using it through vertical maneuvering to gain a shooting position. This tactic generally requires you to give the bandit an opportunity for a snapshot at least but if done right you should be able to defeat his gun shot with maneuvering. Vertical maneuver means in this context pulling up (not necessarily purely vertical) and maneuvering on top of the bandit and then dropping on his six from above. This has to be done efficiently in order to not give the bandit room or time to gather energy and point his nose at you when you come down. Because you have sufficient energy advantage he can't follow you in the vertical but has to either gather speed at level flight and let you drop on his six or stall his plane when coming after you. In practice this is pretty hard to do with modern planes as they have lots of thrust to point the nose upwards even at slow speeds and excellent gun sights that make snapshots and long range tracking shots very dangerous. Still you need to be turning close to the enemy at all times as giving too much separation gives him opportunity for a missile shot. Basically when you are using energy tactics you are turning with the bandit as with angles tactics. Instead of trying to get closer to his six o'clock position you try to keep yourself within missile min range and out of gunsights and gradually build energy advantage in either speed, altitude or both to get high enough on top of him. There's really no signature move that tells if a pilot is using energy tactics or angles tactics but it's evident in what the pilot tries to gain with his moves. Whether to use energy or angles tactics depends on lot of things like tactical situation, weapons available to participants and relative plane characteristics. Fighter A might be better of with energy tactics against fighter B but angles tactics work better against fighter C. Against fighter D (and always A) both tactics work so tactical situation and personal preference could be more important factors.

One way to learn stuff is to just do it and with time you usually get better at it, even if you might not know why. This is a natural way for neural networks to learn statistically do the right thing. People say this kind of skill "instinctive" which it's not but intuitive. This kind of learning hinges on you happening to do the right thing randomly at some point. If someone in the know manages to coach or "manipulate" you doing the right thing you will have a dramatic shortcut. As an example it took me few months to learn no-spin spike throw and understand how I acquired that skill. After that I was able to teach the basic skill to multiple people within 15 minutes (they could get most of the thrown spikes stick to a board). I used to think this was an impossible thing to do or at least you would have to be some kind of extraordinary person to be able to do it from random distance. Turns out it's relatively easy to learn when you know what things to pay attention to. Other aspect is that in many technical skills like race driving or dogfighting the right thing to do isn't easy to stumble upon randomly but can be analytically figured out with relative ease. In these kind of circumstances it's crucial to know and understand the governing "rules" in order to be effective at your trade. There's no way to instinctively or intuitively learn them as precisely as learning the rules through technical analysis or someone telling/showing them to you. For example judging bandit energy is not simply seen (except with radar or something similar). When you do certain maneuvers you can see how the bandit reacts to your moves and from that reaction you can make assessment of his energy. For example you are making a sustained level turn at corner speed and the bandit is tracking you inside the turn circle which is only possible if he has considerably less speed than you. Or you go for a one circle flow at head-on merge and at the other side of the circle the bandit flies half a mile in front of you which means he's going much faster than you. Knowing how turn radius, g and speed play together makes it pretty straightforward to get pretty good sense of the bandits speed with a simple observation. With more experience this assessment will get more accurate but there's nothing special that just anybody can do.

You get to WVR from BVR by denying a BVR shot at you. Usually you do it by shooting your missiles at the enemy which he has to defeat one by one (and keep his nose away from you) while you are getting closer. If you are 8-12nm apart and only have sidewinders left it takes skill and good luck to get to the merge alive with this method. If you absolutely have to shoot down your enemy even if you might get shot down in the process you need to try to get to the merge right from the beginning before you run out of BVR missiles as that's the only way to get a missile or gun shot that he won't defeat. In MP usually both get an initial missile shot at each other and usually the the one who gets the second shot first forces the other to run away or eat a missile. If he decides to fight and has luck you get into a dogfight having the upper hand if you played your cards right. Other typical way that gets you in the merge is flying over a crest at low altitude and running into an enemy at the other side or enemy pops up from behind a hill. In these cases the winner is usually the guy who has his eyes open (or luck puts the enemy right in front of him) and sees the other guy first.

Weight increase increases also drag as you need more alpha to generate the required lift for level flight.

Cockpit visibility is modeled for AI at least for most planes. Cargo planes and helicopters have crew members looking out the windows so it's reasonable to expect it will react to missile shot from sides and rear also. If you come across a plane that seems to have magic vision it might be good to make a bug report if someone hasn't already.

Aspect has definitely some kind of effect on AI vision as usually if I fire a heater from rear at the enemy chopper or aircraft with no MWS they will not react. If you got a track maybe it should be looked closer.

I'm pretty sure air combat doesn't have pretty much any room for actual innovation (like GG said, re-inventing the wheel doesn't count) without technical innovation. In sim world it means that there's really no room for innovation (except for the short time the change is new and people aren't fully aware of all the implications) as all the technical changes are know and available to everyone to experiment with and figure out how to use it and how to work against it. This holds at least in theory assuming it's actually possible to experiment and figure out all the relevant moves and counter-moves for every plane and piece of equipment or obtain the knowledge from others or through experience. The question is how you cram all that information in your brain in a useful manner. How to train ie. program your brain so that you are as effective as you can be. Now regardless of your style of brain programming, it will always happen through practice. The question is, what kind of decision rules you are going to learn ie. what kind of practice drills and scenarios you are going to use and how you are going to analyze and debrief them. My style of learning rules of thumbs stems from the experience with airsoft. All the strict procedure style guys were pretty much too slow to react to changing situations at best and often doing irrelevant stuff while all the best players were people who made decisions by instinct but did pay attention to the basic theoretical principles. Big problem for the procedure guys was the bloated need for internal coordination that took their attention away from the enemy if they played as a group. The worst players were people who just went with instinct (they really didn't have any idea what they were doing) or people who misunderstood the procedures (practically same problem as with pure instinct). Airsoft is in most situations lot more messier than air combat and you can't usually rule out innovations due to unknowns related to playing field so you can't make an apples to apples comparison in strict sense. So my question is, if anyone can answer it, what kind of style the best players use in flight sims? I want to point out, that the well playing instinct guys did have lots of experience, drilling and practice under their belt so they had lots of memories of how to act properly in certain situations. The difference to the pure procedure guys was that their knowledge wasn't explicit, ie. they didn't have a conscious answer to every problem but more like a conscious simple rules of thumb for certain general situations and then they would instinctively recognize the situation and instinctively figure out the proper way to apply the rule to the situation. In effect they did have effectively the same information and most likely even more than the procedure guys but it was organized differently due to different way of thinking and training.

Yes, as a thought process it makes sense to say A2A is all about procedure like any other 'conflict' where all the possible playing pieces and moves are known (still what pieces are in play or where they are might be unknown) ie. no innovations are allowed or possible. But then what kind of thought process I should practice to have? Shaw's book describes tactics in a "bandit does this, you do this" kind of style but I personally don't like that kind of style and Shaw doesn't exactly seem to imply that it's necessary either. I prefer to have more general rules of thumb that result in the described tactics when applied to certain situations. It requires more thinking and less remembering which I prefer but it's less straightforward and more error prone but also more flexible.

How do you define procedure in context of A2A fight? First thing that comes to my mind is checklist type of rigid ordered procedure or choreography. While fighter combat certainly has that aspect in form of operating the plane and its systems correctly I have hard time imagining procedure that gets you in a favorable situation in respect to the enemy to employ weapons effectively as the enemy seldom follows the same procedure as you. Of course if you fumble the weapons employment procedure your skill in getting to a shooting position is useless.

Pretty much any game gets "complex" when you get deep enough into it especially if it's a PvP game. When you start looking games from OODA loop perspective the difference between really good players might be measured in milliseconds and at that point even seemingly insignificant things start to matter and hence more possibilities and opportunities open up to the players. But it doesn't change the fact that real complex games are still at whole another level as they offer much more room for learning and improvement for those people who can handle the complexity. Flying at 104th server as lone wolf is still a mere scratch of the surface of what flight sims of modern fighters can offer. I really liked Maverics post. I like to challenge myself and get better at stuff I do. My score matters to me but even more the way I attained it. I don't enjoy shooting down vastly less skilled players (or AI) as that's just work with no reward ie. seeing improvement in my skills. Nor do I highly appreciate shooting down better pilots due to stumbling into an advantageous position without a clue how it happened or how I can repeat that. Then again I feel good despite getting thoroughly owned by superior tactics, flying and cunning if I have the change to see and undertand why it happened as it will improve my own game. I once attended a "ninjutsu" (can't remember the proper name of the ryuha but it was supposed to be ninja stuff) martial arts seminar where the teacher said that you don't come to dojo to show off how good you are or how much you know but to steal other peoples techniques. I think that is a really good mindset for people who want to be really good and not just appear like that to people who don't understand. I think what new players need is better idea of what it takes to get better at PvP flight simming as I can see lot's of new players stuck at the slightly better than noob level as they can't figure out how to get better on their own which is understandable as very few people can. One of the essential things is someone who knows the way and is able to show it and real people to practice against. Simply flying on a public server is bad as a practice as it consists more of flying than fighting. In a proper practice session you can concentrate on the stuff that you need practice on in a environment that suits your skill level, you can skip the long distance flying part and you can analyze and debrief after engagement which is essential. This means we need lots of more experienced players to help the new ones. I know from experience that it will drastically reduce the apprehension of getting into PvP servers. I'm glad that Ace of Harts started his thread of advice seeking in order to get to the top of the score boards in few months. I'm even more glad that after learning the truth he decided to stick with flight sims instead of seeking something that provides quicker rewards. I think that thread has lots of essential advice and myth busting that new simmers should learn first thing about their prospective hobby.

I think the flash is the laser designator pulse. The designator coding works by pulse interval modulation, ie. the laser code simply sets the interval between pulses. Designators use usually near IR bandwidth ie. the laser "light" can be seen with digital cameras that don't have too strong IR filters on them (try to watch TV remote IR LED through digital camera). There are some Apache gun cam footage where you can see the laser spot strobing in real time. In a slow-mo footage it would appear as intermittent flash only.