Bushmanni

USAF Selects Boeing to deliver podded High Energy Laser http://defense-update.com/20161216_usaf-selects-boeing-to-deliver-podded-high-energy-laser.html

I think it's a bit too much to ask for single person to comb through the acmi and sort everything out by himself, hence the claiming system.

This is a good conversation to have so I'd say lets have it. If mods want to move it elsewhere it would be good as more people get to find it. To put simply what Stuge said, the complexity of air combat isn't in the aircaft systems but in the tactics, operations and strategy, the stuff that the guy on the other side tries to make as complex as he can. The avionics and weapons capabilities and aircraft flight dynamics dictate what you can do and that in turn dictates what kind of tactics you need to prepare to use or encounter. It's the capabilities, not the switches that have the most impact on cognitive complexity. In that regard F-15C and Su-27 are the most complex modules in DCS currently as they have the most flexible capabilities and hence most tactical options available to them. BMS F-16 is on a similar level as is also the DCS M2000C. You can master avionics in a few months but mastering BFM, ACM and BVR tactics in a modern fighter takes years. I have been flying and training with the F-15C weekly since it came out (is it three years ago?) as stand alone module and I have still lots of stuff to learn about how to employ it tactically. In comparison it took me about half a year to learn the A-10C avionics into muscle memory.

More advanced doesn't mean more work load. Fighting in a BMS F-16 or DCS FC3 F-15C is pretty similar from cognitive workload point of view. If you want to you can simply ignore all the advanced features in F-16 and you have pretty much a FC3 level plane. But if you don't ignore them you will have much more capability that will actually decrease your workload as you don't have to do the things yourself. For example, DLZ computation is useless in FC3 F-15C so you do it in your head instead, as you do navigation, keeping SA on friendlies, calculating your flight profiles, etc. Granted there's more workload to learn to use all the systems but in the end you are actually getting by easier in it compared to FC3 planes.

Nice statistics. I'd just like to point out that the "Losses fully accountable to differences in aircraft type performances" doesn't really do justice as if you know you are being attacked you can take defensive measures and this is where the differences come out. Fishbed can keep turning hard and denying sensor nose without any loss of turn rate while Tiger and Viggen clearly turned into a rock sled after a hard turn. More informative would be "losses avoided by differences in aircraft type performance" but judging this from the ACMI is quite iffy. Not denying that it was the tactics and strategy that caused our loss though. We just need to eat the humble pie to the last crumble and be wiser the next time. Stuge (#1) doesn't have TrackIR and Razer (#4) also didn't have it during the matches he earned his ranking so it's clearly not an issue. I can also testify that they are equally though opponents regardless if you are flying P-51, M-2000C, F-86, MiG-21, Su-27 or F-15C. Many of the top ranked pilots also don't have the latest and greatest flight sticks either (for example, Stuge and Razer). I can say for sure that DCS isn't equipment sport where you can easily get advantage over your opponents with expensive equipment. The people who are top ranked fly a lot and train hard besides having talent. What they don't have is some priviledge that put them there (besides having time to practice and take part in ranked competitions). You can also rise to the top fairly quickly if you have the talent as you'll likely get to top 10 or even top 5 with just two MVP scores.

According to my tests and the US Navy EM chart Fishbeds overperformance gets even greater at 600km/h. I can't really decipher the Russian charts so can't tell if they tell the same thing.

Bushmanni - F-15C Do I have to stick with the chosen plane or can I change it if I feel like doing something different?

Actually MiG-21 is superior at all speeds (1 deg/s or more) and especially at slow speeds (600 km/h) where it's 3deg/s faster than F-5 optimum STR when both are at full tanks. With half tanks MiG-21 has 4 deg/s edge over F-5. There's no need for the MiG to go for scissors as it can escape it simply with level turn as F-5 will have poor turn rate at that speed while MiG is at it's optimum. edit: I haven't actually tested if level turn works but it seems to me like a plausible option considering the STR numbers.

USAF flew them IRL. Check the link to the bug report and you see what I'm talking about. MiG-21 sustained turn rate is ridiculously exaggerated and the effect of speed on sustained turn rate works backwards, ie. when you slow down you get better rate which is just wrong.

I did some testing with F-5 and MiG-21 and to my disappointment found out that MiG-21 FM is seriously out of shape at the moment being considerably overperforming and not flying like a Fishbed at all. So unless Leatherneck has a corrected FM already finished and patched in for the event I will bail out as I don't see a point having a serious or even fun match in this situation. https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2972550&postcount=62

Did some testing with sustained turn rates. Here's the result. I couldn't bleed speed below 300kts as I had reached maximum AoA at that point. Raw data points from the test flight. Sustained turn rate test flight bug report.miz

Organizers definitely understand that this event is exclusive and that's what they are after. Complaining about that is like complaining that DCS isn't newbie friendly with all the highly realistic and complicated modules. While it might be meant as constructive criticism it doesn't help the creators to improve towards the goal they are after.

These events are not public service so any bitching about rules the organizers have set is just silly. If they want to do something different lets let them. They are doing the work to organize all this anyways so they have the right to make it the way they want it. Besides there will be more events coming up or you can organize your own.

Callsign: Bushmanni Current SA Ranking: 2 Squadron Name: SF Squadron Squadron Website: http://dcsfinland.fi/sf-squadron/ Nationality: Finland Location (for ping): Finland Available on December 10th: YES Available on December 17th: YES Chosen aircraft: F-5

F-15 has NCTR so it can identify a contact (as long as enemy flies different planes than friendlies) even if contacts IFF isn't working or its configured wrong.

I didn't even think about if someone would think that HUD might be some way superior to the helmet HUD in addition to reliability. From my limited experience with sims I would ditch the HUD without doubt even if I could only have the same functionality as in HUD in a helmet sight as you can see all the important info while looking at the bandit. In real life neck strain is an issue but I have no idea if it's an actual problem.

Thanks for interesting event. There were some issues but that didn't prevent us from having fun with the mission. Hopefully people will announce in advance if they are not coming so other people know to shop up. While we had reserves, there wasn't enough to fill in all the spots. Looking forward to the next one. =RvE=DackSter94, awesome defending with your A-10. I couldn't believe my eyes how many missiles and gunshots you managed to spoof and jink from two F-15s before getting gunned down on the 5th pass. Good job.

Depends how well the helmet works. HUDs typically have also traditional collimator sight as a backup for ultimate redundancy. Then again how useful a traditional HUD or collimator sight would be for F-35 is also question. You could also have HUD like system on the front touchscreen for backup if needed with forward facing DAS camera providing background video.

He means that he's been asking what other people would think about it and their concern is if it's backwards compatible. The current version gets the job done for the most people so the question is if the improvements you describe are worth the possible issue with backwards compatibility. First of all, is there issue with backwards compatibility and if there is then what can you do with the newer version that justifies the compatibility issue? Better multithreading is meaningless unless you have some use for it that benefits the majority at least in a form of simple to use script that mission builders can use to build great missions.

DIRCM is already reality, all that potential F-35 opponents need to do is have funding available to get equipped with it. Lasers that can shoot down missiles and other planes are still somewhere in the unknown future, although the technology to make them reality has already been proven in practice to my knowledge. It's just a matter of time to mature the technology and then build an operational system. While waiting for the laser you need to be prepared to get into gun fights with enemy stealth fighters. I think it's likely that there's going to be a relevant stealth fighter opponent operational before a proper laser weapon gets operational on F-35.

Yep. I think a good goal for our virtual eyes would be average fighter pilot, ie. above average but nothing super exceptional.

I took it upon myself to explore object visibility more and see if I can figure out some kind of pixel visibility system using FOV as parameter. I first started with determining how well you can actually see objects with naked eye. I calculated how far away you need to be from 24" monitor for the monitor to have better angular resolution than average eyes (about 1.5m). Then I took a screenshot of F-15 from DCS and calculated how far it would be when resized to certain size and looked from 2m distance on a 24" monitor. I then made a picture that has the F-15 depicted on several different distances and an angle scale that you can use to determine how well you can see the planes with your off center vision. I will refer to these images as super acuity images. You need to look these images at 1:1 scale on a 24" monitor from 2.0m distance for the objects to be in correct scale and for the angle scale to show correct angles. Head on Side Top Device comparison Leftmost is super acuity, then FullHD 24" monitor, Oculus Rift with 1.0 PD and far right Oculus Rift with 2.0 PD. 24" monitor pixel size assumes in-game FOV is set to same as actual monitor FOV (55 degrees). For the Rift I assumed 94 degree FOV. Angle lines are meaningless in this image, just forgot to remove them. Device comparison with ground background From left: super acuity, FullHD 24", Oculus Rift 2.0PD Observations: Maximum visibility distances were somewhat longer than you would expect based on the paper I referred before. This could be explained by not simulating atmospheric haze that causes the object to have more lighter color the farther it is. I might also have just much better vision as average person. The off-center vision spotting distances were as expected or even shorter. You can use the angle scale to see how far you can see the plane with different amounts of off-center angle. I would consider 10 degrees off as a typical value for spotting when randomly looking around. When systematically scanning, you would expect to spot the target with much smaller cone but probably still not with the central vision. I also tested how simple "perfect antialiasing" method would work for spotting using pixellate filter on image editor. Against sky or other single color backgrounds it seems to work quite well giving similar contrast for the single large pixel as for the super acuity image (when looked from 2m distance). But when you change the background to ground, this doesn't apply anymore as the single pixel gets lost in the cacophony of other pixels. If I darkened the pixel in Rift image sufficiently the plane could be seen with similar contrast as in the other images. You definitely need some kind of extra algorithm besides high quality anti aliasing for working out the pixel color to get a correct contrast with different backgrounds. Using FOV as visibility parameter doesn't seem very easy task but I'll explore this more.

Having a good track IR profile is important for spotting. Besides being able to look into every direction (especially directly up) without problems you should be able to keep the view stable to see movement and small details. It takes careful balancing of the curves to get what you need. If you have poor contrast in your monitor you will be having more trouble spotting targets as targets have poor contrast in DCS to begin with. You might be able to improve this by adjusting your monitor settings. Increasing backlight brightness could improve contrast between colors as human capability to differentiate colors gets better with more light. (This most likely ruins the overall contrast ratio of the monitor though ie. black turns into grey.) Put zoom in some handy place so you can zoom in and out during the fight with ease. When the bandit gets farther out you need zoom to keep track of him. Keeping track of the bandits in a turn fight is supposed to be hard. You can also get better at it with practice. It's especially important to learn to predict where the bandit moves on the canopy as you and the bandit maneuver your aircraft. When you loose tally (sight of the bandit) the usual place where you find him is your six o'clock so that's where you should have your eyes 50% of the time when trying to regain tally. You should also keep flying your last maneuver instead of straightening out as that will usually pose most problems for the bandit and postpone getting him in your six.

Rendering of objects only few pixels wide is much better now but the maximum distances where the dot is visible are way too long. I use FullHD 46" TV on which a single pixel dot is well visible but I know that it's not that hard to see on a 24" FullHD monitor either that I used to use. Human vision has a high acuity area in central fovea and less acuity around it. This creates the situation where you can see object clearly from far distances if you know where to look but usually are able to spot them only about 1/4th of the max visible distance. If you scan an area with the central vision you can spot an object within that area from the maximum visible distance but it takes time and work to do that. What the rendering system should do is replicate this physiological phenomenon. The way DCS handles this is giving better spotting distance when using more zoom. IMO I find this the best method so far that I have come across. There's a paper named "Visual Search in Air Combat" that has a graph that shows maximum detection ranges (central vision) for different fighters in different aspects. The farthest visible plane in the graph is F-14 in belly view with a visible range of about 12 NM. Shortest range is for MiG-21 head-on view with 2.5 NM maximum visible distance. The average spotting distance with off-center vision which should be about 1/4th of those said distances would make MiG-21 visible only about 0.8 NM away. I couldn't see any info of the exact conditions of the environment where these spotting distances should be happening but it's supposedly some generic typical situation where a fighter pilot would be looking for the bandit and is in line with other sources. Essentially the rendering engine should somehow use the FOV as determining factor for object visibility. If you have larger FOV, single pixel sized objects should be less visible. As we are mostly concerned with sub pixels sized objects, the in-game visibility is a function of contrast of the pixel with it's surroundings. So the single pixel sized objects contrast should be a function of FOV. This would greatly even the playing field between different resolutions as the pixel visibility is tied down to FOV rather than monitor resolution. The exact way how to make this happen is not that easy to figure out though. I think for some time there won't be a monitor or display device that can surpass human vision so we are safe to assume the object is reduced to sub pixel size well before it should vanish from view. When the object is single pixel sized it's contrast with the background would be altered so that it satisfies the expected visibility of said object at the current FOV. Basically it would remain at full nominal contrast for some distance and then start losing contrast so that it's about maybe 20% visible at the nominal max visible distance and then keep fading linearly until it disappears. 20% contrast at max spotting distance might be still too much but you can alter it to a value where it is reliably but just barely visible.