MBot

I just opened an empty Persian Gulf mission to check out the new water and and just panning the view up above the horizon into empty sky cuts the fps from 190 max down to steady 50. Edit: Cannot reproduce after restarting the game. Perhaps it didn't compile all the shaders the first time around.

I have found the same, AWACS will not downlink targets that are further than 150 NM from itself. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3919259

In line with the Tomcat's role during this time frame, this is air-air only.

And what evidence do we have that the Tornado is being made on the other hand? As far as I am aware, the Tornado has not been mentioned by Heatblur ever. We do have a statement of intent for the Intruder. Your gripe with the A-6 is that it has no HUD and no cannon. Fair engough, that is not to everyone's liking. Not that you liking HUDs and cannons has anything to do with the topic though (what module HB will most likely do next). Just to ease your concerns, perhaps you would enjoy some guided weapons of the Intruder's arsenale: AGM-45 Shrike, AGM-78 Standard, AGM-88 HARM, AGM-62 Walleye, AGM-123 Skipper, GBU-10, GBU-12, GBU-16 and AGM-84 Harpoon. Also of course the Intruder can easily attack targets of opportunity precisiely with dumb bombs as well. The B/N designates the target either with his radar or the FLIR (the A-6E has an internal laser designator), then the pilot follows the steering cues on his VDI to an automatic release. Bombing with the depressed reticle gunsight remains as a backup.

I think some education is in order here. The Intruder made 560 knots on the deck and contrary to most other aircraft, it retained much of its performance even when loaded up with ordinance. In practice, it moved around at low level at about the same speeds as most other strike aircraft. Also :) Intruder actually carried Sidewinders into combat in the 1980s off Libya. The idea was when Intruders were striking Libyan missile boats, should they get off an anti-ship missile, the A-6 would try to shoot it down.

Very nice!

Regarding the waypoints, there is the F-14 specific issue of deck sliding. This can degrade your INS alignment to the point where it will accumulate massive navigation errors. The effect varies, but I have already seen something like a 100 NM error after one hour. Deck sliding has been reported for along time and we are still waiting for a fix. You cannot manually launch the Alert 5. Interceptors will be launched automatically when a side's early warning network (in this case the Hawkeye) detects and tracks hostile aircraft a defined distance from airbases/carriers. The Alert 5 is set up so that they can catch incoming AS-4 in their final flight phase (when the missiles descend and slow down, becoming easier targets). I assume you would like to launch the Alert 5 earlier so that they can get the bombers, but considering that the Backfires run in at about mach 1.8, deck launched interceptors will never make it in time to the bomber's launch point 200 NM from the carrier. I have been playing with the Reverb recently which also uses Steam VR but I didn't have any crashes.

Most likely you didn't do the MissionScripting.lua modification (needs to be repeated after every DCS update).

+1 Already a while ago I made the personal decision that for me DCS ends in 1991. I have since then used DCS mostly according to this principle. I would very much appreciate if the development of aircraft, AI and maps would concentrate on the Cold War era.

While distances will vary depending on carrier and target location, mission lenght will generally be long-ish. The battle group will maintain a safe distance from enemy territory as you would realistically expect it. Fuel management is an important tactical aspect of this campaign and should always be kept in mind. Fortunately the Tomcat can comfortably cruise 500 NM per hour at medium altitude on just 6000 lbs of fuel, which can be further reduced by going higher. The carrier has only 4 dedicated tankers (ignoring buddy tanking by regular A-6E), which are used as recovery tankers as highest priority.

Try to have a text editor already open and then use it to open the file.

The AWACS operates within the protected airspace of the battle group. On strikes you will frequently be outside of its detection range. Do you tell your wingman to attack ships or to attack the mission target? Try the latter if you haven't already done so.

Sorry, it is hardcoded to use the User folder on the C: drive.

Looking at the screens again, I notice that all missiles are at 1.0 G. Might it be possible that in DCS the proximity fuze is only working as long as the missile is still actively guiding?

Thank you, I am glad you are able to enjoy flying it. Awesome wallpaper! I am aware that multiplayer has various issues, that is why I have removed Integrated coop support from DCE a while ago. People can still try and mess around with it manually, but there are no guarantees. DCE was first and foremost designed to work in singleplayer.

I stand corrected, proximity fuzes are simulated. Some weapons just seem to be worse than others. The SA-2 stands out especially.

I have never seen a proximity detonation in DCS. If an AIM-54 misses by a few meters it goes right by without detonation.

It isn't mentioned very often, but isn't the lack of proximity fuzes a pretty big flaw in DCS? Any word on whether that is planned to be implemented eventually?

It will move the campaign forward.

After spending most of the last year intensively with the fantastic Tomcat, I went back to revisiting the Viggen again for the last week. The Viggen has always been one of my favorite aircraft in DCS. I think it is a very interesting design from my favorite period (70-80s Cold War), combining Apollo-era avionics with an exciting high-performance airframe against an overwhelming enemy in a high threat environment. I especially like the Swedish low-level attack doctrine that the Viggen is so closely built around. Heatblur’s module is also very well made that is, for the most part, complete and working. Unfortunately, I feel that even 3 years after the initial release of the module, DCS does not offer an environment that does justice to the Viggen, especially in the context of its operational doctrine. Sure, you can make it work somehow with what we have available and the aircraft is certainly usable as a regular strike aircraft. But all my efforts to put the Viggen in its historic operational context, as a player and mission/campaign creator, have ultimately failed due to a lack of support of the DCS environment. This is not Heatblur’s fault, but it is still very unsatisfactory. I have been mentioning my critique of DCS in regards to the Viggen before at various places, but let me list them here again: Theater: For me, historical accuracy and/or authenticity is very important and the Viggen just feels completely out of place in any of DCS’ theaters. Some aircraft are very operationally flexible and work well with various theaters (for example the Tomcat and the Persian Gulf map), others can be reasonably explained to show up at places they never did. The Viggen though is so tightly tied to a specific scenario that I can’t accept it anywhere else. Every time I fly the Viggen, I have the feeling that it doesn’t belong here. Nothing less than a Baltic theater will work for me. Ship classes: For an aircraft with such emphasis on the anti-ship mission profile, there is a serious lack of appropriate target ships. This is especially true considering that the Viggen offered only a second-class anti-ship capability even during its prime (compared to contemporary US and Soviet capabilities) that in turn was intended to be used against the mostly second-rate ships found in the Soviet Baltic Fleet. We therefore need such second-rate ships. Now I understand that it is not possible to model the vast number of different ships that the Viggen was expected to encounter in the Baltic. However, I think at least 3 key classes would be important for an at least basic portrayal of a Soviet invasion fleet, which was the historic signature target of the Viggen: 1. Ropucha LST. These formed, among other classes, the core of the amphibious shipping that would cross the Baltic and land Soviet forces in Sweden. It seems that a very high detail 3d model of the Ropucha is already deep within DCS for a while, but for some reason this has never been activated as a usable unit. 2. Kashin DDG. Even though these were already considered second-rate ships by the 1980s, a few of these guided-missile destroyers were the best units permanently assigned to the Baltic Fleet and would have formed the “High” in the High-Low mix of escorts. Armed with SA-N-1 SAM. 3. Mirka FF. These light frigates were among the most numerous warships in the Baltic Fleet and would probably have made up the bulk of escorts. “Low” in the High-Low mix. Not armed with any radar guided SAMs but featuring two twin-76 mm AA guns. Now there would be more ships that would be very interesting targets for the Viggen, but with the three above (and the Krivak and Grisha classes that are already in game), a reasonable representation of the invasion fleet with its escorts could be made. Naval AAA: No ship in DCS has working AA-guns bigger than 30 mm (ignoring the WWII assets pack), even though all modern naval guns are dual purpose (anti-surface and anti-air). This is especially important for the second-rate ships found in the Baltic where 76 mm, 100 mm and 130 mm AAA would still have formed a significant part the air defense of Soviet naval forces. The Viggen with its short-ranged RB-04E would have had to face some of it. Naval EWR: No ship in DCS has working Early Warning Radar. It is my understanding that the most dangerous threat to the Viggen was considered to be enemy fighters and the main tactic to counter them was to fly at low level to avoid detection. This tactic of low level detection avoidance becomes mostly pointless though if the EWR that should guide the enemy fighters to an interception doesn’t even exist. Look-down AI: Even if above naval EWR would exist, flying at low level in DCS is still pointless because AI is capable of look-down detection over vast distances, sometimes over hundreds of km. This is true even for primitive fighters such as MiG-19 and MiG-21. As such this invalidates the Viggen’s primary attack tactic of avoiding detection by low level flight. No NOE AI: Even if above erroneous AI look-down detection capability would not exist, AI flight leaders are still not be able to fly lower than 100 m above the water and player AI wingmen are even unable to fly lower than 200-300 m above the water. As such even if low level flight was a valid tactic to avoid detection by enemy fighters, friendly AI would still be unable to perform it properly.

Each time before hosting a mission, you need to open it in the Mission Editor, find the player flight and change the skill settings for all aircraft of the flight to Client. MP is naturally limited in DCS due to the lack of the Mission Planner (which exists in SP), so you might have difficulties with finding out your flight route and target location.

Any news on reverser closing on main gear touchdown?

What is the latest word on the implementation of the EP-13? It is my understanding that this should be a collimated sight. It somehow was when the Viggen was first released, although this was never working properly (in VR at least). Eventually this was turned into a regular TV display with no collimation, I assume because the problems could not be solved at this time. Is it still planned to be fully implemented eventually?

I support this request. I always treat the aircraft as AJ 37 as frankly the TERNAV upgrade kills a lot of what makes the navigation system so unique.

Yes, coop is possible in principle by changingthe Player (and his wingmen if desired) to Client in the mission editor before hosting. Half a year ago we made a playthrough with 2-3 players which worked well. You need to figure out the right sequence of unpausing-pausing and spawning though (I forgot it) to prevent rubberbanding-collisions. Also stats tracking in the scoreboard is a little bit wonky if two clients occupy the same aircraft.