rossmum

Considering most of what I've been doing in DCS for the past two years has been PvP over cities and coastal areas in the MiG-21, I'll let you guess the answer to that last bit

I can tell you from personal experience that a GoPro may not have the exact same optical qualities as a human eye, but it is a close enough approximation for discussion's sake, either that or my human eyes need more tuning than I thought. Bright sunlight in particular throws really strong reflections and even a less extreme curve than most single-seaters use will produce visible distortion in places (not modelled in DCS, or any sim I know of). You also get quite nasty glare with some canopies as the sun catches tiny cracks and scratches at just the right angle and produces what could best be described as a giant illuminated scuffmark. I learnt to fly in a very sunny place in a plane with a perspex half-bubble, I haven't got any seat time in any military types but perspex is perspex. I wouldn't be pushing back so strongly on this if I didn't have good reason to believe I'm right.

They are pretty pixellated, and there are black bands that seem to cut across them - probably a limit of how the reflections are executed. Not sure if that'll be tweaked in future. It's probably more noticeable in the 21 because they are fairly strong.

It will flame out for one of two reasons. Reason 1 is zero/negative G being sustained too long, so the service tank drains faster than it can refill. You have something like 10-15 seconds in dry thrust and maybe 5, sometimes less, in afterburner. In emergency afterburner you have about 3 seconds. The simple solution here is not to force the nose down while in burner (neither airframes nor human bodies cope well with negative G in the real world anyway, so pilots generally avoid it because it absolutely sucks) and just roll inverted and pull like you're flying an early Spitfire or Hurricane with a float carb. I haven't had a flameout due to this in something like 6-12 months, and the last time I did, it was because I was intentionally trying to spin the aircraft and ended up in a tumble. The other risky time for this is trying to perform a tailslide or hammerhead. Reason 2 is you're overspeeding, and if you're having to restart literally every sortie, this is probably the actual cause. Don't use emergency afterburner in level flight and don't make extended dives in afterburner. The engine will conk out between 1350 and 1400km/h IAS, which is probably a much milder consequence than you'd actually get for passing that speed limitation, which pilots were absolutely forbidden from doing - and IIRC the emergency burner switch was lockwired in peacetime. Pretty much the only reason I need to airstart these days is if I carelessly slip past my maximum speed while chasing somebody, or if I've tried for an altitude record and need to relight on the way back down. It's still worth having the switch bound, though. e/ worth mentioning - the zero/negative G limitation is common across a great many combat aircraft. Some in DCS model it, some don't. The reason and specific time limit varies, but more often than not it's either fuel starvation due to the header tank not being able to keep up, or oil starvation/oil pooling. Good habits in the 21 will translate to good habits in other modules if/when they model their own limitations.

Because they would have had the exact same experience in any other aircraft, so it's not even worth mentioning. In the real world, perspex does not magically change its physical properties based on what jet it's installed in. In DCS, it does, because different developers used different materials with different properties in their modules. As it is, the reason we have reflections in the 21's cockpit is due to a material change, because it originally didn't use the same material as ED's modules (which is the one said reflections have been applied to in 2.7). I don't want to pull the "how many people here have flight hours" thing, but honestly... you guys do realise we're not dealing with automotive glass here, right? Go look at photos of actual cockpits. Go watch gopro videos recorded from pilot's perspectives. Go sit in the things yourselves. We're finally approaching some semblance of realism with regards to visibility in DCS, and people are tripping over themselves to call it "unrealistic" because they think it makes them less likely to be able to spot and kill someone in a dogfight. I'm trying not to sound overly snarky but this discussion is taking a pretty ridiculous direction... I wonder if our pilot here filed a complaint with Stavka VVS upon landing. "Canopy is too reflective, destroys combat".

To the first part: kinda, now the FM is fixed. It feels less twitchy than the 21, can't really accelerate enough to break itself, and doesn't exhibit the same vicious tail-wag when mishandled, but on the other hand the 19 will quite readily spin and can't always be recovered from said spin, even if you know what you're meant to do in that situation. I'd agree it's easier to fly for the most part, but the consequences for mishandling it are just as fatal at low level and even worse higher up (where the 21 will simply tumble a little, then recover itself). To the second: I'd expect the F1 to have a clear advantage over the 21 beyond visual range (by default, since the R-3R won't reach that far), but WVR I don't know. The F1 is underpowered but does have some fairly sophisticated wing mechanisation, so I guess we'll see how well it turns and how well it holds its speed while doing so. I'd say the F1 and F-8 will compete fairly well with the 21, with each having some advantages to bring into the fight. The 23 will run roughshod over all of the above and so its closest counterpart will probably remain the 14 for the time being, although the 14 has a clunkier radar but also an enormously larger weapon load to play with. The server's dynamics will sure get interesting over the next few years.

Perspex will throw some quite obnoxious reflections, especially in the right lighting conditions. It doesn't need any sort of coating, that's just how it is. As they are right now they're maybe a little too opaque, but they're not nearly as exaggerated as people are making out and while in real life you can focus your eyes past them, I haven't found them to "destroy combat". The most common reason I lose sight of people remains my own canopy bars, followed by visual clutter like trees or buildings, followed by (a new contender) cloud shadows. As I said in the other thread: if you think this is bad, be glad the canopy isn't nearly as scuffed or crazed as most real aircraft canopies are after a decade or two of service, and be glad you don't have to deal with distortion at all. Or bug guts, when flying low level in the summer. I seriously hope the reflections aren't toned down too far, DCS already has enough issues with "I want realism, but not like this" any time a feature hampers a player's ability to perform, or makes them feel like it's hampering them.

It was done away with when the entire ASP unit was remodelled and retextured from scratch. The texture in question (for the new ASP model) is ASP_1001.dds, from memory, so you can edit that and make it into a new custom cockpit livery if you have the know-how. I'm not sure if anyone else has released a restoration of the chart yet. I don't need it myself, but liked having something there, so I made my own: I've also seen missile launch parameter charts - pretty much whatever you like, you can put on there with a little time in an image editor. You can also ballpark altitude conversions by reading the inner needle (km) on the outer scale (x100m) as tens of thousands of feet. It's within about +/-2000ft but it's close enough for when you're dealing with imperial callouts and need to figure out what that is in metric without doing any maths. I don't think this was a deliberate choice on the part of the gauge's designers, but it's handy at times in DCS.

The 21 outperforms it in most of the aspects mentioned, and as the 21 outperforms the F-5 in most or all of those as well I figured it was redundant. The 19's big draw card is that it significantly outperforms both in sustained turns and also has a pretty snappy instantaneous turn rate now as well, otherwise the F-5 and 21 both have far superior weapons systems, better top speeds, better radar, better (F-5) or somewhat better (MiG-21) forwards visibility, etc. The issue with the 21 isn't that it isn't appearing as a search radar, it's that the radar isn't giving lock warnings when it's actually locked. I was wondering if there was some kind of issue with this but never really had the chance to conclusively test it, but the IAF guys did do so and found that the lock warning would not go off (and not just in the F-5, it seems) until the 21 was well inside parameters for an R-3R shot. Honestly it's more of an issue of unaware pilots getting sucker punched, as the more clued in blues are generally too alert to sneak up on and will know to evade any shot from frontal aspect, but it is an issue that needs to be taken into consideration.

Yes please. This would go a long way to giving the models a new lease on life, and bringing the whole game up to a consistent standard of visual fidelity.

R-3S' possible overperformance is only an issue when stacked up against the 9B. If the mission has 9Ps, there's not really any reason to limit the R-3S as it's all the 19 can carry. I'd also say that it's a mistake to overcommit to the 21 vs F-5 matchup at the expense of the 19, although the AJS 37 is a special case as it's a strike/interdiction aircraft with a very specialised role. The 19 is not comparable to the Viggen and nor is it superior to the 21 in literally any measure except sustained turn rate, so if anything there should probably be more 19s available than 21s if the goal is to stop people ganking helicopters over open water. The 19's radar is near useless for independent search, having a little over a third of the range of the 21's and being totally unusable below about 1-2km. Most anti-tank duty in a peer conflict (ie war in Europe) would have been cluster bombs. Precision munitions were expensive and in limited supply and there is absolutely no way an A-10 or Su-25 would survive a second pass, never mind the racetrack - fire - racetrack - fire routine they tend to do in DCS, I'd honestly be happy to see things go to unguided weapons only. Both A-10 and Su-25 get cluster munitions, IIRC, and the 21 and even 29 can carry clusters too, though the 21 has magical bombing CCIP which it shouldn't and the S-24A is... really broken. R-60s will continue tracking a target after it turns into them. They'll make side aspect shots. I haven't seen one actually track when launched from a pure front aspect, but it might happen on occasion, I've seen other "rear aspect" missiles do it too. They're nowhere near how they were a year ago, at least. The AIM-9s are a little more picky about aspect, probably because ED modelled them. To be honest I can see why ED want to handle weapons themselves, the weapons made for the older modules have enormous inconsistencies (R-60, R-3S, Rb 24J, S-24 all being poster children for this). The R-3R is a fairly limited but useful missile, the main problem with it is that apparently people aren't getting lock warnings until the 21 is within ~5km and so only experienced players have time to evade once the launch warning comes (assuming a head-on snap-up, which is usually the preferred shot to make with the R-3R). I've heard claims that the 21 radar doesn't even give search warnings, but in that case I'm quite sure it's just people not knowing how their RWR works. I get search warnings for 21s but in the one test I've had a chance to run so far, the lock warnings were questionable. The radar is pretty busted right now anyway as it doesn't see the new clouds and the rework to fix the FPS bug has possibly uncovered some other issues. I would recommend going back to the Chapparal for blue's SHORAD, but replacing the Strela-10 with the original Strela, which is similarly crappy to the Chapparal. I'd also be inclined to suggest switching from Kubs for red's medium-level SAM to the S-125, just because of how long it takes blue to set up a Hawk (which is a far worse system) compared to the Kub, and the fact we can relocate Kubs at will since it's a highly mobile system while the Hawk is "mobile" in about the same fashion as tectonic plates are. This isn't the first time this has happened on the server, but be glad in this case they didn't do it just by the end of your main airfield

RSBN is outside of the mission maker's control. You were probably too low to pick up the signal, or forgot to switch from ARK to RSBN (left cockpit wall, near the engine starter). Those channels are correct, are listed in the 21's default kneeboard as well as a reference card on the front right canopy rail, and cannot be adjusted. It's possible there could be a bug with the module, but I doubt it, as I was able to navigate with those channels just fine over the past few days. Make sure your nav system is in the right mode and that you're actually picking up the right beacon.

The reflections are cubemaps and so will not display true line of sight, real time reflections, but it's better than nothing. They do react to lighting conditions. As for unrealistic... it's not 100% and probably never will be, but it's fair to say that the average DCS user's expectations of visibility from an aircraft's cockpit are the thing that's actually unrealistic.

Almost everything you hear about design role, especially from western sources, is wrong - for example, the MiG-15 was not a bomber escort and the MiG-21 was absolutely not an interceptor, but rather a light frontline fighter - the same role as the later F-16, just with less bells and whistles. In fact, other countries in the Warsaw Pact ended up using the 21 in an interceptor role because they lacked purpose-built interceptors of their own. The Soviets made limited use of it in that role, mainly to plug gaps - for a true interceptor from the same general time period, look at its larger cousin, the Su-9. TLTeo's right - we have the 19P, which was the interceptor version of the 19. The 19S (frontline fighter) lacked all-weather capability, only having a radar-ranged gunsight, not a true search-and-track radar system. Neither had missiles, initially, and when the 19P first got missiles it was in a variant that carried 4 beam-riding radar-guided missiles and no guns (19PM). The 19P received the R-3S that it has in DCS in the mid-to-late 60s.

Each missile fired increases the speed further. Flew ISA with 6 Rb 24J and belly tank, fired the former in pairs and the latter was jettisoned. No messing with anything else, this was purely to check "negative drag" effect from firing weapons. The trackfile is attached. On an earlier test run (using default DCS weather, so a bit warmer), and 11m above the Black Sea, here are the speeds the aircraft stopped accelerating at: 1466km/h IAS with 6 Rb 24J and tank (~M 1.19) 1555km/h IAS with 6 Rb 24J (tank jettisoned) (~M 1.26) 1633km/h IAS with 4 Rb 24J (2 fired, tank jettisoned) (~M 1.32) 1719km/h IAS with 2 Rb 24J (4 fired, tank jettisoned) (~M 1.40) 1804km/h IAS with all Rb 24J fired and tank jettisoned (~M 1.47) In the attached trackfile the speeds reached are slightly slower, but follow the same pattern and with roughly equivalent increments between each 'stage'. All of these are obviously above the documented and attested-to never-exceed speed of 1350km/h IAS for the AJ/AJS 37 and even above the documented and attested-to never-exceed speed of 1450km/h IAS for the JA 37. The only consequences for doing this are obviously the fuel use, and the fact that you only go from very high speed to ludicrous speed as you expend missiles - which is fine, and arguably even ideal, in multiplayer. It means you can make slashing attacks with virtually no chance of reprisal, as not even the 4th gens can catch you and even most SAMs won't be able to reach you unless they're very lucky. This is a game-breaking bug in multiplayer and I don't think any amount of SAAB marketing can explain how an aircraft which was limited to 1350km/h specifically due to skin temperature is able to achieve and sustain nearly M 1.5 at sea level while the F-111 needed one eye kept on a skin temperature gauge for crews to be able to approach the same speeds. As I understand it, "negative drag" is not an issue limited to the Viggen, but in any case there should be some kind of consequence for overspeeding that severely. Short sprints up to 1450-1500 are one thing as it is, but sustaining 1600+? viggen overspeed.trk

Cold War has the proper SPO enabled, GS doesn't. Not sure about other servers. It really should be the default and only mode, we know it works, and it's more realistic than the old implementation.

"Cold start" is a bad translation of what it's actually doing, "cold crank" would be more accurate. It turns the engine over without igniting to drain it off. It will not start the engine and in DCS (where the aircraft always spawns in pretty much ready to go), it won't do anything. IRL you'd use it to make sure you didn't have excess fuel chilling in there, which could become a problem when you actually do try to light off the engine for real. Leave the switch in its default position and hit the ignition instead, for DCS. "Cold start" as it's used in general parlance just means starting the aircraft from a totally "cold and dark" state, i.e. no systems powered on and not plugged into anything.

Considering US tests frequently returned results less than 5 miles, I'm not sure pilot testimony in this case is entirely reliable - if he genuinely did see them at that range, and not contrails or at least smoke, then he is genuinely exceptional because I used to struggle to spot non-manoeuvring, gloss-white-painted aircraft roughly the size of a MiG from more than about 3. We should be modelling what an average pilot would see, not taking a single best-case outlier based on anecdote and using that to decide that it's possible and therefore should be possible in the sim. In any case, the new reflections do complicate matters even at close range, but I really don't think they're as bad as they're being made out as, and even if they were - it's realism. Any realism is good as far as I'm concerned, especially if it makes it harder to airquake your way to 10 kills per sortie (and I say this as someone who flies PvP in air to air roles almost exclusively). IMO every other module in the game should be brought to a comparable level of reflections and canopy dirt/scuffs to the 21, not the reverse - because that's historically been the actual issue here. The 21 has always had a little harder time than other modules because it was the only one portraying a jet that's been out of the factory more than 10 minutes, canopy-wise. e/ The gunsight glass would be less of an issue if the reflection of the lens was not baked in, but apparently that's not easy to do in DCS. At least the glass itself is clean and quite transparent now... currently the 19's multiple layers of it turn nearly opaque when the light catches it at a bad angle, even without reflections.

The reason reflections are visible through paths where there's no direct LoS is because they're just cubemaps, they're not realtime reflections. The latter would require a lot of work and have an enormous impact on performance. As for playability... it's playable. People already expect too much from spotting (and as it is, long-distance spotting in DCS is absurdly good compared to real life - there is no human on earth who can see a MiG-21/F-5 sized aircraft from 20+km away) and now we have another real life factor to deal with. Flat screen users might not be able to focus beyond reflections, but as a flat screen user I don't see what the fuss is honestly... just don't put yourself in situations where you can lose sight of someone that easily, or find ways to work around it. If we want this to be a simulator rather than a game, then it should simulate the negative aspects as well.

Have never encountered this one personally. The gauge will reset as the last step of refuel/rearm but as you said you jettisoned the tank, we can rule out the usual misundertstanding of thinking that an empty tank was refilled/replaced. As long as you wait for the ground crew to tell you that the rearm is complete, your fuel gauge should be set correctly, your countermeasures refilled, and your chute repacked. If you begin moving before the ground crew state that the rearm is complete, none of those actions will be performed regardless of whether you saw your weapons and/or drop tanks replaced.

The Su-25/25T are. I think one or two others as well, and judging from the reflections in the trailer, the Mi-24 will have the same as well. Different modules use different 'glass' materials, so not all of them have the new reflections yet, or display them properly. There is also the issue that it seems some developers are more accommodating to complaints that it's somehow "unrealistic" for canopies to be reflective, crazed, or dirty/scratched (it isn't, no in-service jet on the planet has a canopy as clean and clear as most DCS modules do).

Jane's is incorrect in this case, unless it's talking about some modern/foreign market upgrade package (e: like 21-93 or Bison, as pointed out), which would make it inapplicable to our 21 anyway. The 21bis shouldn't even have (nor be able to guide) the Grom, much less ARMs that were usually employed in conjunction with ELINT pods. You would need to strap a Vyuga to the aircraft somewhere and I've never seen one (nor seen mention of one) on a 21, usually they were used by the Su-17M or the MiG-27. If you want ARMs, your choices are to fly the Su-25T or wait until either a Su-17M, MiG-27, or Su-24 arrive.

The infantry are in a pretty bad state right now, and the possibility of chain-capturing airfields means they can't be used at all for some missions, but honestly they should make up the bulk of any ground war with helicopters slinging light armour and anything substantial being brought up by road, IMO. Relying mostly on vehicles for ground war opens them up to being picked off by loitering ground attack aircraft during low pop hours or while teams are stacked, not just if one team's CAP are letting the side down, and it can get annoying fast. FWIW a large part of the issue with units getting easily picked off comes from the weapons/systems available - in particular the Vikhr and the later Mav variants, but also the Ka-50 and Su-25T in general. Because there's often a fairly reduced threat of smallarms/AAA/SAMs, people tend to loiter in an area and just pop things methodically. While it's probably reasonably fun for the guys doing it, it means slinging is extremely frustrating in some missions, and it isn't really a good representation of how ground attack actually works. You get one pass before every single guy within a good 5-10km knows which direction you egressed, and is just itching to see you turn around and come back. Since the DCS AI aren't very bright, this effect isn't really that evident ingame and so the moment something with FLIR/TI of any sort turns up, it's basically curtains for whatever's on the ground (this is why the OH-58D is a bit dicey here - it's a fully digital aircraft with very modern weapons and systems, while even the Ka-50 is day TV only and all the Mi-24 has is a janky magnified optical periscope for the ATGMs). I kind of feel like if we're going to stick to slinging one unit per helicopter per trip, and stick to vehicles as our main ground game element, dialling back the precision weapons or even going totally to dumb bombs and rockets might make the missions a little more dependent on committed A/G coordination and less on someone sneaking a heavily-loaded aircraft around a flank while CAP are off with the pixies and air defence is non-existent. We really, really, really need a Cobra, but unfortunately I'd put money on any eventual AH-1 being a W at earliest, because the 'muh capabilities' lobby is strong and so are their wallets. As for earlier timeframes - if anything there should be more 19s rather than 21s, especially if ability to wipe ground targets in quick succession is a concern. Just don't give it missiles (R-3s on the 19P were a mid/late 60s add-on anyway). The longstanding FM issue should be fixed quite shortly and I expect a lot more people will be flying it, now it won't be trying to kill itself for 0.1G too much stick deflection in a turn. Word of advice to the F-5 guys: I really wouldn't try turnfighting it anymore.

Could've sworn it was a little worse, coming off some US chart or other I saw a week or two ago. Wish I could remember what the diagram was called or where it was from... in any case, woeful TWR still stands. Meanwhile, come to red team, we have t h r u s t

R530s are pretty miserable, a far cry from the 530D which is among the best SARH missiles in the game. They don't manoeuvre well and without lookdown, I don't think the 21s will need to worry too much - the F-14s are (or at least, should be) much more of a threat with both more and better missiles. I'm curious to see how the F1 handles in close... it has an absolutely woeful TWR, even worse than the F-5's twin afterburning hairdryers, but lots of nice fancy high-lift devices on the wings. Any BVR reign of terror the F1 does enjoy is going to stop the day the 23 arrives, anyway, even if the latter is restricted to R-23s rather than 24s Absolutely love the new FARPs, by the way! Glad to see them spreading to more and more missions.