rossmum

I am expressly bad at the MiG-19, which doesn't help in my case, but the biggest problem with its viability is the fact that you have to approach people from the rear or somehow slip through the merge unseen. With no flares, poor throttle response (even worse than the 21), and no all-aspect capability of your own, it's as one sided as when blue had only the AIM-9P while red had R-60s and could go into head-on merges with impunity. Of course we could all just go fly 21s instead, but those slots are limited in number and it would be nice to see both MiGs seeing more use, rather than 19s only appearing occasionally or when the 21 slots fill. I'm not necessarily saying we need weapon restrictions back across all missions, considering I originally argued to get them removed exactly because I knew how badly it was limiting blue as I won every head-on merge with the R-60. However, a few missions that change things up - particularly Middle Eastern or Warsaw Pact based ones - would be interesting, and force people to rely on more than just who spots the other guy first. Most of those nations either didn't receive R-60s at all, received very limited numbers of them, or received them later. More than a few weeks into a shooting war, a lot of the more minor countries would likely have used up their entire stock and need to fall back on older weapons. As fun as the more modern stuff is, there is also the case of BK90s in particular - the BK90 is absolutely not period-correct, and what's more, if you release it from the right altitude at the right speed, you can get some absolutely obscene range out of it. Red has no counterpart, the closest thing they have to a standoff weapon is the Kh-25 and 29, which require you to get much closer to the target and guide the weapon all the way in. I don't think weapons or airframes should be considered against the time period in question - I think both should be. As for the Ka-50, I expect that will probably go when the Mi-24 arrives, but until then removing it would leave red without a truly anti-tank capable helicopter as we can't strap ATGMs to our Mi-8s.

Can we get rid of the 9M totally while we're at it? I don't think I've seen a single Harrier pulling air to ground duty for weeks, and every time Elbrus comes up in rotation, sure enough, out come the AV-8Bs... it'd be less frustrating if the things would die when hit, but between the questionable damage model being amplified by the R-60's weak explosive power, and the 9M's performance, it's getting a bit frustrating to deal with them. I've also been thinking about loadouts in general lately... I almost wonder if (on perhaps select missions, not all of them) it might be worth removing the 9M, 9P5, RB-74, and both R-60s. This prevents red having the advantage of the base model R-60's limited all-aspect ability, but also means the MiG-19s are a little less punishing. It's a little frustrating getting deleted in the merge because your missiles are paperweights, and you also lack flares. It'd also separate the boys from the men a little more, so to speak, on the 21 side of things... I certainly wouldn't say no for the chance at more gunnery practice :joystick:

Maybe one whitelisted commander slot per team or something?

The models and blocks are a problem, though. A 16C bl. 50 bears very little resemblance in anything but external silhouette to an early 16A, and an 18C lot 20 also has a number of stark differences to an 18A (in fact our 18C even has more powerful engines than most C-model Hornets, nevermind avionics). The Hornet started out with MFDs, but an early 16 would be absolutely unrecognisable to blue players - it doesn't have a single one. The SMS page equivalent is a bunch of vertically stacked one-line LCDs and the radar is an older-fashioned scope between the pilot's legs.

For anyone who hasn't seen this posted in any of the other threads: the interim solution is to roll back video drivers to 442.16 or prior. With 438.something I've never experienced any FPS drop associated with the radar.

Doesn't it rip around 280? Is the clamshell at the back open after you activate it?

29 and Mirage are a bit weird when limited to heaters anyway - and of the two, the Mirage is enormously easier to fly and has a far better radar. The tradeoff is acceleration and two less missiles, but the missiles you do have are a bit punchier than the R-60s. IMO 29 with 2 R-27R/4 R-60 is an acceptable stand-in for the MiG-23, for the time being, and blue having the Mirage with its 530s available would sit fairly well against that. People are going to need to get used to the concept of actually watching their RWRs and watching for missile trails, or I have no idea what they're going to do when the 23/F1 arrive. At the same time, limiting the number of SARH missiles along with the airframes should stop them from dunking on people too hard (although with careful flying, the Mirage in particular is already an absolute death machine even with heaters and guns). Furballs are going to naturally form no matter what you do, the main point IMO is to get people fighting for air superiority where it matters rather than in the middle of nowhere. This depends heavily on player coordination and/or GCI, but a well-coordinated effort can make or break gameplay for the guys in strikers or helicopters - for example on Two Towns yesterday, blue had such a hellcamp going on around our FARP that we could barely get anything done, and by the time we got a decent amount of CAP going they'd managed to kill our EWR and SAMs and basically push us back to our own base. IMO dogfights should not be the focus necessarily, but they are going to happen and they should happen in order to clear the skies for the other guys. I have to admit I'm biased as I'm far better at air to air than anything else, although I've been enjoying messing with helicopters, but I definitely think it needs to be viewed holistically rather than as a separate entity. Plus, they're absolutely sick to watch from below as you try and sneak your Mi-8 past them :D

Doubling the 60s isn't as big of a deal as people make out unless you're in a very tight turning fight, honestly. The real meme (which I've only ever seen someone do once, and which I wasn't even aware was possible) was the Tim Hortons loadout of a double double (4x 60 4x 60M). If I have enough friendly aircraft to not get stuck in a 1v1 for my life, I'll take 2x R-3R and 4x R-60M. If I know I'll be turning a lot, either 2x or 4x R-60M.

Every time I've seen an A-10 get a hit, it's been fairly close range. They should be using them as self-defence, which doesn't require running down a transonic or supersonic MiG - usually the shots are quite close on a MiG that either hasn't seen you, or has overshot and is coming in for another pass. Frankly the 9M shouldn't be around at all, but until the Harrier goes away we're going to have to deal with people using the Harrier as an air to air platform purely because it has the best missile and a broken damage model. I really don't think we should have to deal with the same missile on the A-10 as well, considering Su-25s are stuck with the same R-60s the MiG-21s use.

???? The cockpit now is what it's supposed to look like. The previous version was scaled wrong, and the geometry of the windscreen area was incorrect (excessive 'webbing' between sidelight frames), as well as the periscope being too far back. What we have now is more detailed as well as realistically sized and shaped, and has better forwards visibility, like the real aircraft.

I am and will always be firmly against adding uncommon (as in, one or two users) modernisations to older aircraft. The 21 does fine with the R-60 and the R-73 will not provide a significant improvement (other than range and explosive power) without also adding the Shchel-3UM, which requires a whole series of avionics upgrades in itself and will necessitate new artwork for the cockpit. As there is no facility to slave the seeker head to the radar (and the RP-22 is marginal in a dogfight anyway), you'll still have to put the target more or less on boresight and fire it the old-fashioned way. Try firing 73s in phi-0 mode in the MiG-29/Su-25/Su-27 for a good idea of how it'll be in the 21. Either you get a fully modernised aircraft (which requires an enormous amount of dev work) for a little extra capability, or you take the approach the Cubans seem to have gone with, and get a very mild improvement in capability, which still won't account for the fact you're in a 1972 aircraft fighting something that is better than you in almost every respect. In any case, the MiG-21's strongest suit is close combat and it can arguably compete against anything short of R-73/9X HOBS capable aircraft when flown well. Getting that close is the problem.

This happens with the ailerons/flaps as well when you're on the ground - I think it only happens with shadows set to 'flat' but I can't remember for sure. I think it's only rendering the control surface shadows when the surfaces themselves are in 'view', because looking back towards the wing/tail suddenly causes the shadow to pop in.

The A-10C is too capable for the server and doesn't fit the time frame. This is a Cold War server with a mostly 70s/80s planeset, not a 90s/00s planeset. There are some outliers to this time period, but they're there as placeholders - there's nothing the A-10C needs to hold a place for as we already have the (period-correct) A to use. The MiG-21's radar is far from useless, you can spot people sometimes in turns or as they pop over ridges, can use it to IFF contacts and orient yourself in a fight, and if blue take to flying high I like to slap them with R-3Rs. Most blue players seem to either ignore their RWR or turn it off, because they usually don't react to being locked and assume any missile shot at them is a heater. Any time I expect combat my radar goes on right away. Alpen - I had some severe (and I mean, one frame every two seconds) FPS drop while looking anywhere near the western end of the blue-held town on Two Towns last night. Not sure what it was and it's the first time I've ever had trouble on that mission, performance-wise, and I don't know if the mission's been adjusted recently. I'll have to see if it happens again next time or if it was just a weird fluke. Also, I know the Harrier has the 9M because that's all it can use, but can't the A-10A carry the 9P5? I've noticed the A-10s are carrying 9Ms in at least a few of the missions and those things almost never go for flares, compared to anything else in use by either team.

The Ka-50 didn't actually reach initial operational capability until the mid 90s. First flight was in '82 but like many late Soviet aviation programs, and especially ones that were heavily reliant on automation of systems, it took a long time to work out the kinks and pay for production to begin. Likewise, the Su-33 dragged on beyond the end of the USSR before hitting IOC, and the Su-25T was built in high single/low double digits before being quickly abandoned for something cheaper. Personally I wouldn't say the Ka-50 is too capable (versus, say, AV-8B which does have issues), but in terms of timeframe, it should be replaced by the Mi-24 when that arrives. There's a lot of 'timeline creep' in DCS, part of it comes from modules tending to be the most capable version of an aircraft, and part of it just comes from popular memory not being 100% accurate. A lot of people will take the belief that the AIM-120, R-77, and even R-27ER/ET are "Cold War" missiles to their grave despite the fact the ER/ET only appeared the year before the USSR collapsed and the AMRAAM only towards the end of 1991.

The 21F-13 did indeed lack an AoA indicator, as did the Mikoyan fighters before it. I think they all had accelerometers though. You're probably pulling the nose too much on landing. The delta wing causes a lot of induced drag as you raise the AoA. At 20-22 you are almost double where you should be on approach, and you should not ever need afterburner for a landing. Set up a better approach or adapt flap usage to fit (e.g. don't drop full flaps if you're far below the normal glide slope). I'd say remember the blown flaps, but if you're spending your time in burner, that's a moot point. I really don't know what I can tell people without sounding like a dick, but it's clear a lot of DCS players just don't have the feel they need to handle older-generation (or especially delta/tailed delta configuration) aircraft, and expect it to come easily. As long as you expect a 1972 upgrade of a 1955 aircraft to behave like something with far more thrust and equal or better TWR throughout its flight envelope, or something with fly-by-wire, you will always find the MiG-21 struggles against you. I don't know what to say, "get good" isn't helpful but there's clearly something fundamental going on here and I don't know what it is to give you more specific advice. You should not need to be in afterburner unless you are pulling an extremely hard turn while heavily loaded with weapons/fuel or trying to climb in the same condition. Burner is not necessary to remain level and you can comfortably hit 1,100km/h at mil power even with a moderately draggy A2A loadout and fuel tank. Burner is definitely not necessary during any phase of landing unless you have badly misjudged your approach and are coming in extremely below glideslope, too slow, too high AoA, and flaps fully out. Again, I can't give you answers without seeing what you're doing, but the MiG is tolerant. I don't plan approaches and often make the decision to land far beyond the point that could be considered safe, but with the correct control inputs and aircraft configuration it isn't a problem. The only experience I have which really fits with any of what you're saying is that the nose does still bob around at certain speed ranges, and especially now the trim always over/undershoots, but that's something you can just deal with by control inputs. I don't have any sort of stick extension, I'm working with a stick sitting at chest-height on a desk in front of me. My flying is imprecise as a result but it isn't a problem in the MiG. I also use the SAU recovery as a lazy man's autopilot and experience no problems with it. If you're 'too slow' it will cause the nose to dip for speed before engaging, and sometimes it porpoises slightly before finding the correct trim position, but it will eventually find it and it will hold it as long as you're not allowing the aircraft to get too slow - which would require something like leaving the airbrakes out or reducing power nearly to flight idle. e: Are you using ARU override and adjusting it manually? Because don't. That's really all I can think of that would cause such violent change in AoA and difficulty in control as you're describing. That system exists for a reason and is automated for a reason.

It's no XPlane11, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, honestly.

Cowards :mad: Modern, unfortunately - so urban clutter stutter hell like PG is. :cry: Unless the airfield lights are off, you don't even need to know how to do an instrument approach. The last few times I played the evening version of Catch Me If You Can I was heading home to Gelendzhik in near total darkness (as the moon hadn't risen yet) following the lights from the coastal road, then spotting the airfield lights and following them in. I get that not everyone has the "bush pilot but in a jet" mentality I've somehow developed, but really, it's not difficult. The only hard part of that mission was spotting things - because people STILL insisted on flying as low as possible, so radar was useless. I had hoped the darkness and fear of unseen terrain would force them higher, but all it did was push them out over the water instead.

What I'd like to see (but DCS doesn't support it, actually I don't think any sim does) is the canopy starting spotless on the ground, but low altitude flying results in bugs. Lots of bugs. The longer you stay low, the more bugs you collect. It might force people out of the weeds if they want to keep a clean canopy, and it's realistic! I've never seen a video from a fighter's cockpit where there weren't at least some nice big bugs smeared across the canopy. Flying in the summer here, I would collect hundreds of them. That's just my pet wish though, honestly the canopy glass is fine now. There's just enough grime to show the canopy is there, but it's also not enough to make spotting hard - critically the gunsight is now beautiful and clean. The biggest issue I have with the cockpit now is that the ED glass material is excessively reflective in certain lighting conditions (and they're not true reflections either), so it makes gauges hard to read sometimes and can cause the gunsight to lose some transparency at bad moments. The MiG-19 from Razbam suffers the same issue, but it's one that isn't urgent and can be worked on with time.

And yet in 90% of dogfights I get into, I am sitting comfortably at 400km/h or less, not stalled. I will often go as slow as 180-250km/h in a vertical loop and again, no stall. Just because the original lacked an AoA indicator, does not mean you pull as much as you want and the aircraft never stalls. Pilots have an innate feel for what the aircraft is doing, when they talk about pulling the stick they generally mean it in a very different way to what most DCS players do. AoA indicators did not become common until the late 50s/early 60s on jets, warbirds never had them, civilian aircraft only sometimes have them. I don't see anyone claiming it's impossible to stall a Cessna 152 or a Mustang - because of course you can stall them. The difference is, you can either feel the onset, or you develop muscle memory for the limit of how much back stick you can apply at certain speeds. This second one applies in DCS - maybe you have issues with the 21 stalling, but I don't, unless I'm very tired or clumsy. Below about 800km/h I know I can only pull my stick back perhaps 30-40% of its travel, above that speed I can pull it back further, above 1,000km/h I can pull it as far as I want because I am being limited by the ARU setting instead.

If only it wasn't for the ridiculous 'moonlight glint' that makes air and ground units easy to spot from 100+km away, I'd suggest some moonlit night mission :cry: Night lighting is glorious now, and coupled with the MiG's cockpit, oh lawdy. Could do a half moon one or something as well where inability to clearly see the ground forces people a little higher up, that could be interesting - god knows some of them might actually need to learn to use their radars.

This appeared at the same time the Hornet began cosplaying as a MiG-29 for a few weeks - I think it's related to that. According to the Americans the MiG was "smokeless" (bear in mind this was an R-11F-300 engine, not an R-25-300, and was being compared to the notoriously smoky Phantom) - and previously there was none in burner and moderate smoke out of it, somewhere between the MiG-29/Jeff and Mirage in terms of severity. Now it's quite thick.

In several instant action missions (and a dogfighting mission played against a friend) I couldn't confirm this. I actually lost a fight due to the fuel running out. I'll poke around some more today, maybe it's associated with a particular loadout or ground-starts?

Is your radar on? That's been causing issues when rendering ground clutter. Interim fix is to roll back Nvidia drivers to 442.16 or earlier. I'm lazy and rarely update my drivers, on 438.something I've never experienced the radar-associated performance loss people have on newer drivers.

:wub:

Thanks for the update. What has been achieved so far is incredible and shows a very high commitment to make this happen, unfortunately there will always be people asking for a release date without an appreciation of the work involved and the stress added by constant demands.