PSA: F-14 Performance/FM Development Status + Guided Discussion

[lunaticfringe]

12 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

Nope, are you pretending not to understand? I would like to create the right situations fighting with you and then we will analyze tacview's files.

Let's go on the play ground, i'm available today even now. With my BFM partners we spend much time to train and test, which is your problem? Stop the words and do the facts otherwise your words means nothing.

My man- my problem is that you tell me that you've done these thousands of hours worth of BFM in DCS, and you've got hundreds of hours of BFM practice with your bros, but what you really need to do to have your arguments validated is have me spend a couple hours resetting DCS builds before I can even hop on a server with you, so that I can somehow get into your head space in a fashion that you can't describe in words, Tacviews, or video, to show me things that apparently don't show up in any other fashion, because- well... just because.  And then spend another couple of hours resetting so I can go back to work.

This isn't Neo proving to Morpheus he knows Kung Fu. 

And it isn't even technique versus technique- this is technique versus documentable performance.  Everybody else around here are happy reviewing Tacviews and comparing, but there's something unquantifiable here.  Nah- I'm sure that with your stated experience you're sitting on enough material to make your point, and I'm more than happy to take the time to look and discuss with you what you're seeing.   And if what you're saying is true outside of the transonic, it'll show against the charts, and it will definitively show in the replays through obvious loss in opportunities to close out a fight. 

 

12 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

I don't understand what you mean so please explain better yourself. I'm not joking.

To clarify: didn't you have this line of conversation with Victory- that the fractional DpS were make or break important, or was that somebody else?

[maxsin72]

25 minutes ago, lunaticfringe said:

My man- my problem is that you tell me that you've done these thousands of hours worth of BFM in DCS, and you've got hundreds of hours of BFM practice with your bros, but what you really need to do to have your arguments validated is have me spend a couple hours resetting DCS builds before I can even hop on a server with you, so that I can somehow get into your head space in a fashion that you can't describe in words, Tacviews, or video, to show me things that apparently don't show up in any other fashion, because- well... just because.  And then spend another couple of hours resetting so I can go back to work.

This isn't Neo proving to Morpheus he knows Kung Fu. 

And it isn't even technique versus technique- this is technique versus documentable performance.  Everybody else around here are happy reviewing Tacviews and comparing, but there's something unquantifiable here.  Nah- I'm sure that with your stated experience you're sitting on enough material to make your point, and I'm more than happy to take the time to look and discuss with you what you're seeing.   And if what you're saying is true outside of the transonic, it'll show against the charts, and it will definitively show in the replays through obvious loss in opportunities to close out a fight.

You didn't understood, i don't want to prove you that i'm strong or skilled, ok? I only would like to reproduce certain flight situation, especially the ones vs F18 with me on F18 and you on F14. And for certain flight situation i mean the ones in which F14 can do totaly nothing vs F18. So, if your dcs will be ever ready to be used, i will be really pleased to show you what i mean. And for sure it's really strange that somebody who speak as one very skilled is not even able to start dcs to do some tests...

 

25 minutes ago, lunaticfringe said:

To clarify: didn't you have this line of conversation with Victory- that the fractional DpS were make or break important, or was that somebody else?

I don't remember any particular conversation with Victory.

Edited November 2, 2022 by maxsin72

[IronMike]

3 hours ago, Бойовий Сокіл said:

It's not just a little off, it's quite a bit off especially in acceleration - something that sets the B apart from the A. Ever since the A came out the B became a slightly different A for some reason. Compring the B before the A release and now is night and day.

That is because the -B had a significant amount of too much excess power on release, which got fixed.

[lunaticfringe]

18 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

You didn't understood, i don't want to prove you that i'm strong or skilled, ok? I only would like to reproduce certain flight situation, especially the ones vs F18 with me on F18 and you on F14. And for certain flight situation i mean the ones in which F14 can do totaly nothing vs F18. So, if your dcs will be ever ready to be used, i will be really pleased to show you what i mean.

I'll check my calendar.  In lieu, check your Tacview folder.  I believe in you.

18 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

And for sure it's really strange that somebody who speak as one very skilled is not even able to start dcs to do some tests...

You'll have to excuse me, but I've been working in test builds of DCS across two installs in the last week with 400+ GB in updates between them.  

Testers test, yo.  Being substantially diverged from current OB and stable branches are a way of life. 

[Frosty2124]

11 minutes ago, IronMike said:

That is because the -B had a significant amount of too much excess power on release, which got fixed.

Serious, if slightly off topic question, do you get visibility of the changes before they are implemented or do they sneak up on you? I'm a systems engineer by trade so i'm curious as to how the relationships at  the interfaces work

cheers  

Edited November 2, 2022 by Frosty2124

[IronMike]

1 minute ago, Frosty2124 said:

Serious, if slightly of topic question, do you get visibility of the changes before they are implemented or do they sneak up on you? I'm a systems engineer by trade so i'm curious as to how the relationships at  the interfaces work

cheers  

Not sure what you mean by visibility of the changes? Also not sure what you mean with "relationships at interfaces".

If you mean whether changed items pass through my hands, or those of our testers, then of course, all of them. Bugs ofc can slip through and do, even though we do our best to catch them.

[Frosty2124]

5 minutes ago, IronMike said:

Not sure what you mean by visibility of the changes? Also not sure what you mean with "relationships at interfaces".

If you mean whether changed items pass through my hands, or those of our testers, then of course, all of them. Bugs ofc can slip through and do, even though we do our best to catch them.

basically, does ED let you see the build in enough time to bug fix as much as possible with what we see being the ones that slip through, or does it spring the updates upon you with fairly short notice.

[IronMike]

1 minute ago, Frosty2124 said:

basically, does ED let you see the build in enough time to bug fix as much as possible with what we see being the ones that slip through, or does it spring the updates upon you with fairly short notice.

Again, not quite sure what you mean with "build" - you mean the next DCS version? That is not quite how that works.

We work on our internal builds, towards a patch schedule. Then this internal build gets submitted to ED several weeks before the patch. During this period both the new DCS version and the 3rd party builds get tested. Before uploading, our internal builds also get tested in house.

Sometimes the patch schedule gets changed on rather short notice, which then means we either skip a patch or deliver a smaller amount of changes.

[Frosty2124]

3 minutes ago, IronMike said:

Again, not quite sure what you mean with "build" - you mean the next DCS version? That is not quite how that works.

We work on our internal builds, towards a patch schedule. Then this internal build gets submitted to ED several weeks before the patch. During this period both the new DCS version and the 3rd party builds get tested. Before uploading, our internal builds also get tested in house.

Sometimes the patch schedule gets changed on rather short notice, which then means we either skip a patch or deliver a smaller amount of changes.

ah awesome, it from a systems engineer perspective it makes me feel sick XD, but software development is a wizardry all of its own so hahaha. its pretty much how i expected it to be, cheers for the gen fella

Edited November 2, 2022 by Frosty2124

[maxsin72]

22 minutes ago, lunaticfringe said:

I'll check my calendar.  In lieu, check your Tacview folder.  I believe in you.

You'll have to excuse me, but I've been working in test builds of DCS across two installs in the last week with 400+ GB in updates between them.  

Testers test, yo.  Being substantially diverged from current OB and stable branches are a way of life. 

I thought you have also a clean install of DCS

Anyway, when you will be available, please send me a message. 

[IronMike]

3 hours ago, Callsign JoNay said:

Imagine going to a barber shop and asking for a haircut. You pay in advance, sit in the chair, and your usual barber takes the haircut to 90% completion. Then he tells you that he has to leave because he got another job at a pub and his shift is about to start. He tells you to wait in the chair until he's finished his shift at the pub and then he'll come back to complete the haircut. Or actually, he's pretty swamped this week, so maybe he'll complete it next week. Or next month. He's not sure. Then when you politely ask the manager of the barber shop if maybe another barber could finish the cut, he sarcastically asks if you're the new owner of the shop now.

We're paying customers, and the comment you replied to was being very polite and reasonable.

All of you have every right to ask us any question, that has always been like that and always will be. You know that, we always try to meet you on eye level.

But I still would like to clarify something: the FM is not only 90% done. It is basically complete, with the performance being marginally off. That is off little enough for our F14 pilot SME to not consider it an issue, and actually far closer to the real deal than even an FAA-approved class-D simulator would require. That does not mean that we do not want to get it even closer in performance - we do, and always said so. But within your analogy you would remain sitting to quite literally split some hairs, or wanted some else fairly unnoticable points trimmed, on top of the hair cut that has been delivered to you. That is fine, and we will do it, but we do kindly ask for some patience in return.

Edited November 2, 2022 by IronMike

[maxsin72]

4 hours ago, IronMike said:

All of you have every right to ask us any question

Please forgive me for taking you literally, my question is: how much time, very roughly, do you think we have to wait to see an FM update? 3 months? 6 months? one year?

Thank you

[IronMike]

7 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

Please forgive me for taking you literally, my question is: how much time, very roughly, do you think we have to wait to see an FM update? 3 months? 6 months? one year?

Thank you

I sure hope not that long. It is actively on our minds and we talked with @fat creason very recently about it, but I cannot give you an estimate. Hopefully around end of the year, beginning next year. We all want to get it finally behind ourselves, too, Maxsin.

[captain_dalan]

8 hours ago, maxsin72 said:

There is nothing better than seeing how it works on the play ground, words does not matter and tacview does not explain everything. So, if you are available, i would like to do some tests using both F18  and F14, to try to show you what i mean when i say that nobody is still using F 14 in Tournaments, apart me and one other pilot i met. So please stop losing time writing and use your time to do some tests with me. 

Trust me, there are few that lament the lack of performance more then me, however, there's a couple (or maybe 3, depending on how you count) of issues here:
1. The performance in the subsonic part of the envelope that is currently lacking from both the A and the B is not going to be significant enough to change the logic behind F-14 tournament participation, as long the the corrections are done to match excess power charts, and NOT the performance of early release. In fact most of the corrections need to be done transonic and supersonic, where the plane both under and over performs;
2. The same dude may be able to win 10 times out of 10 when going against himself in two different planes. But what makes you think the results should be any different? That is, what argument other then the battle is unwinnable is there for a change? We don't have detailed data for one of these planes and are at the mercy of the devs to model it as they see fit. And yeah, they mentioned the F-18 FM is going to be a subject to refinement, but from what i've seen done to the Viper, i wouldn't hold my breath just yet. My point is, you can get one of these planes as close as possible to available data, but the other may not play ball. For whatever reason. Then what? We skewer the data so they will be matched more closely?
3. (This is optional), say you get my behind delivered to me every time in BFM. Does that nullify my claims? Does that nullify the EM charts? Or does that prove you are a better stick then me? Or does that prove your plane is better then mine? Let's say it's both. Again..... what makes you think this isn't how things should be? (playing devil's advocate here)

8 hours ago, Callsign JoNay said:

Imagine going to a barber shop and asking for a haircut. You pay in advance, sit in the chair, and your usual barber takes the haircut to 90% completion. Then he tells you that he has to leave because he got another job at a pub and his shift is about to start. He tells you to wait in the chair until he's finished his shift at the pub and then he'll come back to complete the haircut. Or actually, he's pretty swamped this week, so maybe he'll complete it next week. Or next month. He's not sure. Then when you politely ask the manager of the barber shop if maybe another barber could finish the cut, he sarcastically asks if you're the new owner of the shop now.

We're paying customers, and the comment you replied to was being very polite and reasonable.

THIS!

[captain_dalan]

5 hours ago, IronMike said:

All of you have every right to ask us any question, that has always been like that and always will be. You know that, we always try to meet you on eye level.

But I still would like to clarify something: the FM is not only 90% done. It is basically complete, with the performance being marginally off. That is off little enough for our F14 pilot SME to not consider it an issue, and actually far closer to the real deal than even an FAA-approved class-D simulator would require. That does not mean that we do not want to get it even closer in performance - we do, and always said so. But within your analogy you would remain sitting to quite literally split some hairs, or wanted some else fairly unnoticable points trimmed, on top of the hair cut that has been delivered to you. That is fine, and we will do it, but we do kindly ask for some patience in return.

 

If you are referring to the subsonic envelope yeah, it's probably mostly done. But everything mach 0.82+ (or so ish), especially in the A (which is the last plane i really tested in any detail at different altitudes across the entire speed range) is quite a bit off. Unless you guys changed something under the hood in the last few months but failed to mention it in the patch notes. There is even a topic active right now, about a guy asking (quite rightly) why he (or she) can't break through mach 1 with 4 Phoenixes and 2 bags at higher altitudes. And it's been so for years now.

[IronMike]

13 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

If you are referring to the subsonic envelope yeah, it's probably mostly done. But everything mach 0.82+ (or so ish), especially in the A (which is the last plane i really tested in any detail at different altitudes across the entire speed range) is quite a bit off. Unless you guys changed something under the hood in the last few months but failed to mention it in the patch notes. There is even a topic active right now, about a guy asking (quite rightly) why he (or she) can't break through mach 1 with 4 Phoenixes and 2 bags at higher altitudes. And it's been so for years now.

With 4 phoenix, 2 sparrows, 2 aim9s, and 2 tanks you can reach M1.2 atm at 40k feet - which mind you is a massive payload and very draggy - how much should you reach with such a loadout in your opinion? Top speed charts iirc top of my head are for 50k feet with 2x2x2 and fixed internal fuel, no tanks (they are calculated, not proven). I bet you should get a bit faster than 1.2, but I doubt much with this payload. The problem is this isn't an engine performance issue as much as it is a drag issue, which we have limited control of.

See the tacview below: M1.2 with 4x2x2x2XT. The moment you jettison ordnance (and mind you aim9s stay including racks), it purrs away to M2.28. Take away the aim9s and I guess you can account for those missing M0.04. I took off from an airfield, standard mission settings (no weather changes, etc), to give the best unskewed representation (aka no fast in air spawn).

As for the active topic about not being able to reach more than Mach 1.0... He wasn't asking for 4 phoenixes and 2 bags, but if you read his OP again, he was asking for a 2x2x2 payload, aka 2 phoenix, 2 sparrows, 2 sidewinders. I did that, too, and even did 2 things here additionally: I spawned with 100% fuel (aka acceleration is a bit slower as one is heavier than after a normal climb, which has been demonstrated in the other tacview), and also I stayed explicitly below 40k feet. At 50k feet this would be even easier. So, no idea how he flew it, but not being able to breach Mach 1 at high altitudes is simply not true. I reached M2.14 with 2x2x2.

Both tacviews recorded in latest Open Beta, F-14A. Additionally, although trying to maintain level flight as much as possible, if, then there was even an ever so small climb present in both tacviews, though negligable, as periodically there was a tiny descent present as well in order to keep correcting.

Again, the performance is off marginally. Drag is a bit of a bigger issue, but as mentioned, only partially solveable by us, and even so, less of an impact than some here make it out to be. Try for yourself. And let me please know what you would expect.

That said, I am not saying that there is no room for improvement. There most certainly is. But it is not such a game changer or game breaker as some claim it would be.

2x2x2_38kft.zip.acmi 4x2x2x2tanks_40kft.zip.acmi

Edited November 3, 2022 by IronMike

[maxsin72]

7 hours ago, IronMike said:

I sure hope not that long. It is actively on our minds and we talked with @fat creason very recently about it, but I cannot give you an estimate. Hopefully around end of the year, beginning next year. We all want to get it finally behind ourselves, too, Maxsin.

Thank you for your prompt and kind reply, happy to know that fat creason can do the job and happy for the reasonable timing you gave

[Lt_Jaeger]

12 hours ago, IronMike said:

It is basically complete, with the performance being marginally off. That is off little enough for our F14 pilot SME to not consider it an issue, and actually far closer to the real deal than even an FAA-approved class-D simulator would require.

Is anyone reading this part ???

 

Makes me shake my head....not on the statement above, but on the constant demand for "more"

[maxsin72]

7 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

Trust me, there are few that lament the lack of performance more then me, however, there's a couple (or maybe 3, depending on how you count) of issues here:
1. The performance in the subsonic part of the envelope that is currently lacking from both the A and the B is not going to be significant enough to change the logic behind F-14 tournament participation, as long the the corrections are done to match excess power charts, and NOT the performance of early release. In fact most of the corrections need to be done transonic and supersonic, where the plane both under and over performs;
2. The same dude may be able to win 10 times out of 10 when going against himself in two different planes. But what makes you think the results should be any different? That is, what argument other then the battle is unwinnable is there for a change? We don't have detailed data for one of these planes and are at the mercy of the devs to model it as they see fit. And yeah, they mentioned the F-18 FM is going to be a subject to refinement, but from what i've seen done to the Viper, i wouldn't hold my breath just yet. My point is, you can get one of these planes as close as possible to available data, but the other may not play ball. For whatever reason. Then what? We skewer the data so they will be matched more closely?
3. (This is optional), say you get my behind delivered to me every time in BFM. Does that nullify my claims? Does that nullify the EM charts? Or does that prove you are a better stick then me? Or does that prove your plane is better then mine? Let's say it's both. Again..... what makes you think this isn't how things should be? (playing devil's advocate here)

THIS!

Maybe i'm wrong maybe not, i'm talking only about F14B, i don't know almost at all A version, in the graph below i see Ps going very low under mach 0,4 and, imho, this is a terrain, the low speed fighting, in which F14B can do very well but perhaps it can do even better with the right Ps. The same for speeds over mach 0,6, even if at this speeds the impact is less than at speeds under mach 0,4.

Edited November 3, 2022 by maxsin72

[r4y30n]

With 4 phoenix, 2 sparrows, 2 aim9s, and 2 tanks you can reach M1.2 atm at 40k feet - which mind you is a massive payload and very draggy - how much should you reach with such a loadout in your opinion? Top speed charts iirc top of my head are for 50k feet with 2x2x2 and fixed internal fuel, no tanks (they are calculated, not proven). I bet you should get a bit faster than 1.2, but I doubt much with this payload. The problem is this isn't an engine performance issue as much as it is a drag issue, which we have limited control of.

See the tacview below: M1.2 with 4x2x2x2XT. The moment you jettison ordnance (and mind you aim9s stay including racks), it purrs away to M2.28. Take away the aim9s and I guess you can account for those missing M0.04. I took off from an airfield, standard mission settings (no weather changes, etc), to give the best unskewed representation (aka no fast in air spawn).

As for the active topic about not being able to reach more than Mach 1.0... He wasn't asking for 4 phoenixes and 2 bags, but if you read his OP again, he was asking for a 2x2x2 payload, aka 2 phoenix, 2 sparrows, 2 sidewinders. I did that, too, and even did 2 things here additionally: I spawned with 100% fuel (aka acceleration is a bit slower as one is heavier than after a normal climb, which has been demonstrated in the other tacview), and also I stayed explicitly below 40k feet. At 50k feet this would be even easier. So, no idea how he flew it, but not being able to breach Mach 1 at high altitudes is simply not true.

Both tacviews recorded in latest Open Beta, F-14A. Additionally, although trying to maintain level flight as much as possible, if, then there was even an ever so small climb present in both tacviews, though negligable, as periodically there was a tiny descent present as well in order to keep correcting.

Again, the performance is off marginally. Drag is a bit of a bigger issue, but as mentioned, only partially solveable by us, and even so, less of an impact than some here make it out to be. Try for yourself. And let me please know what you would expect.

That said, I am not saying that there is no room for improvement. There most certainly is. But it is not such a game changer or game breaker as some claim it would be.
2x2x2_38kft.zip.acmi 4x2x2x2tanks_40kft.zip.acmi

Regarding stores drag, is that something ED seems interested in fixing long term? The Phantom is obviously in the same boat as the Tomcat in regards to recessed Sparrows but it’s also going to be a problem on the Typhoon, F-15E, and even the F/A-18’s intake hard points.

[Spurts]

4 hours ago, maxsin72 said:

Maybe i'm wrong maybe not, i'm talking only about F14B, i don't know almost at all A version, in the graph below i see Ps going very low under mach 0,4 and, imho, this is a terrain, the low speed fighting, in which F14B can do very well but perhaps it can do even better with the right Ps. The same for speeds over mach 0,6, even if at this speeds the impact is less than at speeds under mach 0,4.

 

That is a level flight Ps graph on the left.  The STR graph from that video showed the F-14B actually over performs below 0.5M.  The left side lag was even explicitly stated to be a possible testing error due to initial AoA for the level speed acceleration run.

[maxsin72]

5 hours ago, Spurts said:

That is a level flight Ps graph on the left.  The STR graph from that video showed the F-14B actually over performs below 0.5M.  The left side lag was even explicitly stated to be a possible testing error due to initial AoA for the level speed acceleration run.

I'm still waiting you show me on the play ground how the F14B can always beat the F18. 

[Spurts]

43 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

I'm still waiting you show me on the play ground how the F14B can always beat the F18. 

And I already told you that I only get to fly once a month.  Proving something to you is not a priority to me, I'll spend my time elsewhere.  Your "1v1 me, bro!  If you can't do that then your argument is invalid." attitude has long since gotten old.  

[maxsin72]

36 minutes ago, Spurts said:

And I already told you that I only get to fly once a month.  Proving something to you is not a priority to me, I'll spend my time elsewhere.  Your "1v1 me, bro!  If you can't do that then your argument is invalid." attitude has long since gotten old.  

If you are not able to prove what you affirm, it's better you keep silence.  And yes, you spend your time making bla bla bla every day on this forum but when it"s time to do facts you are not available because you fly once a month . I don't want to show you i'm the best, i don't think i am the best. I would like to show you how the F18 at the moment is the most dominant plane

Edited November 3, 2022 by maxsin72

[Spurts]

LOL, okay.