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Hornet fans, Why do you prefer the Hornet more than the Viper beside it being a more complete module?


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If they ED release an A-6 or F-4E I’ll be a happy man


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As in real life:  1. I always fly with 2 engines, not one.

                         2. I have 1200 hours and change in this hornet, not about to start all over

                             flying another incomplete model.  Sorry.

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6 hours ago, ruddy122 said:

If they ED release an A-6 or F-4E I’ll be a happy man

Well, half of that is in the development pipeline! https://trello.com/c/spuDRnXp/2-dcs-a-6e-intruder

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I've been an admirer of the F-16 all my life but I fly the Hornet, and I wish it wasn't so ....


First of all Carrier Ops, I thought the F-14 would satisfy that, but I'm an offline player and find Jester just doesn't do the job for me.
Second VR, I find the tiny MFDs in the F-16 too small and too few.
The F/A-18 systems just make a lot of sense and are very intuitive. Situational awareness is so much better. The F-16 has a few ways of doing things better too, but the Hornet wins here. 
The F/A-18 is pretty much complete.

But I find the cockpit visually unappealing and clunky ... the leading edge extensions block the view below. The air frame isn't the prettiest either. The speed she loses is hard to claw back.  And yet of all the modules I own this is my go to.

If Jester ever gets really good, and the F-16 is closer to feature complete then I might switch over.
 

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On 6/23/2021 at 4:07 PM, Flia said:

What i like most on Hornet :

 

* Well designed cockpit

* Very good hud compared to F-16 little one

* Much better hotas comands and overall comand logic 

* Very easy Air refueling. I like to look when i puting tanker basket to my Refueling Probe

* Overall feel from Hornets  Flybywire system. I feel much more stability and control of the aircraft than in the F-16.

* His multirole capatibility to do really everything you want 

* Carrier operations 

 

I always like F-16 more. I fly a lot Falcon 4.0 and and I was convinced that the Viper was the best plane there could be. Until ED made Hornet, which I fell in love with. And over time learned what else it could do compared to the F-16. A true multi-role machine.

 

 

 

Ditto for me, what he said!

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To me, the Hornet is cool because of carrier ops and more ordinance available. Other than that, I prefer Viper's HOTAS (damn, every fighter with HOTAS should have a DMS to cycle between MFD pages), it's engine power, easier to read avionics in general (hate the strange symbols on the Hornet radar, to me hafu is like Egyptian hieroglyphs).

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i would say F18 over F16 ...but...
to me the only way to play DCS is flaming cliffs3 , since planes actually works.... while F18c has new game-breaking bugs every patch (good luck with radar, for example).
F14 crash DCS at second slot selection even in stable version.
totally unplayable.
 

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For me, hornet has been my favorite airframe for a long time. I’ve spent more than 1000 hours in Falcon series, so i’m a bit tired to being in that cockpit so much.

 

The things I hate about DCS hornet is no sensor fuzed weapons and green DDI.

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Avionics, looks, handling, more useable pylons, standoff weapons, 4 HARMs, onboard ASPJ, carrier ops, easier refueling.

Pilots who have flown both say that if you want a joyride take the Viper, but it's the Hornet you want in combat.

Is is just overall a vastly superior platform in capability.

It may not seem like it at first glance, but the Hornet avionics are leaps and bounds ahead of the Viper's giving it a ton of flexibility.

You have displays twice the size, +1 more display, imo an immensely superior HOTAS, you can communicate with everyone with the 2 ARC-210s and 2 MIDS VOC channels. The Hornet sensor fusion called multi sensor integration (MSI) is an incredibly powerful tool, and it's basically not implimented in DCS yet.

Everytime I try and fly the Viper I get so frustrated by poor design of the avionics system, and it's lack of functionality. It is the most clumsy thing possible.
Only nice thing is the quick ability to create a stearpoint by pressing STPT when DED is CNI. But why do you need three separate pages (INV SMS WPN) to employ say HARMs or MAVs when you could have a single STORES format as the Hornet does?
The 16s comparatively dinky radar is another turn off.

I could compare avionics all day but I've gone on long enough.

Most people overlook the Hornet's communication capabilities as many tend to be using discord to talk to their buddies instead of SRS. That is save for the milsim groups who want to keep the immersion.

You get 2 radios which can hold 20 manaul presets each. You can effortlessly change the presets by rotating the corresponding radios knob on the UFC. You can see the preset number AND the corresponding frequency simultaneously. These radios can be either UHF, VHF, AM or FM. There's a preset for guard, cue, and maritime channels.
With MIDS, you have to digital voice channels to communicate with other Hornets.
What this means is that I can talk to my flight on MIDS VOCA, another flight on MIDS VOCB, AWACS on COMM 1, *and* choppers running CSAR on COMM 2

The Viper can't do any of that. Hell, in the Viper you could have you interflight on UHF 253 and AWACS on VHF 134, but when you RTB tower is on 249.5 so you need to change your interflight frequency over to a VHF freq...

I'll leave it at that.

Mobius708

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To me, the Hornet is cool because of carrier ops and more ordinance available. Other than that, I prefer Viper's HOTAS (damn, every fighter with HOTAS should have a DMS to cycle between MFD pages), it's engine power, easier to read avionics in general (hate the strange symbols on the Hornet radar, to me hafu is like Egyptian hieroglyphs).


Unpopular opinion, Viper HOTAS is disgusting. DMS is making up for poor avionics design to begin with. You better have a way to flip between three pages (SMS, INV, and WPN) because the Hornet has it all consolidated into one stores format. It really doesn't make up for the two tiny MFDs. Besides, what else are you going to put on the hot bar? In A/A you want radar, SMS, and HSD. In A/G you want SMS, TGP, and HSD. It would just be better to have another MFD.

Back to the HOTAS. Again, we see a separate TMS and DMS...while this is great in the A-10 with it's unbeatable HOTAS, it's disappointing in the Viper because it had so much potential. In the Hornet TMS and DMS is replaced a single SCS, and it's function is a lot cleaner.

In the Viper if you want to STT a single track on your FCR you need to make the FCR SOI, slew the RDR cursor over the track, then TMS up twice.(bug, then STT) In the Hornet, you hit SCS towards the attack format twice. Once to make the format TDC priority, twice to command AACQ to STT the priority track. It's really sad that the Viper can enter the ACM condition with the dogfight switch. In the Hornet it's all seamless as you can enter the ACM condition via SCS up. (And exit via TDC depress or NWS button) Another really big thing is the weapons select switch and being able to immediately select the weapon you want. Even if you don't have the weapon loaded, you can use it's system selection to set radar search parameters, I do this quite often.

The HAFUs are the most intuative things possible...if you hate them, blame the Tomcat actually.

Like seriously, red is hostile, green is friendly, and yellow is unknown. If you see the top half of the HAFU, your own aircraft sees it, if it's the bottom half, it's a donor datalink track. Only slightly confusing thing would be when you aircraft hasn't IFF'd a contact it sees. That's when you get the pentagon because the top half indicating what your radar sees is the "staple" meaning unknown, and the bottom half is a chevron as others on the net identified it as hostile.

In the Tomcat, you don't even get colored HAFUs :)

Mobius708

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22 hours ago, DLEGION said:while F18c has new game-breaking bugs every patch (good luck with radar, for example)
 

 
hornet radar is working absolutely beautifully this patch. Also, I’ve been maining the hornet for a couple years now, and I’ve never had trouble shooting down FC3 planes in PvP servers. Despite what a lot of people on here say, Hornet’s radar has only occasionally been truly broken; most of the time it just has minor quirks that need to be worked around, which is not a challenge if you understand how to use it well.

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2 hours ago, slug88 said:

 
hornet radar is working absolutely beautifully this patch. Also, I’ve been maining the hornet for a couple years now, and I’ve never had trouble shooting down FC3 planes in PvP servers. Despite what a lot of people on here say, Hornet’s radar has only occasionally been truly broken; most of the time it just has minor quirks that need to be worked around, which is not a challenge if you understand how to use it well.

 

I'm finding it impossible to lock helos with the current Open Beta Hornet's radar.  At least the Mi-8.  Has anyone noticed this or have a work around?

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I'm finding it impossible to lock helos with the current Open Beta Hornet's radar.  At least the Mi-8.  Has anyone noticed this or have a work around?
Well at what range? Helos are slow moving small RCS targets so they are hard to find in radar. You should also use low PRF.

Mobius708

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1 minute ago, Hulkbust44 said:

Well at what range? Helos are slow moving small RCS targets so they are hard to find in radar. You should also use low PRF.

Mobius708
 

 

Various ranges from 0-10miles, various aspects, look up/look down, hi/med/interleaved PRF.  None work in the current open beta.  F-15C works fine.  2.5 Hornet radar works fine.

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6 hours ago, Hulkbust44 said:

Well at what range? Helos are slow moving small RCS targets so they are hard to find in radar. You should also use low PRF.

Mobius708
 

Not really, at least not on average. Depending on the viewing angle to the rotor rotation axis, the RCS can increase significantly for the cases where the pulse is reflected by the rotor in certain positions, enough for the radar to correlate returns and build a track. I'm also curious as to how much PRF would actually matter, since the rotor offers all kinds of movement and aspect, although I'm guessing the timings for MPRF and LPRF vs HPRF would help (LPRF is not pilot-selectable, but can be used during ACM acquisition).

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Not really, at least not on average. Depending on the viewing angle to the rotor rotation axis, the RCS can increase significantly for the cases where the pulse is reflected by the rotor in certain positions, enough for the radar to correlate returns and build a track. I'm also curious as to how much PRF would actually matter, since the rotor offers all kinds of movement and aspect, although I'm guessing the timings for MPRF and LPRF vs HPRF would help (LPRF is not pilot-selectable, but can be used during ACM acquisition).


While this is true, I don't believe the helicopter RCS is modeled in detail. I remember them being really tricky to find in DCS. I forgot that there is no low PRF outside of the ACM condition. I was thinking about using low PRF as in the Mirage.

Mobius708

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While this is true, I don't believe the helicopter RCS is modeled in detail. I remember them being really tricky to find in DCS. I forgot that there is no low PRF outside of the ACM condition. I was thinking about using low PRF as in the Mirage.

Mobius708

Yeah, I don't disagree that DCS might not model the rotor-induced RCS, but that's something for ED to fix.

The truth of the matter is that helicopter rotors, especially ones from the likes of the Mi-8, UH-1 etc, are characterized by RCS values comparable to those of fighters and thus should be easily detectable.
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On 6/26/2021 at 2:48 PM, Baaz said:

Personally, I don't like flying F-18 or the F-16; both are too advanced for my tastes (preferring aircraft of the early Vietnam War era).  

 

That being said, I prefer the F-18 because:

 

1)  Carrier Ops;

2)  I find it more intuitive, and easier to understand;

3)  I prefer the looks of it over the F-16;
4)  Carrier Ops;

5)  I hate Jester, and the F-18 is the only other carrier capable plane for Blue (aside from mods);

6)  Carrier Ops;

7)  Have I mentioned carrier ops?

These days I find myself flying the A-4 and F-5 above all else (other than helos).  In the future I look forward to flying the F-4U (yep, carrier ops), A-6, A-7, F-4 Phantom (hoping for Navy version), and the F-8.  Some day, although not carrier based, I also hope for an F-100 and F-105.

 

I am with you there. Carrier Ops is the main reason I fly the Hornet.

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On 7/1/2021 at 6:56 AM, Hulkbust44 said:


 

 


Unpopular opinion, Viper HOTAS is disgusting. DMS is making up for poor avionics design to begin with. You better have a way to flip between three pages (SMS, INV, and WPN) because the Hornet has it all consolidated into one stores format. It really doesn't make up for the two tiny MFDs. Besides, what else are you going to put on the hot bar? In A/A you want radar, SMS, and HSD. In A/G you want SMS, TGP, and HSD. It would just be better to have another MFD.

Back to the HOTAS. Again, we see a separate TMS and DMS...while this is great in the A-10 with it's unbeatable HOTAS, it's disappointing in the Viper because it had so much potential. In the Hornet TMS and DMS is replaced a single SCS, and it's function is a lot cleaner.

In the Viper if you want to STT a single track on your FCR you need to make the FCR SOI, slew the RDR cursor over the track, then TMS up twice.(bug, then STT) In the Hornet, you hit SCS towards the attack format twice. Once to make the format TDC priority, twice to command AACQ to STT the priority track. It's really sad that the Viper can enter the ACM condition with the dogfight switch. In the Hornet it's all seamless as you can enter the ACM condition via SCS up. (And exit via TDC depress or NWS button) Another really big thing is the weapons select switch and being able to immediately select the weapon you want. Even if you don't have the weapon loaded, you can use it's system selection to set radar search parameters, I do this quite often.

The HAFUs are the most intuative things possible...if you hate them, blame the Tomcat actually.

Like seriously, red is hostile, green is friendly, and yellow is unknown. If you see the top half of the HAFU, your own aircraft sees it, if it's the bottom half, it's a donor datalink track. Only slightly confusing thing would be when you aircraft hasn't IFF'd a contact it sees. That's when you get the pentagon because the top half indicating what your radar sees is the "staple" meaning unknown, and the bottom half is a chevron as others on the net identified it as hostile.

In the Tomcat, you don't even get colored HAFUs 🙂

Mobius708
 

 

 

Good points mate, and I agree to some of then. In the end it's just a matter o adapting to the airframe/avionics and extracting the most of then. The extra screen and the "smart" stores page on the Hornet are great features indeed. The only issue is that I see myself changing pages frequently, sometimes during combat, and unfortunately on that Hornet you have to press buttons on the MFD bezel. In real life maybe that's not a big issue, but on DCS, means you have to click on the right spot and I think it takes more time than IRL. That's why I love so much a DMS type switch. Anyway, good discussion. 

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As much as I prefer the Viper's HOTAS logic, more linear avionics, better acceleration, and unobstructed canopy view, I frequently come back to the Hornet because:

 

1. More variety of weapons

2. More weapons stations

3. Better high alpha performance in BFM

4. Boat Ops

5. More interesting liveries (color birds)

6. Doesn't need a 10,000ft runway to stop with a payload heavier than fumes (DCS Viper approach/landing speeds are 10~15kts faster than they should be on the heavy side)

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On 7/1/2021 at 3:32 PM, Raisuli said:

The real reason?

 

>200 hours in the hornet

<50 in the viper

 

Which one do I know better  🙂

 

I don't really have the time to get good at both.  If the Viper came out first those would be reversed.

There’s a kernel of truth for me here with every jet aside from the Hornet. Having fairly well mastered the Hornet, approaching a jet like the Viper with similar capabilities and struggling to employ them is maddening. 
 

I batted about in the Harrier this week, to be fair it actually gives me a small measure of appreciation for the Viper in that the HOTAS could be worse. 

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Prefer the Hornet since I can make really bad landings on land as its very forgiving (LOL), unless of course after coming off the boat for a ground landing and I (frequently) forget to enable anti-skid and swerve across the runway...the Viper is very delicate and twitchy to land...flare to land = squat to pee.

On 6/25/2021 at 9:51 AM, VpR81 said:

using 2 respective 3 TM Cougar MFDs was a game changer in MFD control with both jets, especially with the Hornet and also when switching to VR.

 

As a VR user with 3 Cougar MFDs I find it too awkward to blindly flail for the MFD buttons and end up using the mouse.  If I had a good monitor Id use the MFDs mind you, working with an old 22" currently.

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4 hours ago, Mower said:

As a VR user with 3 Cougar MFDs I find it too awkward to blindly flail for the MFD buttons and end up using the mouse.  If I had a good monitor Id use the MFDs mind you, working with an old 22" currently.

Hmm, good point... I put small rubber stickers on some of the buttons (on each middle button of each side) to support it. Works good and muscle memory did the rest for me. I rarely push the wrong buttons now...

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