Any advice for staying in formation?

[Hyperlynx]

I've started regularly flying with an organised group, and one of the things they're pretty big on is formation flying. I find I have difficulty staying in formation. If I've lagged behind and increase speed, I find I overshoot quite often. When I've managed to get saddled, it seems that if I look away from my flight lead for even a moment (eg to adjust something on an MFD) when I look back up I'm out of position again.

Any general advice? It seems like I can only really stay in formation when that's the only thing I'm concentrating on, pretty much like mid-air refuelling. Is that just how it is? I've got the hang of mid-air refuelling, but formations are giving me trouble...

Edited February 9 by Hyperlynx

[razo+r]

Practice, practice and more practice. You will eventually get so much routine that you get more capacity for other things and then formation flying will be easy.

[TheFreshPrince]

Well there are different kind of formations. If you want to fly like the Blue Angels, you cannot take your eyes off your wingman even for a fraction of a second. You'll need  to move the throttle as when you're landing, constantly back and forth and you will have to use a lot of trimming. You also cannot fly very fast doing this (I think they do about 300kn). It's also important that the leader is giving precise commands. Still takes a lot of experience and practice.

 

But if you have a wider formation with some seperation and everyone is settled, your position shouldn't change much if you keep the speed and stick position and the aircraft is trimmed out. 

There is a user mission to practice formation flying somewhere in the forum.

 

Edit: Just saw this is F16 forum, but same things should apply.

Edited February 9 by TheFreshPrince

[speed-of-heat]

35 minutes ago, Hyperlynx said:

I've started regularly flying with an organised group, and one of the things they're pretty big on is formation flying. I find I have difficulty staying in formation. If I've lagged behind and increase speed, I find I overshoot quite often. When I've managed to get saddled, it seems that if I look away from my flight lead for even a moment (eg to adjust something on an MFD) when I look back up I'm out of position again.

Any general advice? It seems like I can only really stay in formation when that's the only thing I'm concentrating on, pretty much like mid-air refuelling. Is that just how it is? I've got the hang of mid-air refuelling, but formations are giving me trouble...

AAR is flying formation, as has been already said , there are different kinds of formations be-they tactical or tight "parade" / display like formations the tighter the formation the more you concentrate to get the job done, if i am in a tight parade formation with a lead the only thing i am doing is moving the throttle nearly constantly and looking at the leader...set up a scans spend at least as much time looking out of the cockpit as in... in the Viper ... turn on your JHMCS which should cut down your inside scan ...

[NytHawk]

43 minutes ago, Hyperlynx said:

 I find I have difficulty staying in formation. If I've lagged behind and increase speed, I find I overshoot quite often.

This is something you will need to practice, but every time you are flying in formation, you need to try and find the rough throttle position that keeps you at the right speed, and then make very small adjustments from there. 
You need to remember that even with the most modern jet engines, they still take several seconds to respond to a throttle input, therefore you REALLY want to avoid making large throttle movements when in formation, because you'll never really know if you've applied way too much throttle until its already too late (and you're going to overshoot).

[Hyperlynx]

So far, I've been practicing by making a simple mission with an AI flight lead who changes course in a fairly random way, and I don't have the same waypoints plugged in so I just have to follow them. Is that a good idea, for practice?

[AdrianL]

I found this userfiles mission good to practice, and it gives you a score on how well you did. So you see your progress every time you fly it  https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3327920/
 

BogeyDope did a video on a older version a few years ago to give you an idea of the mission.

 

There is also versions for slower planes and for choppers.
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3328167/
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3328192/

Edited February 9 by AdrianL

[darkman222]

DCS is the most difficult flight simulator to fly formation in. Try it in every other sim, also in WW2 sims. You will realize it is way easier everywhere else. And I am not alone with that opinion. Something seems to be off the way it is modeled in DCS' core sim.

[d0ppler]

8 minutes ago, darkman222 said:

DCS is the most difficult flight simulator to fly formation in. Try it in every other sim, also in WW2 sims. You will realize it is way easier everywhere else. And I am not alone with that opinion. Something seems to be off the way it is modeled in DCS' core sim.

Huh? Formation flying isn't modeled, nor it can't be. The problem might be that AI planes fly on "rails" in DCS. But in all fairness it's not that hard.
Flying in formation online with other players is easier, as long as lead doesn't act as a drunken sailor.

[ThePops]

46 minutes ago, darkman222 said:

Something seems to be off the way it is modeled in DCS' core sim.

This could be to lag and intermittency in the connections. Perhaps also poor smoothing code. In WarBirds in the 90s this was always a hot topic. The internet is much better now (no US Robotics phone modems anymore  ), but not not that much better in fact. There's always lag, the information can only go so fast from one end of the world to another, and that speed is overall slower than the speed of light in a straight line (across the surface) between those points. The end effect is very much relativistic, not in theory but for real. A see B as B was 1 second ago, and B see A as A was one second ago. The problem is if that "second" varies a lot, then a good smoothing code is needed to interpolate/extrapolate.

Another thing is FOV. To stay in formation, you would like to have straight (imaginary) lines to appear as "straight" on the screen. About 70-75 degree FOV would do that, outside that and things become distorted, fisheye effect for instance for 100+ degrees. This is also about practice, but it's definitely easier with a roughly correct FOV.

[darkman222]

I mean it literally. Just put an AI aircraft in DCS that just flies straight and level, then do the same in any other sim. Now start a little offset and start to get in formation and pay attention how much you overshoot, over correct etc. The tendency that you get pilot induced oscillation is way more pronounced in DCS than anywhere else.

[ThePops]

What curvature do you use on your joystick/rudder axis? Having said that, many aircraft in DCS are way over sensitive in the trimming (the tiniest of pushes on the hat causes to much action), making them unnecessary hard to trim manually.

[d0ppler]

I have a curvature of 25 on a TM Warthog stick on a Realsimulator FSSB-R3 Lighting base, which mimics the real F-16 stick (almost no movement, just pressure). But it's pretty personal how people prefer it.

Edited February 10 by d0ppler

[NytHawk]

11 hours ago, darkman222 said:

DCS is the most difficult flight simulator to fly formation in. Try it in every other sim, also in WW2 sims. You will realize it is way easier everywhere else. And I am not alone with that opinion. Something seems to be off the way it is modeled in DCS' core sim.

I have played many flight sims, and flying in formation is always very similar apart from wake turbulence modelling. It's also much easier to stay in formation while in a warbird because of the instantaneous throttle response in my opinion.

[Hyperlynx]

On 2/9/2025 at 11:17 AM, AdrianL said:

I found this userfiles mission good to practice, and it gives you a score on how well you did. So you see your progress every time you fly it  https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3327920/
 

BogeyDope did a video on a older version a few years ago to give you an idea of the mission.

 

There is also versions for slower planes and for choppers.
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3328167/
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3328192/

...yeah, having just tried it: it's a "no" from me. Horrible AI voiceover, and she doesn't shut up.

I might modify it to get rid of the voiceover, though.

E: yeah, that's a million times better, oh my god. Ok, cool. With the AI slop taken out, that'll be a really useful training tool. Thanks!

Edited February 11 by Hyperlynx

[ThePops]

  

14 hours ago, darkman222 said:

The tendency that you get pilot induced oscillation is way more pronounced in DCS than anywhere else

This is typically a result of one and/or two things. One is lag. There's some delay from stick input to aircraft response. The other is too much stick output compared with the manual stick input (too much amplification around the neutral zone). In real aircraft it's usually due to the aircraft not being trimmed in pitch, and your muscles aren't relaxed. I agree that DCS is not particularly good in this respect on overall, but it varies a lot from aircraft to aircraft.

Tuning the curvature helps a lot. I have it at 25 as default all across the board, but more is probably OK as well. Haven't investigated further. In IL-2 I have it at "0.5", making the stick input/output roughly similar to DCS. The same for X-Plane. Even in WarBirds 25-30 years ago, this was a hot topic. It was the only flight sim at the time with this kind of tuning (that I knew of at least). Getting this roughly right was essential. It also had a smoothing algorithm. Back then, sticks used analogue potentiometers. They gave rise to spikes that had to be smoothed out.

The trim in pitch is very important. Here DCS is just poor with too much trim output for too little trim input. It's almost impossible to trim the aircraft completely neutral at any given speed. It doesn't matter all that much for larger maneuvers, but when precision is important, as it is in a tight formation, this is essential. Essential unless you fancy unrealistically difficult flying  

Then there is the lag. This is a difficult thing. In a PC flight sim we cannot feel accelerations and g, we can only see what happens on the screen. There's always an observed lag between stick input and when we actually see much happening on the screen. The accelerations don't have any lag however, but the visual image(s) is perceived as "laggy", because that's how acceleration works. This is straight forward basic physics. The position S when you have a starting position S0, a velocity v0 and acceleration a is:

S = S0 + v0*t + 0.5*a*t^2

We see only S, and therefore also v, but the acceleration, a, we have no feel for whatsoever. It is however super essential in real flying. That's what the "seat of your pants" is all about. One main "issue" is the t^2 (t*t). The position due to acceleration is proportional to t squared. When this is less than 1 second, not much is happening in terms of position. Let's say t is 0.1 s after an input that causes 5g. Then t*t = 0.01. That 5g is scaled by 0.01. This means that everything that happens in the first fractions of a second, let's say the first 0.5 s is hardly noticeable in a sim, but very much noticeable in RL. You can see rotations of course, but that's only part of it.

A flight model will always feel a bit odd due to this. You react a bit slower than you would do in RL, and this can cause PIO. A Level D commercial flight sim must have 6 degree of freedom motion platform, so these things can at least in part be accounted for. If you only do simming, then I guess it doesn't matter all that much. Sooner or later you will get a "feel" for it. This is even more pronounced for RC flying. The brain is rather incredible this way. That "feel" isn't necessarily realistic or "correct" when compared with real life flying however.

OK, enough FM rambling in a day   

  

[void68]

First try with level, straight formation flying. Your wingleader should be in autopilot and speed should already be settled. Identical loadout and Fuel Flow declaration can be helpful. Every change in speed, altitude, heading should be gentle and should be declared. That's what the winglead can do.

Once you are settled stay with minimum inputs, you can even try with autopilot to keep the same altitude or pitch (yes, that's a sacrilege I know, but that's one axis less to care for). With the Paddle on your HOTAS you can easily adjust the altitude to aim for. Most of the time you have to adjust throttle inputs, a bit forth, a bit back till you find the sweet spot. Brakes help for quick change. Think ahead of your engine, it got quite some latency (other than piston engines). First get rid of your overshooting. Better take some time and learn about closure rates and how they correspond with the screen, i.e. how fast the "target" aircraft grows on your screen. Do you use VR? Headtracking? Keep your eyes somewhat fixed on your lead, but also keep him more in a peripheral view area. Like AAR and when you are dashing your car through a very narrow lane or right next a truck while in a narrow roadwork: If you fix your eyes on the side you will oscillate your inputs. Just look ahead and subconsciously you will steer correctly. Again, short, quick inputs, else it leads to PIO. Try different formations with that more or less stable lead aircraft.