Yeah, and I’m a Chinese jet pilot.
And community kitbashed “dynamic campaigns” or rando mission generators don’t count
Not even close
Hah! Wasn’t in the rules. And no shit, if they stopped development on either of those birds today, I would be totally happy with what has been delivered. In both cases more than any other game has done.
I have absolutely no problem with people who appreciate good aircraft simulations. IL-2 was always a good aircraft simulation. The DCS sims I see look amazing and I have no doubt I’d enjoy flying them.
They’re just not good simulations of what the life of a fighter pilot is like in a real world conflict. That’s an entirely different simulation. That’s a simulation of what the airspace and ground space is like in an active war. I would say a better title for this thread would be combat aircraft sim and not air combat sim.
I would largely agree with this with the caveat that some of the scripted campaigns do a good job of providing that simulation temporarily. The limitations of this approach have been detailed ad nauseam and of course are real. I think it would be a mistake to discount totally based on those limitations though.
Full disclosure I have been working on such a campaign for the past eight months, so am of course vested and biased. My campaign is Time Pilot, which puts you in an A-10, F-18, F-5, F-14 and Spitfire back in time to kill Nazis in various shapes and forms. The campaign includes a story-line, plenty of voice-overs, powerups and plenty of fun wackiness. I’m 16 missions in, but have slowed quite a bit due to work. When done, I’ll probably end up releasing it in the wild, as I doubt ED would consider such a left-field effort in their store. We’ll see.
Edit: two such campaigns that are well worth the effort are “The Museum Relic” and “The Enemy Within”. Fly them once and your mostly done, but that first time is a hell of a ride.
Edit edit: for what it’s worth, scripted campaigns can be better at providing personality than dynamic. Characters and such. DCS and IL-2 both desperately need more personality, so that is a point in it’s current favor.
This update just dropped today, giving Hornet a targeting pod. Sure that’s a big piece, but look at the rest of the stuff. Most users would never even notice it was missing.
Rivet counters like @scharmers would of course point out “but TWS” and “AGM-184”. Most of us regular gamers wouldn’t know what those ever were, let alone that they were missing. Based on the fact that the jet is stable (app rarely crashes), no obvious graphical errors, and included system work, then yes, I’d say no major issues :P
I’d say donate that dollar to Tom, Mr. Scharmers and we’ll call it good :P
DCS: F/A-18C
The initial release of the AA/ANQ-28 Litening Targeting Pod (WIP). Other modes like air-to-air mode, INR tracking, additional HUD symbology, and slave to target point, and other functions will be added later in early access.
Marking a target on the SA page with PLID now is shown correctly on the radar page.
Sharing PLID info in Multiplayer displayed correctly to and from donors.
STEP data now matches Radar Data for a selected target.
SA page STEP marker doesn’t pass through all displayed contacts - fixed
SA page EXPAND option added
JDAM TOO mode does not respect WPTs loaded as TOO MSN 1 or TOO MSN 2 - fixed
Radar shows target as hostile even if DL and NTCR are turned off - fixed
MSI: donor HAFU not displayed on RADAR page - fixed
Fixed a crash that could happen when trying to restart AUTO at the end of a WP route.
Fixed disabling AUTO in mid-route could break AUTO sequence.
TDC movement now shuts off STEP.
Radar altimeter is now set correctly at zero before Hornet start-up.
Updated the Hornet Guide.
Fixed CTD when setting bomb interval.this.
Holy mother of bog, so there is hope! Perhaps over time, DCS might be redeemed in your eyes as well. I very much consider wags an excellent producer, who’s been doing a hell of a job with it the last few years. It’s come a long way and it aint there yet either.
@Anklebiter I think you right that the machines that are in DCS are flippin’ awesome as they are. But major features are missing. AG radar. TWS for the hornets’ radar, is that in yet?
Anyway, I really love playing with my toy airplanes. They are so pretty and they move so convincingly. And of course I preordered the *fuck out of that viper the very moment it became available. I know, I’m part of the problem :P
I haven’t messed with them much save for a few tweaks such as a cockpit mod that made the F-14B’s labels readable with my old rift or one that made the mirage pit less dark. I did try the community A-4 and that is a sweet ride. A bit rough around the edges, but what in PC flighsimming land ever hasn’t been?
I get I’m arguing from a weak position, but for the sake of argument, the only reason you say they are missing is because they were put on some feature list somewhere. If that list didn’t exist, you would never know.
It is impossible to model every aspect of a plane. As @scharmers rightly says, you may as well just build the plane. The expectation is unrealistic.
For nostalgia’s sake, I fired up Jane’s Superhornet the other day. The left and right panels were just blank. There is just nothing there! The DCS plane has way more detail than the Jane’s one. Is more “complete”. But you never hear about Jane’s version being incomplete.
What exactly is the criteria for “major features”?
For me, at a meta level, major features for a combat flight sim are:
- Can it fly?
- Can it blow shit up?
- Are the graphics in place?
- Does the application constantly crash?
Great. It’s complete. Now some sims are more detailed than others.
Judged by what’s currently there, DCS / Hornet is a complete game. It is more and less detailed in areas than other games, but that’s normal.
Will a free expansion be released that adds functions? Yes.
OK, I’m gonna give this one up :)
I will grant you this mate, it is <.three hilariously obscene expletives> awesome. I got back from france yesterday night (early this morning?) at 04:00. At 09:00 I was woken by kids needing shit. At 11:00 I was slinging LGB from my hornet like a motherfucking baws and playing that HOTAS like a sweet murderous musical instrument.
Yeah it’s good. Sure playing that thing in a symphony of destruction is nice, even nicer if it’s all jammin’ jazz and not a pre-ordained script. But for now, a machine, a target range and some drones will do.
Did you fly your turkey already? they tweaked the FM some more and it’s nice.
God I can’t wait for that viper. That cockpit. That UI. That performance. Fuck yea.
I’ve been slinging LGB’s all day today. What a fun thing to do. The HOTAS implementation is so nice. So sweet. Seek, point, boom, warheads on foreheads.
In other news, they added two-seaters to Flying Circus the other day. Those things are dangerous! better not saddle up on 'em, bullet between the eyes still very much an Il-2 thing.
Interesting video in the WSJ about how the “dogfight” is going away given modern kill distance. With obligatory “reporter flies in the back seat” footage. Warning: may be paywalled.
The dogfight has “gone the way of the dodo” a couple time in history. A bit like mano-a-mano fighting for infantry. And somehow “fix bayonets” always keeps happening.
What’s the definition of a dogfight?
I watch YouTube videos of hardcore DCS pilots and they’re locking up and firing missiles at one another at huge distances, but there’s tons of maneuvering involved, especially after they’re locked-on and missiles are flying. But it’s not a dogfight in the WWII-style.
Then you read how the Air Force is rushing a new long-range AAM into service because the AMRAAM is nothing compared to what China is looking to field. They’ve spent decades watching how the USAF fights, and they’ve identified the weak points. So they’ve got AAMs with ranges of close to 100 miles or further, because you don’t need to kill the fighters, you just need to kill the tankers and the AWACs birds that the US relies heavily upon. And those are a lot easier to kill than stealth fighters. They’re big, slow, can’t maneuver, and have humongous radar returns.
Very Sun Tzu.
BVR fights (using long range missiles) indeed are quite energetic. The machines need a LOT of power to regain the energy lost during evasive maneuvering. The range of a missile is largely determined by the energy (altitude X speed) of the launching aircraft. Defeating it comes down to running it out of energy.
Now having a longer stick will go a long way in gaining superiority in BVR fights. But it’s not the end-all and be-all. Very long sticks often do not have much energy left at the end of their run and making large course corrections can make a 100nm firing solution into a 20nm one.
So we get at the merge. Like we always have. Sure modern IR missiles are murderous. Combine them with a helmet mounted targeting solution and it becomes very much a matter of seeing the enemy before he sees you, or die.
But the race between arrow and shield always has seesawed from one to the other. Now the arrow has the upper hand. But directed IR countermeasure (automagically aimed lasers that fry the seeker head) could very well end that. And guess what…
Guns.
fuck I love this shit :D
Yeah, long-range AAMs don’t have a ton of energy left near the end. The Phoenix was designed for big Soviet bombers in mind, not for shooting down nimble fighters. The Chinese long-range AAM is also designed with big ol’ targets in mind.
Has anyone merged AI with IR missiles? It always seems silly to me that flares still work in this day-and-age. You’d think an algorithm would figure that bright hot objects suddenly falling behind a bring-hot object are the decoys.
Filed under things I’ve learned today: AIM-9X has an air to surface capability (apparently dating back to 2009). @Woolen_Horde I’m not sure we would hear about it, if it has been worked on. The Raytheon site was saying the current 9x, the block II, has been in production for 16 years. Possibly there have been software updates involving that since there were the updates allowing the air to surface capability.
If they did they wouldn’t be near the end!
They pretty much don’t. Imaging IR sensors have been in missiles for some years now, and render traditional flares largely useless. Even the fancy spatially-distributed flare variety requires very careful deployment to be effective. cf.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4783/4ec45f24453d1263b94f633aa6e6bc7e2387.pdf
… And then the fancy schmancy AIM-9X failed shooting down an ancient and decrepit Su-22 over Syria last year.
How else will they be able to sell the DoD on a new, improved block III???