Sea Serpent

Eyepoint view controls (and/or “snap views”) and the ability to set a default view as desired by the user have been part of every half-decent flight sim for decades. Meanwhile, TrackIR has been around for a long time, and is considered standard kit by most, in lieu of VR.

Dont be a wuss. I was browsing through the manual today, and this plane has traditional instruments and fairly straightforward switchology. I don’t think the learning curve will be too bad, even in the back seat. The F-14 was easy to learn in the front seat, but difficult in the back seat, to me, in part because we can’t fly the thing from the back seat, except through the Iceman Wheel. I was always lagging behind the interface. Maybe I’m just making excuses because I didn’t really feel like learning the back seat? Still, being able to actually fly the plane from the back seat, point it where you want it, and operate the radar, is going to be a big learning tool, I think. But, even so, this radar is no AWG-9 in the Tomcat. Mortal beings might actually be able to operate the Phantom’s radar. I also look forward to Jester 2, not only for the F-4, but also F-14.

The Who Sells Out 😀

I wish my DCS looked that good!

I guess I washed out of F-15 school once again, so I'm back to the lowly Mirage F1: This is an unbelievably cool aircraft, my very favorite in a long time. It might not be the best combat aircraft of the universe, but it's definitely one of the nicest jets to fly that I've seen. The learning curve is pretty gentle, imho. It's third generation, but it has some really nice more modern things, like a velocity vector dot, and an autopilot you might see on an airliner.

Many people who like flight sim are always bitching for more “immersion.” So in the F-5E, you have to tell the ground crew to connect the generator, and the air unit, and then go through a simple start sequence. You have like three modes of gunsight, and you select launch pylons by an on/off switch. Full Fidelity, quelle horreur. edit: I say no to more generically-controlled, more simplified style of airplanes. I have FC3 and I play around with them occasionally. It’s great for aircraft like the modern-ish Sukhois and MiGs that wouldn’t otherwise be in DCS at all.

Those aircraft seem an odd choice to receive the generic, clickless, Flaming Cliffs treatment, since the full fidelity versions are already notable for having a very gentle learning curve. I would have rather seen effort directed toward updating the existing FF modules than making downgraded casual versions, but clearly they’re trying to increase their share of the “start with E” market that I normally think of with IL-2. I hope most MP servers go with one or the other, but not both versions simultaneously.

These kinds of things are handled at the multiplayer server level, by consumers of the product who decide they want to make a server to host games, aren’t they? Its a given that this new sim will accommodate that ability, I would assume.

Dawn Patrol over Normandy in the Mi-24. First pass from enemy perspective (one destroyed with ATGM), those hideous co-axial MG-42s firing at my Hind: 2 ATGMs off on second attack run, remaining two tanks destroyed:

That’s interesting. I’ve never seen a plastic model like that…part plastic, but with an internal frame covered with…what?

In modern DCS, the IFLOLS (landing light system) is hard to read on a screen, so they added in an optional pop up that shows the lights, that appears after you call the ball. I suggest something similar, but instead of lights, you get a pop up of the LSO waving the flags paddles.

The stall speed of a Wildcat is probably under 70 knots, and then you probably have 20+ knots over the deck. Do we need something slower to practice a no-consequence virtual deck landing? I could be wrong, as I have almost no sim experience landing a WW2 plane on a carrier, but I don’t think this is going to be as tough as some are making it sound.

Someday, I'd like to do multi-crew in the Mi-8. I used to fly it online, but that was before it had multi-crew capabilities. I guess you can have up to 5 people in it now? Anyway, just an attack run on some soft and easy targets (w/ 23mm gunpods), to get the feel back. You would almost never overfly the targets, but this was just practice. It doesn’t look so bad from the cockpit to me, but from the screenshots, I think the Caucasus terrain and the Mi-8 may both be showing their age. This and the Blackshark are still my favorite helicopters in DCS.