streakeagle

I haven't tried flight gear in ages. It never ran well on my hardware and didn't have much to offer as a non-combat civil sim when I already have FSX and X-Plane. I saw previews of what the F-14B would be like for v3.4, so I have been waiting for its release ever since then. I just checked again last night, found v3.4 was available, and downloaded from here: http://www.flightgear.org/ Tonight, I installed it. I went straight to the F-14B and runway 10R at San Francisco International, summer afternoon. Out of the box, the graphics are still very dated, but the F-14B cockpit looks interesting. You can sit in the pilot or rio seat. Apparently, multiplayer with a pilot and rio in the same aircraft is possible, which makes this a unique sim as far as I know. At first, I couldn't figure out how to get my stick setup to work. I looked up the location of the joystick menu in the instruction file and also read that it should automatically recognize my stick setup and try to make basic assignments. So I restarted the game and sure enough, my complex stick setup was detected and automatically configured. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it came up with mostly valid assignments despite my unusual stick arrangement. I have a real B-8 grip and stick assembly from an F-4 Phantom that is integrated into Windows via a Bodnar Bu0836X USB stick interface board, a Thrustmaster Warthog Throttle, and Saitek rudder pedals. Everything was assigned 100% correct! The B-8 had the correct roll and pitch axes, the throttle had the throttle axis, and the rudder pedals had the toe-brakes and rudder. The only problem was dual assignment of the roll and pitch axes to the throttle's little cursor stick which were easily cleared to "none". The aircraft was on the runway with engines running. "Brake" light was red for wheel brakes (parking brake?), <shift><b> released the brakes per the "Common Aircraft Controls" summary. Throttle forward (single axis only, I didn't see any option for dual throttles on a twin engine aircraft). Rotated, lifted off, retracted gear <g>, and... got a master caution due to exceeding vne -> never exceed speed for the current altitude. Apparently, full throttle in an F-14B results in extremely quick acceleration, at least as modeled in this sim. Upon flying around just a minute or two, I figured out real fast that I needed to get TrackIR enabled to really enjoy this aircraft. This is where I hit the brakes! TrackIR is not inherently supported in any way after all of these years. Someone got creative and came up with a basic dll/config that allows use of TrackIR in Windows and someone else revised it to improve it to some extent, but I haven't had the guts to download and install this little hack. TrackIR is compatible with a library for Linux that also works in OSX: so you can easily use TrackIR in Linux or Apple OSX but not Windows! If the hack is actually still available for download (two years from the time the links were posted in a forum), it might work well enough for me to go further in exploring the F-14B in FlightGear v3.4. But as it stands now, this pretty much kills my interest in this sim.

My son loves this, now :) Even played it in HD on my 60" TV for my wife because my son wanted her to see/hear it. She went to bed singing the chorus ;)

Watch the full song, even better! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anM1N5oN-OM

Edge needs to have good enough detail for land combat. So it should be capable of way more ground detail than any existing flight sim... more like OFP/ArmA type shooters. One could only hope that DCS would ultimately allow you to be a first person pilot that walks/rides out to the aircraft, climbs in, and can land/climb out or eject, then interact with the world like a shooter. This obviously isn't needed for jet flight/combat, but is the kind of functionality you need when flying UH-1H and Mi-8 transports to haul troops which could be AI or even other people. DCS will never be the best shooter, but ArmA will never be the best flight simulator. It would be cool if DCS, ArmA, and Steel Beasts could be integrated to have the best of all three sims making all of the fans happy and supporting a much larger community. Another aspect of this video is evidence of how well DCS could compete with FSX for airline mods. I hope they are building a globe that ties all of these terrains together instead of little square patches like SFP1/SF2.

Cool!

I have a pure stock install on a new pc and have no problem with the afterburner emitters. Patched to Jul 2013. We could discuss the issue on the Third Wire forums... oh wait, they have been shut down for quite some time. Or we could discuss it at the Third Wire facebook page... oh wait, there has been nothing but the sound of crickets from TK aside from basic holiday greetings. TK could still surprise us with the last promised expansion and re-open the forums with years of knowledge intact, but I am not holding my breath :( But it has been only just over a year and a half since the last patch. TK could still be squeezing SF2 progress in on the side, but no news last Christmas was a bad sign. No news this coming Christmas will most likely make SF2 a permanently "stable platform" for 3rd party developers. I hope TK is at least eating and sleeping well on the income from mobile gaming.

Excellent read. Tons of good info. I wish I could discuss the classified info with him.

Not something you see everyday. Pretty impressive.

Back to the F-104, based on the v-n diagram, 200 kts IAS is the 1g speed for both sea level and 20,000 ft, so the curves for the F-104 would start at about Mach 0.36 on the color graph. The instantaneous rate would peak at about the same spot as the F-4E.

An interesting point is at Mach 0.8. At 10,000 ft that is about 500 kts, a typical starting point for air-to-air combat, which is commonly evaluated at Mach 0.9. Around that point, the F-14A performs nearly identical to the F-4E in both sustained and instantaneous. Down to Mach 0.5, just over 300 kts, the F-14A's sustained performance is about 20% better than the F-4E, while its instantaneous is about 72% better. The power-to-weight advantage of the F-15C over the F-14A is very apparent from this graph. So only knowing the v-n diagram which establishes instantaneous performance limits doesn't quite tell the whole story. The weight/payload greatly affect performance: the F-16C does not sustain 9gs when the wings are cluttered with missiles and pylons -- too much weight, drag and lost lift. It is a shame the F-14D isn't shown, as it would reflect how simply changing the available thrust greatly affects the same airframe.

The unslatted F-4B can pull more g at a lower speed, which means its instantaneous performance is considerably better than the F-104A/C depicted above. At the same 7.33g load, the F-4 only needs to fly at 420 kts, about compared to the F-104G's 490+ kts. This results in 490/420 = 16% better turn rate. At corner speed, around 445 kts, the F-4 can pull about 8.5g, leading to 8.5/7.33*490/445 = 27% better turn rate. I don't know how accurate the information is, but this graph is way cool. Keep in mind that the slatted F-4E generally turns better than the F-4B by a good margin given how much better the F-4B turns compared to the F-104:

For perspective, consider a clean F-4B at 50% fuel. Since the altitude is at sea level, TAS = CAS = IAS is fairly true, so it is directly comparable to the sea level data above:

Be wary of the limits of the above graph: clean with flaps and gear up... and less than 1,000 lbs of fuel. If you take the total weight with 1,000 lbs of fuel, you can estimate performance with higher fuel loadings by using the weight ratio to reduce the load factor scale on the left. i.e. if the weight is increased by 25% (5/4), then the load factor g's should be 80% (4/5) lower. Note: this load factor reduction also applies to the 7.33g structural limit. In this example, it would now be 0.8 x 7.33g => 5.864g Flaps down should improve the lift curves a bit up to their rated speed, but at the cost of greatly increased drag. Keep in mind, this is not a sustained turn graph, this is the maximum load that can be pulled while the wing is at the max controllable angle of attack, which can be less than the theoretical Clmax angle since the F-104 had control issues at high AoA. The stick pusher system that tries to prevent unstable AoA is the source of the flat spots in the curves. Also keep in mind, the speed is IAS => indicated airspeed, not CAS/TAS, which is useful while flying but harder to read for performance evaluation/comparison. At sea level, IAS is theoretically equal to TAS, so that is a great altitude to derive Clmax information as a function of speed. According to this graph, at sea level, Vc is very close to 500 kts! This is the price of using thin stubby wings to maximize top speed.

This graph for the F-104A should give you an idea of F-104 corner speed (Vc):

I am far more interested in full-blown, well-known air superiority fighters, hence my general lack of interest in FSX and X-Plane. However, I love all airplanes and well-modeled virtual aircraft have a very strong appeal to me whether they are military or civil. Yet, I still don't own any A2A FSX releases despite their nearly insane detail and realism. I would really enjoy the T-38A modeled as realistically as possible, of course, I would like the F-5A and F-5E to go with it.

The F-14D would easily be the best option for matching the Flaming Cliffs era planeset, and I wouldn't fault Leatherneck for choosing to provide that model nor the fans who want it: easily the Navy equivalent to the F-15E Strike Eagle with more power-to-weight and low speed agility. The only limit being built-in DCS support for its avionics, which couldn't really be attempted until ED's F/A-18C is further along. For the same reason that I enjoy flying the MiG-21bis with all of its old tech, I personally prefer the earliest variants possible of the teen fighters. I want an early F-14A with TF30's. It was not the Tomcat the Navy wanted, but it was the Tomcat they got and were stuck with for quite some time. From 1971 until 1987 (almost the peak of the Cold War arms race), it was all they had. I would just as much like an early F-15A with its touchy F100's. These are the perfect historical matches to the MiG-21bis already available, the MiG-23M/MF/MS, the MiG-25P/PD/PDS, and Su-15TM of that same era. This is a plane set I would like to see much more than the Flanker/LOMAC/FC '90s era. Of course, the F-4D/E and F-4J/N/S need to be there in quantity for a truly accurate representation of US military air power during that time: "DCS:Strike Fighters"

But if they are interested in decent sales, it would be much better to offer an airplane with greater appeal. As others have stated, many other aircraft would have been no more difficult to model than these trainers but would have gotten a much better response in sales.

I ended up getting the C-101. After having flown so many similar aircraft in DCS with full ramp startups, I was able to get this baby out of the hangar and off the ground without even reading a quick start guide. I did use the English tool tips to verify my guesses at switch functionality, but the process was fairly straight forward: close the canopy, lock the canopy, turn on oxygen supply, turn on battery and generator, turn on fuel pumps, set throttle to idle, flip start switch. There were fault lights that helped me figure figure out anything that was missing. Simply closing the canopy gave me the most trouble. I couldn't figure out where the hotspot was for clicking on it with a mouse. The aircraft is overall very well done, but the SFM makes taxiing, taking off, and landing very boring. I hope the promised AFM is comparable to other DCS aircraft in detail and realism.

Despite all the trainers already planned and/or being released, I would like it if all the trainers used in a particular military's pilot training program were replicated to allow simulating a full course of instruction. A complete training package for USAF and/or USN pilots from the 1960's or 1970's would be cool. If I could only have one trainer, it would be the T-38A, especially if a minor variant were available: the USAF Thunderbirds. I bought the Hawk to support VEAO's long term plans and see what kind of quality they are capable of producing. I am not sure about the C-101, but if the flight model is good and they are going to ultimately make some airplanes I really want, I may buy it.

In all the years I flew SFP1/WoX series, many if not most of them hosting online, I never saw anyone figure out how to mod either dogfight or co-op.

The MiG-23MLD makes sense in the DCS/FC3 background, and I would gladly take it. But The early F-14A is historically the opponent of the MiG-23MF and MiG-23MS. It would be cool if a bunch of aircraft from the same decade were actually available (in this case, the 1970's). MiG-21bis, MiG-23MF, F-4E, F-14A, F-15A, F-16A. The F-18A was mostly just an artist's concept in magazines. These are the fighters I grew up with :)

I would want an F-14A with all of its older systems. A MiG-23MF is an interesting match against the F-14A. As long as they can keep up the quality of their releases, I will probably be happy with anything they choose to do.

In multiplayer, you have two options: Dogfight, which is strictly for arena style fighter vs fighter combat. Co-op, which allows one side of up to 8 aircraft to attack the other side of up to 8 aircraft. Co-op should have limited air defenses, but things were intentionally kept light to ensure good frame rates despite any lag called by the DirectPlay multiplayer interface. Co-op can be fun, but there is no respawning, so dogfight is better for long term gameplay. For instance, if you have 4 people flying together against AI in co-op, and one guy gets shot down right away, he can't do anything until that mission is complete. Dogfight is far more flexible with its unlimited spawning, but it turns the game into a "Quake Fest". Ultimately, the limitations of SFP1/WoX multiplayer ensured that there would never be a large group of people interested in playing it over the long term. I spent a few years supporting it, but never met more than a handful of people that actually tried SFP1/WoX multiplayer. Only a few of those played regularly for any length of time.

Whatever the bugs or inaccuracies, the MiG-21bis is a masterpiece. Equally fun to just fly around or engage in combat. MiG-21bis vs AI F-5E is a great guns only duel. I wish they would release many variants of MiG-21 as well as the MiG-23.

I have no trouble ignoring the extra buttons and flying as if an SF2 level on most of the current DCS aircraft. The A-10C and Ka-50 with all of their advanced systems are the only ones that require advanced proficiency to use their tactical systems effectively. Startup/shutdown procedures can be done with a key press. So, the complexity hasn't hurt me on those nights I just want to fly or dogfight. Then, when I have the time and energy, I can still do full ramp start, radio comms, etc. The big problem I had with FC3 aircraft was the flight modeling, and the A-10A, F-15C, Su-25, and Su-27 have fixed that part. So, I wouldn't mind more aircraft being introduced at the FC level as long as they have the PFM. But the flight model is the hardest, most time consuming part, so third parties are more likely to provide detailed system modeling with a simple flight model until they can finish a PFM->VEAO Hawk. But Belsimtek and Leatherneck give you the full deal from the start. I would kill for a full DCS F-4, but would settle for an F-5, F-8, F-104, or F-105. The F-5E would be a great match for the MiG-21bis. I might get Tac Pack and the new F-14... but not until the Steam version of FSX is supported. I don't want to mess with my disc version, not sure how many more times I can activate it.