That he is. And I like his opinion. The more the merrier, though this is one module I have even less interest in than the ww2 stuff (and I ended up owning a fair bit of that lol)
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…which is the exact tone I continue to try to strike but with no avail… 
Which is basically why I’m passing on Heatblur’s F-14…“heresy”, I know.
True, I never actually flew the real thing, , so I have no idea how it should fly. What I do have is hundreds of hours working with my squadron, on tactics…on the best ways to fly and fight the jet. So I have an academic knowledge as to how the F-14A should be flown in A2A and I am not seeing that in the previews and discussions.
From what I have seen and read, Heatblr’s F-14, while a game changer great sim, will not meet my expectations…well…perhaps not my expectations but my memories. Regardless, like @smokinhole and the Eagle, I’ll pass…at least for a while…
I am absolutely drooling over the Mig-19.
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Not with a nick like @smokinhole, you don’t 
Sorry, but I agree with the rest. I have zero problems with your posts.
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Now you will know how I feel every time I see a Viggen crash…
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While unrelated to the Christen Eagle at hand, I wanted to take @Hangar200 and @smokinhole’s points and twist them to the perspective of someone working on these kinds of games/sims, if only from a modding perspective.
Number one is you will never get 100% accurate. I’m sorry, it’s just not possible. You can get pretty close, even remarkably close, but eventually you hit diminishing returns. Some of this are technical limitations and some are practical. Some of us get way too hung up on just how much fidelity a sim should have, forgetting that the heart is still a game. It’s along the same lines that 90% of your performance costs 10% of your budget and that last 10% costs 90% of your budget. A lot of people are surprised to find out that making an art asset for a simulator is quite a bit easier than modeling flight dynamics and especially systems; all the boxes that are stacked on one another, each having influence on the others, is a massive undertaking. Probably one of the largest parts about it is pure bug hunting, because it’s kind of a large flowchart that has to have everything properly looped together. It’s not an easy undertaking, and we didn’t even bother with the ancillary stuff like BIT checks!
This isn’t to say @Hangar200 and @smokinhole don’t have valid points, nor that their experience means nothing; but to get the degree of accuracy to match real life is unattainable with a limited budget and computing power. Even the military knows this, which is why the DCS A-10C module was a thing for the Air Guard, or the French Air Force’s use of the DCS M2000 – they represent an affordable solution for certain aspects of training that may be difficult to do with more expensive solutions or through real operations. Even VBS, which is basically FP/ArmA for militaries, is far from 100% realistic in how it treats every aspect. They use the same clunky vehicle mechanics as the games do!
So while a game or module that is in the sim genre may not be perfect and it may have flaws, I think people need to keep in mind that experts like @Hangar200 and @smokinhole have unique perspectives that not everyone can share. Don’t let the wrong size handle or a misplaced button ruin your fun… Because sometimes you get stuff like the Bug not playing nice with the Warthog throttle TDC because the real thing uses a click hold and the throttle doesn’t play nice with that functionality. I’m not so sure some of you would be happy with “tough luck, real pilots have to do it that way anyways.” 
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Wise words, @Franze. But it still is interesting to hear the expert opinions. And this early in the game, there’s still time to tweak, which I’m sure will happen.
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I am with you. Only I personally limit my acceptance of concessions to those made intentionally to promote good gameplay. Concessions made because intel is limited can be distracting but we accept them as allowances for a developer that’s doing its best. Mistakes in rivet counts and wobble pump dimensions are totally acceptable but a good dev should strive to correct them once the truth is certain. (Why bother otherwise?) Concessions that sway wide and far from physics are, to me anyway, not acceptable.
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I can respect that, just felt like it was worth noting that we need to keep in mind that it needs to be fun. If you’re having fun, then a rivet out of place should really be a minor concession. For combat simulation, it’s usually more than rivets that are out of place!
Great words! I am in 99.999% agreement. 
I had a line in my post where I said something like, "I realize that it is called a “flight simulator” and not a “flight real thing”…but I cut it for length. I agree wholeheartedly with that @Franze’s statement.
My 0.0001% difference is not in anything like flight performance or button placement or visual model, etc. It is with the apparent emphasis with how the DCS F-14 is employed DCS World versus the 1980’s Cold War employment of the F-14A.
I blame the film Topgun, even though it is the greatest film of all time. It made flying the Tomcat look like fun…well…too much fun. Yes the Tomcat was a fighter, but it was also an interceptor (a bomber interceptor) and that mission was at least equally emphasized and trained to. So for a large part of the time, theTomcat mission was not all that exciting.
For example…
We took to calling air-intercept training flights, “Bumping Heads” missions–two F-14s flying at each other from usually over 100 Nm while each RIO runs their own intercept…usually ending up head-to-head…nothing after the merge but to set up for another Bumping Heads run. From the hundreds of debriefs I took, it was really apparent that Bumping Heads was not really fun.
“Not all that exciting” doesn’t sell. So Heatblur seems to have done an awesome job–especially from what I have seen of Jester–of taking the un-fun parts out of flying the F-14A. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is going to set the bar for DCS models for years to come. I’m betting that it will be quite literally a “game changer” However, I am also fairly sure it will not be the Tomcat I remember. 
Regardless, Yes, I will purchase this Tomcat and fly it a lot…but I will really, really try not to have fun! 
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I understand. You have way too much ”fun” in the Viggen, already… 
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Yeah, mixing the fun factor and realism is a tough cocktail to mix and given that everyone’s tastes are variable, you have to find some sort of middle ground. The reality of the F-14 (or any module) integration into DCS World, particularly in an online scenario, is that there is a really wide spectrum of experience levels and people who want to get out of DCS World what they want. So while you can fly the F-14 according to all the real world procedures and training, that doesn’t keep the guy in the L-39 from flying at three feet toward your carrier. That isn’t something a normal person in the real world would do, but some guy online thinks it is a great idea and there you have it. So all the real world procedures don’t exist in a vacuum (online anyway) and you just have to adjust to what is presented to you.
I don’t fly any DCS modules to real world specifications, so I have no stance on how people are using or demonstrating the modules. Basically, I’d encourage people to “just do you” and/or find a group of people that fly in a like-minded way to get the most out of your DCS experience. I haven’t had a single MP experience with Mudspikers (Mudders? we still haven’t figured out what we are) that wasn’t fun and enjoyable and educational. So we are lucky that our diverse group here seems to find a lot of common middle ground.
Alright. Now I’m going to go back to my F-14 and see if I can score some air-to-air kills with CBUs…
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Lol, that would probably be something I would try.
Wheels
Well, some guys did it with a B-52.
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WOW! I’ve never seen that pic before that’s incredible! Thanks for posting that Franze! I love stuff like that. I wonder if that was bud Holland…
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The story is in this article, under “Just After The Storm Had Passed”:
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If I didn’t read it I wouldn’t of believed it. Brilliant story.
Cool read.
Wheels
Great article. In my carrier time, the Hawkeye bubbas usually seem to be the “rascals” of the airwing. Incredibly smart guys and gals, quietly get the job done in the air…an equally sharp sense of humor on the boat.
Example:
In the 1980’s the E-2C had a system called “AUTOCAD”. It essentially was a datalink that could direct an F-14, the idea being to silently vector the Tomcat awards the bandits. It was seldom used and rarely worked correctly when it was.
An official Hawkeye fight suit shoulder patch, based on the famous Tomcat, “Anytime Baby” F-14 Patch:
In light of AUTOCAD’s dubious reliability, our E-2C squadron had a patch that featured Bill the Cat from Bloom County…
…with “Autocad” in place of “Tomcat” and proclaiming “Sometimes Baby”
(I couldn’t find the patch on line…but you get the idea.)
Then there is this more recent work by a Hawkeye squadron…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMMceEx72sE
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Oh yeah, I remember them shooting that one. They did seem to have the most fun, or at least the most free time to make videos (Lt Christensen’s ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’ notwithstanding). A few others I remember seeing, done by another squadron:
I’ll have to ask my old JO friends if they have the Cruise Patch videos they did for our '06 deployment.
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