DCS: F-4E Phantom Phorever!

Flight Sims
1447

After flying her religiously the past two weeks I’m really mixed on it.

LOVES:

  • Lore
  • Artwork
  • Jester 2.0
  • Crew Chief
  • Stability in BFM
  • DT Bombing

HATES:

  • unstable, twitchy pitch trim
  • RWR that can’t identify threats
  • Unreliable A2A weapons employment
  • Not much of a DCS ecosystem to employ such suppression bombing, and the peer aircraft AI are overpowered with their SFMs

Strangely, flying the Phantom has me wanting to fly more Tomcat, but I know I’ll just be disappointed until it too gets Jester 2.0 and a vape update.

6 Likes
1448

Not gonna lie, I use the AFCS the vast majority of the time. It will hold a given pitch attitude very nicely. I get the trim attitude I want in place, activate the AFCS, and bam trimmed. Realistic? No clue, but it works.

I find that half the fun honestly. Ain’t no kill like a guns kill, because you already fired off 8 missiles, that you probably should replaced with some hyrda pods because those at least fly roughly in the right direction.

Agree’d. However if you go building hunting it can still be quiet the challenge.

3 Likes
1449

Some things I particularly like so far:

Excellent fighter bomber. DT works great and also low-level pop-up attacks with Direct are very successful. It’s nice that you can easily make a 6-bomb drop which still qualifies as a “light” loadout.

Pave Spike looks like a lot of fun so far. This might be the airplane where using LGBs is still interesting and fun. Need to try it with multicrew.

SAM hunting with Shrike looks very interesting. Interchangable seeker heads, quirky guidance (bang-bang), in your face short ranged in Direct mode, hand flown lofting of the missile for longer range. Need to play more with it.

Anti-shipping with TV Walleye II.

This might be the easiest steam-gauges plane to fly on instruments I have ever seen. The Flight Director is fantastic and makes flying an ILS approach a dream.

The WSO looks inteersting with the radar basically requiring constant manipulation. This might be a plane where the backseater has enough intersting things to do for me to consider taking the seat every now and then. Let’s be honest, despite people raving about it all the time, there is not really that much to do as the RIO in the Tomcat. Select the appropriate scan volume and the AWG-9 does the rest.

I have been toying around bit with Offset bombing, trying to use a radar significant feature as a Radar IP. The idea is that this might be used for carpet-bombing area targets such as airfields or harbours at night or through cloud cover. Basically being a small B-52. The technique is interesting, but so far I had little success with the radar to pick out any identifiable features with sufficient precision.

I still need to check out the nuke bombing modes such as LOFT, O/S or LADD.

Air-Air is a bit of a mixed bag so far. There is basically no BVR, which was to be expected and which I actually like. Head-on Sparrow shots against AI MiG-23 work great under 5 NM, at the same time getting a good lock against a MiG-21 almost never works in the same scenario. Dogfighting against AI MiG-21 is unfortunately almost pointless because of the AI flight model. At the same time, the AI MiG-23 offers no big challenge. I have the fear that this module will really suffer in air-air in singleplayer. I still have to explore how the Phantom performs against human MiG-19, MiG-21, F-5E or F1.

The only thing I really don’t like so far is the new Jester menu. It is low resolution, difficult to read, the head tracking control is imprecise and it is slow to use. Also in VR it is now fixed to the front (apparently a technical necessity for the new technology used), while the cursor control center is below it. This means that by looking directly at the UI the cursor is already selecting upwards and to select downards I have to look so far down that the UI is at the top of my view. This UI is really a step back in every respect from the Tomcat. I am so confused how HB went ahead with this.

4 Likes
1450

In pancake it’s great, possibility they have a limited VR base among their dev’s and it just wasn’t noticed.

3 Likes
1451

Spent some more time this morning binding controls. I made a decision that just because I had spare HOTAS buttons it doesnt mean I have to bind something to it. Not today anyway.

However. Jester. New to me as I dont have the F14. I can get the wheel up using a button. I can turn a dial in either direction to highlight something. Everything is done with my left thumb on the throttle. But I only seem able to action it with the mouse button. What is the name of the binding please.

2 Likes
1452

Curiously I have the complete oppoosite experience. I vastly prefer this implementation over what the Tomcat offers. And I don’t share your observations about it being hard to read and its resolution. I wonder what’s going on there.

3 Likes
1453

Your are in VR too, right?

Getting the Wheel to show up correctly in the first place was a PITA, with about an hour of fiddling in graphics and resulution settings required. It now at least renders without being cut off, but resolution seems substandard. HB doesn’t have a better solution, as apparently it is a DCS technical limitation of their new tech. Really a shame, because their old UI tech worked great for me. I use a Reverb G1.

How is your head tracking for UI selction? Is the cursor center in the UI center? Mine is below, which makes it a huge pain to use.

2 Likes
1454

Ah maybe it’s because of the lower resolution of the headset? I have a G2 and I will say the font is a bit smaller so that could cause issues there. I didn’t have any troubles with the UI showing up correctly though. My coursor for interaction with the kneeboard is below the cursor for cockpit interaction but it hasn’t given me any trouble. I have the kneeboard open quite often though so I’m always kind of aware of my cursors location.

1 Like
1455

I think the G1 and the G2 have the same displays. The Wheel is related to the resolution of the 2d mirror rendered on the monitor. There are like 3-4 graphics settings, which otherwise have zero influence on VR, which affect the actual rendering of the Wheel in VR. Initially there were are a lot of posts about it on the ED forum. With the right settings you can get the wheel not being half cut off, but the resolution doesn’t seem fixable so far. HB just says they are working on it with ED, so that might be fixed at some point or not.

What I mean with the cursor is that little line that extends from the center of the Wheel, which you can move with your head. Looking at the Wheel the line should be in the center. Looking up the line should move up etc. For me, looking at the Wheel the line is up, looking down the line is in the center and looking even further down the line goes down. According to HB this is also an ED bug, so we might see how that goes.

2 Likes
1456

Also in the Tomcat the Jester Wheel would open wherever you were currently looking at. In the F-4 this still works in 2D but doesn’t work in VR. Here the Wheel always opens to the front of the cockpit. Apparently also a limitation of the new tech and HB has already indicated that this is just the way it is now.

1457

I don’t really use it that often. On the ground I mostly just use the mouse and once airborne the only thing I really do with it is change WPs or tell him to tune tacan, the head movement required is so small that it isn’t much an issue for me personally but I’ll admit it could be improved. In combat I haven’t needed more than the context action key so far :person_shrugging:t3:

In the Tomcat I never liked flying without a proper WSO, in the F-4E dealing with jester is much better imho.

Edit: Goddamn mobile keyboard swallowing what I type :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
1458

I started the radar tutorial last night… :crazy_face: . I quickly came to the conclusion that I’m just a dumb airplane driver, and quietly went back to the front cockpit.

8 Likes
1459

Fighting against AI planes as always in DCS makes you regret having a full fidelity plane when you know they don’t.
Watching a MiG or F-5 pull a sustained 8g turn in full burner at 450 kts without it dropping below 449 for more than 1 second is extremely demoralizing.

3 Likes
1460

It’s the same button that brings up the menu. Once you have the desired action selected press the key again to confirm. Long press closes the menu.

3 Likes
1461

Just curious here but do you mean something like dropping on, say, an artillery site or AAA?

Haven’t even tried ‘dog fighting’ the Phantom yet, and its been a while since I mixed it up with the ‘Super’ F-5. I’d have hoped they fixed that by now. Guess not.

But! we have cool pilot models (for some platforms); makes for great cinematics :frowning_face:

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Jester-Interaction
Jester-Interaction822×94 48 KB

Short press to open the Jester wheel menu, long to close. If you are using VR or a head tracker like TrackIR, it senses this and moves a pointer with your head movement. Then the same button that you opened the menu with is used for action. Together, it’s a brilliant system.

There is also a sub mode that uses the same button and head movement tracking. That is the small menu when Jester initiates a conversation. Same process applies. Select with your head movement and “click” with the Jester UI Action button.

2 Likes
1463

Get 'em in the vertical and give them an AIM-9 enema while they meander over the top.

1 Like
1464

I’ve got the opposite experience as Mbot on the instrument ergonomics and the Jester wheel. I find the Tomcat’s instruments to be much more usable with the altitude, speed, and VVI right next to each other in a cluster. The Phantom’s ADI is great, but the other gauges are so scattered I have difficulty with my scan, and with maintaining a stable altitude even in VFR. In the Tomcat I can chameleon-eye that VVI without even trying hard.

For the UI, I’m in VR with the Quest 2 and don’t have any resolution issues or navigation issues. I disabled head control and mouse control, and use a four-way hat plus modifier for the 8 commands, then next/back/select for the outer wheel. With this setup it’s also replay-track-proof since replays don’t catch the head movement or mouse movement accurately.

1 Like
1465

I’ve worked out the Sparrows. Thoroughly enjoying the F-4E.

2 Likes
1466

Just had a session in vr with jester and found the pointer. It worked just as you said.

Less impressed with jester saying “I like your landing, I always wanted to be two inches shorter”

It is harder to fly than the F4J sim at my work. They have that set to maximum easy for the public.

3 Likes