OMG Aginor!! The middle east is coming together. I for one cant wait.
Enemy tomcats?!? Awesome!! With a Phantom we might be able to do Iran - Iraq wars too.
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Yeah lots of options. Some planes just open a lot of doors. 
I just hope they don’t forget the rest of the sim. Planes alone won’t help.
And isn’t Ariodev working on a Mirage F1?
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Not the Cats we’re getting (for now), but still interesting.
http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/nnam/virtualtour/?s=pano682
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Necro Post? Necro Post.
Saw this video this afternoon and I was reminded of the concern over HUD FPS. As far as I can tell Bio’s got A/A Guns and Cruise mode in this video.
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From the Heatblur Facebook page:
The F-14 development crunch is ramping up and the team slips into a familiar coffee-fueled development mania. We’ve been around this rodeo twice before with the MiG-21 and AJS37- and we know that great things lie ahead! A development update is in the works to get you up to speed on the latest.
Speaking of the AJS37 Viggen though- we’ve just shipped a great set of bugfixes and features for this aircraft in the latest 1.5 patch! Big and exciting additions to the Viggen are yet to come though. Check out the changelog below;
Well… change log is here.
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Screw it, I like talking
So as you can see, the RIO pit is subdivided amongst two major screens. The top screen is the Digital Data Display, or DDD. This is a raw representation of what the radar is seeing, and will be mostly comparable to what you see in say, the F-15 (with some major caveats). Neglecting the PD and P Search modes, this screen should display information in a B-Scope. In non doppler modes, expect it to return reflections of clouds, terrain, and everything else.
The console immediately surrounding the DDD are controls for manipulating the radar. The right side is for choosing radar search modes. The RIO has is pick of Pulse and Pulse Doppler Search, Range While Scan, Track While Scan (Manual and Auto), and Pulse and Pulse Doppler STT. Above the DDD are a series of push buttons to select range, options being 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200.
The left side of the console is used manipulate the logic by which the radar filters contacts. The RIO has control of the gain of the radar in (non doppler) pulse modes, and while I’m not 100% sure, it looks like he’s able to manipulate the thresholds for clutter rejection and jamming noise for pulse doppler modes. What is automated (and outright abstracted in FC3) in later radars of the era, your back seater has direct control over in the F-14. Put another way: if you have someone who knows what he’s doing back there, it will be much harder for bandits to hide from you, if you have a rank newbie, your potential for struggle will be much higher.
The lower screen is the Tactical Information Display or TID (colloquially known as the “Fishbowl”). The TID is an aggregated display of what the radar sees in PPI format, with additional information fed in from the Link 4 datalink and other sources. The TID as pictured shows 50 mile scope (each “link” of the dashed line is representative of 20 miles of scope, 2.5 lines = 50 miles). The numbers along the left side show the minimum and maximum altitudes of the current scan zone, as well as the current angle of the radar. The bar of information at the top current (should?) display current aircraft speed and heading. When a radar contact is selected, it will display the contacts aspect, altitude, speed. More or less information, including jamming strobes, dynamic launch zone indication (DLZ), and data link information can be displayed, but this is chosen by the RIO on a panel just below (not shown). Additionally the TID is where feed from the AAX-1 Television Camera Set is shown when that sensor is selected. Contacts can be “bugged” via the TID or the DDD, and they will shown on both displays as selected.
The other notable thing in this shot is the AWG-15 weapons control panel prominently seen on the left side of the cockpit. This is where the RIO manages stores (for jettisoning, etc.), configures fusing for the missile, and launches the AIM-7 or AIM-54. There are also a number of switches pertaining to air to ground weapons (fusing, release quantity, delay, etc.). Until the 90s, this was a vestigial remnant of the original program specification that the Tomcat be AG capable. This functionality was cut in the early 70s due to budgetary constraints, and would not be fully pursued until the end of the cold war. Here’s an F-14A Prototype hauling 14 Mk-82s to make your afternoon.
The more you know…
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Always thought it was called Track While Scan?
Nice collection of info there near_blind, Flying RIO in upcoming DCS Tomcat may be even more fun than manning the front seat… Was MP multicrew even announced for the module?
- ‘JESTER AI’ - A Proprietary AI System for fully voiced, dependable and smart RIO/WSO
…- Multiplayer Multicrew capability. Fly together as RIO and Pilot!
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It is. Call it a brain fart.
The dev working on the HUD made some posts pertaining to seemingly peculiar behavior with regards to the gun sight. I’d noticed it but wasn’t sure of what was happening. It’s fascinating. He’s referencing the video I posted above.
I’m working on the F-14 HUD (i.a.) for Heatblur DCS F-14A/B. I’ve watched and re-watched this video a bunch of times in the past (among many others of course). There is an interesting little detail going on in this video which I think is worth pointing out: if you look from 3m58 or so onwards, the target diamond seems to be off the target, and then at 4m07 he seems to get a sidewinder lock and the target diamond is suddenly on target. At first glance it looks weird, almost like the target diamond is inaccurate or something. The explanation is as follows: he has a radar STT lock while in guns mode, but he is in RTGS (real time gunsight) mode. In this mode the target diamond shows a 1000foot gun solution instead of the radar STT track… The movable reticle (big plus symbol) shows a solution at target range if below 4000 feet, or 4000 feet if target range is greater. Then at 4m07 he switches to sidewinder (with the weapon selector on the stick, not shown in the video here), and because he already has an STT lock, the sidewinder seeker immediately slaves to the STT direction and thus immediately has lock. In sidewinder mode, as in most other modes aside from RTGS guns, the target diamond shows the radar STT location, and therefore suddenly jumps to the target.
With regards to the HUD refresh rate.
Part of it is different sensor update and computation rates, but another part is this: the HUD is a vector (a.k.a. calligraphic) display, like 1980s Asteroids and Battlezone arcade games. These displays have a unique property that raster (pixel grid) displays do not have: the more elements that are shown (i.e. more vectors in the display buffer), the slower the overall refresh rate, since it cycles through all the vectors to draw them. Conversely, when showing fewer elements, the update is much more frequent and appears smoother. The upside of a vector display is that it in effect has much better resolution than a raster display (of the era). The VDI (loosely known as the “heads down display”) in the F-14 is also interesting in that it is a hybrid of vector and raster, some elements are displayed as vectors and others as (pretty low resolution) raster images. These days (well, for the past 25-30 years probably) raster display resolution is good enough that vector displays have gone completely out of fashion, I don’t think anything modern uses them anymore. Most people now don’t even know such a thing ever existed
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if my Jester AI doesnt tell me to Do some of that Pilot ■■■■…
Then it’s a failure.
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As we go down in flames…
“That was some of the best flying I’ve ever seen…right up to the part where you got us killed.”
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Or as you’re getting shot down:
“the Defense Department regrets to inform you that your children are dead because they were stupid.”
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Top Gun quotes are passe.
The true backseat BFM commentary
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Top Gun is widely known, as opposed to random YT video #19407425622310.
Ignorance is no protection from the back seater.
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thats so funny ! xD
From the facebook page:
Work continues on high level radar, weapon and navigation functionality! Here’s a couple of examples from the RIOs TID (Tactical Information Display). The TID displays information such as computer detected radar contacts, navigation steerpoints, datalinked targets and more.
As a RIO, you’ll spend plenty of time looking at and using the TID. While you’ll also need to be proficient at reading the DDD Radar Display, the TID will greatly aid you in establishing an overarching view of the tactical situation. Using your joystick, you’ll be able to select (hook) and prioritize targets with ease.
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