DCS Module Buyer Guide Review: F-16C Viper

hello everyone i hope you're all doing very well today we're going to be doing the grim reaper's review of the f-16c module in dts world now the first thing to point out is that we're doing this mid november 2020 it's not complete it's still heavily in early access and hence we'll update this video when it's finished but that's probably over a year from now i've put this off for as long as i dare but you guys are asking me more and more to do it so let's get on with it as ever let's look at the structure of this review to make sure that it is empirical as we can make it and i'll do my best to make it objective rather than subjective so one we'll look at the capabilities at this time in early access what you get for your money in terms of weapons sensors nav and miscellaneous two we'll look at the kinematic performance all of the aircraft in dcs i measure their kinematic attributes their speeds their accelerations their climb rates their roll rates their turn rates just about everything i could possibly think one i've got a whopping great database and we'll go and have a look at where the f-16c fits in three we'll look at the visual effects inside the cockpit and outside of the aircraft four sound effects again inside and outside five interactivity and detail this is how interactive the cockpit is overall how many of the buttons work how many of the mfd functions work what are the systems like behind those functions and so on six we'll look at the flight model really difficult to do it's very hard to be objective and not subjective about this but we'll do our best to rate the flight model in terms of various parameters seven a quick look at difficulty in terms of one to five how difficult is this to learn where an a10c is extremely hard so that's five out of five where a christian eagle is extremely easy which is one out of five and finally eight since this aircraft was released what's the history been like has it been a buggy aircraft like some are that's just real life that's how it is or has it been relatively trouble free and to keep things as empirical as possible and to give you as much information as possible points three four five and six will be rated between one and five where five is good one is bad and we'll be logged in a spreadsheet which i will link to you in the video description so you can compare this directly against all of the other aircraft note that i reserve the right to change my score at any time and that is simply because i may change my mind when i learn a plane better or i might change my mind and firm the score up a bit more and as well as that you won't just get my score you'll see the score of the other grim reapers that have that module as well and you can get an average score from that and that is the best most serious and sensible way we can do of reviewing the module quantitatively so with that let's crack on with capability okay guys welcome to the f16c block 50 cockpit first let's look at weapons we've currently got in early access so on the outer pylons we can have and this is interesting with this aircraft we can have the medium-range missiles on the pylons we can have an a120b amrap or a c version or a lima mic or x-ray there's a hob version of the a9 sidewinder or a training capture 9m pods we can have this again training pod in the next boilers in we can have air-to-air missiles exactly the same and pods again training pod x pylon we can have air-to-air missiles exactly the same but we can also have air-to-ground missiles the agm adhc harm anti-radiation missile as well as a series of agm-65 mavericks on allow 117 or allow 88 we have four versions the delta and the golf infrared centered versions or the hotel and the kilo optical guided versions for the delta and the hotel you can have an option of one two or three as they are the smaller warheads faster bomb the cbu 87 or the cbu 97 the more intelligent seeking version and laser guided gbu 10 or gbu 12 or unguided a slick mark 82 or a mark 82 snake eye or a mark 82 air or a mark 84 2000 pound variant we also have a ter9a rack that can feature multiples of what we talked about above plus uh three bdu-33 training bombs pods a travel pod for your lunch or training rockets on allow three rack 19 times 2.75 inch with various warheads high explosive willy peat white phosphorus high explosive anti-tank white phosphorus again and white phosphorus again then onto pylon six we can have the harm bombs and these are the same as we just looked at before also fuel tanks with 370 gallons each pods just a travel pod and the same rockets we saw before on the chin pods as they're called we've got five right we can have very important we have the modern lightning 2 targeting pod and this is going to allow us for precision search and engagement air to ground center pylon a fuel tank for 300 gallons and travel pod and 5l is currently empty those the weapons we can have also we have the obligatory internal m61 20 mil rotary cannon air-to-air or to ground and we can have these different types of ammo for the gun might as well have a look at flare and chaff here a pretty decent amount of 120 cartridges separated however we like next let's look at sensors on the left screen we can see the display for our radar we have an air-to-air radar we will also have an air-to-ground radar the air-to-air radar is a modern contemporary post doppler radar with range while search and track wall scan functions this is coupled with an iff interrogator note that in this aircraft iff symbology will be shown on the radar but not in the hud different to say the hornet as with contemporary aircraft using the truck while scan feature allows us to send multiple amras out on multiple targets at the same time we also have modern contemporary rwr as you can see here it's going to be pretty similar to anything from the 80s on era we have full link 16 datalink so we can share information with donors the surveillance aircraft you see on a hsd i haven't got anything to show here but we would show friendly aircraft hostile aircraft surveillance aircraft for optimal situational awareness and it's a pretty although it's a small screen it's a good hsd good for situational awareness in terms of sensors we also have a radar altimeter in terms of navigation we have a modern egi so an ins inertial navigation with gps we can use coloreds mfd for navigation we've also got a hsi more traditional hsi down here as well as that we've got tack and tactical air navigation to allow us to find for instance air-to-air refuellers and bases we have an ils an instrument landing system for ifr approach and landing that's bad visibility and the model we've got here it looks like we're also going to get adf automatic direction finding for radio beacons at this time not yet implemented some other features the obligatory modern cmds a counter measure system currently chap flare others are not relevant and we can set these up in various methods of deployment manual semi-automatic fully auto and different programs of chat and player that we can program in although it says missile warning system here the block the model of aircraft that we have does not have a missile warning system we do have a contemporary jammer here just a white noise jammer in dcs currently not implemented but it will be obviously we have a helmet mounted display currently november 2020 only for air-to-air but we will gain air-to-ground functionality on it as well great communications we have radios com1 com2 we've got control from ufc here we've also got control by a manual uhf head down here we've good modern pilot copper interface through a ufc here and a ded here so this ufc couples with this ded here this is a readout and this is an input general cockpit layout is two times multi-function screens displays here and traditional flight instruments here engine of fuel instruments here with right console auxiliary left console auxiliary and finally good modern hud one of the best huds in dcs in my opinion it's based on its functionality and what it shows now we come to the kinematic comparison we've got the different categories here and unless told otherwise all of these tests are done with an isa environment with a drag index set to zero with 10 percent internal fuel load on the aircraft fuel burn turned off and it'll say if there's any other stipulations first of all low speed maximum altitude the absolute king as ever is the ads 37 and mach 1.32 then we've got the new model of the tomcat at 1.31 and then and this was really surprising to me because i never thought the f-16c was so fast but generally considered it is very accurately modeled in dcs and we know that because we've compared it to the em charts the energy management charts of the real f-16c uh and we've got third place mac 1.3 so it is incredibly fast to get it that fast remember you have to strip your pylons off as soon as you keep your pylons your weapons mounts and stuff like that then it gets much slower anyway high altitude maximum sustained and maximum dive instantaneous we've got the mig 289 a absolute king and mac 2.83 but remember this is an fc3 plane and these are simply not that realistic that is just a false figure f-15 is just about right we think at 2.6 and the f-16 is down here at mac when measured of 2.01 and the max instantaneous dive at 32 000 of 2.09 i actually thought it was going to go a bit faster than that but that's just what we measured it at we can't do any better than that next low altitude acceleration from 300 to 650 knots true speed and we've got the new king is actually the f-16c at 15.12 seconds just clipping the uh reigning champion which was the f-15c so in terms of acceleration low altitude clean remember and a zero dragging dex this is the fastest we can get now in terms of acceleration for the real aircraft i couldn't actually find any details on that so you guys will have to let me know if you think this is realistic in terms of drag and power to weight ratios but that's just how it is same test true speed again this time 15k and we are not quite as fast this time we are second though 21 seconds and 68 so still is pretty mighty next climb rate very important and absolutely this thing goes like a scolded cat it says crazy it beat mig 29 in a climb nothing beats a mig-29 in a climb and not only did it beat it it beat it by uh what five four seconds i mean that is ridiculous again is it realistic i couldn't find this particular information this is climb rate from zero knots this is what we call a qra scramble so you set the timer from zero and then you get up to twenty thousand feet and you follow the same profile for each aircraft same climb profile and it's just so horrendously good so kinematically so far average is pretty much the best aircraft we've got uh climb rate slightly different test from uh where is it from 600 knots this is a rolling stop from sea level to 20 000 and it is second place again just just clipped by the mig-29 so really amazing stuff there next max sustained turn rate this is incredibly important and we do this test with a 50 gas loader this test has a slightly different meaning and implication and so we've done it with uh 50 gas load we've got uh now this really interesting test f14b is the reigning champion with 24 degrees per second with 30 degree flaps i think it was it was a high degree of flaps to get that much f a18c this is incredibly controversial and no one knows whether it's true or not because the em charts for this aircraft are still classified i can't get them out of d e d i can't get them from anywhere so we just have to assume they're right at 22. now if we find the f16 it is 20 degrees per second remember 50 gas so the 22.5 claimed by the real aircraft is with 10 gas this is 50 gas and therefore it is accurate it is comparable with the actual real-life em charts at 20 degrees per second and that's just where it fits just behind the jf-17 which we're not too sure about uh mig-29 fa18 max sustained angle of attack with the various parameters that we looked at we found it here at 195 cass and 23 degrees max sustainable angle of attack if you want to know more about how i did this test i have a video for each test in the max aircraft performance playlist you can go and look and see exactly how why i did this particular test and how i performed it okay maximum altitude instantaneous climb we got the f-16 not too impressive 88 000 feet and sustained otherwise known as ceiling where you actually perform a slight climb of 65 000 feet uh we've got the roll rates now we've got different types of rollers you've got aileron slow aileron fast aileron rudder elevator aileron and rudder so it's quite complex but let's just do a rough go through so f16 on aileron only at 300 knots is pretty bad at 173 degrees per second for whatever reason it does not roll fast at 300 not 600 knots 217 degrees per second aileron rudder and elevator so i guess you're going to call this a snap roll and it improves seriously here at 186 degrees per second heavily fly-by-wire limited obviously you know this is everything here is going to be limited by the fly-by-wire aileron and rudder vw limited of 201 degrees per second and that is the end of our kinematics overall speaking it's a really high performer next we're going to look at the visual effects and give it a rating we'll look at the cockpit first then the exterior model now it is a bit of a dark cockpit so just to help out we're going to artificially turn the camera up now the best thing is because this can be a bit subjective the graphics some people will like it some people won't i zoom in and i'm gonna spend five or ten minutes just slowly panning around the cockpit and you can make your own mind up about the textures about the mesh the resolution the textures i think it's absolutely top-notch i think this is probably along there with the best in dcs which is going to be the f-14 tomcat i prefer this i think this is better than the hornet in terms of graphics inside love these kind of shag pile uh seat textures that we get it looks mega you can see the little you know hairs coming out and it's done a really good job this is of course a modern you know 2020 or 2019 you know there's a modern module so it is kind of what you would expect now i always um thought they did a really bad job in the f-16 module with this display it looks very nintendo 8-bit if you know what i mean really poor but um after i saw in a real f-16 cockpit uh not a real plane but you know video of a real plane this is exactly how it looks it looks really cartoony and the real one looks exactly like this or maybe even worse in terms of you know the graphics is really interesting shadows absolutely top-notch uh you see later when we're flying around the shadows we move dynamically around the cockpit gauges you know however far i zoom in that's as far as i can zoom in you get no breakup of texture which is pretty top-notch wow i've never even noticed this is the first time i've even noticed this stuff look at that you can see even the rust on the bolts and the code numbers on the bolts and stuff turned at different angles never seen that before some serious attention to detail going on here from the rough textures on the indicator lights stick tiny bit of break up there so look at the detail here this kind of flange it's amazing a little bit break up there love this seat belt and the great job in this there's this texture in there scoop around the other side you a good eye full of what's available so you can zoom right into these knobs here and you can't really see any polygons or anything so it must be a very high triangle count thank you red oh that must be the panic button i've never seen that before yes it is that's the panic button that funny what you see when you actually take a good look around spiniest bit of breakup going on there never noticed that bottle before i never noticed this upstand here i wonder what that does that because i think that's your hmd oh is it really sensor how about that okay so that's in the cockpit i mean that's basically as good as it gets in in in dcs at the moment 2020. i'd say comparable you know roughly eagle with a tomcat amazing when you look down here i've never seen this stuff before okay one thing i'd like to show you as well i like to fly this aircraft with all my internal lights on yes it's stupid yes it's unrealistic but it gives a really cool glow in fact it's so bright today that i might not show very well but um no it's a bit too bright to say it gives a cool green tint to everything um but yeah anyway that's that let's go and have a look outside so leave those are your iff uh antennas it's definitely the best looking cockpit in dcs the copper has a certain tint to it and it has a really high resolution to it sorry canopy i mean canopy not the cockpit oh so wow have you seen this stuff happen in the landing gear when you do the nose will say it's got these little actuators that move i've never seen that before i have seen that again i've never you know it's just something you don't think about when you're because here 500 knots on the multiplayer server now i've always had a bit of a problem if i get my cursor up try with this area this kind of the kind of back of the i don't know what you call the top of the view is a large the textures have never worked for me it's it's got better it's a lot better since they've released it it's it's just i don't know if you know what i mean on the rc but this that looks top-notch that looks took notch that looks good but this kind of back of the planes never been perfect for me but i mean i'm not saying it's bad i'm not saying you know it's a great model around but there's always been something there that's just not quite work for me but maybe i'm just being really super picky i mean it looks pretty good yeah i think that's very that's maybe the subjective thing so i'm the only one that's ever complained about it as i'm aware oh it's got no tyre textures naughty wagoner you've seen that it's kind of thai texture must be new maybe it doesn't i just can't see it just gonna have a look at the uh oh that's coming unfinished yet is it the angle you're at yeah gonna have a look behind i love how that shadow is cast by the brother it's pretty it's actually really clever i don't know how they do that oh this is all done for them automatically so so i've never looked in the jet pipe before oh you can see that you can see the turbine spinning oh thank you powerful for saying no i really don't think there's any tyre textures down there i'll see it's just it's just uh jet black wherever i look it's a shame at least we found an arrow somewhere so that shows the basic meshes inside and out obviously you've got animations for all these buttons and things to move the only other thing i'd like to quickly show if i can take off is the kind of atmospheric effects when we pull high alpha because it's really noticeable probably more noticeable in this aircraft than any other we're just trying to get a high angle attack and you'll see what i mean i mean that is really super duper no great i don't i don't know how you do that kind of effect it must be kind of smoke effect but on this plane here it looks absolutely top notch doesn't rc and the jeff 17 presumably because of these kind of lurks areas here uh that and also got a wing bend so if you look there it's subtle but if you look there the wing is actually bent as it gets loaded up by the handle of attack so that there was kind of a great shot there so the rating for me it's a clear five out of five i rated the hornet five i rated the tomcat five so it's as high as it goes basically maybe those ratings will change as you know future years come and the graphics get better and then it will make this look worse but you know that's just how it is i'll see you out of interest while i've got you one rating out of graphics one to five or zero to five i guess it is four out of five oh controversial well i'm not going to laugh i'm just going to give it a five it needs to be perfect and those tires are not perfect that's fair enough that as long as you've got justification for your answer which you have then that's that uh right next we're gonna go and look at the sounds let's reset we are going to do this based on parameters that we've done previously to keep it as objective as possible inside the cockpit outside the cockpit we're going to do engine spool and the total engine spectrum we're going to do exterior flyby we're going to do interior sound angle of attack we're going to do wind speed sounds we're going to do high g sounds we're going to do tie grumble and we're going to do various weapon noises so what we've got first is the engine this is a good point to say and i'll keep this as quick as i can i've interviewed lots of real-life fighter pilots over the years and spoken to any the real-life fighter pilot has three main senses visual sound i suppose they have spell as well but sound and feel of those three the most important is not visual or sound it's actually the feel most of the pilots i've spoken to fly the plane by the feel the backup is the visual uh i don't know me tactically but how you actually feel the plane and fly the plane and then and then the sound in dcs we're virtual pilots we don't have feel so all of that has to be translated to us in purely visual with no peripheral vision just a 16x9 or i guess you could have a vr headset and a basic sound system so it is incredibly important that the developers get the balance of the visuals correct the shaking of cockpit uh the the you know the the lurks um smoke whatever you call it vapor that we saw there and the sounds and the sounds are going to be mixed right lots of planes and dcs have been ruined not ruined but are not as good as they could be because the sound mixes are wrong going fly mig-19 has almost no engine sound completely ruins the module for me so um let's first of all look at the engine noise it's very important that um you can hear the spool of the engine again the real pilot knows by the vibration we don't have that we have to know by the sound of the engine you know in a dogfight i cannot sit and look at my nozzle position so i have to know about the sound uh disclaimer i've got my normal mission sounds as you can see there nothing has been changed or cheated or edited so this is exactly as you'll hear it in a mission and this is my favorite engine sound dcs i'll make no phones about that you can hear everything perfectly and it's a beautiful mix as well now i know you're going to say oh you can change your sound settings i don't want to do that i shouldn't have to do that edie do it for me so i play my 80 dollars for it's their responsibility to get it right now that lovely big chunky afterburner some of you might not have it's actually an extra optional extra which i love uh it is loud cockpit afterwards so that inside for me is the best in dcs at the moment some of you like tomcat tomcat sounds i think are absolutely terrible however literally tomorrow we're getting a big update to the tomcat sounds which is much needed uh let's go and have a look outside this is so powerful i'm not going to be able to hold this still oh yeah i might be able to not much of a transition from mill power into full burner there which is disappointing let's try that again see there i must admit that's a real disappointment i mean you go to i go to rf lakenheath and i watch the f-15s and when they go from mill power to afterburner there is a huge difference in externals but there's nothing here i can't notice any difference at all i hadn't noticed that before and to me that's disappointing uh right so let's get start where the opposite of static is let's get dynamic let's go and do the tyre rumble i want to hear because i can't feel i want to hear the uh tyre rumble probably needs that afterburner um banging sound but in the inside as well as the uh on the outside as well as the inside i can hear a good tire grumble and it's a good it's the the the mix is good with the engine sound hear that tire grabble not too much not too little again some planes got it wrong okay that's good gear up next wind speed so listen at 200 knots how does she sound in terms of wind speed wind speed in a relay almost every real aircraft is a big thing so listen hear that background noise it's growing altitude altitude it's fine it's fine it's easily discernable it's good in the mix it's not overpowering like some of my planes are just right in my opinion uh next is going to be high alpha no high g has too high g first so let's get rid of my g and listen [Music] i'm a professional at least we get to hear the the black outside should we try that again obviously i'll do it without further ado as well because realistically you'd have afterburner wanting to hide you oh this is really true but it's a little low isn't it what i'm listening for is not just the angle of attack but that to really let you know that it's obviously you've got the visual effect but we're not talking about visual but it's a little low for me i can i could be a little in real life in your helmet it would really be you know and you know that because you can watch the actual videos of of the cockpit recordings a little low in the mix there for me uh so be it next is high angle of attack we were doing a bit of high angler attack but we're going to do more because heimlib attack is very important probably you know your most important thing to know you know almost any time but especially in a fight is uh your angle of attack again you a real pilot doesn't sit there and uh and look at his angle of attack like that he's looking like that as lift vector and we know this because we've been told this so angle of attack is going to be transferred to us through um in this case the sound and the mix of the sound i'm just going to reduce our speed a little bit here because angle of attack comes easier with speed low speed okay you can see your angle of attack down at the bottom it's called a08 it's limited to about 26 degrees in this plane watch this massive angle of attack noise probably the highest i think possibly in dcs is that a function of this particular plane is that realistic i don't know but certainly in this aircraft you can really hear the angle of attack well which i think is important for the reasons i say it is pretty much your most important parameter um you know generally while fighting if anything i think it might come on a little bit too soon compared to other aircraft let's let's watch again so i'm just gonna watch so five degrees six degrees it's pretty loud by 10 degrees and very loud by you know kind of 26 kind of stool type territory i think it's okay i think it's just about right to be honest um you may find it's a little bit loud for you but because it is very important for the reasons i've talked about i think that's pretty top notch so let's do a couple of fly bys then as far as i'm aware in fact i don't know i was about to say i thought they might use the same sound as the f-18 but it may have changed and i may just have that wrong so let's have outside and a flyby sounds pretty spot on after burn up that's too fast this plane's too fast yeah pretty decent just good sound sounds i've got no complaints at all unlike some of the planes so i'm happy with that um next weapon noises oh god uh where's my gun on this thing oh just added literally a couple of weeks ago maybe a week ago a new gun sound for all of the m61s and avenger new new gun sounds presumably recorded from a cockpit somewhere very satisfying and very solid it's got really listen to the clunk penis in the background it really feels like you can hear the the the the interaction of the the gun and the mounts and the the airframe as well as the actual gun sound i can hear clunking you hear that clunking oh i'm out of hammer now anyway uh top notch uh now they've got some super hill i didn't let's see if i'm getting these missiles to fire standby oh there you go honey you can even see the wing flex slightly when that thing comes off i don't know why does that but if it does anyway um i'm not gonna go through all the weapons because i'm starting to waste your guys time now but all the weapons have got the necessary clunks and whooshes and and and you know when a bomb comes off and it's i don't know how it sounds in a real cockpit because i'm not a real pilot but it all sounds good enough for a virtual pilot to know that that thing has dropped and fired so a hornet i rated 4.5 because it's good it's up there um the tomcat are rated 3.5 at the time of making this it is terrible sounds in the tomcat the exterior but i know it's about to be fixed i've got some views but that's what i've got so i'm going to have to rate this almost perfection because it's got the benefit over the hole in it is it's got that clear engine spool sound which you just don't get as much in the hornet so and i can't make it perfect i can't say it's five because i just got a tiny little bit of error in there so i'm going to say i know it's weird but 4.75 which brings us on to the next thing the flight model the flight model is it's really hard to talk about objectively but i'm going to do my best now luckily i'm in a position where i have all of the modules and because of how i do it i fly pretty much all of them because this is a heavy fly-by-wire limited aircraft isn't pretty much an unstable aircraft it's controlled by what it can actually do and how it feels in many ways by the fly by white it means i can't really compare it with a non-fly-by-way plane like a tomcat like a mig-19 like an f86 i have to compare it against other fly-by-wire variants like the f-18 like the jf-17 like the mirage 2000 and the good thing to say is of all of the fly-by-wire limited aircraft and i don't like fly-by-wire by the way i hate it i find it easy arcade non-challenging and a bit boring but you know that's how the real aircraft is this is not dad's downside about the module per se it's going to be my favorite out of all of them and the reason is again really hard to tell you why it's about the feel of the thing about how you connect to it and how more importantly it's about how it tells you what it's doing for the reasons we spoke about earlier it's import very important that the aircraft the module translates how it is reacting um to speed angle of attack stuff like that maneuvers that you're pulling to you through vibrations through the smoke through the sound and stuff like that and we've got just the right amount of vibration and stuff like that obviously we've got you darkening their vibration there it's not too much you can fly tom you know shakes you to pieces which i've heard is actually true from real tomcat pilots i find it a bit too much for a sim but i understand that i may be wrong i find this extremely well balanced and i find it very smooth as well now my understanding is is that this plane is probably the most fly-by-wire control planes of all the planes in dcs along with the jf-17 however for me it actually feels like the least uh restricted the least controlled um fly-by-wire controlled aircraft and dcs as compared to say the mirage 2000 just by how it feels and you're just going to have to trust me on it really i've got no way of quantifying that too i've got no charge i can put up to show stick and versus maneuver because you know i just don't understand it at the end of the day it's just flying this for hundreds of hours or whatever i've wrapped up in this aircraft i just know what it feels like let's go and have a quick uh burn around this village at low speed high alpha it's had a comment from the stream the hornet's fly-by-wire is absolutely lifeless i agree that's exactly why um i don't like the hornets feel it it feels like a spaceship because it doesn't have and again we can't quantify that i can't quantify it the stream can't quantify it's only something that your brain can tell you whereas this is anything but lifeless you can see you see it rocking around it's giving me all the feedback i need to know that i'm pulling too much alpha and things are going to go bad beautiful telling me i'm too high off i'm too high alpha and extending the alpha's gone hours on the wind speeds getting up everything just feels really top-notch so in terms of feel along with the you know non-fly-by-wire planes like you you know can take a spit out a p-47 or something it really does feel top-notch in terms of what you can get it to do it's stunt wires and stuff like that well pretty much nothing because the fly by work is not going to let you do much dangerous stuff see what we can do here well we'll do a tail slide probably not because everything that fly by wire is saying look look at it move do they move those surfaces i'm not commanding those rear surfaces i'm a neutral stick it's doing them for me because it's trying to get my nose down i may crash here i must admit put my nose down for me and i may even pull out ah how embarrassing for me anyway i don't think you need me to go on and on there uh now that's actually a really interesting point it has an angle of attack limiter of 26 degrees and you can actually crash this plane quite easily because you do have that angle of attack limiter the real aircraft has an override that allows you to pull as far as i'm aware infinite angle of attack we don't have that function in our aircraft yet i've got nothing really to add i know that wasn't particularly exhaustive maybe not even a very professional view of the flyby sorry of the flight model but i personally think it's top notch in the way that it feels in the way that handles high speed the way that handles low speed and the way it handles weather because remember we do you know stupid 200 mile an hour winds wear that because we like testing things and pushing them to the limits everything reacts perfectly the landing gear reacts with the ground surfaces you know as far as i'm aware perfectly it slides nicely it doesn't feel blocky doesn't feel bad flight model so everything feels good from the ground although it is challenging on the ground uh it does tip over a lot um again that's the aircraft rather than the module is kind of that tricycle landing gear i guess you'd call it so you've got to be careful and takes a while to master to take off and land okay i was just talking to rc on the stream behind the scenes there we can't really find anything there are i'm not saying there's no problems with this module at all but flight model which is what we're rating it on now we can't find a single problem with it um so i'm probably i think i'm going to vote that five out of five uh i'll see out of interest any you fly it quite a bit feel how does it feel for you you have what kind of score you give it feels good i would give it a five out of five how about that pretty good guys okay guys next we're looking at interactivity in detail this is all about how me as a human can interact with the machine so some modules in dcs for instance when there's two two sides of this a how many controls are actually modeled here how much actually work and do stuff and as well as that behind the buttons and controls how many of those background systems work so at the top of the class you'd have for instance an a10c as far as i'm aware every button in in there every dial switch works you know the ones that are available to work you know obviously you can't measure things like oxygen and stuff like that within reason and as well as that there are so many background systems measured uh model for that a10c probably more than any other uh uh system uh sorry module in dcs as you know most of them you'll never probably even look at i know i you know find new ones every time i look at the a10c so first we'll have a quick blast around the copy and really look if there's anything that's not modelled i mean things like little switches but even if you can't model what they do um i can't think of any uh examples at the moment but you should be able to at least press them and then have to have a make a little sound and stuff like that so go right back here i can't even remember all this stuff is but you know it does it does whatever it's supposed to do all this stuff is switchable turnable adjustable various trims and stuff probably going to ruin the plane now all your lights everything is doable i can't remember something here that doesn't be careful what i press i suppose yep i know i shouldn't have done that move down here just had the complaint from the stream that um these controls aren't modeled on the hotas so oh stick's gone here and here um now you don't actually click on these what you do is you press the actual hotas button on your physical stick but the complaint is that the button the knob should actually turn and i better check that before i make that assumption so pressing the trigger yeah that's correct i'm pressing the trigger that the trigger doesn't move so that is one tiny thing i've never actually thought about that until now so um yeah hat trim doesn't work uh and so it's a bit loud but in other aircraft like i'm just thinking of a uh f86 saver i think you know you press the trim buttons up down left and right and they actually move on the sticks small things like that there's some aircraft that yeah that it is animated and some that aren't roger yeah i know it sounds a bit petty but again when you're paying 50 80 that's a lot of money for a thing then it's the kind of thing that you know it's the kind of thing that snags you a bit and so it's nice to have feedback like if you are pushing a trim hat switch it's nice to be able to look at that stick and make sure you're pressing it yeah it's not a good idea so right so if it's not it doesn't feel like it's trimming right well if you can see the actual trim thing going up down left and right then you know which is a little thing yeah uh just saying other ones on the f5 and stuff do so maybe um maybe that's something a complaint we should put in really um and obviously we'll highlight in this video and we'll move on so that's the thing um radio sounds everything's working i just gotta turn up volume down being stupid everything works around here the radio head works as far as i can remember i'm not gonna press this stuff because it'll blow the engine up probably uh all this stuff works works ah finally something that doesn't work oh no it's not a button that's why haha it's a fuse uh finally something that works that pull handle doesn't work ah i got you mr w there yeah all round cmds all work so remember all this works what's this i'm silly oh we haven't got hooked yet that should work but it's good to see even the animations done little animation there everything's going here i've never impressed these buttons i can't actually remember what they do but they work maybe they just clear those lights everything here all these other speeds work obviously don't do anything huh the ones on the side roger uh you stick wiggles your throat moves and your pedals wiggle uh everything around here works everything on the ufc works everything around here works everything around here works right auxiliary all right console i should say everything there everything that everything there what's that works that works nucleic acid even the nuclear can same works and obviously you know it's relevant irrelevant oh it doesn't it doesn't work pocket chairs no oh she does not switch that's the thing that annoys me a little bit though because it wouldn't have taken much time to model it i know we don't have nuclear bombs on this but um you know it would be nice again paying you big money if you could move that switch right and it wouldn't cost them very much to do that no it doesn't do anything but you know that's when that's why we're here doing this at the end of the day i've just learned that is an up and down switch for the uh see it yep never knew that wowzer that's cool okay so we found a switch there that doesn't work uh nothing's the only thing that's meant to move whatever it is um i mean it's always a lot of this is not going to work environmental control some of it will but it's good i can move at least move the bits around even if some of them are modeled same i think there's something there that's not modeled no maybe not uh none of this is model this is a radio encryption none of its model but you can move the switches right so it makes me think good you know wagner's put a lot of effort into it it's worth my eighty dollars there's some bits there special model so that's probably a 90 in terms of copy controls i say it's a 99 percenter which is what the average for a good new module is um just a couple of bits that are modeled in there again this is early access you know but that's what i've got to work with uh and the armrest should flip out of the way to armrest apparently this should flip out the way too and we can't do that so in terms of systems behind these commands um and we can interact with a lot of them through the left mfd right mfd and the ded here if i went to a list i can get a main menu up and there's other main menus i'll say ded population at the moment i'll see how complete would you say it is 50 percent 40 percent 80 oh really i'll say this yeah there's probably three to five that aren't populated yet right for example uh vip is not destinations not a couple others on the other list okay i'm going to find pretty much the same with these guys here we went back to the main menu we've got tgp which works if you've got a dgp fire control radar works i don't think all of the commands are working and i don't think it's all in yet but most of you know the important stuff is in their weapon works with the agm 65s at the moment that's pretty much there uh yep right uh tfr no work if this isn't even has a flirt no sms does work um hsd does work whether it's fully populated yeah i'm not entirely sure probably not dte no test no uh flcs no is there anything else some other odds that don't work there so i i don't know what percentage is complete somewhere i think we're going to argue somewhere between sort of 50 and 80 percent by the sounds of it i'll see in terms of these kind of systems that we can use or just total yeah in terms of mfd and ded and ufc i'll say somewhere between 100 it's 100 not working as the pfc the pilot fault panel roger uh which is there so that is that's just not in a tool at the moment yep fine it's another example so um we've got to rate that now there's no point conjecturing you know what it's going to be like when it's finished we may as well just rate it as it is so we've got you know we determined about 99 of these controls are model animated and pretty much do what they're supposed to do somewhere between 50 to 80 percent of these systems in the emfd is in the ded in the ufc uh the pilot system here and maybe elsewhere i'm not even thinking about so uh all being i really want to rate it high because i do like the plane but i should it's my job is to rate it actually so i'm going to say 3.5 out of 5 all in as it stands at the moment and obviously we'll change that when it's fully uh completed your any thoughts from urc i'm gonna go with a three three five see okay we're not far off next we'll look at the difficulty and not just the difficulty flying the plane i mean that's one part of it but also the difficulty in learning all the most of the systems all or most of the weapons all are most of the techniques that you've got the whole spectrum to cover so the most difficult uh at the moment is the a10c i mean it's not actually very difficult to fly at all but there are so many systems weapons sub-systems sub-sub-systems that you've got to learn so many controls hotest controls do so many things now difficult it's hard and i know that because i can't do it i've learned it three times now and i still can't really fly it properly it means it's difficult to fly i'm sure a lot of you would agree so that's a five out of five either side of the spectrum a ce2 where you can literally just take off and that's it and land and do stunts or an fc3 plane where it's you know kind of really dumbed down going towards arcade mode that's a one out of five okay a hornet out of interest i and this is again subjective in a way i hold it i put 4.5 out of 5. maybe i should bring that down to about four now thinking about it because there's lots of systems there's lots to learn there's some sub systems to learn things like nav there's a lot to it there is a lot to it when you when you get in there i mean the plane's deadly fireflies itself but the systems it's a lot there's a lot of weapons to learn it's going to take months of sitting down to learn a hornet this as it stands and that's key this is as it stands it's not how it's going to be is a little bit simpler than the um the hornet it's dead easy to fly uh take off and landing i get a little bit tricky so you you have to get used to that but it's dead easy to actually fly systems at the moment are like what i would say a dumbed down hornet as they stand at the moment generally speaking um and so i'm going to rate this difficulty 3.5 out of 5 in total to learn as it stands now remember it's going to get a lot more complicated they're going to bring more systems in and they're going to get more and more complicated so i'll eventually see it ending up being a four or four point five but three point five as it stands i'll see any thoughts on that uh four four right so we come to our next field this is history this is all about the reliability of the module in the time that's been in service some have been in service for 13 years or longer some have been serviced for just a few months this has been in service for what surprises about a year old now isn't it i think it was last november 2019 so this is about a year old maybe it was october just over a year in terms of comparisons probably the harrier is the most complained about i and it has i've had problems with it it's had lots of buggy the tgp i found buggy and it's ruined a bit for that module for me so i rate that i rated that very low in terms of the history the an example of a plane that's not very buggy i mean in contemporary times something like an a10c i've had i mean it's very how mighty complicated it is how many bugs of serious bugs have you actually known about the atm crc data link didn't work one of the first planes they've ever done yeah yeah it's most complicated yeah absolutely um this f-16 i've had almost there are awesome odds and sobs but actual real things that you know actually you know make you annoy that you've spent your 80 dollars on it very little if you remember the iff went wrong at one point rc and it meant we were iffing that annoyed us we got over it but it annoyed us and it's fixed now obviously i think we had a minor problem with the radar picking people up other than that to be honest i personally think they've done a great job there was complaints that was released too early without enough features and you know that's up for you to decide it's you know subjective at the end of the day but in terms of bugs we're just hearing from the stream at the moment f-16 is better than the f-18 for bugs agreed i would say it's better than the f-18 for bugs so it's realistically not quite as good as the a-10c but probably the next best down uh in terms of goodness in terms of how reliable it has been any differences or any thoughts on that rc no in summary for me it's my favorite uh this is subjective obviously it's my favorite modern aircraft it's the one i best want to fly it's not the best it can't you know out fire tomcat at long range and he can't out dogfight well to be honest a tomcat at close range in terms of um the feel and one thing i didn't mention earlier is the visibility uh look how low the ridges of the cockpit are compared to an f well compared to anything compared to a tomcat tomcat has massive structures up here makes it very hard to actually do your mission in some cases this has a beautiful air of freedom it makes the plane feel light and it also is the light uh aircraft and it's well modeled to feel light and so i have the best time in it it gives me the best feel good factor and then mixed with the good sounds and dynamics that we looked at earlier it's just for me uh it's the one i would like to fly most i can't fly all the time because it's my job if you like self-imposed jobs to play all the different aircraft for you guys to show them all it's the one i would like to fly at the moment we are a little restricted they're a little slow in getting weapons in it's been out for a year we've got some weapons we've got the 88 that's come in we've got what else have we had i'll say we've got laser-guided bombs we've got no j dams at the moment we've got agm-65s we've got some mavericks uh but we really would like to see some more coming in now let's get the j dams in there and the uh you know the ins gps equivalents in there because they're lacking in that department and a few others as well and hopefully they'll uh expand that uh quicker otherwise it's a top bird for me um anything you want to add super rc nope okay i hope you enjoyed that review we'll update it maybe a year's time and we'll see you later

Channel: Grim Reapers

Views: 55,548

Rating: 4.9214988 out of 5

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Id: OdCknqaICp4

Length: 59min 30sec (3570 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020