Yeah, that’s right, and they all went off to Akrotiri I think it was once a year for armament camp and gun firing exercises, banners towed by Canberras back then I think it was. I have no doubt something similar still happens today.
Hey Dean, I was wondering if you caught the Q+A. Its worth catching up with if you missed it. One of the best Q+A’s with the Asobo guys I’ve seen. So much incredible stuff coming in the next few months. They spoke about taking on board all the requests and feedback from fast jet developers like yourself with new much requested features. Lots of detail about how the afterburners are modelled. It looks like if you fly at low level now in any aircraft the ground will react to the plane flying over and kick up lots of dirt and dust. Should be great with the replay system and making videos.
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Don’t forget that as much as we’d like to think that everyone who flies MSFS is as serious as we are about flight models, weather, traffic, and realism, some (like my nephew) just wants to fly REALLY fast and crash into stuff. And he would absolutely LOVE a fighter jet.
If you strip away the military aspects what you have are high performance aircraft. Powerful, agile, usually pretty great visibility through a bubble canopy from a single seat.
Sports cars in the air.
So, what do I do in them? I have fun and explore the world.
Fast, low level is quite the blast.
Throw the throttle into the firewall, point at the heavens and burst through the clouds.
Aerobatics.
And naturally learning to overcome the quirks of each aircraft or type.
I also fly DCS and IL-2 so sometimes I’ll compare the modelling of the various Spitfires across those platforms (as I have Spits in all titles)
Indeed since its release the IndiaFoxTecho MB339 has been my “go to” ride. It’s such a fun little plane and a joy to fly.
As for OnAir missions. Well in fact OnAir does have a mission type “Fighter Tour” and also a time trial flight challenge for the warbirds. (Currently the leaderboard is dominated by the FlyingIron Spit)
I get a lot of joy from flying MSFS2020, whether it be flying Helsinki to Copenhagen in the A320 or exploring the wilderness in the Savage Cub.
But I also get a great deal of joy from roaring down a highway below the treetops in the MB339 or scraping the heavens in the F14 watching those wings sweep back. (pure magic)
And hey. If DCDesigns or anybody else is listening…how about an F111? Hmmmm?
Edit.
As for procedural fun.
Shortly after I got the MB339 I took off out of somewhere in North West Africa with live weather.
Loaded into a game with almost zero visibility.
I could have just cancelled out.
Or changed the weather.
But I went for it anyway.
Above the cloud layer the world was a bright, clean blue. But the cloud layer was infinite. Not a break.
The MB339 is a pure steam guage aircraft. No glass cockpits to cheat my way to safety.
Luckily Gibraltar accepted my request for an IFR landing.
My eyes were effectively glued to the instruments for about 30 minutes as I felt my way towards the airstrip through the gloom with frequent requests for vectors to next waypoint.
The sense of relief and accomplishment when the runway lights eventually appeared through the fog and my wheels touched down was the perfect gaming experience.
My trusty little jet got me home.
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Many people apparently think they are fun to fly, personally I have no interest in warbirds at all.
3rd party develop fighters for 2 feasons:
- cause people loves iconic planes
- cause fighter jet systems is focused on weapons and defence. With limitation of sdk is really easy and fast to create a dlc with all this systems INOP. Fast money for not study level plane. People want to flight an f14 and don’t care about the flight model. It’s not important if it flyes like a piper but at 10x speed. In DCS systems are around 80% code of the dlc. So think how easy is to sell a 3D model with fantasy flight model in fs.
So what you doing posting in this thread then ?
Absolute drivel
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I was just putting together a long post in response to that post but in actual fact you summed it all perfectly with just two words.
I’ve no idea why any discussion on this forum around fast jets brings out all the trolls?
A lot of these hit the nail on the head here.
I’m in the same boat as someone else here- the MB 339 is my go to aircraft if I just want to go out and fly somewhere. It’s a mix of superb visibility, handling and speed so I can fly a reasonable distance fairly quickly and when I get there I can do some sightseeing. If I’m going seriously cross country and using radio beacons I don’t want to be crawling along at 100 knots and other aircraft with similar cruise speeds at altitude like the TBM if you see something interesting below you can’t just swoop down to take a look.
The thing with Flight simulator is that there are no boundaries. Sure, I might get a more immersive experience actually flying a jet like an F-14 in DCS, but if I want to go for a fly somewhere specific just to chill out Flight simulator is great. It’s nice to be flying somewhere and just spot other people in light sport aircraft out and about as well, or the odd airliner going past (sure, I can set up AI in DCS to do that with some scripting, but it feels less organic).
One of the most frustrating moments I’ve ever had in FS was in the first couple of days. I play a lot of DCS and I first learned how to fly planes “Properly” in a sim out of Senaki, so I decided to fly a TBM from there to Southampton, down the road from where I live. It was mostly done in a loose formation with other people I fly with. Something like four hours into the flight we were scheduled to stop for fuel in Romania. Was flying over the castle that inspired Dracula, I went into a gentle descent to take a look at what the sim had placed there and bam! Blackscreen you’ve crashed! In a jet trainer that doesn’t happen.
With jet trainers and older jets their systems are simple enough that you can model most of their features into FS2020. The 339 is a good example and probably same with the upcoming Hawk, so you still have great immersion. That starts to break down with the bigger, more modern jets (speaking from experience the F14 and 15), where the more advanced computer systems and HUDs can’t be changed much in FS so it’s a bit of a bodge. With those though I’m generally just wanting to fly long distances or short distances very, very quickly and I don’t really need the systems unlike in DCS so I can live without them.
The only downside is that currently on both the aforementioned jets the alt and hdg hold autopilots don’t work so I’m essentially just flying a very big, very fast jet trainer with less immersion, which isn’t so fun. I’m hoping once the F18 comes out there will be more dev tools available to improve them in terms of flight model and systems but I’ll have to wait and see.
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Why do I like Fighter Jets? The joy of flying a Raptor F-22 from Orlando to Miami in minutes and climbing to 65K feet and seeing the curvature of earth.
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I like their performance and they are optimized for single pilot. They are beautiful as well:)
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As someone who enjoys all sorts of aircraft, and owns the T45 on Xbox, the Hawk plays really well into the VFR flying the sim does well.
I can see why someone would want the F-14 or F-15 to watch the world speed by.
That said, the market is over-saturated with fighters, particularly cheap, low effort cash grabs that are disrespectful to the airframes they are depicting.
I purchased the DCD F14, just a few quick thought for the reasons:
-
this is the plane of the day when I was a child, and since my first SF anime macross is having the fictional plane based on F14 it is a childhood dream to went back
-
in msfs fighters are a great fun, I don’t care about actually firing to release my desire of destruction or to shoot others down creating some terrorist attack or ruining others game play… but the fun mainly comes from their very fast capabilities (nice to have when play time is limited), and that fighters are capable of very high stress, so I don’t need to do slow descend on approach nor to line up with the runway far away as when I fly the A32NX, I can just go any direction and sharp turn to line up the runway, use speed brakes aggressively to slow down to touch down or tough down at high speed say 200 knots and still works
-
in cockpit sightseeing is actually great as the angle of view possible for fighters are gig compared to most GA and airliners
-
sometimes doing crazy challenges to one self you would never dream of in real life in fighters are fun, like going at near sonic speed to suddenly fly under a bridge, or at 300+ knots to twist through Grand Canyon or New York City is another kind of fun.
So I would say 1/3 of my flights I would go to the F14 just to mess around. When I wanted to go serious and higher fidelity flight with procedures to follow I can always go to FBW A32NX (no insult to DCD, but the addition of AP to the F14 and the battery is something not true to life, as much as I enjoyed it it kind of feels untrue) just to enjoy not breaking the plane and do some civil flights. When I want to go pure sight seeing the free H135 heli is the way to go.
Horses for courses
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The hawk is a really cool one because it is a relatively slow military jet, that is used as a trainer too. Some of the most fun you can have in sims is zooming through valleys or over coastlines, making your way across countries in a small jet. Music on… just vibing. Better yet, with friends that are on mics hanging out as you go. Hop from airport to airport, taking it all in as you go. I get so bored of slow prop airplanes and get so bored of autopilot airliners. This is a great balance. Rip around low level, go up high, fly IFR if you want too… very capable airplane. Day one purchase for me!
As others have said, the sim offers me a way to fly an airplane I will never get to fly in real life! Looks like Just flight has nailed this one.
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On what info do you base this on? Given a typical two sorties a week, you would need 500 weeks to get a single life fire sortie? It is not that rare.
Mind you, flying a fighter jet is also expensive, ie $10k’s per hour. Not all weapons are that expensive (gun ammo, dumb bombs, rockets), although guided weapons can be extremely expensive (100k to 1M).
In order to stay proficient you would need life fire exercises a few times a year I would think.
Not that it matters, I fly without weapons in DCS often enough: formation flying, air to air refueling, carrier landings to name just a few interesting activities.
I was a RAF armourer so it was my job to arm up the jets. My old squadron would fly twice or in summer 3 times a day with 4-6 jets each time depending how many we could fix, out of a squadron with 12 jets or so. They nearly always only carried 3 or 14kg practice bombs for their practice down the range. Only once or twice a year they would live HE drops with 1000lb and they would do it in a block of say a week so all pilots get to drop.
In those days we also had to go to Kuwait for 2 months on a 12 month rotation with other squadrons to protect the Southern no fly zone in Iraq. Whilst not at war the aircrew were dropping 2000lb Paveway IIIs whenever they could. If they should of been morally is another discussion best kept away from this forum however! This practice is probably not available these days however.
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I personally don’t see a point in flying a modern supersonic fighter outside of DCS but I simply don’t have to buy them. If people have fun with it, why not? There are people who drive around in a car in MSFS. Or sail a ship. As long as they have fun, fine. I have an affection for radials, civil or military, but in an A2A level of realism. And if the airplane around it is interesting I’m in. And so are other people with a modern weapon system, live and let die or so… ^^
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I may want to know what it is that makes so many people interested in them.
Some of the military aircraft are some of the best aircraft in the sim currently. If you just want to enjoy flying, chances are there is one in there that will do it for you.