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Tokoyami

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About Tokoyami

  • Birthday 09/24/1970

Personal Information

  • Flight Simulators
    F-18|AV-88|F-16|F-15|Viggen|Su-33|Huey|Gazelle|Mi-8|Tomcat|P-51|P-47|Nora|A-10c
  • Location
    Tallahassee, Florida
  • Interests
    Family, Firearms, Flight Sims
  • Occupation
    Write Q Posts for kicks

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  1. Tokoyami

    Bravo!

    Concur - really ejoying this map. Nice work!
  2. Thank you for your comments - I read every word. I think we are much closer aligned than we suspect. I respect and appreciate your opinions and what’s important to you.
  3. I hear ya, truly. The entire reason I joined the Army was for a shot at a slot for flight school. In my third year of a six year enlistment I was selected for flight school. At the time I was a flying, non rated crewmen. Commonly known as a “Crew Chief”; logged about 350 hours at that point, in all conditions. It’s important to note non rated crew had to pass the same flight physical as pilots, save the 20/20 vision requirement. Anyway, I get to flight school, start WOC training and guess what? I fail the freakin eye exam for astigmatism. That’s right, they subject you to another flight physical while in WOC (Warren Officer Candidate) school. I passed the visual requirements a year earlier when I applied, but my physiology aged another year and I was a full diopter out of limits. It was a soul crushing, horrible time in my life. I still lose sleep over it to this day. When I listen to the Fighter Pilots Podcast and I hear all the talk of waivers I want to cry and/or commit homicide (not really, said for laughs - but it does hurt to this day). I hear you. I totally get it. I say with absolute honesty that there are some things - with present consumer technology - that just can’t be modeled in any game when it comes to flying. From my own experiences flying third seat, what matters for our game are the visceral elements. In today’s terms, based on my own experience actually doing the kinds of things some want modeled in game, What will give you the best impression of flying are sound, visuals and flight dynamics. Trying to model, for example, the feel of a real helicopter through a consumer software product is like asking me to explain an orgasm. I know exactly what a Blackhawk feels like VIA the collective and cyclic. There’s no way to model THAT without the actual servos, springs, mechanical geometry, etc, etc, etc. I understand why people are asking for the things they asking for, it’s just that if they get what they are asking for their gameplay won’t be any deeper, better or more satisfying. Deep, realistic and convincing is what brings you closest to what it actually feels like to fly, short of a multi axis, multimillion dollar, purpose built simulator. I respect you and deeply appreciate you sharing your situation. So, I thought I’d share something personal too, so you know you aren’t alone dealing with that kind of disappointment and pain. ETA - what I’m getting at is that no amount of coding can overcome our disappointment. I’ve spent maybe a dozen hours in 1990’s full motion, Blackhawk simulators. Usually it was during lunch, or a weekend, and once the pilots had done whatever they needed time on, they’d let me hop in the left seat and do all the things you’d expect a couple of guys goofing off in a multi million dollar simulator to do. The sim was perfect for pilots to practice procedures. Things like IFR approaches or perhaps bold faced items. The cockpit was a faithful 1:1 reproduction. What it was kinda “eh” at? What it felt like to actually fly it, or in it. It was close, but only close and this was an articulating, off the floor, enclosed, on hydraulic arms, the real deal simulator. I promise, just “eh”. The visuals were horrible, even for 1990’s standards. Current sims lag behind what we have on our desktops to this day. The 1:1 cockpit isn’t nearly as important to immersion as is sound and “feel” - as far as trying to capture the impossible sensation of flying in a particular airframe. I think far more important to you being able to capture what it really feels like would be an excellent VR system, rather than very, very deep troubleshooting procedures (as just a random example).
  4. Yess sir, points well taken. My comments were with the entire player base in mind, not the tiny fraction of the player base that interacts on forums - of which I am just as guilty as anyone else here. I am not blameless or without sin. My overall point was to expose what I believe are toxic influences that get far more credence than they should, and why, here on the forums. I don’t dismiss or minimize the why a customer wants a certain feature, but rather how large of an audience the super mil-sim crowd actually is. It’s tiny. Most flight simmers want convincing and real feeling, without the reality of.....well.....real life. In real life we struggle with things like OR rates - struggling to keep enough airframes viable for their intended missions. Not just airworthy - almost all are - but mission capable. A lot of airframes are flying around out there for training with various equipment in op and go through the motions “notionally”. Basically, I think what drives a lot of the people DEMANDING really deep system modeling isn’t for fun, isn’t what people are actually clamoring for And doesn’t serve the overall game for the vast majority of players. When companies cater to this tiny subset of forum users the user base dries up, the game languishes and ultimately software publishers steer clear of the space as impossible to please and very, very niche. Want to hear absolute hearsay in these parts? Falcon 4.0 is what killed the mass appeal of flight sims. As the bar for realism was raised higher and higher, more and more players began to leave the space. The game went from being an accessible, very deep game to a niche, boutique product with a rather vocal and nasty fan base. THAT’s what killed the flight sim market space. In the 1990’s there were things like computer stores than had actual game sections. Flight sims were VERY popular. The fans have never gone away. The industry decided it was a niche market (again, driven by very loud, very vocal online voices) with intensely high expectations, requires capital to be spent (HOTAS, etc) and frankly, there are a lot,of other markets to spend time in - that actually make money. We’ve done it to ourselves. There’s only one ED because that’s all the market will bear - we’re that small of a sub fraction of a fraction. The endless drive for deeper and more complex systems is what killed the flight sim industry. I’m not saying we shouldn’t ask for deep and convincing systems; we should. I am saying there’s deep, and then there’s absurd. ETA - proof? JF-17. It’s complicated, but easily the most user friendly presentation of the battlefield. The onboard systems make threat detections and most importantly situational awareness EASY. That’s why players love the aircraft. Any modern aircraft will sell in droves for these reasons. The airframe sells the boxes, what it’s like to “fly” is what keeps customers. Deep and rewarding is where it’s at. Not rivet counts on tail sections that people notice isn’t like the real thing. Hope that makes sense. Only a very small subsection of players cares about things like accurately modeled failure procedures and spending time coding for the 2% is at the detriment to the other 98% who want a deep, rich and most importantly FUN experience. I’m not trying to insult those who like to take it to the next level. We can disagree and still be wingmen.
  5. TL;DR - none of us (myself included) are qualified to actually fly any of the modules we fly in game. No amount of coding (that can actually be accomplished for $79) is going to make any of us a “real” pilot. We should stop demanding these excellent developers overcome (through coding) whatever mental baggage we’re carrying on the topic. No, seriously. Read on - My answer will be a highly unpopular one: this question (unfortunately) has a lot more to do with why people answer the way they do, versus anything to with the underlying game, or module. There is a certain subset of users who spend far more time gaming these forums than they do in game. They are very vocal and it’s obvious they (wrongly) think their very loud voice on these forums is a direct line to the developers, who they think are hinging on their every word. If ED takes these forum warriors at face value it’s bad for everyone involved, especially ED. Forum warriors only represent a tiny fraction of the user base and what motivates them and their comments are often completely toxic to the overall game and community. Again, the loudest here are representative of only a tiny subset of those playing. Most of ED’s players are busy playing - most in single player. I have some experience in the real world with helicopters. Hundreds of hours flown as a CE on Blackhawk helicopters in the mid to late nineties. Lots and lots of experience with check lists and bold faced items. Truthfully, as a CE there aren’t any bold faced items for YOU in the Blackhawk but, I assure you I’ve been there and done that and in real life bold faced items aren’t fun. Exciting, yes. But exciting like excited before a root canal, not “fun”. That brings me to my last point - fun. Circuit breakers are real life, and they ain’t any fun. Been there, done that, have multiple T-shirts. It’s not fun and has exactly zero to do with the actual fun part - doing the mission. In other forums people are asking for insanely complicated coding so that a sub system appears to pass a BIT check, or worse yet - fail one!? Where’s the fun in that? I can tell you, for a fact, in real life a BIT failure as a 12 ship cranks IS NOT any fun. Again, been there, done that, no fun. It sucks. Those advocating for that level of detail will ruin the game for 95% of the player base by focusing on esoteric minutia that only people trying to fill a internal void advocate for. The key is this: model things in a convincing way, not (always) the literal way it is in the aircraft. 99,9% of the user base won’t know the difference and the .01% that does shouldn’t be listened to (as far as coding decisions are made) at all. That .01% isn’t playing the game, they are playing the forums as their version of the game. The rest of us are playing the game. Developers should spend their time coding the game in a convincing and deep way, but only if that’s in service of fun. Modeling things like circuit breaker pulling as part of troubleshooting a failure? Total waste of time. 99% will never use what you coded and the 1% who do will bitch endlessly here about how incomplete the system is, no matter how far down the rabbit hole the developer goes. Disclaimer: No, I don’t think everyone but me is like what I describe. We are all guilty to a certain extent. If the shoe fits wear it, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. This is just a simple observation from a guy who’s been playing sims for a long, long, long time and has noticed certain trends on simulation forums. What I describe isn’t a “problem”. Just something to consider as everyone noodles through the various opinions. I’m honestly and truly not trying to pick a fight with anyone. This is just my opinion and it’s equally (my wife would say more) worthless as anyone else’s. ETA - thinking some more about this - I think those that find faults and failures entertaining don’t realize how failure prone these aircraft are. How many hours are spent fixing and maintaining and yet mission scrubs still occur with more frequency than most realize. In game, shit works 100% of the time unless I ask for failures. I can even specify what, when and how often. Real life isn’t like that. Real life is a 0100 final brief, followed by nod (NVGs) draw, weapons draw, ammo draw, com sec data fill cart, humping all that shit across an improvised flight line + all your hooo-ahh flight gear (yes, it is sexy and yes, chicks DO dig it), preflight, comm fill, weapons mount and troubleshoot, squaring away whatever we’re taking with us, 0300 APU crank, 0310 flight commo check, 0315 group commo check, 0320 battle net commo check, 0345 engine crank and the goddamn #2 fails it’s HIT and you watch everyone else hover taxi out to formation and then on with the mission. Next up? Download the weapons, the Ammo, the fly away gear, the tools we take with us, the nods, the comm fill(s) - hump all that shit back across the flight line, sign it all back in, make sure you didn’t lose or forget something (trust me, you did) and then go wake up the engine shop for a nice, long, blistering hot day of sexy engine troubleshooting. No. Hell no. No. Not any more. No. Never again. No. (Lol).
  6. Thank you for that very thorough explanation, I really appreciate it.
  7. After watching the Syria trailer I am doubling down: it’s the Apache. I know that’s considered blasphemy by most, and I don’t mean to cause any offense by my guess. Last time I made my prognostication others demanded to know what evidence I have. I don’t have any beyond my wild *** guess/hunch. Endlessly entertaining conversation though. I’ve read every page of this thread as it’s developed and enjoy reading all of the very well thought out theories.
  8. Is there an advantage to using LTWS versus TWS, other than the auto IFF once covered by the TDC? I find this mode to be very confusing.
  9. Really appreciate the latest adds, fixes, and tweaks - thank you! I am especially enjoying the new MFD work - everything is much crisper and clearer. Thank you for your continued work!
  10. Ah -ha! Thank you for the info - I hadn't considered the fact that someone can get between me and the intended target and with the right circumstances BECOME the missile's target. Makes perfect sense. Thank you.
  11. I think the mistake we make is assuming there is one airframe that will do it all, everything we want it to. Each airframe has its strengths and weaknesses. Take the Viggen for example - that airframe really only has two missions. Try to dog fight in that airframe and you’ll find that it can be done, but other airframes will eat your lunch. The MiG-29 is an awesome light fighter with a super thrust to weight ratio. You’ll have to play into it’s strengths, which I think are mid to close engagements. You have to leverage its strengths (power, agility) against whatever you’re flying against. Most situations we fly into in the game we wouldn’t dream of doing in the real world. But online? Single ship F-14 versus a dozen dissimilars? Hell yeah! You’re right about the F-18 being easier to fly. It is. Just pull in the stick and the aircraft gives what it can. It also means online -18 drivers (myself included) don’t pay much attention to flight envelopes or things like corner speed. We just yank on the stick and go postal when we don’t get a 9G max rate turn (because of weight, speed, etc). I suspect that’s happening to you too. People online tend to fight the battle the same way regardless of what they are flying or in what situation they find themselves. Know your corner speed and understand how weight affects the airframe. I’m not trying to be condescending in any wha and if I came off that way, I apologize. I’m trying to throw out just a few of the variables that can easily tip the scales right OUT of your favor. Everything from configuration, to altitude, to speed, etc, etc - all play a role in how your aircraft responds to you and what it’s capable of doing at any given state. The F-18 just doesn’t respond when you ask more than it can do. The -29, -15, 27 (and others) will allow you to do things you really shouldn’t and get yourself into a pickle.
  12. Need a bit of help here. Last night I managed to shoot down two friendlies BVR, using Jester and the Phoenix. Obviously completely my fault, but why? I asked for the radar range I wanted (200 - just off the boat PG map), TWS mode and watched Jester interrogate and classify targets as we drove the 150 miles to the SoH. Pick up a flight of six inbound. Rio six shooter follows (me pulling the trigger one after the other) based on the six ranked targets. Six hits, two of whom are friendly. What did I do wrong? Is it possible they weren’t using IFF? Why would Jester classify two bluefor as hostile? How can I double check to make sure everyone about to get some medicine is the right target? Thanks!
  13. Are one of those the aircraft Yeager was involved with?
  14. There is a weird sense of dependence on developer interaction, that's true. I don't think the OP is one of those people though. There is also a real problem with ED over-promising and under-delivering for quite some time. I think we can find common ground without insulting anyone and respecting the different aspects of this wonderful game (including the challenges providing said game) and differing opinions. Wouldn't we really rather shoot missiles at each other or work cooperatively to take down a SAM site than trade barbs here?
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