The ACTUAL Real Truth Behind the Notch in DCS

While Mike Solyom's Ops Center video is what got me to make this video, I do not want anyone to think I dislike him or his content. I think what he provides is a very valuable resource to the community and I endorse his videos. The point of this video is to bring information that I believe pretty much everyone leaves out and to make it as clear cut as possible so that there is no more ambiguity around the notch in DCS. I hope you all found this video informational and helpful, and go out there to become notch-pros like the rest of us. Thank you all so very much for watching, and have a nice day!
The video in question: • The Real Truth Behind ...
The Ops Center channel: / @theopscenterbymikesolyom
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Outro: Intervals(Open Spectrum) by Color Index
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[@haedubabaganush]

Great video pointing out one of the many areas where DCS needs to improve.....there are many others. I will pick with you one point. You can simulate a game, you can game a simulation, but there is a huge difference between a game and a simulation. DCS, and most of the current computer based attempts are recreating the atmosphere of military flying are SIMULATIONS. Some are much better than others, some have more unrealistic elements...for example. labels and spotting aids which doesn't happen in real life and I would say are "GAME" elements. If you're not aware of what a simulation is and why it's different than a game then maybe you shouldn't simply call DCS or any other flight program a game. In simplest terms, checkers is a game, it doesn't represent real life, there is a singular goal, finite strategies and is (relatively) easily reproduced on a computer....like tic tac toe. A simulation is an attempt to recreate an experience or system that we see in real life, be that an ecological simulation of a african velt, or a simulation of the dynamics of a lake...or a flight simulation.... military or non military....doesn't matter. The point is that you are trying to capture that real life experience. I have never seen a perfect simulation....and that isn't always the goal. It's easy to find faults and be critical of a simulation and indeed that is a necessary part of the process but the real question is: Does the simulation capture the essence of the system being simulated? To what degree? How can it be improved. etc. Having real life experience in fast military aircraft, I can tell you that none of what I have flown on computers is like the real thing....some come closer than others in capturing the experience, but close is not the same as the real thing. DCS comes close but in many areas there is a wide gulf, but for most of you who will never sit in or fly a military jet, it lets you experience, a taste if you like, of the complexity involved. Keep up the good work finding the areas that are lacking with the hope that the poobahs at DCS are taking notes and will address at least some of the issues in the future. We have to admit...at least DCS is better than most in updating their sim.

[@PrezDCS]

They've been on a decent, steady track to improving their sim as you said. I just wish things were much better managed over there. Every update I check the patch notes and have to shake my head and wonder what the heck they are even doing most of the time. Thank you for this comment btw. I enjoyed reading it :D

[@louisurquhart9466]

could you use paragraphs

[@18skaterboy18]

This guy thinks he can fly a military aircraft in real life because he can fly it in DCS.

[@PrezDCS]

@@18skaterboy18 That's just true tho. I'm a qualified F-16, F-15C, F-15E, F-14, and F-4 pilot IRL because of my DCS credentials

[@haedubabaganush]

@@18skaterboy18 If you're referring to me, I made it clear that I was in real life military aviation in the late 60's flying tactical strike fighters in the century series. While I'm in my 70's and can't fly anymore, I can assure you that I haven't forgotten everything, but it's fine by me if you want to be sarcastic. I was hopefully trying to be helpful with a bit of wisdom. Out.

[@przemo12323]

it's hard to believe that dcs has less realistic radar mechanics than war thunder which is not meant to be a simulator but here we are

[@PrezDCS]

It really is sad to see

[@wmouse]

How is War Thunder not meant to be a simulator? It's what used to be called a survey sim, and it's actually very good at that. It does a very good job at representing the evolving tactics of small scale air combat from the 1930s through the 1990s, which no other simulator can claim to do. The huge problem with War Thunder is that it has all that free-to-play crap piled on top of it. Gaijin is also very transparent about how countermeasures, missile seekers, and radars are implemented in their game. These are simplified compared to real life but most of these are actually much more advanced than DCS.

[@nobstompah4850]

@wmouse it’s just that, Gaijin doesn’t broadcast itself as a study level sim. DCS does, and charges 80 dollars for it. It’s just sad.

[@BH-ro4ly]

Its a very complex and very resource intensive task to successfully implement with precision in their game.

[@markcorrigan3930]

@@nobstompah4850 Bingo. It's marketing

[@koc988]

lets all remember this is a modern "simulator" that has AI that is almost as good as falcon 3.0's. Now give ED 56 dollars for a half finished single block of the F-16.

[@jaceallen3270]

You saw that video too? Lol.

[@Youda00008]

Finally my favourite childhood game is getting some attention again 😆

[@ViperPilot16]

It is honestly terrible, on how they just let it fly into the terrain like it wasn't even there. I get AI is not the easiest thing to do, but this is also an air combat game.

[@mikekohler2279]

@@ViperPilot16 I presume you know that AI aircraft can be set to be Rookie, Trained, Veteran or Ace in the Mission Editor. So maybe it was a Rookie AI flying into terrain like it wasn't even there:) On the other hand I and many others have flown into terrain when chasing a bandit at low level in MP fights and getting distracted at the wrong moment. Just like some real WW2 pilots too...

[@chaosinsurgency6636]

@@mikekohler2279max copium

[@MultiVeeta]

Notching in DCS with certain aircraft is such a skill substitute. It takes away actual air combat tactics and promotes gaming mentality.

[@PrezDCS]

It's the unfortunate reality that ED has presented us with

[@PrezDCS]

@thebrain7441 I think I know exactly who you're talking about lol

[@sunrisejackdaw1779]

​@thebrain7441saabmissive and notchable

[@catto7274]

RNG countermeasures is absolutely the most diabolical thing lmao

[@xFlowXxX]

Now I understand why in 800 hours my CMS were absolutely useless: as everything involving RNG irl, I never won In my whole life

[@purplepenguin43]

I realized this with IR missles a long time ago, flying the A-10. Just flare same time same conditions wildly different results. Learned to just keep flaring until i found the missile and saw it go off corse or the mws stopped beeping. I didn’t think it would apply to radar countermeasures as well though…

[@Parched_Leech]

The chaff and flares being a random number probability is ludicrous!

[@PrezDCS]

It's very gamey yeah

[@dougmasters4561]

​@PrezDCS im not sure what can truly be done about that though. Realistic chaffe and flair sounds very complicated.

[@PrezDCS]

@@dougmasters4561 The chaff is already in the game, the modeling of it's affects is already modeled on some radars such as those by Razbam and Heatblur. ED has failed to do it themselves. Flare modeling wouldn't be hard. War Thunder has realistic flare modeling and that game is just Ace Combat at this point

[@Sideburns892]

How long have we been waiting for the missile logic and sensor rewrite now to conclude? Years? Still an incomplete work in progress.

[@PrezDCS]

Too long... way too long...

[@asiberiantiger188]

​@@PrezDCS That's what she said

[@S-ACV]

The thing is, VTOL VR has better radar than dcs, the game itself has the goofiest graphics possible, but has fully modeled dynamic radar cross section, fully modeled electronic waves spectrum (not joking)

[@thewarthogproject]

You guys have radars?

[@SDsc0rch]

we need to put pressure on ED to improve RWR, notch, PRF and lookup simulation fidelity in their modules and enforce these standards on 3rd party devs

[@PrezDCS]

@@SDsc0rch 3rd party standards outpace ED’s most of the time unfortunately

[@FoxWithTheAngels]

The second he said "DCS is a video game" I liked the video

[@TitanCalE]

ED will just keep notching us when we complain. Thank you for your passion and support.

[@agonydestiny8218]

Fly a helicopter, infinite notching buff 🗿

[@robertgaudet7407]

Harrier plus. Amraams + hover chaff infininotch. You do have the Harrier plus right?

[@pd28cat]

Rotor blades = nah

[@Android_ELITE]

I play war thunder. A lot, in fact. RB and sim modes. I don’t play DCS, outside a session or two of learning the basics with a friend. Despite that, I’m always disappointed when I look into how things are going with the game and see that the devs are ignoring or propagating issues. I liked the idea that there was this expensive and difficult to learn but extremely good sim game with a supportive dev team in my favorite niche genre. Sad to see the dev problem extends to y’all’s community too. Stay strong.

[@Whiskey11Gaming]

Can't wait for ED to learn what range gating is and how it works with missile seeker technology! Blew my mind hearing about how it works!

[@PrezDCS]

@@Whiskey11Gaming I remember when they first added a range gate to the AIM-120, it made notching even better because the range gate was either so small/improperly modeled that it failed to reacquire the target if it was notched and the target exited the notch

[@spawncaptain]

They will probably write a white paper about it first as if it some miracular technology and not something that almost occurs naturally in the engineering process if you take the doppler-shift out of the pulse-doppler transceiver.

[@AviationPlus]

bahahha You are my HERO. It is notch and Die in Falcon BMS.

[@_Ailixian_]

I love the people that think they're the king of notching but can barely stay connected to a server due to ping and packet loss.

[@PrezDCS]

Lmao absolutely. Luckily DCS doesn't have too much issue with lag at least below 250 ping, but there are certainly still millions of issues with the netcode.

[@Adam-qk5tt]

Go to growling server, bunch of f looswes with 300+ ping calling others skill issue when they lag every single second when nothing or literally starts teleporting when missile is fired at them, im also more then sure 80% of those guys are using lag switch in dcs that is present in dcs since last few years... Sad af.

[@americankid7782]

I really don’t like that DCS doesn’t have proper Radar cross section simulations. I’m paying up to $60 for a plane that has the exact same Radar cross section from any angle you look at it with. VTOL VR does this far better meaning that Angle of attack actually changes how likely you are to be detected. Ex. You are less likely to be detected from head on than from the side.

[@Bellator151]

a simulation can also be a game because (a) things can be more than one thing and (b) it's ok for realistic software to be fun.

[@PrezDCS]

Sure, but there needs to be a distinction where people realize that this simulation has its limits and things are gamey for lack of proper simulation.

[@ViperPilot16]

​@PrezDCS DCS is honestly set up as more of a sandbox or a pit sim more than anything else. This isn't Falcon 4.0 (a sim that came out in the 90s) where it models an actual war.

[@broko336]

@@PrezDCS a simulation is a simlipified approximation of something, and the level of simplification is determined by the desired accuracy, what your hardware can realistically support and the amount of time you want to spend developing it. since most of DCS has its roots in software thats 25 years old, this shallow level is to be expected. this is no reason to leave it like that, but its clearly visible that ED are slowly but steadily improving on it. we, as a community, should focus on pushing the need for this rework a bit harder, a discussion on their discord usually gets at some acknowledgement. (keeping to the rules that is)

[@chaosinsurgency6636]

@@broko336lmao no a simulation is not A simulation is the re-creation of a real world process in a controlled environment. It involves creating laws and models to represent the world, and then running those models to see what happens. A Simulation can only be accurate as you wish it to be.

[@Kimchi_Studios]

Getting flashbacks of ralfidude and IASGATG's DCS missile modeling breakdown from 5 years ago 😁

[@molnibalage83]

10:13 What I learnt on ED forum if you complain and report issues they are just banning you...

[@PrezDCS]

That's true lol

[@jumperdcsworld1319]

That’s a garuntee

[@nighthawk2174]

I posted an image from the textbook the radar dev was reading and got banned by them clearly because they got tired of me its a real thing. They claimed I broke ITAR rules rofl.

[@DCSCompetitive]

I’m very glad you’ve made this video, it’s an element we’ve been trying to address for a long time. As egregious as the barrel roll, they’re essentially the same thing. Use of yaw mostly and/or minor, frequent pitch changes below the missile is seen done by almost all of the ‘top’ teams out there and it’s gross. If you’re not using your rudder pedals, your survival chances decrease significantly. But it’s meta for now and the fight must go on.

[@CallsignWombat428]

the rudder is not the key to notching. anyone who’s good at it can notch without the rudder, not using the rudder does not make it harder at all or decrease your ability to notch. anyone who can do it already should have 0 issue without ruddering

[@ddiver7908]

Yup, completely agree it’s just a video game. An expensive video game at that.

[@PrezDCS]

EA wishes for this level of macrotransactions for its games

[@bustanutist]

I love when people in the dcs community get mad when you call it a video game. It’s 100 percent a video game lmao. Made for us losers who don’t have the balls to serve in real life. That’s like calling a Sunday larp a real battle.

[@manuelpiston]

​@@bustanutist🧢 I served

[@samgau2]

Yes like any "free to play" games

[@bustanutist]

@@manuelpiston Okay army reservist pipe down.

[@TheIke444]

Perfect breakdown of the DCS notch. I too hope that it becomes more dynamic. Though it is important to note that your chaff breakdown only applies to multiplayer. In singleplayer, the chaff entity is spawned with properties like radar reflectivity. This allows you to evade missiles by just going cold and then dumping chaff with a turn. Not to LARP, I agree its a game, but apparently this is the most common usage of chaff/jaff IRL I found it astonishing that in the DCS Flaming Cliffs manual, this is described as THE way to evade fox 3s, but does not work at all in multiplayer. Maybe left in the manual from a DCS predecessor who knows.

[@RT81775]

These same issues have been around since the beginning. Does anyone remember Ironhand’s old tutorial showing how you could use the Russia Beryoza to precisely time an orthogonal roll around an AIM-120? That was from the Lock On days. Pre-Flaming Cliffs.

[@nighthawk2174]

An alarming amount of the code is still from those days it seems.

[@RT81775]

@@nighthawk2174 more than ED lets on. Would t surprise me if there’s a sizable amount of code from Flanker 2.0 or earlier. Don’t get me wrong, DCS is very flawed but it’s a sound product. There’s a lot of capability there for those who want to use it. But the fundamental mechanics are still not the best. If the AI in DCS worked better with large operations, small details like notching wouldn’t be as bad. Perfect notching isn’t going to save you in a large scale air war where you’re getting attacked by multiple aggressors mixed in with long, medium, and short rage air defense.

[@egoalter1276]

Some of this simulation is on the level of CMANO, and thats meant to simulate armygroup scale operations and doesnt even have a graphical interface.

[@doorgunnervfx]

This is a phenominal video in terms of getting straight to the point, and accurately explaining the skill of notching. Great job!

[@PrezDCS]

Thank you! I really tried to make sure this video was as clear and accurate as possible. Cut out all the crap people usually do.

[@doorgunnervfx]

@@PrezDCS well you definetly achieved that goal!

[@Tabs_Original]

S tier explanation! Going to practice notching more now I know it has a chance of instantly defeating a missile.

[@arandomcommenter412]

Im an idiot and immediately assumed this meant Notch as in minecraft

[@biggieb8900]

Notching isn't even modeled into the game, you've completely placeboed yourself into believing something. It's not even real What a noob jk

[@KevTCC]

DCS is a video game earned my like immediately. Not sure if I am subbed but I will be after this comment is posted.

[@henriklmao]

Let's just all grow the falcon Bms community and Dev team!

[@wmouse]

I think Mike Solyom's videos are excellent at explaining how things would work in real life, and he just happens to use DCS as his visual aid. I'd expect his videos to be much more applicable to Falcon BMS.

[@PrezDCS]

@@wmouse yeah, like I said, very good videos for larpers. Not so much for gamers

[@heremyjogan]

Digital Combat Simulator sounds better than Digital Combat Game lol

[@PrezDCS]

So true

[@montrose699]

How is it a game? It simulates the actual flight ,model and systems of the aircraft. Does it need work on things like notching absolutely but that doesnt make it a game

[@heremyjogan]

@montrose699 you can call it whatever you want. Since you can play it at home on an ordinary PC with a mouse and keyboard, it only simulates a few aspects not all aspects. Goat Simulator is named as a simulator but no one actually knows what a goat goes through on a daily basis.

[@montrose699]

@@heremyjogan so the fact that some militaries use it to train aircraft startup and shutdown procedures as well as system and weapons setup and deployment doesn't matter???? I don't see one startup video or weapon use video or any real instructional video for War Thunder. If you know of any please share I am honestly interested

[@PrezDCS]

@@montrose699 It's a game. Simulators are ultimately games.

[@er00ic]

ED isn't capable of modeling modern electronic systems like radar, seekers, and RWR.

[@gigantrejser4926]

Because a lot of thing are classified.

[@orleansjunky4074]

Yeah, one day, something worth wild will be 100% complete.

[@PrezDCS]

We can only hope and dream

[@sheeplord4976]

DCS has always been about appearances sadly. Occasionally they replace some underlying component, but there are so many pieces to replace that the number of crappy components can still ruin the few masterful pieces.

[@effsixteenblock50]

Let's further muddy the waters and discuss simulator vs emulator.

[@ownage5550]

holy shit im notchinggg holy fuckkkkkk im boutta noottchch😫😫😫😫😫😫

[@2BachShakur]

We’re talking about devs that are still selling a dead, unfinished module by Razbam. Not holding my breath for a more realistic RWR.

[@eb3yr]

Jesus christ I thought the guy who was going on about War Thunder's missile modelling being better was just having a laugh? DCS uses rng for countermeasures!? Very informative video, thanks for making it.

[@DavidGöteskog]

Found your vid yesterday and just tried the notch thing 10 times in the hornet and it worked every time, didnt get hit a single time. Never thought in my 11 years of playing DCS that it was like this… it does make it feel alot more like a game. The more you scratch on the dcs surface, the more it takes away the fun

[@utley]

I dont want to be that guy, but I have to.... MSFS is a game. DCS...as a war fighting simulator...is also a game. DCS as a training aid for ground handling and flight characteristics is second to none and therefore should qualify as a decent flight simulator alone. When Boeing tells you that you need to undo a specific build of the Hornet because it was "too close" to actual flight dynamics, you're a legit flight simulator. The thing that kills me is when ED selectively adds unrealistic things to their aircraft, but wont listen to customers when it comes to adding weapons to aircraft. For example: the F-18 Blk 20 never carried AIM9X, but here we are...yet we ask for the APKWS, its been flown on that block before, and its a plug and play missile, but nope...not doing that.

[@PrezDCS]

Yes, DCS is a great "cockpit" simulator. It does flight dynamics really well. But the combat portion of the title leaves a lot to be desired. That's kind of the big issue here.

[@UnderTaker2OO3]

Just notch bro...cries in su33 with only fox1s...and long range fox2s that get flared by ai....

[@PrezDCS]

Erm... kind of a skill issue bro idk what to say..............................................

[@UnderTaker2OO3]

@@PrezDCS when u don't know shit just keep that mouth of yours shot.i fucking know every inn and out of bvr in dcs u don't need to teach someone who's been playing for 3 years...if u notch in su27 or 33 u lose lock and when u lose lock r27 er goes stupid.whereas the aim120 has its own radar so u don't need to guide it till impact and can perform notch... Yet again b4 u open ur mouth,please think about what ur going to say.if u don't,not everyone are going to be as patient as I am.u might end up getting ur face all wrecked up

[@jaidensky5738]

I like the mention about the questionable guidance logic. It is comically easy to outmaneuver certain missiles (namely the 120c) by simply running perpendicular to the missile, pulling max G vertical for about a second or 2, inverting, and repeating the same until the missile passes by. Hilarious to watch it fail to keep up on tacview.

[@The_Tau]

Well as Heatblur F-14 enjoyer i must put way more emphasis on kinematic defeat techniques than notching :D

[@egoalter1276]

With the advent of hardware level raytracing, actual direct real time optical simulation modeling of radar has become a reality a few years ago. Why it hasnt become common practice yet is beyond me.

[@PrezDCS]

I know that ray tracing tech just wasn't possible in DCS until maybe 2 years ago. It was one of Heatblur's big complaints that they couldn't model the AWG-9 correctly b/c of the lack of ray tracing. After it was added, Razbam was promoting the use of ray tracing in their SAR modeling for the F-15E. So, it's very much possible, but it would certainly tank the performance of some people's systems as much as I would prefer it to be commonplace.

[@egoalter1276]

@@PrezDCS While I understand the concern, it could be mad eoptional, and would at any rate be significantly less performance intensive than graphical raytracing. You dont need to update it at 60Hz, you can get away with just a few rays per radar, rather than one per display pixel, and you can completely skip mapping the trace into display data.

[@ghostskills_dcs]

Great video. Finally, someone is saying it. Very well explained.

[@PrezDCS]

@@ghostskills_dcs thank you!

[@OgamiItto70]

That's what I like about guns...

[@rovpilot1]

Would love to see a honest comparison with the BMS

[@mothership-lr6ss]

fyi at 8:35 the cmm_k0 of 0.1 is = to 1% so a cmm of 1 means there is a 10% chance to defeat a missle with countermeasures

[@PrezDCS]

Good to know. I haven't seen anything up to a one so I assumed it was more like an out of 100% thing rather than out of 10%

[@mothership-lr6ss]

@@PrezDCS the aim9b has a 2 i think

[@PrezDCS]

@@mothership-lr6ss I'd have to go look, but I believe it.

[@OseanBigshot444]

I'm just a casual follower of DCS, never really played it, I just like to see what's going on with it occasionally. This was very entertaining and informative. Also, you sound suspiciously like S2 Underground lol.

[@PrezDCS]

Lol first time I've heard that I sound like him

[@myr_wlk698]

Although it provides fire res and better absorption, it really doesn't make that big of a different compared to a regular gapple. Notch is just not that op imo

[@PrezDCS]

@@myr_wlk698 wtf is a gapple?

[@myr_wlk698]

@@PrezDCS it was a joke, minecraft golden apple. Compared to notch apple.

[@PrezDCS]

@@myr_wlk698 Oh lol, I know what that is. Just felt so out of context I didn't realize.

[@lucky_luke4785]

Here's how we combine both views in 335th: For Defensive Counter-Air we run low/medium risk timelines and kinematically defeat missiles. For Offensive Counter-Air we run high-risk timelines, with high-pk shots. Once we are banzai in the visual arena where you can't defeat the missile kinematically we notch, so we have less ATA and keep the hostile defensive until he runs into the ground or eats a missile. We used to have a fantastic rwr in the F-15E and it's still good but not as easy to notch as with the F-15Cs. DCAF will be recruiting soon, so if you want to experience our top of the line training and ops seasons, check out our Forum posts and get in contact!

[@PrezDCS]

That's cool and all, but I think Alamo is better ;)

[@mp7_acog]

I’d love to see a similar explanation of how the AIM-7s and other SAR missiles work/don’t work properly.

[@PrezDCS]

I’d have to get more information on the SARH missile to make one. They definitely need work, but they’re at least an authentic experience

[@Vapor_32]

Please post some GS hops in your Charlie Eagle. I fly the Viper exclusively, and am genuinely interested in the pvp experience with that aircraft. Frankly, it's hard to wrap my head around not having L16. Thanks in advance and thanks for this vid too! 🤝🏾

[@PrezDCS]

Will do. I fly it every now and then on GS, but without link16 it's really hard to make decisions relying on the slow update rate of the AWACS giving you piecemeal information

[@HighAspect]

@@PrezDCS next video you can cover how irl datalink isn’t the all seeing eye as done in DCS 😅😂

[@theninja5019]

fake news jk

[@LazerDon271]

I flew F16s in 1942 for Air Force battalion Charlie in Vietnam and this video is 100% accurate with how I was taught.

[@prichardgs]

Great video!!!

[@hansigasus2006]

I think people underastimate how deadly some missals in reality are. In DCs you can dodge like 6 AARAMs when you know what you are doing, or even 4-5 meteors. Like wtf... I wanne see a modern pilot dodge that many missals, with ez. Most of the time it comes down to a Fox2 fight if you dont have that many Foxs3 on your aircraft. Which makes you ask the question why are theire even Fox 3 in the first place, sometimes. Guess what, wikipedia dosent tell you everything about those missals. They are probably double as deadly then in DCS

[@666okano]

I hadnt heard of the notch before this video. Now i feel like Keanu Reeves after learning KungFu

[@ziosam850]

As long Chizh seat in his place at ED, there are no chanches to see qby improvement, SATAL players should mock him during streams and meme notch or AoA everything to show how a disgrace is missile notching in dcs, same for flaring everything that is launched from the frontal emisphere

[@KomradeDoge]

While I can see this definitely being a problem for PvP players, currently (myself being almost exclusively a PvE player) see this as, at least until ED does something about AI behavior, a decent counter to them always being seemingly perfect in their execution of just about every combat maneuver. The Ai always knows when they've been launched on, even down to which ship in a flight is the actual one targeted. They can pull way more in a dogfight than the plane their flying can physically IRL, or more importantly than a player flying the exact same plane. They can see through everything from trees to clouds to buildings. The RWR and notching being more effective than it should be is (IMO of course) lower on the list of things the game should improve on.

[@Lochaby]

Isn't it worth carrying chaff for SAMs? You can't really notch them, can you?

[@PrezDCS]

@@Lochaby you can if it’s a pulse Doppler track radar

[@KarthanRouge]

As an aspiring Jeff flyer and lover, this video will help me greatly, I think 😂

[@PrezDCS]

Sorry, but Total Jeff Death

[@egoalter1276]

I understand that perpendicular flight in ground background defeats doppler shift gating target discriminators, but if its so effective, why hasnt distance gating as a secondary discriminator not become more widespread earlier? As early as the sixties ranging was commonly calculated from phase interfefence of the reflected wave in pulsed wave radars, so it should only require signal processing electronics, no new antenna by the time radar guided missiles became common in air combat.

[@egoalter1276]

What the hell, notching is simulated based on missile position relative to the airframe, not missile position relative to plane trajectory? That is incredibly poor coding. All it would take is checking the angle of the planes velocity vector and the missile-plane line.

[@blayas5239]

I like the path that the simulation of radars and especially IR and irst's has taken in war thunder.

[@RAAFLightning1]

cookie is so happy he is on the thumbnail of a youtube video that he told me to shut up when i asked him about it the other day in a voice chat

[@ghosk]

I thought everybody knew that if you cared about insane model accuracy you'd play BMS

[@scottl9660]

Thank you for this mate. This won’t be what you want to hear but I was thinking about getting DCS, I think I’ll just watch YT videos and fly other games.

[@wmouse]

If you're put off by the gamey taste of DCS and want a modern fighter pilot sim, try Falcon BMS. It's a lot cheaper and it's stunningly good.

[@MongooseTacticool]

You could free trial modules on standalone version, in a chain, and never really pay for anything. There are free mods as well, such as the A4E which can be used on servers.

[@jansatamme6521]

War thunder having more realistic CMs (at least flares, notching is even easier there) is crazy

[@hephaestion12]

Lol eagle dynamics models something correctly "for once" 😂 its the highest fidelity combat flight sim out there? I mean sure not perfect but to say "for once" is pretty insulting to a lot of hard work

[@Checklist_STT]

Good stuff, hopefully people take a lot away from it.

[@PrezDCS]

That's my hope as well. I think everyone in the community, regardless of their leaning towards PvP multiplayer, should understand this and open their eyes to how this game really works.

[@what1048]

I wonder if TFS has better notching or not (Probably not but im just curious)

[@SlavianAesthetics]

Yeah real pilots play war thunder smh

[@PrezDCS]

So true, so true! REAL in fact, so real....

[@SlavianAesthetics]

@@PrezDCSWilbur and Orville Wright told me so.

[@Error-33]

These kinds of commentary videos on certain topics are really nice. Great video man, learned a lot

[@SkyDawg91]

I see a lot of complaints about chaff and flare being RNG but I’ve never seen anybody offer a better solution. There is no absolute guarantee that chaff and flare works in every IRL situation, so isn’t the employment/deployment of C&F IRL essentially slightly RNG? So what needs to be changed? Better tolerances in the programming? Better odds in the slot machine? lol. Genuinely curious

[@PrezDCS]

If you've flown Razbam's F-15E and Mirage 2000, or Heatblur's F-4 and F-14, they have actually modeled the effects of chaff on radars extremely well in that they actually cause false alarm detections on the radar within certain parameters and radar settings. This is not the case for ED modules and certainly not the missiles. As for IR, one just needs to look at War Thunder (haha yes le funny inaccurate game). They have an infinitely better IR model than DCS does and DCS has existed for FAR longer and is supposed to be actually be a simulator.

[@delayed_control]

Some questions: 1. Why does HPRF require a wider notch filter? 2. How should the countermeasures work instead? Should they either always work or never work depending on the radar/missile used?

[@PrezDCS]

@@delayed_control 1. HPRF has larger notch filters b/c it has more range ambiguity than lower PRFs b/c it acquires all its info through Doppler shift(phase comparison) and therefore needs sizeable shifts in phase b/c if the phase shift required for detection is very small you end up with lots of false alarm detections from random ground clutter 2. Some radars in game already simulate realistic chaff effects like the Razbam radars where depending the parameters of the radar, the chaff blooms will create new detections that mess with the radar. This is something that should be standard. As for flares, they could most likely model IR seekers pretty accurately without too much effort and then flare rejection would just be based on sensitivity to new heat sources/FOV which then could further be used for IRCCM modeling like in the 9M where if the seeker detects a new bright hot spot(flare) it shutters like IRL to ignore the new heat source and reacquire the normal one. These would add vastly more accurate ways to employ countermeasures

[@gigantrejser4926]

"Why does HPRF require a wider notch filter?" - Not all. It depends of radar. "How should the countermeasures work instead? Should they either always work or never work depending on the radar/missile used?" - Everything depends on scripts and MTI clutter fillter. It just probability.

[@gigantrejser4926]

@@PrezDCS "1. HPRF has larger notch filters b/c it has more range ambiguity than lower PRFs b/c it acquires all its info through Doppler shift(phase comparison) and therefore needs sizeable shifts in phase b/c if the phase shift required for detection is very small you end up with lots of false alarm detections from random ground clutter" - it depends on radar, because every radar can have another bandwith and higher or lower transmit power.

[@davedeville6540]

Get to the point already

[@PrezDCS]

@@davedeville6540 tiktok attention spans be like

[@cammoore0823]

As someone just now starting DCS and dumping 50-something dollars into the F16, this is extremely disheartening. I always believed that DCS was one of the most (if not the most) realistic modern flight simulators on the market. It definitely seemed like it too with how much the modules cost. Thank you for this video. It definitely has me reconsidering some things in DCS, at least until these issues are properly addressed.

[@PrezDCS]

It's the best simulator for learning how to operate the aircraft. So, if you really just like pushing buttons and feeling like you're in the cockpit of a real F-16 then this is the game for you. But if you're looking for a realistic combat experience then this isn't the place

[@arxidamos13]

Notching is cancer, unrealistic and one of the main reasons I lost interest in DCS a few years back. BVR is a mess. Nobody cares about the NEZ. Everybody hugs the deck and there is no advantage in flying high anymore. ED will never change this because the REDFOR players will get mad. It is a "balancing" decision not a realism one.

[@PrezDCS]

It's not balancing. If anything, this just helps blue jets because they have far superior RWRs. Almost nobody flies the redfor jets in the competition scene because they are just strictly worse.

[@__Dusty_]

Great work on this video dude! Learnt a lot about the DCS air-to-air meta. Bit of a sorry state isn't it :(

[@PrezDCS]

Tell me about it

[@andrewa837]

Actually if you spin (roll with a little pitch) towards missiles in DCS they will miss 4/5 of the time. It's hilariously stupid because proximity fuses don't work in multiplayer.

[@PrezDCS]

Yeah, but that's a netcode issue usually, not really supposed to happen. Just a symptom of the complexity of net syncing in the game. That's actually just exploiting the game lol

[@andrewa837]

@@PrezDCS it only affects the client planes, the host plane is actually at a major disadvantage as the spin trick won't work. Also, I wouldn't call it just a netcode issue. I'm compiling footage of the phenomenon and the way missiles work plus how planes in DCS "look" in the world (only the pilot models aspect matters this is why ground units always headshot) combine for a deadly stupid combo. In BMS this just doesn't happen

[@PrezDCS]

@@andrewa837 Oh I know it only matters about where the pilot is. That's how the fusing works. Fusing is technically modeled in multiplayer but because it's based off the pilot it never actually accurately fuses lol

[@freakmusicaddict]

​@@andrewa837 wait what the game only cares about pilot position, it doesn't take account of the whole plane¿?????¿¿¿ Dafuq

[@HobelDcs]

@@PrezDCS this is not correct the Fuze explodes from the Plane model if you test it in detail you will also notice this The ground units aiming at the head is also no longer the case.(for well over a year) test this in detail and you will find exactly that, place your aircraft on a Field next to a unit of your choice, it will shoot at the centre of the aircraft and so on.

[@qadqdae]

Heatblur > anything in case of simulation As always

[@Pukin-Dog]

I think you need to look at the Harrier RWR. :-) FAR more accurate than anything else...indeed it's accurate enough to use as a psuedo HTS to find SAMs.

[@TakoInkling]

Nicely put together *chefs kiss*

[@PrezDCS]

Thank you very much!

[@coldclaws2479]

behold, the video that killed dcs "esports"

[@cookie125]

That cookie guy is on to something

[@PrezDCS]

I think he's RETARDED

[@louhodo5761]

This is how i destroy SAM sites in game with the F1EE.

[@Pricklyhedgehog72]

Guns, guns it is then...

[@germangamingvideos6069]

I know this is unrelated to the video but are you ever planning to make a video like "the rooks have arrived" for the soviet song "fantom"?

[@PrezDCS]

I did actually talk to someone about doing that recently. It's a possibility for sure. I would be interested in starting that project.

[@svenborchert1122]

About the RWR you guys are wrong. @prez , they are well capable of reading distance according to signal strength and direction for many years and are in fact capable of telling exactly where a missile is as long the data on radar strength in correlation to distance is correct. It is no magic behind that concept

[@PrezDCS]

Yeah yeah this is all very well known, but you do know that there is no way for the RWR to tell whether the intercepted radar energy are sidelobes or mainlobes which can lead to false data interpretation and false warnings since sidelobes are significantly lower energy than the mainlobe but still very detectable within range. Also, the accuracy of the range and bearing indication is extremely beholden to the accuracy of the antenna and signal processing which most jets in the 90s (which DCS is more or less emulating) had rudimentary capabilities compared to the current day. They should not be as accurate as they are in game.

[@dougmasters4561]

As a DCS player i have no idea why anyone else would get offended. Never have I ever considered it anything but a video game and I have yet to find someone else who was confusing themselves.

[@PrezDCS]

You should interact with the community more then. There's lots of people that take this game way more seriously than they should and will point out this game as analogic for IRL.

[@WigSplitters]

You say these are problems yet you provide no proof of them occuring and also do not provide proof of how they differ from real life, i dont like to trust another mans word because both yours and EDs have the same weight

[@PrezDCS]

Did you watch this video with just sound and no picture?? I literally spend the entire time in the background notching and showcasing notches with tacview

[@adiaprog5787]

Nice video, well made! Cheers.

[@PrezDCS]

Thank you!

[@mailman282]

You´re completely ignoring the effects of ECM which are way stronger IRL than in DCS. Be careful what you wish for, watch what this USAF Colonel says at this time stamp about AIM-120s not working at visual ranges: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bHylnqlsfaefqq8feature=shared&t=542 Also earlier in the video he mentions how on the modernized MiG-21s, the jammer made them practically invisible to mechanically steered radars. AIM-120C5 has a mechanically steered array, and a much weaker radar compared to the F-15s for example, which the colonel states was useless vs. the jammer. Meanwhile in DCS, it is much easier to notch an aircraft radar than the AIM-120 active seeker: F-15C has a ~75 knot notch filter, the AIM-120 has 25 knots. The R-77 if i remember correctly has 10 but also eats chaff more, being on super old code. The truth is, if DCS makes notching even weaker, and as you´ve mentioned, it already used to be much stronger, then memes like spamming ecm on and off to defeat missiles head-on will get stronger. ED is aiming to preserve a certain missile effectiveness. Ask yourself: Would you rather have the current modelling or one where missiles are almost completely un-notchable, but planes with modern jammers become "practically invisible" like the USAF Colonel states in the Video?

[@PrezDCS]

@@mailman282 Make missiles un-notchable and get rid of jamming until ED decides to model it even remotely correct. What do you mean ignoring ECM? That is completely outside the scope of this video! You’re bringing up something that is just not at all part of the conversation.

[@mailman282]

@@PrezDCS Notching and chaff are part of electronic warfare, what you´re asking for will lead to practically perfect missiles. ED will never do that as they´ve said before. You´ll make them rework the missiles again which will cause a million bugs again and not satisfy anyone since ED will always implement ways to defeat the missiles non kinematically. You can either choose to push for DCS to finally become consistent and less bug-infested or watch the endless cycle of "no barrel rolling" and "no ECM" etc. in tournaments because the base game doesnt work well enough anymore. Or you just wait for a competitor to come up and kill DCS which will happen sooner than later. And if you look at War Thunder VTOL VR for example, that competitor might have WAY less reliable missiles, DCS right now is worth gold against that.

[@razgriz25thinf]

Really, this is just all the more of an indictment of modern era DCS and an endorsement of cold war DCS. Notching isnt less effective against fox-1s, but having to go into the notch puts you at a huge disadvantage when fox-1 firing ranges in miles can be measured in single digits, but the attacker also has to stay nose on the whole time, and the defender cant just whip the nose around and put an AMRAAM or 9M/X out there before going back into the notch. Cold war is at least somewhat close to what its trying to represent. Modern isnt even close, and its less fun and interesting as a result.

[@PrezDCS]

Yeah, I much prefer the 80s era of DCS when I play. I like not having to care about AMRAAMs.

[@HighAspect]

@@PrezDCSgib F-15A high fidelity :)

[@PolarBearSeal]

Ok, I think it's time to learn to notch.

[@contrails2151]

I made it 6 minutes in before I gave up, because you never explained what the notch even is.

[@PrezDCS]

Sorry, this isn't "baby's first notch". The assumption of this video is that you already understand what the notch is and this is to tell you how it works in DCS. Go watch Mike Solyom's video if you really need an explanation on what the notch is.

[@xfire7]

A realistic assessment 👏