🚀 go-pugleaf

Daniel,

Hello, I am one of the 30 or so Falcon 3.0 beta testers that begged SH to
not release a buggy F3 when it did. I've been involved in testing and debugging
of all the patches, and am currently writing an F3 related book for THe Waite
Group Press. FYI, the book will ship with a disk with extra RF missions, 
Latest release of Falncnr and F3maps.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on some of your suggestions:


>From: d...@ocf.berkeley.edu (Daniel Rosler)
>
>This is a list of suggestions I sent to SH.  I thought y'all might be 
>interested and might offer further suggestions.
> 
>1) The rudder should always be available (not just when wheels are extended); 
>its effectiveness decreasing with speed. Otherwise several ACM's in books 
>such as Shaw's "Fighter Combat" cannot be executed. 

This is a good suggestion, but unrealistic. The F-16's Flight Control COmputer
actually does phase out manual control of the rudders as airspeed increases.
The FCC actaully cuts off manual rudder around 250Kts, but for the sake of
playabilitity, SH extended this range to around 300Kts.

Actual F-16 pilots we consulted for reference stated that they usually adjusted
the rudder pedals to be out of reach of their feet, and never touched them
during flight, period. The F-16 is a true FBW machine; you just point the
stick where you want it to go, and the FCC figures out how to get it there.

  
>2) It would be nice if auto-pilots would land along with leader.

Auto pilots will land, but *ONLY* if they fly to every waypoint. If you
bypass a waypoint a land, the wingmen will simply circle. You can END-MISSION
with no ill effects. If you fly all waypoints such that the waypoint indicator
on the HUD automatically changes, the wingies will land.

   
>3) For night missions, AGM65D's should load automatically on wing men.

Actaully, te beta crew had devised an excellent system allowing stored
configurations and flexible copy commands for loading arms, but SH decided
not to implement it.

    
>4) The AWAC's should do what AWAC's really do and provide threat information.
>For example, they could warn about various threats (to ground installations,
>yours and other flights) and provide intercept vectors.  Most importantly, 
>with this feature, one wouldn't have to broadcast their location by doing 
>360 degree radar sweeps to assess the threat environment.

AMEN! We begged SH to incorporate this, but they wanted people to fully
use HFR radar, so they purposefully  limited AWACS usefullness. Ten, to
aggrevate matters, they refused to fix bugs in HFR radar. This is a very
annoying situation.

    
>5) Be able to tell wing men to turn off their radars to run silent.  Works 
>well with AWAC's possibilities.

Again, we begged SH during the beta phase to allow better control of
wingmen.
      
[ Stuff deleted ]

>Most important:
>	 
>8) We felt there needed to be a different way to design flights.  Because 
>some missions involve getting several flights to the same place at the same 
>time (and not always from the same place) it would be useful if a time-based
>waypoint were available.  For example:

SH discussed this with us. We stated there must be a way to gurantee arrival
times to waypoints. SH flat out told us this was too dificult to do, and that
FOTI (written by Rowan and distributed by SH) had this function, but "cheated"
They did not elaborate on what "cheated" meant.
 

The bottom line: most things that people want to have in F3 was discussed,
but SH felt it was too costly to implement. Fortunately, FALCNR F3MAPS and
F3ILS solve most of the remaining, critical problems.

BTW, a hacker on CIS found the following text string in buried in F3:
"NAMLIG SI DAED". Bears a close resemblence to "GILMAN IS DEAD"

Tom Basham
-- 
Tom Basham      AT&T Bell Laboratories   ba...@ihlpb.ATT.COM
I'm the NRA.  I also vote.  I can't say what AT&T does.