amazing - even a survey can have bugs.

a few days ago I fixed the bizarre missing age range, 25-34.

There was a question of why is the sea harrier a 4th generation fighter?

why indeed? I was not quite certain where to place the sea harrier. Or what a generation of fighters actually is. In the sea harriers case, it entered service in the same era as the Tornado. Which made me wonder if in engineering terms it was advanced - obviously lacking in some weapons systems and many capabilities of the tornado. I wasn't quite sure on that since the sea harriers replaced the 3rd generation phantoms.

Small through deck cruisers might have been a sideways or backward step, but then planners probably thought it was the way to go for whatever reasons.

shall i move sea harrier into 3rd generation?

oh and of course, i'm pleased with the responses. theres some interesting info there, even if the survey was buggy.

for example, most of you definitely prefer digital distribution.

Feature wise, i was surprised by how important clickable cockpits are.

what you people at seem to want most though are, realistic avionics, realistic flight models and graphics that look the part.

you were collectively rather disinterested in alternate history scenarios and yet keen on dynamic campaign feature.

all very interesting. the preference for a naval task force scenario is encouraging - i wonder what a wider sample of the combat flight sim community will think of that - our little group here might be slightly biased!

There has not been an in-depth study sim for the Harrier yet, and there should be one. Nor has there been any kind of proper naval avaition sim released since Janes F/A-18. And there should be another one. Jet Thunder in its proposed form has a market, one that can be measured. The possibilites for follow-on releases, however, are tremendous. Given any kind of success with that first release, this has the potentional, really, to be the naval avaiation equivalent to the DCS fighter series.

Ripcord

^I agree with that post. We all want to see a naval aviation sim especially something based on the Falkland's war an untouched subject in simming. It was one of the larger military conflicts of the last 25 years (pre 2000) and an intriguing conflict at that. It's just a bonus that the Harrier is covered!

There is ony one simulator without clickable cockpits I play from time to time. It's Rise of Flight, but it's not that important in WWI aircrafts. For example I almost haven't played Il2 because of simplified engine management and no clickable cockpits.



You should see aircraft wishlist for DCS on Eagle Dynamics forums, most people wish for F/A-18 and carrier ops.

As this topic comes up more than occasionally, I will point out (as I usually do) that people don't just want clickable cockpits just for the sake of their being some buttons to push. That's why you won't find many people clamoring for the addition of clickable cockpits in Rise of Flight or IL-2; there isn't much point to having them.

When a modern (or in the case of Jet Thunder, "somewhat modern") combat jet sim has clickable cockpits, that automatically indicates something else: the avionics systems modeling is appropriately advanced to warrant clickable cockpits. Take a look at the original iterations of Lock On - good flight dynamics, wonderful graphics, and no clickable cockpits. What do we wind up with as an end result? An F-15 with simplified avionics modeling.

As Eagle Dynamics improved their product beyond Lock On, and announced the DCS series, we got Black Shark. Black Shark has a fully clickable cockpit, and it needs to. While it's certainly possible to map all of the cockpit buttons to keystroke combinations, it becomes an exercise in finding which obscure combination has not yet been assigned, and key command assignments rapidly begin to lose any sense of intuition. Thus, for a sim with advanced modeling of advanced avionics , a clickable cockpit becomes a functional necessity. For a sim with advanced modeling of basic avionics (see Lock On: Flaming Cliffs' Su-25T) or a sim with basic modeling of advanced avionics (see any number of "sim lite" titles), this functional necessity does not exist.

While I realize this doesn’t apply to JT, even an ultra-modern sim-lite needs at least clickable MFDs, IMO. If EF2000 didn't have clickable MFDs it would get kinda cumbersome...

http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/EF2K_TIALDWN.wmv
http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/EF2K_SEAM.wmv
http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/EF2K_RFM.wmv

Unfortunately the follow-up TAW doesn't have all MFD functions mapped to keys, forcing you to occasionally pull up an MFD screen. I'd rather have the option. With EF2000 it's nice to have clickable MFDs when I'm traveling with a laptop and limited button Wingman stick vs. my X52.

Although Hornet Korea (i.e. PSF) did pretty well IMO with mid-core avionics and no click-pit by using multiple cycling for radar sub-modes...

http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/PSF_Key_Reference.pdf

But I still wish HK had a clickable pit.

Oops, meant to show this air-refueling instead (even if botched at first) as it makes more use of clicks in a lighter title...

http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/EF2K_RF2.wmv

Definitely easier than mapping those MFD functions to a HOTAS while making it easy to play with a simpler joystick.

After flying A2A's Thunderbolt and B-17 in FSX I've realised how simplified aircrafts in Il-2 are. In high-fidelity simulation of WW2 aircraft clickable cockpit is a must.



I agree

done