From time to time I check on the status of the MiG-21, which was once my fav module.

Well, it's rotten. The FM is bonkers, still holding 43.6 degrees AoA all day long with MIL or minimum A/B, and not a single one of those glaring bugs and inaccuracies has been given any attention to, for ages.

What a total shame. And to think they are the ones making the F-14...The Tomcat deserves MUCH better.

I regret spending money on the MiG-21, which is totally useless and only gathers virtual dust. If there will ever be any possibility to re-sell modules, my license key is up for grabs.

Ah, I remember writing something similar about a hawk, that thread even got a few comments from Cobra himself....my response was quite similar to yours regarding "buried under mountains of dust in my virtual hanger" regarding the '21 module....I'll see if I can find it.

Isn't the Tomcat the "hardest" one to code of these 3? MiG-21 has these problems, now Viggen launch some pretty ridiculous bugs, well if rudder not working counts as one.. I think we all gonna crash and burn when cat attacks us, and that my friends... isn't gonna be pretty.

I dont think the MIG-21 is the worst , probably the most dissapointing maybe
It had such potential, but too many silly issues eg the retarded activation issues

The HAWK on the other hand could defo be described as the worst module

No idea about the hawk, I steered well clear of it since I saw the first screenshots of the cockpit, and the whole "SFM first - AFM later" thing.

But I can agree, MiG-21 is the most disappointing module, but also the worst in my hangar.

Source taken from page 4 of the Hawk AFM thread

P.s, the FAA drama was back when the 9 starforce keys were being used up and the aircraft was still unflyable for those concerned parties and new comers....simply for clarification.

or on a more recent SimHQ post (yesterday).....

Lucky you dont have either the Hawk or the 101, its a tough call on which is crappier

And this is EXACTLY the reason why everyone should buy DCS keys exclusively through Steam. On Steam, you can ask for a refund if you have less than 2 hours of time with a module.

So buy your module on Steam, fly around for an hour and a half and if the module isn't what you expected, ask for a refund. If you live in the EU, prices are often better on Steam as well.

I never understood why people accept ED's crappy customer service.

I was wondering about you......than I looked at your SimHQ registration date.....you are new here....for a moment I thought my old sparring buddies Vitesse, SkateZilla and komemiute were up for another post war.

I imagine there may be some inaccuracies in the MIG-21, but the same can be said for the A-10C and any aircraft really. None of them are 100% entirely correct. Given that LNS has a MIG-21 pilot on the team, I'd like to think it flies fairly accurately.

But I don't think it can be called "the worst" module over some supposed minor inaccuracies. For those who are not up to speed, where are you obtaining this information?

With all due respect, it seems you're not really up to speed. And yes, it's really sad that they have an active MiG-21 pilot in their team, considering the laughable de-volution of their FM. It's just sad. Read up on the issues in the 21 forum, if those posts haven't been sanitized by the minions.

So you're getting your information from forum posts? I hope you have better sources than that. I'd love to see where you're finding this information if it is publicly accessible. This is a sincere question, I actually would like to know where you can find such detailed information on flight characteristics, even if only for the MIG-21BIS.

But I wouldn't consider posts on a flight sim forum to be worthy sources.

FM is difficult. I respect difficulties in getting FM just right especially in the extremes of the envelope.

MiG-21 isn't the worst module but it is the module which was being improved steadily and this improvement practically stopped.

It's not just the FM though, the weapon systems and the HUD/ASP do not work as per real life either. If you google it you'll be able to find full technical manuals including circuit diagrams in English, Polish, Russian and German so there is no excuse for LN not to have the thing properly simulated, but as Frederf says progress has ground to a halt. I think now LN have all our money, there is no incentive to fix so they have just moved on to the next thing.

I hope LN is rolling cash after releasing two modules. If they continue to a 3rd module in a similar state as the first two they will have about 10-12 years worth of fixing backlogged in total.

You don't have to be a pilot to know that a 43.6 degree AoA is flatout wrong. Those delta wings are like barn doors in the wind at those numbers, and considering the MiG-21's CoG moves forward with increased speed, the AoA should diminish, not increase.

The RL manual speaks of a stall warning buffeting at 16-18 degrees. How the hell is a 43,6 degree AoA considered valid at Mil/Full AB?

Gameplay concessions
- RS-2US and Kh-66 missiles (The RP-22 was a monopulse radar, so no beam-riding)
- UPK gunpods (Although there actually was the option for a central gunpod in early MiG-21's, as used by the Arab countries during the Yom Kippur war. I can recommend Osprey's ' Arab MiG-19 and MiG-21 units in combat' for more information on this and how and why they used it)
- Both nukes (Not every MiG-21 had the necessary wiring for nukes and the nuclear control panel wasn't detachable as it is in-game, so Leatherneck took some lee-way there. For more info on MiG-21bis subversions, Mladenov's (tiny) Air Vanguard 14 book is fine.)

Inaccuracies
- Navigation (Frederf and Tarres did a great job explaining what is wrong with it on the ED Forums, will post links to it later)
- Weapons Selector (In the real thing, you only use it to choose the first launch; for all sequencing launches you're not obligated to use the weapons selector again. This is well explained in the RL manual).
- Clock (Should work as the MiG-15 one and I believe it is already well-explained in the LN Mantishub, will post link later)

I used to love LN and I'm glad they went 'as accurate as possible' on the Viggen. But the MiG-21 really needs the inaccuracies and FM fixed.

EDIT:
@Jetronic: Wasn't the ASP fixed? IIRC you can turn the unrealistic ASP off in the 'Options' menu

Exactly what Vaderini said. Lol, the Super Hornet performs high alpha passes at 35 degrees at airshows, and here we have a cold war delta wing flying happily at 43.6....

Other than that:

- External sounds?? Still using the stock Su-25 sounds for some obscure reason. All other 3rd parties have custom sounds..

- Afterburner operation is not synced between outside animation (correct) and cockpit gauges + FM (WRONG! on the MiG-21 the A/B is lit AFTER the nozzle is opened fully).

- Small Z-issues in the turn coordinator and g-meter

- The acceleration time was also off by quite a bit, not sure where it stands now.

- Roll speed has been changed form extremely slow to extremely fast, back and forth several times. Did they have a MiG-21 pilot on the team? Seems he's busy enjoying the real MiG-21 while their FM is being ridiculed (damn, I would do the same

Good to know. I always knew the nukes would have had some leeway, as they don't function like nukes when they explode. To be fair, bomb blast radius has been fairly inaccurate forever, and I don't expect them to implement proper nuclear weapons as ED would have to do that. So I can see them skimping on the control panel for them, but the rest of the issues seem more notable.

Flogger, please, You're a member long enough both on blue forum and here to know there are flight and tech manuals available, describing the characteristics of that plane, either in form of factory charts, or at least a general description of its behaviour in supercritical regimes (because measuring these precisely isn't possible obviously). So some aspects of flight model can and are challenged not on the basis of "feel" of PC nerds, but based on hard data. I'm not talking about extra, non-historical weapons, 'cause if someone's anal about accuracy, he can just not use them.

Novak is the aforementioned pilot and FM coder for the MiG, but being a good military pilot doesn't automatically make the greatest software programmer and vice versa. The -21 was a module they all were learning their new sim-development job on, and it shows. Fixing one parameter breaks the other and so on... That is especially noticeable in recent FM changes merry-go-around. I guess to "fix" the plane once and for all, some aspects of the module (FM, nav aids, external sounds) would need a complete rewrite if LN did them today with experience they learned. I don't see that happening though, not for the 2-years old product, nearing the end of its commercial life.

Still, when I see the relatively simple gyro gunsight not working as the real thing after all these updates, or the dreaded weapons panel bug still here after a few months, or the rendering glitches on the instrument pages, which were supposed to be fixed in 1.5.3 or so... I do feel somewhat disheartened.

I still rather like the plane, take it for a spin every now and then and it's nowhere near being "the worst" in DCS universe. It seems to need just a few, final strong pushes to make it truly excellent product when publisher can honestly stop its further development and move on, but for some reason it just struggles to get there.

For what it's worth, Rudel wrote that some binaries with latest adjustments and fixes didn't make it to 1.5.6 OB update - let's wait and see what next weeks bring.

In Mig-21 Bis gameplay concessions can be added:

. Trigger magically fly down when press Arm Cannon button, and magically fly up when turn OFF cannon master switch (should by like in Black Shark).

. Weapons Release Cover button magically flip up when pressed Weapons Release button.

EDIT - But these concessions please the average DCSW player base. See the complains about not be possible map Mig-21 landing gear in one of their HOTAS press buttons (in true is possible via joystick mapping program), this players don't care about fidelity but commodity.