VRS SuperBug Heads Up!

Hey, Mud! Just a thought here, but I was having the same problem until I tried this out.... Right after you kick the tires and light the fires, look on the left side console and locate the 'reset' button on the FCS panel. Push it and you should hear a tone. The 'FCS' light on the warning panel should go out, and you should hopefully then have total control. My other problem was that during setup, I only reversed TWO of the four controller axis.. I could fly, but it was very unstable, with little or no control at low speeds. I went back through the process of reversing the axis (all four this time) and all is well. This may or may not work for you, but I thought I'd let you know how I got through it... I hope it works for you.
 
Jmig, I agree on the delay issue. Because I only made circuits and carrier landings I thought that it was just a combination of low-speed control forces and mass inertia (I noticed that in the real simulator also, although I cannot remember whether it was to the same degree), but after your post I tried it in cruising speed and the delay is still there. I can imagine the instantaneous roll and pitch rates of the real Super Hornet being worse than those of the F-16 since the plane is bigger (longer mass moment arms) and scaled up from the smaller F/A-18C, which was itself scaled up from the YF-17, so it seems likely to me that the control effectiveness did not keep pace with the increase in mass inertia. But your point remains valid: the delay after control movement initiation seems rather long. During carrier landings moving the control stick is to be minimized anyway as far as I know (unless you use autothrottle, which I am going to try next), so I have no trouble with the delay. But in up-and-away flight the plane, as you say, does not fly as nicely as the Aerosoft F-16.
I also noticed that you have to cycle the views in order to get the VC working, you are right there too. A bit awkward, but manageable.

A separate point is that when you use the download manager to download the plane, you are asked whether you want to install it. If you say yes, the downloaded file does not seem to be saved on your computer, so you cannot re/install the plane without re/activating via the Internet. I tried twice to download the plane afterwards, but apparently the download manager detected the installed plane and did not give me the option to install or not (according to the VRS support forum if you don’t install the file is indeed saved on your computer). So now I’ve used up all my 3 activation codes but I still don’t have the files to install the plane. No problem as long as my hard disk does not crash or I get a new computer, but else…
 
Every one of the issues you've described in this thread has been reported by one or another in the VRS Support Forum. Most of them require reading the Manual. Setting up your controls has been an issue for some with multiple controllers and there IS a way to do correctly. You should not have any built-in deadzones.

It's one thing to say that both the F/A-18E and the F-16 are FBW and another to say that that's the way they have been modeled in FS9/FSX, respectively. Perhaps the reason some of you feel that the F-16 flies smoother (it actually doesn't) is that it's based on the default airfile in the FSX SDK far more so than the VRS Superbug is on the FS9 SDK. IOW, it isn't close to replicating FBW whereas the F/A-18E is very close -- so close indeed that the rest of the flight dynamics hold water throughout the range of the FDE (it's energy envelope). As was said, apples and oranges -- which, BTW, apples given the same thrust vector cannot not possibly "fly" as far, under as much control, as oranges, because there are no means by which it can gain lift (a la the orange's ruts and bumps). See also, golf balls and baseballs.

Frankly, the two planes are so dissimilar in the MS Flight Sim environment that one cannot truly compare them except cosmetically. I like both planes and I fly both planes.....for different reasons. I also applaud the efforts of Aerosoft in producing it's product and congratulate VRS in producing the finest military add-on for FS9/FSX available yet.
 
Not every one. The issue of the odd takeoff behavior, where the plane seems stuck to the ground, and then leaps into the air at a very steep angle, unless you are very ready to push hard nose down, has been reported by many, and the last word there was that this would be addressed in a patch later. The issue of a seeming “dead zone” or delay between control input and control surface deflection, I don’t recall seeing there yet, but I may have missed it. In any case, this is not a matter of not having read the book and followed the directions properly. I think everyone here agrees the plane is a masterpiece. The plane flies fine for me, but I think jmig may be onto something here, and it could be related to the takeoff characteristics, something VRS folks have said they are looking into.
 
PRB said:
Not every one. The issue of the odd takeoff behavior, where the plane seems stuck to the ground, and then leaps into the air at a very steep angle, unless you are very ready to push hard nose down, has been reported by many, and the last word there was that this would be addressed in a patch later.
Click to expand...

Yes. This is true, but it hasn't been complained about by many. I can think of only 5 or 6 that have made mention of it and once they understood how the plane's FBW is designed to work they aren't quite so surprised. However, during the beta I made mention of it because it wouldn't lend itself well to formation takeoffs, not to mention being unlike what people had experienced before (personally, I thought it was too much but I don't even notice it now!). It's going to be adjusted for the first patch. I hope that everyone can understand that tweaking this is much more complicated than what you might think due to the interaction with a variety of other inputs that allow the plane to replicate the FBW in real thing as accurately as possible.
 
I have the pitch-up issue as well; At the moment, however, I am content looking at my own setup to try and squeeze a few more frames out of this aircraft; The staff at VRS is great, and Rob has already helped me get more out of it, and continues to do so. A nit-pick that I do have (and it is not an important one) is that the red strobes on the stabs don't flash in the 3-pulse mode that they do on the real aircraft. There is a switch in the vc but it doesn't allow a setting to replicate that external lighting mode. Only reason I care is because that at night it is really the only visible indicator that you are looking at a superhornet. Stupid nit-pick, I know. But i'm not to bright either. :icon_lol:
 
I have the same impression about control behavior that's been mentioned here. The fbw effect subjectively feels really good, but it requires excessive joystick throw to get the desired pitch reaction.
 
Deacon said:
Every one of the issues you've described in this thread has been reported by one or another in the VRS Support Forum. Most of them require reading the Manual. Setting up your controls has been an issue for some with multiple controllers and there IS a way to do correctly. You should not have any built-in deadzones.

It's one thing to say that both the F/A-18E and the F-16 are FBW and another to say that that's the way they have been modeled in FS9/FSX, respectively. Perhaps the reason some of you feel that the F-16 flies smoother (it actually doesn't) is that it's based on the default airfile in the FSX SDK far more so than the VRS Superbug is on the FS9 SDK. IOW, it isn't close to replicating FBW whereas the F/A-18E is very close -- so close indeed that the rest of the flight dynamics hold water throughout the range of the FDE (it's energy envelope). As was said, apples and oranges -- which, BTW, apples given the same thrust vector cannot not possibly "fly" as far, under as much control, as oranges, because there are no means by which it can gain lift (a la the orange's ruts and bumps). See also, golf balls and baseballs.

Frankly, the two planes are so dissimilar in the MS Flight Sim environment that one cannot truly compare them except cosmetically. I like both planes and I fly both planes.....for different reasons. I also applaud the efforts of Aerosoft in producing it's product and congratulate VRS in producing the finest military add-on for FS9/FSX available yet.
Click to expand...


Hi Deacon, welcome to SOH. Good to see you here. Ok, based on your avatar and sig. And, if I recall correctly from other forums, like me, you have some time in the Phantom. Let's compare the two aircraft, since they are both center sticks.

On takeoff, when you rotated, you pulled smoothly to 10 -12 degrees. There was no hesitation then a jump from the F-4's nose. The nose came up smoothly and the aircraft flew off the runway. Unless you were heavy weight and slow, control movements were

After rolling off the perch, you never THOUGHT about stick movements. You just thought, if you actually thought verbally (can you do that?) and the plane followed your thoughts. Why?

Because the controls were sensitive enough that all you did was think “nose needs to cone up at bit” and instinctively your arm moved the stick a fraction of an inch to command that attitude. You felt the airplane and became one with it.
Up into the AS F-16 this is what I missed most about MSFS over real flying. In MSFS you always had to react. There was no thoughtless flow with the bird. I see I need to climb, I input back pressure, I watch where the nose goes and then correct. Then it drifts and I recorrect. That is what happens in the F-18, with one nice exception. The nose tens to stay where I put it. It is SOOOooo nice to be able to be in level flight, look down and flip a stitch or look at the approach plate and look up to see the nose about where you left it. Great job on that feature.
I know you have a lot more time in this aircraft than I do. However, I don’t find it as smooth as the F-16. If you have set your aircraft and sim up to avoid what I mentioned above, I sure wish you would pass it on to the rest of us. I love the systems on this plane. Tweak it so it flies smoothly and I just may trade in my USAF wings and runway for Navy gold and a carrier deck.
 
Quicksand said:
Hey, Mud! Just a thought here, but I was having the same problem until I tried this out.... Right after you kick the tires and light the fires, look on the left side console and locate the 'reset' button on the FCS panel. Push it and you should hear a tone. The 'FCS' light on the warning panel should go out, and you should hopefully then have total control. My other problem was that during setup, I only reversed TWO of the four controller axis.. I could fly, but it was very unstable, with little or no control at low speeds. I went back through the process of reversing the axis (all four this time) and all is well. This may or may not work for you, but I thought I'd let you know how I got through it... I hope it works for you.
Click to expand...

Believe me I've done that, over and over and over and.........didn't work.
 
I couldn't begin to reply to all that jmig wrote in his post above. But let's try to knock it down to something reasonable.

I've got a lot of time in the F-4. I am also on the beta teams of both the VRS F/A-18E and the Aerosoft F-16. So I do have my own observations of what makes each a good plane, and I won't get into a debate on the merits or problems of either one except to say they exist. Anyone who thinks either one is a perfect replication of the real bird needs a reality check.

The issue that's been discussed here, amongst others, has been pitch-up as the nose leaves the runway on takeoff in the F/A-18E. But really, how much more white space can we give it? To really come up with some quantitative facts to compare we would have to have your various machines side-by-side so that we could make sure each was configured exactly the same way: from the hardware, services running, scenery and terrain mesh settings, all the same controllers set up to the same exact standards, all null zones matching, each selected aircraft set up the same on each machine....well, you get where I'm going. It just can't be done. So, as developers, we have to come up with something that will work for everyone (not so easy) without breaking the parameters of the rest of the aircraft's flight envelope.

That's where we are now. For me, I rarely fly the bird fully loaded since I'm testing specific aspects of it that may require a quick return for landing (and I don't want to dump fuel). However, I've found that if I leave the plane on the ground a little longer without trying to force a rotation I get a much smoother transition. But that's still not good enough for me because I want control down to a gnat's ass so that I can keep it on the deck and suck up the gear without too much effort. We'll get there, trust me. IT would have been done by now if everyone was back from their holidays.

As for comparing the stick forces, you can't. Totally different type of systems. Not having any time in an actual F/A-18E I'm not the best one to make that comparison, but I have asked a few guys who do have the time and it's not nearly as quick to touch as some might think being FBW. Resistance to control stick forces/movements plays a much more integrated roll in a FBW than in a physically linked system. Since both the 18 and the 16 are FBW they are very similar that way. If you look at the specifications for both planes you'd see that their roll rates aren't that different.

Anyway, as I said before, all these issues will be resolved by the development team without too much delay. Just keep in mind that we're dealing with a simulator that is a game and not one designed from the ground up for commercial use.
 
I know where you're coming from Dacon: I think we all understand that it's a game more that a simulator........I also think the people around here, many of which are real pilot's, are very advanced users. I've been around aviation since I was 19 years old. It's a life long passion.

Something to think about.... I have almost 7hrs ( I know that's nothing) in an A-6 simulator at MCAS Cherry Point; from 1985 to 1986. FS9 and FSX are far more advanced than that simulator was for it's time. Pilot's back then logged their sim. time as actual flight time. So to me there's a fine line between game and simulator.

If F/A18's where having the same control problems that I'm having there would be a fleet wide safety stand down!:icon_lol: Like my F/A-18, I placed it in stand down mode unitl the "problems" are resolved by the tech's. I just can't wait until it's resolved, I miss my Bug!!:applause:
 
hey guys,

here a again a few shots iof the superbug flying and practicing intercepting an orion with 2 bugs and a Viper


315.jpg


3ship.jpg


3ship1.jpg


bom.jpg


danny.jpg


flare135.jpg


ss300.jpg


ss301.jpg


ss306.jpg


ss315.jpg
 
Let us see what the update brings. But from this discussion it is clear that it is next to impossible to have a definite answer to the question how realistic the flight behaviour of the Aerosoft and VRS (and surely many more) aircraft in FS actually is. I have flown five or six professional F-16 simulators and no two of them flew the same. But this discussion is good; I learned a lot from it and it merely reinforces my opinion of how excellent the VRS Super Hornet actually is and how difficult it is to assess the realism of an aircraft’s flight model. Perhaps it shows how far PC simulators have come. Fifteen years or so ago curing-edge sims like Aces over Europe have planes which you had to land by flying them onto the ground because flaring was impossible. We had to live with basically faulty mechanics of flight models and loved the sims anyway. Now we are talking about details so small that it is difficult to say definitively how they compare to the real aircraft. Even if a patch were not forthcoming, I am extremely satisfied with the aircraft. The delay/twitchiness issue is, I find, rather easy to get used to and I am still not convinced that it detracts much from the realism, given all ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ mentioned in this thread. It is good that we have discussions like this; it will advance our hobby further. But I would not like it to detract from the overall quality of the plane. And let us not forget that the real aircraft had its handling problems too, like transonic wing drop. Some of these problems were solved, but I don’t know how good the flight behaviour really is. Even successful operational aircraft can have nasty characteristics. I once read a flight report about the Russian Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker in which it was stated that it was ‘mushy’ in the roll. If you rolled fast it took a noticeable delay to stop the roll after centering the stick, compared to American fighters This would seem to me an adverse characteristic for a dogfighter, but it was there all the same.
By the way, a good way to assess the effect of the delay issue would be to see how it affects gun tracking in a mock dogfight. If the delay makes it unduly difficult, even after some practice, to get the pipper on an adversary, then there really is a problem. Has anyone tried this?
 
Hello Rat.NL

Can you please share with us your complete detailed set up and Screenshot
Tools for such "Laser Clear" Sreenshots.

They look like a "Blue Ray" DVD on a High Def TV !!!
Its seems also that you are flying over Netherland

Any FS9 or FSX Netherland Scenery including Volkel, Gilze Rijen, Twenthe
Leeuwarden, Eindhoven, etc...air bases you can recommend for me ?

Thanks for the sharing ! A Superb Job
Dank u voor het fantastische werk partageDu
:ernae:
VaporZ
 
i use screen shooter, then i crop and sharpen (unsharp mask) the screens in photoshop.
scenery is NL2000v3 with the tweaks that can be found in the bes
t fs9
tweak topic. further more i use nhancer for better handling of graphic settings versus SLi
 
MudMarine said:
FS9 and FSX are far more advanced than that simulator was for it's time. Pilot's back then logged their sim. time as actual flight time. So to me there's a fine line between game and simulator.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to insult anyone's passion about flight sim. I was asked a bunch of questions and, rather than getting real specific on my experience, I answered them in a fairly general way. The statement you make above just doesn't make any sense to me at all. Simulators I flew back in the early seventies were more sophisticated than FS9 or FSX in terms of what they allowed you to simulate accurately. That's the key. FS9 and FSX certainly have a lot more eye candy in many areas, but if the F-4 could do it, so could the simulator (almost everything). Not so with Microsoft's game. So to me there's no line at all.

If F/A18's where having the same control problems that I'm having there would be a fleet wide safety stand down!:icon_lol: Like my F/A-18, I placed it in stand down mode unitl the "problems" are resolved by the tech's. I just can't wait until it's resolved, I miss my Bug!!:applause:
Click to expand...
Of course, and every F/A-18E than needed fixing would be configured with exactly the same hardware and software, unlike the millions of potential combinations among flight simmers' controllers.
 
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