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Next up was one of the gentlemen from Edwards, a military contractor
interested in how the seat performed. He was helped into the straps and
took a whirl around the world. Then it was my turn. (By the way, for what
it's worth, the pilots who had tried the force-feel seat liked it.)
I strapped in (to get the full feel of the seat!) and started the
simulation. I had asked to get direction employing the weapons system. The
pilot had me roll inverted, pull towards the ground and level out at a lower
altitude (about 500 ft), then turn in towards the formation of aircraft.
Their position was indicated on the HUD by lines extending radially from the
center, the top of the HUD represented forward. Basically, the RWR
symbology was being displayed on the HUD. I remembered seeing that in GSC's
Hornet3.0...
Controls were, again, heavy (seems like I covered this ground before, huh?).
Again, controlling the aircraft took up a disproportionate amount of my
attention. Finesse was put on the backburner while I listened intently to
the direction I was receiving and splitting my concentration on the
instrumentation, the terminology the pilot was using and situational
awareness.
I had to put off the fact that I had the aircraft in a 5-deg
climb and I was a little slower than what the pilot had recommended a minute
ago... Oh well. I think it would be great if joysticks were made with
realistic forces. If we want real, we should be prepared to make control
inputs in a realistic fashion.
Here's another note on that topic. Aircraft aren't so much controlled with
deflection of the stick so much as with *pressure* to the stick. With
current hardware the emphasis is on deflection of the joystick. There
really is no feedback. Trust me, its a different ball game when you're
using the proper hardware. Flying these sims gave me a much greater
appreciation for the athletic ability and skill required to operate these
aircraft a) safely and b) in a manner that utilizes their full tactical
capabilities.
As I was flying toward the gaggle of "soon-to-be-debris," I started taking
mental note of my surroundings. The HUD is filled with a lot more than the
standard commerical sim fare. For example, if you've lost radar lock on a
contact, the TD box changes from solid lines to broken lines. Hadn't seen
that in civ-sims before. Most of the symbology was familiar to me, but
there was more information down and to the left and right that I was
unfamiliar with.
Click to continue
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Raytheon Simusphere
There were also a lot of tones and voice warnings (even,
believe it or not, a whistle! Just like someone was whistling at you to get
your attention) that don't normally appear in current civilian PC flight
sims. For example, when you command a missile launch, there is a tone, a
pause, and *then* a missile fires. In the sims we buy, a missile just flies
off the rail - no tones or pauses.
I remember my "instructor/guide" would be calling out information and I'd
ask, "Where did you see that?" and he would point it out on the HUD or
instrumentation. I have to say, the Hornet is much more robust than the
F-16 with respect to the amount of information available to the pilot.
Another HUD note - the HUD symbology was *very* thin compared to what I'm
used to in civilian flight sims. And the symbology appeared larger, too, notably the velocity vector/flight path marker. It was big and round. Imagine a
quarter held at arms length - that's about the size of it. In commercial
flight sims I would compare the size of the VV with a printed "o" like you
see in this article.
Keeping track of what HOTAS buttons did what was a challenge. The castle
switch controls which MPD is the current SOI. But once the SOI has been
changed, the castle switch now can mean something else. For example,
deflecting it to the right made the right MPD, currently displaying radar
information, the active sensor. A second right-selection automatically
locked up a target. Cool. Wouldn't it be great if current sims would
incorporate that functionality?
Go to Page Three.
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