The ACTUAL Real Truth Behind the Notch in DCS 

Great video pointing out one of the many areas where DCS needs to improve.....there are many others. I will pick with you one point. You can simulate a game, you can game a simulation, but there is a huge difference between a game and a simulation. DCS, and most of the current computer based attempts are recreating the atmosphere of military flying are SIMULATIONS. Some are much better than others, some have more unrealistic elements...for example. labels and spotting aids which doesn't happen in real life and I would say are "GAME" elements. If you're not aware of what a simulation is and why it's different than a game then maybe you shouldn't simply call DCS or any other flight program a game. In simplest terms, checkers is a game, it doesn't represent real life, there is a singular goal, finite strategies and is (relatively) easily reproduced on a computer....like tic tac toe. A simulation is an attempt to recreate an experience or system that we see in real life, be that an ecological simulation of a african velt, or a simulation of the dynamics of a lake...or a flight simulation.... military or non military....doesn't matter. The point is that you are trying to capture that real life experience. I have never seen a perfect simulation....and that isn't always the goal. It's easy to find faults and be critical of a simulation and indeed that is a necessary part of the process but the real question is: Does the simulation capture the essence of the system being simulated? To what degree? How can it be improved. etc. Having real life experience in fast military aircraft, I can tell you that none of what I have flown on computers is like the real thing....some come closer than others in capturing the experience, but close is not the same as the real thing. DCS comes close but in many areas there is a wide gulf, but for most of you who will never sit in or fly a military jet, it lets you experience, a taste if you like, of the complexity involved. Keep up the good work finding the areas that are lacking with the hope that the poobahs at DCS are taking notes and will address at least some of the issues in the future. We have to admit...at least DCS is better than most in updating their sim.

it's hard to believe that dcs has less realistic radar mechanics than war thunder which is not meant to be a simulator but here we are

ED will just keep notching us when we complain. Thank you for your passion and support.

Notching in DCS with certain aircraft is such a skill substitute. It takes away actual air combat tactics and promotes gaming mentality.

we need to put pressure on ED to improve RWR, notch, PRF and lookup simulation fidelity in their modules and enforce these standards on 3rd party devs

How long have we been waiting for the missile logic and sensor rewrite now to conclude? Years? Still an incomplete work in progress.

lets all remember this is a modern "simulator" that has AI that is almost as good as falcon 3.0's. Now give ED 56 dollars for a half finished single block of the F-16.

Can't wait for ED to learn what range gating is and how it works with missile seeker technology! Blew my mind hearing about how it works!

Fly a helicopter, infinite notching buff 🗿

I play war thunder. A lot, in fact. RB and sim modes. I don’t play DCS, outside a session or two of learning the basics with a friend. Despite that, I’m always disappointed when I look into how things are going with the game and see that the devs are ignoring or propagating issues. I liked the idea that there was this expensive and difficult to learn but extremely good sim game with a supportive dev team in my favorite niche genre. Sad to see the dev problem extends to y’all’s community too. Stay strong.

The chaff and flares being a random number probability is ludicrous!

I love the people that think they're the king of notching but can barely stay connected to a server due to ping and packet loss.

I’m very glad you’ve made this video, it’s an element we’ve been trying to address for a long time. As egregious as the barrel roll, they’re essentially the same thing. Use of yaw mostly and/or minor, frequent pitch changes below the missile is seen done by almost all of the ‘top’ teams out there and it’s gross. If you’re not using your rudder pedals, your survival chances decrease significantly. But it’s meta for now and the fight must go on.

RNG countermeasures is absolutely the most diabolical thing lmao

This is a phenominal video in terms of getting straight to the point, and accurately explaining the skill of notching. Great job!

10:13 What I learnt on ED forum if you complain and report issues they are just banning you...

These same issues have been around since the beginning. Does anyone remember Ironhand’s old tutorial showing how you could use the Russia Beryoza to precisely time an orthogonal roll around an AIM-120? That was from the Lock On days. Pre-Flaming Cliffs.

Yup, completely agree it’s just a video game. An expensive video game at that.

Yeah, one day, something worth wild will be 100% complete.

Perfect breakdown of the DCS notch. I too hope that it becomes more dynamic. Though it is important to note that your chaff breakdown only applies to multiplayer. In singleplayer, the chaff entity is spawned with properties like radar reflectivity. This allows you to evade missiles by just going cold and then dumping chaff with a turn. Not to LARP, I agree its a game, but apparently this is the most common usage of chaff/jaff IRL I found it astonishing that in the DCS Flaming Cliffs manual, this is described as THE way to evade fox 3s, but does not work at all in multiplayer. Maybe left in the manual from a DCS predecessor who knows.

Nicely put together *chefs kiss*

Getting flashbacks of ralfidude and IASGATG's DCS missile modeling breakdown from 5 years ago 😁

Actually if you spin (roll with a little pitch) towards missiles in DCS they will miss 4/5 of the time. It's hilariously stupid because proximity fuses don't work in multiplayer.

a simulation can also be a game because (a) things can be more than one thing and (b) it's ok for realistic software to be fun.

Some questions: 1. Why does HPRF require a wider notch filter? 2. How should the countermeasures work instead? Should they either always work or never work depending on the radar/missile used?

Guns, guns it is then...

@Prez Does this include the Reds planes, I love flying the Mig-29, and Su-27?

Aweosme to see. Can you also make a video explainig the state of the jammers in DCS?

Digital Combat Simulator sounds better than Digital Combat Game lol

Mind Blown! Thank you!!!

So all i have to do is look at my RWR and dive 90° away from the missile source and I won´t get hit? Why didn´t I hear this earlier, or am I wrong? How to defend IR Missiles like Sidewinders effectivly?

That cookie guy is on to something

I agree with most things to a certain extent. The main issue I have with this video is that it doesn't acknowledge one important thing, and that is that two things can be true at the same time. DCS can be both a game and a full-up simulator. It is up to the users to decide what kind of path they will take. Mike Solyom leans more towards the sim crowd, so what works there will not necessarily work for the game crowd.

Nice video, well made! Cheers.

Great work on this video dude! Learnt a lot about the DCS air-to-air meta. Bit of a sorry state isn't it :(

you have it backwards with the amraam. It only has the MPRF seeker mode and does NOT have the HPRF phase.

I’d love to see a similar explanation of how the AIM-7s and other SAR missiles work/don’t work properly.

Also speaking of dice roll, is this roll say 0.1 no matter the distance, aspect, altitude, etc? If so that's extremely primitive.

A great presentation man & very well explained, but what about all the DCS Pilots out there ( incl. me ) that have never used nor even heard of Notching before?

Thank you!

ED isn't capable of modeling modern electronic systems like radar, seekers, and RWR.

Wait, did you say the DCS AMRAAM *only* has HPRF and never goes to MPRF? Can you explain this further? How do you know? I'm genuinely curious.

Beautiful video. Highlighting the fact that this game mechanic is incredibly easy to pull off which basically removes the skill required to kinematically defeat a missile, then locate, and re-engage the enemy faster. Its a shame to see how one small issue is making such a big change in the games gameplay which could probably be fixed quite simply. Would love if you would call out some of the other issues with dcs as well that doesn't really get highlighted or may be unknown to other players: -vr spotting being incredible -how the tpod over preforms on may modules -how broken jammers are code wise -and how bad ground AI such as sams truly are. A video such as this highlights these issues well and is better than an explanation from someones mouth.

Thank you for this mate. This won’t be what you want to hear but I was thinking about getting DCS, I think I’ll just watch YT videos and fly other games.

can you notch with a helo as well?

Isn't it worth carrying chaff for SAMs? You can't really notch them, can you?

Please post some GS hops in your Charlie Eagle. I fly the Viper exclusively, and am genuinely interested in the pvp experience with that aircraft. Frankly, it's hard to wrap my head around not having L16. Thanks in advance and thanks for this vid too! 🤝🏾

As an aspiring Jeff flyer and lover, this video will help me greatly, I think 😂

Here's how we combine both views in 335th: For Defensive Counter-Air we run low/medium risk timelines and kinematically defeat missiles. For Offensive Counter-Air we run high-risk timelines, with high-pk shots. Once we are banzai in the visual arena where you can't defeat the missile kinematically we notch, so we have less ATA and keep the hostile defensive until he runs into the ground or eats a missile. We used to have a fantastic rwr in the F-15E and it's still good but not as easy to notch as with the F-15Cs. DCAF will be recruiting soon, so if you want to experience our top of the line training and ops seasons, check out our Forum posts and get in contact!

fyi at 8:35 the cmm_k0 of 0.1 is = to 1% so a cmm of 1 means there is a 10% chance to defeat a missle with countermeasures

I think Mike Solyom's videos are excellent at explaining how things would work in real life, and he just happens to use DCS as his visual aid. I'd expect his videos to be much more applicable to Falcon BMS.

That's what I like about guns...

Just notch bro...cries in su33 with only fox1s...and long range fox2s that get flared by ai....

notchcels unite!!!

I troon heart this 💛

It’s a gameeee!!!!!!!

this video makes me sad

Good stuff, hopefully people take a lot away from it.

So this is meta

As long Chizh seat in his place at ED, there are no chanches to see qby improvement, SATAL players should mock him during streams and meme notch or AoA everything to show how a disgrace is missile notching in dcs, same for flaring everything that is launched from the frontal emisphere

This is how i destroy SAM sites in game with the F1EE.

What is notching though? I watched this whole thing and still don't understand.

LOL if the RWR is really realistic it will realistically fail from ground

The AMRAAM is actually modelled as being MPRF only, with HPRF active (Husky) not being modelled. The issue is: MPRF doesn't behave like MPRF should. The F-15E's radar (if you can get it to work these days, shoutouts to Budgie), is probably the only radar in DCS that really makes MPRF work properly, being incredibly difficult to notch thanks to range binning. Is it possible to notch still? Yes, but it's so difficult and so barely situationally possible that you're still probably dead if you were to try to notch it. Or you would be if the missiles you were shooting weren't victim to the same issue. This is why Sparrow F-15E is so strong. You aren't relying on some AMRAAM seeker to work. All you need to do is maintain lock with an accurately simulated MPRF-capable radar. Bish bash bosh. On the AMRAAM, HPRF active would be switched to first for high closure rate targets. It'd then transition to MPRF active for the remainder of the flight. The missile can go straight to MPRF active if the closure rate isn't high enough to warrant using HPRF. In DCS, only MPRF active works, but you're right that it might as well be HPRF due to how notch prone it is.

I dont want to be that guy, but I have to.... MSFS is a game. DCS...as a war fighting simulator...is also a game. DCS as a training aid for ground handling and flight characteristics is second to none and therefore should qualify as a decent flight simulator alone. When Boeing tells you that you need to undo a specific build of the Hornet because it was "too close" to actual flight dynamics, you're a legit flight simulator. The thing that kills me is when ED selectively adds unrealistic things to their aircraft, but wont listen to customers when it comes to adding weapons to aircraft. For example: the F-18 Blk 20 never carried AIM9X, but here we are...yet we ask for the APKWS, its been flown on that block before, and its a plug and play missile, but nope...not doing that.

A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world.[1][2][3] In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model.[2] Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in which simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the simulation represents the evolution of the model over time.[3] Another way to distinguish between the terms is to define simulation as experimentation with the help of a model.[4] This definition includes time-independent simulations. Often, computers are used to execute the simulation.

Yep, Mike Solyom is a great content creator, but he dropped the ball with his last video.

This is why Falcon BMS is the best milsim simulator at the moment. Nothing compares to it. It's 5 dollars and has everything you'll ever need!

Really, this is just all the more of an indictment of modern era DCS and an endorsement of cold war DCS. Notching isnt less effective against fox-1s, but having to go into the notch puts you at a huge disadvantage when fox-1 firing ranges in miles can be measured in single digits, but the attacker also has to stay nose on the whole time, and the defender cant just whip the nose around and put an AMRAAM or 9M/X out there before going back into the notch. Cold war is at least somewhat close to what its trying to represent. Modern isnt even close, and its less fun and interesting as a result.

no way 😂😂😂😂😂

Yeah real pilots play war thunder smh

Eagle Dynamics is a horrible developer .Just look what they did with the F 15 after everybody bought it and now are in stagnation. That tells you all you need to know about an Eagle Dynamics.

fake news jk