On dogfighting, and virtual reality
Many years ago, during the dog days of the pandemic, I started playing the flight sim known as Digital Combat Simulator, or DCS.
I'd actually been introduced to it several years earlier, and upon finishing school invested in a decent HOTAS setup as a gift to myself. But it wasn't until the pandemic that I had the downtime at home (in between hospital shifts, of course) to really learn an aircraft and fly.
DCS in VR was by far my favorite experience in gaming. I love arcade-y flight sims too - Ace Combat in particular - but it doesn't compare. DCS is a study-level sim which tries to model aircraft as realistically as possible. You need all the buttons you can get. When I fly, I have a throttle on my left, joystick in the center, a keyboard on my lap, and a mouse on my right (to click cockpit switches that I can't map to my controls). The learning curve is much steeper - simply getting your aircraft off the ground and back is a challenge. But the satisfaction is so much greater. And VR is a game changer for immersion.
When I started flying online there was (IMO) just one server worth joining: Alpenwolf's COLD WAR... It cycled through a series of objective-oriented missions modeling a conflict between a "Red" (Soviet-allied) faction and a "Blue" (NATO-allied) faction. Long-range radar-guided missiles were banned, as were most modern jets. Before the F-14A became the server's God-king and apex predator, the server was a never-ending close-quarters knifefight between two of the 1970s most iconic aircraft: the F-5E and the MiG-21.
Blue flies the F-5, my preferred airframe: a simple, elegant weapon which was exported to allies worldwide. It is outclassed by modern aircraft, but has been updated in recent years and remains deadly in the right hands. The in-game version is the "E" model.
The Red pilots prefer the MiG-21: The workhorse of Communist air forces for decades. It is a temperamental beast - not "flown" so much as "strapped on." It is an interceptor in the truest sense - designed to fly high and take down bombers. On paper, it has several advantages in over the F-5: It can fly faster, climb higher, and carries more misses. But it is harder to control. I've downed many a MiG pilot by simply outmaneuvering them.
In the real world F-5 Tigers and MiG-21 Fishbeds met a few times in East Africa, fighting eachother to a draw. The flight characteristics of the two are similar enough that Americans began to use the F-5s as stand-ins for the MiG-21 in training exercises.
In game, F-5 vs MiG-21 is basically a wash. There are effective tactics for each. They fly differently, but it is possible to win a fight with either aircraft. It all comes down to who has the element of surprise, and which pilot is better at using his (or her) weapon.
On one particular day, my team - Blue - had the advantage of a superior commander. We were trying to defend a mountaintop radar station. We were losing. The version of the F-5 modeled in DCS carries just two Sidewinders, and the airborne defenders were quickly running out. The Red commander was sending additional fighters to turn the tide. I had been dispatched to intercept them.
I was nervous as all hell. It's hard to describe the feeling. VR is immersive - so immersive that you retain the mammalian instinct to keep your damn head down in a dangerous environment. Naturally you fly low, and this has the helpful side effect of avoiding airborne radar -- yours and theirs.
So there I was: somewhere over the Caucuses, my engines screaming at full burner, zipping along at treetop level. I'm scanning the sky around me and occasionally glancing over my shoulder to check for fighters in pursuit. As I approached the mountain range, my team's commander plotted an indirect route to the radar station through the valleys around it, hoping to help me ambush the fighters on approach.
We - that is, the enemy and I - remained invisible to each other until I was about twenty miles out, about to make the final turn northward to the mountaintop. I had to gain altitude briefly, to make contact with our own airborne radar, and that's when I found the enemy.
VR headsets don't have great resolution, so often you hear other aircraft before you see them clearly. The low growl of my missiles' seeker evolved into a high pitched squeal as my quarry - a pair of enemy fighters with the unmistakable profile of the MiG-21 - popped over the ridgeline and into another valley, passing left-to-right less than five miles in front of my nose. Neither had seen me. They must have appeared on the commander's scope at the same time because he started screaming at me to turn in pursuit.
I dropped my external tank and dove after them into the valley, trading altitude for speed. If nothing else, the F-5 can dive quickly when it needs to and I closed the distance in seconds. I loosed a single missile at the the trailing aircraft. It connected, but didn't do enough damage to down him immediately. He broke out of formation, trailing smoke. He didn't make it home.
The lead fighter, now aware of my presence, continued his turn and dropped countermeasures - perhaps fearing that I had fired twice. He bled off speed, hoping I would overshoot. This actually worked to my advantage, because our encounter became the kind of swinging low-speed fight the F-5 excels at - and it's way easier to track a maneuvering enemy with a VR headset than a head-tracker. He rolled left, and I pursued - making a wide arc to optimize our distance from each other. He banked right, again passing in front of my nose. I landed a few shots on him then. At some point he realized I was lining up for another missile and he activated his emergency burner to climb away from me. This only made him a better target for my second Sidewinder.
I circled to confirm the kill and turned home to rearm. Blue held the mountaintop until reinforcements arrived. Ultimately we won the day.
The Red team will call this Blue propaganda, and MiG drivers will call me a liar. I no longer have the TacView recording of the entire flight but I did make a gif of the two kills.
I don't fly much at all anymore. DCS is not the type of game you can just drop into, so any time I want to okay I have to spend an hour tweaking my setup and updating software, and then another hour looking for a server to join. I just don't have the time for that anymore. I've actually considered selling much of controller setup. But I do miss the thrill sometimes. I'll come back to it, one day.