Being one of the first few military jets in Microsoft Flight Simulator, the F-15 Eagle by DC Designs has stirred up plenty of interest and a fair bit of critique as well. Here’s a round up of what some of the community are reporting on the module.
A round up of reviews and impressions
Having a go-fast fighter jet as legendary as the F-15 in any flight sim is going to attract attention and as one of the first jets in Microsoft Flight Simulator that is Mach 2+ capable (at least in real life), a lot of people were interested to experience the performance of the jet in the sim. Would the terrain engine be capable of loading in new information quickly enough (seems to not be a problem), would the sim be able to handle those speeds (not yet, although some trickery with the flight model makes it sort of possible), and would it be any good? Well… listen in on these reviews.
Summary and my thoughts
The summary of what’s being said around the community is that the F-15 by DC Designs is not likely to live up expectations if you’re looking for a high fidelity experience. The cockpit appears as a rough approximation of the real jet’s appearance and there are issues with the HUD, sim performance with the battery and avionics on, and there are other visual maladies such as overwing vapours and afterburner effects that don’t look particularly convincing. Some of the reviewers were unconvinced by the sound while others thought it to be alright. There’s also the issue of transonic flight modeling which Microsoft Flight Simulator just doesn’t have yet although they are working on it.
There’s also issue of price with the aircraft being priced at $40 USD in the Just Flight store which seems a little steep for this aircraft – granted there are four variants available.
DC Designs for their part have made a recent post on their Facebook page suggesting ongoing improvements including updated texture work and revised methods that should improve FPS particularly when the HUD is in view.
At this point I’m not interested in writing a review on the module. I already struggle a bit with military aircraft in a civil aviation focused flight sim – although Aeroplane Heaven’s Spitfire Mark I and IndiaFoxTecho T-45 Goshawk I might make an exception for. In this case, if the modeling were at a high fidelity level I might be interested to see how it compares to a military oriented flight sim such as DCS World but at this point I don’t see that being the case at the moment. That said, for some of you, you might find the speed and performance of something like this suitably interesting to you. If the DC Designs F-15 is for you, I’ll let you make that decision. F-15 Eagle by DC Designs is available for $40 USD in the Just Flight webstore.
My other take on this goes a little like this: If flying an F-15 sounds fun but you also want to sling some AMRAAM’s in a full up conflict I’d suggest giving the F-15C for DCS World a shot. It’s not a full fidelity module (so no clickable cockpit) but the flight model is at the peak of what DCS offers, it’s fully combat capable, and price is $14.99 USD with sale prices frequently taking it into the single digits. Here are my thoughts on making it your first jet fighter. In the future, we may also be treated to the F-15E Strike Eagle by RAZBAM for DCS World although it may be a while yet before that becomes a reality.
Those are my thoughts. What do you think? Is this aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator for you?
Stormbirds 
Yeah…not for me, not in this implementation at any rate. Though I’ve been spending my time on the opposite end of the speed spectrum anyways, with the Wing42 Bleriot, which is superb!
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$40 US? Not a chance.
For that much it had better be DCS quality.
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I never see the point of having military aircraft specifically designed for combat in civilian simulators. Even at DCS quality it would be a waste of money.
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Indeed. It’s rather pointless to have this in FS2020, since it’s never going to be full fidelity (costs big $$$) and the sim is not designed to be a combat simulator and it’s unlikely to ever have such features either.
Not to mention I’m sure they don’t want people using their sim for practicing acts of violence anyways – especially in these times.
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Back then, I bought the Aerosoft’s Tomcat in P3D, it was a very detailed module, probably much more reliable and accurate than this one, from what you posted here. Still, not very enjoyable because the simulator doesn’t support those speeds very well, textures don’t load fast enough and leaves holes, or causes micro-freezes. When I tried it, it even crashed after a while, because it was too far behind when loading textures.
You can’t use the weapons; Lockheed reused MS’ code for P3D and can’t use it for entertainment, so any weapon is prohibited. It shouldn’t be a problem in MSFS though, but I doubt the weapons would do anything interesting.
IIRC MSFS doesn’t support aircraft damage. Maybe you can have failures, but it would be limited vs DCS.
In comparison, DCS World is free, and even though as you said the Eagle F-15C is not a full module (the main comparative disadvantage will be a non-clickable cockpit, probably) … it’s only $15.
But sure DCS, like any sim, eats up a lot of disk space – usually very expensive disk space nowadays since you need NVMe with DCS. And you need time to get used to the control, to work around DCS bugs, to know how it works, and so on.
So the only good reason I see would be if you want to stick to one simulator only (provided you’re not interested in fights, and if an average experience is good enough), but yeah, perhaps it’s a bit expensive for that.
Or if you want to see your house from an Eagle cockpit 😉
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Completely agree! At least Aerosoft’s was much closer to the actual aircraft. Maybe for a cheaper price it would be good for a laugh but for me I’ll wait for something more. There’s lots of cool stuff coming in the MSFS pipeline.
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I love going fast and carving tight turns. I’ve always had sport motorcycles, sports cars, and even sporty boats.
When I learned to fly in a Piper Archer, I got bored – fast. Heck, it was only a couple mph faster than my sport bike!
Then on my first solo x-country I buzzed cows in a pasture and that was a LOT more fun.
So while I enjoy aerial combat in DCS/IL2, I don’t *need* BVR engagements, cruise missiles, close range dogfights, or 500lb bombs to have fun.
A quick run around The Mach Loop, nap of the Earth helicoptering, skyscraper surfing, and aircraft carrier operations are at least as interesting to me as slugging it out with AMRAAM’s.
Flying a well modeled military jet is one of the best ways to experience the virtual world.
…Hand flying the no-autopilot MilViz T-38C on an accurate flight plan from KLAS to KSFO? Cool!
…Low level x-country through the UK in the DWS F-16C with a nice overhead break landing at the end? Niiice!
…VTOL-ing around downtown Los Angeles in the X-Trident Harrier? EXCELLENT!
Slogging along at FL350 in a tubeliner watching the computer do all the actual flying? Boooring…
So for me, military birds (the REALISTIC ones) can’t get to MSFS fast enough. Hopefully someone will bring the F-16 – no better view in the world. Until then, the Goshawk, 339, Spitfire and Corsair(!) will have to tide me over. 🙂
p.s.: Knew from the P3D versions that this Eagle wasn’t gonna be up to snuff.
p.s.s.: sorry for the necro post, just stumbled across this post at the bottom of another
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