The plane they built missed significant amounts of avionics and was not combat capable, thus it does not represent the Rafale in game which is combat capable.
If they changed the name to F.4.1, changed up the IRST and added the AASM 1000 it would be a real thing
In any way. How can people be so dramatic about 2 pylons that are semi-historical when paper vehicles exists in game or some still under testing protos like 2S38 are in game.
Tbf, it doesn’t help that wt constantly markets itself as the most historical, realistic, “authentic” vehicle combat game on the market
Not throwing shade, I agree, it is very annoying how certain aircraft/tanks get fantasy loadouts to make things “balanced” but when you give them a well-written document, they throw it out of the window for “historical” (see: F-4F early and MiG-21PFM)
Afaik most of their advertising as of late went into “WarThuner is a realistic game” or “Come play X and Y top tier vehicle from that famous nation” which in istelf isn’t false as mots of the systems in game are realistic but they don’t claim absolute historical accuracy about in game vehicles anymore, don’t know if they ever did.
Smin talked about Exported F.3R : in such Indian Rafales were exported with those SP3 pylons, which makes it “accurate” - again Gaijin is mixing aircraft of same standards from diverse nations to make them “interesting” to the eyes of the “PlayerBase”
in such, it is done as Mirage 2000-5F (which is mixing -5 mk2 of Greeks and -9 from the UAE Airforces - even worse as it’s completely different standards on this one)
real balance should be to put MICA-EM at 80km range, and not the 50km frankenstein that came from nowhere (even MICA-IR, the shortest variant is stated at 60km range)
not really no one cares anymore rmv got aasm, 2000-5f has 2 extra magics, this has been happening for a while its a very niche bunch who want a 100% accurate aircraft no matter the cost
It doesn’t give them the high they want from taking this meaningless stance clearly cause otherwise they’d just move on with their 6 mica loadout in game
Interestingly, in a Rafale documentary called “Rafale Confidential” published in 2014, this is seen for a French Rafale aircraft, the extra 2 pylons is seen as “open” to being used in the cockpit, indicating the wiring exists for the aircraft.