How Hard Can I Thrust My Vector? | Testing TVC & Viffing

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01]Hey guys, Salamander Desalinator here.

[00:00:03]Gaijin recently added a thrust vector toggle to jets like the Su-30SM that let you turn off thrust vectoring so that the jet nozzles don't move around anymore. Some people were speculating how turning thrust vectoring off would be helpful in a dog fight or when jousting as to improve energy retention and reduce speed loss, but I was a bit skeptical as to how much this would actually help. So, I ran a few tests to see how much it would actually help in a conventional dog fight. And uh it doesn't look like it makes that much of a difference at all. Your energy retention is a tiny bit worse and your turn is a tiny bit better at low speeds, [music] as we expected, but the difference is so marginal that I don't think it's going to make a big difference at all.

[00:00:41]You probably want to have your thrust vectoring turned on if you do get into a low speed dog fight since it lets you do all the funny floppies with the AOA button. So, I don't really see the point of turning thrust vectoring off. It's not really going to help you out to the point where it makes much of a difference.

[00:00:55]Well, that was kind of underwhelming, so I decided to test a few other thrust vectoring planes to see how much it would help. First, a Harrier. I'm using the GR.7 since it's the best flight model Harrier as far as I'm aware, and we'll see how different nozzle angles change its performance. Again, we should expect a better turn for a worse energy retention the more thrust vectoring we use.

[00:01:14]Starting at 25% thrust vectoring, you get a small bump in turn circle, but only really under 600 kph. Then with 50% it's the same story, but to a more extreme extent. Then with 75% you bleed so much speed that you can no longer sustain a continuous turn, but you do still turn tighter.

[00:01:29]I also tested 90% since that's the point at which the nozzles point directly downwards for the Harrier, and at this point you don't really get more turn, it's just worse retention. And with 100% you get even worse energy. In fact, the nozzles point slightly forward, so it's like having extra force pushing backwards and actively slowing the plane down like having an extra little bit of air braking. So, it seems like in a conventional dog fight you should probably avoid using Viffing when above 600% to keep your instantaneous turn high, and if you're below then you should only go up to 75% thrust vectoring. This is of course if you're just doing a conventional dog fight. If you're trying to force an overshoot, then it depends on how much you're willing to slow down, but you can use 100% thrust vectoring for a bit of extra air braking effect. If you air brake too hard, the enemy might just zoom away though, so you do have to make sure they've committed to a low speed dog fight before you air brake too hard or try and go all in and doing funny VTOL shenanigans. The thrust vectoring on other Harriers should perform similarly.

[00:02:21]So, let's take a look at a different design, the Yak-141. The 141 does have a lot more specific conditions under which thrust vectoring can be used, so let's go over those first. Number one, the thrust nozzle will only start moving when you're under 550 kph IAS and will only deflect to 100% when below 450 kph IAS, linearly interpolating the maximum angle the nozzle can deflect between those [music] two speeds. And so, because thrust vectoring is speed limited, you can only really do thrust vectoring shenanigans when you're in a low speed dog fight. Secondly, the afterburner only works when you're at 50% thrust vectoring or below, so you can't afterburner straight down. And thirdly, the speed at which the plane is able to go fully floppy mode and do backflips seems to depend on the thrust vector angle. When you're at 50% thrust vectoring, it's quite difficult. You need to be under 100 kph IAS in order for you to do backflips, while when you're at 75% or 100% it was a lot easier. You could be at a 230 kph and still do backflips. I can't really pinpoint the exact relation between your speed and your ability to go floppy mode, but either way, you probably want to be at at least 75% thrust vectoring if you want to be able to engage floppy mode easily. At 25% thrust vectoring, you get what you'd expect, same with 50% with the plane letting you pull more for worse energy retention. At 75% the turn doesn't improve while the energy retention becomes absolutely horrible because you can't use your afterburner anymore, and with 100% you get a tiny bit extra turn, but again, a much worse energy retention. The exact numbers shown on the graphs here are wonky and wrong since my code isn't very good at handling these weird edge cases, but the point here is that it's probably not worth going past 57% in a conventional dog fight since that's where you lose your afterburner. And again, if your goal is to force an overshoot or to get into floppy mode quickly, then it's up to you to decide how much to bleed speed because if you do it too quickly, then the enemy just overshoots and zooms away before you're able to react and get a good shot on them. Now, as much as I'd like this information to be useful, you don't really get into any dog fights at these high BRs often since teams collapse one way or another, so you're usually going to get third partied or a teammate is usually going to third party you before you're able to get a shot off even if you do actually manage to get a dog fight. It's kind of unfortunate since these airframes are very silly and it would be very fun to be able to maximize their silly by engaging the silly floppy mode, but that's just the reality of the game right now at missile spam premium tier. But that'll be all for now. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye-bye.