TEMPEST.114

as the title says. The position keeping of units in a naval group is... let's just say awful, esp when the lead makes changes. However a helo set to follow a naval unit does much better staying in position through the changes in heading. Therefore it would be ideal if FOLLOW was added for all units (ground/naval/air/infantry) so that the group structure can be more accurately maintained. Re: Labels Distance - is the fore/aft or lateral? Interval - that doesn't even make sense with regards to follow - its obviously the opposite of distance but it's not clear from its nomenclature. Now, trial and error will tell you that Distance is lateral and Interval is fore/aft in relation to the thing being followed, but it's just three labels that need changing and maybe a tooltip for each explaining them for users.

@Exorcet Is this in your niche? Can you advise please?

@Exorcet Can you help please?

But why does the new birth happen before the previous aircraft's leave? That makes no sense. And surely the event leave - as it does contain data to a unit that in the sim no longer exists - that unit shouldn't have been removed from the backend before all the necessary events have completed, right? Otherwise - like now, it's utterly useless and asking for trouble if the things it's referencing are already gone. Shouldn't these events be firing for the scripting engine at a point where all the referenced objects still exist - the the scripter / mission designer and do what they need to first, and then the back end removes them as it completes its actions? There seems to be a rather larger issue at hand if this is the way it's been architected...

/facepalm. Which is why I'm raising it here - they look here, they review the posts... /smh

Here's the entry in: \DCS World\Mods\terrains\PersianGult\radio.lua { radioId = 'airfield21_0'; role = {"ground", "tower", "approach"}; callsign = {{["common"] = {_("Jask"), "Jask"}}}; frequency = {}; sceneObjects = {'t:82673668'}; }; However in the M.E. window you see this: Where is that data coming from if not from the radio.lua for the terrain pack?!

I have a player manager that records when players join and leave. The join events are either birth or on enter unit. The leave events are either dead pilot or leave unit On trying to handle the onEvent for the leaving events, the event specifies that the initiator is a Unit. The problem is, that I have to filter out players from AI units. So the way to do that is getPlayerName() on the Unit. But when I try and cast the event.initiator : Unit.getByName(event.initiator:getName()) then I get an error because the unit has already been destroyed in the game engine! What's worse is that in the event the player changes slot or even changes coalition, the BIRTH event for the new aircraft happens BEFORE the LEAVE_UNIT event for the previous aircraft!?! @Exorcet Surely there's something screwy going on here?

I meant it's way out of date - most entries are from 2022 so it's not exactly reliable.

Thanks for your input.

Err…. Not really.

2024-03-15 15:03:25.614 INFO TLC (Main): onEvent ENTERED 2024-03-15 15:03:25.614 INFO TLC (Main): ******* S_EVENT_PLAYER_LEAVE_UNIT ******* 2024-03-15 15:03:25.615 INFO TLC (Main): onEvent ENTERED 2024-03-15 15:03:25.615 INFO TLC (Main): ******* S_EVENT_PLAYER_LEAVE_UNIT ******* Can anyone else confirm this bug?

@BIGNEWY @NineLine @Grimes Can I get some clarity on this please? This is a blocker on my Mission Info script.

@BIGNEWY May I ask for some feedback on this please? It's a blocker on my ATIS scripts.

Specifically, what's the fastest way to sort between AI objects and player objects to see the distance between them and if within a set distance, return that subset as a table? I have done it, it's not hard using world.searchObjects() but I'm wondering on a server with a large number of players and AI units if this built-in sorting algorithm would be too inefficient and if there is a better way, or if because of the limitation of using the DCS Scripting Engine API if there is no alternative.

Just a note from someone who spent an unreasonably long time with trying to resolve this... It's perfectly fine if you just want to spawn them at an exact lat/long (x/z in game). It will never work if you want to send them to an exact position once they already exist. The 'pathing' tech used by the DCS engine is shockingly awful and you will almost never get them to go EXACTLY where you want - they often stop somewhere near and how close is *seemingly* random (has more to do with orientation and poor collision detection/formation spread). So to recap; spawning new unit - exact, moving unit - horrifically awful and within 10-100m or so of the 'exact' point you specified. This has a knock on effect if you're trying to move infantry or tanks to use shelter behind the environment - don't even try for anything smaller than a large hill.

No, you'd have to do that in scripting, and then post one of those actions depending on the result. I think an 'example' would basically be writing it for you. Take a look at this: https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/DCS_func_addEventHandler

I just wanted to add that I'm aware from recent interviews with the senior HB team that their intention is to bring as much of the new tech from the F4 back into the F14 as a free update - and that's amazing; I'd have happily paid for it, but either way, it's a hugely appreciated thing. Thank you HB. My question is, is that when we can expect all the fixes and finishing of the F14? When this upgrade comes? Which I appreciate will be after the F4 is finished and then another time period after that, or can we, once the F4 is in Early Access, start expecting some F14 improvements along the way? I guess I'm kind of asking about the roadmap for F14 fixes / finishes / upgrades - no fixed timeline is expected, but just an overview to set our expectations? The LSO thing is *really* annoying and the Callsigns would be really nice to have so separate us from the 'rabble of lesser aircraft' hehehehe (joking)

Unless they rewrite the mission editor too, this won't come. Some others will probably point you to the 3rd party web app that's currently £14 a month on patreon to use which I think is... cheeky... but it's pretty poor that this is the mission editor that ED seem to be keeping going forward. It gets zero love. Every yearly 'looking forward' video they do - the mission editor and the scripting get ZERO mentions. I looked at what it would take to log 'transactions' and roll back for undo/redo in the mission editor lua, and it's a big job. A really big job.

I didn't know you were using a 3rd party library. Okay, @cfrag will sort you out no problem.

The order you set them up.

In my old group of players that I played with for years; actually it was flying with them and listening to the same old complaints over and over and over that spurred me into learning lua and dcs scripting to fix their complaints (all but one I did - not that they were thankful). However the loss of datalink-ing allies in the F18 HMCS was a huge reason they hated splitting the groups into individual player groups. The other thing was recovery ops to the boat tended to get all frakked up when you have lots of groups trying to recover in a very short space of time from each other. I'm sure there were others related to JTACS and an AWACS issue but these were the two big ones.

Oh, okay, let me look into that - thanks!

@Tippis You seem to think I'm approaching this from a managed squadron/managed server situation. I'm not. I'm trying to create a Mission Designer API into my scripts to allow for a huge amount of interaction and mission branching that isn't there in virtually ever other mission in DCS. Even in the campaigns that are on rails by default. So I can't 'discipline my' players - because I'm not in control of them, nor do I know who will be. And you can't expect every player to be perfect, as annoying as that is, because humans have different skill levels or ability to multitask etc. So a 'flash traffic' won't help because if they miss it, then coping with that becomes a chore. If seems to me like you have a very fixed, tight idea of what is happening, and I'm trying to come at this from 'I don't know who's running it, with how many players, of whatever skills levels' and I still need the system to be able to cope with it.' which are very, very different - you misunderstanding that leads you to think I have an attitude and I'm thinking you're being obtuse. So how about if we're talking at cross purposes, you just forget this thread as you clearly aren't understanding where I'm coming from, and your narrow, over-controlling and unsympathetic view of players, isn't really the conducive and inclusive environment I want to force onto people who will eventually use my library to create missions and campaigns.

I need to know the position in 3D space of where an aircraft will be at a specific time, assuming no changes in speed or direction. The getPosition() returns 4 vec 3's. The first is p - which is the position in 3d space, the next 3 are x, y and z; each vec 3's that are the nomalised vectors for the translation in each axis right? So all I need to do is multiply the x, y and z by a magnitude (in metres?) and ADD them to the p.x, p.y, p.z - to get the new position... right? Or have I misunderstood something?

We've been waiting ages for the F14 updates - I know HB is heads down on the F4, but it really feels like the F14 got 90% finished and then just ignored... And when is the LSO fix coming? ED are saying it's a HB fix, but I thought HB said it was an ED fix for the Supercarrier?!