LastRifleRound

This is for the Hornet

Thank you

Bump. This is a pretty annoying bug that's easily repeatable. Set down a boiler-house or similar sized object in the ME, place a waypoint on it's center. Load up Mk82's. Bug also effects Mk83's and 84's but I haven't tested to find their idealized airspeeds at the various altitudes. In mission, WPDSG that waypoint. Enter auto mode, select bombs in pairs. Fly level at 7000ft and 370kts. You will hit the target. Fly level at 7000ft and 440kts. You will land short. Fly level at 7000ft and 300kts. You will land long. Fly level at 9000ft and 370kts. You will land short. Fly level at 5000ft and 370kts. You will land long. And so on.

Or it's intentional and this is just a placeholder. Either way I hope ED acknowledges this finally and gets it fixed.

Not that weird if you're bombing a single target and the point of the spread is to increase hit probability. In that scenario you'd be guessing how to center the stick of bombs and trying to aim forward. Also, it's easier in general to aim at the center of things than the beginning

See the latest in the original forum thread. It's altitude and speed together. The lower you are the faster you need to go until somewhere around 7k-8k ft and 350ish kts, when it inverts and you need to start slowing down, to the point where if you go high enough you cannot possibly go slow enough to have your aim point be your centerpoint. We're definitely on to something here and it's definitely bugged. Good work uncovering the connection to speed. EDIT: I realize I typed this confusingly. Another way to say it is the higher from the ground you are, the slower you need to go. It seems like the speed of 370kts at 7000ft hits reliably whatever you're aiming at (whether it's TPOD or WPDSG). If you are going lower than this, you have to go faster than 370kts. If you go higher, you must go slower. Eventually you'll reach an altitude where you can't go slow enough to hit accurately and will always drop the bombs short. This is why you can drop a string of 10 bombs at 25,000ft and every single one of them will land short. As currently implemented, high altitude dumb bombing is impossible in the Hornet unless you manually designate a guessed point beyond the target.

Did a few more tests. There are definitely altitude/speed pairings that have to be maintained to be accurate in AUTO. Basically, the lower you are, the fasteryou need to go until you hit a middle point (looks like 7kft 350ish kts) when that inverts, and you need to start slowing down to make hits until you reach an altitude so high that it's no longer possible to go as slow as you would need to to hit (which Frederf is seeing in his track). AUTO is bugged. See attached track. Going fast causes 7k ft level bombing to go long, going slower causes them to land short, cutting the difference in half causes a hit (I was off laterally, but I was asymetric. The distance was on. I then went to 6k ft and 340ish kts and shacked a BTR to further prove the point. Hope ED will finally look into this. alt_speed_combo.trk

Definitely! Harpoon is on to something. Speed definitely effects bomb impact. I just ran a test here, where I purposely tried to hit every target, and see what that would look like. What I found is if I take the TPOD and aim it a few taps longer than I thought the center of the target was (ignoring the actual target, of course, and just considering the ground underneath it as laser ranging is not currently modeled), I could achieve some pretty darn good accuracy. See that attached track where I hit almost every target with a single drop almost dead center most of the time by intentionally aiming long and going less than 300kts. However, it is more complicated than this. If you descend to 7k ft. and bomb flying level, you will find an overshoot situation like Harpoon showed if you are flying greater than 320-350kts or so. Slowing down helps, but causes the bombs to land short. I've attached a track here where I fly level and release single Mk82s @7k ft going over 400kts and overshoot. Slowing down to less than 300kts makes the bombs land short. This means at 7k ft there is some speed where my tendency would be to hit dead center. This tells me there are idealized pairings of altitudes and airspeeds where the solution is valid. Speed and altitude both seem to play a part. It would be interesting to re-run your tests @7k ft and see what your observations are. Track where I hit everything and track where I demonstrate the effects of airspeed at 7k ft attached. how_to_hit.trk alt_effects.trk

3 years. That's insane. Fix the HUD pixels and the INS updating already. It just isn't right that this goes on.

This does not address the precision problem at all. Did you see the track where I purposely designate behind and hit all but once to show it wasn't competence or randomness? Did you see where I also used WPDSG to rule out the TGP? Harpoon I'll test that on my end. You may be on to something. I did test acceleration_deceleration at drop, but not total speed. Also note the same thing happens in the A10 and JF17, and I have a bug report with supporting tracks on DEKAs forum as well.

That may be so, but it doesn't answer the question. A road block is a bigger target than a building. If you saw the tracks, you would see the bombs all land within a road block of the target. The question is, why do they miss the buildings exactly the same way every time? Using a smaller target shows errors in accuracy (as opposed to precision) more clearly. I then posted a track where I hit every target by intentionally designating a point behind the target. That's a single bomb on a building-sized target, not a road block. This is to show the misses aren't random chance and that there is an issue with AUTO dropping the bombs short. The winds are set to 0 for all altitudes in the tracks.

Track attached. From both level flight and in a dive, AUTO bombs land short when dropped on PTRK structures and vehicles. Not sure if ED has an API for this, but the A10 and Hornet also exhibit this issue. Not sure what's causing it. EDIT: Also tested with AREA tracks and waypoints as SPI. Same thing, bombs landing short. EDIT: Just tested point track launching LS6. Aim point of Point track is perfect, LS6's hit their targets. Issue is with bombing solution, not the targeting point. jf17_misses.trk

All this time I never notice that readout. That looks handy as hell, particularly coordinating with JTAC for those bottomless BRM's

Sucks you feel that way. I think you know there's plenty of people out there who put the politics aside in this space and welcome everyone who wants to develop for DCS. I think you do fantastic work. The people complaining here forget about Phoenix magic updates, Hornet magic TWS, the Mirage being able to maintain STT through terrain, etc etc etc. I think people forget ED was built on red air (Flanker, IL2 and Black Shark). To be fair, Cap gets his share of criticisms, and he may crack on the JF17, but in his checklist tutorial video he was telling everyone it's an excellent and very well done and complete module and recommending people buy it. I think he just hates eating red air fox 3's. You guys have my support :thumbup:

Stellan Hilmerby is occasionally on these forums, was a real Viggen pilot and has a great youtube channel as well.

More testing. This time showing a technique I know reliably produces hits. Getting the FLIR POV at roughly a line just past the target, then diving about 15deg reliably produces hits. The PTRK on the boiler houses, if you keep pressing TDC depress up until 2 sec before release, will give you a perfect angle. Otherwise, try to get the FLIR reticle at roughly 45 deg. There's something wrong here. I can also show short misses on level approaches at greater than 6k ft on WPDSG targets, all of them falling short. hits.trk

Ok conducted more tests. Attached track here, using WPDSG, both mk83 and mk82 dropped in singles. Multiple misses, all but one falling short. Last drop down at 3k ft level scores a direct hit to show diving is an exacerbating factor. loads_of_misses.trk

Ok time to run some new tests then. I get the same effect if I use WPDSG instead of the FLIR pod. I assumed LITENING was using angle rates in lieu of laser ranging if laser ranging wasn't provided since I believe that is how it works. I don't think laser ranging is modeled at all currently. I think it's "magic" right now and knows the exact range to the spot on the ground you're pointing at, regardless of the presence of any intervening objects you may be pointing at. Also, having a PTRK doesn't increase accuracy of aimpoint at all, it still ignores the object it's tracking for range and targets the area you are looking at behind the target at the time of TDC depress, so it's not using angle rates or lasers, but is still accurate enough to deliver a JDAMs. At any rate, I eliminated aim point as an issue two ways: 1. By running the same test with WPDSG 2. By using the TPOD aim point to drop JDAMs.JDAMs was able to successfully hit the target using the same FLIR designation you see in the tracks. I will test tonight: 1. Using single ejectors instead of the doubles I've been testing 2. Placing targets at higher elevations, as high (but still flat) as possible to magnify any changes 3. Using Mk84 4. Dropping QTY=1 to rule out errors in multiple bomb computations

Not sure what you mean? Someone posted on my visitor's wall some nonsense back in 2017, but that wasn't me. That's public and I don't have control over what people post there. My attachments are all DCS tracks. If you look at my post history you can see plenty of people have downloaded tracks from me and none have complained about anything out of the ordinary. I have 20% warn because I posted a document about JDAMs that I found out wasn't formally declassified, but it wasn't a virus or anything crazy like that. Just a misunderstanding. Frederf, thanks for checking it out. I reported it in the bug section, but everyone told me they couldn't reproduce it and I was wrong. However, the same thing happens in the A10 and the JF17 and I can reproduce it reliably. I cannot test the Viper as I do not own that module. It's hard to test the Mirage because the CCRP aimpoint doesn't line up in the hud, so there is ambiguity there. Have yet to test the Harrier. Not only do I not use mods, I have never installed a mod, so this is as stock as DCS OB can get. I think the baro is off because DCS has an issue with cold weather screwing that up. You can tell in the Viggen because the WP markers in cold weather will be below the target, or underground, when correct QFE is set. At 20 deg C, no problem. The exact same thing happens with Mk82's, so it's not just Mk83. Haven't tested 84's yet. Newy, can we get a second look at this? To reproduce the bug: 1. Use WPDSG on either waypoint 3 or 4 in the track. You can see in the ME the WP's are properly placed. 2. Set up bombs for pair release or a small stagger, like 2 @ 25ft spacing 3. Dive on the target 10 degrees or more, keeping stable flight and stable speed and drop The bombs will land short 90% of the time. They may get close enough at times to destroy the target, but they'll still be short of the aimpoint. Since these releases are in dives at altitude of around 5-6k feet, time of flight is around 7-9 seconds, so very short. There is no wind in the mission. They shouldn't be that inaccurate that often.

2 tracks attached. AUTO bombing on buildings. Slight dive, stable flight, bombs well short. Don't know what I did wrong. It just sometimes happens to me for seemingly no reason. I know AUTO isn't the most accurate but consistently 100m short leads to believe I'm doing something wrong, just can't figure out what. It's frustrating on deep strike missions to have all that set up, pop up, have everything right, and the string just goes short out of nowhere. I can't seem to fix it with piloting. It seems being in a dive and adjusting designation late exacerbate it, but you can see in the second track I don't fiddle with the designation late and it happens anyway. Anyone can tell me what I did wrong? Tips/tricks to share? miss_1.trk miss_2.trk

2 things: 1.) Saying this is asking for an update on an update is inaccurate. It's asking for the status of an update, since a different one has been planned instead. If he asked for the update to the July 15th update, then you'd be right. He asked for the weekly feature release status which comes with mini-updates, since the new bug strategy is taking its place and we are not sure when to expect that sort of thing again. If you want to be reductionist about everything, then saying anything on this forum is talking about talking and therefore also pointless. 2.) Waiting is something. None of us paid them $80 in 2002. If they didn't deliver until 2035 on 75% of the Hornet feature list, is it still nothing? Of course not. There's this weird dichotomy in the DCS community that delivering features on time and low in bugs is anathema to software. This just isn't the case for many development houses out there. On time and good aren't mutually exclusive and if I made my clients pick between the two as routinely as this community seems to think is normal, they'd have my head on a pike. I get it the enterprise world is a lot different than this, but it's not some universal maxim all of us software developers have illuminati meetings over. 100% on deadline with 100% completion is obviously a ridiculous expectation, but so is 300% over deadline and 50% under-delivered. I'm not saying ED is doing any of this mind you, just pointing out for the sake of conversation how weird this community can be sometimes. People wear their "I'd rather wait!" badges rather proudly. Wouldn't you rather NOT wait AND have it be accurate? Why is that never an option in DCS debate land? I still think they either promise too early or too much or some measure of both. They definitely have a tough time setting realistic deadlines for their feature groupings. People were saying no way to 2020 since it was announced. Waiting for November to say "Q2 2021" is not smart. Rip the band-aid off and say it now or we're going to have another upheaval with Kate making reddit posts and what not and that just dirties up the forums from their otherwise helpful content. My .02 and of course I'm not looking for agreement, just trying to put another consumer perspective out there I don't see voiced all that often. Can we allow that not wanting to wait forever doesn't: 1. Make you generally impatient 2. Make you hate ED 3. Make you hate ED's products or even dislike them Can we agree a little consumer pressure is good? I mean they sign off on every community feedback movement that they appreciate and like the feedback. I realize they might just be saying that, but I think I'll take their word for it. EDIT: Of course with the caveat that said feedback is CIVIL. Just being a jerk obviously doesn't help anyone. These are people, after all, not sprockets that churn out flight sim widgets. 2ND EDIT: Took out an unintentional swipe at ED.

Should the actual designated point be continuously updated when the LITENING is in PTRK or ATRK? It's not just a big deal for moving targets. As of right now, there is never a good reason to use ATRK, particularly when delivering iron. The most accurate way to deliver bombs is to keep it in OPER and continuously update the point yourself to be the middle of your target. The higher you are, the better since laser ranging doesn't currently recognize ground objects. Getting a continuously updated PTRK/ATRK would eliminate this issue, but I do not know if it works this way in the real jet. You can test this yourself. PTRK a building (I like the boiler house object) from 11nm out at angels 10. Start a dive attack w/7 seconds to go, diving to 15-20deg, hold till release. If you do not update the designation point by TDC depress close to release, you will notice overshoot, as the designation point refers to the position of the diamond cross hair before PTRK was initiated, way back 11nm ago, without taking into account the intervening building. If you update the designation without slew at 10 sec, 7 sec, and say 2 sec before release, you will hit with just one bomb 98% of the time, and with 2 nearly 100%, even with a cross wind. The most obvious case is tracking a moving target with PTRK. The designation diamond only updates when you TDC depress. It isn't this way on the A10, not sure if it should be this way in the Hornet. Also makes MAVF's a pain in the butt, as you have to sensor select back over to the TPOD to keep TDC depressing to get the MAVF to grab the right target if it's moving.

Pretty sure that's an A10 procedure

Best advice I can give was given above. Do NOT look directly at the drogue. Look at the pod on the hose is attached to and stabilize that. Your peripheral vision will take you in. Very small adjustments are necessary. There is also a very slight lag in the FBW aircraft you only notice if you've flown a lot in non-FBW aircraft (like the Hog, Viggen, Harrier), and that can throw you off quite a bit and lead you to oscillate like crazy. Also, do NOT forget to call "ready pre-contact" and do NOT proceed unless you hear "cleared contact" from the tanker. Else, the drogue will not be engagable no matter what you do, your probe will simply clip through it. This something you don't do in the boom-fueled aircraft. Don't ask me how I know this.

So I'm getting long drops every time in the Hornet right now level. Once you dive +25 deg bombs are dead on. Time of fall only effects dispersion, not impact point, so we're back to the computation being wrong. I did 20 drops in a row, level at 6k, all long using wpdsg. Did 5 in a row starting a 25 deg dive from 20k, all hits. Latest OB and I don't use any mods.