Birds, ground traffic, air traffic "soon" ... but what about UFOs?

I had reservations back and forth posting this here or in ChitChat ... but but it's official thing at the Navy apparently now, and I know this isn't on anyone's mind around here at all but if that's the reality the simulator can't just ignore it technically, but ofcourse in practice you can, understandably it's not the focus ofcourse.

Secondly I kept thinking well probably no way someone else going to ask this anytime soon so someone has to ;)

I'm just floating the idea, as I'm kinda looking at it ... it's a simulator, shouldn't be hard to implement, why not ... especially if we find valid gameplay reasons, and those are, officially documented cases and videos, so you wouldn't be shooting at it, there wouldn't be any combat, it would all be relatively distant sightings, which if pilot isn't paying attention wouldn't even notice, so no crazy spaceships, just balls floating slowly or speeding to some direction, like in the examples in this thread, depends if ED wants to make them detectable on radar/awacs/ ... still the missles could track just visuals right? So if the UFO detects a missile it may just want to run away and disappear after some time and that would be it, and that's enough.

It at least be kinda interesting getting your sensors to try to track it, to replicate the struggling, that even be a good benchmark test of the simulation of the sensors haha that's another reason I didn't even think of before writing this paragraph, so for player gameplay it come to scenarios where could confuse the heck out of some people, very possibly changing the events of a dogfight or a long battle, someone might see it and follow thinking it's the other player, even if someone sees a bit is enough, the UFO doesn't need to be particularly close, that may give the lucky opponent to shoot him down as he got flustered by a UFO and there could be many such instances when nobody in-game figured out it was a UFO influencing the play, until maybe someone watches a replay, it would probably make interesting multiplayer experiences, probably fun twist to a match, not that it would happen all the time ofcourse not, but just like the solar/lunar eclipse is simulated, there was some mention of an update in one of the patches several years ago.

So you'd have this option like low or turned off by default.

Some ideas of the basic DCS UFO technicalities:

• A couple of types of shapes (models) ... mostly round or basically replicas of what we see on the declassified videos, but avoiding crazy dramatic cartoony saucer shapes.
  
• There could be a few behaviors of them each, slow moving, fast moving, high up, low at sea going straight, etc
  
• A slider just like Birds have in the options menu, percentage chance or some kind of amount, but physicaly I'd have no more than 3 appear simultaneously for a whole map at any given time, if there's multiple battles, depending on total unit counts, and there ofcourse be timers set up that not more than 2 in the same hour, stuff like that, and not more than 3 in 6 hours and you get it pretty toned down and realistic, but it has to happen more as not all will be necessairly seen, totally depends on the player as well, screen resolution probably too.
  
• Also they wouldn't last indefinitely, like when it appears, it would have it's lifetime of let's say 5-15 minutes, if nobody spots/interest then it be possibly longer, maybe a dynamic system if it gets to close then it'll already be speeding up going away and disappearing in a few minutes, otherwise it'll keep wandering until it get's "poked" (distance, some unit speeding towards it, aiming stuff, radars, that's how it would detect, irrespective if the player pilot actually seen it (panning/zooming camera)
  
• They would work in a similar way civilian traffic works, just their own layer completely, and they would always appaear with some hardcoded calculation so they are not too close to ANY player or even AI unit, so if you have a battle going on, if you calculate all the distances between all the ground/air/sea units of all the factions, you shouldn't get a UFO to appear in the middle of a battlefront, however not too much away either or it wouldn't really have an effect if it's like way out of the battle area then it may be ignored or figured out even if it's seen, so some kind of balance needs to be found what the min and max distance zones are ... randomized in this zone, but it can't be random for the whole map otherwise the chances would be way to slim even if you play for 5000 hours as most of them could in areas you normally never fly to, middle of the black sea for example, so there should be like "no ufo zones" but again they would need to be dynamic based on the mission ... maybe birds already have something like this, not only they would appear with separation, the UFOs should also actively fly with that min/max separation to always keep generaly moving away from everyone else or parallel, except when they reach their "safe" separation they may move into random direction so that it's not always appearing as going away.
  

I mean there might even be whole missions where Grim Reapers would hunt and search for a UFO with a fleet full of F/A-18 or similar and fuel tankers and AWACS, oh I would watch that ... but there's a downside, more on that later.

It's just kinda hard to justify this thing as something DCS fitting I know ... but at least I'd like to see what other people think about this, and I hope it doesn't get dumped on me as if it's "my idea", no it's more of a something happens in the aviation out there and automatically you go what if I had that in the sim. So it's not my thing, I wouldn't do this thread without seeing that news piece so it's not my thing. I did however give it a lot more thought and effort as anyone would, even going into the technical details, that's is genuinely my nature that when I focus on something whether small or big I usually dig deep, on another note, I actually do it as a objective analysis for giving a case, like a government would order a study to see the economical/industrial justification of constructing a new railroad to some city, but in this case I'm also subjectively biased and there's no secret here so I can admit I find this as kind of a fun easter egg.

The ofcourse biggest con point against it is that it may turn it into a drama thing where *everyone* would just chase UFOs and make videos and people would watch it as sport, even I could find myself guilty of that jikes ... ofcourse something I would want to avoid so it doesn't get down to that level ... but that would be human culture, that's the customer fault right, if DCS is simulating reality then it should not be at fault for the users unrealistically abusing it. Maybe it's more of a MAC concern, I'm sure the DCS Community would give it a laugh or two and move along, I'm doubting big players and channels would just stop all things DCS and purposelly chase UFOs all day long, but it's at least good to know the risks ahead.

The other thing is ... it stops here, it's round balls floating far relatively far away in the end (but still in visual range half the time) it's not like there's going to be evolution or some big update, so I see a scenario where MAC people may get all out crazy and get all hyped up and expect some update and more crazy fictional UFOs and more models and more spaceships and stuff, well it won't happen will it, so if ED doesn't do anything, it should be fine, the craze will very likely dwindle down and they'll go back to normal playing the sim as usual.

EDIT: More complete article

https://www.lasvegasnow.com/news/i-team-exclusive-confidential-report-analyzes-tic-tac-ufo-incidents/1187688105

We do have UFOs.

I often practice intercepts in DCS Hornet and they always appear as UNKNOWN before being identified.

These unknowns are flying so they are technically Unidentified Flying Objects.

We do have UFOs.

I often practice intercepts in DCS Hornet and they always appear as UNKNOWN before being identified.

These unknowns are flying so they are technically Unidentified Flying Objects.

Yes nice remark. I've always found UFO to be shy and unprecize term. Let's say secret advanced technology vessels or E.T. vessels. Because when top of the art military tech can't intercept you know you're not facing a frisbee.

UFO is UFO as long as it is not identified though, be it secret advanced technology, extraterrestrial or frisbee.

If one would like to see flying lights in DCS, ED would need to start with redefining this portion of EDGE to begin with. I am sure they will do that eventually. Light sources in DCS not flying saucers I mean.

UFO is UFO as long as it is not identified though, be it secret advanced technology, extraterrestrial or frisbee...

First two are vehicles to me, only last is an object but if you call a vehicle an object then I agree.

UFO is UFO as long as it is not identified though, be it secret advanced technology, extraterrestrial or frisbee.

If one would like to see flying lights in DCS, ED would need to start with redefining this portion of EDGE to begin with. I am sure they will do that eventually. Light sources in DCS not flying saucers I mean.

Wait... you think they would need to modify the engine to support UFOs ? It's not that big of a deal and if it did happen it be done right but you could basically just mod and call it's just a missile that has near zero turn rate, minimal turn angle, just making it way unrealistic, disabled GFX (exhaust) and using a ball gray ball or tictac model instead of the missle, there you go, the rest is just scripts to do behavior, unless you mean some kind of exotic lighting effects to make it glow and produce weird patterns and to actually emit light at night it may be another thing, hey that be cool, some weird spooky light patterns haha, I didn't even think of that :thumbup:, but it's not like they can't do it right now. Light source stuff tech not necessairly for UFOs, it would make some look cooler for sure, but mainly that be for long-range afterburner sighting (if that's a thing in reality?), and all the stuff at night.

Up up and away ...

I know the term UFO isn't suppose to be used like this, but for the sake of convenience I didn't spend time recalling the proper term.

Update but here's the other hand of this:

Anyways, while the videos themselfs may or may not be what we think or wish, just to be clear it's no secret and while I'm the OP of this thread and the first post appears to be so enthusiastic rest assured I am well aware that the UFO community is riddled with huge amounts of fakery, drama and big money turns around, for example XYZ youtube account is ran by a 16-17 year old kid who's probably using adobe after effects and gets sometimes double digit million views on absolute total fakes, ... but even with that it doesn't mean necessairly everything's fake, a bunch of freeloaders basically muddying the waters just makes it a lot harder to get any sense out of the stuff, at least in these cases linked above, the AATIP stuff there's some criticism that a company wanted to make a case to do weapon systems (presumably against UFOs) so they just wanted some drama out there out of these 3 FLIR videos and hype it up or whatever. One such critical example here https://ufoseekers.com/2018/05/07/aatip-pentagon-ufo-study-complete-update/ - secondly there's a heck of a lot of watermarks on most videos as I still haven't found the actual source, takes time. Thirdly, what I'm mentioning here, but certaintly not everything, is that the media that covered this added some of their flavoring to it so you get different story based on what article you read and this I-team (news team) apparently regarded 3 videos as one event even tho the objects look nothing alike, it could be the same event but separate videos/obj from different planes/time of day, it's just so annnoying how the press/people reaction and reporting can interpret something that may be true/honest and twist it like that. The focus should be to the actual videos, other real pilots just have to make their own call based on the FLIR videos and stuff and it's their choice what they think, , that's the whole thing, it's not line one authority to tell what's right, everyone should make their opinion based on all of this, and no conclusion is needed,

That said, rest assured I won't be bringing much of this drama into this community, other than this post or two ... however all of this shouldn't sway from the OP main idea, it's about DCS and just the phenomena, irrespective of this specific case, I just happened to mention this one as I saw it in the news and it lead to it, I could have done the thread randomly and citing other stuff, it's about the idea of DCS support. The question is, how questionable, ... I might append some docs, I saw an article saying "US admits there's UFO sighting at bases", so it at least gives some validity to even consider making anything into the simulator.

The thing is, in order to make these sightings at all in DCS that can't be confirmed, the simulator just has to feature a "physical" object (model) internally that actually exists and renders by the graphics engine, or what, or make a fake a spot appear inside the HUD or the windshield, that's the stuff we should discuss here, what would be the valid way for ED to do this to be as netural as possible. The scripts/behavior of this AI UFO in DCS would then need to be developed precisely so like it lessens the chance of many players seeing it ... that's probably one great way to make it more mysterious and realistic is to have it appear near players which don't have other AI's or players in vicinity, away from big battle zones, ... but there should be some chance that someone else could discover it if they get there really really fast, kinda easter egg, for a few seconds, again hoping it doesn't turn into a sport.

unless you mean some kind of exotic lighting effects to make it glow and produce weird patterns and to actually emit light at night it may be another thing,

That's exactly what I meant.

Suffice to say I would prefer to see realistic night and day lighting first, including light sources and illumination for the current environments rather than UFO itself

Suffice to say I would prefer to see realistic night and day lighting first, including light sources and illumination for the current environments rather than UFO itself

Ofcourse yes, I was going to mention in the previous post, I'm not sure if I made the connection, that these things can share the tech, but most likely it will be something else driving the tech not the UFO, unfortunately for this thread, heh.

And that something else may be some ... spotting and visibility stuff that may need better lighting, for example the afterburner exhaust, but I didn't got into that deep yet to know how big of a deal it is overall in DCS/Reality.

Follow up response from Navy:

"Military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew," Gradisher said. "Furthermore, any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations."

 

He added, "Therefore, no release of information to the general public is expected.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/UFO-information-not-expected-to-go-to-general-13810876.php