The Interesting Missions Generator

[JLX]

Hey emolina,

 

By "hover over the landing zone" I actually meant the equivalent of what you said about touching only the tip of the skids to the ground.

 

I used to work in the arctic and my first helicopter experience was being dropped off over the snowy tundra to take DGPS readings. Anyway, I remember the pilot teaching me to gently step off the skids as he couldn't land due to the deep snow. So, he hovered about a foot over the surface while I stepped out (and later climbed back in from the chest deep snow). This is what made me think of a "hover pickup/dropoff" even for passengers.

 

For this to work in DCS though, I think it would be helpful to know what parameters your interesting mission generator uses so that we can decide how creative we can be when trying to meet the mission criteria.

 

For example, if I know that I've got a 75m radius around the pickup point, I may look for near by buildings as you suggested. But, if I've only got 5m from the smoke, then there is no point.

 

Similarly, if hovering within 1m above ground is acceptable for pickup/dropoffs then I know it's an option (kinda like picking up a sling load with a 1m rope). However, I assumed that landing, meant *landing* (AGL=0 and velocity=0) but perhaps it's more flexible than that?

 

I've always wished there was a hoist for DCS helos so troops could rappel in and medivac out (via basket) but I digress...

 

Having alternatives/fallbacks would be great but I can appreciate how quickly that would make the missions much more complicated. Failing that though, it would be good to at least know pickup radius.

[emolina]

That sounds like an interesting job!

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I am about to start working on the documentation for the missions and I will make sure to include details about the pickup zone and also mission scoring.

 

My plan right now is to get a first draft of both the missions and the documentation out as soon as I can and then get feedback from you fine folk on both.

[emolina]

Hi everyone, I am really, really, SUPER happy to have finished the briefing document for the UH-1H missions!

 

I would love for you to read it and let me know what you think.

 

You can get the PDF of it here:

 

Interesting Missions Helicopter Briefing

 

Thought you may like a look at the cover page too ...

 

[JLX]

Hi everyone, I am really, really, SUPER happy to have finished the briefing document for the UH-1H missions!

 

I would love for you to read it and let me know what you think.

 

You can get the PDF of it here:

 

Interesting Missions Helicopter Briefing

 

Thought you may like a look at the cover page too ...

 

Fantastic! The flavour text is a nice immersive touch to explain why missions aren't vetted before being assigned. The clear explanation of weather and procedures is helpful too.

 

Really looking forward to trying these out!

 

As always, thanks for your efforts.

 

Sent from my tablet using Tapatalk.

[Yurgon]

Awesome, that provides a good explanation and some very helpful guidelines!

 

Of course being the nitpicker I am, here a re a few typos I spotted. ;)

 

*****

 

The Bzipi river valley has numerous scattered villages along it’s its bank.

 

We are in operating in support of a civilian government.

 

Personnel has been trained to provide some kind of visual indication to help you find the landing zone, but if they don’t always pick somewhere suitable.

 

The steep valley walls around the townships we support means that we are often close to our safety limits without much room to manoeuvre.

 

Use the flight plan as a guide only, at least the altitudes of our landing sites are correct so you can definitely used them for your flight planning.

[emolina]

Thanks JLX!

 

Thanks for the corrections Yurgon, I read over each of those many times and didn't spot them. Fixed now!

[emolina]

Hi everyone!

 

The first batch of UH-1H missions are ready!

 

They are not everything I want them to be yet but they are functional and I hope you will get a lot of fun out of them.

 

As I mentioned earlier these missions are either personnel transport or sling loads with sling loads having random weights.

 

The difficulty of the mission you pick (the D number in the filename) will affect the KIND of missions you get too. Low difficulty missions have simple tasks, and as the difficulty ramps up so does the mission complexity.

 

All the usual 'interesting missions' warnings apply, make sure you can do the mission given the weather conditions, because you have multiple destinations you will need to check the visibility at your different landing points. Use the provided NDB if needed. Landing point altitudes are provided in the flight plan.

 

Make sure the aircraft is ok during startup etc.

 

PLEASE READ THE PDF PROVIDED IN THE UH-1H directory! It explains lots and I've tried to make it short and useful.

 

You don't need a Dropbox account to access the files.

 

To download the PDF and missions go to the Dropbox link below and select Published Missions->UH-1H, then either 'Annotated' if you want a hint of what's in the mission (mission description is in the filename), or 'Interesting' if you want to be surprised.

 

 

Interesting Missions at Dropbox

 

If you haven't flown my 'Interesting Missions' before please read the first and maybe second posts in this thread, they explain the system, weather report format and my motivation for making these.

 

Ok, if you've read this far, thank you! Here is what still has to be done:

 

- For some reason I get crashes if you are picking up groups of troops with people in them ... yup. I don't know where the problem is or how I am going to fix it but in the meantime you will be picking up mortar tubes! There is other scenery at the pickup and drop off sites so it's not too bad ...

 

- Need more destinations, there are six there now, and they are semi-interesting, but lots more are needed.

 

- More difficulty tuning and failures.

 

As I hope to be updating these often over the next few weeks I've only made 40 annotated and 100 interesting missions. As things settle down a bit more I'll go over to the usual 100/400 split.

 

Again, I hope you enjoy the missions, please let me know what you think.

[JLX]

Hi everyone!

 

The first batch of UH-1H missions are ready!

 

 

Thanks emolina! I'm eager to try them out and will give them a whirl (pun intended) as soon as I'm able.

 

Sent from my tablet using Tapatalk.

[JLX]

I've only had time to try 2 interesting missions so far (#1 & #100) but here is my initial feedback:

 

• There is something that is causing severe frame drop. It happened consistently in both missions I tried. I've a pretty capable rig (see my sig.) and usually run at 60fps but was getting drops to as low as 14fps around the initial FARP. When further away (and not looking at it) it would climb back up. Perhaps a poorly constructed object or something that if it comes into view causes the slowdown? I'll let you know if I notice anything more specific.
   
  
• Often the waypoints out to a pickup point are the same ones used coming back in. When this is the case, the initial outbound waypoints are overwritten on the map with the returning inbound waypoints. So, it appears as if the first half of the waypoints are missing. You can see this in interesting mission #1.
   
  
• The mission text is boilerplate right now. It would be nice to have a very brief summary of the objective. Short and sweet is fine. Perhaps of the form: "Take off from... Pickup ??? at... Deliver/Return ??? to..." or something like that. So for example (again for mission #1): "Takeoff from from Alahadzy FARP. Pickup troops at Bzybta N. Return troops to Alahadzy FARP ." I just assumed there was a pickup at the furthest point and that I had to bring them back to the original FARP based of waypoint progression. But missions may get more interesting than that ;-)
   
  
• Similar to above... The flightplan on the kneeboard displays the waypoints and their description (a nice touch). But it would be good to have additional information about any specifics that need to happen at a specific waypoint. For example in interesting mission #1, you may want to add a "Pickup troops/gear here..." message to the notes of waypoint #5 and "Deliver troops/gear here..." to WP#9.
   
  
• Default views seemed to be saved with the mission which overrode my custom default views for both the pilot and co-pilot. It would be nice if the default views were omitted from the mission files so we can use our own that we're used to. I vaguely remember reading something about including/excluding them from mission files in a post long ago but it escapes me at the moment.
   
  
• Mission distances are good and not too long for helo flights.
   
  
• Unlike the original test mission, there was no red smoke at the pickup point. This is fine as it was kind of fun to have to look for the trucks and use the description in the notes to figure out the correct pickup point. However, it would be nice to have the option via the comm menu to request smoke if you're having a hard time locating the correct spot and prefer to fly without using labels, the F10 map or marks on the kneeboard for assistance.
   
  
• Really enjoyed keeping an eye out for mechanical failures. In mission #100 I got an engine icing warning as well as having the engine run hot. Even though it was a bit of an odd combination of problems and the icing wasn't particularly appropriate to the environment, that part didn't matter too much. It was fun to actually have to turn on the de-icing gear but to be honest, I didn't know what to do with hot running engine. I decided to finish the mission and didn't fall out of the sky :-)
   
  
• An additional spec I'd like to see reported is the length of the cargo line. In my homegrown practise missions I use 50' but I seem to recall getting the "Successfully delivered cargo..." message with about 75' on my radar altimeter. As I use the altimeter to gauge decent rate/distance for an accurate cargo drop I dropped it way to early/far from my intended target.
  

 

Great work! Looking forward to seeing these evolve.

Edited December 7, 2016 by JLX
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[emolina]

Thanks JLX, I will start working on some of those in the next few days.

 

A couple of comments!

 

- There isn't a LOT at the FARP. Just the basics really. I'm not sure what's happening there, I'm not doing anything fancy. I'll double check the template mission just to make sure I'm not doing anything silly.

 

- In mission 100 for this set there are no failures. The ice light you got was for real. Probably the aircraft measuring the outside air temperature and letting you know to keep an eye on things. I'm not sure. Overheating ? I'm not sure, was it a very heavy sling load?

[JLX]

[*]The mission text is boilerplate right now. It would be nice to have a very brief summary of the objective...<snip>

[*]An additional spec I'd like to see reported is the length of the cargo line...<snip>

 

- In mission 100 for this set there are no failures. The ice light you got was for real. Probably the aircraft measuring the outside air temperature and letting you know to keep an eye on things. I'm not sure. Overheating ? I'm not sure, was it a very heavy sling load?

 

A few of oversights on my part:

 

I missed the fact that on the flight plan the mission goals are stated at the very top! I was focused on the waypoint information and missed it. That is sufficient and what I was looking for in the briefing. Might be nice to have it in the briefing too but not really necessary now that I see where it is. My bad.

 

I also didn't remember that the rope length is reported on the Hints page of the kneeboard so again, my bad. Please ignore my earlier comment about it.

 

As for the icing and engine overheating, I did the mission again and saw that the ambient temperature at ground level was indeed 0°C as you suspected. The exhaust temp did go over the green up to 650-700°C, sometimes even after I'd dropped the sling load. I made a point of not over torquing the engine but, TBH, I never paid any attention to this in the past. So perhaps this is happening more often than I realize. So much to learn...

 

FWIW, I have checked to make sure that random failures is (ans was) turned off in the settings for future testing.

 

Cheers!

[emolina]

I think your briefing comments and suggestions for the flight plan and briefing are spot on. I've been thinking about how to better annotate the flight plan since your post. Now I just need the time to update the code.

 

There is a hints page in the kneeboard? I can't check right now but that's a surprise too! I'll add the length to the briefing document notes. I've just slowly climbed till I felt the bump but it's not always a ... smooth transition.

 

Interesting about the engine temperature and icing. I've been keeping an eye on the exhaust temperature needle a lot more as I work out how to fine tune the sling load weights (want them to be marginal to lift at the higher altitude sites) and I've noticed that the way I normally fly has the temperature out of the green zone a LOT.

[emolina]

JLX, I've been looking at the mission files and I can't find anything defining the snap views in there. There is supposed to be a 'config' directory if the snap views are set by the mission but there isn't one in this missions.

 

I did find a config file in there but there isn't any snap view information in there.

 

Can you please double check this for me by quickly setting up a snap view or two in some other mission, then try a new mission from this batch and see if the snap views are reset?

[JLX]

There is a hints page in the kneeboard? I can't check right now but that's a surprise too! I'll add the length to the briefing document notes. I've just slowly climbed till I felt the bump but it's not always a ... smooth transition.

 

I got my versions crossed when looking at this. The cargo section of the hints page on the kneeboard is only in v2.x:

 

 

Interesting about the engine temperature and icing. I've been keeping an eye on the exhaust temperature needle a lot more as I work out how to fine tune the sling load weights (want them to be marginal to lift at the higher altitude sites) and I've noticed that the way I normally fly has the temperature out of the green zone a LOT.

 

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. I'm routinely flying over-temp even when I feel I'm not over stressing the engine (Engine/Rotor RPM high-green). But, perhaps the governor has something else to say about that? If/when they start modelling engine overheating effects I guess I'll have to learn to fly much more conservatively.

 

JLX, I've been looking at the mission files and I can't find anything defining the snap views in there. There is supposed to be a 'config' directory if the snap views are set by the mission but there isn't one in this missions.

 

I did find a config file in there but there isn't any snap view information in there.

 

Can you please double check this for me by quickly setting up a snap view or two in some other mission, then try a new mission from this batch and see if the snap views are reset?

 

Ack! It turns out that when copying snapviews.lua between stable/beta/alpha versions, I mixed up my files which only had some of my snapviews up to date. Sry for wasting your time on this.

 

One last thing is that I think you may need to check your altitudes. Something janky is going on there:

 

 

Hope that helps.

[JLX]

I played quite a few of these over the weekend and even though there are only a few pickup points, I'm really enjoying them! It's fun to get familiar with the area.

 

I thought I'd add a couple more thoughts as they came to me:

 

 

1. Sling loads are being registered as delievered ("Mission Goal Complete") when I haven't dropped the load yet. I think it's about 20ft over ground level the trigger comes on.

 

2. For sling loads, it would be a nice challenge to have to drop the load in a much smaller target area. Perhaps the harder the mission, the smaller the target? You could get quite creative with this using ships, platforms, truck beds, stacking of some sort?, etc. Like the trucks & troops used now, smaller targets should of course also have some obvious visual cues as to where the limits of the drop area are.

[emolina]

Hi JLX! thanks for letting me know about the kneeboard in 2.0, it makes me wonder how many other little useful things like that are out there.

 

The problem with the altitude is that it's using locations both as landing points and waypoints. As landing points it shows the ground altitude, as waypoints it shows the flight plan altitude. Because all the points list the landing notes and so look the same it's confusing.

 

If you have a look at the mission description at the top of the page and match the landing points to the flight plan waypoint list you'll see that the names mentioned in the mission description are showing ground level altitudes.

 

I'm using CTLD for working out when the swing loads have been dropped in the right area, I think it's being a little too easy on us!

[emolina]

Hi everyone, I'm uploaded another batch of UH-1H missions. Here are the changes from the previous batch:

 

- I've cleaned up the flight plan. If you are not going to land at a waypoint, the description for the waypoint is left out. It makes it a lot easier to read. I've also moved the mission description to be right above the flight plan so it stands out more.

 

- I've added another six landing locations and also changed the landing site for 'Mount Amjulapa' to be out of the trees. It's in a different peak now.

 

- Before this version, the difficulty determined what types of missions you got, now it also determines WHERE the missions go to. At the lower difficulties you will get shorter flights to low-altitude destinations. At the higher difficulties flights can be longer and high-altitude destinations are a possibility. Difficulty still also affects weather, time, failures etc.

 

I haven't tested all the new landing sites yet so I would love to hear your opinion and any feedback you may have.

[JLX]

Swapping the Time & Mission Description was a good move. Seems subtle but it makes a difference when quickly scanning them. It is more logical and readable.

 

I miss the waypoint names and descriptions though. I found those really excellent! It's more than personal preference though, I think they really add informational value. For example:

• WP #4 - Other than sequence, doesn't tell me much
  
• WP #4, Akyara NE - Tells me more. Especially if I've become familiar with the area enough to know where Akyara is.
  
• WP #4, Akyara NE (Entrance to Valley) - Now we're talking. Even for "just a waypoint" that is so much more informative. Especially if I don't know where Akyara is.
  

I tend to like flying with no labels, no F10 map and without using the mark position on kneeboard whenever possible. Also, depending on the mission, I often like to fly using visual navigation rather than just instruments.

 

The notes you added to all waypoints really helped with this! Together with the map, I could now use visual cues to make my way around. Especially helpful if I've wandered off my designated bearing or decided to take a different route/shortcut.

 

It's like receiving directions from a person: "Head East on Hwy 21 until you see the gas station, turn left and look for the driveway north of the green barn." or "Fly to the valley entrance, head north, look for the second small township and pickup troops on the north side. Then return to the FARP."

 

That is really great! I'd not only hate to lose it, but would love it if it were more important to use visual/descriptive spotting to locate mission points in the future.

 

For readability, might I suggest omitting the altitude information of waypoints instead? As you pointed out, it can be a bit confusing as is (although I now understand how they work). Also, do we really need to be told how high to fly over a waypoint? My thought is that would be left to the pilot.

 

Just my $0.02 as always...

[emolina]

Thanks JLX.

 

The waypoint thing is interesting. I like to fly the missions the same way as you so I see where you are coming from.

 

When I first started adding the comments I wanted them to help you find the landing sites. I stuffed up their implementation though and I ended up with descriptions that described the waypoint or told you where to land, or both.

 

What I need to do is go back and have a description of the waypoint, and a description of the landing site and pick which ones get shown according to the flight plan.

 

It's a pain but it's what the system needs and it's what the system is about, that's where the value is for me, having a realistic, random mission AND good documentation to go with it so we have a chance of succeeding the first time we fly it.

 

You are also right about the waypoints. I think the way to solve this one is to only show the height of the landing points and leave the fly-over points blank.

 

Thank you for all your great feedback.

[retired_old_sarge]

is there a way to download all the missions at once instead of one at a time... For instance all of the P-51D missions at one time or have to download each one seperately one at a time... Please.. I am new and very interested .. can you please reply to my address here as I am still learning how to navigate the forums also..\Thank You

[ralgha]

Click the download button in the upper right corner of the page to download a zip file containing all files in the folder you're viewing.

 

Then, if you want to save disk space, recompress the files as a .7z file using 7-Zip on max settings with a solid archive. 400 missions are like 300MB zipped, but only 60MB as a .7z file!

[JLX]

Just thought I'd give a quick ping and see how things are coming along. I'm not in a rush as my graphics card is in for repairs anyway but I'm still very interested to see this get developed further as interesting/unpredictable helo flights are my main interest. Cheers! :-)

[emolina]

Hi JLX, things are going along well. I'm not sure what I will tackle next. I've been on holidays and now that I'm back I'm thinking about the next step with the missions.

[Hawkeye60]

Hi JLX, things are going along well. I'm not sure what I will tackle next. I've been on holidays and now that I'm back I'm thinking about the next step with the missions.

I wanted to thank you for your work on this.

 

Outstanding!

 

DCS has needed this for a long time!

 

I would like to request any mission sets for the WW II aircraft.

 

Your missions I have used have been great fun.

 

With Normandy around the corner, this would be a fantastic addition!

 

Perhaps design new missions to be WW II oriented!

 

Thanks for considering this!

 

Take care

 

Hawkeye

[emolina]

Thank you Hawkeye! Once the Normandy map comes out I'll start working on it, I'm also really looking forward to the Hormuz map.