500 Missions for the MiG-21

[emolina]

Hi everyone, long story short I made a thing that made 500 missions for the MiG-21.

 

The long story is here:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=172869

 

This could be an interesting flight!

 

The 'Interesting Flights' system is a generator of sort-of-random missions aimed at making sure you never have to fly the same mission twice. They are interesting because you don't know what's going to happen in them. Every mission is different. The flight plan for each mission is generated just for that mission. There is no combat but there IS scoring.

 

The flight plan is complete, well annotated, and can be found on your kneeboard.

 

Below you will find the download link, there are 100 missions in the 'annotated' directory. Their filename gives you some clues about what will happen during the mission (format explained in the post linked above). There are 400 missions in the 'interesting' directory, they don't tell you anything except their difficulty.

 

The message linked above explains the system, its goals, and what you will find in each mission. It's fairly long! I hope you enjoy it.

 

Mission Briefing

 

Look at the weather forecast on your kneeboard, then checkout the flight plan details.

 

The aim of these missions is to get the aircraft safely back on the ground, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard, sometimes you shouldn't even fly.

 

You'll get a higher score if you meet the take off and landing times shown in your flight plan. Down to the second.

 

Make sure there isn't anything wrong with your aircraft during startup.

 

You are not supposed to complete all the 'Interesting Flights', for many, you shouldn't even take off! A lot of the higher numbered flights are just not safe.

 

Make sure the weather and your aircraft are suitable. If not, download another flight. Or download a bunch of them in the first place so you can go trough them quickly.

There are plenty there, no reason to ever fly one twice. So don't, they are a lot more fun if you don't know what's going to happen.

 

During the flight you can use the 'F10' radio menu to find out:

• Your score for the mission so far.
  
• What you are expected to do next.
  
• Get a helping hand by seeing your ground speed and the elapsed mission time down to the second.
  

 

You will not experience or see any combat during this flight.

'Interesting Flights' uses the MOOSE scripting framework and Open Maps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHERE TO GET THE MISSIONS FROM

 

Please read the thread linked above if you don't know what this is all about! You can download the missions from a shared DropBox folder here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mzic1uoxnyofgm3/AADJTks7pN0nmj1CqpmqUy5oa?dl=0

[Bogey Jammer]

Very interesting, I'll test that. I can only say welcome to any dynamic gameplay cruelly missing in this simulator.

 

But what would be wonderful is to separate your kneeboard features as a mod universal to any module because many of us deeply need it.

 

EDIT: ah they are not dynamic… no problem though :)

 

EDIT2: ah, the kneeboard pages are static jpeg… Anyway I like these missions. Perfect for navigation training.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Bogey Jammer

[emolina]

Sorry to disappoint you twice BG! Unfortunately to get varying weather, time of day and a more informative kneeboard it all has to be baked in before the mission starts.

 

Although I would love it if there was a way to generate the kneeboard dynamically.

[PE_Tigar]

Tried it for L-39C, but having these missions for MiG is much better for me - I have 10x more hours on it :).

[emolina]

I'm so glad you're using the missions from multiple aircraft! that's awesome, thanks for letting me know.

[hsth]

Hi,

 

I'm very happy with these missions. They are indeed very interesting..

But is there a way to re-save them all at once in the ME to keep up with the latest DCS versions?

[emolina]

Thank you!

 

Hi,

But is there a way to re-save them all at once in the ME to keep up with the latest DCS versions?

 

Only when I re-generate them, have you been running into issues?

[hsth]

So far only when I use the mizedit mod. But it has happened in the past that new DCS versions required a re-save of the missions. Since there are now 500 (! and I enjoy them) of them I was wondering if you have thought about this.

[charenton]

download link dont run well:pilotfly:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mzic1uoxn...qpmqUy5oa?dl=0

[emolina]

Oh right! Phew!

 

The missions are made by an external program, that's the only way I can maintain them really.

 

So I'm hoping that if DCS updates break the current version of the missions, I'll be able to modify the generator to fix the issue, then re-generate them!

[emolina]

download link dont run well:pilotfly:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mzic1uoxn...qpmqUy5oa?dl=0

 

The link at the top of the page works well for me, did you click on it or copy/paste it?

[hsth]

I have no trouble at all following the link from OP.

[hsth]

I see, I'll keep my fingers crossed that you 'll manage to keep your generator up to date as I really appreciate what you've done.

(and hope for some SU-25A missions?)

[emolina]

Thank you!

 

I didn't think people would be too interested in the missions for the Flaming Cliffs aircraft.

[PE_Tigar]

Same here - the original link works for me - and thanks again emolina for creating the missions, really appreciate your work.

 

BTW, some observations, after flying a couple of missions:

 

1. Conditions - it's very hard to hit the exact second when your wheels leave the ground. IRL you would ideally count "breaks off" at the start of the takeoff run as your takeoff time. I don't think that the game logs that, though. Suggest change this requirement to minutes, or at least penalize less for not hitting the exact second. Same with landing.

 

2. Conditions - however, on the other hand, it would be good to put altitude and position triggers on waypoints - that's how navigation competitions work IRL. You should also use more stringent limits for aircraft with advanced navigation suites (A-10C, Ka-50, M-2000C) and those without.

 

3. Kneeboard - weather report could be in internationally recognized format. Here's how it looks for example: METAR LKPR 301000Z 19008KT 9999 FEW036 20/11 Q1016 NOSIG RMK REG QNH 1013=. You could give METAR (=weather report) for departure airfield, and TAF (=forecast) for destination. For MiG air pressure should be given in mmHg, standard pressure (1013.25 HPa) is 760 mmHg. AFAIK military ops are flown on Qfe BTW.

 

4. Kneeboard - navigation. You got mag headings and distance - perfect. IMHO altitudes should be rounded in meters for MiG (9000 instead of 9144, for example), it's easier to maintain. Nav aids - TACAN is useless for MiG, you can remove that. Instead, RSBN channels should be used. For NDBs Sector and number should be used instead of frequency. I think it would be easy to replace NDB and RSBN frequencies with channels/sectors+numbers automatically using a simple table. Same goes for radio frequencies.

 

5. Speeds, TOC and TOD - MiGs performance is much better than many slower planes in DCS. For example, your required cruise speed of 740km/h TAS is actually very low for MiG. MiGs normal cruise speed is 600 km/h IAS, which translates to around 900 km/h TAS @30k feet. Of course, the speeds should be defined in IAS in the nav log as well. You should also think about time to climb and time to descend. Top of climb and top of descent should be defined if you're flying as high as the missions stipulate. In one of the missions my last WP before landing was 86 km from destination @30k feet. That required very steep descent. In nice weather it's no big deal, but in shite weather could mean additional workload. Also, ideally you would aim to have an initial approach fix as your last waypoint before landing in the nav log.

 

So, to conclude - so far so good, and keep up the good work :). If I was you, I'd perfect the missions set, packaged it as a training/challenge campaign and sell it.

[emolina]

Thanks Tigar! that's a lot of great feedback, I'll try do deal with most of it point by point:

 

1. I agree, over the next week or two I'll be uploading new missions which extend the take-off sweet spot to be ten seconds either way of the planned time. Landing will change to 40 seconds either way of the predicted time and you will only lose one quarter of a point for each second outside of that.

 

2. I hadn't thought of making it more like a real-nav competition. That's good idea. I had originally thought about timing at waypoints but the code inside the mission was going to get really tricky. I couldn't just use a trigger because you would not be at the waypoint when it's triggered, you'd be at location where the trigger zone starts.

 

3. I had also thought of the METAR standard for the weather report but some of the information in the METAR is not available in DCS, like visibility for example. You can set it to BE something, but it's not measurable in the sim. It won't take into account things like fog, or low cloud, time of day, precipitation etc. On top of that I think a lot of people are not familiar with the METAR codes so it would be a hindrance to them more than help. The code I'm using was originally only intended to be used a short weather description for the filenames in the 'annotated' version of the missions but I ended up liking it so I put it in the kneeboards too!

 

4+5. I got the MiG-21 data from the mission posted here : https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2896883&postcount=56 in the main 'Interesting Missions' thread. If you would like to play around with that version until you're happy with it and then upload it here I would be really happy to re-run the MiG-21 missions with your updated data.

 

I think you make some great points in 4+5 but a lot of that detail is outside of my 'scope', not that I have a scope at the moment but I think that if I got bogged down with things like vertical navigation I may never actually finish the project and never go on to the next thing.

 

Thank you for all the great feedback, it's great to hear back from people actually using the missions!

[PE_Tigar]

Great - I'll look into that template and post it back here with changes.

[FrancisIsHere]

I'm so happy about this package, I have tested it today and gave me a lot to work :D