Request: realistic AI radar behaviour and scan patterns

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Hey,

 

Along with the ongoing efforts to make AI aircraft behave in a more realistic manner (G-forces etc), could we also have AI aircraft have realistic radar scan patterns?

At the moment you can get instantly engaged by jets that fly significantly higher and who do not have a look-down radar (MiG-21/23 etc), nor AWACS / GCI-support, and it would be nice if Vietnam-era tactics can be used to sneak up on enemy aircraft: fly at treetop level with radar off, and zoom up below higher flying jets to take them out with heat-seakers.

 

And, for more recent aircraft who do have look-down radars, could their scanning behaviour maybe be tied to their skill level? So that rookie enemy AI either "forget" to use their radar elevation, or use it less frequently than expert-level AI?

 

Thanks!

[Worrazen]

That's probably not going to be easy on hardware, it would be similar to raytracing for realism, except that it's not visible light and bounces off different objects differently ofcourse.

 

Now this doesn't need to run as fast to be the same framerate/fidelity as the raytracing would in order to render the world so you can see the game, ofcourse limiting the speed would also limit the capability of all of these radars in terms of realism, if you go mach 3 the same radar might not track as good as the same radar in real life.

 

This could be further optimized by limiting the bounce depth amount, each signal wave for example can only bounce 3 times max before disappearing.

 

This could be as complicated as fluid physics, it's nowhere near close to be doable in realtime in any game out there.

 

But I'm not an expert on math/physics and how much things could be done in software to make the radar be as good as real one without fully replicating real world physics, probably a number of cheats that could be used, I don't even know how it works right now.

 

EDIT: I maybe have misred the OP a bit, but whatever.

Edited August 15, 2017 by Worrazen

[Buzzles]

The first point for aircraft that don't have look down picking people up below them should be addressed.

 

I don't know how ED have done their AI, but if they have a pattern where the AI has a number of sensors (eg, 1 is eyes, 2 is radar etc...), then it should be a case of just adding limits into the correct one.

[Frederf]

Instead of the computationally (more) expensive effort of modeling the scanning beam and pattern the search volume could pulse at several seconds interval and then this search volume could change to others inside the total radar capability volume according to some pattern.

 

E.g. if the radar can have 5 zones in which to place the scan volume it might do: 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 3, ....

 

If each scan in a volume takes 10 seconds (2-3 sweeps) then it might be a minute or more before volume 5 is scanned since last time.

 

For example the F-15 might have a 120x120 total radar capability but it's probably only scanning a 120x10 slice every 4 seconds. If you fly very low it could take some time before the F-15 decides to check one of the lower slices.

[Weta43]

& it isn't necessary to actually have them scan, only to limit their ability to 'notice' to specific angles, in the same way that they 'can't' see you if you're behind and below them.