[MISSING TRACK FILE] F/A-18C Cat 4 on Stennis - lineup tweak

[Bankler]

This might be a Stennis bug, rather than an F/A-18C bug, I'm not sure (but it surely affects the current F/A-18 experience).

 

Description:

It looks like the alignment error range for hooking up with the shuttle is wrong at CAT 4, when the carrier is heading north (000 true hdg).

 

On the other cats, it seems you can be a little off left or right, but you'll connect to the shuttle anyway.

 

On CAT 4 however, your nose needs to point a little to the right. If you're ever so slightly angled to the left, the shuttle won't work.

 

Repro rate:

100%

 

Repro steps:

1) Let Stennis travel north (important that it's 000).

1) Start on Stennis (cold or parking hot).

2) Taxi to cat 4, and line up with the nose pointed just slightly to the left. Note that the shuttle don't work.

3) Go around, but this time line up with the nose pointed quite significantly to the right. Note that the shuttle now works, despite the fact that the absolute alignment error is now larger than in step 2.

 

Possible cause of problem:

See follow-up post below.

FailedCat4OnBoat.trk

CatFailTest_CleanCopy.miz

Edited December 2, 2018 by Bankler
Added that it's only happening when carrier is heading north.

[Lange_666]

I always wondered why the cat didn't hook up on CAT 4 half of the time even though the distance from the hook to the cat was OK (looking from either left or right side of the aircraft). Never looked at it from the nose point of view.

[Bankler]

Made a trk-file (attached to the top post) and did some more testing.

 

I can only reproduce the bug when the carrier is heading north (000 true heading).

 

This made no sense to me. But after 5-10 repros when the carrier was going 000, and zero repro when it was going 359, I started to accept the fact that it actually MIGHT be related to the carrier's absolute heading... Maybe.

 

Some speculation on what might be happening:

 

Could it be that whoever programmed the cats and how the alignment error is calculated forgot to "wrap-around" at 360/000 when calculating the delta angle between the boat/shuttle and the aircraft?

 

Psuedo code (including suggested error):

 

var shuttleAngle;
var aircraftAngle;

var absDelta = Abs(shuttleAngle - aircraftAngle); [color="Red"]//Bug[/color]

if (absDelta < 2 degrees)
{
  HookUpWithShuttle();
}

 

If the aircraftAngle is 359.0 and the shuttleAngle is 0.0, absAngle would be 359 (instead of 1, which it should be).

 

As I said, pure speculation here, probably I'm completely wrong. But please let me know if I happened to nail it! :thumbup:

[Bankler]

In version 2.5.4.28090, this is still bugged. NineLine, please confirm that you've seen this bump, as I noticed it's still marked with [missing track] even though a track file was submitted in December.

 

Best regards