Tomcat Pilot Radar controls

[dundun92]

1 minute ago, Legioneod said:

from my limited experience a human RIO is far more efficient due to them knowing the radar and working it autonomically/more effectively.

No matter how "good" jester is this will always be the case. A human RIO is always the better option.

[Mr. Big.Biggs]

I should add that regardless, it sure is a helluva fun plane to fly. I think they have done a beautiful job. Of course, anything will need a tweak or two....

[Noctrach]

11 hours ago, Legioneod said:

I recently got back into the F-14 and Jester is the only thing that keeps me from enjoying it 100%. If I have to do the RIOs job for him that kinda ruins the experience but I would much rather have easier/quicker control of the radar than having to go through a bunch of menus. If jester was more autonomous/smart with the radar I wouldn't have much of a problem because then I really wouldn't need to tell him anything at all. 

 

I think they made jester a bit too dumb (maybe dumb isnt the right word, a bit too reliant on the player is better I think). I understand they didn't want to make him unrealistic or "op"/unfair but really he should be more autonomous  without me having to tell him every little thing. Maybe I just don't know how to use jester properly (I'm still rather new to the F-14) but from my limited experience a human RIO is far more efficient due to them knowing the radar and working it autonomically/more effectively.

 

Jester can work the systems, he can lock, he can release CMS, he can set the radio, he can do navigation stuff to an extent that's mind-bogglingly impressive and for which I can only commend Heatblur. However, I agree he just cannot do proper combat support.

 

As someone who's primarily in the RIO seat, there are some "basic radar things" that are a bit too clunky through the Jester menu.

From the pilot's seat I would highly prefer to have control over elevation/azimuth/bars/width. These are the primary RIO controls, which Jester does not seem to actively manipulate during a fight. How could he... he's an interface to the backseat and has no actual knowledge of what I want him to do, since I can't talk to him.

Asking him to scan at a certain altitude and distance "works", but it's a lot of steps through the menu. Considering the speed at which intercepts take place, even with a highly optimised Voice-Attack profile, it's not fast enough to keep up with manoeuvring contacts in a target-rich environment. It's simply not a flexible enough tool for proper target selection. TWS-A is not a valid alternative, considering it's limited use-case against fighter-sized targest over land.

 

My main "issue" flying with Jester is that from a RIOs perspective, the actual radar information is in the DDD, which is invisible to the pilot anyway. The TID merely combines multiple data sources in a single picture. This is why in a 2-man crew, the RIO does his job autonomously and informs the pilot of what's going on. It's true that you really shouldn't be flying the F-14 solo, because you're missing your most powerful SA tools. The DDD, a second brain and two more eyes. (Also RIOs are much more handsome by nature, so there's an aesthetic argument to be made)

 

As a pilot I'm not seeing the DDD but also not having Jester consistently support me in SA. This is further exacerbated by the difficulty he has on selecting specific targets on the TID (seriously HB, this feature just doesn't work at all). This means I spend most of my combat time staring at the TID trying to get him to point the radar at the right things. What I really should be doing as a pilot, is keeping my eyes out and watching for threats/cranking/evading.

 

At that stage, where I'm essentially doing a significant part of what my RIO would be doing autonomously, I'd much rather just control elevation/azimuth/bars/width while telling Jester to go to TWS-M/RWS.

 

I can understand if there's difficulties/risks for implementing pilot "reachback controls" in a multicrew plane. But I'd really like to ask Heatblur to provide control of at least these core tools, as it'll make the life of single pilots so much easier.

[Slant]

22 hours ago, USA_Recon said:

To be clear, I'm not talking about LANTIRN, I'm talking about needing to constantly use a wheel to tell Jester how to scan.   Honestly if he did his job properly in the first place, i wouldn't need to spin the wheel all around just to get him to understand, ie. we have a low datalink contact ahead, target it - vs. 'unable' etc.. that BS far outweighs this 'spin the wheel around' approach.   If it means I can press a button to low radar range so be it.   Reality is, I shouldn't be commanding a RIO to do his job in the first place.

 

So the 'realism' folks are keeping a blind eye on the gaminess of the jester in the first place.   It's 'neat' and all, but exposes the complete incompetence of the 'Jester'.   Let alone his call outs that are always delayed and rather silly (by the time he says 'contact on your 3 oclock', the bandit is on your six, or telling you about something far away when you have an immediate threat).   

 

 

I just get a RIO and fly a two seater aircraft with a two-man crew. That seems to solve the problem for the most part.

 

In lieu of that, voice attack does a fine job. Jester's a bit dimwitted, but so are some people in the RIO seat, it's a challenge but not an obstacle.

 

You can create macros for any sort of Jester wheel combination, by the way. So why not go ahead and do that?

[Legioneod]

Anyway the devs can make all jester commands mappable? This way players have more freedom/control on what they deem important to map vs leave in the redial menu format. It would make managing/commanding jester alot easier compared to going through all the menus. You've already done this with a few commands like range 50, 100, 200, etc. but I'd like more options that I can just set to a hotkey.

 

Why not just allow all commands to be mapped and let the player choose what they need to map vs leave in the radial menu?

 

The main thing I hate about jester is going into the menu and losing SA, having commands mapped to a key would make things alot more fluid.

 

EDIT:

Just to give an idea of what I mean here's some commands that should be able to assign to a key press. (some of them you can do already)

Green: Can already be mapped

RED: Opens to a sub menu mapping the commands inside to a key should be an option if possible. Some things can't reasonably be mappable imo so the sub menu should be mappable as a way to quickly get to that menu (Scan Alt at Distance menu for example)

Default Text: End command that should be allowed to map.

 

STT Target Ahead

STT Enemy Ahead

STT Friendly Ahead

Choose Specific Target

First TWS Target

TWS Target Number

Scan EL and AZ Auto

Scan Elevation

Scan Alt at Distance

Scan Elev Low

Scan Elev Low Middle

Scan Elev Middle

Scan Elev High Middle

Scan Elev High

Scan Azimuth

Scan Az Left

Scan Az Left Center

Scan Az Center

Scan Az Right Center

Scan Az Right

TID Range

TID Range Auto

TID Range 25

TID Range 50

TID Range 100

TID Range 200

TID Range 400

Radar Auto

TWS Auto (TWS mode is mappable but not sure if its for auto or manual)

TWS Manual 

RWS Mode

Target Size Normal

Target Size Small

Target Size Large

TID Ground Stabilize

TID Aircraft Stabilize

Jettison Drop Tanks

Break Lock

Edited January 9, 2021 by Legioneod

[Dragon1-1]

That would be a very good idea, it would also make things easier to VoiceAttack users who don't want to shell out for VAICOM. Ideally, all of the Jester menu would have commands, and there would be additional ones added (both to the wheel and to the bindings) to allow him to be micromanaged a little bit better.

[draconus]

I'm all in for smarter Jester - after all it's in his name to operate the radar on his own. Asking basic stuff like trying to catch a highest threat in the radar beam is too much babysitting and should have no place if we're any serious in this sim. Imho it's even more important than his LANTIRN-operation. I know it's not what devs promised at any time but hopefuly they will reconsider one day after the module is out of EA. If we have AI RIO then make his primary role stand out for the sake of realism.

It is of course possible to fly and fight with Jester right now. Apart from the wheel and VA (by far most realistic) there should be all functions bindable to let the players choose how to communicate with Jester. It is still not realistic to command RIO how to operate radar but somehow we have to tell him our intentions in the game. That's why the more autonomic he is the better.

I propose basic implementation of general RWS scanning based on priority (hot over cold, enemy fighters over bombers, anything over friendlies), DL targets (to spike and IFF) and RWR airborne warnings for starters. Unless we choose 54 TWS or it's a single he should eventually find and STT highest threat. Maybe allow ME options like RIO_search(AZ,ALT,DIST,BARS) so it'd look like Jester heard the orders from AW and start searching the mentioned speace. Maybe some basic intercept comms from RIO. That'd be amazing - cheers for the future of AI.

 

Having said that all reachback functionality is a no go for me and has no place in the sim. Like all unrealistic feature it belongs to user mods. I understand the devs in their decissions - they had to cut the scope somewhere and could not really left the aircraft dead for single splayers also.

Edited January 13, 2021 by draconus

[captain_dalan]

On 1/8/2021 at 9:52 AM, Noctrach said:

 

1. As someone who's primarily in the RIO seat, there are some "basic radar things" that are a bit too clunky through the Jester menu.

From the pilot's seat I would highly prefer to have control over elevation/azimuth/bars/width. These are the primary RIO controls, which Jester does not seem to actively manipulate during a fight. How could he... he's an interface to the backseat and has no actual knowledge of what I want him to do, since I can't talk to him.

Asking him to scan at a certain altitude and distance "works", but it's a lot of steps through the menu. Considering the speed at which intercepts take place, even with a highly optimised Voice-Attack profile, it's not fast enough to keep up with manoeuvring contacts in a target-rich environment. It's simply not a flexible enough tool for proper target selection. TWS-A is not a valid alternative, considering it's limited use-case against fighter-sized targest over land.

 

 

 

2.As a pilot I'm not seeing the DDD but also not having Jester consistently support me in SA. This is further exacerbated by the difficulty he has on selecting specific targets on the TID (seriously HB, this feature just doesn't work at all). This means I spend most of my combat time staring at the TID trying to get him to point the radar at the right things. What I really should be doing as a pilot, is keeping my eyes out and watching for threats/cranking/evading.

 

 

 

 

1. Add to that the lack any target prioritization options. Right now the AWG9 just does it all on AUTO, without the ability for us to tell Jester to prioritize closest, fastest approaching, highest, or the opposites of those. In an environment where contacts are dropped the tracks lost, it becomes an often occurrence that the 50NM bandit, is lost (either in a notch, or clutter, or just by a hard maneuver), the priority number gets transferred to the next bandit, that might be 90NM away. So when the original bandit now pops back in at say 40NM it assigned the the furthest available priority number. Some kind of option to re-prioritise would be useful.

2. Recently (in MP PvE) i've noticed even a tendency to lock up wrong targets in densely populated area. And i mean wrong as in the friendly target, despite being told to lock the hostile. Which he himself declares is a friendly just after he's locked it. And yes, the contacts are close, but not that close that even i can't tell them apart on the TID-R. This actually happened 3 times in a row. Only on the 4th attempt did he finally lock the hostile. Take into account that each breaking of the lock causes a reset in the radar, loss of IFF information and the slow nature of the interface, and i was fortunate to fly with 3 wingmen (one human and 2x AI). What started like a 50NM controlled intercept, would  have ended up in a 20NM break off or die scenario.

On 1/7/2021 at 9:59 PM, dundun92 said:

No matter how "good" jester is this will always be the case. A human RIO is always the better option.

Not an option for many of us.

[Legioneod]

2 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

1. Add to that the lack any target prioritization options. Right now the AWG9 just does it all on AUTO, without the ability for us to tell Jester to prioritize closest, fastest approaching, highest, or the opposites of those. In an environment where contacts are dropped the tracks lost, it becomes an often occurrence that the 50NM bandit, is lost (either in a notch, or clutter, or just by a hard maneuver), the priority number gets transferred to the next bandit, that might be 90NM away. So when the original bandit now pops back in at say 40NM it assigned the the furthest available priority number. Some kind of option to re-prioritise would be useful.

...

 

This 100% there needs to be a way to tell jester to prioritize targets (something like set priority target to targets within x nm or something. Just something so we can reset the priority to targets that are closer instead of targets that are 100nm away.

[DD_Fenrir]

HB have told us that the WCS cannot accept re-prioritization from Jester - there's no real life function to this on the AWG-9.

 

What a RIO can do is select specific tracks to not attack. Even then the WCS will auto prioritise what is left with no way for a RIO to adjust except for selecting next target.

Edited January 13, 2021 by DD_Fenrir

[draconus]

3 hours ago, Legioneod said:

 

This 100% there needs to be a way to tell jester to prioritize targets (something like set priority target to targets within x nm or something. Just something so we can reset the priority to targets that are closer instead of targets that are 100nm away.

Jester > set TID scale to 50nm, Pilot PLM click

[QuiGon]

5 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

1. Add to that the lack any target prioritization options. Right now the AWG9 just does it all on AUTO, without the ability for us to tell Jester to prioritize closest, fastest approaching, highest, or the opposites of those. In an environment where contacts are dropped the tracks lost, it becomes an often occurrence that the 50NM bandit, is lost (either in a notch, or clutter, or just by a hard maneuver), the priority number gets transferred to the next bandit, that might be 90NM away. So when the original bandit now pops back in at say 40NM it assigned the the furthest available priority number. Some kind of option to re-prioritise would be useful.

The AWG-9 re-prioritises constantly on its own. In the situation you described it should re-assign the number 1 priority to the bandit that re-appeared at 40NM, once a stable track has been created and the calculated TTI is smaller than the one for the bandit at 90NM, which depends on target speeds and headings.

[captain_dalan]

2 hours ago, QuiGon said:

The AWG-9 re-prioritises constantly on its own. In the situation you described it should re-assign the number 1 priority to the bandit that re-appeared at 40NM, once a stable track has been created and the calculated TTI is smaller than the one for the bandit at 90NM, which depends on target speeds and headings.

Except, in my experience it never does. Or it never does during the time scales in which air to air battles are fought.

2 hours ago, DD_Fenrir said:

HB have told us that the WCS cannot accept re-prioritization from Jester - there's no real life function to this on the AWG-9.

 

What a RIO can do is select specific tracks to not attack. Even then the WCS will auto prioritise what is left with no way for a RIO to adjust except for selecting next target.

 

Then some kind of workaround that would accept re prioritization as in input and would give deselected tracks as output. I don't  think Hooking can be properly implemented from the front seat.

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Jester > set TID scale to 50nm, Pilot PLM click

PLM? As in PLM on the throttle segment? The one that locks on the boresight? Is that some new added function? Or a workaround  just to reset the radar?

[draconus]

5 minutes ago, captain_dalan said:

PLM? As in PLM on the throttle segment? The one that locks on the boresight? Is that some new added function? Or a workaround  just to reset the radar?

Yep, it always did reset the radar. Very useful and I use it frequently to deal with wrong TWS-A assignments and cone direction. It also breaks any lock instantly.

[QuiGon]

2 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

Except, in my experience it never does. Or it never does during the time scales in which air to air battles are fought.

Well, TWS needs a couple of seconds to convert a new radar contact into an actual track. There's nothing a RIO can do to speed this up.

 

  

2 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

PLM? As in PLM on the throttle segment? The one that locks on the boresight? Is that some new added function? Or a workaround  just to reset the radar?

It resets the radar and if the TID is set to 50nm it won't target anything beyond 50nm.

Edited January 13, 2021 by QuiGon

[Legioneod]

4 hours ago, draconus said:

Jester > set TID scale to 50nm, Pilot PLM click

Thanks, will try it out.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, QuiGon said:

It resets the radar and if the TID is set to 50nm it won't target anything beyond 50nm.

I bet RIO's love it when it happens Seriously, what RIO's do to get the same result? Change radar mode and back?

[Noctrach]

Duplicate, new forum is confusing to me.

Edited January 13, 2021 by Noctrach
duplicate

[Noctrach]

7 hours ago, DD_Fenrir said:

HB have told us that the WCS cannot accept re-prioritization from Jester - there's no real life function to this on the AWG-9.

 

What a RIO can do is select specific tracks to not attack. Even then the WCS will auto prioritise what is left with no way for a RIO to adjust except for selecting next target.

 

 

6 hours ago, QuiGon said:

The AWG-9 re-prioritises constantly on its own. In the situation you described it should re-assign the number 1 priority to the bandit that re-appeared at 40NM, once a stable track has been created and the calculated TTI is smaller than the one for the bandit at 90NM, which depends on target speeds and headings.

 

Not entirely true, you can hit "next target" to reset prioritization of TID targets, which will force the selected target to be the one that it fires on. This means the selected target becomes the absolute first target launched on, while all the others can still be prioritised by the WCS.

 

BIO even mentions this in one of his youtube videos, irl it was mandatory to hit that button before firing any missile to prevent WCS re-prioritizing just before launching.

 

On 1/12/2021 at 2:43 PM, draconus said:

Having said that all reachback functionality is a no go for me and has no place in the sim. Like all unrealistic feature it belongs to user mods. I understand the devs in their decissions - they had to cut the scope somewhere and could not really left the aircraft dead for single splayers also.

I'd be a little more on board with this stance if Jester was capable of performing any RIO duties. He's an exceptionally refined interface to the backseat, nothing more, nothing less.  Some functionality of said interface is just either a bit too janky (selecting specific targets) or a bit too clunky (elevation/azimuth) to be combat-effective.

 

Edited January 13, 2021 by Noctrach

[QuiGon]

3 hours ago, draconus said:

I bet RIO's love it when it happens Seriously, what RIO's do to get the same result? Change radar mode and back?

If the TID scale is set to 50nm, then the AWG-9 won't target contacts beyond that. No need to change it back and forth. Actually, I don't even see a need why you would need to press PLM to reset the radar, as it continuously re-evaluates the targets. Commanding Jester to change TID scale to 50nm should be sufficent.

Edited January 13, 2021 by QuiGon

[draconus]

8 minutes ago, QuiGon said:

If the TID scale is set to 50nm, then the AWG-9 won't target contacts beyond that. No need to change it back and forth. Actually, I don't even see a need why you would press PLM to reset the radar, as it continuously re-evaluates the targets.

I was asking how RIOs reset the radar quickly.

Why I reset? As a pilot I turn into bandits while the TWS-A stayed on the side with narrow cone targetting some friendlies. Now I reset, TWS-A make a new search straight ahead and prioritise the bandits. It's very common.

[QuiGon]

56 minutes ago, draconus said:

I was asking how RIOs reset the radar quickly.

Why I reset? As a pilot I turn into bandits while the TWS-A stayed on the side with narrow cone targetting some friendlies. Now I reset, TWS-A make a new search straight ahead and prioritise the bandits. It's very common.

 

I meant when switching TID scale, as you said above:

 

11 hours ago, draconus said:

Jester > set TID scale to 50nm, Pilot PLM click

 

Setting TID scale to 50nm should be sufficient to exclude targets >50nm.

 

 

4 hours ago, Noctrach said:

Not entirely true, you can hit "next target" to reset prioritization of TID targets, which will force the selected target to be the one that it fires on. This means the selected target becomes the absolute first target launched on, while all the others can still be prioritised by the WCS.

Yeah, I don't think I said anything to the contrary? I just said, that the AWG-9 is automatically re-assessing the situation all the time on its own.

Edited January 13, 2021 by QuiGon

[draconus]

12 minutes ago, QuiGon said:

Setting TID scale to 50nm should be sufficient to exclude targets >50nm

Ok. I wasn't sure.

[captain_dalan]

11 hours ago, draconus said:

I was asking how RIOs reset the radar quickly.

Why I reset? As a pilot I turn into bandits while the TWS-A stayed on the side with narrow cone targetting some friendlies. Now I reset, TWS-A make a new search straight ahead and prioritise the bandits. It's very common.

Tried it tonight. Even bagged a Bug despite the awful lag. Surprisingly efficient as long as you are outside 'Mraam range. Thanks!

[ustio]

Regarding jester control, Has anyone tried using keyboard instead of pilot head/voice attack? If your hand are not far from the keyboard you should give it a try until you have developed your muscle memory.

 

Once you do, you can pretty much give any order less than a second