Radar warning inside bunker

[andhog]

This has probably nothing to do with this aircraft, but enemy fighters have sometimes been able to lock on to me while I'm standing inside a bunker hangar. I spawn, turn on the rwr and suddenly get lethal warnings.

 

This is obviously not a correct behavior, but the question is what's causing it? The most logic explanation IMHO is unrealistic radar models on other aircraft, rather than a problem with the RWR on the FA-18. That's a passive system that detects radar beams and there shouldn't be any radar beams to detect inside a bunker.

 

Have anyone else experienced this? Any thoughts?

 

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[Bobik2002]

Radar simulation is simplified bcs normal PC can't handle really detailed radar sim...

[Brun]

If DCS can do terrain masking it should be able to account for hangars.

[FalconPlot16]

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=261350

[sk000tch]

If DCS can do terrain masking it should be able to account for hangars.

 

I have no first hand knowledge of this but objects are not the same as terrain, so I don't think that's a safe assumption. From conversations with ED people (most of which I didn't understand), grapevine is that this is part of difficulty with AG radar and part of benefit of API change (something about allocating memory appropriate to hardware that stays put and same descriptor being able to render at different qualities for low cost - like out the canopy view vs. tpod vs. AG radar all see same object differently). That statement was probably ridiculous to anyone that knows what they are talking about, my main takeaway from convo is that there are limitations in current engine that make things they want to do difficult/impossible but that things they are doing now will make it better in the future (should have just said this and left it there)

 

But to answer question - pretty sure DCS just calculates range, search volume, has some variables for radar max detect range, sensitivity, RCS, does a terrain mask and aspect check/ ground clutter check, and decides whether to display a return. More complex than that with trackfiles and modern radars with additional bells and whistles, but point being they aren't simulating waveforms via ray tracing or anything like that. Someday maybe, though I"m no sure what benefit it would provide outside maybe AG-- the light we can see is already expensive to render.

 

I am very curious whether RCS of ordinance is modelled. Loaded hornet should be 3-4x more than clean but doesn't seem to be.

[andhog]

Interesting thoughts!

 

Since this is a game and not a professional simulator it's unrealistic to expect a detailed and accurate radar model, especially since radar performance data is as classified as it gets. And I also know that line of sight calculations are complicated stuff that require quite some computing power.

 

With that said, I have been thinking about what makes this different from the visual representation and if the logic behind this would be applicable to radar as well. I mean, look at an object inside a bunker from above and all you see is the roof of that bunker. Obviously there's logic that masks out the object inside the bunker, so shouldn't it be possible to use that logic to mask out the object for the radar as well?

[andhog]

And another thing I've noticed is that it takes only a single sweep with the radar to detect clear tracks even on great distances. I'm pretty sure it takes more than that to process the echoes, filter out false positives and present the track on the radar screen.