What is the controlled flight time for SD-10

[AeriaGloria]

15s is plenty of reaction time for what I see as no good reason.

 

I still don’t understand, what is so important about 15 secs? Are you saying you took a shot that said TOF was 15 secs and TOA was wrong and it missed??? TOA is only time until pit bull

[shaHeen-1]

Maybe I'm mixing something up. What does the hud symbology say after missile goes active? Does it not give time till impact?

[AeriaGloria]

After TOA is up it goes to TOF for second shot from your airplane

[Harlikwin]

Anyone else feel SD10 TOA is too soon? The resulting TOF is like 15 seconds. Way too much I think.

 

The whiners on bluflag would disagree with you.

[foxwxl]

80 seconds for next build.

[Harlikwin]

80 seconds for next build.

 

So does deka not have actual detailed docs on the missile? I mean if it was 100 and now 80s so its the same as the aamram it doesnt lend much credibility.

[foxwxl]

So does deka not have actual detailed docs on the missile? I mean if it was 100 and now 80s so its the same as the aamram it doesnt lend much credibility.

 

Credibility? So you are claiming that ED's AIM120 performance is matching the classified information of the real missile? I doubt that.:D

 

The actual performance of a weapon/plane that is still in service is classified and it is not supposed to be written into an civil game, unless your want the development team to be sent into jail.

 

If you have any problem of this, you can consulting ED why they had tweaked the F/A-18's FM data to not matching the real plane.

[shaHeen-1]

But what if the developer accidentally hits near the correct value by using their analysis? Is that OK?

[shaHeen-1]

Also since ED has an idea of what their modules can do IRL and Deka has an idea of what Jeff does IRL, do you guys like negotiate stuff like "hey we're pegging the hornet here in game, kindly adjust Jeff performance accordingly"? To keep some sense of realistic relative performance?

[Jester2138]

Neither ED nor Deka has access to classified information. It may be non-public, but that is not always the same thing as classified.

[D4n]

Neither ED nor Deka has access to classified information.

And yet, Deka seems to know more about real Lot 20 Hornet FM than ED? :huh:

[...] they had tweaked the F/A-18's FM data to not matching the real plane.

[unknown]

And yet, Deka seems to know more about real Lot 20 Hornet FM than ED? :huh:

If i remember correctly its a quote from Wags's The Fighter pilot podcast. (...why they had tweaked the F/A-18's FM data...)

[Jester2138]

And yet, Deka seems to know more about real Lot 20 Hornet FM than ED? :huh:

 

It is ED themselves who said their Hornet FM is intentionally inaccurate.

 

Personally, I don't believe their reasons, but they absolutely have claimed this.

[Harlikwin]

Credibility? So you are claiming that ED's AIM120 performance is matching the classified information of the real missile? I doubt that.:D

 

The actual performance of a weapon/plane that is still in service is classified and it is not supposed to be written into an civil game, unless your want the development team to be sent into jail.

 

If you have any problem of this, you can consulting ED why they had tweaked the F/A-18's FM data to not matching the real plane.

 

No, but credible is writing a white paper like Heatblur did on the phoenix to show off its kinematics and how they got there. I've seen plenty of open source data like this for the Aim120.

 

As for controlled flight time, again, a first year engineering student could come up with a credible guess.

 

You have a battery. Its not rocket science to compute the storage capacity of said battery/power source, even if you have a rough volume.

 

Same for power consumption during the radar off part of the flight, you are running the FCS, INS, and power for the fins. Which isn't much.

 

That leaves the active seeker time, which is gonna be short, because that radar is eating shitloads of power. Again, you can also estimate the radar power.

 

Honestly what I think DCS actually needs, is some sort of public workflow for all the missiles for CFD that is available for community review. And likely the same for things like missile active time, and guidance laws. This would avoid most of the back and forth about missile XYZ being over or underpowered. And you source it from public data sources or educated guesses with the assumptions stated so it leaves everyone in the clear about what is being modeled and why.

 

What is not credible, is randomly changing the missile run time for no stated reasons. Was it because they got better data? Was it to make it more like the aim120 for no reason at all, was it to appease whiners on the MP servers?

Edited May 5, 2020 by Harlikwin

[foxwxl]

No, but credible is writing a white paper like Heatblur did on the phoenix to show off its kinematics and how they got there. I've seen plenty of open source data like this for the Aim120.

 

As for controlled flight time, again, a first year engineering student could come up with a credible guess.

 

You have a battery. Its not rocket science to compute the storage capacity of said battery/power source, even if you have a rough volume.

 

Same for power consumption during the radar off part of the flight, you are running the FCS, INS, and power for the fins. Which isn't much.

 

That leaves the active seeker time, which is gonna be short, because that radar is eating shitloads of power. Again, you can also estimate the radar power.

 

Honestly what I think DCS actually needs, is some sort of public workflow for all the missiles for CFD that is available for community review. And likely the same for things like missile active time, and guidance laws. This would avoid most of the back and forth about missile XYZ being over or underpowered. And you source it from public data sources or educated guesses with the assumptions stated so it leaves everyone in the clear about what is being modeled and why.

 

What is not credible, is randomly changing the missile run time for no stated reasons. Was it because they got better data? Was it to make it more like the aim120 for no reason at all, was it to appease whiners on the MP servers?

 

Sorry man, if U are asking the background source to prove whether a performance is accurate or not, it's no going to happen.

 

Like I stated above, RL performance data is not meant to go public, even if it is only the battery life. And battery life of the ARH missile DO indicate some of it's important performance data(like gernal range, Seeker operation time, gernal seeker operation range, etc.)

[AeriaGloria]

I think it was just new documentation. It’s possble the Pl-12 has 100 seconds of battery, but the SD-10 that is exported could be worse, so they corrected the PL-12 portion of code remaining.

[foxwxl]

And do note that CFD is not 100% accurate(model, assumption, limitations), that's why wind tunnel and test flight is still needed in RL. Also a small parameter change (ie. missile's Cx0) is already enough(very easily) to cause OP/Underpowder problem in DCS.

 

So, there are serval ways to obtain data, CFD is just one of them.

[Harlikwin]

And do note that CFD is not 100% accurate(model, assumption, limitations), that's why wind tunnel and test flight is still needed in RL. Also a small parameter change (ie. missile's Cx0) is already enough(very easily) to cause OP/Underpowder problem in DCS.

 

So, there are serval ways to obtain data, CFD is just one of them.

 

I don't disagree, but having some sort of standardized pipeline would be good. I mean a number is just that and prone to misinterpretation. What if one piece of US documentation measures flight time, as defined by time till radar on, while the Chinese use a different methodology which means till end of flight for example. And both say "missile flight time". You have be sure you are comparing apples to apples as they say. A famous example in Night vision world is that SNR used to be measured one way in the 70's and 80's and then the protocol was changed so that the numbers would look higher in the late 80's. But on all the technical spec papers it only says SNR without any further clarification. And if you don't know how it was obtained then you have some hilarious misinterpretations of technology and how it advanced.

 

At the end of the day I don't care too much if the real world numbers on missiles are off by even 20%. As long as the numbers between in-game missiles are within a few percent. Because its the in-game difference that actually matters most in DCS. I.e. if the SD10 has 5% more range than Aim120B and that's what DCS models, I don't care if that IRL range is 40nm or 25nm. As long as the SD10 is 5% more. And even there I wouldn't care if it was 3% or 7%, just that it was a bit better.

 

The main reason to use publicly available tools like CFD for DCS is consistency across all missiles. Here is the methodology, here are the numbers we get for missile's X,Y,Z (say the Aim7 series, or early Aim120's)that we have good real world performance numbers on, and therefore we can use this same methodology to get missiles A,B,C, performance which we don't have good numbers on (i.e. the SD10, or R-77, or R-27ET).

[Harlikwin]

Sorry man, if U are asking the background source to prove whether a performance is accurate or not, it's no going to happen.

 

Like I stated above, RL performance data is not meant to go public, even if it is only the battery life. And battery life of the ARH missile DO indicate some of it's important performance data(like gernal range, Seeker operation time, gernal seeker operation range, etc.)

 

Yeah, which is why my argument is that you use publicly available data and tools to make the missile models. And use a standardized set of tools to build those missiles, using whatever minimum set of data you can on "newer" missiles.

 

Personally I've always though DCS trying to do modern air combat has been sort of stupid pipe dream, too much information is sensitive or classified etc. If you go back to say the 80's or even early 90's you basically have almost all the data to do things much more realistically and credibly without all the guesswork or legal issues. And I'm pretty sure the DCS marketoid video people could make some cool Vietnam, arab, israeli wars or Cold war gone hot vids. Pick a decade, pick a plane set and go for it.

[foxwxl]

Yeah, which is why my argument is that you use publicly available data and tools to make the missile models. And use a standardized set of tools to build those missiles, using whatever minimum set of data you can on "newer" missiles.

It's hard,man. Standardized missiles need all the missiles to be created with an standard way,but the source of ED and every team are different. Even one trying to gather all info by public, it is still like to be a mission impossible(basically), since different countries have different attitude or definition on opening weapon info. And we have US,UK, RUS, CHN weapons all over the DCS, some are the most advanced weapon they can offer at the moment, it can be hard to get the info, since no public info may be availiable.

 

Personally I've always though DCS trying to do modern air combat has been sort of stupid pipe dream, too much information is sensitive or classified etc.

It's truely the problem, and consider DCS has mixed aircrafts & wpns from 1990s(Su27S) to 2005(F-16 F18) to 2010s(JF-17)(only consider those most involved in MP combat), it is already covered over 20 years, and 20 years is really a long time for weapon development.

[shaHeen-1]

Also if dcs accurately portrays the relative performance between modules, anyone with the accurate knowledge of one can extrapolate the other.

[Harlikwin]

Also if dcs accurately portrays the relative performance between modules, anyone with the accurate knowledge of one can extrapolate the other.

 

Yup totally fair point, which is why I said I'm good with errors that are "ish" since that leaves plenty of room for real world data to stay obfuscated. I.e. not only is the sim vs real range wrong, the relative difference is also somewhat wrong.

 

And honestly nation states have very large agencies that get that data and modeling for a living, so really we aren't compromising anything that already likely isn't. And my general comment on using what is known from public sources to keep everyone safe and happy.

[Harlikwin]

It's hard,man. Standardized missiles need all the missiles to be created with an standard way,but the source of ED and every team are different. Even one trying to gather all info by public, it is still like to be a mission impossible(basically), since different countries have different attitude or definition on opening weapon info. And we have US,UK, RUS, CHN weapons all over the DCS, some are the most advanced weapon they can offer at the moment, it can be hard to get the info, since no public info may be availiable.

 

Thats kinda my point in having a process that uses the bare minimum "data" and creates a lot of it from scratch. And then baselineing it on older weapons for which you have good data.

 

I.e. you can have some idea of missile aerodynamics from CFD. Same thing for total missile energy just based on overall propellant volume and propellant type. The laws of physics more or less dictate all that. I don't need to know the exact aerodynamics of the real missile if I have consistent CFD method to calculate in game coefficients, and if they are done the same way in theory they are "balanced" because they will be "equally wrong". Same for fuel/propulsion. Same for some generic guidance laws and seeker heads/types. And it avoids the ugly issue with using "Real world data". The simulated data is generated ab-inito and should be "close enough" for a "game/sim".

 

Apply that methodology to all in game missiles and you end up with something that is open source, consistent and credible based on some minimum data set that is publicly available (like overall dimensions, weights etc)

 

And you can check the validity of the overall method on older missiles that you have actual data on.

 

Otherwise you basically end up with what we have now a bunch of people throwing around terms like buffed and nerfed with regards to every missile they like or don't like with little to no facts or transparency on the developer side.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Harlikwin

[AeriaGloria]

To be fair, those throwing around buffed and nerfed probably have no idea how to look at a LUA:)

[foxwxl]

Thats kinda my point in having a process that uses the bare minimum "data" and creates a lot of it from scratch. And then baselineing it on older weapons for which you have good data.

 

I.e. you can have some idea of missile aerodynamics from CFD. Same thing for total missile energy just based on overall propellant volume and propellant type. The laws of physics more or less dictate all that. I don't need to know the exact aerodynamics of the real missile if I have consistent CFD method to calculate in game coefficients, and if they are done the same way in theory they are "balanced" because they will be "equally wrong". Same for fuel/propulsion. Same for some generic guidance laws and seeker heads/types. And it avoids the ugly issue with using "Real world data". The simulated data is generated ab-inito and should be "close enough" for a "game/sim".

 

Apply that methodology to all in game missiles and you end up with something that is open source, consistent and credible based on some minimum data set that is publicly available (like overall dimensions, weights etc)

 

And you can check the validity of the overall method on older missiles that you have actual data on.

 

Otherwise you basically end up with what we have now a bunch of people throwing around terms like buffed and nerfed with regards to every missile they like or don't like with little to no facts or transparency on the developer side.

 

IMO, it's basically impossible to make different missile performance to hookup for a proportional performance error VS the RL.

 

If one know how to hookup the performance in the DCS, he must have to know the real performance of the weapon, and we have classified weapon for all over the world. Even if ED would like to do this job, all development team have to donate and share their intel source into ED, which may not acceptable in lots of cases. So, I don't think it is possible.

 

If all missiles are created based on solo public source, the only thing might be accurate is the missile's shape, and you can try CFD the missile to get a general idea of its drag.

But another very important matter, the propellant volume and propellant type, is basically unknown(especially russian & chinese missile), thus the specific impulse is unknown. There is no "gernal idea" of the propellant type, different missile from different countries can be very different(even with different years, this can be different). Then, the only thing left is guessing and balancing, no more place for simulation. And this DO greatly matter to the range which players do care a lot.

Now new OP/UP problem is created, and players start to complain if their weapon is not on the top grade.