Radio traffic in Lock on

[AndyHill]

I've been doing a bit of Lock on flying lately and there's one pretty simple thing I find a bit annoying. Many of the missions are truly spectacular shows that leave Hollywood script writers in the dust - when viewed in the TacView after the mission is over. While flying I'm almost in a vacuum with only a number of radar contacts for company (unless there's an AWACS in the air). There are battles raging all over the map, but no-one seems to care enough to say a word on the radio.

 

The solution is pretty simple: have all the friendly aircraft in the air radio the same messages you and your wingmen do when in battle. Fox-calls, requests for assistance and all the stuff that's already in the game. If doable, their voices can be altered a bit, maybe slightly different pitch and so on to make them sound more personal. It would be important, however, to differentiate them from your flight simply by giving their voices less volume when you hear them over the radio. That way the constant babbling wouldn't be intrusive and you would always know when it's your wingman calling for help.

 

This is a feature that could be used in DCS AND Lock on. It would increase the player's situational awareness a little and give a tremendeous boost to the feeling of being there. Best of all this might be pretty simple to implement, all the voice recordings are already there (unless you want to create more, which I wouldn't object to) and they already work with the player's wingmen.

 

It would be an incredible to for example hear your fighter sweep engage enemy CAPpers when your' flying escort for a low & fast strike behind enemy lines. Easily worth a little time from a couple of programmers.

 

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Lock on MUST have toe-brakes on an axis AND a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer capability AND radio traffic from other flights

[SUBS17]

Yeah thats a must have for DCS to fill the void with Ai radio traffic like Falcon it adds alot to imersion. It should also be required to be on the same radio freq as well in order to hear them and like wise online.

[CapnGimp]

Good idea for mo

 

i understand exactly what you are saying. My hearing being bad however, I find radio chatter (AWACS) annoying and I usually have it off. I talk with my buddies on teamspeak while we fly and concentrate hard to hear them. THAT is very useful and enlightening for situational awareness. We only fly custom maps though. Anyway....:joystick:

 

It would be nice to have different 'freq/channels' for the different groups, such that you could choose those you wish to hear and avoid confusion, if you were going to make extensive use of this.

[Kuky]

I'd like too more realitic and plainly more radio chatter as it happens in real life, but currently LockOn engine makes it so each and every transmission is queued up and only after say, AWACS finishes with his transmission can you hear your wing transmission. In many cases you hear stuff too late because of this.

[britgliderpilot]

Yeah thats a must have for DCS to fill the void with Ai radio traffic like Falcon it adds alot to imersion. It should also be required to be on the same radio freq as well in order to hear them and like wise online.

 

Black Shark's radio modelling is much more complex than Lomac - you can set up the radio frequencies manually and depending on what you're tuned to you'll hear different things.

 

Whether the AI outside your flight chatter or not, I'm not sure.

With radio modelling this complex it's probably possible, but don't hold your breath for Black Shark. There's plenty of opportunity to develop through the DCS series :)

 

 

There's a realism issue here, too - how much of the AI is likely to be on your channel?

[EvilBivol-1]

Agreed with Brit here. I don't think the proposed solution of having all friendly aircraft use the same radio calls, but quieter, is one worth pursuing. It seems like a desperate half-measure that is neither realistic nor effective. Not to knock you down Andy - I know you've been calling for some important features for a long time, but I think this particular idea is simplistic and shortsighted.

 

What we do need is a more advanced model of frequency allocation. The foundation for this is already implemented in Black Shark with the new radio physics model, but use of it is still largely centered around the player and his interaction with other elements. Again though, ED is moving in the right direction and I 'm sure we'll see further developments in this area as well.

 

At this point, radio traffic is modeled dynamically according to frequency and multiple other variables that determine signal strength. In addition, LUA files will allow the player to assign frequencies to some in-game units, like airport towers, which are, by default, all on the same frequency.

[AndyHill]

Having different frequencies could be interesting and without actually thinking things through I'd say that's probably the way to go in the long run. The proposed quick and dirty hack was a desperate half-measure on purpose, I really want to see the feature in Lock on 1.13 (if there ever will be one) as well as DCS and I'm pretty sure no-one is going to put a lot of effort into Lo anymore. It's going to be several years before we get to fly fast movers in DCS and although flying a chopper can be a lot of fun...

 

One thing I very much disagree about is is the proposed feature's effectiveness, however. Il-2, Falcon, Strike Fighters series have demonstrated to me beyond any doubt that exactly such a feature (even without the quieter, less intrusive other flights' voices) gives a tremenduous boost to the overall atmosphere and situational awareness. If you see a dot launch a missile at another dot and hear a fox-call simultaneously you can determine which dot is the enemy - you may be wrong, though, but as long as we're not shooting at real people it just makes things more interesting. Actually I don't remember exactly how Strike Fighters and Falcon have the radio system setup, but I know that they DO have radio traffic between flights and it DOES improve immersion vastly.

 

Having a teamspeak full of real people is, of course, the best option, but it just doesn't happen all the time and even then having AI chatter would give some boost to immersion. And the idea of having a separate (preferrably adjustable) volume for the non-player flights means that the everyone gets to choose exactly how much radio chatter they want to hear.

 

Having a completely realistic radio traffic system sounds like a great idea in principle, but there are some things that have to be considered. The AI pilots, for example, are nowhere near as smart and capable of communicating their actions as real people, so constantly flooding the player with as much information as he can take could very well be the best option. For me modeling air combat on a computer is about unavoidable compromises: because there are there are many things that simply cannot be modeled properly, it may be preferrable to make other compromises to for example get the situational awareness to a realistic level. As far as the comms system goes - I just don't know, because I haven't tested it. What I do know is that there's a relatively simple way to get Lock on / DCS to the same playing field with other air combat simulators.

 

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Lock on MUST have toe-brakes on an axis AND a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer capability AND radio traffic from other flights

[Weta43]

I'm know nothing about how frequencies are assigned in real life to aircraft, & I agree that being able to hear ALL the chatter from ALL the AI would be unrealistic & probably really annoying, but I've often thought that surely by default at least all the planes in the same 'Group' should have the same frequency (or access to each others frequency). If I'm flying CAS, presumably I should be able to hear (preferably interact with) what is supposed to be my escort without hopping to another frequency, and if I'm the escort, surely I should hear if one of the planes I'm providing cover for is in trouble ?

How does just assigning the same Hz (switching on messages to the player) for all aircraft in the same group sound ? (complex group - lots of chat, simple group - less chat)

[EvilBivol-1]

Yes, that is my understanding as well. I too am not well informed here, but I think mission groups would operate on a given frequency. To hear other packages, you would have to get on their freqs. In addition, there would be some reserved frequencies for specific purposes that all a/c can use. Although we tend to cite other sims as examples, IMO they weren't particularly realistic, either. For gameplay purposes, I certainly agree - too much chatter is better than not enough chatter.

 

Andy, I don't think we will see your desperate half-measure implemented by ED. :) I do think there will be continued development in this area in DCS, but not in the Black Shark release or (possible) 1.13. I'm hoping, in the near future. However, I think the emphasis will be on doing it properly.

[SimFreak]

All I care about is which radio station I can tune in and listen to some music :) (Hopefully we can add own mp3 to that radio station)

[GGTharos]

Actually Andy, your proposal is a horrible solution.

We already know the effects of 'flooding the player with information' from doing it on teamspeak. You think it's cool for a short time, then it becomes annoying, and downright confusing.

It WILL in fact be necessary to have smarter AI and some sort of messaging framework - those AI will have to talk 'amongst themselves' and any signals your radio can 'pick up', will just be translated to sound for you.

At the same time the flights must be able to decide and segregate which comms go to where. I doubt you really care to hear your cover flight's navigation calls and status checks. It's entirely useless to you - but on the other hand, you might like them to inform you if they've lost aircraft or if they think you should back out.

'Flooding the player with information' is just as bad as no information. Just like that.

 

Real fighters have two radios, so they listen to two frequencies simultaneously - their flight frequency and either GUARD, AWACS, or perhaps an AFAC or FAC (or tower).

Each radio will have at least two frequencies pre-programmed into it that you can switch between easily. So as you can see, communications, to be realistic in any way, shape or form, require some work to do right.

 

Only THEN will it really add a lot to immersion.

[AndyHill]

I think we will just have to agree to disagree. It's been a while since I flew Falcon or Strike Fighters, but at least Il-2 has a similiar system in place and it just works. I wouldn't be surprised if Falcon modeled the actual radio systems, but whatever it does seems to work pretty ok. In Il-2 the planes even broadcast navigational commands but still instead of radio clutter the problem is still more in the lack of communication - for example wingmen don't radio you when they see bandits, they just quietly slip away. It is likely that all the aforementioned games have some sort of radio traffic optimizations in place, but they all have more traffic than an average Lock on -mission I play and they all just work.

 

I'm all for intelligent radio traffic algorithms, realism and functionality, but as I'd like to have a chance of seeing improvement in Lock on as well, it would have to be a very simple solution. I would also love to hear intelligent AI chatter on the air, but I've never seen AI that was nearly smart enough to make complex tactical assessments and communicate it to the player, so it may be preferrable to make them just tell you what they're doing and let the player decide what he should do. Creating an intelligent AI comms system would be fantastic, but it might take a while and it might be nice to have a version 1.0 to play with in the mean time.

 

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Lock on MUST have toe-brakes on an axis AND a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer capability AND radio traffic from other flights

[SUBS17]

How it should work is like this:

1/ pilot starts aircraft and sets tower freq(UHF) plus package freq(VHF)

2/ pilot talks to tower on UHF while this is set all AI/human traffic landing and taking off in the traffic pattern can be heard.

3/ After departing the package switches UHF freq for AWACs and flight lead checks in.etc

 

So there should really be no debate over this its simple as outlined above for each freq set only coms on that freq can be heard with one exception being guard etc. All the AI should follow the same procedure as the human players and should have same reponses eg hold short, take off, check in/check out. Otherwise you would have the same problem as with lockon a void empty radio with nothing happening. IMO good radio = immersion