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Realistic ASP -- General Questions


john4pap

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I talked with one of the people that was affiliated with the original dev team and he said that there was a limit on how much could be done to the module without rippin' everything out and start over. Like you mentioned: MiG-21bis was made a long long time ago, with the tools and knowledge available at the time. Back then, there was no other third party developer except Belsimtek (former ED developers) that knew how to make a module from scratch.

My guess it is still why we have a bunch of afterthoughts and band-aids like a checkbox for Realistic ASP and "Experimental Features" for the realistic RWR. Problem with the special option checkboxes is that they are affected by multiplayer. So even if you check the box you might end up with unrealistic ASP when joining a host that has not checked those boxes. So it's not a good solution.

I would also like to see a more realistic implementation. Or at least implementing the optional checkboxes fully into the module. But it has been 7 years now... Unless Magnitude 3 really want to fix it, there is little we can do about it.

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As it's such an old module and actually still up there as one of the most popular, I think a case could be made for a paid for refresh ala Black Shark 3 ( if that ever happens ). It seems like the only thing that might allow the devs financially to invest time into an old product that probably doesn't earn them much £££ anymore. It's my fave module by far and I feel they did finally listen and address a lot of the flight model issues that people had, I think the FM is in a decent place now. I have hope, not much though.  

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
 
The realism setting only selects whether the pipper should track targets you locked on to in IR mode. It doesn't make anything else more realistic. And it doesn't even work properly, every patch is a lottery whether it will work as intended, bleed into radar mode with realistic setting, lock up in one axis, or both.
 
1. Far from realistic especially in air to ground modes. In air to air it's mostly broken, giving incorrect solutions (to see how incorrect you can set low-ish range manually with the grip twist axis and just fire gun while flying level at constant airspeed - you will see that the tracers never even cross the pipper center) and with the procedures being wrong. Manual mode is broken for instance, in order to have a functional manual mode you set auto and just don't use radar... In air to ground mode we're supposed to only have a solution for guns and rockets and not for bombs, also it's not modern CCIP like it's depicted, you should either need to set the altimeter to target QFE for the triangulation mode or use radar in fixed beam mode for ranging.
2. The pipper should not follow the target, it's just a gyro sight. The unrealistic "pipper follows IR target" option is broken and sometimes even when it's off the pipper will follow the target when locked with radar (often only in one axis, to add insult to injury). The pipper is just supposed to show you the boresight axis of the missiles. When using radar it will take the range from it. The pipper span corresponds to angular size of the target, it will change whether the gyro is locked or not, as you can also use it to range optically when attacking bombers with IR missiles with radar off.
3. It doesn't work because the whole A/G implementation is fantasy. It's supposed to be implemented as FC3 CCIP clone, so pipper shows exact impact point, but even that doesn't really work, it has some weird errors to it. Don't use radar, it might reduce accuracy if it even does anything.
4. The point is that radar will not give you range, because it will lose the target in a dogfight 99% of the time. You use it to range optically, if you have the base set correctly you can 1. verify if radar is giving you correct range, often it won't cause it will lose the target or track who knows what. 2. Set range manually by rotating the throttle grip (I really advise to set that axis to a rotary axis on the throttle if you have one available) so the target is circumscribed by the pipper 3. Determine when to start shooting in fixed 300m mode - which is preferable in a dogfight to both radar and optical ranging as it's more stable (or supposed to, again, iffy implementation) and in other ranging modes the pipper won't constrict enough to circumscribe fighter sized targets - so all other ranging options either don't work or are not verifiable (radar range) against fighters. You use 300m mode by rotating the grip to minimum position and setting target base with the black and white scale on the knob rather than the red window.
For air to ground you can do the same, but there's no point thanks to magical CCIP. Since minimum span is too big you'd normally use a smaller section of the pipper to eyeball the range and set the appropriately bigger.
5. It is not. It's fantasy FC3 CCIP. You're not supposed to have any solution at all for bombing, it's supposed to work like it does in F-5. And for guns and bombs it should require either radar or correct QFE, exactly as you say, but in DCS it doesn't need anything. You can still avoid cheating by switching to manual mode and manually setting correct depression with the knob on the right (which normally is barely used), then flying by the numbers. It's harder but more satisfying when you hit.
I heard anecdotes that Cuban pilots would use the rocket a2g modes to have approximate solutions for dive bombing with either the triangulation or the radar mode, not sure how though. It certainly won't work here.
6. No. In fact it's not possible to use groms with RP-22. And it's questionable whether it should lock on in fixed beam mode in A2A either, most likely it "can", but the antenna won't follow and the pilot should be required to keep the target within 1.5 degrees off boresight to maintain a2a lock in fixed beam mode (for instance to guide R-3Rs optically or for radar ranging in a dogfight (the latter not being a good idea to begin with as it will constantly lose solution)). Right now it just switches to regular tracking mode.
7. If everything worked correctly you would use it for manual range entry, both when ranging optically and in 300m mode, as well as for bombing. You would be able to use radar and ASP independently this way, though the grip twist will still control the radar tdc. Auto mode would only really be useful for large aerial targets and air to ground.
As it works now, selecting manual mode causes the ASP to break in some creative ways that change from patch to patch. You instead select manual by simply not using radar while in auto mode.
8. Yes, when you're not using ranging and want to set a fixed depression instead, either if something breaks of for bombing, as described above.
 
You're perfectly in the right here for asking these questions and being confused, the state of ASP in DCS is not acceptable. It is confusing even for people who have flown this module for years.
I hadn't visited this forum for a while. Many thanks for this very detailed reply. It answers to my questions and to the frustrations I have but I could not put in words. The gist, I understand, of what you're saying is that the ASP is a total mess and whomever struggles with it isn't an imbecile after all :)
For me it's become a marginally better experience using the fixed net with some ww2 kind of intuition than learn its numerous quirks and shortcomings...
I do hope that this gets fixed eventually... but in the meantime it'd be great if someone could compile a sort of guide on how the asp should work and share it with the community. Not just for encyclopaedic reasons (for people like me who want to know how things work irl rather than just getting things done in the simulator) but also as document that becomes a point of reference for all the community of what we expect from the developers.

Sent from my M2012K11AG using Tapatalk

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  • 2 years later...

  MiG-21 ASP.PNG

While this is a very low effort "fix", it's definitely a step in the right direction. 👍
I hope more steps will follow to actually create a more realistic ASP simulation. 🙏

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Intel i7-12700K @ 8x5GHz+4x3.8GHz + 32 GB DDR5 RAM + Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 (8 GB VRAM) + M.2 SSD + Windows 10 64Bit

 

DCS Panavia Tornado (IDS) really needs to be a thing!

 

Tornado3 small.jpg

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