cannot reproduce and missing track file Hornet A2A Radar Broken? - OpenBeta

[zildac]

Hi,

 

So not used the Hornet in a while and decided to try the 1989 Task Force challenger campaign today. Mission one has a bunch of enemy aircraft grouped together and heading straight towards my flight. For the life of me  I cannot get them to appear on the radar, azimuth scan and elevation all good, RWS, TWS within about 20 miles but nothing, then some appear, then disappear. Their aspect is head on and they don't really maneuver at all. Is something horribly messed up with the Hornet radar in OpenBeta at present? I've read the posts re ECM "blinking" but I'm guessing this isn't related (unless the AI are that smart to utilise the same method).

 

Regards,

 

Z

Edited March 5, 2021 by zildac

[dorianR666]

ive played it recently and radar was working fine (apart from the sparrow problem).

 

post track, ill look at it.

[zildac]

3 minutes ago, dorianR666 said:

ive played it recently and radar was working fine (apart from the sparrow problem).

 

post track, ill look at it.

Thanks, interesting, the entire load out in that mission is Aim7's, excuse my ignorance but what is "The Sparrow problem"?

 

I'll get a track up....

[dorianR666]

1 minute ago, zildac said:

excuse my ignorance but what is "The Sparrow problem"?

sparrows kind of dont work at the moment because of a bug:

 

but you can change your loadout in Mission Planner, to AMRAAMs for example.

[dburne]

Welcome to my word, experiencing the same with A2A radar.

[Drac]

@zildac -  Many have complained in other Threads.  I'm thinking we will have to wait until late March.

[zildac]

Welcome to my word, experiencing the same with A2A radar.

I thought it was just my "time off" from the Hornet and no doubt that plays a factor, but even basic locks seem to be flakey. Or there's no contacts at all displayed when I can almost see them visually.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi

 

Regarding AIM-120 It is important to support your missiles until they go active, we are currently working on coupled INS / data link for a future update. 

 

Blinking ECM is being worked on and is high priority

 

AIM-7 is being investigated but no clear result yet. 

 

thank you

[jojo]

5 minutes ago, zildac said:

1 hour ago, dburne said:

Welcome to my word, experiencing the same with A2A radar.

I thought it was just my "time off" from the Hornet and no doubt that plays a factor, but even basic locks seem to be flakey. Or there's no contacts at all displayed when I can almost see them visually.

 

Take care to elevation control.

If you are using an axis, you need to reset it to center after changing the elevation or it will be constant input, and you quickly reach the vertical tilt limit.

 

The real Hornet HOTAS have a spring loaded return to center axis, but appart from maybe WinWing throttle, I don't know any with this feature on the market...

Edited March 5, 2021 by jojo

[dburne]

50 minutes ago, jojo said:

 

Take care to elevation control.

If you are using an axis, you need to reset it to center after changing the elevation or it will be constant input, and you quickly reach the vertical tilt limit.

 

The real Hornet HOTAS have a spring loaded return to center axis, but appart from maybe WinWing throttle, I don't know any with this feature on the market...

 

 

Thanks - yes I have an axis with a center detent so I can easily return it to it's center.

[Kempleja]

For me, radar behaviour is very erratic when playing online (Growling Sidewinder), but generally no problems, when I set up a mission with a couple of AI planes.

Online, radar drops tracks a lot, or L&S might just jump to a contact 60 nm away, when I have a hostile 30 nm in front of me or AMRAAM's gets LOST, even if track is not lost. I have considered it to be some kind of lag or netcode related issue as there are no such issues when setting up missions against AI.

[zildac]

12 minutes ago, Kempleja said:

For me, radar behaviour is very erratic when playing online (Growling Sidewinder), but generally no problems, when I set up a mission with a couple of AI planes.

Online, radar drops tracks a lot, or L&S might just jump to a contact 60 nm away, when I have a hostile 30 nm in front of me or AMRAAM's gets LOST, even if track is not lost. I have considered it to be some kind of lag or netcode related issue as there are no such issues when setting up missions against AI.

This is the same kind of issue I am seeing, albeit not in MP. Specifically radar dropping tracks, jumping to a contact miles away when there's 4 off my nose at 20 odd miles. Or just plain not seeing them in the first place. The elevation is not an issue. I'll keep playing around in case it is just me being a bit "dim" but I don't recall this amount of trouble when flying the Hornet in A2A around 4 months ago.

[dburne]

Yeah I am running into problems using my Amraams in a mission in the Serpents Head 2 campaign.

Can't seem to get and keep a lock. Might be me, will mess around more with target elevation and see what I can figure out.

 

[Drac]

Check what's happening on your SA page also.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Drac

[dburne]

50 minutes ago, Drac said:

Check what's happening on your SA page also.

 

 

Will do thanks.

[Drac]

30 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

Will do thanks.

Just for clarification, the SA page has issues as well.  Contacts coming in and out.

[dburne]

42 minutes ago, Drac said:

Just for clarification, the SA page has issues as well.  Contacts coming in and out.

 

Great - ok thanks for the heads up!

[monacoBMW]

16 hours ago, Kempleja said:

For me, radar behaviour is very erratic when playing online (Growling Sidewinder), but generally no problems, when I set up a mission with a couple of AI planes.

Online, radar drops tracks a lot, or L&S might just jump to a contact 60 nm away, when I have a hostile 30 nm in front of me or AMRAAM's gets LOST, even if track is not lost. I have considered it to be some kind of lag or netcode related issue as there are no such issues when setting up missions against AI.

 

I've been having every problem you just described. I play on a friend's dedicated server the most and the only other Hornet regular in our group is having similar experiences as well.  Zero lag issues that we can see and all of us have low pings. Something is very wrong with its online performance for sure. What made me abandon any sort of A2A mission in this plane was that inexplicable L&S issue you mentioned, but it was even worse the one time I experienced it. 2 Mig23s directly on my nose at ~30 miles and instead of locking any one of them up, it jumped to a friendly that was 120 miles away at about my 2 o'clock. Happened in both TWS and RWS modes. Even with a narrow azimuth, it would just jump way off in the distance for absolutely no reason. No track file because that made me rage quit ngl.

[chaos]

I thought it was just me but I've been logging into the Growling Sidewinder server and I hardly see any contacts at all (flying the Hornet). Also there seems to be an issue with the datalink. I've never had any problems displaying contacts from donor-aircraft but my SA-page is E M P T Y (apart from the threat-circles). This is a very recent thing....

 

Off-line, everything seems to be working correctly. GS server issue?

[Crashdown2]

I've found better luck changing the target size to small rather than leaving it medium. Not sure if that's what people are doing. Increased my track and hit rate drastically. Since I found the AIM-7 was designed to primarily shoot down bombers, I figured large was for them, medium was for something like B1 size or around there an slightly smaller, and small for fighters. A lesson I just did said to change the size to small as well. I had always left it medium and the type to 7F rather than changing it to 7M.

[wilbur81]

A few things to remember:

 

1.) Datalink objects will drop off if they're lost by your donors (i.e. AWACS loses their contact; friendlies lose contact; etc.) and in MP, aircraft are climbing, turning, accelerating, decelerating, and generally maneuvering WAY more dynamically and intelligently than AI. 

 

2.) Our radar in the Hornet is powerful, but it isn't magical or even AESA: So, the operator has to actually operate it in a fairly 'hands-on' fashion: so, narrow the azimuth on the piece of sky you're looking at (using TWS so you can move the beam around the scope).

 

3. Be VERY cognizant of your radar elevation at any given time. So many times I've had a datalink a/c on my radar screen, placed my TDC over it, only to realize that the enemy had climbed 1K feet higher than the height of my current elevation scan...bump the elevation up a bit and voila'... the contact appears. 

 

4. A fairly helpful tactic for me in the air to air regime is to go 4 or 6 bar elev. scan and 40 to 20 deg azimuth and move the beam with the TDC around the scope diligently. This provides the rapid refresh rate you need to pick guys up (this of course doesn't apply to ACM modes which work as intended).

 

5. Again, the pulse rep. freq. (PRF) really does make a difference as well so make sure you're in High or High/Interleaved when bandits are Hot/high aspect and medium if beam or going away from you. I don't use Med PRF very often.

 

6. Take all the above with a grain of salt as I'm clearly no expert. 

 

One final thought - Our DCS APG-73 is actually working really well and is an AMAZING and complex piece of work (art)! It isn't entirely bug-free, but it is working way more soundly than most of us think because, frankly, most of us (I do include myself here) aren't operating it correctly when we assume "bug."

Edited March 6, 2021 by wilbur81

[Stearmandriver]

There are plenty of bugs in the radar yet. I was watching a video of a previous twitch stream the other night, and observed the TD box appearing as I designated my lead for a rejoin, and then detaching and drifting off of him to create one of those phantom contacts.  Check this out! (Time stamp 52:40 if the link doesn't do it. )

 

That said, I agree most of the time it works well, and many of the issues (mine included) are related to mismanaging PRF, elev, or aging settings.  Of course it doesn't help that there are bugs changing these settings when they shouldn't be changed (like PRF) so you aren't expecting it lol. 

[dburne]

9 hours ago, Crashdown2 said:

I've found better luck changing the target size to small rather than leaving it medium. Not sure if that's what people are doing. Increased my track and hit rate drastically. Since I found the AIM-7 was designed to primarily shoot down bombers, I figured large was for them, medium was for something like B1 size or around there an slightly smaller, and small for fighters. A lesson I just did said to change the size to small as well. I had always left it medium and the type to 7F rather than changing it to 7M.

 

I will have to give that a try, thanks for the tip.

[Padre Pio]

On 3/6/2021 at 3:58 PM, wilbur81 said:

One final thought - Our DCS APG-73 is actually working really well and is an AMAZING and complex piece of work (art)! It isn't entirely bug-free, but it is working way more soundly than most of us think because, frankly, most of us (I do include myself here) aren't operating it correctly when we assume "bug."

I cannot disagree with your tutorial, most of the point are really helpful.

 

I cannot agree with the last sentence. How can you explain that most of us used the same radar 2 months ago and had no problem with the mentioned points (like PRF for example) and now - they have? 

Why does it happen, that some peaople who spent a lot of hours on DCS F-18, now  take a break and go flying to different modules they have, saying that A/A became really hard and annoying?

 

According to last OB patches, I cannot find any announcments from ED about any intended changes to the radar, which should make it more realistic (as some people suggest).

The official changes were directed to ECM and A/G radar which should not have influence on A/A radar or at least AA should work not worse than 2 months before.

 

The facts are:

- targets are dissapearing / dropping (and  it is not related to the antenna level in case of experienced users)

- WACQ is not working, other ACM systems work 5-time slower than before (in sense of locking the target)

- there was no discussion about PRF until it started to switch itself to "med" in some situations

 

My simple conclusion is: something got broken since the begining of January 2021 as the side effect of the other aircraft systems updates and no one wants simply to own up. I understand this is a lot hard work, that it is OpenBeta, but blaming the users for all of that is really not OK.

 

I could just throw all my knowledge to the trashcan and learn everything from the begining, but only after someone from ED says: "in December 2020 the radar was working wrong, it was a kind of simplifying, just an arcade, and NOW it works as intended, as a real radar". I hope it won't happen. 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Padre Pio

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

 

if you think there is a bug please provide short track replays showing the issue we will be happy to check them.

 

If your contacts are dropping check your fade time, it maybe set to short with a large scan frame you will have problems. 

 

thanks