How does the TCS lock onto enemy...

[WelshZeCorgi]

... aircraft when there are other contrasting objects behind them? 

 

Since the TCS locks onto contrasts, why doesn't it ever lose a lock when the contact has the ground behind them? Wouldn't a bus or a ship or something behind the aircraft possibly cause the TCS to lock onto the background clutter instead simply because it might contrast more than the tgt itself? 

 

Is the TCS lock really this unbreakable IRL?

 

 

Edit: Now that I think about it, the TCS will often lock onto a missile I fired at a hostile, so I guess the DCS TCS does break lock, but it's the only instance I know of.

Edited May 26, 2021 by WelshZeCorgi

[Northstar98]

4 hours ago, WelshZeCorgi said:

... aircraft when there are other contrasting objects behind them? 

 

Since the TCS locks onto contrasts, why doesn't it ever lose a lock when the contact has the ground behind them? Wouldn't a bus or a ship or something behind the aircraft possibly cause the TCS to lock onto the background clutter instead simply because it might contrast more than the tgt itself? 

 

Is the TCS lock really this unbreakable IRL?

 

It's because DCS is using a simplified system that uses target IDs instead of actually checking contrast.

 

How I think it works is if there's a target within the tracking gates, at or less than a certain maximum range, it can lock it and stay locked, so long as it doesn't fall outside the tracking gates or move faster than the slew rate of the TCS. There might be a few constraints for sure, but there's certainly nothing on the lines of actual contrast checking going on.

 

It's exactly the same with targeting pods, at least to my knowledge.

 

LTD/Rs also have simplifications, lasers (and all electromagnetic radiation) should spread out as per the inverse square law, right now they stay the same fixed beam AFAIK.

 

RADARs should have sidelobes, and these are very important for EW (in particular a multiple target repeater DECM set, will exploit sidelobes to give out false returns at false azimuths, right now DCS only really does range and even that is super simplified). 

[draconus]

TCS is slaved to radar most of the time - that makes it far easier to keep the lock. You'd have to use TCS only lock without radar to test.

Idk about TCS implementation but actual contrast is taken into consideration in DCS, ie. Su-25T's Shkval can't lock the ground targets when it's getting darker.

[Fri13]

17 minutes ago, draconus said:

Idk about TCS implementation but actual contrast is taken into consideration in DCS, ie. Su-25T's Shkval can't lock the ground targets when it's getting darker.

 

Contrast is not taken in consideration as it has not been so far modeled in DCS (possibility is that with upcoming FLIR update it could).

Only a time of day is modeled in the DCS, this is the same that example automatically sets your cockpit lighting as night lighting when time of day is specific or you have NVG On. 

 

That is just a hack to simulate the loss of visual ranges by shortening the range of lock for targets. Example with random values: Shkval in KA-50 is set to have lock for 9 km in mid-day. At  the 6 pm it will be 7 km and at 8 pm it will be 3 km. Then it will be something like 1.5 km after that, unless a target is inside illumination rocket "illumination circle" (a specific distance from rocket) and then you can lock to it again at something like 7 km. 

This creates silly situations where you have sun above horizon, direct sunlight shining on the target that has very strong shadow and all, but because time of day is earlier than 8 am then "you can not lock it from max range". 

 

And similar thing is with aircraft targeting etc. All is based to just time of day instead actual contrast (and that would allow you to lock on anything, and it would be required as without contrast lock you can't have a ground stabilization for many systems like a Shkval, DMT or Litening/ATFLIR targeting pods). So if no contrast, no pattern, no track...  

[Skysurfer]

The same way EO works in the FC3 planes essentially or a TGP a2a track. 

[Spiceman]

To answer the original question, yes, the TCS would pretty easily switch contrast locks. I’d lock some guy walking down the flight line and if he passed by some other guy, or even a fixed object, the TCS would quite often switch to the new guy/object. The chance of it switching was directly proportional to how much of the acquisition window the intended target occupied.