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54 not guiding on track-hold contacts.


WelshZeCorgi

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So my understanding is, if a 54 is in the air and the TID looses the track on the contact that 54 is guiding on, the WCS will create a fake contact, a track-hold contact, for the 54 to continue guiding on. It will basically treat the track-hold contact like a real contact, continuing to loft, peak and then glide down towards the target before going active at a programed amount of time before TTI, looking for the target. As the track-hold contact basically flies in a straight line, not maneuvering or changing altitude, there is a high chance it will not find a maneuvering target. However, if the real initial contact or just a new and very unlucky one, is near the track-hold contacts position and altitude, the chance of it finding, locking on and guiding itself towards it is very likely. 

 

If this is true, 'if' being as I'm not a self-proclaimed 54 expert, then the current 54s we have in DCS are bugged in this aspect. In DCS, when a track-hold is created after track file loss on a target with a 54 on it, the 54 has a tendency of stopping loft, flying straight and never activating its seeker to look for the target.  

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I've seen it both ways. I've seen the missile just keep driving forward, the contact never begins to flash and the missile seemingly doesn't go active. I've also seen missiles hit extrapolated targets.

The loss of loft when a track begins to correlate is probably related to the missile API, hopefully this will be remedied when the AIM-54 is fully transferred over to the new model. 


Edited by near_blind
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8 hours ago, BreaKKer said:

Another thing, phoenixes don’t go active on track hold contacts either.


Simple set up, Foxbat closing at speed of yes. First flare I drop after I shoot signals me flipping the aspect switch to beam with ~40 TTI, and the Foxbat track drops into track held extrapolation. Second flare I drop is the AWG-9 displaying a phoenix active signal for the dropped track with ~12 TTI. Missile takes cut off, and bandit starts manuevering. 

Tacview-20210625-222237-DCS.zip.acmi

I've absolutely encountered the extrapolated tracks not going active, but it's not 100% of the time. 

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It's a bit weird at the moment. I did not spend much time on it, but sometimes the missiles is guided and activated correctly, sometimes it doesn't. The distance seems like an important factor. Here, for example, the two '54s were guided and activated correctly. A couple of days ago I launched an AIM-54 in TWS a relatively short range, and it went dumb (looking back, I should have used PSTT, but that's another story).

 

Any way, it's still WIP, so I wouldn't lose my sleep over it. It'll get fixed.

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As it currently is we can't guide a missile in DCS on just a track in the radar, it needs to track on a real target.

 

What we did to allow some of this functionality is that when a track is lost we compare the location of the held track to the real target and if those are close enough together we still guide the missile. If they're not we don't. This means that if the target is not within this box anymore it will look as if the missile just stopped guiding and if it is it will continue to guide.

 

It's not optimal for sure but it's better than nothing and we'd be more than happy to model it in a more correct way if we can in the future. Optimally we would be able to guide the missile towards a spot in the sky that we can decide on and then tell the missile to go active and find the target on it's own. But that's not currently possible afaik.

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2 hours ago, Naquaii said:

As it currently is we can't guide a missile in DCS on just a track in the radar, it needs to track on a real target.

 

What we did to allow some of this functionality is that when a track is lost we compare the location of the held track to the real target and if those are close enough together we still guide the missile. If they're not we don't. This means that if the target is not within this box anymore it will look as if the missile just stopped guiding and if it is it will continue to guide.

 

It's not optimal for sure but it's better than nothing and we'd be more than happy to model it in a more correct way if we can in the future. Optimally we would be able to guide the missile towards a spot in the sky that we can decide on and then tell the missile to go active and find the target on it's own. But that's not currently possible afaik.

Thank you for your answer, Naquaii, I was just wondering about the very same issue in recent days, as the results of my Phoenix shots, especially on lower altitutdes with lost tracks were very inconsistent. I wish I knew it earlier (how this mechanics works) as it would have spared me a lot of frustration.

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3 hours ago, Naquaii said:

As it currently is we can't guide a missile in DCS on just a track in the radar, it needs to track on a real target.

 

What we did to allow some of this functionality is that when a track is lost we compare the location of the held track to the real target and if those are close enough together we still guide the missile. If they're not we don't. This means that if the target is not within this box anymore it will look as if the missile just stopped guiding and if it is it will continue to guide.

 

It's not optimal for sure but it's better than nothing and we'd be more than happy to model it in a more correct way if we can in the future. Optimally we would be able to guide the missile towards a spot in the sky that we can decide on and then tell the missile to go active and find the target on it's own. But that's not currently possible afaik.

So noted. And as mentioned by others before, sometimes the missile does guide and hit and other times it doesn't.
My question:
Should the TTI symbology remain the same? As in the numbers counting down to impact and flashing when the missile does go active? Cause right now the numbers never flash when missile is guided on a held track. Even when they hit.

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7 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

So noted. And as mentioned by others before, sometimes the missile does guide and hit and other times it doesn't.
My question:
Should the TTI symbology remain the same? As in the numbers counting down to impact and flashing when the missile does go active? Cause right now the numbers never flash when missile is guided on a held track. Even when they hit.

 

It should be the same, that might be an oversight or bug.


Edited by Naquaii
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On 6/27/2021 at 12:23 AM, Naquaii said:

 

It should be the same, that might be an oversight or bug.

 

Roget that! Good to know. I actually thought it may be a feature 🙂

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On 6/26/2021 at 4:39 PM, captain_dalan said:

So noted. And as mentioned by others before, sometimes the missile does guide and hit and other times it doesn't.
My question:
Should the TTI symbology remain the same? As in the numbers counting down to impact and flashing when the missile does go active? Cause right now the numbers never flash when missile is guided on a held track. Even when they hit.

 

Is that when looking at the TID repeater or the actual TID and in multiplayer or singleplayer? There's a bug currently with a pending fix regarding the blinking of the TTI on the pilot repeater.


Edited by Naquaii
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22 hours ago, Naquaii said:

 

Is that when looking at the TID repeater or the actual TID and in multiplayer or singleplayer? There's a bug currently with a pending fix regarding the blinking of the TTI on the pilot repeater.

 

The TID repeater, both SP and MP. It hasn't occurred to me to jump into the RIO pit and check if it's there too, but the issue fits  perfectly with the bug you describe, so it's probably that.


Edited by captain_dalan

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/26/2021 at 4:13 AM, Naquaii said:

As it currently is we can't guide a missile in DCS on just a track in the radar, it needs to track on a real target.

 

What we did to allow some of this functionality is that when a track is lost we compare the location of the held track to the real target and if those are close enough together we still guide the missile. If they're not we don't. This means that if the target is not within this box anymore it will look as if the missile just stopped guiding and if it is it will continue to guide.

 

It's not optimal for sure but it's better than nothing and we'd be more than happy to model it in a more correct way if we can in the future. Optimally we would be able to guide the missile towards a spot in the sky that we can decide on and then tell the missile to go active and find the target on it's own. But that's not currently possible afaik.

The lack of any kind of "virtual target" within DCS is actually a big problem.

I ran into a similar issue with trying to make the KS-19 for High Digit Sams.  Since weapons always and only target entities, I had no way to include any kind of aiming error in the gun depending on what was actually being used to track the target at the time (radar tracking vs optical tracking).

 

Here's to hoping ED includes this function in the near future.

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On 7/8/2021 at 1:40 PM, Hextopia said:

The lack of any kind of "virtual target" within DCS is actually a big problem.

I ran into a similar issue with trying to make the KS-19 for High Digit Sams.  Since weapons always and only target entities, I had no way to include any kind of aiming error in the gun depending on what was actually being used to track the target at the time (radar tracking vs optical tracking).

 

Here's to hoping ED includes this function in the near future.

Also happens when you try and Fox-3 a ship, the missile never makes it all the way there

BreaKKer

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I seem to remember that during Iran tensions tests were done and the 54 was found to be a decent emergency tool against surface combatants. Never operationally used obviously. BreaKKer I have used them against ships in PAL just fine as Omega said. May be an employment issue on your end. 

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11 minutes ago, Grater Tovakia said:

I seem to remember that during Iran tensions tests were done and the 54 was found to be a decent emergency tool against surface combatants. Never operationally used obviously. BreaKKer I have used them against ships in PAL just fine as Omega said. May be an employment issue on your end. 

 

A rumour saying that (true or not) is still a far cry from a missile actually guiding on a ship. For the AWG-9 to actually track on a ship you'd have to be in pulse meaning that the missile would happen to find the correct target on it's own, a target that it's not designed to track. If this is actually true I suspect what we're talking about is actually launching them dumb along the ADL more or less.

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22 minutes ago, Naquaii said:

For the AWG-9 to actually track on a ship you'd have to be in pulse

Cant AWG-9 track and lock surface contacts in PD with MLC switched off? If I remember correctly, one time we were on CAP/RECON mission and my RIO located enemy carrier group that way.

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Just now, Golo said:

Cant AWG-9 track and lock surface contacts in PD with MLC switched off? If I remember correctly, one time we were on CAP/RECON mission and my RIO located enemy carrier group that way.

 

Pulse search would be the suggested mode for that. In PD with the MLC off you'd risk massive ground returns so not reliable.

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On 7/11/2021 at 7:50 PM, Golo said:

Cant AWG-9 track and lock surface contacts in PD with MLC switched off?

Wouldn't they need to drive over 100kts towards you?

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14 minutes ago, draconus said:

Wouldn't they need to drive over 100kts towards you?

 

No, the zero doppler filter is centered around 0 radial velocity, it's the MLC that cancels out targets at or around ground speed so with MLC disabled it could see them. It's just unlikely as they'd very likely be totally drowned in ground/sea echoes.


Edited by Naquaii
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On 7/11/2021 at 7:53 PM, Naquaii said:

In PD with the MLC off you'd risk massive ground returns so not reliable.

OK, let me ask you this one time, who is your daddy and.... wait no thats wrong.

Have you ever seen radar reflection from the water surface in both P and PD? Because I have not. Ive seen ground reflection from ground in P and maybe some in PD, but definitely not from water surface. I guess we should, but isnt yet implemented?

 

Because what I see right now is this.

DDD PDS NO MLC.png

DDD PDSTT NO MLC.png

F10.png


Edited by Golo
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Optimally the returns from the sea should depend greatly on sea state. In any case, using PD to search for surface targets shouldn't be a thing, we might have to look at disabling that or making it much harder. I'll have a talk with the others.

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