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It’s time to end the never ending AI vertical loop.


PSYKOnz

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It’s written all over the internet. Please do something, anything to end the AI from going into endless physicsless vertical loops. It destroys game play. Immersion and everybody’s hard work.


Just today I was playing the excellent zone 5 campaign by reflected simulations, did everything right, did it all by the numbers, went full retard on it. Hit the merge, he went vertical, then we did 6 consecutive loops till I decided to try another manoeuvre and boom I’m dead. Didn’t have a chance

 

Once the loop starts you only have two options Restart the mission or go play another game. Because that vertical loop just destroys everything I love about this game.

 

please please figure out a way to end this damn loop please.

 

I play dcs because it’s the closest i will ever get to flying a fighter and for the most part it’s so good but when this damn loop crap starts I just quit and go play something else, cause there’s no point playing a combat sim if it doesn’t sim combat 

 

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I have noticed this too. Been away from the sim for awhile and started practicing again.

 

F 18 vs MiG 21 BIS the MiG was just going vertical all the time. I can shoot it down but I stall every-time. I dint think that MiG could do that since that's how the F4 defeated them in Vi et Nam also saw a video about the F14 and going vertical was one way of defeating enemy planes at the time.

 

 

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While I totally agree on the more than dire need for improved AI, I can't say I ever had the issue of being in an endless vertical loop combat situation with AI.

 

When, for instance, I do the Hornet BFM quick action mission against the Mig-29, we always end up in a slowly descending horizontal "loop" (or spiral), until we get too close to the ground. Then, when getting really low, the AI doesn't know what to do and ends up dead, always... (either by me or by crashing into the ground)

 

 

Luckily, ED stated they are constantly working on AI improvement.


Edited by sirrah

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Yeah it gets ridiculous but I’ve become good at outlooping the AI. They need some different moves for sure. 

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It’s just so game breaking. I mean this game is about simulating air combat and when you get to the merge and this loop happens (vertical or horizontal) it really does make me question why bother. 
 

the physics should be the same between AI and player aircraft for a start and the AI shouldn’t be able to do things that can’t actually be done with the jet there on. 
 

I want the fight to be hard and to test me but when the loop kicks in it just becomes pointless. I can’t believe I’m about to type this but it feels like ace combat has a better AI flight model (don’t worry I’m already washing my mouth out with soap)
 

And it’s even worse when your playing a paid campaign!

 

does anyone have a work around or are we stuck with this until DCS 3.0

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DCS has the most resoundingly awful AI in the industry, the worst AI I've seen offhand since Mechwarrior 3 in 1999.

 

  The ground ''AI'' is literally entirely absent, they are completely incapable of responding to stimulus or departing from a waypoint.

 

  The aerial ''AI'' is marginally better, as it at least responds to you, but is extremely simplistic and relies entirely on broken physics, with certain specific ones being particularly egregious offenders.

 

  -edit for reminder that I'm a hardcore fanboi, and still feel this strongly.


Edited by Mars Exulte
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Де вороги, знайдуться козаки їх перемогти.

5800x3d * 3090 * 64gb * Reverb G2

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Completely agree,

 

AI behaviour and their flight modelling are by far the weakest area of DCS.

Which is unfortunately very immersion breaking since it’s an integral part of any combat flight simulation.

Hearing Nineline say that he and Nick Grey think it’s actually not too bad in the Air Combat Sim podcast interview didn’t really go down well with me personally.

I mean sure they’re entitled to their own opinion, but it left the feeling of not being able to accept justified criticism.

DCS does a lot of things well, but AI and their FM are really bad.


Edited by Snappy
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Honestly as bad as the DCS AI is, it's nothing on another ww2-based sim. 1v1 dogfights in that are literally impossible because the AI just flies around in a shallow horizontal turn after the merge.

 

One thing I noticed about the AI never-ending vertical loop is that it tends to only happen when the AI identifies that you're low on energy, which it always does almost perfectly (e.g. if you try to force it to overshoot by bleeding speed and going for a flat scissors). At this point, one of two things happen: either the AI FM of your opponent is broken enough that you get stuck in lag forever, or the AI slowly loses angles until you can gun them. If you keep your energy up, I found that the infinite loop doesn't start nearly as easily - although whether you can win that fight or not is entirely a function of AI aircraft and especially difficulty setting, with "Ace" aircraft being essentially invincible.

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26 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

Honestly as bad as the DCS AI is, it's nothing on another ww2-based sim. 1v1 dogfights in that are literally impossible because the AI just flies around in a shallow horizontal turn after the merge.

 

One thing I noticed about the AI never-ending vertical loop is that it tends to only happen when the AI identifies that you're low on energy, which it always does almost perfectly (e.g. if you try to force it to overshoot by bleeding speed and going for a flat scissors). At this point, one of two things happen: either the AI FM of your opponent is broken enough that you get stuck in lag forever, or the AI slowly loses angles until you can gun them. If you keep your energy up, I found that the infinite loop doesn't start nearly as easily - although whether you can win that fight or not is entirely a function of AI aircraft and especially difficulty setting, with "Ace" aircraft being essentially invincible.

Not sure about that. Might depend on selected aircraft type for opponent, as I have see them use the vertical in the other sim too.

Plus there at least they use the same FM as the player.


Regarding DCS AI, my experience is, that the AI seems to start its looping once you reach an offensive position. Then it seems like "oh I have no other ideas, lets start looping until the player shoots me down".


 

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30 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

1v1 dogfights in that are literally impossible because the AI just flies around in a shallow horizontal turn after the merge.

That hardly makes them impossible to beat. Literally all of BFM is a method for overcoming this situation. Out of plane maneuvers, misaligned turn circles etc etc. 

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1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

That hardly makes them impossible to beat. Literally all of BFM is a method for overcoming this situation. Out of plane maneuvers, misaligned turn circles etc etc. 

Why, thank you for the free lesson. I'm not saying 1v1 dogfights in that sim are impossible to beat, but that they are worse because they don't even exist. Lining up to something doing a shallow turn doesn't count as a dogfight.

 

6 minutes ago, Snappy said:

Not sure about that. Might depend on selected aircraft type for opponent, as I have see them use the vertical in the other sim too.

Plus there at least they use the same FM as the player.

I have never, ever seen a vertical maneuver from the AI in 1v1s. You are right about their FM though.

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4 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

I'm not saying 1v1 dogfights in that sim are impossible to beat, but that they are worse because they don't even exist. Lining up to something doing a shallow turn doesn't count as a dogfight.

Subject for another game really… at least they use the same FM as the player. That’s something I’d really like to see in DCS if this Vulkan/ multi core adoption can handle it. 

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This one ^ always bugs me, there are always a ton of people who say something then one person who is like “well i haven’t seen it so it can’t be true” which doesn’t help the situation and inevitably turns a constructive thread into bickering over nothing,

 

awesome that you haven’t experienced it but the majority of us have, hence our conversations.

 

so in the interests of keeping this thread honest and productive, let’s drop the have or have not seen it thing and work together to get some recognition from ED so they can see that there are a lot of us that love the game but would love it more if the flight model and AI got an update to fix the awful performance of the AI

 

 Be cause you can be assured if they see this descending into an argument they will just ignore i

 

nineline said in that interview that he’s the go between so let’s give him all the information we can to get a result 🙂

 

the ai definitely needs an overhaul. So how can we help 

 

the way I see it, first step, fix the FM, make the ai fly the aircraft with the same physics and rules that our aircraft have, stop giving them these op, limitless airframes that way when they do go into the endless loop that jet eventually stalls out 


Edited by PSYKOnz

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11 hours ago, PSYKOnz said:

the ai definitely needs an overhaul. So how can we help 

  We can't. There's nothing to do on our end, and they don't really need a run down of everything that's wrong. The things wrong have been wrong literally forever. It's well known how and why the AI sucks.

 

11 hours ago, PSYKOnz said:

the way I see it, first step, fix the FM, make the ai fly the aircraft with the same physics and rules that our aircraft have, stop giving them these op, limitless airframes that way when they do go into the endless loop that jet eventually stalls out 

  Never going to happen for performance reasons. The AI will literally NEVER use the same modeling we do because it would completely obliterate playability. It's also not necessary, they can use a simplified model, the SFM we used to have on FC3 jets is more than fine for AI and was still pretty good. The issue is that some of these FMs need tweaking and have literally forever, they've simply been ignored (I'm looking at you, MiG-15). The FMs themselves aren't the issue persay, but rather the AI's tendency to behave brainlessly and either inadvertently abuse its "strengths" or maybe simply zone out entirely and fall into repetitive behavior.

 

  The FMs need to be tweaked in some cases to be more believable and consistent, but the AI itself needs a full rewrite.

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Де вороги, знайдуться козаки їх перемогти.

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13 hours ago, PSYKOnz said:

This one ^ always bugs me, there are always a ton of people who say something then one person who is like “well i haven’t seen it so it can’t be true” which doesn’t help the situation and inevitably turns a constructive thread into bickering over nothing,

 

Well, if you'd read my earlier post (4th reply in this thread) you would have seen that @TLTeo is not the only one that never experienced this "endless vertical loop" thing...

 

But in the end we're all on the same side (together with ED btw). Improvement just takes time, especially something as complicated as AI behaviour.

 

This thread, or any other, won't speed up the progress..

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~ That nuke might not have been the best of ideas, Sir... the enemy is furious ~ GUMMBAH

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1 hour ago, sirrah said:

is not the only one that never experienced this "endless vertical loop" thing

You misread my post. In DCS, I do see that happening frequently, but only under specific circumstances. In the other sim, the AI is even worse and it doesn't even acknowledge the existence of the vertical plane. I just wanted to put things in perspective - yes the AI in DCS is mediocre, but we could be doing much, much worse.

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The AI is something that concerns me especially when the "dynamic campaign" is brought up.  I can't see the dynamic campaign even functioning with the AI in this state.

 

Doing the F-14 campaigns showed just how many flaws there are.  A lot of the time my wingman just shat the bed and flew off to some mysterious unlisted waypoint rather than air refuelling or landing on the carrier.  That's just basic stuff, you chuck in combat and the whole thing just collapses.

 

"2 hit the tanker"

 

"negative"

 

10 minutes later....

 

"2, ejecting"

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On 8/13/2021 at 3:47 PM, PSYKOnz said:

 

the physics should be the same between AI and player aircraft for a start and the AI shouldn’t be able to do things that can’t actually be done with the jet there on. 

 

Careful what you wish for - that can be a giant resource hog.

 

I’ve seen the results of this elsewhere and it’s not all good news.

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@Wavehopper

That's literally why I am not diving whole hog into the campaigns. It will really ruin it for me dealing with that nonsense. I ran face first into the AI limitations just with limited experimentation early on in my own missions.

 

7 hours ago, PSYKOnz said:

And by the sounds of it that’s not on the cards 

  It is on their official to do list, but most likely is waiting on Vulkan and improved multicore support. DCS is already pegging CPUs, and AI is verrry intensive, especially when there are dozens/hundreds of active units. Optimisation is a fine thing, but some things are inherently demanding by nature and nothing will change that.

Де вороги, знайдуться козаки їх перемогти.

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On 8/13/2021 at 3:32 PM, PSYKOnz said:

It’s written all over the internet. Please do something, anything to end the AI from going into endless physicsless vertical loops. It destroys game play. Immersion and everybody’s hard work.


Just today I was playing the excellent zone 5 campaign by reflected simulations, did everything right, did it all by the numbers, went full retard on it. Hit the merge, he went vertical, then we did 6 consecutive loops till I decided to try another manoeuvre and boom I’m dead. Didn’t have a chance

 

Once the loop starts you only have two options Restart the mission or go play another game. Because that vertical loop just destroys everything I love about this game.

 

please please figure out a way to end this damn loop please.

 

I play dcs because it’s the closest i will ever get to flying a fighter and for the most part it’s so good but when this damn loop crap starts I just quit and go play something else, cause there’s no point playing a combat sim if it doesn’t sim combat 

 

 

The good sign of coming change is the new AI F-18C Hornet flight model. I have been doing almost a week of BFM Hornet vs. AI Hornet and must say it is headed in the right direction, once that is combined with AI tactics and weapons school, it will add a whole new dimension to the single player experience!

 

DCS: F/A-18C Hornet by Eagle Dynamics

  • AI F/A-18C FM tune:
    • Tune AI FM to fit human one.
    • Added the same auto flaps control as the player.
    • AI stalls when turning heavy and slow - Fixed.

Edited by Gierasimov

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  • 1 year later...

I took a break from DCS for a few months and picked up the excellent Mirage F1 from Aerges. Started doing radar work and air-to-air with the AI and it looks like the same issues persist today. AI (on recruit difficulty) has seemingly near perfect energy management skills up to the point where I am thinking "Wow, how did we go from similar energy states in a horisontal scissor to the MiG 21 suddenly doing a booming circle climb running circles around me?". Same with the F-4E; that fight basically ended up with the Phantom doing slashing attacks on me; as soon as I extended and built up energy it was on my again, I had to defend and once I win the scissor he would just extend in a climb, leaving me in the dust. 

I thought I would try the Viggen as it usually does not retain energy well after a few turns. Wrong. I could stay in the circle on its 4/8 position but it was impossible to gain any distance on him to attack with the cannon. 

These fights mostly ended with maneuver kills - AI finally flies into the ground. The MiG-21 once just stopped fighting and flew in a straight line all of a sudden, probably due to low fuel state. The one fighter I managed to beat a few times was the MiG-23 using boom & zoom tactics until I was able to get into a position to Fox 2 him.

I know I am not great with air-to-air but I have flown a lot of online over the years and I can usually hold my own. The AI just still feels wrong. I remember the AI in LOMAC and Flanker being much more enjoyable back in the day. It is disappointing to see that over a year later the AI situation still hasn't changed much. I always wonder how this affects all the paid campaigns, or do they try to avoid air to air as much as possible or focus on BVR instead?


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