Entering initial coordinates

[Kang]

Ever since an update the initial coordinates to align the INS have had digits that don't get displayed. Instead, after entering they appear in a DCS info message in the top right.

Considering how such info windows obviously don't exist in the actual Mirage 2000, is that really how it works? Do pilots (or ground crew) punch in the remaining digits blindly and just assume they are correct?

Strikes me as odd that these digits are necessary but there is no way to see them.

[El Chapo]

Yes that's the way it's working IRL. 

On more modern M2000 you can check actual coordinates on MFD. 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Габихан

[Slack Mouse]

This was something I noticed right away too.  It seems weird that this would be the real life way it was done.  The original PCN we had, had more digits being represented.  Someone here was nice enough to show a real life PCN panel.  Is it possible to revert back to the original PCN we had?  See image below.

[Kercheiz]

There is only one displayed decimal. The two "blind" decimals are bonus.

[Kercheiz]

Also, it is worth noting that rounding to first digit is a maximum error of 90m, which is a 3 min average drift in class 1. You don’t really need to go to 9m with an extra digit, as that extra accuracy is lost in 18s of drift.

[myHelljumper]

The implementation is correct, the two last digits are not displayed by the PCN.

We are not planning to give the option to revert this change as it would need to change the way the PCN works too much for very little gain.

Thanks.

Edited October 19, 2021 by myHelljumper

[Slack Mouse]

9 hours ago, myHelljumper said:

The implementation is correct, the two last digits are not displayed by the PCN.

We are not planning to give the option to revert this change as it would need to change the way the PCN works too much for very little gain.

Thanks.

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

[Frederf]

I'm guessing navigation points can also be entered to the extra precision. One thing I noticed is the "current position" hint shows up when entering in navigation points during alignment. I was worried that every time I was entering new coordinates it was changing what I was aligning to but thankfully when I was done my assumed position were the L/L entered at the VAL press.

This debug hint message should be removed. It does not belong in a public release.

[QuiGon]

On 10/20/2021 at 12:49 AM, Frederf said:

This debug hint message should be removed. It does not belong in a public release.

This! I would love to see this gone, as it gives you additional information (display of the remaining two digits), that the pilot should not have.

[Kercheiz]

Check your special options!

 

[QuiGon]

19 minutes ago, Kercheiz said:

Check your special options!

 

Thanks, but I'm aware of the special option. I'm requesting it to be removed completely as I don't see any reason why it should be there at all. It's a gamification that provides unrealistic information to the player that a pilot would not have. I also fail to see the necessary to have this kind of additional information.

[Kercheiz]

The purpose is checking that no mistake was done when pressing the digits. With mouse clicks and head tracking, you make entry mistakes that you would not do IRL with a physical keyboard.

Now if you complain about an optional feature, that you can choose to enable or disable, that doesn't provide a cheat-like advantage, and just want to remove it from other users, I don't know what to answer.

Hey ED, could we fully remove game pause, mouse clicks (full home cockpit only please), respawn and hot start? It's unrealistic. And also changing volume. Full blast only.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Kercheiz

[myHelljumper]

The option is staying, it's a little removable gamification that does nothing to reduce the quality or possible enjoyment of the module.

[QuiGon]

19 minutes ago, Kercheiz said:

The purpose is checking that no mistake was done when pressing the digits.

Which is unrealistic, as a RL pilot has no such option.
 

19 minutes ago, Kercheiz said:

Now if you complain about an optional feature, that you can choose to enable or disable, that doesn't provide a cheat-like advantage, and just want to remove it from other users, I don't know what to answer.

I disagree. It provides you with the unrealistic advantage to verify your coordinate input and thus gaining an advantage over someone who can not do so. Granted, it's a tiny advantage, but it is one.
 

12 minutes ago, myHelljumper said:

The option is staying, it's a little removable gamification that does nothing to reduce the quality or possible enjoyment of the module.

Aside from what I said above, it is also a sign of poor product quality if such debug messages made their way into the public version of the product as Frederf pointed out:

On 10/20/2021 at 12:49 AM, Frederf said:

This debug hint message should be removed. It does not belong in a public release.

That doesn't exactly reinforce my confidence in the devs to deliver a proper and authentic simulation.

[myHelljumper]

17 minutes ago, QuiGon said:

Which is unrealistic, as a RL pilot has no such option.
 

I disagree. It provides you with the unrealistic advantage to verify your coordinate input and thus gaining an advantage over someone who can not do so. Granted, it's a tiny advantage, but it is one.
 

Aside from what I said above, it is also a sign of poor product quality if such debug messages made their way into the public version of the product as Frederf pointed out:

That doesn't exactly reinforce my confidence in the devs to deliver a proper and authentic simulation.

If this is how you judge the authenticity of the module, I don't know what to say to you.

I'm sorry that we cannot meet your quality expectation because of an optional tooltip.

 

Why are we talking about advantages ? Is DCS a competitive game ?

 

I really don't get why it's such an issue, you guys can just disable it.....

Edited January 26, 2022 by myHelljumper

[Kercheiz]

This is not a debug message, but a way to compensate the limitations of input/output PC hardware. Hence mouse clicking the PCN buttons with a head tracker which is much more prone to wrong input than using the real PCN.

Options are there to make everyone happy.

But, there are always unhappy people...

We removed the HUD AoA option, because in our opinion it was unrealistic and giving a slight dogfight advantage. We got some backlash for this.

Same for the radar axis.

We have to find a compromise

[TheMrMawaks]

RL pilot can see if his finger is on the good button , in VR no , that's the end of your reasoning

[Kercheiz]

Anyway, the complain proves one thing, you never had to input JTAC coordinates in flight in VR with a VR controller...

It's so messy that I ended up building myself a full right console just fot this

So I'm not even using the option

[Frederf]

I was unaware that the debug message was changed to be a special option. Regardless, it shouldn't be enabled by default. Will a multiplayer server enforce the debug message on? I know that was a problem with the MiG-21bis unrealistic pipper special option.

[Kercheiz]

No it will not be possible to disable it server side, because such a feature doesn’t give any advantage. That’s an accessibility feature for some hardware configurations.

[Frederf]

You don't understand. If the option is part of server difficulty then when I turn it off and server says "no, it's on" then server will force it on.

[Kercheiz]

Ah, my bad! There has been a lot of discussion recently about if the VTB overlay had to be disabled server side because it's a cheat blablabla... So I definitely misunderstood your question.

There currently is no such option server side.

But if the messages appear while disabled in the player special options, that's definitely a bug.

[QuiGon]

15 hours ago, myHelljumper said:

If this is how you judge the authenticity of the module, I don't know what to say to you.

It's of course not what I base my entire assessment of the authenticity of a module on, but it's a (small) part of it. It's also an indicator of the developer team and their stance on realism and unfortunately RAZBAM has quite a lot of such indicators across all their modules that worry me in this regard.
 

15 hours ago, myHelljumper said:

I'm sorry that we cannot meet your quality expectation because of an optional tooltip.

It's not a tooltip, which appears when you hover your cursor over something to better explain a function. It's obviously a debug messages that (purposfully) has been left in the public release. And yeah, for me that's a sign of bad software design.
 

15 hours ago, myHelljumper said:

Why are we talking about advantages ? Is DCS a competitive game ?

Well, there is multiplayer where players fight each other, so it actually is a competitive game of some kind.
But when I talk about advantages, I'm referring to artifical advantages over the realistic simulation or in other words: If I fly a simulator like DCS in MP against other players I would at least expect, that it is possible for the server admin, to enforce realistic settings for all players and eny the use of such artifical helpers. This is currently not the case for this coordinate entry helper.

[felixx75]

20 hours ago, myHelljumper said:

The option is staying, it's a little removable gamification that does nothing to reduce the quality or possible enjoyment of the module.

I can't see any real reason, to remove this option (I have disabled it in my settings).