JESTER LANTIRN Feedback thread

[Wizard1393]

Over all good experience with this feature. Well done HB! However, one thing that perhaps either I missed was documented;

In VR when using QDIRECT Head Control to slew the LANTIRN, you get one small ring in the center of the display, and two large rings, one for each eye, that is not correlated properly between both eyes, so you get a sense of a crosseye.

Edited October 22, 2021 by chrisofsweden

[bonesvf103]

12 hours ago, near_blind said:

LANTIRN LTS doesn't have Laser Spot Search, so the other aircraft will have to verbally talk you on to the target. If it's at night and they have IR laser capability, they could visually mark it. 

 

My buddy and I have done this before.  It was a night mission and I had the Tomcat and he had a Hornet with LITENING.  He used the LITENING laser to show me where the target was, aand I hit it.  It was great.

 

v6,

boNes

[Ian Boys UK]

Jester seems unable to target static aircraft. Vehicles like tanks etc work fine but the Target All Aircraft command has him just search aimlessly even when he clearly has big a/c like the A-50 in view.

Also QDES seems erratic.

[Scout]

Is there a way to disable Jester from manipulating the pod, and use the Lantirn pilot mod instead? 

[Comrade Doge]

First I would like to congratulate the dev team again for a splendid addition to the Cat. Fantastic job there.
Recently I did a flight which stumbled across some confusing behaviour for me. I was under the impression Jester will start readying up the pod right after takeoff, correct me if I'm wrong. Based on this, here's what happened. I took off from the John C. Stennis, with a loadout of 2 AIM54C on stations 1 and 8, 2 Mk84 on stations 3 and 6, TALD decoys on stations 4 and 5, and the usual sidewinders and bags. Went ahead and dropped all the munitions, then returned, rearmed, this time replacing a pheonix station with the LANTIRN, and 2 AIM54s + 2 GBU 24s on the belly pylons.
Here's the interesting behaviour now. I took off, headed to the AO, switched to AG mode, and surprise surprise, the LANTIRN was not aligned, the process not even started. As I noticed that, Jester immediately started the alignment process, and I orbited patiently 8 minutes over the AO to wait for it to align.
If you need any more information, I will kindly provide it. Might just be an error on my end, it frequently is, but I found this a little bit intriguing.
I know you guys are very busy, and thank you again for the work!

Edited October 22, 2021 by Comrade Doge

[WarbossPetross]

I can totally see how this mechanic would work in the A-6 module! One thing left to do is to be able to tell Iceman to fly straight and level to the designated ground target and pickle when appropriate since most of the necessary programming logic seems to be in place already. Speaking of logic, when does Jester start talking the pilot onto target after acquiring it? When I tried the Lantirn test mission yesterday he did talk me onto target and gave the countdown to pickle, but today he's having none of that. Are there some release criteria I'm not meeting?

UPD: nailed it. After you start the mission the A/G Jester page says by default your laser bombs are selected... except they're not. What you need to do is to go to the ordnance menu and select the bombs. You will hear Jester flip some switches in the back, and gee, the pickle queue appears at the right side of Lantirn display and Jester starts calling the shots. The solution might be to modify the A/G scripting procedure to force the selection of default A/G weapons at the stage of preparing the Lantirn when the player presses the A/G master mode button, but if there are multiple A/G weapons on board things might get confusing.

Edited October 22, 2021 by WarbossPetross

[shagrat]

First, thanks for this functionality. Such a great addition. I found two issues.

I can't get the Map Marker to work, it seems. Are there any requirements, like being in range? Still didn't have much time, just tried in two different sessions.

When using the direct head movement, currently once you looked inside the red circle it stays in control mode, even when looking outside the circle again. This makes it impossible to quickly look up, check instruments or whatever, unless you designate the point currently looking at. It would far more flexible to only move the pod while the dot is inside the circle. You could quickly look up or to a console and then back into the circle to resume slewing the pod.

Ah, and I support the request to tell Jester to zoom in/out with the pod in an attempt to identify stuff on the screen or get a better view of the area around the designation.

[Ian Boys UK]

32 minutes ago, shagrat said:

I can't get the Map Marker to work, it seems. Are there any requirements, like being in range? Still didn't have much time, just tried in two different sessions.

 

Yes there seems to be a range requirement for all the options. It does work.

4 hours ago, Comrade Doge said:

Here's the interesting behaviour now. I took off, headed to the AO, switched to AG mode, and surprise surprise, the LANTIRN was not aligned, the process not even started. As I noticed that, Jester immediately started the alignment process, and I orbited patiently 8 minutes over the AO to wait for it to align.

Switch to AG mode at any point and he'll start the warm up. You can switch away a second later but the process will have started.

[Ian Boys UK]

Have done more testing using all available Target Search commands - Jester doesn't see static aircraft at all. 

[bonesvf103]

3 hours ago, Ian Boys UK said:

Have done more testing using all available Target Search commands - Jester doesn't see static aircraft at all. 

He works for me though I can't control his choice.  There was an An-50 but he chose and targetted the Mi-28 parked nearby instead.  But they were both static aircraft.

 

I would like to know if he can be told to target a structure, like a control tower or something.

 

v6,

boNes

[near_blind]

2 hours ago, bonesvf103 said:

I would like to know if he can be told to target a structure, like a control tower or something.

That's the use case for the direct control mode. Trying to query every map object for jester to find would likely be... problematic. 

[shagrat]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb bonesvf103:

I would like to know if he can be told to target a structure, like a control tower or something.

Nope, was a clear statement in the release notes. No map objects, as off now.

What you can do, is "eyeball" the rough location, then slew it with "head control" over the Tower and designate.

Edited October 23, 2021 by shagrat

[AvroLanc]

There needs to be a way of commanding Jester to put LANTIRN back in standby mode and to disarm the Laser. It's not very realistic to be returning to base / landing with the pod unstowed and laser armed. For those of us who notice such things. 

Also, it would be nice to set up a manual lase time. JESTER always lases at 10s TTI, but in some scenarios I'd like a slightly longer lase time. This would also be correct for employing GBU-24, as that LGB needs lasing almost as soon as you drop. (I know DCS doesn't care, but to be role-playing / procedurally correct.......).

Jester Lantirn features breath new life into the Tomcat and HB have done an amazing job.

Edited October 23, 2021 by AvroLanc

[ouky1991]

Cold start, using mk82 in tgt computer mode, then switching to GBU16, man. ord. mode. I find target myself from the RIO seat and designate, when I switch to pilot, JESTER looses track - he gives me a cue to align for about 2 seconds but then it seems the LANTIRN goes to snowplow.

When I start from the air, he stays on the target when I switch back to pilot and I can pickle without any issues. I'm not sure if it's cold start that does this, dropping the mk82s before, or something else entirely.

[Uxi]

Went through the 2 hour IA mission a couple times.  Pretty fun. Especially how circumstances can change.  My first run through I was 2 of 2 right away so got the special mission call.  Next run through missed a couple times...

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Yes it is a lot of fun. I just wish the coordinates for the special mission would stay on screen a while longer, to allow VR users some extra time to enter them in the manual Jester WP entry menu: I was still entering longitudes when the message disappeared...

[Gun Jam]

This is an awesome update. Its a huge improvement over the mod that lets the pilot run the pod it unloads a ton of work.

issues im having.

1) in VR the "head control" red circle is double vision not sure if this is a VR issue with a setting on my end or a HB issue. Ive run the cross eye alignment tool months ago when I got the Hp Reverb G2 and everything has been fine since then. This is the first VR issue ive seen recently.

2) Need a jester hot key(s) for zoom. It would allow for two types of control: (Type 1) rocker sw that is normally centered press forward zoom in press back zoom out and then auto (give control back to jester) (Type 2) Normally open push sw this runs on a loop cycle each time you push zoom 1, zoom 2, zoom 3, auto and it loops back  

 

-Gun

[DSplayer]

Jester spotting stuff is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes he's able to spot tanks and ground vehicles that are very hard to see but other times he can miss an entire moving oil tanker that is directly in the FOV. I would also like Jester to be able to use Point track instead of just Area track.

 

Slight suggestion for the future: Jester LANTIRN A/A Mode. Would like to see it be used to spot aircraft and point track them.

[ShinyMikey]

31 minutes ago, DSplayer said:

Jester spotting stuff is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes he's able to spot tanks and ground vehicles that are very hard to see but other times he can miss an entire moving oil tanker that is directly in the FOV. I would also like Jester to be able to use Point track instead of just Area track.

 

He does do point track. He has gone to point track on moving vehicles for me.

[Paladin1cd]

Shouldn't he be able to do with with the built in camera too?

[Cdodders]

I would like to suggest sub-menus for various target types so you can further prioritise certain targets, Like SAM Radars rather than a 23mm on a truck

[shagrat]

Am 24.10.2021 um 10:04 schrieb DSplayer:

Jester spotting stuff is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes he's able to spot tanks and ground vehicles that are very hard to see but other times he can miss an entire moving oil tanker that is directly in the FOV.

Seeing the same here. Maybe it's possible to put in a "chance" to right away spot a target(s) 100% under the crosshair and reduces when Jester needs to "search", so when he directly looks at a target(s) on the initial LANTIRN screen zoomed in, he has a higher chance to "see" targets without searching.

This would reflect human, also. You point the LANTIRN, look at the screen, zoom in if there's a "blob" and then, if it isn't a target you start searching.

[IronMike]

3 hours ago, Cdodders said:

I would like to suggest sub-menus for various target types so you can further prioritise certain targets, Like SAM Radars rather than a 23mm on a truck

 

This is something we're considering ofc, but currently we're limited through DCS typing units together as how they are detected in the game, for example a AAA or parts of a silkworm etc unit will also be considered a "SAM" by DCS in game, while BTR, MBT, BMP and APC will all be considered "armor", etc... whereas in the mission editor you will find sub-categories that are not present as such once the game is running. We hope to find a solution for this together with ED.

Thank you also everyone for the very kind feedback you provided us with. It is all being taken into account and discussed.

Edited October 25, 2021 by IronMike

[Mule]

This is one of the coolest things I have seen in all the years of flight simulation. It's intuitive, it works and I love it. The lantirn pod on the Tomcat is superb.

[Cdodders]

5 hours ago, IronMike said:

 

This is something we're considering ofc, but currently we're limited through DCS typing units together as how they are detected in the game, for example a AAA or parts of a silkworm etc unit will also be considered a "SAM" by DCS in game, while BTR, MBT, BMP and APC will all be considered "armor", etc... whereas in the mission editor you will find sub-categories that are not present as such once the game is running. We hope to find a solution for this together with ED.

Thank you also everyone for the very kind feedback you provided us with. It is all being taken into account and discussed.

 

Thanks for the reply. Hopefully something can be worked out!