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AIM-120s + All AIM-120 API Missiles in 2.7.7


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31 minutes ago, falcon_120 said:

Where are your tracks guys?
You don't get things fixed just complaining!

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Literally the next topic.

 

 

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To be fair it was absurdly easy to notch before this patch. It does seem like its even easier now, and at the very least it has not been improved.

Which is what many of us were expecting from this patch, that the ability to notch would be significantly reduced, and it clearly has not been.

The only things I have noticed in testing are the following:

-Notching is the same as before, if not somewhat worse. All you have to do is turn mildly into the beam  and under virtually all conditions the missile will fail to guide.

-There does now seem to be some ability to reacquire after being notched that was not there before, but it almost never happens.

-INS works

-Datalink might work? Its hard to tell but sometimes it seems like I can get missiles to track beaming targets if I maintain radar lock until missile impact. But I have had inconsistent results.

-There is now a problem where missiles miss non-beaming targets for no apparent reason. No chaff, no notch, and missile has plenty of energy.


Edited by KenobiOrder
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12 hours ago, Chizh said:

I don't see any decrease in efficiency. The missiles miss and hit the same way as before.

Whether or not the missiles are more or less efficient in this patch than in last is not the point we (at least myself) are trying to make here. The point is, there is an underlying problem that has plagued these missiles for quite some time and it has not yet been properly addressed. Many updates ago, (and I cannot remember which one exactly), notching radar guided missiles became extremely easy to do. Now some patches may have improved upon this slightly since then but overall, the problem persisted and continues to persist. The fact of the matter is, when you see behavior like in the tracks I provided below, the BVR/ radar guided missile experience is completely ruined. It is my crazy suspicion that it is ED's goal to always force players into dogfighting scenarios, or to save ground pounders who would not know a Sidewinder from a Phoenix from hot shot BVR aces, by nerfing as many BVR tools as possible such as the radar (i.e. the current look down problem on hot, fighter sized targets currently plaguing the Viper and Hornets radar) and the missiles (whether it be their kinematic abilities or CCM abilities). Now with all of this said, returning back to the topic at hand, notching and distracting radar guided missiles with countermeasures should not be impossible. However, from what I understand and have heard from people on these forums who are much more knowledgeable in this subject area than I am, making modern missiles like an AMRAAM, R-77, or SD-10 go haywire from notching and countermeasures, should be very hard to do (certainly much harder than it is now). As @Hotel Tango put it in another post, "Notching one missile should be a fluke, not a rule...". Well right now, it is pretty much guaranteed if you just turn 90 degrees away from any incoming radar guided missile and hit the brakes a little, it will miss. I think these tracks will highlight just how bad things are. The third one is actually quite hilarious. 

NOTCH 1.trk NOTCH 2.trk NOTCH 3.trk

53 minutes ago, falcon_120 said:

Where are your tracks guys?
You don't get things fixed just complaining!

Enviado desde mi ELE-L29 mediante Tapatalk
 

Right here!


Edited by DCS FIGHTER PILOT
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Here's a track file of me just turning around and the missile doesn't even attempt to keep tracking me in both the OB and the Stable along with respective Tacviews.

120Trashed.trk 

120TrashedbutStable.trk 120Trashed.acmi 120TrashedbutStabe.acmi


Edited by DSplayer
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Honestly, this is one of the main reasons of why I lost interest and quit DCS for over 6 months now. Being that I love flying, and I've spent over 2k in modules and equipment, the constant changes in BVR (for the worse) and the continuous game breaking bugs in the Hornets A/A radar, doesn't make me feel like flying anymore. For me, my favorite things to do was BVR and SEAD/DEAD. I could live with having to support the 120 until pitbull, but when the changes to the chaff success rate and notching were made, BVR was over. Notching shouldn't be a "thing", especially on modern weapons. As other people have said before me, "notching should be a fluke, not the rule". A/A missiles are meant to be defeated kinematically, not by turning your jet 90degrees from the missile (regardless of the range or altitude).

When I started doing BVR the best pilot always survived the BVR fight. People had to respect the MAR. People had to figure out the best way to defeat a missile kinematically and reengage as soon as possible. People had to have good SA to not be flanked. People with the highest altitude had the upper hand in the BVR fight, now it's the opposite. After the changes on chaff and notching were made, after watching countless tacviews of multiplayer matches, I rarely saw people going cold. I saw too many 2.5 Mach 120s missing on even hot bandits. People not caring about merging with flaking jets and just reacting with a notch to an incoming 8mile 120 shot and surviving easily. I can't even remember how many times I've shot 3 mile FOX3s only for them to miss with plenty of energy, 2+ mach. 

Basically, there is no BVR anymore. And I don't even know how things are since April, but from what I see people talking about everywhere, it's way worse than what I experienced. The very forgiving nature of the current Air Combat meta, doesn't help/force people to improve and be more tactical. I'm not sure if this is a "balancing" decision for ED (which to me it looks like that), but this casual approach on BVR doesn't make DCS feel like a sim at all.


Edited by LaFleur
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I haven't used DCS for BVR in years. Missiles have always been terrible and whatever "improvement" they make seems to make them even worse (the 120 especially). 

I use DCS for guns-only dogfights and A-G. as an A-A BVR sim, it's non-existent. 

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16 hours ago, SchumiF399 said:

This, I feel the same way. I had an aim-120c miss a nose hot F15 yesterday at 4nm. I’ve been flying with a full sidewinder load out cause these AMRAAMS are so bad now. 

Pretty much same. Especially in deck, there's no more "Stern WEZ" and "Minimum Abort Range" for both variant of 120 and SD-10 in current version of DCS. Also 120's CCM capability is much lower and feels like notch window is now at least ±30° from complete notch. Not even capable for BVR to WVR..

Even more, new seeker code induces some oscillation in long range launch. I think this oscillation can be cured by introducing "Husky then Pitbull" feature, but I can't hope so much that ED is going to do it……

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Supposedly, HPRF (Husky) is coming, that said I don't think that will fix any of the issues mentioned in the thread, it will essentially just be a lower quality, longer range active state. Notching/Look-Down/Chaff Resistance/Lack of Proxy Fuse/etc. will still be an issue. If they improve those things though, I think the AIM-120 will be in a good place.

Narrow the gap where you can be in the notch. I imagine it should be quite small, you need to be in a perfect 90 degrees position, the real F18 pilot I know has mentioned how in debriefs if someone executed a notch defense they will check your angle from the bandit because you need to be very very close to 90 degrees to have any effect.

Chaff should not be a primary defense at all and its effectiveness should be reduced, it's a supplement for when you bust your timeline/the MAR to help you a bit, but should not be your #1 option ever.

Lately, I've seen 120's missing their target by very small amounts (100 feet) quite often, proxy fuse should be improved. It seems to me like it's not even working at all.

Fingers crossed!!! I really hope there isn't a behind-the-scenes plan to unrealistically force WVR fights for "fun", people come to DCS for the simulation, if they wanted forced WVR they'd go to other games.

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3 hours ago, Frostie said:

I hope ED haven't included RCS values into notch calculations as that would be absurd.

Not absurd actually (and, AFAIK, they already have modeled it 😄). The notch filter, and how small it is is directly correlated to SNR; radars can track targets even "through" the notch if the SNR remains high enough, and RCS will has a significant effect on SNR.

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Please forgive me if I am missing something obvious, as I can't view tracks at the moment, but no one here actually provided "expected behavior" to "current behavior" comparison like: "What is AMRAAM doing as opposed to what it should be doing?".

A lot of people just started saying "ah it's not like it used to be". Could you please provide some info/theory that backs up the claims? I am not saying they are wrong per se, just that there are no facts being put here, a part that "it ain't what it used to be."

Someone here mentioned that turning cold breaks the lock, well the same happens on a much larger and more powerful radar system found on the airplane, so I guess that shouldn't be an issue.


Edited by Cmptohocah
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Cmptohocah=CMPTOHOCAH 😉

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2 hours ago, BlackPixxel said:

Ah yes, Aim-120 should ignore chaff and ground clutter because I think so. It is from the US after all!!

As always, the answer is it depends. Modern radars and missiles do ignore chaff and ground clutter to some degree and the techniques employed have been described above to some degree. (Chaff is implemented inaccurately anyway so it doesn't even matter in this discussion). The main purpose of implementing a proper simulation of SNR is to get rid of the extremely simplistic and static notch margin and behaviour and make it dependent on factors that would influence it, such as RCS, ground clutter, PRF and the different filtering and proccessing employed by the seeker. Look down performance against a notching Mig-21 in a mountainous area should be very different than the same against an Su-27 flying above water. If SNR indeed got implemented all these factors should influence the effectiveness of the notch.

 

 

52 minutes ago, Cmptohocah said:

Could you please provide some info/theory that backs up the claims?

Do you honestly believe that an Aim-120 would be defeated that easily in the real world? Even if we discount the highly unrealistic RWRs in DCS that make notching a lot more reliable than in real life, do you think that without any regard for the circumstances, flying a bit below the missile or turning cold at extremely close ranges would beat it? If modern missiles were that useless would it make sense to treat them as the primary weapon for achieving air supremacy? Real life TTPs base the timeline and the entire approach to BVR combat around defeating missiles kinematically. If a skilled pilot would be virtually immune to Fox 3s, why wouldn't real pilots do the same thing as in DCS, namely notch, close in and try to win a WVR fight? 

 

Then of course there are anecdotal statements, which are just that; anecdotes. If you read Tailhook's comments on reddit you may see him talking about how better real life missiles are than any game depicts them. You can see Klarsnow and other Strike Eagle WSOs make off handed comments on Discords about how notching an AMRAAM with its MPRF seeker active is virtually impossible and even if you do notch it somehow, you can't notch the radar and the missile at the same time and even in that situation it can get datalinked close enough to a proximity hit.

 

 

Ultimately a lot of things are implemented inaccurately in DCS that makes the problem worse:

 

-Radars are highly simplified (no real PRF simulation, static notch threshold, RCS being static, etc.)

-RWRs are much more reliable

-Notching is way too effective

-There are a lot of weird bugs in the netcode and the missile autopilot logic itself (competitive PVPers can abuse that unless its specifically banned, like the high AoA 'abuse')

 

If you consider this and add in the inherent qualities of it being a video game (as a game you can test actual performance a lot easier than it would be possible in real life, you can have essentially a perfect understanding of your own capabilities and the capabilities of your opponent, you don't fear death, scenarios are inherently unrealistic for the most part, you have an high amount of incompetent or beginner players who don't know what they're doing and are essentially target drones online etc.) you'll see why tactics that work in DCS in a competitive setting are absolutely and completely different than real life TTPs. It's a well known thing that in DCS Fox 3s stop being an actual threat and become a nuisance at the highest levels of play, which incentivizes "fun" dogfights. Since Nick Grey talked about how much he appreciates the "gladiatorial" nature of close combat and him being a WW2 afficionado and how big and vocal the anti BVR playerbase is, it'd make sense for ED to purposefully gimp missiles to cater to these huge audiences. People who take air to ari combat simming seriously play something else anyway.

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1 hour ago, Cmptohocah said:

Please forgive me if I am missing something obvious, as I can't view tracks at the moment, but no one here actually provided "expected behavior" to "current behavior" comparison like: "What is AMRAAM doing as opposed to what it should be doing?".

A lot of people just started saying "ah it's not like it used to be". Could you please provide some info/theory that backs up the claims? I am not saying they are wrong per se, just that there are no facts being put here, a part that "it ain't what it used to be."

Someone here mentioned that turning cold breaks the lock, well the same happens on a much larger and more powerful radar system found on the airplane, so I guess that shouldn't be an issue.

 

I'm not sure this picture can help you but only thing I can send now is this.

This one is a screen cap of tacview, taken in one of the famous Open PvP server you may know.

This was a launch from Over M1.1 within 8nm. As you can see from picture 1, the targeted F-14B is not in high energy state and not going for notch. Missile's sightline and Missile's flight pass is both far from 90° on F-14B's flight pass.

But in picture 2, Missile for some reason lost track. and going into ground. It isn't defeated kinetically(Missile is over M2.0 and target was around M0.8-0.9, and target is not being cold from incoming Missile), nor dragged into chaff, nor falling down to the notch filter, targeted F-14B didn't even do a evasive turn. There is no possible reason to justify this Missile went away from the target.

This is one of the case many of these people see, and the reason that being said "Current 120's and SD-10 has some issue".

Tacview Starter 2021_10_27 19_29_20.png

Tacview Starter 2021_10_27 19_35_25 (2).png

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53 minutes ago, WobblyFlops said:

As always, the answer is it depends. Modern radars and missiles do ignore chaff and ground clutter to some degree and the techniques employed have been described above to some degree. (Chaff is implemented inaccurately anyway so it doesn't even matter in this discussion). The main purpose of implementing a proper simulation of SNR is to get rid of the extremely simplistic and static notch margin and behaviour and make it dependent on factors that would influence it, such as RCS, ground clutter, PRF and the different filtering and proccessing employed by the seeker. Look down performance against a notching Mig-21 in a mountainous area should be very different than the same against an Su-27 flying above water. If SNR indeed got implemented all these factors should influence the effectiveness of the notch.

 

 

Do you honestly believe that an Aim-120 would be defeated that easily in the real world? Even if we discount the highly unrealistic RWRs in DCS that make notching a lot more reliable than in real life, do you think that without any regard for the circumstances, flying a bit below the missile or turning cold at extremely close ranges would beat it? If modern missiles were that useless would it make sense to treat them as the primary weapon for achieving air supremacy? Real life TTPs base the timeline and the entire approach to BVR combat around defeating missiles kinematically. If a skilled pilot would be virtually immune to Fox 3s, why wouldn't real pilots do the same thing as in DCS, namely notch, close in and try to win a WVR fight? 

 

Then of course there are anecdotal statements, which are just that; anecdotes. If you read Tailhook's comments on reddit you may see him talking about how better real life missiles are than any game depicts them. You can see Klarsnow and other Strike Eagle WSOs make off handed comments on Discords about how notching an AMRAAM with its MPRF seeker active is virtually impossible and even if you do notch it somehow, you can't notch the radar and the missile at the same time and even in that situation it can get datalinked close enough to a proximity hit.

 

 

Ultimately a lot of things are implemented inaccurately in DCS that makes the problem worse:

 

-Radars are highly simplified (no real PRF simulation, static notch threshold, RCS being static, etc.)

-RWRs are much more reliable

-Notching is way too effective

-There are a lot of weird bugs in the netcode and the missile autopilot logic itself (competitive PVPers can abuse that unless its specifically banned, like the high AoA 'abuse')

 

If you consider this and add in the inherent qualities of it being a video game (as a game you can test actual performance a lot easier than it would be possible in real life, you can have essentially a perfect understanding of your own capabilities and the capabilities of your opponent, you don't fear death, scenarios are inherently unrealistic for the most part, you have an high amount of incompetent or beginner players who don't know what they're doing and are essentially target drones online etc.) you'll see why tactics that work in DCS in a competitive setting are absolutely and completely different than real life TTPs. It's a well known thing that in DCS Fox 3s stop being an actual threat and become a nuisance at the highest levels of play, which incentivizes "fun" dogfights. Since Nick Grey talked about how much he appreciates the "gladiatorial" nature of close combat and him being a WW2 afficionado and how big and vocal the anti BVR playerbase is, it'd make sense for ED to purposefully gimp missiles to cater to these huge audiences. People who take air to ari combat simming seriously play something else anyway.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. All I will say is that I come from a family of fighter pilots. One of them retired very recently from flying. While telling him about DCS World I was asking him about BVR tactics etc, which he refused to answer, I told him about notching and he laughed. He told me "No one will even think to try to notch an AMRAAM". He also told me that Kinematics, Jamming, and Towed Decoys are the only reliable countermeasures you have. Nothing more. So yeah, ED has many sources that go into detail about stuff like this. That's why my personal belief is that it is a balancing decision, not a "where is the proof" one.


Edited by LaFleur
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Some great and to the point input in here. 👍 Hopefully ED will figure this out sooner than later - the new API has been in the works for how long now? I really think there has to be a complete radar and chaff rework for this to ever work somewhat properly. In my opinion the original amraam from 2.5 was much better and way more reliable than it is now. And again, the SNR based "low level aiming error" should for one not be random and not nearly as pronounced, let alone the comically small notch gate and lack of any PRF modeling. 

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3 hours ago, B503 said:

I'm not sure this picture can help you but only thing I can send now is this.

This one is a screen cap of tacview, taken in one of the famous Open PvP server you may know.

This was a launch from Over M1.1 within 8nm. As you can see from picture 1, the targeted F-14B is not in high energy state and not going for notch. Missile's sightline and Missile's flight pass is both far from 90° on F-14B's flight pass.

But in picture 2, Missile for some reason lost track. and going into ground. It isn't defeated kinetically(Missile is over M2.0 and target was around M0.8-0.9, and target is not being cold from incoming Missile), nor dragged into chaff, nor falling down to the notch filter, targeted F-14B didn't even do a evasive turn. There is no possible reason to justify this Missile went away from the target.

This is one of the case many of these people see, and the reason that being said "Current 120's and SD-10 has some issue".

Tacview Starter 2021_10_27 19_29_20.png

Tacview Starter 2021_10_27 19_35_25 (2).png

Thanks a lot for the screenshots. Are you able to replicate this issue in Single player also?
I've once had 4xR-73 and 1xR-27T miss in multiplayer from 6-12km distance, so I'm wondering if it's something to do with MP.
Yeah that one should def. have tracked the target.

Cmptohocah=CMPTOHOCAH 😉

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It's a really shame that advertised improvement just turned out worse with 30 minutes of tests.

INS + Datalink is definitely improvement but if ED really implemented velocity gate and Kalman filters for AMRAAM's seeker, how can AMRAAM jump from moving target to just floating chaffs? It does not make any sense for me. 

To begin with, it's ok that ARH's seeker having difficulty to track beaming target due to zero doppler shift. However then why ARH be able to find chaffs with zero doppler shift?   


Edited by opps
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Its F-16/F-18 RWR that is way to good with the pression it has, If-16/F-18 did not have so precis RWR where they put the AIM-120  in perfect 90 degree notch every time, you would see AIM-120 work as good as it is working on FLANKER. 


Edited by Teknetinium

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1 hour ago, opps said:

It's a really shame that advertised improvement just turned out worse with 30 minutes of tests.

INS + Datalink is definitely improvement but if ED really implemented velocity gate and Kalman filters for AMRAAM's seeker, how can AMRAAM jump from moving target to just floating chaffs? It does not make any sense for me. 

To begin with, it's ok that ARH's seeker having difficulty to track beaming target due to zero doppler shift. However then why ARH be able to find chaffs with zero doppler shift?   

 

Yeah this is an issue that has been present since I started playing back in 2013 think of chaff as long burning flares but for radar missiles.  Also its worse than just that, radars are able to essentially ignore returns outside of what's called their resolution cell so it jumping like 4° to the left onto a stationary chaff bundle is even more absurd.  Especially if its outside the seekers FOV...

9 hours ago, BlackPixxel said:

Ah yes, Aim-120 should ignore chaff and ground clutter because I think so. It is from the US after all!!

Yes yes it should, but its because the systems used on the amraam render chaff pointless.  Chaff is a 1940's countermeasure to radars so there has been quite some time for countermeasures to be developed.  If chaff is so good why is everyone flying towed decoys now and very modern jets like the F22/F35 carry very few traditional CM's.  And btw this applies to the more modern Russian missiles too both the adder and alamo are too sensitive to chaff.  While defiantly not as good as the amraam-C it should still be well below a 1% chance against these missiles not what it is now.  The amraam just has all of the things with regards to defeating chaff.

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