Exterior Lighting

[felixx75]

Hi,
is there an official statement somewhere about whether the exterior lighting of "my" aircraft affects the visibility of the ai?

thx

Edited February 15, 2022 by felixx75

[Bulldog_1]

Good question!

[SlipHavoc]

I'm necroing this thread because I've been curious about this for a while and finally did some testing, and was looking to see if anyone else had done some, so this seems like a good place to post my results.

The short answer is:

Yes, your exterior lights make you visible to the AI, if they can see them!
Brighter lights make you more visible.
Moonlight also makes you visible to the AI.
But flares and gunfire do not make you visible.

I tested with the AH-64D Apache on the Caucasus map, default conditions, mostly against a DShK technical and AK-74 infantry.  I first tried a moonless night (setting the year to 2017 and then just changing the time of day is an easy way to get a moonless night).  If all exterior lights are off, I was able to fly directly over the infantry at head height, and land right next to the technical, without being spotted or fired on at all.  Popping flares and shooting the cannon also didn't cause the AI to see me.  However as soon as I turned on any exterior lights, they were able to spot me and opened fire immediately.

However, it's not just a binary thing...  When the lights are on "dim", they would shoot at me at around 500 m, but couldn't see me at around 900 m.  With the lights on "bright", they were able to shoot at me at 900 m.  I didn't exhaustively test every range because it's a pain to do, but the important lesson is that the brightness of the lights does matter.

Also, the Apache's formation lights are not visible from the forward hemisphere.  If the formation lights are on and you're facing the enemy, they can't see you, but as soon as you turn around and they see the lights, they start shooting.

Then, I tried a full moon (leave the year on 2016 and change the time of day to get a full moon).  With all exterior lights off, they started shooting at around 900 m, but couldn't see me beyond that.  Turning on "dim" exterior lights didn't make a difference in that case.  However with "bright" exterior lights they were able to shoot from at least 1.1 km.

I also tried adding an overcast (Overcast 5 is a very dense 3-layer overcast), but kept the full moon.  Although it was visibly darker with the overcast layer, the AI was still able to spot me at the same distances as without the overcast.  So I guess that's part of the current AI-ignores-clouds issue that's been a thing since the new cloud graphics were added.

Finally, just to confirm, I had been doing all this testing with the default dark green US Army livery for the Apache, so I tried once with the very light gray desert livery, and the AI saw me at the same range as before, so it doesn't look like the livery you pick makes a difference to the AI, at least under these conditions.

This was all pretty surprising to me somehow; I hadn't expected that the exterior lighting made such a difference, although realistically it certainly should.  I'll definitely have "Exterior lights: OFF" in my fence check from now on...

 

Some ideas to try in future experiments:

Do enemy units with night vision capability spot you from farther away?  If so, does type of night vision (thermal vs image intensifier) make a difference?

Can enemy units with heat seeking weapons (e.g. MANPADs) spot you?  (They shouldn't be able to, since AFAIK the seeker cone on most MANPADs is very small and they have to be aimed visually to get their initial lockon, and their coolant is limited so they can't reasonably be used to scan for a target anyway, but would be good to make sure.)

Is spotting affected by your physical size?  Like, a Gazelle should be much harder to see than a Hip or Hind.  Also, does aspect matter (e.g. you should be easier to see if you're turned sideways vs head on)?

Does exact time of day matter?  Or is spotting just based on a binary day/night flag?

Does moon phase matter?  Or the height above the horizon?  What if the moon is behind a hill and you're in its shadow?

I tested the Apache's gun and countermeasures flares, but do any other weapons make you visible?  What about the colored signal flares that the Hip and Hind can shoot off?

Does interior cockpit lighting make you visible?  The Hip in particular has some bright white interior lights that theoretically should make it a lot easier to see from the outside.

[Crash *]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb SlipHavoc:

Does moon phase matter?  Or the height above the horizon?  What if the moon is behind a hill and you're in its shadow?

Thank you for your efforts.

This is very informative.

I can confirm the part about the phases of the moon. It is crucial how high the moon is in the sky. In one mission, I let the moon rise straight up and the enemies ignored me. Later, I moved the time forward and was shot at directly. The reason was that the moon was now high in the sky.

[jackd]

In need of a full moon for your nightly mission: https://www.fullmoon.info/en/fullmoon-calendar_1900-2050.html

[twistking]

9 hours ago, jackd said:

In need of a full moon for your nightly mission: https://www.fullmoon.info/en/fullmoon-calendar_1900-2050.html

moon cycle visualization is already built into the editor. there is a drop down menu where you select the mission date/time...

[SlipHavoc]

1 hour ago, twistking said:

moon cycle visualization is already built into the editor. there is a drop down menu where you select the mission date/time...

Yes, but if you're looking for a specific moon phase it's a lot easier to just pick a date from a list rather than have to go through one date at a time in the ME and see which one has the moon phase you want.  It's great having the visualizer built into the editor, but it's also great to have a list of dates that have a full moon.

[twistking]

9 minutes ago, SlipHavoc said:

Yes, but if you're looking for a specific moon phase it's a lot easier to just pick a date from a list rather than have to go through one date at a time in the ME and see which one has the moon phase you want.  It's great having the visualizer built into the editor, but it's also great to have a list of dates that have a full moon.

fair enough