implemented George freely search for targets?

[Raptor9]

1 hour ago, Gunslinger52 said:

If you guys have run out of time to start on this, just say so.  To keep throwing 'Early Access' at us consistently, wears thin after a few years of having paid full price for a product.  

This thread has been tagged as "in development" for quite some time now.

Everyone knows that Early Access means a product is still in development, and everyone has their own wishes and priorities for what features they wish to see completed over others. It is unfortunate that features have not been developed in the order you personally prefer, but that is the nature of Early Access, and Early Access is completely voluntary and optional.

Further, if you have already purchased the DCS AH-64D, you have not in fact paid full price for the module, but a discounted Early Access price.

48 minutes ago, Tom P said:

They just need to give us a solid roadmap for all their projects. It's that simple. 

There has been an AH-64D roadmap for quite some time, it is pinned near the top of the main AH-64D section.

Sure, it would be nice to share more play-by-play details about what is being worked on or what is planned, but we've clearly seen in the past, and present, that providing more details in the roadmap have been met with more community complaints. If providing such detail in the roadmap receives negative feedback, there really isn't a good reason to continue such practices.

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

This thread has been tagged as "in development" for quite some time now.

Everyone knows that Early Access means a product is still in development, and everyone has their own wishes and priorities for what features they wish to see completed over others. It is unfortunate that features have not been developed in the order you personally prefer, but that is the nature of Early Access, and Early Access is completely voluntary and optional.

Further, if you have already purchased the DCS AH-64D, you have not in fact paid full price for the module, but a discounted Early Access price.

There has been an AH-64D roadmap for quite some time, it is pinned near the top of the main AH-64D section.

Sure, it would be nice to share more play-by-play details about what is being worked on or what is planned, but we've clearly seen in the past, and present, that providing more details in the roadmap have been met with more community complaints. If providing such detail in the roadmap receives negative feedback, there really isn't a good reason to continue such practices.

Thanks Raptor9.

Fair point about the discounted price, taken.

No more negative comments from me.  Like you imply; What's the point in providing a forum for feedback, if people are going to include negative feedback as well?  

'52

[Raptor9]

20 minutes ago, Gunslinger52 said:

Like you imply; What's the point in providing a forum for feedback, if people are going to include negative feedback as well?  

I believe you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. Gathering feedback from the community is important since it not only helps improve DCS itself, but it shapes how we present DCS as a whole. I was not stating that the presence of feedback was to be avoided entirely at the risk of some of it being negative. Rather, what I was pointing out was that if a method or depth of communication has not been received favorably by the community in the past, it should not be surprising if we do not do so in the future.

We welcome feedback since, again, that is how we shape the product to suit the community. We may not be as revealing regarding our day-to-day internal developments, but I think we do make considerable effort through our community managers and other staff to engage with the community. But ED is a small company, with a large customer base across many languages and social media channels, with a fairly broad set of products to which any number could be the topic of community feedback.

You are certainly free to express your thoughts (within the confines of the forum rules of course), but I disagree with the premise of some of the statements that were made last night, which is why I replied to them in the manner I did.

[Rogue Trooper]

To be honest, George is pretty awesome as he is.

To have him automatically searching for targets is simply problematic as he will find everything..... Instantly.

I would rather his AMAZING ability to find targets restricted by my ability to guide him.

[Tom P]

Agreed George is my homie but I would rather have him do his own search like how jester gives you situation updates. Instead of us spamming areas for him to search.

We shouldn't be in the backseat more focused on commanding him where to search. But instead it should be him giving us a situation of "hey I got something off our left" and we point the aircraft so he can get sensors/weapons in that direction. 

Give him a sector to search, for example left 10-12 while we focus on the right 12-3 and if we see something in our search area we command him to look for what we see. It's a team effort and we're doing 95% of the team work.

But yeah George is still my homie online.

[Floyd1212]

2 hours ago, Rogue Trooper said:

To have him automatically searching for targets is simply problematic as he will find everything..... Instantly.

Yeah, before George gets the ability to constantly be searching for targets on his own, they need to fix his miraculous eyesight.  No more ability to lock-up a vehicle that is totally obscured by trees, buildings, or even hills.  And if his head is down in the TEDAC targeting a group off in the distance, he can't also be telling you about a group that is sneaking up on you from your 9 o'clock.

[Rogue Trooper]

3 hours ago, Tom P said:

Agreed George is my homie but I would rather have him do his own search like how jester gives you situation updates. Instead of us spamming areas for him to search.

We shouldn't be in the backseat more focused on commanding him where to search. But instead it should be him giving us a situation of "hey I got something off our left" and we point the aircraft so he can get sensors/weapons in that direction. 

Give him a sector to search, for example left 10-12 while we focus on the right 12-3 and if we see something in our search area we command him to look for what we see. It's a team effort and we're doing 95% of the team work.

But yeah George is still my homie online.

It will not work... he is awesome at spotting targets (I love him, I love George dearly). An auto search George is just a "I win no matter what" scenario. It just would make the Apache even more awesome machine than it already is.

Realistic spotting first then auto scan for targets.

I talk to George Tom P, I look at something and say "my Loss" and he slaves TADS to my LOS and scans the area, if he finds something we kill it!

I love George Tom P, I believe I have the wrong love for George.

This discussion will go long into the future and will not change.

The fact that in multiplayer he can be disabled.... now there is injustice! ... can Jester be disabled in the F14?

Edited December 1, 2024 by Raptor9
Rule 1.1 - Removed profanity.

[Raptor9]

Some of the claims being made in this thread are categorically not true. George cannot see through buildings or hills, neither in singleplayer nor multiplayer. I've never seen a single instance of this, up to and including the past several days playing on Gray Flag for many hours. If you have seen something resembling this behavior, provide a track file like any bug report. Having said that, like a human crewmember, George can see partially obscured vehicles; and he is capable of being aware of a target that has exited his TADS slew range (like if the Pilot turned outbound momentarily). Again, just like a human crewmember.

As for trees, George may give the appearance of seeing through trees, but as someone that spent the better part of the past two days playing online with him, this can lead to mixed results where his line-of-sight is intermittently broken and reacquired. The trees and thicker branches (the portions that also block the FCR or cause your helicopter to take damage on impact), will obscure portions of the target while other portions may still be visible, especially if behind a thin tree-line. Again, not outside the realm of possibilities of a human crewmember, especially with thermal sensors.

Let me clarify one thing that many people seem to be overlooking. George does not have instant detection and identification capabilities if he is set to a Realistic setting. DCS provides many settings that scale the realism within the game to suit personal preferences. Realistic G effects as an example, or the presence of labels (which quite unrealistically allows players to detect and/or identify all DCS units instantly as well). There are also settings that affect how realistic George behaves in this regard. So, if you want George to be as unrealistic and infallible as player labels or spotting dots, or as realistic as possible, set his options accordingly as described below in the Early Access Guide.

If a player does not want to use George at all, he can also be disabled entirely. If a player thinks one type of AI CPG search method is unrealistic over another, then no one is forcing them to use that type of search. It seems that the complaints being stated in this thread is that George's ability to detect and acquire targets is simultaneously too realistic and not realistic enough. All this hand-wringing over this feature request is rather amusing, since a lot of it is based on false premises, and the rest can be solved by selecting the appropriate game settings to suit a player's preferred gameplay.

[Floyd1212]

49 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

Some of the claims being made in this thread are categorically not true. George cannot see through buildings or hills, neither in singleplayer nor multiplayer. I've never seen a single instance of this, up to and including the past several days playing on Gray Flag for many hours. If you have seen something resembling this behavior, provide a track file like any bug report. Having said that, like a human crewmember, George can see partially obscured vehicles; and he is capable of being aware of a target that has exited his TADS slew range (like if the Pilot turned outbound momentarily). Again, just like a human crewmember.

I'll be sure to grab some screenshots, and possibly tracks the next time I see this happen, though the tracks may not be very useful during a long MP session.

In the instance of "seeing through a hill" that happened to me just the other day, there may have been one pixel of a vehicle above the hill, with 99% of the vehicle obscured.  And I feel like maybe some buildings but not others can be spotted through.  Again, I will get some evidence of this happening the next time I see it.

As for seeing through the trees, this happens quite a lot.  To my eye, the vehicle is completely concealed by the trees, and I am sitting in a hover.  George not only knows the vehicle is there, but will IAT lock it without having any aspect of the vehicle to work with, via TV or FLIR.  I tell him to launch the missile and it comes in from above and shacks the vehicle perfectly, which means not only can he see the vehicle, but the laser penetrates right through the tree.  The only thing you see after that is a plume of smoke rising up beyond the treeline.

I understand the complexities of properly occluding George's LOS based on the tree foliage, and not just the trunks, but this has always been the way it works in DCS, and is one of the more immersion-breaking aspects of using George.  Sometimes I Store the location of the units to come back and attack them from a different angle, but more often than not, I just take them out from behind their tree cover and move on.

[Floyd1212]

@Raptor9 I was able to capture some screenshots of all 3 situations mentioned above.  You want them in here, or start a new thread?

[Raptor9]

9 hours ago, Floyd1212 said:

@Raptor9 I was able to capture some screenshots of all 3 situations mentioned above.  You want them in here, or start a new thread?

As this is a wishlist thread, post bug reports in the bug report section.

On that note, as there is no longer any point in continuing a wishlist thread about a feature that is already in development for implementation, I'll close this thread to prevent confusion.