investigating George cannot hit moving targets with the hellfire.

[Ghostlydoggo]

I've found that George has a very hard time hitting moving targets. My friends and I normally fly on the rotorheads server and most of the targets are moving. So when I have to use George to take over as cpg he has a rough go at actually hitting anything with the AGM. We had a tank moving straight towards us and he missed three times before scoring a glancing hit. The missile always seemed to hit just behind the target. This isn't the first time I've had this happen if you have a target moving left to right he will hit high and to the left of the target by a fair margin. 

[Tepnox]

George AI generally has a hard time tracking targets. It looks like, he is not using the ground stabiliziation feature for now. When I play as CPG and use the ground stabiliziation even very rapid movements with the helicopter are possible and I don't lose lock on the target.

Let's hope, this gets improved. For now, I would assume George AI is WIP and gets fine tuned.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

if you are having issues please attach as short as possible track replay examples so we can take a look.

thank you

[REPTAR]

My friends and I have also observed this during some preliminary testing, however it does seem to be isolated to dedicated MP servers. I'll see if we can provide some track file examples later today. It appears as though the Hellfires land either short or long of a moving target in dedicated servers regardless of human CPG or George AI.

[Eroxz564]

Yes this is a real problem tbh

[NeMoGas]

Yeah he has real issues. Even a human CPG has issues. George will be dead on when viewed through the TADS in the back seat but the missile will often land long. Same goes for a human CPG. Trying to nail this down with a human CPG and it is just super random. Sometimes you miss 4 or 5 missiles in a row when the TADS was dead on. Sometimes you shoot 4 or 5 in a row and they all hit.

Generally in single player the hits seem pretty consistent. Once in multiplayer it becomes pretty unreliable. 

Even static targets fired at from a hover exhibit this behavior of missiles missing in multiplayer.

Providing a track for this is also somewhat hard to do as by the time you start the aircraft, fly to the AO, and avoid being shot down long enough to shoot 5 or 6 Hellfires you have a track that is 200Mb and 45 minutes long.

[Nealius]

Does he hit in the general area? The one time I tried my missiles went off into space and landed 20km in the distance. I couldn't tell if it was George not tracking the moving target, or if me changing the laser channel to B (to deconflict with AI) caused it.

[NeMoGas]

They generally hit like 50m long if the target is moving toward you. You can tell the missile is trying but right at the end it just can't quite make it. These shots are within 8k and constraints with a large solid box indicating the missile sees the laser. If you are shooting a target traveling 90 degrees left or right of you then they tend to fall behind the target.

I have seen this on the default code, other preset codes like bravo or november, and even custom entered frequencies.

Edited April 3, 2022 by NeMoGas

[REPTAR]

Clip from our MP test session. This was conducted on a dedicated server where @NeMoGashad about a 90ms ping as the pilot. We have high hit probability when not using a dedicated server setup and just playing from the host (as well, you can see the heads moving in the cockpit, not sure if that is related somehow? Seems to have a better sync state)

https://streamable.com/d7jlrv

Edited April 3, 2022 by REPTAR

[NeMoGas]

We have tracks from this also but several of them show the helicopter crashing into the ground. Then even though the hulk is facing about 180 degrees away from the convoy broken into pieces you still see it shooting and somehow magically killing the BTRs lol. It's pretty hilarious actually. Total time of the 2 tracks is probably sub 20 minutes each. Not sure how to get a track that actually works? Only thing in this mission is 1 Apache and 10 BTR80's.

We have a server side track that seems to work but you can't get a cockpit view. 

Edited April 3, 2022 by NeMoGas

[Mr_Blastman]

For me George currently has a ~30% hit rate with hellfires when I am flying online.  I get depressed every time he misses, especially against a human who manages to jump into a BMP when the shot must count...

This is both versus stationary and moving targets.  He can't seem to hold the crosshairs on target and even when does--and I'm perfectly smooth, he still misses and most of these misses sail over the target and hit behind.

[NeMoGas]

Yeah he will miss stationary targets even when you are in a very stable hover and the target is nicely lined up in the TADS.

[REPTAR]

server-20220402-180138.trk

Server side track for those interested and subsequently where the CPG video clip above was captured from. We observed some interesting flight behavior from the missiles on their way to targets, as well the server seemed to display desync of where the missile impacted vs the hit/kill event on the target in some cases. Hopefully this will shed some light here.

Oddly this only seems to be happening in a dedicated server environment, and is exacerbated on large multiplayer servers with a lot of clients such as Rotorheads, DDCS, etc.

[Sandman1330]

He's absolutely terrible at hitting moving targets... Like others have said, very difficult to post a track as it's prevalent on multiplayer servers, but the hellfire always hits behind the target. I have seen it on single player in the CPG seat with stationary targets too, sometimes it seems as if the laser is passing through the target (not sure, maybe this is unrelated?)

Here's one that should be fairly short to sit through (~10 mins probably to get to the point)

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ascm8Kmu7NR0hIA27M1bvx_bYjw43A?e=7GPPgg

edit: what I’m seeing may be related to this…

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/297462-george-doesnt-aim-correctly/

Edited April 6, 2022 by Sandman1330

[KoN]

Agree with all the above online play has a few problems .

Hellfires miss moving targets .

Edited April 7, 2022 by KoN

[BIGNEWY]

Possibly lag related, I will ask the MP team to check also. 

My single player tests with different speeds of the target all seemed good, hits every time as long as the target was not masked by trees or building. Tested 0, 40, and 100 with the speed of the vehicle. 

[REPTAR]

6 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Possibly lag related, I will ask the MP team to check also. 

My single player tests with different speeds of the target all seemed good, hits every time as long as the target was not masked by trees or building. Tested 0, 40, and 100 with the speed of the vehicle. 

Yea, we had similar results in SP, and even the same when I hosted the server directly from my client. Very accurate hellfires on targets moving at various speeds. Issue really only seems to come up when a dedicated server is involved for some reason.

Thank you for taking the time to investigate this!

[admiki]

6 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Possibly lag related, I will ask the MP team to check also. 

My single player tests with different speeds of the target all seemed good, hits every time as long as the target was not masked by trees or building. Tested 0, 40, and 100 with the speed of the vehicle. 

Doing 100? IRL Apache pilot told me that HF has comparatively small maneuvering surfaces and can't turn all that good

[Zholik]

From my experience this issue is mainly occurring on multiplayer servers like rotorheads which unfortunately is where I spend most of my time

[NeMoGas]

It's not going to turn like an AIM-9X but there are videos of them hitting fast moving vehicles and even aircraft. 

Probably wouldn't have to many issues pulling lead to hit a fast moving vehicle going in a straight line. 

 

[Frederf]

1 hour ago, admiki said:

Doing 100? IRL Apache pilot told me that HF has comparatively small maneuvering surfaces and can't turn all that good

Doesn't matter, with PN navigation the target can be doing 1,000mph as long as the LOS rate is zero.

[Rongor]

Hey ED, unfortunately your mission playback system doesn't allow file trimming, so please skip forward to the very last 10 minutes or so.
I am letting George unload a dozen Hellfires on tanks moving perpendicular to my point of view. You can see on the TADS how they miss repeatedly behind the moving targets. Should be valuable data of the exact kind you might be looking for to investigate...

https://ufile.io/amzyhdbh

Edited April 7, 2022 by Rongor

[Hammer1-1]

I had a similar issue last night. Best I can do is a tacview because my track files have been going over 50mb or so and never play right for some reason. Was in SP.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Hammer1-1

[Sr.]

George can't find his ass with both hands...

 

Too often I've got a clear target area off the nose. I command search, he slaves/de-slaves fire one missile, then I hold aft/long, see the list of other targets, select 1. George claims he's "firing" or "engaging" but usually never fires... I mean he can clearly see the weapon remaining screen just as easily as I can.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Sr.

[Tank33]

I play rotoheads server with a ping of 200-250ms and I have no problems killing moving targets on a KA-50 which would indicate there are issues with AH-64D hellfire mechanism.