no bug FLIR WHOT/BHOT regression?

[Blackdog]

In today's patch, TGP WHOT/BHOT appear reversed again.

Addendum: May be more nuanced --- just saw a wingmate's screenshots, and his WHOT/BHOT appear as I would expect -- perhaps day/night?

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Blackdog

[NineLine]

Are the vehicles just placed there? Could be cold vehicles.

If you just place vehicles, they are cold, making them move, or doing a late start will add heat. We are looking at solutions to start them with certain heat signatures. 

[twistking]

9 minutes ago, NineLine said:

Are the vehicles just placed there? Could be cold vehicles.

I know i'm going a bit off topic here, but it is kind of related to this: It would be very good to have an editor option to pre-warm vehicles. To simulate that they just recently moved to that position. It would be tedious to give waypoints to every units just to "warm up". I could think of quite a few reasons why you would want vehicles to be warmed up even though they are static in the mission...

*edit* feel free to delete if it's too off-topic...

Edited June 8, 2022 by twistking

[NineLine]

Just now, twistking said:

I know i'm going a bit off topic here, but it is kind of related to this: It would be very good to have an editor option to pre-warm vehicles. To simulate that they just recently moved to that position. It would be tedious to give waypoints to every units just to "warm up". I could think of quite a few reasons why you would want vehicles to be warmed up even though they are static in the mission...

You might have typed this before I edited my post, but yes.

You can do a late start on them, but then the entire vehicle is hot. 

[twistking]

22 minutes ago, NineLine said:

[...]
If you just place vehicles, they are cold, making them move, or doing a late start will add heat. We are looking at solutions to start them with certain heat signatures. 

Yes, i did not see that. That's great!

[TheBigTatanka]

by late start -- do you mean late activated in the editor?  Then adding a trigger to start them?

[NineLine]

2 hours ago, TheBigTatanka said:

by late start -- do you mean late activated in the editor?  Then adding a trigger to start them?

Yes, sorry I wasnt clear, its been a hectic morning. 

[TheBigTatanka]

Thanks, will give it a try.  I imagine it is hectic, looks like some things bungled, but overall, a lot of promise shown.  Feels like we are on the verge of some really good stuff (and there was some great stuff added this patch).   Already, I'm very much enjoying the new FLIR.

[Blackdog]

Thanks for the info, that's awesome.

[85th_Maverick]

This bug of having units become invisible on FLIR and LANTIRN took place some while ago at some "x" update (about 1..2 years as I remember) and now it's back again. Just prior to this last Open Beta (this is what I'm playing only) version, everything was fine and the targets could be seen on IR LANTIRN or FLIR. Now, they are one with the ground. Unless you're trying to struggle with TV only, you can't see units anymore. Strangely enough, this only affects all DCS products except for the FC3 aircraft (Su-25T and A-10A) with which you can clearly see targets on IR as before.

Here's a track:

LANTIRN, FLIR bug for DCS modules, not affecting FC3.trk

[NineLine]

24 minutes ago, 85th_Maverick said:

This bug of having units become invisible on FLIR and LANTIRN took place some while ago at some "x" update (about 1..2 years as I remember) and now it's back again. Just prior to this last Open Beta (this is what I'm playing only) version, everything was fine and the targets could be seen on IR LANTIRN or FLIR. Now, they are one with the ground. Unless you're trying to struggle with TV only, you can't see units anymore. Strangely enough, this only affects all DCS products except for the FC3 aircraft (Su-25T and A-10A) with which you can clearly see targets on IR as before.

Here's a track:

LANTIRN, FLIR bug for DCS modules, not affecting FC3.trk 4.12 MB · 0 downloads

Its the same as I have stated, a placed unit, especially during daylight will be cold, in most cases the same temps as the surrounding area. The work around right now is do a late activation at mission start, this makes the entire vehicle max hot, or have the unit move into position. Later I hope we have a better system to play vehicles with different heat states. 

[bshireling]

How do you do a late activation?

[NineLine]

25 minutes ago, bshireling said:

How do you do a late activation?

Let me do a quick little example mission for you and will post it here. Hold on.

[NineLine]

Set Late Activation (optional visible bef. activation)

Then set a trigger:

That's the basic, but you can get fancy with it, but for this, its all you need. 

Late Activate.miz

[bshireling]

Thanks I will give a try.

[85th_Maverick]

23 hours ago, NineLine said:

Its the same as I have stated, a placed unit, especially during daylight will be cold, in most cases the same temps as the surrounding area. The work around right now is do a late activation at mission start, this makes the entire vehicle max hot, or have the unit move into position. Later I hope we have a better system to play vehicles with different heat states. 

Copy man. Sorry I didn't read what you've stated and thought that it's a bug again, but still..., I have late activation on units and make them appear when X unit is spawned in Y zone using MIST scripts and they are all as cold as the surrounding and completely invisible in IR. So all ground units are cold at start, but for how many hours until they heat up while running and how much to cool down while not doing anything. But the ground soldiers should always be hooter than the surroundings anyway no matter how they start in mission. 36C while idling or 40C when they are sweating or running should make almost no difference on our FLIRs when we see them.

Edited June 10, 2022 by 85th_Maverick

[NineLine]

22 minutes ago, 85th_Maverick said:

Copy man. Sorry I didn't read what you've stated and thought that it's a bug again, but still..., I have late activation on units and make them appear when X unit is spawned in Y zone using MIST scripts and they are all as cold as the surrounding and completely invisible in IR. So all ground units are cold at start, but for how many hours until they heat up while running and how much to cool down while not doing anything. But the ground soldiers should always be hooter than the surroundings anyway no matter how they start in mission. 36C while idling or 40C when they are sweating or running should make almost no difference on our FLIRs when we see them.

 

Yeah it doesnt work with outside scripting, sorry. 

[MARLAN_]

Mist doesn't actually activate units, at least not with the respawn/clone/teleport commands, it uses DCS's dynAdd function which sounds like it doesn't count for starting units hot.

Edited June 10, 2022 by MARLAN_

[NineLine]

If someone can make me a simple mission using this method, I can submit to the team as well.

[85th_Maverick]

1 hour ago, NineLine said:

If someone can make me a simple mission using this method, I can submit to the team as well.

You got it!

Why does this only affect DCS modules other than the FC3? The LLTV on Su-25T and MAV seeker on A-10A have different graphics logics than DCS modules LANTIRN or FLIR pods? With Su-25 or A-10, the targets appear hot as normal.

Just made one using MIST (last version) to continuously respawn a group once a player aircraft is within a trigger zone. Just please let me know what to do using the respawn script in order to have the ground units "warmed up" in order to normally see them on FLIR. Thanks!

FLIR tests.miz

[NineLine]

23 minutes ago, 85th_Maverick said:

You got it!

Why does this only affect DCS modules other than the FC3? The LLTV on Su-25T and MAV seeker on A-10A have different graphics logics than DCS modules LANTIRN or FLIR pods? With Su-25 or A-10, the targets appear hot as normal.

Just made one using MIST (last version) to continuously respawn a group once a player aircraft is within a trigger zone. Just please let me know what to do using the respawn script in order to have the ground units "warmed up" in order to normally see them on FLIR. Thanks!

FLIR tests.miz 87.58 kB · 0 downloads

Its possible that the new FLIR has not been added to the FC3 modules as of yet.

[85th_Maverick]

26 minutes ago, NineLine said:

Its possible that the new FLIR has not been added to the FC3 modules as of yet.

Copy! Until then, just let us know how turn the targets hot (if there's any other method than having them move around a bit) cause even in winter or summer your vehicles will be hotter than the surroundings well enough to be spotted on FLIR. In the summer, they'll get heated by the sun much greater than the surroundings and in the winter they'll be with engine running and heated for the crew, so either way I can't find a real situation where the vehicles will be as cold as the environment, makes no sense. The soldiers should always be hot anyway! Cheers!

Edited June 10, 2022 by 85th_Maverick

[85th_Maverick]

I moved the tank and solider around in that small example mission that I've uploaded here for test and no heat was added to any of the 2 units. What can I do to have the units heated up to bypass this rather useless feature that would only make sense for ground units which stood with engine off for plenty of hours to become as cold as the surroundings. Still for the soldiers, to be as cold as the surroundings would mean that their life chapter has ended!

[85th_Maverick]

On 6/10/2022 at 12:48 AM, NineLine said:

Set Late Activation (optional visible bef. activation)

Then set a trigger:

That's the basic, but you can get fancy with it, but for this, its all you need. 

Late Activate.miz 7.45 kB · 2 downloads

I tried this and even accelerated the time to become a couple of hours later after the mission has started and the targets still remain as cold as the night. Yes, I continued to try so using the mist respawn code, but still, by making the group activate with mission start shouldn't the targets become hot as you've said it should work?

[85th_Maverick]

I see the intention with this new feature and it's a another good idea to increase realism. I like it, but it still needs tweaking and improvement here and there. The idea to only better see the hotter spots of a ground unit (vehicle or human) in contrast to the cooler spots is not wrong, but I believe that the discrepancies / contrast are too great. From all real IR life footage I could find on the internet, there isn't such a great contrast between the hot and cold areas of a unit seen with a FLIR for example and at the same time they appear much brighter and clearer in reality than in DCS.

Here's some war examples and may require discretion:

 

 

If the ground units can appear much closer to this in DCS, that would be the key! The idea may be good (not that necessary I believe though) to make a difference between hotter and cooler spots on a unit, but it might be too much bother to program. Better just make them brighter as they appear on real FLIRs and that's it!