Why do HMCS alignment sometimes fail?

[moggel]

Every now and then when I align the HMCS during a cold start the procedure fails. At the first step, when I go M-SEL and align my head/eyes with the large cross, I get a "FAIL" message at the end. When this happens it seems there's nothing I can do to fix it. I have tried turning off the HMCS and start over but I always get the "FAIL" message in the end, which then prevents me from continuing to the other two alignment steps.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? I suspected it could happen if I'm aligning during rearming but I have also seen this when the jet is completely undisturbed so I haven't really found a correlation to what else I'm doing during the cold start.

[Gattling]

A trackfile/short video might be useful.

[Viciam1]

Iv never had a fail ever so not sure. Make sure your ins is fully aligned and NAV mode is selected before trying to align. Maybe keep your head really still? 

[drsoran]

I had the same issue and really struggled to find the cause. I'm currently on Valve Index but don't know if you are in VR, too. For me this was a damaged VR headset cable. It starts some day and I suspected an update.

After some time I figured out that when I straighten the cable manually, alignment instantly succeeds. Where before it failed constantly. The crazy think was you never saw this. No tracking issues. HMCS crosses perfectly aligned.

My headset is currently in repair so I hope this is gone afterwards.

[JesseJames38]

Only time I had the course alignment fail is when I pushed the enabled button and let the cross in the helmet drift to far or to much in the hud cross it will come back as failed.     It may be to much head movement when accomplishing the task.    If it fails. Just re align the cross on the hud and push the enable switch again to restart the process

Edited July 5, 2022 by JesseJames38

[RuskyV]

It can sometimes be a bit tricky in VR as DCS does not apply any filtering for very small micro movements of the head, which doesn’t help at all

Not sure if the OP is using VR or not so it could be a different issue altogether.

[moggel]

On 7/5/2022 at 11:37 AM, Viciam1 said:

Iv never had a fail ever so not sure. Make sure your ins is fully aligned and NAV mode is selected before trying to align. Maybe keep your head really still? 

Might be that I initiated the alignment before INS alignment was done. I will make sure I do and see if it happens anyway. Thanks

[skywalker22]

Successfully aligned JHMCS for 100/100 times.

[Fuggzy]

On 7/6/2022 at 11:27 PM, RuskyV said:

It can sometimes be a bit tricky in VR as DCS does not apply any filtering for very small micro movements of the head, which doesn’t help at all

Ain't that the truth. VR headsets capture every nanometer of head motion, where TrackIR doesn't see any movements smaller than deliberate.

So for immersion, I just pretend that this mission is going to hell in a handbasket, I took too many go pills, have to <profanity> badly, and am rattled to the bone by what I just witnessed. Then the HMCS/IHAADS/JHMCS jittering becomes a thoughtful touch.