Hard to see bogeys

[dresoccer4]

man, I guess it's realistic or else the devs wouldn't have done us so dirty like this but I have to say it's is near impossible to identify a green bogey in a giant map of identical green haze. you have to look down at the radar at just the right second at just the right spot to see anything. wonder why they did it this way. seems to make the pilot's job unnecessarily difficult. 

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[J20Stronk]

That is a very weird looking JF-17 radar screen

Edited August 16, 2022 by J20Stronk

[Dragon1-1]

Wrong board, that's Mirage F1 not a JF-17.  Mods, please move.

OT, radar screens of the era really sucked. Low RCS contacts would be difficult to see through the noise. It was exactly as hard for the real pilots.

[dresoccer4]

WHOOPS! I guess I time travelled to the future for a second  

[Vek17]

The radar clutter is significantly easier to see through than I'd generally expect actually especially in look down and low altitude flight.

[sedenion]

On 8/16/2022 at 7:10 AM, dresoccer4 said:

man, I guess it's realistic or else the devs wouldn't have done us so dirty like this but I have to say it's is near impossible to identify a green bogey in a giant map of identical green haze. you have to look down at the radar at just the right second at just the right spot to see anything. wonder why they did it this way. seems to make the pilot's job unnecessarily difficult.

In the screenshot you provided I found the bogey pretty easy to spot.

They did "this way" because that were the best way they managed to did it at the time. Lets back in time, there were no microchip, everything were done using simple electronic components, mostly analogic. This green noise cloud is a filtered version of what the radar sensor receive, the main problem is here : separating noise from interesting echoes, wich were not very easy using the rudimentary electronic of this times combined to radar emitter and antenna design.
Brief, the analog electronic system can discard some obviously uninteresting received signals but cannot do a precision job. So, the precision job must be done by the pilot, examining this noise to spot what could be an interesting echo.

As an image, think about radio, analog radio, with tuner. Imagine you are tuned to a specific radio station, when you are close to the emiter the signal is strong and you ear it clearly, but when you go far from the emiter, you ear signal with noise. Farer you get only noise because the signal is lost. The problem here is roughly similar, the interesting signal is lost in noise, because the signal is week and the tuner very sensitive. If you discard all the noise, you take the risk to discard the interesting signal, because electronic is too rustic, not precise enough to properly separate weak signal from back noise.

Edited August 17, 2022 by sedenion

[dresoccer4]

9 hours ago, sedenion said:

In the screenshot you provided I found the bogey pretty easy to spot.

They did "this way" because that were the best way they managed to did it at the time. Lets back in time, there were no microchip, everything were done using simple electronic components, mostly analogic. This green noise cloud is a filtered version of what the radar sensor receive, the main problem is here : separating noise from interesting echoes, wich were not very easy using the rudimentary electronic of this times combined to radar emitter and antenna design.
Brief, the analog electronic system can discard some obviously uninteresting received signals but cannot do a precision job. So, the precision job must be done by the pilot, examining this noise to spot what could be an interesting echo.

As an image, think about radio, analog radio, with tuner. Imagine you are tuned to a specific radio station, when you are close to the emiter the signal is strong and you ear it clearly, but when you go far from the emiter, you ear signal with noise. Farer you get only noise because the signal is lost. The problem here is roughly similar, the interesting signal is lost in noise, because the signal is week and the tuner very sensitive. If you discard all the noise, you take the risk to discard the interesting signal, because electronic is too rustic, not precise enough to properly separate weak signal from back noise.

 

 

thanks, good description. 

and yeah i can spot it fairly easy in my screenshot too. but that's because i was able to pause at just the right moment . in reality the plane radar screen is constantly moving and the plane is moving and the bogey blip only appear in a single radar direction (so only appears 50% of the time, if you're lucky).

life was tough back then! makes me appreciate the 2-seat birds more now. having a dedicated radar operator would have beeb clutch

Edited August 17, 2022 by dresoccer4

[Midair]

You can change to 30° of scan pattern, it's a lot easier to find bogeys!

[dresoccer4]

42 minutes ago, Midair said:

You can change to 30° of scan pattern, it's a lot easier to find bogeys!

thanks ill try!