Clarification on ED's poor/confusing naming choices in the Mission Editor?

[TEMPEST.114]

I'm having trouble trying to work out the following, in large part because ED's naming convention is truly 'unusual' and because in some cases I can't see any difference when I change the values. 

Could some ME guru please advise?

1. Mission Editor 'Follow' command.

Distance - ??? Is that port/starboard/forward/back? which way is positive/negative.

Elevation - that's at least obvious

Interval - ??? This term literally doesn't make sense. 

If you think of these as X, Y and Z, and we know Y is elevation then you'd think that setting 'Interval' would be lateral movement and Distance as longitudinal movement but when I set a helo to follow my carrier and change these in relation to following the carrier the helo doesn't do anything sensible.

 

2. Mission Editor - 'Aerobatics' Manoeuvres.

a) Under each manoeuvre it says 'Sector' - what on earth does that apply to? Should it read as 'heading'? Is that the roll out heading? Why not just say 'heading'?

b) Why can't I make a standard 1G turn? Every roll angle increases G - you literally can't make / set a rate one turn with this!?

 

 

[Northstar98]

4 hours ago, Elphaba said:

I'm having trouble trying to work out the following, in large part because ED's naming convention is truly 'unusual' and because in some cases I can't see any difference when I change the values. 

Could some ME guru please advise?

1. Mission Editor 'Follow' command.

Distance - ??? Is that port/starboard/forward/back? which way is positive/negative.

Elevation - that's at least obvious

Interval - ??? This term literally doesn't make sense. 

If you think of these as X, Y and Z, and we know Y is elevation then you'd think that setting 'Interval' would be lateral movement and Distance as longitudinal movement but when I set a helo to follow my carrier and change these in relation to following the carrier the helo doesn't do anything sensible.

Distance is forward/backward, positive is ahead of the unit/group to be followed, negative is behind.

Elevation, as you probably guessed, is the height above/below, though sometimes the AI won't go below a certain altitude (most notable when following ships/ground units).

Interval is how far left/right, positive values are right, negative values are left.

 

Note that "Distance" and "Interval" are relative to either the unit (when following a unit) or the group lead (when following a group). If my group lead is on a heading of 057°, "distance" will move it forwards/backwards on a line parallel to 057° and "interval" will move the unit on a line perpendicular to 057°.

One thing I do is I measure the where I want the following unit to hold position relative to the unit being followed and then I place the waypoint with fallow task there - so far I haven't run into any problems.

 

Personally, I'd rename them to longitudinal offset, altitude offset and lateral offset respectively. It should also tell you if the values you've entered correspond to ahead/behind/left/right (perhaps with it being selectable, which would mitigate any ambiguity).

4 hours ago, Elphaba said:

2. Mission Editor - 'Aerobatics' Manoeuvres.

a) Under each manoeuvre it says 'Sector' - what on earth does that apply to? Should it read as 'heading'? Is that the roll out heading? Why not just say 'heading'?

I'm pretty sure it is roll out heading and no idea why it doesn't just say "roll out heading" or "desired heading on completion" or something like that.

So far I've only seen it work with turns - the sector/fixSector setting in aileron rolls doesn't seem to do anything. Unfortunately the DCS user manual (page 223) isn't any help either as it only goes over the basic parameters.

4 hours ago, Elphaba said:

b) Why can't I make a standard 1G turn? Every roll angle increases G - you literally can't make / set a rate one turn with this!?

If you want to set up a 1G turn, just input a desired roll angle (manually input it instead of using the increment/decrement chevrons) anything from 1 - 17° gives me a 1.0 G turn to 1 decimal place.

 

As for a rate one turn (i.e 3°/s turn rate for anyone unfamiliar), that's fairly simple to do too:

1. Set the manoeuvre to "turn"
2. Set sector and side as desired (haven't found a way to do a complete circle yet)
3. Enter the bank angle for your desired TAS (fyi the mission editor speed is TAS), using this equation (note, this is one I derived, but so far in testing it's always given me a 3°/s turn rate):

bank angle = π*v/60*g

Where v is the true airspeed in m/s and g is the acceleration due to gravity ≈ 9.81 m/s^2

Edited October 10, 2022 by Northstar98

[TEMPEST.114]

Thanks so much @Northstar98

[TEMPEST.114]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Distance is forward/backward, positive is ahead of the unit/group to be followed, negative is behind.

Is it relative to the 'centre' of the unit or a corner of a bounding box? I'm still getting weird behaviour from the helo not holding station 400ft ahead and 400ft to the right of the carrier... it keeps moving to the centreline of the carrier and swinging out and moving ahead and falling back...

[Northstar98]

38 minutes ago, Elphaba said:

Is it relative to the 'centre' of the unit or a corner of a bounding box? I'm still getting weird behaviour from the helo not holding station 400ft ahead and 400ft to the right of the carrier... it keeps moving to the centreline of the carrier and swinging out and moving ahead and falling back...

Always the centre of the lead unit (i.e the centre of the mission editor icon), if you want it 400 ft ahead of the bow of the ship and 400 ft right of the starboard side, you'll need to factor the extra distance.

Not sure what's going on in your case, is it possible for you to post the mission file?

 

If not, I'll provide a couple of test examples - follow_example_1.miz has the helicopter 400 ft ahead and 400 ft to the right of the centre of the carrier (i.e distance and interval both set to 400), the follow_example_2.miz has it 400 ft ahead of the bow and 400 ft to the right of the starboard edge (distance set to 989 ft and interval to 523 ft, to account for the extra distances, using the Forrestal).

As I said above, what I do is I put the waypoint that has the follow task for the unit doing the following, at the point I want them to station keep at (so if it's 400 ft ahead and 400 ft to the right, I'll put the waypoint there, with the speed set to the speed of the unit being followed. I'll then put the unit doing the following a short distance behind it set at the same speed - this way the unit will naturally drift into the follow point, without the AI needing to do any manoeuvring).

follow_example_1.miz

follow_example_2.miz

Edited October 10, 2022 by Northstar98

[TEMPEST.114]

Thanks again @Northstar98 You get all the Internet awards today! xx 

[Exorcet]

A potential helpful hint with follow/escort positions. DCS AI can sometimes do weird things in trying to keep formation and also isn't great a fuel conservation. I always 0 all the distances except elevation in order to make things as easy for the AI as possible.