Jester and iceman

[JabsDabbin]

Hi.

I found that both jester and iceman have some issues that are probably fairly easy to solve and I'd like to collect improvements and suggestions in this thread so that Heatblur can refer to it if they want to.

Jester:

• Friendly contacts should not be shown when trying to select a specific target, assuming they are already identified. Unidentified targets should show of course.
• While there are bandits, be it on data link or on radar, nearby, jester really should not be prioritizing threats 100nm out, a simple distance setting which can act as a sort of deadzone, prioritizing any targets in it first, always, might provide a solution.
• the system to set a distance and height to scan at is rather clunky and has failed me more often than not. If I know a target is out there, I just have to hop in jesters seat and lock it myself instead.

iceman:

• iceman really does it own thing, even overriding attitude autopilot. Best behaviour imo would be if iceman just did not touch the controls unless not doing so would destroy the aircraft. He should maintain attitude regardless of autopilot setting. (or just not touch the stick especially if auto pilot is on and in altitude mode)
• setting mach speed while above mach .7 is probably a better solution than increasing speed by x knots. The biggest issue here is the lack of feedback about which speed it's currently set to. 

Edited February 3, 2023 by JabsDabbin

[RaisedByWolves]

Jester definitely has issues, mainly the kind that manifest later in life.

[Callsign JoNay]

After struggling with the Jester interface for a couple years now, I want a cursor for A2A mode. With a human RIO I can tell them verbally to hook a contact to my 2 o'clock 40 miles out, or to hook the hostile contact behind me in my ground stabilized mode. Without a human RIO I'm at the mercy of Jester to hook the right contact, and it's pure luck of the draw, and he never hooks anything useful in ground stabilized.

They gave us a way to slew the LANTIRN in A2G mode as a substitute for being able to tell a human RIO to slew left/right etc, (although it's tied to using a head tracker for some strange reason, they should just allow us to ditch the "put the dot in the circle" method and let us map it to an axis), and they gave us q-eyeballs to simulate being able to tell a human rio to move the LANTIRN to something we see outside the cockpit. My wish is to have a similar substitute for A2A mode. Not direct control of the half action TID cursor itself, but some kind of red dot or something I can slew as a substitute for being able to verbally direct a human RIO.

Also, they should make every Jester function able to be mapped so we can access via Voice Attack without needing Vaicom/AIRIO which is now blocked by pure script integrity check settings.

I'm hoping for major improvements in Jester 2.0.

[Cobra847]

22 minutes ago, Callsign JoNay said:

After struggling with the Jester interface for a couple years now, I want a cursor for A2A mode. With a human RIO I can tell them verbally to hook a contact to my 2 o'clock 40 miles out, or to hook the hostile contact behind me in my ground stabilized mode. Without a human RIO I'm at the mercy of Jester to hook the right contact, and it's pure luck of the draw, and he never hooks anything useful in ground stabilized.

They gave us a way to slew the LANTIRN in A2G mode as a substitute for being able to tell a human RIO to slew left/right etc, (although it's tied to using a head tracker for some strange reason, they should just allow us to ditch the "put the dot in the circle" method and let us map it to an axis), and they gave us q-eyeballs to simulate being able to tell a human rio to move the LANTIRN to something we see outside the cockpit. My wish is to have a similar substitute for A2A mode. Not direct control of the half action TID cursor itself, but some kind of red dot or something I can slew as a substitute for being able to verbally direct a human RIO.

Also, they should make every Jester function able to be mapped so we can access via Voice Attack without needing Vaicom/AIRIO which is now blocked by pure script integrity check settings.

I'm hoping for major improvements in Jester 2.0.

We have similar ideas.

[Billy]

I hope Iceman don't mess up trim when on the ground. 

[Japo32]

I know that it is almost imposible.. but I would love to have a better pilot AI to just be the RIO in single player missions. Don't tell Iceman to fly straight or climb or whatever. Just he fly and we just make our job. I suppose is very difficult with the AI DCS has.

I wish now that AI chatters and drawers are comming, that future AI would learn from humans to do it better so the gat between humans and Bots would be impossible to realize.

[draconus]

10 hours ago, JabsDabbin said:

Jester:

• Friendly contacts should not be shown when trying to select a specific target, assuming they are already identified. Unidentified targets should show of course.
• While there are bandits, be it on data link or on radar, nearby, jester really should not be prioritizing threats 100nm out, a simple distance setting which can act as a sort of deadzone, prioritizing any targets in it first, always, might provide a solution.
• the system to set a distance and height to scan at is rather clunky and has failed me more often than not. If I know a target is out there, I just have to hop in jesters seat and lock it myself instead.

1. What if you want to lock a friendly or it's not really a friendly (Jester or DCS bug)?

2. TID range does that.

Anyway, Jester 2.0 is planned afaik.

[JabsDabbin]

15 hours ago, draconus said:

1. What if you want to lock a friendly or it's not really a friendly (Jester or DCS bug)?

2. TID range does that.

Anyway, Jester 2.0 is planned afaik.

1. Why would you want to lock a friendly deliberately? I can imagine some situations where you're trying to meet up maybe but especially in the context of combat, it's rarely needed/wanted? When it concerns a bug ideally the bug just gets fixed but if its critical I would just mark a contact as unidentified if i can only detect the bug but for some reason don't have access to all of the systems internals.( Meaning situations where the bug just can not be fixed without a serious overhaul somewhere deeper).

a separate lock friendly menu option would not be a bad solution either. The main thing here being that the information should be sorted already. However, a hook cursor like someone else mentioned would be even better. I often find myself just not having enough time to process the stuff required to deal with the current system. 

2. Thanks for the tip I did not consider that! I still don't think it's ideal because you'd lose situational awareness but I'll go try it out!

Good to hear such progress is already underway. 

[JabsDabbin]

 

On 2/4/2023 at 9:35 AM, draconus said:

1. What if you want to lock a friendly or it's not really a friendly (Jester or DCS bug)?

2. TID range does that.

Anyway, Jester 2.0 is planned afaik.

I tried using TID range (the one you can tell jester to set as a pilot) and even with tid range at 30nm jester hooked targets 70nm out, invisible on the tid repeater. 
 

[Callsign JoNay]

9 hours ago, JabsDabbin said:

 

I tried using TID range (the one you can tell jester to set as a pilot) and even with tid range at 30nm jester hooked targets 70nm out, invisible on the tid repeater. 
 

Jester has always made odd choices about what he chooses to hook. In fact, I'm not convinced it's Jester and is instead some other underlying bug with the AWG, because even when I fly as a human RIO there are times where my TID becomes possessed and hooks/unhooks random things. I think someone made a bug report about it too.

That being said, the TID range has always functioned successfully for me at prioritizing only targets within the fishbowl. TWSA won't factor in trackfiles outside the range into its automated azimuth/elevation. And it won't assign any tracks outside the fishbowl to the Phownix shooting order either.

It's a good habit to always shorten up the TID range to the minimum you need to engage whatever targets you're committing on. Not only for the reasons above, but also as a courtesy to the driver who has to look over his stick to see the repeater. I think it was Mooch who said he always tries to keep everything important in the upper 1/3 of the TID.

[draconus]

14 hours ago, JabsDabbin said:

I tried using TID range (the one you can tell jester to set as a pilot) and even with tid range at 30nm jester hooked targets 70nm out, invisible on the tid repeater.

There's either 25 or 50nm range for TID. I've never experienced such behavior so a short video would help here.

[bonesvf103]

I've noticed that Jester will hook a target, giving you all that info at the top of the TID, and then he will unhook it presumably doing something else.  That is annoying because I need that information and I lose it when he does that.

Alternatively, he will hook say lead, and then he switches to hooking trail and leaves it there.  I need to know the most information for the #1 target over #2.

The other things I wish he would do better is call target clock codes correctly.  Most of the time it seems like he has the clock code in a queue as the bandit goes by, and so he calls them off in order which means by the time you hear them, the bandit is already gone.  There have been so many times when he calls they are on my six when they are already right in front of me, for example.  The only time he is accurate is when I'm straight and level.

I enjoy everything else he does though.  With a new Jester I'd also look forward to hearing more lines from him, I think I've heard everything he's had to say already haha.

 

v6,

boNes

 

[JabsDabbin]

11 hours ago, Callsign JoNay said:

Jester has always made odd choices about what he chooses to hook. In fact, I'm not convinced it's Jester and is instead some other underlying bug with the AWG, because even when I fly as a human RIO there are times where my TID becomes possessed and hooks/unhooks random things. I think someone made a bug report about it too.

That being said, the TID range has always functioned successfully for me at prioritizing only targets within the fishbowl. TWSA won't factor in trackfiles outside the range into its automated azimuth/elevation. And it won't assign any tracks outside the fishbowl to the Phownix shooting order either.

It's a good habit to always shorten up the TID range to the minimum you need to engage whatever targets you're committing on. Not only for the reasons above, but also as a courtesy to the driver who has to look over his stick to see the repeater. I think it was Mooch who said he always tries to keep everything important in the upper 1/3 of the TID.

I see. Now that you mention it, perhaps I should be clearer about what happens ( see below)

 

7 hours ago, draconus said:

There's either 25 or 50nm range for TID. I've never experienced such behavior so a short video would help here.

Idk why i came up with 30nm I rounded it off or something and in general don't look at numbers too specifically unless math. 

Instead of actually 'prioritizing', it's more so that jester hooks/highlights a target far away, not commanding the radar to build a track perse. However, he does move the antenna for this. I can't tell if he moves the antenna because he can or if he's trashing missiles. my missiles fly on interpolated tracks all the time because of it. Seemingly at least.

But just as annoying, I actually have to memorize the altitudes at jesters whim because chances are he wont highlight the target again even tho it's well within missile launch parameters. 

Not sure if the following matters but: TID range failed me when I told jester to set it very late, when it/the radar had already build at least some tracks further away.  I'll try recording my next flights

 

[JabsDabbin]

nullTid at 50nm

Tid range does filter the lock specific target menu though. I can usually manage to lock at least one of the contacts, regardless of source (own radar/datalink) but jester, or the radar, rarely will build tracks for those contacts nearby. Which is probably more a limitation/result of TWS auto mode or some other parameter maybe. I didn't think of this earlier ( that I usually let jester/auto tws do its thing).
null