Velocity gate in STT appears to be too high

[Naquaii]

13 hours ago, KenobiOrder said:

What makes you certain of that? Do you have a document stating explicitly that the PD STT has a 200 knot zero doppler filter and the amount of gain specified?

 

Yes.

 

As for track memory, that's absolutely something it should have but isn't in DCS. It's not by any stretch a "cure all" for this as it'd mostly help you for very quick transitions and/or if the target flies straight and level without maneuvering. We would like to add it but it's also a massive undertaking due to how the STT is coded as is.

[H7142]

6 hours ago, Naquaii said:

Yes.

 

As for track memory, that's absolutely something it should have but isn't in DCS. It's not by any stretch a "cure all" for this as it'd mostly help you for very quick transitions and/or if the target flies straight and level without maneuvering. We would like to add it but it's also a massive undertaking due to how the STT is coded as is.

Are you allowed to share this document or at least this part of it?  Or worst case the name of the document.

Edited February 13, 2023 by H7142

[Naquaii]

11 hours ago, H7142 said:

Are you allowed to share this document or at least this part of it?  Or worst case the name of the document.

 

Unfortunately not. We don’t discuss or share our internal research library.

[KenobiOrder]

16 hours ago, Naquaii said:

Unfortunately not. We don’t discuss or share our internal research library.

Why is this the case?

The documents used for this module are either legally available or they are not legally available. How can it be the case that you have legally available documentation that you cannot share, since if the documents could not be shared they could not ostensibly be used for the module either. 

Edited February 15, 2023 by KenobiOrder

[H7142]

1 hour ago, KenobiOrder said:

Why is this the case?

The documents used for this module are either legally available or they are not legally available. How can it be the case that you have legally available documentation that you cannot share, since if the documents could not be shared they could not ostensibly be used for the module either. 

 

+1

[r4y30n]

I think there’s confusion between legally available and readily available.

[AdrianL]

Legally availably does not mean freely available. You can purchase documentation or be granted access with a restricted license.

[opps]

I think asking randam conpany "Hey, I want XXX documents you reserched for YYY product" is big NO NO in common sence. Let's stay away from that.

[KenobiOrder]

5 hours ago, opps said:

I think asking randam conpany "Hey, I want XXX documents you reserched for YYY product" is big NO NO in common sence. Let's stay away from that.

This makes zero sense when we're talking about government documentation. Nobody is asking for heatblurs proprietary formula or anything.

[opps]

And I assume heatblur worked very hard to get those documents. They paid certain amounts of time and cost and, may have needed hard and long discussions, negociations.  I don't expect heatblur share those easly.

[lunaticfringe]

1 hour ago, KenobiOrder said:

This makes zero sense when we're talking about government documentation. Nobody is asking for heatblurs proprietary formula or anything.

Not all documentation acquired for module development is, in fact, covered under the lack of government copyright law for materials produced on its behalf.  Systems training and company engineering and troubleshooting texts authored in-house retain copyright protection and are accessed accordingly, quite often at substantial cost, or donation (for example, they be provided by a museum).

 

Contrary to popular opinion, "freedom of information" isn't.  Contest a mandatory declassification review finding- that's the point where lawyers, billable hours, and government costs kick in.  But wait- this is for *commercial* purposes: billable research hours and per-page costs start government side from the initial request.

 

After all the expense, all the time, and all the back and forth between controlling offices and final service branch chief office oversight prior to signoff, you're left with materials that are very much in the realm of proprietary- because that research cost is an investment; one that needs recovered at a threshold well above e-peen wagging in forum debates.  Somebody else wants that material, they themselves can go fetch, as not every document hits the servive reading rooms.

 

So what it all boils down to is simple: when the system works like it should, to the recollection of the people who flew the machine and operated the radar, as well as the people who tested and maintained the equipment- when the people who helped build the model explicitly state a number from documentation, it's the number.  At this point, with the amount of heat they've willingly accepted for supposedly downgrading weapons and systems to more closely approximate what they can prove to have been the functionality, a wide gate is the least of your concerns to debate regarding how well they understand what has been presented.  

 

And if you're still unable go accept that an early 1960s derived system built with a specific operating area in mind, constructed with the best (but albeit era-limited storage and back end techniques), and with processing far more dependent on the operator skill and knowledge of the EW environment than what it had built in under the hood, that's a "you" issue regards to understanding, not anybody else.

 

[Naquaii]

11 hours ago, KenobiOrder said:

Why is this the case?

The documents used for this module are either legally available or they are not legally available. How can it be the case that you have legally available documentation that you cannot share, since if the documents could not be shared they could not ostensibly be used for the module either. 

 

This is not about legality. We do not have classified documentation and wouldn’t look for that either. Do we have documentation not available on the net? Yeah, ofc we do, that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to have them. We also have information collated through extensive dialogue with SMEs.

The simple fact is that when you have put extensive effort and resources into acquiring said information it doesn’t make sense to just give them away. And even so we kinda do in a way as we put the relevant information into the module and the module documentation.

[KenobiOrder]

19 hours ago, lunaticfringe said:

Not all documentation acquired for module development is, in fact, covered under the lack of government copyright law for materials produced on its behalf.  Systems training and company engineering and troubleshooting texts authored in-house retain copyright protection and are accessed accordingly, quite often at substantial cost, or donation (for example, they be provided by a museum).

 

Contrary to popular opinion, "freedom of information" isn't.  Contest a mandatory declassification review finding- that's the point where lawyers, billable hours, and government costs kick in.  But wait- this is for *commercial* purposes: billable research hours and per-page costs start government side from the initial request.

 

After all the expense, all the time, and all the back and forth between controlling offices and final service branch chief office oversight prior to signoff, you're left with materials that are very much in the realm of proprietary- because that research cost is an investment; one that needs recovered at a threshold well above e-peen wagging in forum debates.  Somebody else wants that material, they themselves can go fetch, as not every document hits the servive reading rooms.

 

So what it all boils down to is simple: when the system works like it should, to the recollection of the people who flew the machine and operated the radar, as well as the people who tested and maintained the equipment- when the people who helped build the model explicitly state a number from documentation, it's the number.  At this point, with the amount of heat they've willingly accepted for supposedly downgrading weapons and systems to more closely approximate what they can prove to have been the functionality, a wide gate is the least of your concerns to debate regarding how well they understand what has been presented.  

 

And if you're still unable go accept that an early 1960s derived system built with a specific operating area in mind, constructed with the best (but albeit era-limited storage and back end techniques), and with processing far more dependent on the operator skill and knowledge of the EW environment than what it had built in under the hood, that's a "you" issue regards to understanding, not anybody else.

 

Yeah this is all completely counter factual for the most part. I've done requests for this sort of data and while it can incur costs, most of the time it does not. And to certainly does not involve lawyers.

You also making many assumptions about the nature of the source in question with a absolutely zero evidence.

[KenobiOrder]

18 hours ago, Naquaii said:

This is not about legality. We do not have classified documentation and wouldn’t look for that either. Do we have documentation not available on the net? Yeah, ofc we do, that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to have them. We also have information collated through extensive dialogue with SMEs.

The simple fact is that when you have put extensive effort and resources into acquiring said information it doesn’t make sense to just give them away. And even so we kinda do in a way as we put the relevant information into the module and the module documentation.

And we have zero verification of any of this. Which means no rational individual can place any significant epistemic confidence in claims originating from a video game module where the justification is "trust me".

It makes little sense to hide evidence of details you have already ostensibly revealed through the module. If you have a document that specifically states what you claim, why not even a screenshot and possibly also the name of the source? Surely this would verify your claim without giving away any additional information from your document trove. A competitor would learn nothing new, except that you have valid data. 

I make no accustion of dishonesty at all. I assume you are giving a good faith module. But it has been the case in the past, more than once, that you justified the current module status based on documents you possessed. Then later, additional, and apparently contradictory information surfaced that allowed for changes. This implies that either some of your sources are not accurate or that you misinterpreted them with the best intentions possible. Or some information was out of date of intended aircraft or system model. This very thread is partially the subject of one example of this. We are now talking about the zero Doppler filter, but entire subject got brought up due to changes to the velocity gate tracking loops and whether the MLC filter was present, which was changed from the original model some time ago based on your research.

Also, I am not accusing you of being incompetent either. As I am sure you would agree, the subject of modeling these systems is complex and so is interpreting whatever documentation exists. Mistakes get made, and as far as I can tell you seem to correct them when found. 

But it would still be nice if you could provide some kind of evidence of various claims. I fail to see how screenshots of specific paragraphs or even document names somehow threaten your exclusive access to a useful information repository when this is data you have already ostensibly revealed and would just be verifying. 

 

[Ivandrov]

1 hour ago, KenobiOrder said:

And we have zero verification of any of this. Which means no rational individual can place any significant epistemic confidence in claims originating from a video game module where the justification is "trust me".

It makes little sense to hide evidence of details you have already ostensibly revealed through the module. If you have a document that specifically states what you claim, why not even a screenshot and possibly also the name of the source? Surely this would verify your claim without giving away any additional information from your document trove. A competitor would learn nothing new, except that you have valid data. 

I make no accustion of dishonesty at all. I assume you are giving a good faith module. But it has been the case in the past, more than once, that you justified the current module status based on documents you possessed. Then later, additional, and apparently contradictory information surfaced that allowed for changes. This implies that either some of your sources are not accurate or that you misinterpreted them with the best intentions possible. Or some information was out of date of intended aircraft or system model. This very thread is partially the subject of one example of this. We are now talking about the zero Doppler filter, but entire subject got brought up due to changes to the velocity gate tracking loops and whether the MLC filter was present, which was changed from the original model some time ago based on your research.

Also, I am not accusing you of being incompetent either. As I am sure you would agree, the subject of modeling these systems is complex and so is interpreting whatever documentation exists. Mistakes get made, and as far as I can tell you seem to correct them when found. 

But it would still be nice if you could provide some kind of evidence of various claims. I fail to see how screenshots of specific paragraphs or even document names somehow threaten your exclusive access to a useful information repository when this is data you have already ostensibly revealed and would just be verifying. 

 

Then present the contradictory evidence. If you're not accusing them of incompetence or dishonesty, then they have no reason to present you anything to prove they are right. You are the one that wants the change. You are making the claim that they are wrong therefore the burden of proof falls to you.

 

If you truly believe that they are not dishonest or incompetent, then you should not have a problem with them making an internal comparison without revealing what their side of the data is.

Edited February 16, 2023 by Ivandrov

[lunaticfringe]

2 hours ago, KenobiOrder said:

Yeah this is all completely counter factual for the most part. I've done requests for this sort of data and while it can incur costs, most of the time it does not. And to certainly does not involve lawyers.

It's abundantly clear how little experience you have with the process. Get yourself through the successful appeal of an MDR and come back to me. 

[IronMike]

5 hours ago, KenobiOrder said:

And we have zero verification of any of this. Which means no rational individual can place any significant epistemic confidence in claims originating from a video game module where the justification is "trust me".

It makes little sense to hide evidence of details you have already ostensibly revealed through the module. If you have a document that specifically states what you claim, why not even a screenshot and possibly also the name of the source? Surely this would verify your claim without giving away any additional information from your document trove. A competitor would learn nothing new, except that you have valid data. 

I make no accustion of dishonesty at all. I assume you are giving a good faith module. But it has been the case in the past, more than once, that you justified the current module status based on documents you possessed. Then later, additional, and apparently contradictory information surfaced that allowed for changes. This implies that either some of your sources are not accurate or that you misinterpreted them with the best intentions possible. Or some information was out of date of intended aircraft or system model. This very thread is partially the subject of one example of this. We are now talking about the zero Doppler filter, but entire subject got brought up due to changes to the velocity gate tracking loops and whether the MLC filter was present, which was changed from the original model some time ago based on your research.

Also, I am not accusing you of being incompetent either. As I am sure you would agree, the subject of modeling these systems is complex and so is interpreting whatever documentation exists. Mistakes get made, and as far as I can tell you seem to correct them when found. 

But it would still be nice if you could provide some kind of evidence of various claims. I fail to see how screenshots of specific paragraphs or even document names somehow threaten your exclusive access to a useful information repository when this is data you have already ostensibly revealed and would just be verifying. 

 

The reason why we do not share our business propietary knowledge, of any sorts, is because we don't have to - unless we ourselves deem otherwise. It is neither usus, nor is it sound for a business to do so, nor would I know of any business that does it. We are very much for transperancy, but transperany does not mean renouncement of private data and intellectual property - which the researched objects may not be part of, as they are potentially available to anyone - but the composition and approach very well is, also including objects that are not readily available as you purchase certain rights to use, while even the mention of certain documents may reveal more than we want, for reasons we cannot and will not ever disclose, which can be as benign as the original owner, like a museum, asking us not to do, to expensive propietary knowledge, to legal obligations and anything in between.

Additionally we are in no way contracted or obliged to prove to you that what we do is accurate to the T. We choose to do so voluntarily, and so we set a constraint for ourselves by saying "we want our modules to be as realistic as possible" - and re-affirm this constraint to the community by marketing them in this way, by making a promise. Other simulator modules - across all sims - may choose a different path and not even put in the effort to model to a certain depth, or accuracy for that matter, in full disclosure or not. Or they may even make up things. It seems to have a market, one could go and say "we did it like this, because it is fun." But we don't, we want the opposite, we say we want our modules to be as realistic as we can get them. I think looking at our modules, it is without a question that we thus also abide by these parameters that we set for them. So we put in the work to research it, put it together and then present it to you. The outcome is an amalgamation of that research, of countless hours of digesting, disecting, re-arranging, understanding and then coding that hard-gained knowledge, technical, historical, cultural and professional information, into a product that you then can experience. And with all the effort we have put in, with all the skill applied, with all the research done, we can safely say: this is the most realistic experience of a Tomcat in any sim to date, and as real as we can make it. Knowing our demeaner to also continuously evolve, continue to research and to correct earlier findings when necessary, you can also safely assume that we stay committed to the above mentioned realism long after the release of the module.

It is however not our obligation to disclose our proprietary knowledge or "trade secrets" to you to prove any of the above. Yet we do try to disclose as much as we can, and want. In the end it is our decision, and we have to weigh what is good for our business to disclose and what not. We also make ourselves accountable by putting out a module with the claim of being realistic. Anyone can go and either try and prove it or disprove it. And since we made ourselves accountable, if someone does disprove something, we have to react to that by improving the aspects in question to uphold that claim. This is why we try to be so thorough before releasing something, like gathering SME input, tester feedback and finally publicizing it to a brought community where other experts or subject matter experts can react and comment on the work, and through their input help us not only maintain a standard of realism but evolve it even further. The duty to disprove our claim however is not on us, but on the person making a counter-claim. And mind you, as you said yourself, we're doing still entertainment products for the end-consumer, that is video games, genre flight-sim or not: we are making a product which again we like to tie to historic accuracy, but ultimately still remains a product for your amusement, and not a thesis for a phd, or a scientific article for a university paper, where quoting rules apply.

Which brings me to your approach, if I may. You have a counter-claim, or at least a differing idea of what we present to you, even though backed up on our side to you in person by someone who works with military radars in his professional career on a daily basis. That is fine. More so, it is appreciated. We should always remain open to re-think our decisions, to re-visit our data, to re-verify our sources and to double check the outcome of our findings. We should always remain open to improving our products. But you cannot demand from us to prove to you that our claim is correct or false to disprove or prove your own claim. You can ask if we may share our sources with you, but when we say no, you then cannot demand it. Please be so kind and understand, that you also cannot expect us to follow up or change our modelling based on a claim that you have not backed up with any source or proven otherwise outside of putting up a theory yourself. Because contrary to us, you should present sources and factual data, if you want us to change what we presented so far. You don't have to, afterall, it is not your job, but please understand that we will not allocate costly ressources, work and time to overhauling something, which has been presented to us as wrong without any reputable source to back up your claims. Remember what I said above? If you do, we will however, because we made ourselves accountable towards what we promised. And lastly please accept it, when you ask for documents, and we say no, that it is a no which will always be given without reason, because the reason alone may be revealing what we may prefer not to reveal, which to protect is not only our right, but also obligation towards our business.

Thank you for your kind understanding.
 

Edited February 16, 2023 by IronMike

[Naquaii]

2 hours ago, IronMike said:

The reason why we do not share our business propietary knowledge, of any sorts, is because we don't have to - unless we ourselves deem otherwise. It is neither usus, nor is it sound for a business to do so, nor would I know of any business that does it. We are very much for transperancy, but transperany does not mean renouncement of private data and intellectual property - which the researched objects may not be part of, as they are potentially available to anyone - but the composition and approach very well is, also including objects that are not readily available as you purchase certain rights to use, while even the mention of certain documents may reveal more than we want, for reasons we cannot and will not ever disclose, which can be as benign as the original owner, like a museum, asking us not to do, to expensive propietary knowledge, to legal obligations and anything in between.

Additionally we are in no way contracted or obliged to prove to you that what we do is accurate to the T. We choose to do so voluntarily, and so we set a constraint for ourselves by saying "we want our modules to be as realistic as possible" - and re-affirm this constraint to the community by marketing them in this way, by making a promise. Other simulator modules - across all sims - may choose a different path and not even put in the effort to model to a certain depth, or accuracy for that matter, in full disclosure or not. Or they may even make up things. It seems to have a market, one could go and say "we did it like this, because it is fun." But we don't, we want the opposite, we say we want our modules to be as realistic as we can get them. I think looking at our modules, it is without a question that we thus also abide by these parameters that we set for them. So we put in the work to research it, put it together and then present it to you. The outcome is an amalgamation of that research, of countless hours of digesting, disecting, re-arranging, understanding and then coding that hard-gained knowledge, technical, historical, cultural and professional information, into a product that you then can experience. And with all the effort we have put in, with all the skill applied, with all the research done, we can safely say: this is the most realistic experience of a Tomcat in any sim to date, and as real as we can make it. Knowing our demeaner to also continuously evolve, continue to research and to correct earlier findings when necessary, you can also safely assume that we stay committed to the above mentioned realism long after the release of the module.

It is however not our obligation to disclose our proprietary knowledge or "trade secrets" to you to prove any of the above. Yet we do try to disclose as much as we can, and want. In the end it is our decision, and we have to weigh what is good for our business to disclose and what not. We also make ourselves accountable by putting out a module with the claim of being realistic. Anyone can go and either try and prove it or disprove it. And since we made ourselves accountable, if someone does disprove something, we have to react to that by improving the aspects in question to uphold that claim. This is why we try to be so thorough before releasing something, like gathering SME input, tester feedback and finally publicizing it to a brought community where other experts or subject matter experts can react and comment on the work, and through their input help us not only maintain a standard of realism but evolve it even further. The duty to disprove our claim however is not on us, but on the person making a counter-claim. And mind you, as you said yourself, we're doing still entertainment products for the end-consumer, that is video games, genre flight-sim or not: we are making a product which again we like to tie to historic accuracy, but ultimately still remains a product for your amusement, and not a thesis for a phd, or a scientific article for a university paper, where quoting rules apply.

Which brings me to your approach, if I may. You have a counter-claim, or at least a differing idea of what we present to you, even though backed up on our side to you in person by someone who works with military radars in his professional career on a daily basis. That is fine. More so, it is appreciated. We should always remain open to re-think our decisions, to re-visit our data, to re-verify our sources and to double check the outcome of our findings. We should always remain open to improving our products. But you cannot demand from us to prove to you that our claim is correct or false to disprove or prove your own claim. You can ask if we may share our sources with you, but when we say no, you then cannot demand it. Please be so kind and understand, that you also cannot expect us to follow up or change our modelling based on a claim that you have not backed up with any source or proven otherwise outside of putting up a theory yourself. Because contrary to us, you should present sources and factual data, if you want us to change what we presented so far. You don't have to, afterall, it is not your job, but please understand that we will not allocate costly ressources, work and time to overhauling something, which has been presented to us as wrong without any reputable source to back up your claims. Remember what I said above? If you do, we will however, because we made ourselves accountable towards what we promised. And lastly please accept it, when you ask for documents, and we say no, that it is a no which will always be given without reason, because the reason alone may be revealing what we may prefer not to reveal, which to protect is not only our right, but also obligation towards our business.

Thank you for your kind understanding.
 

 

This.

And I'd also like to add that the major example of us changing something, which is the AIM-54C change, wasn't about finding contradictory information. It was about finding new sources with additional information.

During that process we were open about that we had much better data on the AIM-54A than the AIM-54C and because of that we used those facts and then changed those parts of the baseline AIM-54A that we knew were improved in the AIM-54C to model that missile. The information we later received then got us additional info in regards to the difference between the AIM-54A and AIM-54C which we then tried to implement as best we could in the AIM-54C. The fact that we didn't change these things until we had more solid information on the AIM-54C should show our sincerity in how we use our sources imho.

In this example we have explicit sources saying the zero doppler filter was like this. No ambiguity. Added to that we also have SMEs (including myself) corroborating that early pulse doppler radars had these issues due to the antenna design and limited signal processing available. This is why later pulse doppler radar systems have specific features added combating this issue.

[RustBelt]

9 hours ago, lunaticfringe said:

It's abundantly clear how little experience you have with the process. Get yourself through the successful appeal of an MDR and come back to me. 

Seriously, we’d all love a copy of -1A if you manage to get the leg work done to get it!