Articulated components of ground vehicles transparent to laser

[ShuRugal]

Working on doing SEAD with the apache recently, I have discovered that moving components of ground vehicles all appear to be transparent to the laser ranger/designator.  This is most obvious with radar units, with massive moving dishes which are frequently the only part of the system visible above terrain/trees/buildings.

So far, I have identified the following components of the following systems to be 100% transparent to the laser ranger/designator:

• SA-10 SR 64H6E search radar - dish
• SA-10 SR 5N66M mast-mounted search radar - the mast above the inspection platform, as well as the dish.
• SA-10 TR 30N6 track radar - radar dish and mast above the cross-brace struts.
• SA-5 TR 5N62B track radar - the entire thing.  the only part of this unit which returns radar range is the small stationary component directly bolted to the ground.  

With all of these units, you can slew the laser up and down while continuous ranging and see the range jump suddenly by several hundred meters as you cross onto/off-off the transparent parts.  when designating a transparent part, missiles impact the ground behind the unit.  when designating a correctly reflecting part, the missile impacts the unit as expected.

I will put together a track and video showing this later today.  This bug makes doing SEAD with the Apache massively inconvenient, as it requires targeting either the lower half of the unit, or the ground beneath it, which is frequently masked when trying to remain below the engagement envelope of these units.

[Flappie]

15 minutes ago, ShuRugal said:

I will put together a track and video showing this later today.

When doing so, please add a new post instead of editing the OP, otherwise we will miss your track(s).

[ShuRugal]

Sorry that took longer than anticipated.  I fucked up my test on Friday and had unusable results (to include forgetting to save the track....)

anyway, attached is my track file.   I cold-started the helicopter, in case there is some issue with my start technique which may be contributing to this.

I've test every radar model in the game except for the giant offshore platform model and the one under the giant radome.

Many models have laser reflection bounding boxed which do not match the position of the dish.  Some have laser boxes which do not at all match the visible model, period (S-300 high-altitude search radar was particularly egrigous, with less than half the model giving a laser return)

 

Test parameters:

• line of all models ~900 meters from the he helicopter (though George was creeping closer the whole test....)
• Units hostile
• units left on default behavior
• Helicopter cold-started
• LRFD set to First Return reporting
• Laser hellfires selected to give a clear indication of loss of return when aiming at targets which extended above horizon.

 

Also observed during this test.... radar hellfires have gone entirely stupid?  I have to jhave been doing something wrong, but i don't know what.  if someone could educate me, that would be nice.  Framerate really started to tank at the end when i finished the test and started shooting things.

 

track file attached, video is uploading to youtube, i will add a post for it when it finishes processing.

radarlaser.trk

[ShuRugal]

@Flappie

Video has just finished processing, see my post above for the track.  Please let me know if there's anything I need to do differently to give good test data.

 

[draconus]

7 hours ago, ShuRugal said:

Many models have laser reflection bounding boxed which do not match the position of the dish.  Some have laser boxes which do not at all match the visible model, period (S-300 high-altitude search radar was particularly egrigous, with less than half the model giving a laser return)

That's probably best seen in model viewer after loading hit boxes models.

[ShuRugal]

bump

[ShuRugal]

bump.  S300 mast radars still definitely cannot be lased on their upper portions.

[ShuRugal]

boop

[Flappie]

@ShuRugal I've just watched a good part of your video report from August. As you know, new SA-10 models have arrived in DCS 2.9, so I rechecked laser reflection using Combined Arms (way easier for me) and determined that only these parts in yellow don't reflect the laser:

Other models seem to reflect the laser just fine.

Do you agree with me?

laser SA10.trk

Edited November 27, 2023 by Flappie

[ShuRugal]

Excellent news!  i will test it today after i get off work and let you know!  Thanks for following up!

[ShuRugal]

On 11/26/2023 at 5:01 PM, Flappie said:

@ShuRugal I've just watched a good part of your video report from August. As you know, new SA-10 models have arrived in DCS 2.9, so I rechecked laser reflection using Combined Arms (way easier for me) and determined that only these parts in yellow don't reflect the laser:

Other models seem to reflect the laser just fine.

Do you agree with me?

laser SA10.trk 126.43 kB · 1 download

 

Alright, i've been able to test:

 

Clamshell and Flip Lid both now behave as you describe, which is excellent.

Big Bird's dish still does not reflect laser:

 

Neither does Square Pair:

A few others also do not, but these are the two most concerning for me, because the non-reflective portions make up very large portions of the unit, and both units easily have their lower/stationary/reflective portion obscured by buildings, trees, or terrain.  The remainder have very small non-reflecting portions.

Clamshell and Flip Lid being reflective to full height is excellent though, I don't want to take away from that.

Edited November 28, 2023 by ShuRugal