Confusion or bug (or both)? Radar makes friendly flights turn into white boxes

[Corrigan]

When my radar is off, a friendly flight (also an F-16CM) shows as a hollow green circle. 

When I turn the radar on, it turns into a filled white box. 

 

• Is this behaviour intended? Does not white mean "unknown"? How is a contact going from friendly to unknown when an additional sensor is put on it? 
• If I add the aircraft to my flight by adding his STN in the DLINK menu in the DED, while flying, the behaviour is hollow blue circle -> filled blue circle instead, which makes much more sense to me. 
• With AWACS in the mission I get the behaviour hollow green circle -> filled green circle when I put my radar onto a friendly.

 

So I guess the question is, why are wingmen treated differently than friendly flights, in that they stay "friendly" when correlated with an ownship radar contact? And which behaviour is correct?  

Attached is a simple mission showing my setup -- two airstarted aircraft. 

 

Thanks 

DLtest.miz

 

 

Edited May 10, 2024 by Corrigan
attached images

[jubuttib]

White just means contact/track, by default the radar doesn't know whether it's a friend or foe without doing an IFF interrogation.

The reason the green "goes away" is because the radar symbology goes on top of the DL symbology and covers it. The two don't combine into a single contact, they stay separate, F-16 in-game doesn't do sensor fusion like that.

Edited May 10, 2024 by jubuttib

[WHOGX5]

7 hours ago, jubuttib said:

White just means contact/track, by default the radar doesn't know whether it's a friend or foe without doing an IFF interrogation.

The reason the green "goes away" is because the radar symbology goes on top of the DL symbology and covers it. The two don't combine into a single contact, they stay separate, F-16 in-game doesn't do sensor fusion like that.

 

Actually, what should happen in real life for our DCS tape of F-16CM-50 is that the onboard and DL track should infact be correlated and the track identity should mipple between the onboard idenity and the DL identity if there is a disagreement. It is correct that the F-16C cannot correlate its own IFF interrogations to tracks detected by its radar, but instead it gets other aircrafts correlated IFF interrogations via DL to use in its own onboard identification process, based on ID criteria loaded via the DTC.

[jubuttib]

Interesting, I wish that would also happen in-game.

[Comrade Doge]

That contact should clearly correlate to show a green circle, as Link 16 declares it as such on the net, and ownship NCTR didn't provide a disagreement. It'll correlate right away to a friendly.

Same logic should apply for Hostiles.

[Nedum]

Maybe I understand something wrong (and that often ).

If the contact is a friendly in the same datalink network, or the information comes from an AWACS, the contact should be shown as a green circle, as long as I didn't track the contact (s.d.).

Is the following right?

All filled symbols are only shown, if I track the same target and the following happens:

Red filled triangle: I did an IFF scan (TMS long left), and the scan shows an enemy, and another datalink bro has the same result.

White filled square: I track the target, my IFF check shows inv, and the same happens for another datalink sender.

Yellow filled square:  The result of my scan of the tracked target and the one of the datalink sender is different.

Green filled circle (dot): My result of the same track and the result from datalink sender show it's a friendly.

What I want to know. In which situations should I see hollowed out yellow squares? What must happen to see this symbolic?

As I understand, the difference during an active datalink is, I am not tracking the tracks. I only get the information from the datalink senders.

If this is right, why I always see filled out yellow or white squares as long I am a member of a datalink, even I have locked nothing?

 

Edited May 17, 2024 by Nedum

[Comrade Doge]

12 hours ago, Nedum said:

Maybe I understand something wrong (and that often ).

If the contact is a friendly in the same datalink network, or the information comes from an AWACS, the contact should be shown as a green circle, as long as I didn't track the contact (s.d.).

Is the following right?

All filled symbols are only shown, if I track the same target and the following happens:

Red filled triangle: I did an IFF scan (TMS long left), and the scan shows an enemy, and another datalink bro has the same result.

White filled square: I track the target, my IFF check shows inv, and the same happens for another datalink sender.

Yellow filled square:  The result of my scan of the tracked target and the one of the datalink sender is different.

Green filled circle (dot): My result of the same track and the result from datalink sender show it's a friendly.

What I want to know. In which situations should I see hollowed out yellow squares? What must happen to see this symbolic?

As I understand, the difference during an active datalink is, I am not tracking the tracks. I only get the information from the datalink senders.

If this is right, why I always see filled out yellow or white squares as long I am a member of a datalink, even I have locked nothing?

 

 

No this is not right. Red filled triangle will show when there is a red hollow triangle on the network, and your radar sees that same target. No IFF / NCTR needed. Filled symbols simply mean your ownship radar sees the contact.

[RyanR]

[Nedum]

17 hours ago, Comrade Doge said:

No this is not right. Red filled triangle will show when there is a red hollow triangle on the network, and your radar sees that same target. No IFF / NCTR needed. Filled symbols simply mean your ownship radar sees the contact.

So, the current behavior in DCS is wrong?

I have by 100 % to bug and NCTR a target before it's turning fully red. Even if I turn my radar off, all tracks are fulfilled. Maybe this could be the current radar bug, but I don't know.

When my radar sees the hollow triangle, it turns to a full yellow square, and only if I NTCR the bugged contact, the yellow square turns to a fulfilled red triangle.

All !!not!! friendly contacts turn instantly into a yellow fulfilled square, as soon my radar see them. Only "friendly" contacts turn into white fulfilled squares from time to time, like RyanR shows.

But all that makes in no way any sense. How can my radar without any NTCR or IFF decide what kind of object the contact is? How do I get all the different colors, if there is no way the radar can say it's a Hostile, Unknown, or Suspect Target? And again, In what situation should I see the hollowed out squares (white and yellow)?

I never saw hollow squares with the datalink connected. No matter the radar is on or off.

The current way in what situation the contacts became a special symbolic, makes in no way any sense to me.

Without the Datalink I can see much more details for my tracks.

I can see if a target is a tracked target, a system target or a bugged target. With datalink on, I can't see this anymore, and that is total BS in my eyes.

How can I see what targets are system or bugged targets? All the good things I get without datalink are gone, but why? And why is the NTCR or IFF not necessary anymore?

Is there a manual that explains my questions? The current F16 manual doesn't do it.

Edited May 19, 2024 by Nedum

[Comrade Doge]

3 hours ago, Nedum said:

So, the current behavior in DCS is wrong?

I have by 100 % to bug and NCTR a target before it's turning fully red. Even if I turn my radar off, all tracks are fulfilled. Maybe this could be the current radar bug, but I don't know.

When my radar sees the hollow triangle, it turns to a full yellow square, and only if I NTCR the bugged contact, the yellow square turns to a fulfilled red triangle.

All !!not!! friendly contacts turn instantly into a yellow fulfilled square, as soon my radar see them. Only "friendly" contacts turn into white fulfilled squares from time to time, like RyanR shows.

But all that makes in no way any sense. How can my radar without any NTCR or IFF decide what kind of object the contact is? How do I get all the different colors, if there is no way the radar can say it's a Hostile, Unknown, or Suspect Target? And again, In what situation should I see the hollowed out squares (white and yellow)?

I never saw hollow squares with the datalink connected. No matter the radar is on or off.

The current way in what situation the contacts became a special symbolic, makes in no way any sense to me.

Without the Datalink I can see much more details for my tracks.

I can see if a target is a tracked target, a system target or a bugged target. With datalink on, I can't see this anymore, and that is total BS in my eyes.

How can I see what targets are system or bugged targets? All the good things I get without datalink are gone, but why? And why is the NTCR or IFF not necessary anymore?

Is there a manual that explains my questions? The current F16 manual doesn't do it.

 

Yes the current DCS implementation is wrong. There are references that point to that, and despite ED telling us it's correct-as-is, there is no evidence we know of that backs up their claim, so it's probably bad manual interpretation.

The primary issue lays in thinking that in order to fill up a symbol, the radar needs to do identification of some sort (NCTR), which is wrong. Filling up symbols (correlation) has nothing to do with identification, it just happens when the FCR sees the same target as the Link 16 net, at the same position in the sky. Thus, it turns a hollow symbol into a filled up one, retaining the original "color" of the symbol. This would be the correct behavior. No NCTR/IFF is required. It's as simple as radar sees target -> fills up the hollow symbol (whichever color it may be).

Currently in DCS, for some unknown reason, this correlation also changes the color/identity, and it requires NCTR to change the color back to the original Link 16 one. Which does not make sense, as correlation/filling does not depend on NCTR as previously established.

I think they've made this confusion by mixing up correlation (filling existing symbols) and identification (change symbol color by means of NCTR), 2 different concepts in the F-16, and slapped them together to result this mix.

It's a slim chance it's gonna be fixed if you ask me, we've had this report ad-nauseaum without any progress. I just turn off Link 16 in the FCR by IFF Outboard, and only use the HSD to see Link 16.