Are we flying low today?

[Lt_Jaeger]

I like my buddy in the back, in both planes. Would feel lonely without him. 

 

Jester, I hope you know I love you, even if I yell at you sometimes. 

[=475FG= Dawger]

3 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Most of the things you are mentioning are bugs that have been fixed for the upcoming patch already, for example ejection. He is supposed to only eject milliseconds before impact. When he ejects in another situation, it is simply a bug.

Regarding the fuel, he can't see the fuel totalizer, so he guesstimates the state based on time and how you fly and then asks the question occasionally. Especially during combat when having a dogfight with afterburner, this was something a real WSO would have done very often and the pilot would then have aborted the fight if fuel was low.
Jester asking the question in a moment where it's not applicable is a bug. Report it and we fix it, that's the nature of development.

That said thanks for the feedback, it is on our list and some of the items have been fixed already or are currently being worked on
 

The ejection I described was warranted. The aircraft was on fire and out of control. 
 

The salient point was that Jester had several messages stacked in his queue, a few sentences of panic, his ejection call and then a call of “He is at our six!”  
 

The last message came over the intercom long after Jester and his ejection seat had cleared the aircraft. 
 

The seat clear of the aircraft should disconnect his intercom connection unless he is running a bluetooth helmet. 

It was funny so I won’t be upset if it doesn’t get fixed. 

[Grundar]

I really enjoy Jester, it's nice to have him back there doing his thing. Sure he could be completely robotic and only call out comm brevity accepted terms, but, for me at least, that takes away from the charm of having Jester in the first place.  I like that he sometimes corrects himself, I enjoy his banter at times as well.  Absolutely could it be improved upon so you don't get callouts stacking atop one another, but it doesn't occur that often.  As for the whole flying low thing, I could never figure out what it was about, at first I assumed perhaps it made him focus more on the ground and ground threats, but that didn't seem to be the case.  

[KLaFaille]

11 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Regarding the fuel, he can't see the fuel totalizer

Edited July 7, 2024 by KLaFaille

[Zabuzard]

7 minutes ago, KLaFaille said:

 

It is unrealistic to have that much possibility to lean and move your head around IRL. Usually you would be strapped in extremely tight. So we have made the decision to not allow Jester to access this value.

8 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

The salient point was that Jester had several messages stacked in his queue, a few sentences of panic, his ejection call and then a call of “He is at our six!”  

Do you remember if he was saying that after ejection happened or just after he announced his ejection but was still in the aircraft?

[KLaFaille]

1 hour ago, Zabuzard said:

It is unrealistic to have that much possibility to lean and move your head around IRL. Usually you would be strapped in extremely tight. So we have made the decision to not allow Jester to access this value.

Do you remember if he was saying that after ejection happened or just after he announced his ejection but was still in the aircraft?

The seat occupant's shoulder harness is attached to an inertial reel that works like the seat belt in a car. They can lean forward and away from the seat, but if they lean (or are jolted) forward too quickly the reel locks preventing further movement. During an ejection there's a device that, like the leg and ankle restraints, forcefully pulls the shoulder harness against the seat back. Whether that would allow a dude to lean his head against the canopy and peek, I don't know. Really, I was just having a bit of fun. At least a human player can keep an eye on the fuel, I suppose.

It's probably for the best anyhow. Wouldn't want to interrupt the hour long nap the guy in back can take during tanking. A flight of Phantoms has to take off six hours earlier than everyone else just to top up their tanks to be on time with how long it takes to fuel on the boom. I think four Hornets or about twenty Vipers would be done before one F-4 finishes.

[=475FG= Dawger]

3 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

 

Do you remember if he was saying that after ejection happened or just after he announced his ejection but was still in the aircraft?

It was definitely post ejection, which is why it was funny.

This sort of thing happens fairly often, Jester saying things very late. I get the landing checklist during landing rollout fairly often. His takeoff speed callouts get delayed by 50 knots if he first feels the need to panic about the runway we are using.

His bandit calls, are generally completely wrong and my sense is that its because it takes quite a while for him to process the information before spitting it out.

[Zabuzard]

The seat occupant's shoulder harness is attached to an inertial reel that works like the seat belt in a car. They can lean forward and away from the seat, but if they lean (or are jolted) forward too quickly the reel locks preventing further movement. During an ejection there's a device that, like the leg and ankle restraints, forcefully pulls the shoulder harness against the seat back. Whether that would allow a dude to lean his head against the canopy and peek, I don't know. Really, I was just having a bit of fun. At least a human player can keep an eye on the fuel, I suppose.
It's probably for the best anyhow. Wouldn't want to interrupt the hour long nap the guy in back can take during tanking. A flight of Phantoms has to take off six hours earlier than everyone else just to top up their tanks to be on time with how long it takes to fuel on the boom. I think four Hornets or about twenty Vipers would be done before one F-4 finishes.

Thanks. We asked our Phantom SMEs on this topic, specifically regarding the fuel gauge and all of them said that it was impossible to see the fuel gauge and it was common practice to ask the pilot during flight regarding fuel state, especially during combat. Which lead to us adding this sort of interaction to Jester.
And yes, it needs fine tuning to not trigger in odd moments.

The "refuel speed" is actually higher than for those other aircraft. That is, for the internal tanks (about 1-2min). If you want to top off everything, including the ext tanks, it can take up to 5-7min from empty. The upcoming patch also has a bugfix on this topic.

[Nealius]

How about verbal fuel check but nix the UI popup. It's the sudden UI popup that's most distracting while flying and completely ruins replay tracks on top of that. We can go through the Jester menu to set divert on our own anyways once the action settles down, so there's no need for a UI popup the moment he asks for a fuel check. It should be verbal only for the pilot to then decide what to do later, not at that specific moment, and waiting for the "W" UI to disappear is a pain.

Edited July 7, 2024 by Nealius

[Zabuzard]

1 hour ago, Nealius said:

and completely ruins replay tracks on top of that

That is something we will fix.

1 hour ago, Nealius said:

and waiting for the "W" UI to disappear is a pain.

I am not sure why this is a problem for you. You can just ignore it. We can also reduce the time its there, but the menu was designed in a way that it is completely okay to just ignore the popup when you do not want to engage it at the moment. And user feedback so far was that this really isnt a problem for anyone. So I would be interested in hearing why it is annoying for you to "wait for it to disappear"

[=475FG= Dawger]

31 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

That is something we will fix.

I am not sure why this is a problem for you. You can just ignore it. We can also reduce the time its there, but the menu was designed in a way that it is completely okay to just ignore the popup when you do not want to engage it at the moment. And user feedback so far was that this really isnt a problem for anyone. So I would be interested in hearing why it is annoying for you to "wait for it to disappear"

It shouldn't matter why it is a problem.

My preference would be for no visual popups from Jester because I interact with him with voice. 

There should be a way to mute visual popups for those who don't want them.

And Jester needs to learn some comms brevity. Speaking in interminable sentences with lots of hmm and haw is extremely annoying.

Example, if the clown is going to ask what the current fuel state is he should just say "Fuel State"

37 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

That is something we will fix.

I am not sure why this is a problem for you. You can just ignore it. We can also reduce the time its there, but the menu was designed in a way that it is completely okay to just ignore the popup when you do not want to engage it at the moment. And user feedback so far was that this really isnt a problem for anyone. So I would be interested in hearing why it is annoying for you to "wait for it to disappear"

One of the options needs to be RTB  and it needs to be a Jester Command so the fussing through the wheel is unnecessary.

 

[Zabuzard]

It does matter to us, because knowing the reason helps in finding alternative, possibly better, solutions. It is helpful for us to understand the pain point and friction rather than only getting a proposal to change something.

Your request of disabling all UI is probably easier to be accomplished through a mod (edit the files in the UI/JesterDialog folder), but then you have to memorize the response options by heart if you want to use it. Which will likely run you into issues in the soon future when we greatly expand on the dialogs and mission planning features.

Regarding brevity, we tried to capture the spirit of how it has been back in the '70-'80, a time where people smoked in the cockpit, ate steak and where efficient and precise communication also among the crew was something that was still currently being worked on.
It is understandable if you prefer a more modern approach to crew communication and your best bet for that, as of now, will likely be user mods.

Ultimately, if you do not enjoy Jester in his current EA state, it might be preferable for you to wait a few months until a lot of these early-day issues have been fixed. Until then, you can also mute Jester through the UI, or perhaps prefer flying with a human WSO.

[=475FG= Dawger]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Regarding brevity, we tried to capture the spirit of how it has been back in the '70-'80, a time where people smoked in the cockpit, ate steak and where efficient and precise communication also among the crew was something that was still currently being worked on.

I remember Vietnam and was flying airplanes in 1982. I had a moustache Olds would have been jealous of when I was hauling freight in the late 80’s. Worked with many veterans of the Phantom as well most other aircraft in the inventory of the time. 
 

You didn’t capture the spirit of those days. You captured a strange Hollywood false impression. 

Its pretty simple. The devil may care jokester is a thin veil over a competent professional, not his entire being.
 

Make him competent first and then teach him some jokes. 

Edited July 8, 2024 by =475FG= Dawger

[Nealius]

18 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

I am not sure why this is a problem for you. You can just ignore it.

It's visually distracting, and lingers right in the middle of the instrument panel, unlike a one-line verbal "fuel-check" that lasts one second, if that. "It's not a problem for me and the limited selection of testers we asked therefore shouldn't be a problem for everyone else" (otherwise known as bias) isn't valid reasoning for invalidating our gripes.

  

17 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

you can also mute Jester through the UI

Muting unfortunately doesn't hide the W popup on fuel check or the low altitude check, though logically it should, and might actually be a reasonable workaround for those of us who don't want it to pop up at all.

Edited July 8, 2024 by Nealius

[Zabuzard]

26 minutes ago, Nealius said:

isn't valid reasoning for invalidating our gripes.

You must have misunderstood me here. No one is invalidating anything, we are taking the feedback very serious and are always interested in improving our product so that everyone has an enjoyable time.

I am just trying to understand the underlying problem better to develop the best solution for it. For example, if you say its visually distracting and blocking parts of the main panel, an alternative approach could be to make it more transparent or move it elsewhere or make it show/hide more dynamically instead of following the suggestion of "just remove the feature entirely".

Edited July 8, 2024 by Zabuzard

[SgtPappy]

6 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

You must have misunderstood me here. No one is invalidating anything, we are taking the feedback very serious and are always interested in improving our product so that everyone has an enjoyable time.

I am just trying to understand the underlying problem better to develop the best solution for it. For example, if you say its visually distracting and blocking parts of the main panel, an alternative approach could be to make it more transparent or move it elsewhere or make it show/hide more dynamically instead of following the suggestion of "just remove the feature entirely".

 

Perhaps the prompt can happen while he is aligning the INS since you're just waiting anyway.