Need help understanding Sparrows and Jester, pilot position

[kraze]

I watched a number of tutorial videos on this topic by a number of DCS players and everything seems to work so well for them, but for me Jester never seems to detect anyone on his radar. I tried flying very low with Migs being at 21k feet, so ground clutter wouldn't be at play, and ordering Jester to scan +3500 to +7500 feet up, 10-20k feet,  25 nm narrow, pointing the reticle straight at the enemy planes and pushing context button - no luck. No contacts show up on the radar screen. At best (and this happens VERY rarely) he would detect and report enemies when they are about 8 nm away, but at that point the closure rate is so high - I'd just use heaters.

I also tried CAGE mode and pushing the context button while pointing the reticle straight at the enemy - and about 5 seconds down the road Jester would lock something. But whatever he locks up there in the sky - it's not an enemy plane, the circle will take random sizes and RMax will jump all over the place - and Sparrow will never launch.

The only time I ever got an enemy with a Sparrow thus far is when I selected a CAGE mode, hit nose-wheel steering for auto-acquisition and then actually got to launch a missile hitting the MiG.

So I take it I'm doing something really wrong, because it looks really effortless in videos.

[fastfed]

Its bugged, anyone saying otherwise is not being honest. 

[Longiron]

The interlock seems to never allow a launch but I feel it's an STT issue, rmax and steering dot are always jumping all over and azimuth seems to be broke.

I lock a tanker off nose after cleaning jesters glasses for him, and put the tanker at 10oclock or 2 o'clock but the return on the scope just wanders, I think this erratic behavior is why we are seeing problems with the interlock being on.

[kraze]

Eh turning off interlock is not a big problem, the bigger problem I notice is that F4E AI planes in my formation easily detect enemy planes and launch sparrows from 15 nm effortlessly, but Jester doesn't detect anything, even if I directly face an enemy in the sky, as apparently AI planes work by the different rules and their radars aren't simulated on par.

[Phantom711]

vor 16 Stunden schrieb kraze:

pointing the reticle straight at the enemy planes and pushing context button - no luck.

What is your expectation of pointing the reticle at the target? What do you think this would do?

The Jester Context button only works as you have contacts on the scope. Short press cycles through the contacts. Long press locks the respective contact. Double press goes back to search.

Try the Instant Action mission on the Mariannas: Putting the fish to bed.

Works as advertised for me.

[kraze]

29 minutes ago, Phantom711 said:

What is your expectation of pointing the reticle at the target? What do you think this would do?

The Jester Context button only works as you have contacts on the scope. Short press cycles through the contacts. Long press locks the respective contact. Double press goes back to search.

Try the Instant Action mission on the Mariannas: Putting the fish to bed.

Works as advertised for me.

Eh Marianas work for me because it's all flat sea
Jester doesn't see / no contacts appear on radar on land maps with a lot of ground clutter even if you are below the guy and facing upwards so ground clutter isn't at play and your radar cone looks into space basically.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

I say, some time, doing the WSO's job by mapping some WSO radar function to the controls may be the way to go.

Still looking for how to do the radar right. Pulse radar can be harder to use than Doppler one some time. I heard @Prez may have a tutorial on the F-4E radar some day.

[Phantom711]

@kraze

Nevada map: Constant Peg III also worked for me. I only get contact on the Flogger though.

[kraze]

OK I think I found a way to somewhat improve this situation. If you tell Jester to scan 'center' elevation - he will actually scan the boresight area with a narrowed range - detecting enemies at 15-18 nm and even maintaining a decent STT lock. Unfortunately Sparrows still fail to track for whatever reason and radar cues are all over the place, but at least Jester is working.
He is still worse at it than AI F-4s though.

I realize it's a dated pulse radar, but I hope it's very WIP and it's the reason the Sparrow tutorial is missing

Edited May 28, 2024 by kraze

[Zabuzard]

OK I think I found a way to somewhat improve this situation. If you tell Jester to scan 'center' elevation - he will actually scan the boresight area with a narrowed range - detecting enemies at 15-18 nm and even maintaining a decent STT lock. Unfortunately Sparrows still fail to track for whatever reason and radar cues are all over the place, but at least Jester is working.
He is still worse at it than AI F-4s though.

I realize it's a dated pulse radar, but I hope it's very WIP and it's the reason the Sparrow tutorial is missing

If your "radar cues are all over the place", you have a bad lock and are tracking a sidelobe instead. Hence your missiles also dont hit the target.
Reattempt the lock until it is good :)

Id generally advice to not compare against the AI like that, since the AI is not running any of the fancy radar logic we created. It is instead running some regular ED logic based on a few parameters.
So there will always be a discrepancy if you compare it directly.

[kraze]

7 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

If your "radar cues are all over the place", you have a bad lock and are tracking a sidelobe instead. Hence your missiles also dont hit the target.
Reattempt the lock until it is good

Id generally advice to not compare against the AI like that, since the AI is not running any of the fancy radar logic we created. It is instead running some regular ED logic based on a few parameters.
So there will always be a discrepancy if you compare it directly.
 

Good to know. Is it possible to make Jester behave at least somewhat on par with the general AI? What I mean is - not literally copying it, but simply considering that a human WSO will have a lot less trouble selecting an appropriate "doppler mode" and a scan area, so basically maybe auto-biasing Jester towards where enemies are and their aspect, while still not making it cheat-like.

[Zabuzard]

Good to know. Is it possible to make Jester behave at least somewhat on par with the general AI? What I mean is - not literally copying it, but simply considering that a human WSO will have a lot less trouble selecting an appropriate "doppler mode" and a scan area, so basically maybe auto-biasing Jester towards where enemies are and their aspect, while still not making it cheat-like.

We will of course keep improving Jester.

But please, dont compare it against the AI. The AI is the one who _cheats_ (because it can't afford running a highly detailed simulation). You may compare him to a real WSO.

Be aware though that a real WSO will often also have issues spotting and locking bandits with this older and challenging radar.

That said, if you feel like Jester wasnt good enough in a certain situation, it would be super helpful if you can supply a track file. That will help us tune Jester better for this particular situation

[kraze]

2 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

We will of course keep improving Jester.

But please, dont compare it against the AI. The AI is the one who _cheats_ (because it can't afford running a highly detailed simulation). You may compare him to a real WSO.

Be aware though that a real WSO will often also have issues spotting and locking bandits with this older and challenging radar.

That said, if you feel like Jester wasnt good enough in a certain situation, it would be super helpful if you can supply a track file. That will help us tune Jester better for this particular situation


 

Oh I actually mean making it more like a human WSO. I don't mean giving him a radar eyes, I mean that, say, with the radar we have in F4E - a human crew member in DCS will spot contacts visually first before they even get into a "usable" radar range (which seems to be ~18 nm and less). So what I mean is biasing Jester scans towards the direction of "spots in the sky" because that's literally what I'm doing right now with the 'center' command (which seems to be forcing Jester to keep scanning that spot regardless of where the nose is pointing (naturally within limits of radar), which is sweet, so as I dive - Jester keeps scanning that area above - keep it as is, I assigned that order to a button - much help with Sparrows now).

So it's not a comparison with AI, more like giving more "human-like" autonomy to Jester, because a human WSO would totally prioritize that area if a pilot spots some dark dots in there. It's just not as easy communicating "scan 11 o'clock, about 20 degrees up" to Jester. The fact that a 'smarter', more "autonomous" Jester will counter AI's advantage - is what I mean.

Edited May 28, 2024 by kraze

[Zabuzard]

Yeah, injecting targets and points of interests from other sources like AWACS, mission data, visual spots and alike to influence and steer Jesters radar search pattern is definetly something we plan on adding rather sooner than later.
Right now, unless you tell him via the Scan Zone options otherwise (which you did), he will go through a pattern that attempts to cover the entire airspace ahead within roughly 15s, while constantly going back to center.

Iirc it was something like:
* center
* slightly up
* center
* down
* center
* up
* slightly down

with differing times spend in each. And the full pattern taking like 15s or so.

Usually, from my experience, he is able to spot most targets that a human would find at random as well. And by tuning him with the Wheel options, if expected target position is known, one can spot them even a bit earlier.