Hotfix broke the radar

[thodre]

Usually i was able to get a headon Mig 21 at about 12-20 miles - now we're at 6-12 miles. That means, the Mig with the weaker radar gets off it's Fox1s before the F-4. Was the radar really that bad?

[primus_TR]

With Jester, or with you in the WSO seat? I have also noticed that, after the update, it may be somewhat harder to tell tracks from the ground returns. Not 100% positive though, so need to test more. 

Edited June 6, 2024 by primus_TR
clarity

[thodre]

35 minutes ago, primus_TR said:

With Jester, or with you in the WSO seat? I have also noticed that, after the update, it may be somewhat harder to tell tracks from the ground returns. Not 100% positive though, so need to test more.

It's Jester. He calls out targets only under 10 miles now.

[primus_TR]

Under 10 miles is visual range, and what he's calling in that case is most likely visual contacts and not radar ones, so you cannot command a lock with the context button on them.

Jester's radar detection performance is not very satisfactory at this time (both before and after the update). I often find myself using CAA to lock on targets at less than 10 miles range that I can see visually (thanks to the spotting dot) for AIM7 shots, or go with flood shots if at all. 90% of my kills are with the AIM9. 

[thodre]

3 minutes ago, primus_TR said:

Under 10 miles is visual range, and what he's calling in that case is most likely visual contacts and not radar ones, so you cannot command a lock with the context button on them.

No, not the case. As soon as he calls them out he can lock them. That happened at ranges of 12-20 miles for a headon Fishbed. Now it's about half the distance for the same scenario. I'm not sure it's a bug or intentional - maybe the F-4 radar was that bad and the one of the Mig is overperforming. It's just that it changed with the hotfix.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

it is best to attach a short track replay example showing the dev team the issue you are seeing. 

thank you

[thodre]

Three times there wasn't even a callout when the fishbed already fired.

f4_nodetect.trk f4_nodetect2.trk f4_nodetect3.trk

[Phantom12]

IIRC from the Have Donut reports IRL the best detection capability was in MAP-B, and usually locks were achieved somewhere in the vicinity of 15-20 miles head on. Beam aspects more like 30-35 miles. Obviously this is all clutter dependent, the report stresses visual lookout is still the primary method of finding fishbeds in combat, and that matches pretty well with actual combat reports.

[Zabuzard]

Three times there wasn't even a callout when the fishbed already fired.
f4_nodetect.trk f4_nodetect2.trk f4_nodetect3.trk

Thank you, we will check the reports and see what the issue is.

It is generally important to differentiate between "i see the contact on the screen, Jester why dont you see it as well?" and "theres indeed no target on the screen, perhaps jester just doesnt set the antenna, gain and similar right to make him appear on screen".

Jester is still awaiting several planned improvements on latter topic.

[thodre]

21 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

It is generally important to differentiate between "i see the contact on the screen, Jester why dont you see it as well?" and "theres indeed no target on the screen, perhaps jester just doesnt set the antenna, gain and similar right to make him appear on screen".

I think it's the latter. Usually i see the targets right before Jester sees them on the screen - now we both don't. I already tried telling him to set the antenna center, tried both narrow modes - but no success.

[Zabuzard]

Yeah okay. The next step at the point is to see if one can find the contact in that situation with Jester disabled, controlling the Radar urself.
If one can find it easily, it simply means Jester hasnt put the right settings.

If its also not possible to find the bad guys completely manually, it is either a radar issue or just an expected limitation of the system.

Anways, thanks for sharing the tracks. The team will have a look and callback :)

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Yes in the Caucasus IA dogfight missions for example Jester sees the bandits just fine, when I give the command to lock him up through Context Long he acknowledges the order but refuses to do so. If I go through the menu Lock Bandit and select him manually, he locks him up immediately
CAA has also been extremely unreliable, on non-jamming aircraft (which shouldn't matter anyway due to the close range).
Before the hotfix all this worked just fine  

[icedstar]

I also have been dealing with this since the hotfix, before the patch I saw Jester clear up noise from the radar and see and lock targets from around 20 miles out but since the patch it doesn't clear the noise, it doesn't show any contacts in radar and of course that means that it doesn't lock up anything either. I have tried flying head on, flying lower than the enemy or higher than the enemy and nothing seems to work. I hope this get fixed because right now the sparrows are just dead weight as he doesn't even lock to what I have pointed out in the hud. 

[primus_TR]

@Zabuzard I have a question about Jester's detection algorithm. Can you take a look at the following screenshot:

In this case, there is a co-altitude bogey, left 5 degrees at 25 miles. This is a head-on Mig 21 with full Air to Air loadout. I can clearly see it. 

Should Jester be able to detect this? In this scenario, Jester could detect this target at 6 miles in one occasion, and in others (most of the time) he cannot even detect it. 

I am trying to understand the algorithm that Jester uses for detecting targets when the antenna is aimed at a target at the correct elevation. How does background noise factor in on how Jester can tell a target return from background noise?

Thank you.  

Edited June 7, 2024 by primus_TR
punctuation

[skywalker22]

Is Jester relying on RWR, it should give him a relative direction where to look for? And if he changes elevation of search by him self? 

Before the update he was doing not-so-good job at finding bandits. Didn't try "BVR" yet since update. But its looks even worse, based on this thread. Will try later on and report accordingly.

[SgtPappy]

I tried a practice mission with MiG-21s at various altitudes flying orbits. I appear to be finding them at the same ranges as I did before.

What seems to work for me is having some control of the antenna elevation and gain myself. If I move around both and illuminate a target, Jester will often find the target himself even in clutter. If he finds nothing he will reset both.

What seems to have got worse for me is how many times he'll just decide that "Oh no I lost the lock!" despite having a perfect lock on a lookup target right in front of me at 7 nm. Then as I'm approaching a firing solution, he'll just return to search. It appears to happen most often when he switches from the 10 nm display to the 5 nm display.

I'll try to reproduce the track soon.

Edited June 8, 2024 by SgtPappy

[TheFlyingHun]

Try to enable the new performance mode for the radar in the special options. It works alot better for me.

[primus_TR]

5 hours ago, SgtPappy said:

If I move around both and illuminate a target, Jester will often find the target himself even in clutter.

To help me understand,  how can you be in the WSO seat and let Jester find the target at the same time? Do you mean,  you find the target and then switch back to pilot seat? Or do you adjust gain and elevation from the pilot seat? 

Edited June 8, 2024 by primus_TR

[SgtPappy]

14 hours ago, primus_TR said:

To help me understand,  how can you be in the WSO seat and let Jester find the target at the same time? Do you mean,  you find the target and then switch back to pilot seat? Or do you adjust gain and elevation from the pilot seat? 

 

There are controls under temporary binds where you can choose to control elevation and gain on your own.

Jester will fight you but he lets you use it a bit for a few scans and resets it to his desire if the scans yield nothing.

You can also add your own controls from the WSO binds in a keyboard.lua for the pilot and take full control while turning Jester off but it's a bit risky.

Edited June 8, 2024 by SgtPappy

[primus_TR]

That's actually a very good tip. Last night I tried doing some manual gain and elevation fiddling from the pilot seat,  and found that if you can find a target that way, Jester picks it up immediately. So, very useful tip. Thank you

[Esac_mirmidon]

Where are the manual controls for the gain and elevation from pilot seat?

 

[primus_TR]

54 minutes ago, Esac_mirmidon said:

Where are the manual controls for the gain and elevation from pilot seat?

 

At the bottom of the controls page for F4E (pilot). 

[thodre]

11 hours ago, TheFlyingHun said:

Try to enable the new performance mode for the radar in the special options. It works alot better for me.

No success. Still locking only below 10 miles.

[Esac_mirmidon]

1 hour ago, primus_TR said:

At the bottom of the controls page for F4E (pilot). 

Didn´t know the pilot can control the radar from the front. Thanks for the tip

[SgtPappy]

2 hours ago, Esac_mirmidon said:

Didn´t know the pilot can control the radar from the front. Thanks for the tip

To be clear, the pilot does not control the radar in the real aircraft. The temporary section of the control bindings which has radar controls for the pilot is exactly that - a temporary workaround while Jester is improved.