Issue with GB6s, LS6, GBU-12 and LD-10

[LeSeccyeth]

Hello,

After not flying the Jeff for about 6 months, I can't manage to use properly any GB6, LS6-250, GBU-12 and LD-10.

First, the LD-10 fly in straight line for like 100m then explode. Same result with ACT, PAS or SP modes, I even tried with WPT and TPOD for ACT mode.

GB6s and LS6-250 (didn't try the 100 or 500) are flying straight to the target, by that I mean directly on the ground in front of it. I tried with PP, A/G radar and TPOD same results again.

GBU-12 doesn't seem to follow laser. This one is probably on me but...

 

By the way PL5, LD-10, C701 IR/TV are working perfectly fine. I'll try more weapons when I have time.

Also Chuck's guide and every tutos I saw on youtube had a AUTO/MANUAL button when using the TPOD, at that place I have a LASER button which only seems to turn on and off the laser...

I have been on this for a week and I really start to think this is some bugs...

Track and log just to show their behavior.

 

Best regards.

dcs.log JF-17 test GB6 GBU12 LD-10.trk

Edited July 27, 2024 by LeSeccyeth

[razo+r]

Some things on the TGP have changed, depending on how old the video is that you were watching, you'll see a depricated version of the implementation. 

As for GB6/LS6, have you made sure that you did a GC alignment (in case of a ground start)? 

[LeSeccyeth]

Since I was trying stuff I mostly did it from an airborn Jeff. I did it from ground start a few times but it made no differences, also it was with fast alignment.

I'll try with GC alignment next time just in case.

[tekwoj]

I watched the replay and:

LD-10:

- the active one: lofts and reaches the target zone, but hits between 2 units, try with a single one in case it was issue with seeker unable to pick a target.

- the passive one: it doesn't loft and simply doesn't have the range to reach the target zone, passive and sp launches need to be from high altitude or you have to loft "manually" by angling up.

GB6:

- everything seems to work fine? Flies to target, opens above and destroys everything in the area correctly. Both GB6 and LS6 have minimal and maximal range and might not reach target if launched outside of those.

GB-12:

- hits the designated target

 

One note, if you set up your weapons ahead, you may want to use weapon pages rather than click the wpn button and switch the weapon on page. To do this use the A/S1 button (1st in top row) on SMS MFD. Then select page you want to configure. Whatever you set up on page will be remembered on that page. (you set up GB6 PP mode that was later back to TOO)

TGP LSR now pretty much works in auto mode all the time. The laser turns on automatically few seconds before impact. You can press the LSR MFD button to turn it on manually. You'll se LS and timer counting down on the tgp screen.

 

[LeSeccyeth]

This is weird, I added a video of what happens on my side in the first message and everything goes wrong.

Still thanks for the tips, I'll try them later and see if it helps...

[tekwoj]

Yeah, your track file for me works fine, so I wonder what's up. Maybe try replaying that track file, see if it's still bad, if yes record a video and put in on youtube?

[LeSeccyeth]

That's what I did and it's still bad, strange...

 

[tekwoj]

That's crazy, this is not at all what I see in your track file, the GB6 explodes above targets and destroys them all before the GBU12 hits.

Here's how it looks on my side

 

I saw in the logs that you have a good deal of mods installed, my first guess would be at least one of them is interfering.

[tae.]

On 7/26/2024 at 9:38 PM, razo+r said:

Some things on the TGP have changed, depending on how old the video is that you were watching, you'll see a depricated version of the implementation. 

As for GB6/LS6, have you made sure that you did a GC alignment (in case of a ground start)? 

Do you, or anyone else for that matter, know why we have to do a GC align for GPS guided munitions to work correctly though? Surely if we have the HNS active (INS+GPS) then we don't need to worry about INS drift, as the GPS will correct it for us.

Yet it does seem that doing a FAST align can result in very bad accuracy with the GB6 and LS6 bombs. I don't know any better, so it feels like more of a bug without an adequate explanation, which I haven't been able to find yet.

Edited July 28, 2024 by tae.

[razo+r]

20 minutes ago, tae. said:

Do you, or anyone else for that matter, know why we have to do a GC align for GPS guided munitions to work correctly though? Surely if we have the HNS active (INS+GPS) then we don't need to worry about INS drift, as the GPS will correct it for us.

Yet it does seem that doing a FAST align can result in very bad accuracy with the GB6 and LS6 bombs. I don't know any better, so it feels like more of a bug without an adequate explanation, which I haven't been able to find yet.

 

Well, FAST align seems to make the INS drift quicker than GC align, which is a similar behaviour to other INS systems in DCS.

Why GPS is not correcting it could be because GPS is restricted to the blue coalition only in DCS (I think), and perhaps you flew it on the RED coalition without the "unrestricted SATNAV" option enabled. That's just my assumption and up for testing though.

[LeSeccyeth]

On my side, in the video I've shown it was BLUEFOR with unrestricted stanav, but I still didn't have time to test with GC alignment.

[tae.]

After some further testing it really does seem to me that INS drift is not corrected whatsoever by HNS/GPS for GPS guided weapons and potentially all weapons in the current patch. Doing a GC ALIGN seems to *help* to circumvent the issue (as INS drift is slowed down), but the core problem is still there.

I tried dropping a few different weapons after multiple flights in the same aircraft, on one GC ALIGN and with HNS ON set to INS+GPS - the accuracy gets progressively worse and worse each flight, to the point of the weapons missing by huge margins by the 4th-5th flight..

Would appreciate if others could test too and report if they are having the same issue, just to make sure it's not me doing something wrong although I can't imagine what that might be.

Otherwise if somebody could explain how this could still be classed as correct behaviour that would also be nice, but right now it seems to me that it is a bug.

Just to clarify - doing a GC ALIGN and heading straight to targets appears to work well, but accruing any INS drift, whether on FAST or GC ALIGN, doesn't seem to be corrected by the HNS at all when employing weapons.

If I have time, I will try to test more and see if I can figure out just how much is affected, because maybe it is more than just the weapons that are affected.

Edit: After reading some other recent bug reports on here, it seems it may also be several issues compounding on top of one another, I don't really have the time to test all of these combined (point track causing inaccuracy, PP points being several metres off for some reason). No matter what, something is very messed up with the weapon accuracy unless you do a GC ALIGN and go straight to your target with zero messing about - even then seems to be questionable sometimes. Would be great if more people can test this out.

Edited July 28, 2024 by tae.

[tae.]

Another update after further testing.

I tried in both singleplayer and multiplayer doing an air-start - it is impossible to reproduce the bug that way (and at this point I am nearly certain that it is a bug!). So, HNS works fine with air-start but NOT cold start. I am currently unsure about hot starts, needs tested.

I even tried to force heavy drift situations by pulling lots of G for 30 minutes straight. I did this with the HNS off (INS only) as a "control" and then with it on, on an air-started aircraft. With HNS off it gave results I would expect with a cold-started plane having the issue - in other words, it sort of confirms that HNS doesn't work from a cold start. Meanwhile, leaving the HNS on meant that after 30 minutes of pulling G, then dropping weapons, they are still pinpoint accurate.

Pinpoint accuracy is what I would expect with cold and hot started aircraft, but at least for cold starts, there is some kind of issue that results in drift even when GPS is available and turned on, rendering most of the weapons inaccurate or useless almost immediately on FAST align, and after a slightly longer time on GC align (30+ min of flying maybe several metres of error, 60+ min you can expect completely unusable accuracy).

Additionally, I would like to supply a track file or something helpful like that, but as I understand it, cold-start requires ground crew menu in JF-17 which will immediately desync/break the track. Furthermore, the bug takes a minimum of 30-60 minutes to reproduce, I feel like even if track file worked it would be impractical. If there is anything I can provide that is not too cumbersome that would help in fixing this then would be happy to try.

Edit: tested hot starts too (HNS already enabled, just like in air-start) and cannot reproduce the bug. For whatever reason, HNS is inoperative specifically on cold started JF-17. Should also add that so far, I have only been able to reproduce the issue in multiplayer, have not tested cold-start in singleplayer.

Edit Edit: After way more testing I am having trouble reproducing even in multiplayer where it was happening fairly frequently. I am not doing anything different but I am trying to figure out how to reproduce, currently everything is back to working fine for me, which is quite puzzling. If I figure out what was causing my issues previously I'll post a separate bug report. Right now everything is working again even with FAST align.

Edited August 4, 2024 by tae.

[LeSeccyeth]

I only tested air-start and cold-start but had the same issues in both cases.

On 7/28/2024 at 3:35 AM, tekwoj said:

I saw in the logs that you have a good deal of mods installed, my first guess would be at least one of them is interfering.

That's a good idea ! I'll try without the mods next time.

 

Edit: Looks like it was due to a mod... Everything works fine now. It was olds mods I totally forgot about and the one that seems to cause the issue was pw-dev_script (needed for DCS UFC and DCS Moving Map).

When I tried I didn't encounter any problem with accuracy (didn't have time for extended tests) but I had a few times ground tracking isssues as mentioned in others threads. I'll wait until the temperatures drop before I test more (I don't need a heater even in winter, imagine in summer lol).

Edited July 31, 2024 by LeSeccyeth

[papaz]

Alright so I wasn't imagining things. For a long time now, GPS guided weapons cannot accurately hit their intended targets in multiplayer. GC alignment + HNS not helping.
Are the devs aware of this problem?

[tae.]

On 8/13/2024 at 8:24 AM, papaz said:

Alright so I wasn't imagining things. For a long time now, GPS guided weapons cannot accurately hit their intended targets in multiplayer. GC alignment + HNS not helping.
Are the devs aware of this problem?

I don't think the devs know, I am still doing a ton of testing trying to locate and be able to reliably reproduce the issue. I believe it may be something to do with JF-17s spawned via the new dynamic spawn system, but I am not sure yet. It just so happens when I saw this thread and wrote my initial messages in here, that I was flying the JF-17 almost entirely on an MP server using dynamic slots, which led me to make many incorrect assumptions and jump to conclusions.

I have tested just about every other combination of parameters and can no longer reproduce the bug (singleplayer cold start, hot start, air start, and MP static slots). I have had perfect success employing JF-17 weapons in all of these tests - in fact, the weapons are actually too accurate! In total I have probably tried reproducing this bug for about 20-30 hours with no success. I have only had issues with this when flying from dynamic slots in MP, so that is what I will test more next.

I should have time to test further either today or next week, but can you remember if you flew from dynamic slots in MP? It would be very helpful.
 

Edited August 18, 2024 by tae.

[papaz]

7 hours ago, tae. said:

I don't think the devs know, I am still doing a ton of testing trying to locate and be able to reliably reproduce the issue. I believe it may be something to do with JF-17s spawned via the new dynamic spawn system, but I am not sure yet. It just so happens when I saw this thread and wrote my initial messages in here, that I was flying the JF-17 almost entirely on an MP server using dynamic slots, which led me to make many incorrect assumptions and jump to conclusions.

I have tested just about every other combination of parameters and can no longer reproduce the bug (singleplayer cold start, hot start, air start, and MP static slots). I have had perfect success employing JF-17 weapons in all of these tests - in fact, the weapons are actually too accurate! In total I have probably tried reproducing this bug for about 20-30 hours with no success. I have only had issues with this when flying from dynamic slots in MP, so that is what I will test more next.

I should have time to test further either today or next week, but can you remember if you flew from dynamic slots in MP? It would be very helpful.
 

 

Last time I experienced the issue was on Grayflag Marianas, from a normal slot. Weapons were also inaccurate from Afghanistan standard slot spawn.

[tae.]

17 hours ago, papaz said:

Last time I experienced the issue was on Grayflag Marianas, from a normal slot. Weapons were also inaccurate from Afghanistan standard slot spawn.

Interesting. I did end up testing dynamic slots yesterday and, frustratingly, they also work fine. It seems to me that whatever was causing the issue for me was inadvertently fixed in one of the last few hotfixes maybe. I went from completely missing every GPS guided weapon (by huge margins, like two blocks over) to now hitting everything with pinpoint accuracy, without changing anything that I did.

As per previous replies, if I find anything else out I'll be back with more info but for now I have spent a lot of time trying to "break" the JF-17 again and I somehow can't anymore, the HNS seems to work perfectly again for me even on a FAST align.

Edited August 19, 2024 by tae.

[tae.]

I figured it out - at least what has been affecting me.
 

In the 5 years I have been playing, I have never been gaslit by a bug so hard  seems that a few of the missions and multiplayer servers have Unrestricted SATNAV enforced off, and it somehow affects even BLUFOR JF-17s. I had this enabled in some but not all of the missions I had locally, and I'm sure I've flown on multiplayer servers with it both enforced and not. Which explains why I have had such trouble figuring out what it was, and why it seemed to rear its head at complete random.

Hopefully I am correct in viewing this as a bug? It seems to me that it is.

Edited August 20, 2024 by tae.