Jester feedback

[Dogsbd]

Does Jester hear AWACS calls?

If not, why not?

If so why doesn't he use that BDA info to know where to steer the radar and concentrate his search? If he already does that, why can't he lock that MiG I can SEE at 15 miles... 10 miles... 5 miles.. oh well I'm switching to heaters.

That is my biggest problem with F4 Jester, he is next to useless as a (Navy term, but fits best) "Radar Intercept Officer" most of the time.

The Jester attempts at humor have grown thin on me already, but I could put up with them IF he were good at his real job. He's not. He fails getting a lock on a head on bandit 75% of the time. And yes, I do get below the bandit altitude so he's not looking into ground clutter.

[Elf1606688794]

36 minutes ago, Dogsbd said:

Does Jester hear AWACS calls?

If not, why not?

If so why doesn't he use that BDA info to know where to steer the radar and concentrate his search? If he already does that, why can't he lock that MiG I can SEE at 15 miles... 10 miles... 5 miles.. oh well I'm switching to heaters.

That is my biggest problem with F4 Jester, he is next to useless as a (Navy term, but fits best) "Radar Intercept Officer" most of the time.

The Jester attempts at humor have grown thin on me already, but I could put up with them IF he were good at his real job. He's not. He fails getting a lock on a head on bandit 75% of the time. And yes, I do get below the bandit altitude so he's not looking into ground clutter.

I have these same issues. Head on Jester never gets a lock even if I'm lower in altitude than the bandit. I end up switching to heaters or my gun. In fact, the only targets that Jester seems to lock are large targets like bombers/AWACs/tankers.

[Dogsbd]

1 minute ago, Elf1606688794 said:

I have these same issues. Head on Jester never gets a lock even if I'm lower in altitude than the bandit. I end up switching to heaters or my gun. In fact, the only targets that Jester seems to lock are large targets like bombers/AWACs/tankers.

It seems as if he doesn't know how to operate the aspect or closure rate settings. IF he were hearing AWAC's calls, like I am, he should be able to deduce what aspect/closure settings to use. 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

On 7/30/2024 at 7:39 AM, XpRiV said:

You Guy's are wearing Pants!?!

null

I won't tell anyone if you won't.

 

Edited August 3, 2024 by MiG21bisFishbedL

[Zabuzard]

He doesnt yet hear AWACS calls, but that is being worked on.

Try acquiring the head-on lock yourself, you will likely have trouble doing it as well and conclude it is mostly just the radar and not necessarily Jester using it incorrectly.

His shortcomings in that regard currently are not experimenting with the gain setting enough, which is also being worked on. You can help us by sending in working tracks of situations where he wasnt able to spot the target, but you were (by operating the radar yourself).

Aspect and Vc settings have no influence on the radar, those are manual overrides. What plays a role here, aside from the pilot positioning the aircraft proper, is the correct antenna angle and gain setting. And even then, a head-on small target will be very hard to spot until perhaps 15-20nm out in good conditions. Thats just how this radar works. Please make sure you have a solid understanding of how to operate the radar in order to ensure your Jester complains are valid. If unsure, just hand in tracks :) Cheers

[Elf1606688794]

Just now, Dogsbd said:

It seems as if he doesn't know how to operate the aspect or closure rate settings. IF he were hearing AWAC's calls, like I am, he should be able to deduce what aspect/closure settings to use. 

Exactly. We shouldn't have to tell Jester how to do his job. If we do, then he's redundant and doesn't need to be in the back seat.

1 minute ago, Zabuzard said:

Try acquiring the head-on lock yourself

If I have to do his job and mine, I might as well not fly the Phantom. I have enough to do without doing his job also.

[Zabuzard]

If I have to do his job and mine, I might as well not fly the Phantom. I have enough to do without doing his job also.

You don't and that's also not expected from you.

[Elf1606688794]

3 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

And even then, a head-on small target will be very hard to spot until perhaps 15-20nm out in good conditions.

He doesn't even lock a target that is 5nm and closing.

3 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

Please make sure you have a solid understanding of how to operate the radar in order to ensure your Jester complains are valid.

I do not know how to operate the radar from the front seat and if I have to learn Jester's job also then how am I supposed to do my job in the front seat? Frankly, I don't care to learn his job also because I already have a full plate.

[RedeyeStorm]

@Elf1606688794, you are being nasty. @Zabuzard suggestion for trying to lock it your self is not intended as a workaround but a remark that would show you how 'bad' Jester is at his job or he can't because the radar in the Phantom is not verry good in that situation. He then states that if Jester can't lock on and you can that you provide a track so Jester can be improved. You are just venting without effect.

[Zabuzard]

I do not know how to operate the radar from the front seat and if I have to learn Jester's job also then how am I supposed to do my job in the front seat? Frankly, I don't care to learn his job also because I already have a full plate.

You dont have to learn his job. But then you also have to accept that perhaps it wasnt necessarily Jesters fault that an engagement failed but instead having too high expectations of this radar.

It is a bit difficult for me to give you concrete feedback when you just say that he can't lock your bad guys without providing some details, a mission or working track file, while Jester seems to lock bandits well for many other players.

What I can tell you from debugging this type of feedback so far is that it is most of the time people not understanding the limitations of this radar good enough, expecting something from Jester that a human WSO couldnt do either (which is fair btw, we are all here to learn and improve). And if it was Jesters fault, it was usually him not having the right gain setting in a situation where the right gain is very tricky - which is being worked on.

[Elf1606688794]

Track with Jester not even seeing the target until it's inside 5nm.

No lock F-4E.trk

1 hour ago, RedeyeStorm said:

@Elf1606688794, you are being nasty. @Zabuzard suggestion for trying to lock it your self is not intended as a workaround but a remark that would show you how 'bad' Jester is at his job or he can't because the radar in the Phantom is not verry good in that situation. He then states that if Jester can't lock on and you can that you provide a track so Jester can be improved. You are just venting without effect.

It took a few minutes to create a track file, cool your jets man, there is nothing nasty about anything I've said in this thread.

[SgtPappy]

On 8/3/2024 at 5:36 AM, Zabuzard said:

Are you talking about boresight locks or in normal scan? For latter, its almost instant after you command lock (provided he sees the return), you do not have to wait for him to finish his talking.

For boresight, he waits until the target is within the 5° cone, else the chances of a bad lock are far too high. This is a frequent mistake I see on human WSOs.

Not sure what you mean with the cursor being stuck. As soon as the target is within range, it should start moving on its own. No need to exit/reenter.

Otherwise, a working track would be very much appreciated

Thanks as always Zabu! Please see the attached tracks.

I have attached one track for the boresight TD tracking. This issue makes it hard to get a lock since he's not moving the cursor onto the target. I can reproduce this every time, even when there's just 1 target merged (see 2nd youtube link). I basically point right at the target, break off and point again or sometimes at a different target and the cursor is stuck wherever he was tracking the previous target.

 

 

I can't recreate the instances when Jester takes a long time to lock onto to something. Perhaps that is user error, a distracted Jester in the merge or something has changed in the latest patch. I do notice, however, that sometimes he takes a while to return to search if you lock clutter or a target and pass it and somehow the radar is still locked on to something. Let me know if you have an explanation.

 

Need to reset cage for jester to follow target.trk Jester wont return to scan on first request.trk

[Zabuzard]

Good stuff, thanks for the tracks. Will investigate tomorrow :)

[Mainstay]

I stopped playing the F4 because like most people said at this time Jester is just not fun to fly with. Many times I entered scenarios where I know where  the enemy planes are but Jester simply can’t see / lock / find them. And then bam we are dead. 
 

I hope he gets a lot of improvement in the future. Love the plane and everything about it except Jackster at the moment.

Edited August 5, 2024 by Mainstay

[Zabuzard]

18 hours ago, SgtPappy said:

I have attached one track for the boresight TD tracking. This issue makes it hard to get a lock since he's not moving the cursor onto the target. I can reproduce this every time, even when there's just 1 target merged (see 2nd youtube link). I basically point right at the target, break off and point again or sometimes at a different target and the cursor is stuck wherever he was tracking the previous target.

Thanks for the tracks. This is a bug, I have just fixed it with the help of your tracks For CAGE/Boresight specifically it seems that the "last_seen_timestamp" of the targets werent updated, so he could not properly apply his "priority" selection to tell the targets that are actually on your screen apart from the old targets in his memory from before entering CAGE/Boresight. Leading to the target you just downed being as-recent as the other targets and having a higher priority since it was last seen at like 0.1 NM distance.

Workaround until the fix arrives in your version is as you said to exit/reenter cage quickly when you want to change targets in CAGE/Boresight Perhaps also toggling CAA on/off would do the same, thats just two quick presses of the NGS/NWS button on your stick and only takes half a second.

18 hours ago, SgtPappy said:

I can't recreate the instances when Jester takes a long time to lock onto to something. Perhaps that is user error, a distracted Jester in the merge or something has changed in the latest patch. I do notice, however, that sometimes he takes a while to return to search if you lock clutter or a target and pass it and somehow the radar is still locked on to something. Let me know if you have an explanation.

I cant really spot the issue in your track file, which is different to the video. In the video it looks like you G-locked Jester with a sudden hard turn and he locked only after the G reduced a bit. In the track I dont really see any actual locks, just Jester attempting to lock but losing the target out of sight in the heavy clutter and hence taking very long to execute the lock and also giving up once. He could have picked a better gain setting to reduce the clutter (which we are working on), but its also just a very unfortunate altitude/distance combination where targets are just naturally all within the ground clutter and altitude line etc. Very difficult to pick something up in that situation.

On 8/4/2024 at 1:16 AM, Elf1606688794 said:

Track with Jester not even seeing the target until it's inside 5nm.

Thanks for the track. Might take me a bit longer to check it while I am trying to get hands on Sinai.

(Possibly you could re-do the track on Caucasus or Syria in the meantime?)

Edited August 5, 2024 by Zabuzard

[Xtorris]

It's fun! Flying a two-seat aircraft, so not all of the workload is on the pilot. Yet, in Jester's current iteration, it's twice the workload because he is usually working against you, or simply is not responding.

[SgtPappy]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Thanks for the tracks. This is a bug, I have just fixed it with the help of your tracks For CAGE/Boresight specifically it seems that the "last_seen_timestamp" of the targets werent updated, so he could not properly apply his "priority" selection to tell the targets that are actually on your screen apart from the old targets in his memory from before entering CAGE/Boresight. Leading to the target you just downed being as-recent as the other targets and having a higher priority since it was last seen at like 0.1 NM distance.

Workaround until the fix arrives in your version is as you said to exit/reenter cage quickly when you want to change targets in CAGE/Boresight Perhaps also toggling CAA on/off would do the same, thats just two quick presses of the NGS/NWS button on your stick and only takes half a second.

I cant really spot the issue in your track file, which is different to the video. In the video it looks like you G-locked Jester with a sudden hard turn and he locked only after the G reduced a bit. In the track I dont really see any actual locks, just Jester attempting to lock but losing the target out of sight in the heavy clutter and hence taking very long to execute the lock and also giving up once. He could have picked a better gain setting to reduce the clutter (which we are working on), but its also just a very unfortunate altitude/distance combination where targets are just naturally all within the ground clutter and altitude line etc. Very difficult to pick something up in that situation.

 

Glad I could help! Thanks for checking it out and fixing it.

I did notice though that he was responding in the video: "returning to regular scan!" but he would stay locked for a while despite being awake. But maybe his voice lines play even if he's knocked out? You'll notice he responds 3 times before actually breaking lock. Would it be fair to say if he is conscious and I tell him to break lock, that should be his next priority in his task flow?

Jester being better with gain is an exciting development. He's way better at seeing things in clutter than I am but smarter gain adjustment will help me as the pilot more. On this note, I notice that when I'm in cage mode pointing down at a target, the clutter return drowns out the IFF response (I learned the hard way and killed a friendly yesterday ). I hope this isn't a big request but if I ask Jester to interrogate in while in boresight/CAGE, do you think you can program him to kill the gain and IFF the target? This way, he and I can see the friendly bars and have him respond "that's a friendly!" Right now, I need to turn him off, kill the gain entirely and then press the IFF button myself as a workaround. It would be great for immersion and also gameplay if he could do this himself. Of course, just a nice to have as I'm sure there's a lot more to work on at this time.

[Zabuzard]

Glad I could help! Thanks for checking it out and fixing it.
I did notice though that he was responding in the video: "returning to regular scan!" but he would stay locked for a while despite being awake. But maybe his voice lines play even if he's knocked out? You'll notice he responds 3 times before actually breaking lock. Would it be fair to say if he is conscious and I tell him to break lock, that should be his next priority in his task flow?
Jester being better with gain is an exciting development. He's way better at seeing things in clutter than I am but smarter gain adjustment will help me as the pilot more. On this note, I notice that when I'm in cage mode pointing down at a target, the clutter return drowns out the IFF response (I learned the hard way and killed a friendly yesterday ). I hope this isn't a big request but if I ask Jester to interrogate in while in boresight/CAGE, do you think you can program him to kill the gain and IFF the target? This way, he and I can see the friendly bars and have him respond "that's a friendly!" Right now, I need to turn him off, kill the gain entirely and then press the IFF button myself as a workaround. It would be great for immersion and also gameplay if he could do this himself. Of course, just a nice to have as I'm sure there's a lot more to work on at this time.

Sure, Ill put it on the list. Doesnt sound too difficult at first glance :)

[Xtorris]

I can put an enemy F-4E (heading 214 magnetic), 50 miles away at 20,000 feet, and Jester calls out the contact at around 42-45 miles. I can take the same mission, add in an enemy AWACS (heading 122 magnetic) roughly 6.8nm @ 127 degrees from the enemy F-4E and he won't call out either contact. He finally calls out the inbound F-4E at 9-13 miles.

This has nothing to do with the radar. It's like he becomes saturated, if there is more than one target out there.

[Zabuzard]

I can put an enemy F-4E (heading 214 magnetic), 50 miles away at 20,000 feet, and Jester calls out the contact at around 42-45 miles. I can take the same mission, add in an enemy AWACS (heading 122 magnetic) roughly 6.8nm @ 127 degrees from the enemy F-4E and he won't call out either contact. He finally calls out the inbound F-4E at 9-13 miles.
This has nothing to do with the radar. It's like he becomes saturated, if there is more than one target out there.

I appreciate your attempt of interpreting what might be happening, but that can't really be the case.

Can you share a track or mission so that we can have a quick look and investigate? Cheers

[WinOrLose]

I have not done much air to air in the Phantom so decided to give the 2v2 instant action on the Marianas a try.

As each fight is only a few minutes long I flew the mission 9 times.

From memory Jester spotted the targets on radar maybe 3 times at sub 10 miles and I believe a similar number of locks.

I think it was on 2 occasions I managed to get a sparrow off pre-merge.

In every attempt I was below the migs.

Not sure if this expected behaviour or not.

[Zabuzard]

I have not done much air to air in the Phantom so decided to give the 2v2 instant action on the Marianas a try.
As each fight is only a few minutes long I flew the mission 9 times.
From memory Jester spotted the targets on radar maybe 3 times at sub 10 miles and I believe a similar number of locks.
I think it was on 2 occasions I managed to get a sparrow off pre-merge.
In every attempt I was below the migs.
Not sure if this expected behaviour or not.

I have a different, better experience flying this mission.

Please send a track our way and we can tell you what you can improve - or possibly spot any bugs with Jester :)

[Xtorris]

1 hour ago, Zabuzard said:

I appreciate your attempt of interpreting what might be happening, but that can't really be the case.

Can you share a track or mission so that we can have a quick look and investigate? Cheers

I gave you a play-by-play of what happened in two identical encounters, which has only one variable. Yet, I am more or less being called incompetent or a liar. That's one way to lose a customer.

[Stackup]

2 hours ago, Xtorris said:

I gave you a play-by-play of what happened in two identical encounters, which has only one variable. Yet, I am more or less being called incompetent or a liar. That's one way to lose a customer.

Wow.  All Zabuzard did was ask for a track file which are insanely easy to save and upload(save track button on the mission results screen).  The track file shows what is actually going on under the hood, your play by play, no matter how detailed you think it is, will never be able to show any of that.

[Zabuzard]

7 hours ago, Xtorris said:

I gave you a play-by-play of what happened in two identical encounters, which has only one variable. Yet, I am more or less being called incompetent or a liar. That's one way to lose a customer.

I am sorry if you perceived my message as calling you incompetent, that was definitely not my intention. More that I cant start looking at the code with "okay, Jester becomes saturated with too many targets", cause this is not how it works on the technical side. Jester can handle 2 million targets simultanously without any problem, he is a computer.

If you say there is an issue, then there is an issue, I believe you. If you can provide a quick track file, then we can investigate the issue and likely spot the bug very quickly. Without track, if I am trying to replicate what you are describing, chances are quite high the issue might not occur because I probably misinterpret your description or the description perhaps misses a step that you thought is perhaps irrelevant to the bug. For example, perhaps the issue is related to the mission having wind. Or only happens on a certain map, or only around a certain airfield with a certain magnetic deviation. Or because you placed the AWACS with Jammer behavior enabled.

Essentially, based on previous experience with bug hunting, going after something like that without track has very low chances of replicating the issue. It also just makes the developers life a bit easier, as we are then able to replay the exact situation after each code-edit to see whether it got fixed. So it would be highly appreciated if you can share one, or perhaps at least your mission file

Edited August 6, 2024 by Zabuzard