Jester feedback

[Zabuzard]

18 minutes ago, RavenFrost said:

intendet I guess. If I chase a bandit he locks him, but it seems he doesn't adjust the Aspect Switch for the Sparrow above 5nm. Because they go dump several

Thanks for your investigations and tracks

The Aspect Switch is only relevant if you launch Sparrows without a radar lock. Jester learns in the upcoming update how to do that. He will offer the use of (regular) BORESIGHT mode and will offer changing the target aspect for a no-lock shot via the Context Commands (also in CAGE/BORESIGHT mode). The manual has details on this already

https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/radar.html#dogfight

[aaronwhite]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Yeah agreed. There is a section that explains Jester features:

https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/overview.html

But overall the manual lacks "tutorials" and generally some "hands on" guides. As in, not just explaining what each switch does, but also explaining how that should be used all together.

The manual isnt really an ideal place to teach these things and we hope to cover those aspects better with in-game trainings and YT videos and then perhaps embed/link that in the manual. That said, if someone submits a PR to the (open source) manual that adds a written "guide", would definitely appreciate and merge it

That's a good point. I guess explaining all of that can be a bit tough in a written manual. I know it's tough to find time to do all of that, and wish I understood air combat enough to help out on my end!

[aaronwhite]

12 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Creating 80 plus versions of a word solely used to express hesitation is pointless development and incredibly annoying. 
 

I get that HB was trying to create a “personality” for the clown meant to mimic the less formal demeanor of military aviation from days gone by. 
 

The problem is they failed miserably in the attempt and neglected important aspects in the process. 
 

It is funny that you think I am harsh. My personality is much more reflective of the way we were back then. Jester is a cartoonish, imaginary version of an air crewmember from the last century. 
 

And if HB can’t take unvarnished appraisals of their creation, they are going to be hopelessly behind the power curve trying to make a ‘realistic’ Phantom WSO. 

At least he is easy to GLOC. 

My point is that you can be critical without being insulting. No one wants to come and read through someone just dumping all over the work they dumped hundreds of hours into. No one, least of all Heatblur, are saying Jester is perfect or that their way of implementing it is perfect. 

People like to conflate "being rude on the internet" with stuff like "unvarnished appraisals" and it's goofy. You can be critical without having to belittle people. And considering they worked with F-4 crewmembers, I'd wager a guess that they have some idea of how crew communications may have gone.

[WinOrLose]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

So first of, thank you for the tracks! What I am seeing on my screen looks all normal and correct to me.
I will go through all the tracks and explain whats going on. If something different happened to you when you played it, we have to investigate why (perhaps you have the radar performance special options enabled?).

In case my description lines up with your experience, I suspect the issue might just be misunderstanding of how to control Jester, i.e. when to use which Context Command. For that, I would suggest having a quick read of:
https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/overview.html
https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/radar.html
And practice until it clicks

Here we go.

Track 1:

* Jester detects both bad guys at 21nm by himself, which is very reasonable for this radar and a small fighter aircraft coming at nose-aspect
* at 10nm and 4nm you command Jester to switch the targets (SHORT press), you are not commanding him to lock (LONG press)

Track 2:

* This time you approach them with a slight angle, RCS increases and Jester can spot them at 25nm already and would be ready for a lock
* Jester is ready for a lock the entire time but you never give him the command.

Track 3:

* Again, approach from the side yields higher RCS, spotting and ready for lock at 25nm
* You are flying pretty much at the sideways limit of the radar though, so he loses sight at 20nm
* Then you are turning into them and they appear back on the screen at 17nm
* at 4nm (very late) you are giving the command to lock
* at 3nm Jester obtained a solid lock
* with the bandit at 1nm you are entering a hard turn with the target on the gimbal limit while it is deploying chaff. that broke the radar lock and Jester returns to scan mode
* you command him now to LOCK the target he just lost out of sight, so he is waiting a few seconds for it to re-appear on screen, which it never does
* instead, you probably intended to command him to lock the other guy, i.e. first tell Jester to switch targets (SHORT), then lock (LONG). Watch where his cursor is to tell who you are commanding to lock, it is still on where he lost the previous guy, not the other guy
* Also, at ranges below 5nm you should consider switching to CAGE/BORESIGHT mode instead to enable Jester to "lock the target on your nose" instead, much easier to use in a Dogfight.

Track 4:

* Similar attack profile, targets spotted at 23nm
* Command to lock at 4nm, at the same time you are executing a hard maneuver, so Jester fails to lead the target correctly with the cursor (as the proper position would be outside of screen bounds), you moved the target out of screen, Jester lost it and gave up on the lock attempt

Track 5:
* targets spotted and ready to lock at 23nm
* no lock command or anything given, you guys merge and overshoot while Jester was ready to lock the entire time
 

 

Thank you - I really appreciate the time and effort looking into this. There is clearly something not quite right as what I am seeing in the game is different to what you are seeing in the tracks.

Can you elaborate on the radar performance switch, if its the option for lower spec computers then I don't have that selected.

 

Track 1

My guess is the contact didn't appear on my screen until 10m which is why that's the first time I pressed the Jester button.

 

Track 2

From memory it was closer but otherwise no comments.

 

Track 3

No contact in game until the short range.

I purposefully didn't use boresight as it was a Jester test.

 

Track 4

No contact in game until the short range.

I purposefully didn't use boresight as it was a Jester test.

 

Track 5

No contact in game.

 

I think I will try and video the tracks to see if there is a discrepancy between what I am seeing in the game and what the tracks are showing.

 

I'm genuinely hopeful its just me being stupid.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

2 hours ago, WinOrLose said:

what I am seeing in the game is different

Do you possibly have mods installed which might interfere?

[WinOrLose]

10 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Do you possibly have mods installed which might interfere?

I think I have the A4 mod and a cockpit mod for the F14.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

4 minutes ago, WinOrLose said:

I think I have the A4 mod and a cockpit mod for the F14.

Perhaps try disabling those for a bit until you can test the mission again, and see if anything changed? Mods can cause weird interference sometimes. 

[WinOrLose]

2 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Perhaps try disabling those for a bit until you can test the mission again, and see if anything changed? Mods can cause weird interference sometimes. 

Thanks - I’ll give that a try. 

[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.

I decided to revisit this. The couple past sessions on the Cold War server, I've been flying high to get better contrast on the radar. Things go pretty well initially - Jester will see the contact and even I can see it easily on the repeater (yay!) at around 9 nm. He focuses on it and I tell him to lock it up via Voice Attack and he immediately confirms the request. 5 seconds pass as he changes some scope settings. 5 more seconds pass as the bandit gets closer. Perhaps another 5 seconds, and we've merged. See video below (sorry for the very quiet sound):

 

The second time this happens (see below), you can see once again that Jester and I both have a clear view of the contact but after confirming my command, he does not lock instantly - 3 or 4 seconds pass until I decide to lock it with my own controls and then turn off Jester so he does not decide to take control and unlock it. It would be great if he reacted faster to this very easily-visible target. In the interim, can we have Jester not unlock a target unless we request him to? It can be a little frustrating to wait for him to lock something such that I need to lock the bandit myself and then not forget to turn him off in fear that he'll unlock while I'm guiding a missile.

 

Finally, please see the attached tracks. I was unable to reproduce the very very long amount of time Jester takes to lock in the previous videos, but it does seem to take him longer when you ask him to lock while he is in his "focus" loop, and even longer when there is clutter around. I think that makes sense except for the fact that in the videos I posted, the target is extremely obvious with no clutter close enough to it to lock. IMO, Jester should have no problem locking this kind of constant near-instantly.

Jester is way better than me at finding/seeing targets in clutter and his scans often find something which is great for an old radar that's not really meant to search. So I think Jester would be even better if this could be resolved or improved.

 

Jester takes time to lock bandit 2.trk Jester takes time to lock bandit.trk

[609_Relentov]

I've had better luck getting Jester to lock a target using the new Jester radar/boresight commands, but of course that means you have to be close enough see the target (even as a dot), so you can place it within the HUD reticle.  Here's an excerpt of the procedure I use:

• Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > Enter BST
• As needed, request for Jester to adjust target aircraft aspect:
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > NOSE Aspect (default ) Target is flying towards you head-on
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > TAIL Aspect: Target is flying away from you (i.e. a tail chase)
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > FORWARD Aspect: Target is flying towards you but not head-on
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > AFT Aspect: Target is flying obliquely away from you (i.e. not a tail chase) 
• Maneuver aircraft, aligning target aircraft within HUD reticle

You can then either have Jester lock the target (via Jester Context Action – click & hold) and then launch the AIM-7, or don't lock (i.e. flood mode) and launch the AIM-7 but you must keep the target aircraft within the HUD reticle until the missile hits.

Edited August 24, 2024 by 609_Relentov

[SgtPappy]

22 hours ago, 609_Relentov said:

I've had better luck getting Jester to lock a target using the new Jester radar/boresight commands, but of course that means you have to be close enough see the target (even as a dot), so you can place it within the HUD reticle.  Here's an excerpt of the procedure I use:

• Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > Enter BST
• As needed, request for Jester to adjust target aircraft aspect:
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > NOSE Aspect (default ) Target is flying towards you head-on
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > TAIL Aspect: Target is flying away from you (i.e. a tail chase)
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > FORWARD Aspect: Target is flying towards you but not head-on
  • Jester Command: Radar > Boresight > AFT Aspect: Target is flying obliquely away from you (i.e. not a tail chase) 
• Maneuver aircraft, aligning target aircraft within HUD reticle

You can then either have Jester lock the target (via Jester Context Action – click & hold) and then launch the AIM-7, or don't lock (i.e. flood mode) and launch the AIM-7 but you must keep the target aircraft within the HUD reticle until the missile hits.

 

I've been doing this from time to time as well, knowing that STT locks from beyond visual range are more of a rarity on this age of combat.

That said, I would like to get proficient at both. The more I can put the bandit on the defensive from longer range the better.

By the way, do you know if Jester puts the aspect switch to "nose" by default when you ask for boresight or go into cage? I've been asking him to do it everytime.

Edited August 25, 2024 by SgtPappy

[609_Relentov]

5 minutes ago, SgtPappy said:

By the way, do you know if Jester puts the aspect switch to "nose" by default when you ask for boresight or go into cage? I've been asking him to do it everytime.

According to the online HB F-4E manual (section 5.3.1), Jester will put the aspect switch to "nose" by default when you go into CAGE mode or have Jester change to BORESIGHT mode:

The options can only be used if either in BORESIGHT or CAGE mode, using Context Action • (short) will toggle between all aspect settings in order:

• NOSE (default)
• FORWARD
• AFT
• TAIL
• WIDE

The default option is NOSE, to enable fast reaction to a threat coming straight at the Phantom.

 

[Zabuzard]

On 8/24/2024 at 5:29 PM, SgtPappy said:

I decided to revisit this. The couple past sessions on the Cold War server, I've been flying high to get better contrast on the radar. Things go pretty well initially - Jester will see the contact and even I can see it easily on the repeater (yay!) at around 9 nm. He focuses on it and I tell him to lock it up via Voice Attack and he immediately confirms the request. 5 seconds pass as he changes some scope settings. 5 more seconds pass as the bandit gets closer. Perhaps another 5 seconds, and we've merged. See video below (sorry for the very quiet sound):

You are sending the wrong action. Jester says "Focusing on your guy", not "Locking". This corresponds to Jester Context Action SHORT instead of LONG. You must hold the context action command for at least 350ms so it triggers the LONG action instead of the SHORT.

Here is an overview of the actions: https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/overview.html

Edited August 26, 2024 by Zabuzard

[SgtPappy]

2 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

You are sending the wrong action. Jester says "Focusing on your guy", not "Locking". This corresponds to Jester Context Action SHORT instead of LONG. You must hold the context action command for at least 350ms so it triggers the LONG action instead of the SHORT.

Here is an overview of the actions: https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/overview.html

 

That's an interesting point, thank you for noticing. Now that I think about it, he says this sometimes but would lock other times. In the tracks, I use exactly the same voice command as in the videos where Voice Attack translates it into a button press of something like 0.4 seconds (i'm making up that number, I'd have to check when I'm home). He locks in the tracks but not in the videos so for sure I have the correct command bound.

Do you think server latency, lag or dropped packets etc in conjunction with VA could have an effect on the button dwell time?

I'll double check the VA bindings and see if perhaps it does not dwell on the button press for quite long enough to make the distinction. Perhaps I should ask VA to use 0.6 seconds to fight any of the aforementioned effects of MP servers.

 

[SgtPappy]

@Zabuzard sorry to harp on this again but for sure this time, there seems to be a problem. 

I cannot reproduce it offline, I'll keep trying, but online Jester is seemingly just "focusing" over and over again. I have also used the long button press instead of voice attack to reduce the variables but he often refuses to lock. He just keeps "focusing" on my guy. In the video you'll hear me command via voice attack (which is supposed to translate the voice command to a 0.4 sec press on the Jester context button) and then I try it 2 more times. I try the long button press on my HOTAS one last time to which he says "Focusing on your guy" again. I immediately then try - and fail - to lock the bandit myself. 

Note that when I try to long press, I hold it for at least 0.5 seconds and he'll say "Focusing on your guy" before I even let go of the button.

The next thing I will investigate is my controller itself. There's a chance that the button presses aren't registering well, although this doesn't explain why the voice command isn't working.

Is anyone else having this problem?

 

[Zabuzard]

@Zabuzard sorry to harp on this again but for sure this time, there seems to be a problem. 
I cannot reproduce it offline, I'll keep trying, but online Jester is seemingly just "focusing" over and over again. I have also used the long button press instead of voice attack to reduce the variables but he often refuses to lock. He just keeps "focusing" on my guy. In the video you'll hear me command via voice attack (which is supposed to translate the voice command to a 0.4 sec press on the Jester context button) and then I try it 2 more times. I try the long button press on my HOTAS one last time to which he says "Focusing on your guy" again. I immediately then try - and fail - to lock the bandit myself. 
Note that when I try to long press, I hold it for at least 0.5 seconds and he'll say "Focusing on your guy" before I even let go of the button.
The next thing I will investigate is my controller itself. There's a chance that the button presses aren't registering well, although this doesn't explain why the voice command isn't working.
Is anyone else having this problem?
 

This is most likely a problem with your hardware or DCS.
That is, you do not hold down the command all the time but interrupt it shortly, hence the "focusing" voice confirming the SHORT action.

Either your hardwarw isnt able to prooerly hold down the command without sending a microinterruption, or DCS. Our code receives it interrupted.

We have seen such reports since release already, but rather rare. We are planning to adjust the code to be resilient against microinterruptions and ignore them.

[=475FG= Dawger]

3 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

This is most likely a problem with your hardware or DCS.
That is, you do not hold down the command all the time but interrupt it shortly, hence the "focusing" voice confirming the SHORT action.

Either your hardwarw isnt able to prooerly hold down the command without sending a microinterruption, or DCS. Our code receives it interrupted.

We have seen such reports since release already, but rather rare. We are planning to adjust the code to be resilient against microinterruptions and ignore them.

Why is it only occurring in MP for the guy? That is the critical bit. If its his hardware, MP or SP should not matter. 

[Zabuzard]

2 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Why is it only occurring in MP for the guy? That is the critical bit. If its his hardware, MP or SP should not matter. 

DCS shenanigans. Its hard for us to tell as everything our code receives is literally the SHORT command.

If there is a bug, it is happening outside of our control.

[SgtPappy]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

This is most likely a problem with your hardware or DCS.
That is, you do not hold down the command all the time but interrupt it shortly, hence the "focusing" voice confirming the SHORT action.

Either your hardwarw isnt able to prooerly hold down the command without sending a microinterruption, or DCS. Our code receives it interrupted.

We have seen such reports since release already, but rather rare. We are planning to adjust the code to be resilient against microinterruptions and ignore them.

I'm starting to think that DCS itself is the issue since it's only MP, but I'll look into it. 

I've also noticed the voice commands sometimes "chop" and only in MP.

Thanks!

Edited September 8, 2024 by SgtPappy

[Ramstein]

basically it not seeing objects in front of his face.. that's what was not fun... I haven't been flying the Phantom lately, so I digress, for a while... I bet the latest patches improved it..