correct as is AI Aircraft Climb Behavior Change

[Grooveline]

The behavior of AI aircraft when changing altitude between waypoints appears to have changed.  I have no way to be certain exactly when, but I'd bet good money it was the DCS 2.9.6.57650 - 11.07.2024 update, this was when I first encountered it.  I perused the changelog but found nothing that sounded like it fit.

Prior to this update, and I admit this particular assertion is based on anecdotal observations (although a lot of them over a long period of time), AI aircraft would climb in a roughly linear fashion when changing altitude between waypoints. Essentially a straight line between the 2 points, arriving at the new altitude near to or at the waypoint.

Subsequent to this update, this assertion is more firmly grounded in experimentation, AI aircraft are taking the express elevator to the altitude of the destination waypoint. In my experiment, I have a Hornet with 3 waypoints: 0 and 1 at 3000 MSL and 2 at 8000 MSL. As soon as he hits waypoint 1, he pitches up to 16-17 degrees until he hits the altitude of waypoint 2 (8000).

How do I know this and why do I care?  A guy named d0ppler (who seems to have disappeared) posted a great series of missions for formation practice, one of which for a very long time, I flew daily, and it was, without doubt, the single most helpful thing (for me) in learning DCS.  For this reason, I was well-conditioned to the behavior of AI aircraft (at least one anyway) and when the update dropped, the change was immediately obvious.  I would really like to be able to use this tool again, so I'm raising the issue.

I can't say whether this change was an intentional change, a side-effect of something else, or an outright bug, but it is a change.

I've included a track with the waypoints at the default 'Turning Point' setting. I ran it with 'Fly-over Points' but there was no observable change. The miz file is available.

TurningPoint.trk

[BIGNEWY]

Hi Grooveline, 

thank you for the report and for the chat in discord, I have spoken with the dev team and it seems this behaviour change is intended but was not documented in the change log, so apologies for that. 

The AI will now try to preform Optimal climbs, rather than the previous linear climbs between way points. 

best regards

bignewy

 

[Grooveline]

Thanks for the update, I appreciate it!