Is it possible to get some more customization options for Jester's radar use in the future?

[Ivandrov]

Currently, I am a bit frustrated with Jester.

He seems to default to the MAP mode in Search meaning that he's scanning without nutation. It seems almost impossible for him to find bandits with a couple thousand feet delta and I have found myself turning him off and taking over the controls for myself for A2A. He seems too conservative with the Gain too, especially over water. It would be nice if I could take over some of these functions and leave him to do the rest. As I cannot make use of the WSO radar boresight mode or change to narrow or the range setting without him.

[Zabuzard]

Jester is WIP and will of course be improved over time still. It is not intended for your as pilot to babysit him though.

On a technical level, adding the possibility to micromanage him is as difficult as just teaching him to be a better WSO, so we prefer doing that instead.

On the note of nutation/MAP mode, Jester is currently doing what the real WSOs did in the Phantom. Nutation and other modes did not work well on this old radar, they did not use it. Some excerpts:

> Forget 2 bar nutating feedhorn - search in  MAP-B 1 bar, which cuts beam down to 3.7 degrees or so. Then when you get a contact, you adjust the elevation to give the best hit.
> RDR uses a nutating feed horn that gives a bigger radar beam but it's less strong.
> We hated 2-bar. As a WSO I'm running the elevation all the time, and don't want it jumping down when I want to go up!
> -34 recommends using MAP-B for search due to better target discrimination and less wear on the nutating feed horn.
> The best radar setting for air to air contacts is MAP - B. That has a tight 1 bar non-nutating scan that is better at discriminating targets from clutter.

From my experience with Jester, he is pretty good at managing the antenna elevation already. It is the gain, as you also pointed out, that needs improvement. But finding the right gain requires multiple attempts, waiting multiple radar sweeps each time. If Jester would do that constantly, his general search pattern would be way too long/slow to be useful.
Instead, Jester needs an extra phase after "general search" where he will actively try to find a bandit in a known area. In such a phase he could then also spend more time playing with the gain. But therefore, as first step Jester needs to learn more about possible target locations. That is, he for example needs to understand AWACs calls, RWR contacts, mission specific data etc so he knows by himself where targets are. On top, we will add a dynamic way for the player to point somewhere "find target here" (for example pointing on your radar screen or outside the canopy into the air). With that stuff added, Jester can then switch from a general non-informed scan (which he is doing currently) to a more active informed target-uncover phase in which he plays the gain up and down.

Once that stuff is added, the experience should be a lot better.

In the meantime you can theoretically bind a few switches from the WSO seat as pilot and try messing around with Jesters pit. Some things he will tolerate, others he will reset every now and then. But he probably wont understand whats happening and you could potentially confuse him a lot. Alternatively, turn him off, then obtain a lock yourself and then turn Jester on again - he was coded to understand this scenario and roll with the player-obtained-lock during his absence.

Edited Tuesday at 10:06 AM by Zabuzard

[Ivandrov]

That may be the case that nutation is less desirable for the real WSO's but I really don't feel like Jester runs the Elevation enough to make up for it, and as far as the provided keybinds go, he fights you on the two we've mentioned so far, the antenna angle and gain.

 

I at one point was basically holding the gain increase keybind so that he could track a target over water intermittently, while he tried to adjust it back down.

[Zabuzard]

Yes, this is expected behavior given his current implementation. You need to disable him first if you want to mess with that stuff in particular (Wheel > Presence > Disable, can also be bound to a key directly).

Once the vision for Jester fully unfolds and everything is in place, these things should not be a problem anymore

Are you sure about the elevation though? In all user supplied tracks ive seen on the topic so far, the elevation was usually good and did cover the airspace with the bandit in (he runs a sophisticated default scan pattern that touches pretty much the entire airspace ahead). The problem leading to not spotting the bandit on the screen is usually the gain, not the elevation. Either case, as a default uninformed scan behavior I think its quite good already. It just lacks, as explained earlier, an extra mode where he actively tries to uncover a target in a known area.

Edited Tuesday at 10:03 AM by Zabuzard

[Ivandrov]

5 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Yes, this is expected behavior given his current implementation. You need to disable him first if you want to mess with that stuff in particular (Wheel > Presence > Disable, can also be bound to a key directly).

Once the vision for Jester fully unfolds and everything is in place, these things should not be a problem anymore

Are you sure about the elevation though? In all user supplied tracks ive seen on the topic so far, the elevation was usually good and did cover the airspace with the bandit in (he runs a sophisticated default scan pattern that touches pretty much the entire airspace ahead). The problem leading to not spotting the bandit on the screen is usually the gain, not the elevation. Either case, as a default uninformed scan behavior I think its quite good already. It just lacks, as explained earlier, an extra mode where he actively tries to uncover a target in a known area.

Yeah, I understand that. The problem is if you disable him you lose access to a bunch of the other pertinent radar controls without switching to the backseat. Which in a bunch of situations is not something you want to do, like if you're actively tracking a bandit visually. It's just a bit unwieldy at the moment.

 

I can take a look through the tracks I have but it really did feel like he was barely moving the elevation angle. The DSCG picture was looking consistent from scan to scan for a while. Wasn't noticing the elevation marker moving.

[Zabuzard]

13 minutes ago, Ivandrov said:

I can take a look through the tracks I have but it really did feel like he was barely moving the elevation angle

Right, that is mostly because an elevation angle of 3° already changes the covered altitude by 10k ft (at a distance of 30 NM). So you cover the entire relevant airspace by moving the angle around below 10° already, while the grid on the side goes up to 60° in both directions. So relevant angle changes will be very small on the scale only:

Jesters uninformed general scan pattern moves in a sophisticated way between -10k ft, -2k ft, 0 ft, +2k ft and +10k ft relative altitude (for a distance of 30nm). So you will get angle changes of around 4° in both directions maximum. To focus on a specific altitude, you can use the Jester Wheel.

Edited Tuesday at 03:51 PM by Zabuzard

[Ivandrov]

4 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

Right, that is mostly because an elevation angle of 3° already changes the covered altitude by 10k ft (at a distance of 30 NM). So you cover the entire relevant airspace by moving the angle around below 10° already, while the grid on the side goes up to 60° in both directions. So relevant angle changes will be very small on the scale only:

Jesters scan pattern moves in a sophisticated way between -10k ft, -2k ft, 0 ft, +2k ft and +10k ft relative altitude. So you will get angle changes of around 4° in both directions maximum. To focus on a specific altitude, you can use the Jester Wheel.

It was less than that. Probably half a degree at the most. The track I have from Contention is very long, so I'll see if I can make a video or something.

[Zabuzard]

What I drew on the pic are +-10°. As explained, Jester operates more in the range of +-3 to 4°. So something like:

[Ivandrov]

I have two little clips that seems to show some undesirable behavior.

This first one after the bandit is splashed and he loses the lock. He gets stuck in 5 mile range with the antenna pointed all the way down.

 

 

This next one coming out of boresight mode, he seems to have the cursor stuck all the way at the top right with no return and he's not changing the elevation at all.

 

 

[Zabuzard]

I have two little clips that seems to show some undesirable behavior.

This first one after the bandit is splashed and he loses the lock. He gets stuck in 5 mile range with the antenna pointed all the way down.
   
This next one coming out of boresight mode, he seems to have the cursor stuck all the way at the top right with no return and he's not changing the elevation at all.
   

I can check them tomorrow, thanks.

But what you are describing sounds like focus mode and not general target search. You can use context action double click to leave that (and possibly disable autofocus).

[Ivandrov]

For the first one, that sounds about right. But I remember trying to get him back to general search and it not working. He also does say in his voice line that he was "back to scanning again" which I assumed meant he was trying to do general search. He also acknowledges that the bandit is going down.

The 2nd one he is still in wide mode though.

Edited Tuesday at 08:44 PM by Ivandrov

[Zabuzard]

Yeah, so the first one is definitely him still being in FOCUS mode. I suppose he did not understand that this particular bandit died. The "bandit is down" callout isnt coming from his radar code but is a visual observation. So his radar logic likely thought that the bandit could still be there, keeping it focused to get it back on screen. You can just get him back to standard scan by using the context actions - autofocus only happens on targets actually on the screen, so he will not focus thin air.

The second one, not sure whats going on there specifically. Possibly he did not understand that you left CAGE mode yourself instead of using the context actions. You can enable the Jester Console (RCTRL+L) to get some insights into what he is doing. I would also suggest to hit context action to get him back to standard scan. Note that you can have Jester leave CAGE mode for you by using the Context Action as well - no need to rotate that knob yourself (potentially losing the target visually doing that).
If you can reproduce this a track would be great, then we can have a deeper look. Cheers