In flight alignment

[Blizz003]

Seems to me I'm wasting 4 minutes every time I start up waiting for my ins to align. Is the procedure for in flight align as simple as pushing the inflight osb on the cdu repeater? How long must I then wait to drop jdams?

[GGTharos]

About 10 min of flying straight and level IIRC.

[Blizz003]

hmm... so i might as well wait the four minutes in most situations...

thanks!

[EtherealN]

Also note that those four minutes you spend aligning aren't "really" time you spend "waiting" - at least, not in real life. During this time you'll have a lot of other things you might be doing, such as reviewing your waypoints, loadouts, your climb schedule - or just plain waiting to get taxi clearance. :P

 

How applicable the above are in the simulator does of course depend entirely on the situation. In single-player it's often pretty much completely N/A since there's no waiting lines, and most people just take their weapons and fly without too much effort spent in planning. This isn't necessarily "bad" though - the "full real" experience for a mission would include a lot of time spent in briefing going through intel reports, weather briefings and so on and so forth and this is more important in real life than in the by necessity somewhat limited environment in the simulator. So not doing that kind of checks and checklists in the simulator isn't a crime - I admit to not spending fantastic amounts of time on it myself, though the checks I do perform (payload setting checks, weapon profile preparations and such) usually keep me going while waiting for the alignment.

[ralfidude]

You can always alt-tab out and browse 9gag!

[joey45]

^ lol

[EtherealN]

Alt-tab? Just get a second monitor, it's awesome. :D

[ralfidude]

Second monitor set up as MFDs

 

:)

 

Its AWESOMEEEEeee

[WarthogSmurf]

You can always alt-tab out and browse 9gag!

 

Tried that ... then i crashed the sim :lol::thumbup::megalol:

[MeerCaT]

Wait? WAIT?!

No, no, no, no...

 

That's what God invented [Ctrl]+Z (time acceleration) for.

[Phuz]

Hey Blizz valid point you make actually..

 

I always see people in multiplayer waiting for their alignments on the ground, but I do not think it is necessary..

 

Fact is if you are quick enough at getting your switches done, you can have both engines running and be ready for taxi at about 1.3-1.5 minutes after your apu gen comes online. All you do is start taxiing after the clock gets to >1.4 minutes on the IRU and it will switch to nav mode automatically. It counts as an "in flight align" even though it was done on the ground.

 

What benefit do you get from the additional 2.5 minutes of sitting around? In the sim, I can't find one. I think IRL it would be a smart thing to complete the full alignment, but in the sim it seems to have zero effect.

[EtherealN]

MeerCaT, good luck with that in multiplayer. ;)

[SmokeyTheLung]

but I do not think it is necessary..

 

it's quite necessary if you intend to send coordinates to your fellow vpilots. The lack of accuracy from an inflight alignment is appreciable.

Single player, ok maybe ;)

[july865]

ethereal

i do have that 2nd monitor. with maybe a flight plan on it or teamspeak. the issue i have is that when i need to scroll the page or access some other portion on the 2nd monitor the game minimizes. just wondering if there is a way to keep that from happening

[EtherealN]

Windowed mode should do it, but that depends on your preferences of course - and on whether your computer is strong enough to not incur too great a performance hit from it. Looking at your system spec in the signature I suspect this is not the case unless paired with reductions in graphical settings.

 

I use windowed mode myself specifically due to my habit for whoring forums even when I'm doing something else, be it work on some documentation, watch eSports, or fly simulators. :P

[Eddie]

All I can say is that you guys thinking that the 4 minute align time is 4 minutes wasted are clearly missing a LOT of stuff that you should be doing.

 

Every time I fly I'm still setting systems up long after the EGI alignment has completed. My ramp start procedure following the check lists takes at least 10 minutes if not 15.

[wess24m]

All I can say is that you guys thinking that the 4 minute align time is 4 minutes wasted are clearly missing a LOT of stuff that you should be doing.

 

Every time I fly I'm still setting systems up long after the EGI alignment has completed. My ramp start procedure following the check lists takes at least 10 minutes if not 15.

 

Agreed, Ed has even helped us not get bored during startup by not letting us save our cockpit setup's :huh:

[Torment]

Tweaking DSMS profiles, adjusting slew sensitivity, setting up the TAD, checking flight plan in CDU, setting up TGP, ILS/TACAN can all easily eat up at least 4 minutes if not more during start-up. I'll also check the flight surfaces. Initially, for some reason I never messed with the CDU during alignment thinking that it needed to stay on that page until it was completed but now I'll happily plug away while its aligning.

 

Anyway, whole process takes about 8-10 minutes for me.

[wess24m]

Tweaking DSMS profiles, adjusting slew sensitivity, setting up the TAD, checking flight plan in CDU, setting up TGP, ILS/TACAN can all easily eat up at least 4 minutes if not more during start-up. I'll also check the flight surfaces. Initially, for some reason I never messed with the CDU during alignment thinking that it needed to stay on that page until it was completed but now I'll happily plug away while its aligning.

 

Anyway, whole process takes about 8-10 minutes for me.

 

On that note, I pre-name my cdu waypoints for future targets, if known I'll go with tanks, ect ect if not target1-6 saves me some time while in the air.

[Speed]

In flight align doesn't seem to require any special flying.... when I use it, I always just hit the in-flight align button and go.

 

If I'm in a hurry, I usually start taxiing with just a single engine running. I can do this because I have a split throttle. By the time I get to the runway and take off I'll have the second engine started. I will complete the ramp start, including the in-flight INS alignment, while enroute to target. Not realistic, but hey, I'm in a hurry here :D

Edited December 20, 2011 by Speed

[GGTharos]

Actually realistic if in a hurry for -some- aircraft. Probably with the exception of spooling the engine while on the move - some aircraft need to be checked for ECS faults/bleed air ... no point in taking off if you're bleeding hot air, you'll just set the AC on fire.

 

I suppose with the INU drift not being modeled, you don't really need to do any special flying ... realistically, it would be up to 10 minutes of very steady flying (heading, speed and altitude).

[Nu-NRG]

Alt-tab? Just get a second monitor, it's awesome. :D

Using that one for DCS as well. Did you mean third? Fourth? :P

DON'T SAY IT. I need to buy Track IR first! :megalol:

[msalama]

aren't "really" time you spend "waiting"

 

They bloody well aren't if you do manual startups. What I usually do is to turn CDU/EGI on at the earliest opportunity (i.e. when APU power is up) and then continue with the rest. And voilá - by the time I'm done the bugger's all good and aligned :smartass:

[RodBorza]

Actually realistic if in a hurry for -some- aircraft.

 

I suppose with the INU drift not being modeled, you don't really need to do any special flying ... realistically, it would be up to 10 minutes of very steady flying (heading, speed and altitude).

 

4 minutes? 4 MINUTES??? That's...ok. :thumbup:

Apart from the very-humoured comments and those who are in a hurry to fly, I'd like to say a thing or two about Inertial systems.

Actually, 4 minutes is pretty fast! If it was not for those fancy (and very expensive) laser ring gyros, a pilot would have to wait far more than that for the system to align.

I remember a professor of mine saying that in the old Mirage III's the pilot would have to wait 30 minutes for the electro-mechanical gyro to spool up, stabilize, sense the Earth's linear velocity and then work its magic to give the right set of coordinates. All the while the pilot should be sitting still on the cockpit and the ground crew would not allowed to get near the aircraft, because the system was so sensitive that needed a very still platform to get aligned. Pretty rough stuff.

Also, in Falcon:AF, those who played this can confirm, you would have to wait 15 minutes for the alignment, and that's a laser-ring gyro too.

I believe the difference from the F-16 to the A-10 is something called EGI, the Embedded Global Positioning/Inertial System. As GGTharos put it, the INS drift is not modeled in the game, and if it were, it would be a very difficult game to program.

Thing is INS systems tend to drift (to loose precision) over time. To avoid that, the GPS corrects the INS system all the time. And as soon as the pilot turns the EGI on, I believe that the INS gets some data from the GPS and tries to align itself, that's why I think alignment on the A-10C is way faster than what it is (or was) on the F-16.

 

And how do I spend my 4 minutes? Programming the DSMS page, setting my radio frequencies, looking at my flight plan. I do that, and my 4 minutes pass really fast.

[GGTharos]

You can do INS alignment quickly if you're doing a stored position align or a couple other tricks, IIRC.