AI in formation...

[ENO]

Eh guys.

 

In my "Frank the Tanked" mission I try to add a little je-ne-sais-quoi to the experience by having different friendly aircraft types flying formation alongside the tanker. In past versions I'd been able to get the aircraft to within about 100 / 100 feet of the tanker and about 60 / 60 from each other. I set the first to follow the tanker and the second to follow the first.

 

I just went in to change it around a little bit and I'm finding the AI isn't holding station the way it used to- they often settle in at the wrong height and get really wonky in the presence of other aircraft within about 100 feet.

 

Have tolerances changed? Has AI changed on purpose? Is this a glitch?

 

Anyone else seeing the same behaviour?

[Shahdoh]

Hey Eno,

Was meaning to get with you on this, I have seen the same thing even using the setup I showed you before, with all the escorts following the tanker. The following formation is no longer able to be done since 1.2.4:

 

[ENO]

Okay, so it's not just me.

 

The aircraft I've been using all bounce up and down every couple of minutes and sometimes bounce up (or down) and hold their altitude without adjusting...

 

I've run the same mission a few different times and each time the behaviour is a little different. Aircraft crash in some, and not in others...

 

I've done following the tanker and following the lead aircraft- doesn't make a difference they're both bad.

[ENO]

Interesting this has been going on since May 2nd

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=105267&highlight=formation+AI+aircraft

 

 

 

 

Loaded some tracks of testing I've been doing to show the disarray.

 

Loaded the mission I've been working off... currently all aircraft are following the tanker.

 

I'm going to see if following one another helps next- but I have to go out.

tanker.trk

tanker2.trk

tanker3.trk

tanker4.trk

formation test2.miz

Edited May 17, 2013 by ENO

[ENO]

Got it nailed down to a progressive 125 foot spacing it runs reasonably smooth although individual aircraft intermittently either dive or climb out of formation about 200 feet or so then drift back into position. Sometimes they drop out that height and hold for awhile.

 

Anyway- here's screen and the final mission version / track.

 

Because of the aircraft intermittently dropping you can't set them to follow each other- they need to follow the base aircraft (tanker in this case).

 

tanker6.trk

formation test3.miz

[Grimes]

Usually the AI freak out slightly when the aircraft they are in formation with starts a turn. They aren't entirely anticipating the change in speed that is required to remain in formation when the turn starts, thus they "sense" they have overshot the position they need to maintain and aggressively attempt to burn energy.

[ENO]

Actually I've found in the past missions that the AI performs the turns well (even a B52 in refuelling)... Well, at least they used to. Here they just drop or climb for no reason while maintaining a steady speed. Watch it in fast motion to see the scope of it.

 

This mission is set in a straight line- never made it to the turn around (at least not on the tracks and photo)

[Grimes]

I haven't looked at the track yet, but given the highish alpha that the aircraft in your screenshot appear to be flying at, I'd suggest you up the sped of the tanker slightly. AI might be having trouble maintaining the set speed.

 

AI seem to use slightly different logic when given the follow/escort command compared to refueling. So generally speaking they are better at maintaining formation while refueling than they are in other circumstances.

[Shahdoh]

Yes, but I think the point being missed here, is the AI did not act this skittish prior to 1.2.4. Take a look at my picture in the above post, had them flying 3-5 ft apart from each other, and they would stay like that even through a turn. What changed and why?

 

Edit: Providing more pictures from AI formations in 1.2.3:

 

Forming up:

[/img]

 

Looking good:

Edited May 18, 2013 by Shahdoh

[Grimes]

I took a look at Eno's example mission, the cause of the seemingly random movement appears to be a change in collision avoidance. Whether its a question of the threshold increasing or something else I don't know. I suspect it could be the result of fixing the bug where AI could kamakazi into a tanker. It appears that if you give the AI a decent amount of separation they won't randomly change their altitude and keep in formation quite well. At 200 feet the AI never exhibited the behavior. Within 150 feet the closer the distance was set, the more frequent the behavior occurred. While I don't like playing the realism card, it is at least more realistic for combat aircraft to keep their spacing when in formation than to be mimicking the Blue Angles.

[Druid_]

During testing of this feature it was found as Grimes has rightly said that collision was a problem. The collision avoidance distance was increased slightly to avoid it. The feature was never intended for setting 4 AI aircraft to fly in formation 5ft apart (although it does look nice).

 

Also as stated it is much better to put all aircraft to formate on a lead aircraft rather than daisy chain the follow on each other else you end up with a lot more movement on the last following aircraft.

[ENO]

That's pretty much the conclusion that I came to here- It would be good to have that hard and fast number so that we can figure out exactly where to space our aircraft without having to go through the rigors of testing it out foot by foot for ourselves.

 

Granted, I was being generous as I Worked through it 25 feet- 50 feet at a time but geez... it worked fine before... now I have got to go through each step trying to sort it out without any warning that it got fixed.

 

I'm just asking on behalf of other mission editors- we need to know these things because they ransack our missions.

 

Thanks.

[Grimes]

Sometimes fixes have a cascading effect on other facets of the sim. These effects aren't always known beforehand. On the plus side the community is quite adapt at noticing most changes. But considering follow/escort still works 100% correctly up to tight formation distances, I would hardly call that a 'ransack'.

[Shahdoh]

I don't suppose it would be possible to set the collision radius based on pilot skill level would it? Say like 50ft for Excellent, 75 for High, etc..

Something like that would be more "realistic". When I was testing the settings to get them that close, I noticed the kamikazi behavior due to the large size of the aircraft they were following, but they seemed to ignore each other, thus allowing that close of spacing. That has apparently changed as well, though not sure for the better. Having the spacing set to 150-200 feet apart seems quite excessive, maybe appropriate for combat environment but even your average military pilot can safely fly half that distance in non-combat formation flying.

[ENO]

But considering follow/escort still works 100% correctly up to tight formation distances, I would hardly call that a 'ransack'.

 

Okay, maybe ransack wasn't the right word- Maybe "walksack."

 

 

If the limits were embedded in the formation data entry location (similarly to how altitude changes automatically and maximum speed is defaulted back to when exceeded with manual entry when setting aircraft groups)

 

If you put follow distance as 5 then it reverts to 125 automatically or something. Right now follow distance defaults to 3000 something... if it defaulted to minimum instead that would be handy!

[Druid_]

Yep, thats a fair enough point. The trouble is that I think the min distance between follow/escort aircraft will change depending on the size of the aircraft. If you want to test this for every different combination of aircraft and pop it into a database or spreadsheet then I'll push it up to the Dev :)

 

Sometimes, just having a great new feature and having to do a little work ourselves should be enough, it certainly is for me . You might think differently if you knew how hard it is to get new features into DCSW and then the amount of time testers devote to making sure it 1. Works as advertised & 2. Intergrates correctly into the Sim without breaking something else.

[ENO]

Yep, thats a fair enough point. The trouble is that I think the min distance between follow/escort aircraft will change depending on the size of the aircraft. If you want to test this for every different combination of aircraft and pop it into a database or spreadsheet then I'll push it up to the Dev :)

 

I was laying there actually contemplating how I could do that when I realized we can think of this another way- the devs already know the numbers... they must because they just recently changed them resulting in the reason this thread exists.

 

Not that I mind doing a little work every now and then but I abhor doing work redundantly.

 

They've got some data inputted that results in the aircraft freaking out at a certain distance... not sure if it's all the same number or varies frame by frame- it would just be nice if we could SEE that number (in the formation distance window) :smartass:

 

It's a class Z priority issue and I suppose the thread was more about asking if things had changed on purpose or if the new behavior was the result of something else that got fixed.

 

Is there a .lua file that I could change that would bring the default follow distance down to 200-250 or so? Maybe I can do this myself after all?

[Teschmacher]

lets resuscitate this thread from its ashes

 

i have been playing around trying to create AI formations and posted this thread:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2505946#post2505946

 

 

as you may see, the devs answer is that the 'follow' function is NOT intended to imitate AI formation flights (and i think that is very unfortunate.) because the other 'escort' function acts just the similar way with additional distance range engage option.

 

it seems that the whole AI flight formation feature is now sort of put a part with a very limited choice of only 4 different type of formations with absolutely no additional 'fine tuning' options such as X,Y,Z coordinates as they exist in the 'follow and escort' options.

 

also, the other problem is the current AI flying skills and behavior inability to maintain a steady flight in a close formation with other aircraft, those sudden speed drops, zigzaging and high G pulling ups and down jumps are not beautiful to watch..

 

it is really regrettable this is a 'Z' priority on the to-do list. :cry:

 

what i would love to see is a more advanced 'formation' task/feature in the mission editor that would have similar custom options where we can set distance / aircraft placement X,Y,Z as in 'follow and escort', a savable user presets option of our custom created formations would be a +!

Edited October 7, 2015 by Teschmacher