F/A-18C: Tornado F3 update set for August, I guess.
The Tornado F3 was not able to exploit the full capabilities of either the AMRAAM or ASRAAM missiles. AMRAAM uses two mid-course updates after launch to refresh target information prior to its own seeker taking over; however, the CSP did not include the datalink to provide this capability, as it was considered to be too expensive. […] The upgrade to give full AMRAAM capability, together with updated IFF, known as the AMRAAM Optimisation Programme (AOP) was incorporated in the remaining F3 fleet between December 2003 and September 2006
Or, they could delay the availability of the AMRAAM until the radar improvements make it in and the other 50% of the concerned player base would be unhappy. I am ok with the incremental improvements.
… And then those 50% of customers become increasingly upset because their vaunted silver bullet performs markedly worse than the baseline they’ve come to expect: that of the FC3 Eagle (which is already a sore spot in the community due to it’s subpar performance).
I intended the Tornado comment as a silly, but if you research into that bit of fun aeronautical history, the RAF actually found the AMRAAM performed similar to or worse than their existing Skyflashes when integrated with F3 because they cut corners during implementation. If ED is trying to simulate these missiles as integrated with the Hornet to the same level they espouse with the rest of the aircraft, it’s not so simple as a lua edit.
I get ED is doing something new and difficult with their radar, I also get it takes time. That’s not the my issue. The point is adding a new weapon that is even more reliant upon a sensor that has not demonstrably progressed in two months of development seems counter productive, especially if you’re trying to satisfy a crowd of people whos seem to only value their ability to kill other aircraft. Incremental improvements only benefit the player base when they improve things.
Didn’t they fix STT target switching, ACM lock times and roll tolerance in the last two months? I’d say substantial progress. Also the SIL button and single sweep activation.
The first is fixed assuming the target exists in real space, if it doesn’t than lol, no. The last two are absolutely not fixed.
Minus SIL, the radar is essentially back to where it was in May.
I suspect it has more to do with whichever team does missile implementations/tech is ready while whoever does sensors/radar is still hard at work with their part of the pie. Get the AMRAAM and 9X in, then move onto HARM, 84, 65, etc. or whichever is next for them. Purely guessing on my part, but wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Especially if it’s for testing purposes, can iron out a lot of initial bugs with the two new missiles so when the sensor is ready, it becomes a pretty seamless transition.
If this were your apache, how do you test AGM-114s if TADS doesn’t do lasers? Getting a missile on the jet isn’t that tough. If I wanted, I could staple AIM-120s to the all 11 hard points of the Hornet after work tonight. I don’t know how difficult implementing it into the stores page would be, but I can’t imagine it’d be that bad if I had access to that code.
On the other hand the AIM-120 is not an AIM-7. The Sparrow is essentially hands off after launch, so long as you keep the bandit locked, the missile has everything it needs to do the job. For the AIM-120 to work optimally, the jet updates the information the missile has at different points throughout its flight. The infrastructure to do this isn’t there yet, and so far there has been no time frame when it might be. With the radar working like it does currently, the AMRAAM would be a pointier Sparrow with caveats. Considering the Sparrow barely functions currently, that would be a fairly disappointing proposition.
Actually, we started off with GPS guided 114s. The scripting was based on a JDAM script, so we basically got the trajectories and launch modes set before we moved onto guidance and conditions. IE, whether or not it was capable of reacquisition and so on. We didn’t add a remote “laser code” capability til much later in development, though the core guidance was in place before we got to that level. A lot of changes got made along the way,
Given that I have no idea what data they’re working from in regards to the AMRAAM and 9X nor how they function with the aircraft, it could be incredibly simplistic or it could be incredibly complex; just getting it into place with all the hooks necessary is a start point, and since this is still early access, is something I’d imagine was on the planning board for a while. Once again, I have no idea how their team is setup and how their development process is going forward, so I’ve only my own experiences from a small project to reference. Even some of the comparatively simple things I tried to do for my Su-17/22 for ArmA1 took a while, and that was without complex guidance scripts or sensor implementations.
I don’t know to what level they’re doing sensor/radar implementation, but from what I’ve seen of how the real Longbow FCR works, it’s certainly not a simple mechanic under the hood. Our FCR was just taking an entire list of units on the map, filtering it down to only vehicles, checking if the unit was in the FCR’s detection arc, running a few simple checks like line of sight (this was a huge performance hog), adding a detection probability based on the target type (ADA more likely to be detected, cars less likely, etc.), before finally adding it to a target array which was accessed by the TSD. That was a comparatively simple system and all it handled was detection; fortunately, the AH-64D’s systems didn’t need to do much beyond detection and so we were spared having to do things like figure out specific modes and behavior/handling.
Trying to do a realistic representation of the F/A-18C’s radar which has to do more than just detection would be a pretty massive undertaking (especially given that there’s a lot of “firsts” involved with it) and I can certainly understand why it would be taking so long to fix and add a lot of the finer points as well as the basics. I don’t see why such should hold up initialization of everything else, so getting other items before the radar is ready isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, especially if you’re trying to get as many bugs squashed as possible – stupid little things like “rockets don’t sit inside the pod” which have no bearing on the radar, but can be fixed in the interim. That’s a problem with the Harrier right now, the 7 shot pods on the inner pylons are halfway sunk into the pylons with the rockets hanging on by applied phlebotium.
I’d need access to the fun encrypted bits to go further, but I’d say they’re pretty far along. You can’t fire them yet, but the only missile specific settings that are missing are shared with the AIM-7, and they aren’t implemented there either.
I get what you’re saying, Franze, I just don’t see what there is to test on the AMRAAM that isn’t highly integrated with the actual FCR, as is the nature of modern systems. Without that functionality, it’s a fancy sparrow, which isn’t anything new for the community other than pandering to people who don’t know any better, and are going to start complaining reality did not meet their lofty expectations.
I could be wrong, hopefully progress with the radar picks up and things move quicker, but I calls them as I sees them.
I don’t know, maybe I am coming off as argumentative. Maybe I am just peeing into the wind.
I’m not saying that there are not improvements that can be had, but that they are coming. I don’t see the point of moaning (sorry if that comes across as strong) about something that we don’t know about. ED announced the AMRAAM in the next few weeks (I take that as month or two - I’m a seasoned developer so I know how these things sometimes go). No where does it say that the radar is not being improved to go with the release of the AMRAAM or shortly(* 2 weeks) after - we simply don’t have a timeline. I am pretty sure that ED knows what needs to be done for it to work (I don’t want to sound all fan boi but I have confidence in their abilities, given time).
This is like arguing about the weather . Neither you nor I are meteorologists and neither of us has more than a 5-day forecast. Arguing about how it should rain over the next 5 days to optimize crop growth is pointless because weather gonna be weather .
Argue among yourselves and I’ll go back to posting news when I hear it (and if someone doesn’t beat me to it)
So… Any more flight model updates? I just got back in town and tomorrow I’ll resume attempting to look less like a drunken seagull when I’m gear down and full flaps.
Dunno, I’m just spitballing myself, looking at it from stuff I’ve done in the past. I figure people will just use it for photo sessions and the like. All I know is the F-18 is currently faster than the Harrier and can sling Mk84s, which is good enough for me.
The scripting was based on a JDAM script, so we basically got the trajectories and launch modes set before we moved onto guidance and conditions. IE, whether or not it was capable of reacquisition and so on. We didn’t add a remote “laser code” capability til much later in development, though the core guidance was in place before we got to that level. A lot of changes got made along the way,
. Neither you nor I are meteorologists and neither of us has more than a 5-day forecast. Arguing about how it should rain 
over the next 5 days to optimize crop growth is pointless because weather gonna be weather 
.
