I would have had about a half an hour of shoots and traps to show you guys tonight, but I flew the whole session in VR, saved the track, and when I played it back, it diverged just about the time I reached the end of the first cat stroke. The replay system is horrible (still). If you guys don’t mind seeing videos in VR resolution, I’ll post some maybe tomorrow, but since I no longer have a TrackIR I’m sorta out of luck with making 2D videos with accurate looking about the cockpit.
The major things I took away from the livestream were
Art and Code for the RIO position are the same state of completeness, it’s a matter of integrating the too
HB does not have sufficient access at present to fully model the AIM-54’s guidance modes.
Point number two is mildly disappointing but understandable. The Tl;dr is the AIM-54 in reality has different guidance modes depending on which radar mode it’s fired in and how the RIO configures a couple of other switches. Depending upon which mode it was fired in, the RIO has a couple of options on how to interact with the missile while it’s in flight if he suspects that the bandit is about to do something that will break lock during the flyout/midcourse phase.
It sounds like the AIM-54 is going behave like the AIM-120 and R-77 do in game right now, which is active at a set distance from target. HB also mentioned that once ED finishes their own rework of the missile code, there’s a chance this might change so neat. That answers one question I had.
I’ve also been rewatching the available media and how they’ve been actually fighting. Jabbers and Magz eitehr haven’t figured out the TID repeater or are intentionally not using it. Both have basically only shown PLM mode. Ralfi leaves his on, and either tells Jester to go STT or uses PLM mode.
In his live stream there was actually an interesting engagement flow where Jester went to Pulse Doppler STT to begin the engagement and fire off a Phoenix. Ralfi spends like thirty seconds following the missile, it is implied jester looses lock and/or the missile is trashed, and when we cut back the TID repeater is blank. That could mean the simulation took a dump, possibly ralfi entered PLM and it instantly locked, or more intriguingly Jester switched from Pulse Doppler STT to Pulse STT which wouldn’t display information on the TID. Then he screwed up his lead turn, and his rate turn and another lead turn. and another
I guess what I’m speculating here is @BeachAV8R, how much information has HB shared with the community contributors with regards to the AWG-9, because the only people I’ve seen that have actually come remotely close to using it effectively were the devs themselves back in November. I get that any discussion is going to be hamstrung at present due to the backseat embargo, and that the TID is missing display functionality. However so far any discussion of the radar has been non existent, extremely generalized, or ignorant of the actual functionality. Follow up would be what exactly can Jester do at present in that arena? Have you noticed him switching between modes to maintain lock against maneuvering targets?
and when we cut back the TID repeater is blank. That could mean the simulation took a dump, possibly ralfi entered PLM and it instantly locked, or more intriguingly Jester switched from Pulse Doppler STT to Pulse STT which wouldn’t display information on the TID.
Probably Jester switched his TID to TCS to identify the target which caused the TID-repeat on the pilot’s HSD blank. Not a bug, a limitation of the real F-14 - the TID has to be in TID to provide the signal to the HSD. However, such things as how often and for how long Jester uses TCS are still subject to change.
One thing I noticed in Ralfi’s stream is that he had to go to the external view to see how many MK-82’s he still had on board. Is that something that the pilot only is aware of through the RIO?
Just wanted to give you all a bit of a quick rundown on where we are and what we’re working on. This update will be rather short and sweet despite my previous desire to make it more meaty. This is mostly because there really isn’t that much to say and the exhaustion is setting in after a really long week.
The past couple of weeks we’ve been focused on completing the items outlined in the OP, plus some additional items that the extra time has allowed us to squeeze in. Some of the items we’ve been working on include:
LANTIRN completion. Our LANTIRN integration will be very complete on day one of early access, instead of having large gaps in functionality. This system has been very complex and has taken us a lot of time to implement, but will make the F-14 a much more potent strike platform on day one.
JESTER improvements across the board - we’ve been adding new functionality to jester, such as injury and incapacitation states, improving various callout functionality and more. If we are able, we hope to add some initial JESTER functionality for controlling LANTIRN before EA, but this may not be possible.
Completion of the RIO cockpit integration. We’re now integrating the last of the RIO cockpit components together in our main development branch. This is one of the last steps before we’re “done” and build our first release candidate.
Buuuugfiixeeees! Opening the Tomcat up to more content creators and drawing in a few more testers has yielded some great feedback and swelled our internal issue tracker. SMEs continue to weigh in on every aspect of the aircraft which continuously helps us refine our systems and FM modeling.
Manuals, training missions, etc. It’s still unclear of how much content we will launch with; but we’re trying to squeeze in as much as possible on day 1.
All of the above is pretty ambiguous, and not really new - but at this stage of product development, focus and effort is a little all over the place. Add some sound for that thing, fix that thing, animate that, implement that - while continuing work on existing functionality and the core pillars of the product. Most importantly, next week we will set our sights on a specific release window internally. Once we are confident and the date is set in stone, we will share and fuel up the hypetrain (because we totally need that, am I right!? )
More than anything, we’re looking forward to stopping your suffering and finally releasing. This will give us a chance to breathe (and live!) a little while we set out on our EA to Release roadmap.
In summary; we’re at the height of our release push now and we’re working literally night and day. Release candidate 1 is just around the corner. We know it’s been a long wait- so thanks for sticking with us.
Hope that sheds some light on where we stand, even if it’s (unfortunately) nothing concrete just yet.
I’ll see what I can figure out today. Great observations. To be honest, I haven’t flown the F-14 all that much beyond what I needed to do to write the magazine article. 1500 words on such a great airplane is easy to do, but 1/3 of that is general history of the plane and Heatblur, 1/3 is how does it look, and 1/3 is how does it fly and a general look at the systems and weapons. So you can imagine, 500 words doesn’t nearly cut it on any of those sections when talking about something as complex as a DCS module.
I’ll hop in the back seat today and do some additional looking around. It hasn’t really been a priority for me simply due to time constraints on some other projects (us filthy casuals flying around in the C-101…haha…) The rear cockpit got another little bump of improvement in the last update, labeling some additional things and putting a bit more 3D geometry back there.
The only direct observations I have about the radar and Jester’s use of it is that it is nice to have someone back there calling out targets he detects, and it is really nice to be able to order Jester to lock certain targets that you want to engage. I haven’t spent much time in the repeater mode either. One thing I noticed last night was that when I had a target selected and missile selected (AIM-54C) there is now a circle on the VDI that grows ever larger as you close on the target. That wasn’t there in the last build.
I’ll do some additional learning and testing today and see if I can bring anything new to what is available, but I’m definitely not the systems guy. If it were my only project I could spend a ton of time with it, but I’m still dividing my time among a few other things. I’ll try to post up my horrible carrier video from last night. The scenario I was flying in was toward sunset and I was having a really hard time spotting the angled deck lineup (I wish they had turned the lights on) in VR.
Ha! I completely forgot about TCS. It’s neat jester takes advantage of that. Thanks for the input Grover.
That’s the Allowable Steering Error (ASE) Circle, conceptually it’s the same idea as the one on the F-15, or the NIRD circle on the Hornet. Make sure the steering cue is in the circle when you squeeze the trigger for great justice.
I’m confused by why Jabbers was testing the AIM-54A. He stresses the difference in motors between the two As and the C as the largest determination in performance between the three variants, but honestly I’d consider that the least important differentiating factor. At the missile’s effective range a the different motor isn’t going to make a huge amount of difference. The majority of missiles looked to miss because of guidance issues. Part of the upgrades the C brought along were upgrades to the sensors and guidance logic that facilitated greater performance against maneuvering targets.
This is all hard to express in DCS because the ED missile and sensor logic is so rudimentary, but I would expect it to manifest in things like greater CM rejection, greater active range, or a narrower notch (even though notching missiles isn’t a thiiiiing). I’m curious what, if any difference there is between the As and the Cs.
Overall I’m a little underwhelmed by the missiles ability to hold a track target. I’ll wait for someone talking about what, if any advantages the C offers in game before really getting worried. It’s also worth noting that it’s DCS, and missiles never work as well as they ought in DCS
Does make you wonder what HB could do if they got their hands on the guidance code though
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, least its WIP