As long as Jester throws in the occasional colorful adjective from time to time for the sake of authenticity, Iāll be happy. The simpler things in lifeā¦
This module is going to be a lot of fun, without the Jester. Iām looking forward to riding backseat in multiplayer. āFOX 69 ENGAGED!!ā
Mirrors looking mighty viggenish though.
Oooh, youāre right about that. Iām hoping weāll maybe get Family - friendly/ sailor - friendly as an option on the menu.
Hopefully it will be out just in time for summer leave.
I am really excited how seriously Heatblur is approaching the AI RIO. This proprietary technology will give them a huge head start to cater two-seaters in DCS in the future. I am wondering how Belsimtek will handle this problem for their F-4E, Mi-24P and AH-1S, and skeptical about RAZBAM and the F-15E. RAZBAM especially seems to be reluctant to develop any new technology on their own and I wonder if Belsimtek/ED will share their AI WSO as baseline DCS technology. I suspect they might not.
AI crews in multi-crew aircraft will be of immense importance. The lack of such is actually one of the primary reasons why I consider the Gazelle a failure, even though I really like light anti-tank helicopters in principal. Enabling auto-hover, switching seats and burying your head into the targeting sight might work at the range, but in combat it is a receipt to be shot in the face. Multiplayer is a nice pastime, but ultimately a module needs to work without it being depended in the play-schedule of other people.
So I am really glad that Heatblur is taking the extra mile with the Tomcat. It really seems as if this will become a signature module for DCS.
Umā¦am I the only one to notice that JESTER was actually a pilot (portrayed by Michael Ironside in what many, myself included, was the performance of his career), not a RIOā¦just sayān.
Having been the intel officer in a Tomcat squadron Iām afraid that IMHO/IMPO the voice acting shown on the Heatblur clip, while certainly enthusiastic and professionally done, is not very authenticā¦at least yet.
My 2 cents:
The RIO (in the lead jet) runs the intercept until the merge. He is trying āsolveā a 3-dmensional problem for which he only has a 2-dimesional scope. There is a lot going on in his head. In training the voices I heard were mostly flat, crisped clipped. In actual combat the āemotionā is more intensity than anything else. I was the squadron intel officer for the aircrew that shot down the Libyan Mig-23s in 1989 and knew all 4 aircrew wellā¦I recognize each voiceāthe RIO/Pilot in the lead jet and the wingman pilot. (The voice at the beginning calling range/bearing is the shipās CIC)
You be the judge.
Finally, these guys knew that they had just killed two people. True, it was what they were trained to do and true, its was an either āthem or usā station. Iām not saying they lost any sleep over itāthey did not. However, the ākillā call is more of a relief than a celebratory event.
That called my attention as well. Arcady-like celebration of kills might be a good way to up the tone of the game, but spoil the realism and the gravitas. There was a long debate about BF1ās idea of violence and war portraying, and how ultimately it being a game, it could not offer a fair critique of the brutal WW1 because itās game elements meant itās violence would always be turned into spectacle no matter how ultraviolent and dark the game wasā¦
That said, thinking about the multiplayer environments and radio chatter, making Jester more game like and less realistic could mean a better merger of jester comms and real peer to peer coms, so that might work out as an artistic choice inside the game.
Trueā¦I hadnāt thought of that. After all, at the end of the day, we purchase and āplayā these combat sims to have some fun. Sure, their is the satisfaction of mastering a complicated weapons systems while trying to fly and equally complicated jet (oh why, oh why did I purchase the Mig-21bis?). However, knowing that that fireball really wasnāt a personās life going up in flamesāthat they will be re-spawning in a few momentsādoes take much of the edge out of it.
Great point. I hope that Heatblur can find a good āserious but fun-excitingā middle ground.
Something often lost in simulating combat is the personality of the individuals involved. Some guys would be cool as ice, others amped to the max. Iām good if JESTER is very excitable and enthusiastic, or if hes just out for another day in the office. Its wholly believable to me. And if you donāt think that some might be celebratory and braggadocios about killing the enemy, you are mistaken. Sure, some people would be contrite and take in the gravity of the situation, but not everyone. Dave Grossman wrote a good book āOn Killingā and a follow up āOn Combatā. Really great read and an honest look at the psychology and physiology of killing in war.
For all the documentation out there, in my experience, there is nothing textbook about combat.
Never said that there wasnāt. However it has been my experience that the vast majorityāif not allāof the naval aviators I knew in my career were not.
Regardless, what I heard in the Heatblur video was āa guy playing a gameā, not a guy trying to simulate RIO āchatterā during an internet and engagement.
ā¦and seriously, the RIO calling out a bogey at 2 oāclock high? If my pilot didnāt already have a tally on that guy, Iām looking for a new pilotā¦just sayān
Iām no zipper suited sky god. However whenever Iām puttin around in the -172. I always ask passengers to call out aircraft they see, if I havnt already acknowledged it. So many things can draw in your attention in a cockpit. Iām sure itās ten fold in a tactical environment. We are all in it together.
Of corse you are right, it is and they are.
The Heatblur video seemed to be a 1v1 fight (which really doesnāt happen in the real world) so he was calling the bandit that (hopefully) the pilot was already engaging.
Pilots & RIOs are teamed up during months of work ups and normally fly with each other through the deployment. So they work out what they want to hear from each other, not just in an engagement but during launch, traps (especially at night) and of course the NATOPS bold face spells out what each does during emergencies.
That teamwork may be hard to capture in Heatblurās F-14 although not impossible. A2A has a Piper Cub where you can set the āchattinessā of your passengerā¦maybe something like that wold work.
Many games with this sort of AI-player interaction have a setting called āverbosityā or some such. There are usually 2 to 4 levels with different categories of info relayed in each one. No idea if weāll have anything like this or not, but there is no doubt while some players want all the info they can get, others will fall into the āI know already, shut up!ā category.
Iāve not watched the video, but I could picture the RIO telling you they found a bogey on the scope that is outside visual range. Iād certainly want to know that.
I only need two things from my co-pilot:
Call minimums.
And when we break out try to spot a Dennyās or IHOP sign.
And it was on that day Beach received a shrill reminder; the RIO controls the ejection seats.
Still envious. It would be great to demand to be flown in a fighter jet
Yep,thatās the whole idea. The RIO has standard calls and updates. Number, altitude, range, closure speed, bearing, target heading, etc. stuff like that. For BVR shots, the RIO launches the missile. Once one of the pilots calls āTallyā (In shoot down tape you can hear the wingman call āTally twoā) it essentially becomes the pilotās fight.
During the intercept, the RIO will also give heading recommendations to the pilot for whatever they are trying to doāhead-to-head, stern conversion, etc.
In the shoot down tape you can hear that they were trying to take an offset from the Migs-keeping non-aggressive while not getting into a defensive positionābasically, pass them by at a couple miles separation then turn back and parallel themāa good position to jump the Migs if they threaten another air wing aircraft like an E-2C or S-3B.
The problem was every time the F-14ās turned away to set the offset, the Migs turned into them on a direct intercept course. You canāt turn more in the same direction since that will eventually put you in a defensive positionāso you turn back across the Migās heading to offset on the other sideā¦they tried that five times.
The Mig-23/AA-7 radar/missile system has a forward quarter capabilityā¦obviously enhanced if you are pointing directly at the targetā¦in this case your F-14ā¦soā¦once they get into their missileās rangeā¦FOX-1ā¦fightās on.