UAVs: Feedback and wishes

[xon2 102]

Is there anyway to make the Greyhawk missile variant attack 'laser painted targets' only when it flys autonomously?

 

So the UAVs seem to attack an enemy only when the waypoint is set to 'open fire' (which is the default) or 'open fire and engage at will'. Since the Greyhawk missile variant can lock on and attack enemy vehicles on its own, i need to set the waypoints to either never fire, hold fire or hold fire and engage at will. But if i laser designate a target when the autonomously flying drone is in the latter modes, it will not fire on my designated target. It will only do so if i set it to open fire or open fire and engage at will. But then it will attack any enemy target of opportunity, including my laser designated one.

 

It works with the CAS variant because these need to lock onto a laser before they can attack an enemy. Hence when i put them in the 'open fire' mode, they can really only attack laser painted targets (just like the A-10 with gbus).

 

Wouldnt it be awesome to have the missle variant (six missles overall) circle over the OA autonomously without randomly attack enemy vehicles on its own, but still be able to specifically fire on laser painted targets? Anyway to make that work?

[LorenLuke 11]

• Allow multiple connections to the UAV. This would enable several potential benefits to open up. For example, it would allow the simultaneous inclusion of a pilot and gunner, allowing better coordination and usage of the drone. It would allow having a squad leader/commander unit use the AV cam (or brand new sensor panels that came with the Jets update) and see what the drone does without having to operate the drone itself (Not much point in having the AV cam if you can just look through the drone already, anyway).
• Allow for more back(pack)-mounted, or even smaller, drones. Various fixed-wing style drones such as the RQ-11 Raven (or on the civilian market, Parrot Disco) could be emplied for less noisy/visible presence as compared to a quadcopter at the cost of inability to lase and hover. A small two wheeled drone for clearing rooms and the like, or even just a grenade-style drone designed to be tossed in somewhere as a camera for places beyond arm's reach.
• Reduced visibility for the darter. Having been an owner of a Phantom 2 drone, I can confirm they are noisy. However, 50 meters up and 200 meters away is about when I can't hear it anymore. Being able to have it spotted with no lights on from 500 meters away when it's just poking over a hilltop is silly.
• The ability to datalink to a squad from a drone.
• An actual set of crosshairs/UI for the MQ-12.
• With the advent of jets and the turrets used on the USS Freedom aircraft carrier, the ability to emplace remote turrets in addition to the HMG/GMG has been demonstrated to be possible. Potentially have the ability to interact and place player weapons in to be used by the turrets.

 

[lex__1 422]

Who can explain the function in menu - "support", what is it and what is it intended for?
And associated glare of the screen, the lack of the ability to use UAV fully, after using the function in menu - "support" - what it all means. https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120280

 

[lex__1 422]

On 27.08.2017 at 5:10 PM, lex__1 said:

Who can explain the function - support, what is it and what is it intended for?
And associated glare of the screen, the lack of the ability to use UAV fully, after using the function - support - what it all means. https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120280

 

BIS, is there an explanation for this?

 

[lex__1 422]

?

 

[oukej 2911]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Waypoint_types#Support

[Drenlin 4]

To preface this, I am an actual IRL imagery analyst, working with real military RPAs/UAVs/UCAVs. (We can't seem to all agree on what to call them.)  What I'm saying applies mostly to the Greyhawk and Sentinel, but also in most cases to the other UAVs and even some of the manned assets (armed Blackfish especially).

The one glaring issue with these is that they allow only one operator, but require a separate pilot and sensor operator. Depending on an AI pilot for ISR ops and lining up strikes is not fun, and striking things from the pilot's view is basically just the same as a manned aircraft but with a crappy view. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to allow someone to connect to them individually?

Other than that, the biggest problem with these, IMO, is that the thermals are all wrong. Personnel are way overexposed, while the rest of the image is almost a flat grey in some cases. Now I know there's only one "thermal vision" effect for the game, so they're not going to rewrite that part, but it would be an enormous improvement to give players control over the contrast settings. Just a hotkey for contrast up/down would be amazing. The real ones can do this. Thermals are a huge part of how these operate, visually, especially at night when it's their only option. The green "night vision" mode, on the other hand, is pretty unrealistic...this is not something you find on actual RPAs. They do leverage the technology (described as "image intensified TV" in Raytheon's advertisements) , but it's not a usable image, exactly, and I'm not sure it could really be implemented here anyway. This is just a distraction for many units, but a critical issue with anything trying to perform in an airborne ISR role.

Another big issue is that the zoom levels on the camera are wonky. More of them are needed in general really, but the biggest shortfall is that the furthest zoom is still not enough...with the low ranges involved here, I'd say at least a 15x would still be appropriate. Adding it as a 4th zoom level would make the most sense. For context, from 5000MSL, the real ones can still get a much closer view than the game's units get from 1000MSL. Arma also doesn't handle LOD properly with long ranges and high zoom levels, so anything even approaching the proper range for something like this just looks awful...it's really distracting when you're trying to follow a vehicle while it's being rendered as a low-poly model and is constantly sinking up to its windshield into the terrain.

Further, the lack of altitude options in the default UAV Operator's menu is a significant hangup. Adding 750m, and then 500m increments from 1000 to 3000 would be ok, but if nothing else just add 1000 and 1500 in there. For most applications in this game, 500 is too low and 2000 is too high. The orbit standoffs available aren't actually too bad...2km would be good on the Greyhawk with some extra zoom available though. Similarly, the Sentinel 's options offer good ranges for its higher orbit speeds, but it doesn't really have enough zoom to make use of it. Related to this, we need the option to pick the speed they orbit at, which is way too high by default. You typically want this to be pretty slow compared to the aircraft's max speed. I script my Greyhawk to orbit at ~125kmh, which makes things much easier. Making the loiter altitude ASL instead of AGL would be a nice touch, too, so they aren't wobbling around trying to follow the terrain while you're trying to zoom in on something.

End goal for these changes is to be able to park these things over a target and do actual ISR work and maybe some more realistic combat support. They're not great at CAS compared to the other aircraft since the current interface is so clunky, but being able to park one in an effective orbit over an AO and spot/lase targets for other units would be an enormous increase in its utility. This is something the real ones are very, very good at. Further, it would be a fantastic (and realistic) use of the craft to be able to do that from outside detection range of your average dismounted rifleman.

Now, for some smaller stuff, for utility and immersion -

• Today's actual models are already using HD cameras. Why, several decades in the future, have we reverted to cameras from 2005? Just take the black border off of the sensor 's view, so you can see a full screen image with the HUD on it. It'll look much, much better, and significantly more accurate.
   
• The sensor's lens is "dirty", on all of them, and makes the thermal vision even worse. Why is this a thing? They would never be launched like that, and even if they did, it wouldn't be in focus the whole time....it's very distracting.
   
• The sensor ball should display the grids of whatever it's looking at, unless it's looking over the horizon, in which case it should blank out. Mostly comes into play on hardcore servers that actually make you pass grids verbally or through chat, instead of via the map. The real ones do this. Even on regular servers though, it'd look pretty cool, yeah?
   
• Discussed here before, but unless you're in 3rd person view, I don't think it's realistic or helpful to hear the aircraft's noises instead of your actual character's surroundings. This may be a game engine limitation, but if nothing else just give an option to mute it, maybe?
   
• The sensor turret seems to have trouble rotating quickly, for some reason? That's not a thing IRL...they can spin like a top. Rotation of the aircraft has basically no bearing on their movement, either.
   
• Last one, why can these things maneuver like fighters? The Greyhawk doing fast, high-G maneuvers without the wings coming off is flat out silly. The Sentinel is a bit better since it's got more of a scifi element to it, but still over the top...it's a tail-less flying wing design with a wide aspect ratio and no yaw control. No way is it stable enough to pull high G maneuvers at 900kmh.

[lex__1 422]

@Drenlin Excellent commentary to achieve high-end equipment.

 

On 19.12.2017 at 11:45 PM, oukej said:

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Waypoint_types#Support

And the glare of the screen why do you need?
What is the way to exit support mode? Support mode-quickly turns on, there is no way to cancel the "support" mode, or there is a problem in changing it.

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120280