Apex Vehicles Feedback

[VTOLAFMPLS:3 36]

Xi'an

- landing light pointed down

- landing light remains turned on (even w/ landing gear up - the texture goes thru)

- a hole on the back of the turret

 

+Mohawk

- cockpit textures look different from usual cockpit quality, this helicopter is worth detail, as it's the best helicopter in the history at the moment

   you can also add some other textures

- 2 black screens

 

+IR signatures

- when an engine is working the whole UGV body warms up, apparently a lot of other vehicle bodies as well (also makes a contrast for zoomed-out IR cameras onboard)

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

AI wipeout still getting stuck, same spot as seen here.

Why there have to be 1.2m deep trenches on a civilian airfield is beyond me.

 

Cheers

[dragon01 902]

The taxiways are there for a reason, you know? :) Generally, heavy planes have trouble taxiing over anything that isn't tarmac.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

The taxiways are there for a reason, you know? :) Generally, heavy planes have trouble taxiing over anything that isn't tarmac.

Go tell that the AI that drove it there.

 

Cheers

[dragon01 902]

Even if AI could taxi properly, they wouldn't be able to take off anyway. I tried. Without unitCapture it's an exercise in futility. That's another thing I hope they'll fix for the Jets DLC.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

Last time I tried the Buzzard still crashes when trying to land on altis main airport, has been an issue since the wipeout164 went live, go figure.

Back in A2 this was a non issue, you could have aircraft land/depart on various airports and automate an authentic busy airfield.

Those were the days.

 

Cheers

[joostsidy 685]

I hope BI can find the time to improve VTOL AI. Today I spent several hours trying to make the blackfish land at the Bala airstrip at Tanoa. Couldn't get it working, even with loads of scripted waypoints, managing heights and setting speeds to help the AI as it approaches its landing zone. Tried invisible helipads. It's impossible to make the VTOL fly very slow with limit- and forceSpeed. The vectoring actions don't work. VTOLS take unnecessary corners, crashes into hills etc.

 

I just wanted the VTOL do drop my vehicle off at a very 'landing friendly' area, really bummed that something that simple can't work.

[arkhir 135]

3 hours ago, joostsidy said:

I hope BI can find the time to improve VTOL AI. Today I spent several hours trying to make the blackfish land at the Bala airstrip at Tanoa. Couldn't get it working, even with loads of scripted waypoints, managing heights and setting speeds to help the AI as it approaches its landing zone. Tried invisible helipads. It's impossible to make the VTOL fly very slow with limit- and forceSpeed. The vectoring actions don't work. VTOLS take unnecessary corners, crashes into hills etc.

 

I just wanted the VTOL do drop my vehicle off at a very 'landing friendly' area, really bummed that something that simple can't work.

Have you tried https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/landAt?

 

I suspect VTOL AI uses plane ai more than helicopter AI.

[joostsidy 685]

12 hours ago, arkhir said:

Have you tried https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/landAt?

 

I suspect VTOL AI uses plane ai more than helicopter AI.

Thanks arkhir! I got a decent script working with the landAt command and the airfield number. Treating it like a plane like you said.

 

This will be good enough for my current mission, the whole experience is quite crude however. I hope some of the following things can be adressed by BI to make more use of this awesome vehicle type.

 

- The ai basically thinks that it's a plane, but will try to take off vertically. This leads to a low power, wobbly take off (Blackfish vehicle). Can this be improved someway?

- Can the VTOLS (AI) be made to take off horizontally?

- It would be coolest of course if VTOLS (AI) could have a choice between vertical and horizontal landing/take off

- Can the VTOLS (AI) be made to hover?

- Scripters would have more options if related commands would actually work: action commands regarding vectoring, setting any speed and making them land at helipads

- The VTOL always shuts down its engine on landing, I think there should be an option to keep it running (LAND 'GET OUT'), for stop-and-go landings.

- Although VTOLS only need a small bit of runway, they land at the absolute start of it, almost clipping terrain and looking totally unnecessary. Probably all planes have the same kind of 'landing config', all using the same 'landing point' at the edge of the runway, but still.

 

Would a solution perhaps be to have a command that locks vectoring to helicopter mode and then switch the entire AI to the standard helo flight model? This would give a lot of freedom. Probably easier said then done :-)

[Tankbuster 1746]

12 hours ago, arkhir said:

Have you tried https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/landAt?

 

I suspect VTOL AI uses plane ai more than helicopter AI.

 

Blackfish AI pilot can't land at Bala though. He executes 'go around' endlessly.

[joostsidy 685]

Just now, Tankbuster said:

Blackfish AI pilot can't land at Bala though. He executes 'go around' endlessly.

 

He does in my mission, have you tried it recently?

 

It's probably because my AI pilot is better than yours. His name is Jim. ;-)

[Tankbuster 1746]

7 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

 

He does in my mission, have you tried it recently?

 

It's probably because my AI pilot is better than yours. His name is Jim. ;-)

 

Using landing autopilot he lands ok, but giving him a landat command for that airfield and he just goes around all the time. I assumed the landing autopilot and landat command used the same AI.

[joostsidy 685]

My script is a little more elaborate but the relevant parts are these:

 

while {_count < (count _wpList)} do {
	_helo move (getPos (_wpList select _count));
	waitUntil {_helo distance (_wpList select _count) < _wpRadius};
	_count = _count + 1;
};

waitUntil {unitReady _helo};
_helo landAt 3;

 

So I make the blackfish fly to a convenient waypoint to the n-w of Bala, about two km. Then I activate the 'landAt 3'. I tested it at default flyInHeight and flyInHeight 500; My plane leaves at Tuvanaka airport.

[Tankbuster 1746]

I had the AI do the entire flight. He seems to lose confidence in his approach quite early. The predicted flightpath takes him through a narrow avenue of trees on the approach and that appears to spook him. 

[joostsidy 685]

Now I remember.. It should also work 'out of the box'. To see which number is which airfield I dropped a blackfish on the map to the n-w of Bala, set its height to 100 and put 'this landAt 3;' in its init. Should def work!

 

Tanoa airports:
- 0 = main
- 1 = military
- 2 = dutch
- 3 = dirt
- 4 = harbour

[joostsidy 685]

 

11 minutes ago, Tankbuster said:

I had the AI do the entire flight. He seems to lose confidence in his approach quite early. The predicted flightpath seems to take him through a narrow avenue of trees on the approach and that appears to spook him. 

 

Srsly? Did your AI pilot and my AI pilot even go the same AI school? Maybe the entire flight is too long for him and he gets tired.. ;-P

 

EasyPeasy:

http://imgur.com/a/VSxzb

 

 

[joostsidy 685]

With weird flying behaviour its sometimes the case that you just have to restart the mission/game. Might that help in your case? I know that sometimes pathfinding behaviour changes in another session after you have painstakingly configured it on one occasion.

[joostsidy 685]

1 hour ago, joostsidy said:

- The VTOL always shuts down its engine on landing, I think there should be an option to keep it running (LAND 'GET OUT'), for stop-and-go landings.

 

This seems to be broken with AI. You can turn the engine on with script when the Blackfish hasn't done anything, however, after it has landed it will always turn its engines off, and you can't turn them on. I made an eventhandler that fires up the engines once it detects they are off. It works one time at the beginning of the mission. The Blackfish will only start its engines when it gets a new move command.

[Tankbuster 1746]

16 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

With weird flying behaviour its sometimes the case that you just have to restart the mission/game. Might that help in your case? I know that sometimes pathfinding behaviour changes in another session after you have painstakingly configured it on one occasion.

 

Possibly. This was in editor.

[joostsidy 685]

One thing I noted as well when finalizing dropping of vehicles with the Blackfish (AI): when you're *in a vehicle in the Blackfish*, there is much noise like engine or wind that changes in pitch, sounding very weird and annoying. You also hear this if you go to external view. The pitch of this white noise changes depending on how you rotate the camera. It sounds unrealistic and annoying and makes you want to turn the game sound off for the duration of the flight. If you're in the cockpit of the Blackfish, this noise is not present (internal or external view).

 

I know the VTOLS are not a priority at the moment, but I hope some resources can still be spent in the future to make the VTOL experience a little less crude.