hailstorm

Like Beagle said, the vapor cone appears when there is high humidity in the air... and is NOT dependant on the sound barrier, it can happen as long as the aircraft is travelling fast enough to create the air pressure difference around itself to make it happen (higher humidity = slower speed required) it can be done above or below the sound barrier, even jets on landing approach though cloud can create them, so no, it has nothing to do with it. the sound barrier is just that - sound. I don't know who first reported it as being linked to breaking the sound barrier, but it was never the case and is just about as true as most hollywood myths about aircraft/guns/any military aspect.

I could swear that's how the laser-guided artillery shells work already, the person firing the shell has no confirmation of any designation made by a player at the target area, as long as it's fired in the general area of the designated target it automatically locks on and homes in. So the ability is there, but wether it's something that can be applied to air-dropped munitions is a question only the devs can answer. I'm currently using an X-55, care to share how you got the thumbstick working? I've been wracking my brains trying to get it to work so I don't have to keep switching to the mouse!

More or less, yes. wIthout going into too much technically, it should be somewhat reasonable to assume in-game someone should be able to lock onto at least passive-detected air targets with heatseekers. In my mind that gives the heatseekers a better gameplay role as a 'stealthy' short-range attack weapon, as opposed to just another aa missile that has to be locked like any other one. eg. a pilot might try to 'sneak up' on a target, but the opponent could get the jump on them and counter with a long-range radar missile shot. moments and tactics like that making battles a little more fluid in nature

I'm not sure if i'm missing something obvious, but are the BIM-9 (and similar IR-guided) missiles only able to lock onto air targets if active radar is switched on? IRL a jet pilot is able to lock onto targets and launch them without radar guidance (though it can be used to assist in telling the missle where to point it's seeker head initially),

I put this one up in the bugtracker as well: https://feedback.bistudio.com/T124536 Yeah, Atm it's more <1 degree...

lex__1, the guys who made the jet in the video you linked ARE the same ones who are making this DLC, That's why the jet in the DLC is called the "Black Wasp II" and follows the same design philosophy (Stealth F/A-18E), in one of their developement videos they conceded that as much as they wanted to add a lot of features to the jet (and DLC) they had to limit themselves to only the most worthwhile changes, so while we get advanced sensors, component failures and swappable loadouts as official changes, a lot didn't make the cut :( Feedback: The ILS for the Carrier is incorrectly set. Aside from the ILS runway and the Carrier's Physical stip being misaligned (which was already mentioned here) the Glideslope is VERY low - almost flat. it means that there is a high risk of crashing into the back of the ship while attempting to follow it: https://feedback.bistudio.com/T124536 Normal glideslope angle is 3 degrees (though in some cases can be up to 5 degrees)

Been a long time since I posted here, probably since the last forum update lol. Auss, Mattaust, and everyone else who worked on this map since the beginning, I want to say thanks. I've been following this project for a long time - ever since the initial work back in ArmA. I don't doubt for a second it's been a long road for you guys, and I you guys truely deserve a lot of praise for just the sheer amount of work you all have put into it. What you all did with this map is a serious achievement, and I don't think you should let anyone convince you otherwise. It's clear that there has been so much work put into this, as well as lots of hidden effort that was lost when re-porting the map over the different engines and hard drive crashes etc. that you all had to overcome that this was more than just a simple map project. I'm not sure just how much I can tell you I respect your work, but i will say this; one of the major reasons i bought ArmA 3 in the first place was because of your plans to release this map for it. At some point i wanted to build an epic campaign set on it, but for now i'm just happy to burn around the coast in an RAAF Superhornet. so even for just letting me do that, thank you!

Well, there's the Patriot system: a humvee-based system of this type would probably be the SLAMRAAM launcher (but cancelled) (there's also the NASAMS system used to guard the WH) (it's in VBS2!) problem is all of these systems need to set up and use a separate ground vehicle for guidance. then there's This. which from the description sounds like it can attack tanks as well as keep the skies clear (something the tunguska does quite well), pity it's also cancelled...

While they're at it, they can fix the fact that the parachute is a solid object and will hold the occupant off the ground if the canopy hits the ground first. what makes it worse that on landing it can make the parachutist stuck in a infinite loop - the folding animation goes downwards and backwards, and if the parachutist is off the ground for whatever reason (like the parachute lifting the guy off the ground while folding) it will re-deploy and start the whole process over again. It's been in the bugtracker for months. (though extra votes might get a bit of attention!) @JAG201509; the problem with the animation is that the game treats the parachute as a "vehicle" with all the included physics and inertia, so that jump on the ground you're seeing is just the standard 'dismount' animation that happens whenever you get out of a vehicle. off topic: btw JAG, don't assume you're the only person with a 'PH299' on these forums. ;) and just an FYI, craft like the Apache and Tiger have armored/high-placed cockpits and collapsing landing gear to cushion the impact of a crash to make them survivable; the way attack helicopters are usually flown mean the time needed to react and fire a ejection seat is usually not there, but the low altitude means it also won't be falling at terminal velocity either - meaning an emphasis on internal survivability is better than one of external survivability.

Just keep in mind that when ArmA1 first released it brought a harrier that couldn't hover, and it couldn't designate it's own lazer-guided bombs even though one of it's hard points had a lazer designator bolted to it. ArmA2 brought an F-35 that can't attack ground without external help. It's sad, but just because it's modeled, don't assume it'll be functional.

If you're talking about this screenshot, that's the X-35B VTOL version - you can still see the four-piece lift fan doors behind the cockpit, and even then those are of the prototype model - the production model has a single main door with a single hinge. My bet is it's the same model from Arma2. Hopefully this time around they at least make it able to attack ground without needing someone else with a lazer designator.

I want a UAV that doesn't require a live, vulnerable crew inside it in order to fly like an unmanned drone. Is that too much to ask?

Was (and still is) VERY possible with a Kamov and Vikhr missiles. Those things have a huge range and can also successfully attack air - the damn helicopter has basically NO counter except an infantry with a stinger with the luck to somehow get underneath it. After all this time I still think balance-wise it's completely broken. Air physics are OK in 2 overall, what I'd like to see is a separation in the config values of thrust and max power - so a prop plane can have a high thrust value but overall a low max speed and a jet to have lower acceleration but higher top speed. (real life example - having the C-130 be able to fly out of the grass airfields on cherno but the jets not being able to) I'd also like to be able to do a constant turn at full thrust without having the speed bleed all the way to stall - it shouldn't happen at max thrust, at least. with real air physics airspeed will only drop to a point where there is enough excess thrust from the engines to compensate for the increased drag created by the turn. The speed is different for most aircraft but it's usually a speed slightly higher than stall speed. It would also be nice to get rid of the silly harrier version of autohover and have the F-35 version as the minimum standard across all vtol craft (assuming the harrier is even IN 3)

Coffeecat I reported the same issue in my first post. after dePBO'ing the mission I found the only thing that fixed the LHD vanishing was by moving the ship and everything on it closer to the edge of the map (where you have it positioned now is well outside the map boundary)

Yeah, it's tricky at first, but it's straightforward once you know how; -Fly straight and level (the higher up the better), and start throttling back about 2 k's away from the ship. - Dump full flap and gear, and keep decelerating. - At about 200 KMH, switch on autohover, keep decelerating. nose up slightly if you want to slow down quickly. - Then it's a matter of tilting the harrier in the direction you want to go, aim straight at the area in front of the UH-1y's. Using autohover on the ground with very small amounts of thrust also lets you rotate the aircraft around it's axis as well for easy taxiing.

I just found the skybreakers mission, it was pretty good. I was curious as to what you used tp spawn the LHD, was it this script? I had an bug whereby the entire LHD disappears once you are onboard the harrier, but reappears when you zoom in slightly - it made landing purely by guesswork based on the position of the helicopters that were still visible on the deck. I suspect there's just way too much objects placed on the ship, causing the game to cut down on visible LODs - the LHD being one that thus vanishes. Other than that it's not bad, the only targets were AA-tank type vehicles, if you wanted some variety you could also throw in a few soft targets like trucks or jeeps that the player could use their rockets on. With re-arming, like [TcB]-Psycho- said only the bombs seem to be rearmed - it would be nice if everything was replenished. The added "magazine" of bombs also doesn't appear on the wings afterwards, and drop from the centre of the aircraft - try adding removemagazine "6Rnd_Mk82" before you add the next one in. You mentioned flares in the mission, but useful flares only exist in arrowhead - if you wanted to make it CO-dependant you could reload those too; the code should be [jet] addmagazine "120Rnd_CMFlare_Chaff_Magazine" Also, one thing to note is that even though you repair the aircraft, it's a good idea to also heal the pilot - Arma does this thing where if a vehicle it damaged, it takes the equivalent percentage of the crew's health as well - so the player in this mission can only take 100% harrier hitpoints before he dies - even if the harrier was repaired back to 100% halfway (or even made the harrier invincible) @TheCapulet, you're not supposed to land conventionally (i.e like a airliner) on the LHD's deck - the Harrier in-game has an autohover which makes it fly like a helicopter (although it can't ascend in this mode) - You're supposed to land vertically like a helicopter onto the deck - it's how it's done IRL and it definitely doesn't need a tailhook script.

I'm in the "don't like the future setting/weapons" crowd. but i don't think it'll be that bad, however. Like a few others have said, there's only 1 100% fictional weapon shown so far, and the comanche (yes, it IS a comanche and YES, it is unmodified from the last known design, tail rotor and all) could be explained away. for all we know, BI have just released images of the 'fantastical' stuff purely to look different and to show something new to fans and non-fans alike, and every single other weapon in the game is all present-day stuff. here's hoping. I do hope that the storyline gives a plausible explanation as to the existence of these weapons, like, say, the cold war went hot and the world has been at war for a long time, hence the approved development of things like the comanche and that co-ax havok, the almost haphazard approval for all sorts of rifles to be used on the frontlines, etc. that being said, I also hope that BI will include present-day weapons in-game that do the same job as all the fictional stuff, like a AH-1 for the blu and hind or proper, actual havok for the opfor, just so mission designers can make modern-day conflicts straight out of the box without having to wait for modders.

Can the manual nozzle control for the harriers be changed so that the control works regardless of engine thrust setting? Currently if there is some sort of engine thrust input (from a joystick slider for example) it automatically controls where the nozzles point, meaning the flaps up/down setting will not control the nozzles, only the flaps. In addition, attempting to use brakes will also override the nozzle position as well, meaning the pilot has to re-set them.

Rindier, that isn't a bomb sight indicator on the HUD - it's just the flight path marker with a line linking it and the nose direction. So basically if you want to aim bombs then you have to realize that the bomb will hit the ground below the flight path marker - to what distance varies depending on attitude and the velocity of the aircraft. But yeah, this is definitely in the wrong section buddy. mando missiles will probably be the best bet.

On-topic: great stuff JDog. if you're having trouble thinking about what to do with the hangar deck a la detail, why not just copy the design of the hangar deck of the LHD-9 Khe sahn? not many people know this, but you can actually walk to the hangar deck using the railings on the left side of the ship. it's not really great detail, and AFAIK it's in the wrong position on the ship, but it has enough details to look the part, and besides, what else do you need other than that?

Hey Macadam Cow, nice work. your base looks really nice. If you're aiming for something more realistic, here's a few more pointers from my experience as a civil pilot: The most important things for a large-ish airport are the layout of the taxiways and runways. at the minimum, for each runway, there should be 1 parallel primary taxiway that runs from end-to-end next to the runway, and it situated between the runway and any secondary taxiways leading off to hangars and parking areas - this main taxiway is for constantly moving aircraft of all sizes, so having tall buildings or aircraft parking anywhere near it is a no-no. A good BIS-made example of an airport is the one on Malden, from OFP. DON"T take layout inspiration from anything made in ArmA or ArmA2, each airport there has something that would legally prevent it from being called an aerodrome IRL lol (main Cherno, Takistan & Sahrani - bulidings way to close to runway and taxiways, Cherno grass strips - trees way to close to runway ends, Utes - that deathtrap of a tower placement :omg:, etc.) - What you should do is replace that perimeter road with an actual taxiway following the same route - aircraft usually try to only travel on one runway while taxiing on the ground, the one they actually be landing/taking off from. crossing two runways to take off from a third, while not illegal or anything, is inefficient and also very dangerous if those runways are also in operation. Runways are actually much, much wider legally than just the strip of pavement with the lines painted on it - This Australian legal document outlines the basic space requirements of a runway - figure 2B on page 3, specifically. an interesting thing to note is that this is for a runway that has only a 15m wide paved area - the rest is referring to areas that just need to be free from any obstacles, like fences, buildings, trees, etc. -It might be a good idea to remove those hangars and parking bays in between and off the runway edges, their position is way too unrealistic for a base (and runways) that big. Just replacing them with taxiways running the length of the field would make things look much more realistic. -The hesco walls you've ringed the base with don't seem to be breaking the clearway rules, they're low enough and far enough away from the runway to not be a problem. -With lighting, the lights alongside a runway only need to be placed every 90m or so - nothing Christmas tree-like. also, runways are always bi-directional, since aircraft always prefer to land into the wind as much as possible, so having runway landing lights at BOTH end of each runway is how they're set up. that being said, only one set of lights will be turned on at any one time, but with parallel runways, those lights are on at the same ends... Here's a real-life triple-parallel runway airport to draw some inspiration from - Bankstown Airport, in Australia. I've scanned in a diagram of the airport from one of my aviation documents for you: Black means runways and buildings, grey means taxiways, and letter/number combinations are talking about specific sections of taxiway (i.e taxiway Lima, which runs to the south of all three runways, is split up into 7 different sections (Lima-1 to Lima-7) by taxiway intersections. At the end of each runway there is a number detailing what compass bearing the runway sits on (110 degrees or 290 degrees) as well as wether the runway is the Left, Centre, or Right runway from that direction. -Things worth noting is how far away any sort of parking is from the actual runways, and how the taxiways are there mainly to allow planes to taxi onto the far end of each runway, as well as allow landing planes to get off the runway quickly when they stop short of the ends of the runway. PAPI lights, in ArmA AFAIK, are made up of four separate objects in that catalog - they require no scripting to work, just some skillful placement by the creator. all the objects do are project a white or red light at the player depending what vertical angle they are relative to the light - if the player is too low on glideslope (5 degrees IIRC), all four lights looks red to the player, too high, they all look white. the real system (and the game system) works by having the lights change from left to right depending on the player's perspective (this is already programmed into each light). each light changes at a different angle, so (assuming the player stands on the ground in front of them and ascends vertically) the light on the the left changes to white first, then the 2nd to left, then 2nd to right, then the right-most one, in order. To get them to work on your airbase, you just need to place the lights roughly 2M apart from each other, next to the touch-down point on each end of the runway (you can tell it's the touchdown point by the large amount of tire markings on the runway texture), while placing the correct PAPI lights in the correct order so the light change pattern is what you see when you look at them as you're trying to land. IRL, the aim is to see from the cockpit the two left-hand lights white, and the two right-hand lights red as you're trying to land. I know this was a huge read, but hopefully it helps buddy.

hmm, it may depend on whether you waited at the checkpoint at the start or not. I chose to wait, seeing as I figured firing at a US checkpoint is never a good idea... anyway, within a few seconds of going through the checkpoint after waiting one of the mercs announces he's hacked into a UAV uplink, so you can use it through the action menu under "UAV (hacked)". Sometimes you get logged off it automatically, due to it being a questionable connection, but since you can only use it for spotting anyway it's not a big deal.

Just had a very, very painful run-though of this mission. Driver AI, well, that really hasn't been great through any of the ArmA 2 iterations, and driver skill has been on a steady decline ever since OFP, though that could be due to multiple factors like increased environmental clutter around roads, etc. more of that in this mission, so even a radio 0-0-1 "stop", 0-0-2 "go" commands to assist with gunning would have been really appreciated. Including the UAV was a good idea though, using thermal on that really was a lifesaver. That hind encounter at the end really took the cake though. Not Because I didn't have enough ammo, or it was too good of a shot, but because the bastard thing did one attack pass on me and then pissed off. Well, since for some random reason whoever authored this mission made it a requirement that the damn thing has to be DESTROYED for a mission complete, my vehicle made it to the "end" (which is nowhere near the end of the map btw) and just sat there. Eventually I got bored and watched from the UAV as the hind spazzed out and crashed itself into a mountainside kilometers away from where I was, thus letting me complete the mission. Honestly, why do we HAVE to shoot it down to finish? there are lots of possibilities as to why that can't be done by everyone who plays this mission, and strictly speaking, it's not even a mission requirement in the brief anyway, so why make things so difficult?

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure a real HUD has never, and will never work in how it's depicted in this beta, and also I'm well aware that the game crosshair had no physical link to the HUD. My point is that due to number of factors (like head movement, possibly badly configured HUDs, etc) the HUD in an aircraft pre-73116 OA was totally useless as an aiming device, and as a player the pilot had to rely on a completely external, unrealistic, game-generated object (i.e the crosshair) for any degree of accuracy. I too don't like that the idea of a solution is to make the HUD image a moving object, like you said Rock it's unrealistic, it currently causes more problems than it solves, and I personally feel there's lots of other, better ways to fix the problem. BUT, it does solve the parallax problem. I don't like this kind of roundabout fix to a different problem as opposed to fixing the true problem head-on, but at the end of the day, if BI think that this is going to be the solution they're going to run with, and don't have the time/resources for a better solution, I'll have to accept what I'm given. I'm taking solace in the fact the HUD at least now does the job of aiming weapons like it's supposed to. Personally, I'd prefer that the pilot's viewpoint was completely static in the cockpit when the pilot looks around, and not fixed a foot in front of the rotational axis like it currently is. With a static viewpoint, It would eliminate the moving HUD problem and still be accurate while looking in different directions. There is a reason most flight simulators do not simulate head movement, after all. Following Rock's example of the rifle iron sights, the error for the HUD in pre-beta was basically the equivalent of the entire rifle skewing whenever the player aimed to the left/right/up/down of dead centre while looking down the sights - if this happened, there's be a huge outrage from all the infantry players (and we know how huge a majority those guys are) who now couldn't aim and probably instead rely on the aim-from-the-hip crosshair for the majority of aiming.

currently the game sees how fast the aircraft is traveling prior to impact, and if that value is higher than a set value, the aircraft blows up. can it be programmed so the game looks at how fast an aircraft is going prior to impact, then look at how fast it's going after impact? then if change is higher than a set value (for the unit) = kill? if that were to be implemented, it would possibly mean that stuff like armored helicopters like the Apache can have a very high tolerance to hard landing (as it was designed to do), and make stuff like gear-up landings in fixed-wing aircraft (where a slow descent rate and small angle of impact can accurately be factored in and not overall speed) possible.