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Though members of our team were out-of-office for part of the cycle supporting various Pro events, we’ve still managed to put together a release we hope you’ll enjoy. 495 includes over 500 new platforms between DB3K and CWDB (not counting over 700 new loadouts), and solutions to about 340 tickets from the public DB requests Github.

DB 495 also brings some new schema changes “under-the-hood.” Most of these support the continuing OODA overhaul we began in 494.

Aircraft Cockpit Generations

The flying equivalent to the “Combat System Generation” for ships, the “Cockpit Generation” is a way for us to approximate pilot load – and subsequently reaction times – based on cockpit design.

Aircraft can be assigned one of six cockpits: “Basic Instruments Only,” intended for the simplest aircraft; “Steam Gauges, ” as for WW2-era fighters; “Complex Steam Gauges,” for the nightmarish mid-Cold War fighters; “Partial Glass Cockpit,” for transitioning aircraft of the ‘70s-90s; “Glass Cockpit,” for most modern aircraft; or finally a “Panoramic Cockpit Display,” representing the new single-screen touch displays coming to a fifth-generation fighter near you.

Just as a ship is only as good as its CIC, your aircraft are only as good as their cockpits – and whether your pilots are forced to fiddle with a forest of knobs, switches, and dials or able to glance at an easy-to-read LCD will affect their performance. Of course, the difference between aircraft cockpit generations is far less than the difference between ship CS generations, measured in seconds rather than minutes.

But in a dogfight, seconds count.

Ergonomics

Not every aircraft built with steam gauges was equally difficult to fly; not every ship built in a certain decade could react with identical speed. Certain platforms gained a reputation for being especially easy to operate (the Viggen, for example, had a remarkably well-designed cockpit); others, like the Komar-class missile boat, were the bane of their operators. Much of this can be ascribed to ergonomics, the consideration (or lack thereof) of human factors in design.

The new “ergonomics” field – ranging from “Awful” to “Excellent” – is intended to reflect these intra-generation differences, acting as a sort of OODA “buff/debuff” and giving the ability to adjust values to reflect upgrades, etc. without needing to take the drastic step of upgrading the combat generation.

And, of course, you still have proficiency in the mix. Players now have an interesting mix of factors to consider:
- "Tech generation," e.g. CS/cockpit generation: when was your platform designed/built, and what sort of tech was in play at the time? Are you working with ancient WW2 plotting boards or Aegis?
- Usability/ergonomics/design: are you working with beautiful, top-of-the-line COTS human interface tech or the nightmare that was mid/late-Cold War Soviet systems?
- Proficiency: Do you have well-trained, well-rested/motivated crews, or are you dealing with bottom-of-the-barrel conscripts?

Those three factors will all have to play into your operational planning.

Definable Sensor Arcs and Vertical Scan Limits

495 also sees a small but important improvement to our sensor modelling: at last, sensor arcs can be defined in degrees, rather than in set sectors! We’ve also implemented vertical sensor arcs, which were especially important during the Cold War. Older air-to-air radars were often limited to a small chunk of vertical space (20 degrees or so), which meant that fighters would struggle to detect aircraft far below or above them. For air planners, this meant “Low CAPs” and “High CAPs” were necessary. Soon you too will have to consider altitude in your CAP coverage.

(Note that v495 does not have vertical sensor arc data backfilled, so this won’t have an immediate effect on gameplay until we can do a bit more research. Expect to see an RFI in the public Github for arcs and scan limits.)

Unmanned Autonomy Levels

Though still a work-in-progress and not yet supported sim-side, 495 also includes early work on “Unmanned Autonomy Levels” for UAVs. Essentially, this is intended to define the capabilities of a UAV when communications are disrupted. Some UAVs, nothing more than remotely controlled aircraft, will on loss of signal become “ghost planes,” flying off on their last heading until eventually crashing. Some can self-recover, i.e. search for a new signal and return to base if reconnection proves impossible. Newer UAVs are proving increasingly more autonomous, able to complete their last orders, self-analyze their ability to continue, work together, or even “think” for themselves. Once this is implemented, jamming drones will have platform-specific consequences beyond simply losing communications: some drones will crash immediately, while others may go off and hunt down John Connor.

pgatcomb wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 3:04 pm This is seriously cool stuff, especially now that missiles in flight are a bit more difficult to track. Question: I see the cockpit information in the database viewer, but I do not see the ergonomics?

Mgellis wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:32 pm Is anyone else having issues with loading cargo? I may just be doing something wrong, but I'm finding that...

1. I can't load more than one unit of the same type on an aircraft, even if it is supposed to fit (e.g., 2 4-man sections on a helicopter with room for 8)...but if I have a similar unit, I can do it (e.g., 1 4-man section of infantry AND 1 4-man section of Canadian infantry). Aircraft is an SH-60S.

2. When I load cargo onto an aircraft, close the cargo window, and then open it again, it does not show that cargo has been loaded. It seems to show it on the main game screen (e.g., load a cargo unit onto an aircraft and take off and it shows the total number of cargo units on the ship being reduced by 1) but not the window that shows you moving cargo from, say, a ship to an aircraft.

Is this a bug or am I just not using the controls properly?

Thanks.

Dimitris wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:36 pm

Mgellis wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:32 pm Is anyone else having issues with loading cargo? I may just be doing something wrong, but I'm finding that...

1. I can't load more than one unit of the same type on an aircraft, even if it is supposed to fit (e.g., 2 4-man sections on a helicopter with room for 8)...but if I have a similar unit, I can do it (e.g., 1 4-man section of infantry AND 1 4-man section of Canadian infantry). Aircraft is an SH-60S.

2. When I load cargo onto an aircraft, close the cargo window, and then open it again, it does not show that cargo has been loaded. It seems to show it on the main game screen (e.g., load a cargo unit onto an aircraft and take off and it shows the total number of cargo units on the ship being reduced by 1) but not the window that shows you moving cargo from, say, a ship to an aircraft.

Is this a bug or am I just not using the controls properly?

Thanks.

Mark, can you please spawn a new thread for this on Tech Support so that we can properly track and resolve? Thanks!

Matharox wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:12 pm Is number of crew factored in 'Ergonomics'? For example in Two-seater fighters the workload is split between the two pilots as opposed to one doing all the work.

rmwilsonjr wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 1:58 am I've downloaded and installed Build 1261.1 successfully, but my DB 3000 and CWDB are still v. 493, not 495. What did I overlook?

KLAB wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 8:26 am

rmwilsonjr wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 1:58 am I've downloaded and installed Build 1261.1 successfully, but my DB 3000 and CWDB are still v. 493, not 495. What did I overlook?

You may have to "manually" update each scenario to the latest DB? 495 via the editor function and save a new ini file? .
Not sure if legacy scenarios will have been updated automatically?
Editor allows you to check which DB the scenario is using and offers to upgrade it, and you can opt to update a list of scenarios. (With the OODA changes theres also the option to update these as well or not.)
Hope this is some help?
K