Aviation and Weather

[User1984]

I was watching a recent Twitch stream with Capt Darwin, where he is playing as the Czech's.

The ceiling (cloud height above ground level) is represented as 120 m (about 400 ft). Both of the fixed-wing aircraft available for the Czech's are listed as Not Rated - All Weather Capable, meaning that they are not equipped to fly in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC). Additionally, the red team also has helicopters available. I don't believe that precision guided munitions were available to the Warsaw Pact or NATO aircraft in 1989. How are the aircraft able to locate and identify targets with the cloud deck so low?

Early on in the scenario helicopters show up, with the ceiling still shown at 120 m. How are these helicopters able to operate with such a low ceiling? It is difficult to locate targets, very easy to run into things when flying that low, and there is not much room to maneuver without inadvertently entering the clouds. For those not familiar with aviation, entering the clouds when not expecting it and not on an instrument flight plan, is a very bad idea. Was the Mi-24V even equipped to fly in IMC?

Also, it would be a nice addition if the game shows cloud tops in addition to the cloud bases. For example, a thin cloud deck may indicate that the fog will burn off soon.

Regarding sunrise and illumination shown in the scenario. A quick check of sunrise data seems to indicate that the sunrise is occurring to early in the game. Also illumination is increasing unrealistically. With a low cloud deck (fog) how is illumination shown as 100% after sunrise?

[WildCatNL]

Thanks for your feedback. Really appreciate the aviation angle.

The ceiling (cloud height above ground level) is represented as 120 m (about 400 ft). Both of the fixed-wing aircraft available for the Czech's are listed as Not Rated - All Weather Capable, meaning that they are not equipped to fly in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC). Additionally, the red team also has helicopters available. I don't believe that precision guided munitions were available to the Warsaw Pact or NATO aircraft in 1989. How are the aircraft able to locate and identify targets with the cloud deck so low?

They shouldn't. We need to improve how the game deals with aircraft and helicopters under these conditions.

Also, it would be a nice addition if the game shows cloud tops in addition to the cloud bases. For example, a thin cloud deck may indicate that the fog will burn off soon.

We don't have cloud top info (or cloud layer) info. For Germany, we used public data from the german weather service (DWD), based on 100+ weather stations, most of which are traditional weather stations, not airports, and don't collect cloud ceiling data.

For NTC Irwin and Twenty Nine Palms (areas not in this version of the game), we used NOAA METAR data from neighboring airfields. Although that data includes cloud layers, we didn't use it; given the coarse fidelity modeling of air strikes (no on-map ingress and egress), we put our focus on other mechanisms.

Regarding sunrise and illumination shown in the scenario. A quick check of sunrise data seems to indicate that the sunrise is occurring to early in the game.

CapnDarwin was playing a scenario near Landau an der Isar, Jul 20 1989, with sunrise listed by the game as 0259-0429 (BMNT - Sunrise).
www.timeanddate.com gives me, for that location, 0355-0528 with DST, which would be 0255-0428 without daylight time savings, which happens what we use for the game.
The small discrepancy is due to how we enable scenario designers to provide random regionally correct weather by picking a random day from 15 surrounding days.

Also illumination is increasing unrealistically. With a low cloud deck (fog) how is illumination shown as 100% after sunrise?

We model illumination from a sensor system / spotting perspective, where some low illumination conditions render certain sensors (notably light amplifying NVGs) ineffective. Illumination can be low at night, depending on clouds and moon, is 100% during the day, and linearly increase to / drops from 100% during sunrise / sunset.
If there are better ways to model that transition, personally I'd love to hear about it. I'm unsure whether a different model would matter in the game, though.

Hope this offers some clarity on what the game does and doesn't.

William

[User1984]

Thanks for taking the time to write up a detailed response. I look forward to more realistic improvements in the future.

One other point regarding weather - I have feet and miles selected in the game options, however the visibility still shows up in meters.

Do you have plans to release the NTC Ft Irwin and 29 Palms maps/scenarios/game to the public?