FalconC2 469th VACS
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I haven’t seen a place for squadron advertising here, so I hope i’m not out of place…
If so, I trust a mod will fix meAs of the time of this posting, things are still not very well defined, and they will be coming along as a work in progress. If you want to help build some community standards from scratch, now is the time to get on board!
Falcon C2 http://www.falconc2.org
Home of the 469th Virtual Air Control Squadron (VACS)The purpose of this squadron is to simulate a Military Radar Unit (i.e. Human AWACS/GCI) specializing in Tactical C2 for air combat sim. FC2 is not a flying squadron (although we might fly some internal TE’s, for the purpose of supporting training for our controllers).
FC2 encourages you to join in addition to your flying squadron.
Hopefully your flying squadrons will not prevent you from joining as an associate with FC2.
We want to add to, not take away from, what the flying squadrons are already doing.Types of associate members:
1. Controllers (you want to provide human awacs/gci)
2. Associate Pilots (you want to participate in the community, standards, and eventual training but not necessarily control)Come on by and register, see you there!
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Hello welcome.
You’ll be more than welcomed in a special place here: https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?18057-List-of-Virtual-Fighter-Wings-and-Squadrons
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Yep, found it and posted there.
You mods can do whatever you want with this one… thanks -
You’re added to the list.
Please keep this and provide some more details on what and how and maybe how flying squadrons would benefit from your educational program.
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Its still a bit ‘up in the air’ in that respect Arty.
Still, broadly speaking, squadrons would benefit from training with increased commonality of standards and interoperability, as well potentially as the increased flexibility leant by AIC tactics being used.
Now granted, they can get a good deal of that benefit by training and using their own AWACS squadron ‘in-house’ as it were, but having a community squadron which is open and accessible by multiple wings does allow for a greater deal of interoperability and makes the developed standards more open and more relevant to the community users.
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Interesting …
So basically you guys want to form a Radar (Awacs/ Tower - I presume) human squad to backup MP operations in Falcon.
A la IVAO for flightsim, Correct? -
Interested to see how this turns out.
Having tried to do ATC and GCI in our squadron already, a few questions / remarks.
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Don’t you think there will be a lot of downtime for your controllers? Mainly during the cruise part (easily 10 - 15 minutes, with an additional 15 - 20 minutes if the flight AARs) our controller was really just sitting there watching blips move on his screen, with nothing to do. Same for A-G missions, where a GCI is pretty much useless.
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During our tests, we noticed that BMS 2D is hardly ideal for ATC / GCI as it only shows flight leads and has a noticeable lag. OSC is better, but AISpy seems broken, so you can’t spot AI (blue or red) on your F4AWACS screen. As such, how accurate can your GCI locate, inform about and guide towards possible threats or targets?
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I don’t mean to discourage you, but I wonder if you will be able to set a standard at all. Especially if you aim to provide C2 for different teams, or on FO as I’ve seen on your site, you will undoubtedly come across pilots and units who want their ATC / GCI to be as realistic and smooth as possible, while others don’t really care about rough edges and cutting corners. The former group will be disappointed with “less quality”, while the latter probably won’t understand more advanced brevity or bother with procedures. Unless your controllers adapt to each team’s wishes (which I would not recommend at all), I’m afraid you will only be able to service the units that are consistent with your own desired level of reality.
I hope you can make it work, but these are my two cents. Cheers.
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Interested to see how this turns out.
Having tried to do ATC and GCI in our squadron already, a few questions / remarks.
- Don’t you think there will be a lot of downtime for your controllers? Mainly during the cruise part (easily 10 - 15 minutes, with an additional 15 - 20 minutes if the flight AARs) our controller was really just sitting there watching blips move on his screen, with nothing to do. Same for A-G missions, where a GCI is pretty much useless.
Depends on the size of the event, but given the small community Falcon has, almost definitely. I have in the past, spent multiple consecutive hours as AWACS on the FO FvF server, without a single pilot logging in to fly. So, almost certainly a feature of any future events, unless they are very large busy ones.
- During our tests, we noticed that BMS 2D is hardly ideal for ATC / GCI as it only shows flight leads and has a noticeable lag. OSC is better, but AISpy seems broken, so you can’t spot AI (blue or red) on your F4AWACS screen. As such, how accurate can your GCI locate, inform about and guide towards possible threats or targets?
Yah, this is a very big issue with the whole concept. For units that are flying with realistic tactics, its not a problem at all to use the BMS 2D UI. Its less comfortable than F4AWACS, but it is functional. Only seeing flight leads is not an issue for any wing whose wingmen stay ever VISUAL, always VISUAL.
Of course, not that many wingmen fly formation in the BMS world. So there can be an issue there.
- I don’t mean to discourage you, but I wonder if you will be able to set a standard at all. Especially if you aim to provide C2 for different teams, or on FO as I’ve seen on your site, you will undoubtedly come across pilots and units who want their ATC / GCI to be as realistic and smooth as possible, while others don’t really care about rough edges and cutting corners. The former group will be disappointed with “less quality”, while the latter probably won’t understand more advanced brevity or bother with procedures. Unless your controllers adapt to each team’s wishes (which I would not recommend at all), I’m afraid you will only be able to service the units that are consistent with your own desired level of reality.
I hope you can make it work, but these are my two cents. Cheers.
Well, setting a standard is the easy part. Encouraging uptake of that standard is the hard part! As yet, there is no definitive FC2 standard. You are of course welcome to discuss that prospect on the FC2 forum. I personally would like this standard to be realistic and smooth, and with correct and advanced brevity concepts and communication. My thoughts are that pilots who wish to take advantage of AWACS to its potential will need to learn a bit about comms and brevity. If you dont see the need for AWACS more advanced than the BMS AI, there is always the AI to fill that role too.
Still, the idea is also to make it inclusive rather than elitist, so there has to be some happy ground where we can operate in. I would concur this will be a potential sticking point for some.
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Yah, this is a very big issue with the whole concept. For units that are flying with realistic tactics, its not a problem at all to use the BMS 2D UI. Its less comfortable than F4AWACS, but it is functional. Only seeing flight leads is not an issue for any wing whose wingmen stay ever VISUAL, always VISUAL.
Of course, not that many wingmen fly formation in the BMS world. So there can be an issue there.
But you assume that an entire formation will stay visual ALL the time, which is not true, even in real life. Units that fly with realistic tactics, especially fourships, can fool 2D just as well, and GCI will only make things worse if the limitations are not factored in. A few examples:
- A single fourship set up in a counter-rotating 2+2 CAP. As Lead will be flying cold, GCI reports that to a pilot, who turns hot believing he has a chance to sneak up on his opponent, but instead finds himself face-to-face with a hot element (if not a missile already).
- A two- or fourship performing a bracket maneuver. Lead turns left, which GCI reports. Pilots focus their eyes and sensors to their right trying to find the opposing flight, and are targeted by the wingman / element from their blind side.
- A fourship that is separated (vertically or horizontally) to avoid immediate detection of the whole formation. Same principle as with the bracket maneuver.
Finally, as you say, not all BMS wingmen stick to their lead, plus it’s in people’s nature to enhance their chance of survival. If you know GCI can only see flight lead, there’s a good chance some people will exploit that.
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A 2 or 4 ship bracket is an attack executed WVR. While not a formation, all aircraft involved are visual by default.
A 2 ship should never be executing a double side offset, because you have no mutual support, and no one looking after your wingman. The closest to that real life ever comes is with LINK formations, and even in a LINK LAB (worst case scenario) you still end up with threat mostly localised.
I agree completely that this is a serious issue for the 2D map AWACS, but you will not convince me that a 2 ship will be executing realistic tactics by splitting to execute BVR attacks from multiple attack axes.
You also did not note the advantages the 2D UI has which are unfair/unrealistic - for instance, knowing the ID automagically, as well as the strength. We can agree at least thay the 2D UI is less than ideal.
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A 2 or 4 ship bracket is an attack executed WVR. While not a formation, all aircraft involved are visual by default.
A bracket maneuver can start well beyond 30NM. If 2 twoship elements each kick 30-50° to their respective side at such long ranges, you will easily end up with a lateral separation of 5NM, maybe even 10, or more. Definitely too far out to maintain visual (especially in BMS). Of course, you still have your own wingman (1 + 2 and 3 + 4) with you, but the chances of 1 and 3 actually seeing each other are slim.
A 2 ship should never be executing a double side offset, because you have no mutual support, and no one looking after your wingman. […] but you will not convince me that a 2 ship will be executing realistic tactics by splitting to execute BVR attacks from multiple attack axes.
Try looking up info on the notch-attack and notch-exit. Not sure you’ll be able to find a lot on Google (all I found were things about Minecraft…) but in the BEM on your site, there is a small paragraph on p. 281 that actually mentions that “both aircraft will likely lose visual mutual support.”
You also did not note the advantages the 2D UI has which are unfair/unrealistic - for instance, knowing the ID automagically, as well as the strength. We can agree at least thay the 2D UI is less than ideal.
True.
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A bracket maneuver can start well beyond 30NM. If 2 twoship elements each kick 30-50° to their respective side at such long ranges, you will easily end up with a lateral separation of 5NM, maybe even 10, or more. Definitely too far out to maintain visual (especially in BMS). Of course, you still have your own wingman (1 + 2 and 3 + 4) with you, but the chances of 1 and 3 actually seeing each other are slim.
Try looking up info on the notch-attack and notch-exit. Not sure you’ll be able to find a lot on Google (all I found were things about Minecraft…) but in the BEM on your site, there is a small paragraph on p. 281 that actually mentions that “both aircraft will likely lose visual mutual support.”
True.
And in that 4 ship double side offset intercept, the 2D UI is insufficient to provide complete information on the flight. I note that in that circumstance, visual mutual support is maintained.
I feel like we are jumping the tracks for this thread, despite it being a fascinating topic. Perhaps another thread could be started, on intercept techniques for BMS?
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@Red:
Interesting …
So basically you guys want to form a Radar (Awacs/ Tower - I presume) human squad to backup MP operations in Falcon.
A la IVAO for flightsim, Correct?Not so much tower as AWACS/GCI.
Heck potentially even adhoc ground tasking.
Yep. -
Interested to see how this turns out.
Me too…
- Don’t you think there will be a lot of downtime for your controllers? Mainly during the cruise part (easily 10 - 15 minutes, with an additional 15 - 20 minutes if the flight AARs) our controller was really just sitting there watching blips move on his screen, with nothing to do. Same for A-G missions, where a GCI is pretty much useless.
Certainly, for a single flight TE, for example.
Consider six flights checking into a MP campaign, however.- During our tests, we noticed that BMS 2D is hardly ideal for ATC / GCI as it only shows flight leads and has a noticeable lag. OSC is better, but AISpy seems broken, so you can’t spot AI (blue or red) on your F4AWACS screen. As such, how accurate can your GCI locate, inform about and guide towards possible threats or targets?
Eh, as I posted, aispy (i think the latest is 2.05 now) seems to be working for me with 4.33U2.
It certainly would be nice if it would filter out things that are on the ground or stationary…
My list of “wouldn’t it be nice if…” has plenty more things on it than that.
Certainly the current capability is a little less than what one would consider ideal.
As someone who knows a bit about the topic, and is a little bit of a coder, I would love the chance to get involved with taking that capability up a step. I (suspect) it’s not THAT major of surgery to get quite a lot of payoff…It is definitely the case that given the current capability, a flight of human players will be able to “trick” a controller looking at the 2d map / aispy.
However in order to do so, they will be sacrificing mutual support of each-other.
…that said, I don’t think most bms flyers actually USE mutual support anyway… so that may not be much of a loss to the fighters.Depending on how sharp people are… if I tell you that there’s a flight of two, 35 miles off your nose… because all I can see is the flight lead,
and you look over there and only see one… then well that should give you a nice little clue that something’s up.
where is that other guy, anyway???
not perfect, but better than not even knowing they were there at all in the first place, no?AI red air certainly flies together at least until it’s well within a human blue bubble whence it might try some sort of tactic or maneuver.
Just knowing that 5 minutes ago, picture was clean, and 20 seconds after you went heads-down ip inbound, two mig29’s launched off of an airfield 40 miles away and are heading toward you would pay itself off immediately. AI awacs isn’t going to reliably/accurately tell you that (if it’s even available). Amongst other lists of similar useful information that I can think of.
Once a fight is WVR, C2 is probably out of the game anyway…
Unless of course you’re merged with 2, in ACM mode, head up your lift vector, and you would like to know that there’s ANOTHER bad guy inbound, about 20 miles out right now… might be useful information to have……orrr you have taken off on a strike mission and arrived at your target to find that it has already been struck, or is not where you planned on it being… Or perhaps you completed your strike and still have some opportunistic ord and a little bit of gas available for another target… Who you gonna call??? Ghostbusters won’t help you much. But a fc2 controller should be able to find you something valid to strike and pass it to you over U6.
i could go on.
- I don’t mean to discourage you, but I wonder if you will be able to set a standard at all.
As the discussion i’m (trying) to invoke over at http://www.falconc2.org goes,
the whole thing needs to be a contract between the fighters and c2.
the fighters tell c2 certain specified things, that c2 needs to know (help me help you)
and c2 tells fighters certain things that they need to know (where can i go find things like targets, gas, or a place to land)(what’s about to shoot me)(etc)what those things are (both of those lists) is up for development/discussion as they pertain to the simulation and community…
I am not trying to dictate anything to anyone here, i’d like to get an organic solution that raises the level of game for everyone.come on over and pitch in
I suspect that most bms pilots don’t have the foggiest idea what they are missing out on by having zero or crappy ai C2 in the game.
Vipers without C2… meh.