OlWilly

From my understanding, BoresightElevation and BoresightAzimuth define the direction of the beam. In this case, it will be 0 azimuth - straight center, and -2 elevation, meaning that it's angled down -2 degrees from the aircraft's centerline. BoresightBeamAngle should be the width of the cone, imagine it not as a "line" but as a "cone" with apex being placed at emitter and degree being measured from the centerline (or bore in that matter)

.LOD in general is not owned by TW, but this is the "umbrella" format of sorts. Some other games used .LOD too, and guess what, they are incompatible with SF2 Generally, I don't recommend this format for open source game as it is a locked format, with no easy editing. Strike Fighters .LOD models are exclusive for Strike Fighters From what I understand, TW is very touchy on the matter of using their 3D assets, so this is a hard no. This is one of the reasons why they choose .LOD format, so no one could touch their precious 3D models On the other hand, modders created tons of decent and great 3D assets for the game, but here comes the issue. All the mods available here are in .LOD too So, you would need their permission and original 3DSMax/Blender/whatever models which would be hard to get. Many modders are no longer active and many original models are lost to time TLDR - if you manage to contact the modders and convince them to share their original 3DSMax/Blender/whatever models, you are good to go. But if you want to work with SF .LOD format, you're out of luck

From what I understand, those are low level functions that process the raw data generated by the game's engine This data is called by scripts which govern the actual functioning of the game, avionics, flight model, etc. Scripts, in return, are set up by .ini files So we have two levels here, with the higher one being accessible to tuning, but not modding. Thus, we know that the low level is contained in binaries. The scripts themselves, the higher level, I assume hidden in the binaries too Low level itself may seem not that important to modding the engine as it's just a set of tools to get and process raw data. But it could open the way into the actual meat of the code, the scripts, and help understand how they actually work Speaking of which, do we know in what language the game is written? C++ I presume

Some compromises had to be made, but overall function of RP-21 could be modeled just fine. You just need to create proper symbology

Indeed, the game engine was built to deal with a limited number of assets during a single mission. You have like up to 10 types of aircraft, limited number of munitions and very few ground objects all using relatively low res textures and not too crazy on polygon count. Then you load up a heavily modded game with number of objects increased by order of magnitude and all using bigger textures and often high poly. Ground vehicle mods tend to contribute to this problem a lot. A single mission won't generate too much types of the aircraft, but can go crazy with ground units. When I added vehicles from massive WarPac pack the loading times increased a lot ...

AI can't really defend again SARH missiles either. The only thing it could do is to drop chaff, but defensive maneuvers - forget about it. I've read somewhere on this forum that in some previous titles - WOE I think - AI could even notch your missiles; but apparently this was nerfed like many other features to simplify the gameplay

Technicians are preparing the Polish MiG-21PFM for takeoff. The canopy is tilted to the right. The MiG-21PFM was the first version of the fighter to feature two rear-view mirrors in the cockpit. Later they were also used on vehicles of the MiG-21SM family. Only on the MiG-21 MF they were replaced with a TS-27LMSh rear view mirror. The MiG-21PFM was also equipped for the first time with the improved RP-21MA Sapphire radar. Two rear mirrors on the MiG-21PFM canopy. These mirrors were not present on early MiGs. This aircraft is also equipped with a TS-27AMSH rear-view mirror. In addition, this is an early version of the MiG-21PMF, since the aircraft is equipped with a KM-1 ejection seat. https://military.wikireading.ru/33447?ysclid=lzs4o0c1wx378987657 TS-27AMSh is the rearview periscope common for other aircraft too (MiG-23, Su-25, etc) View from Il-76

Speaking of the text on the fuselage, before you release these birds send textures to someone for proofreading, me if no one else around

SF2 engine allows only for unlimited CCIP - meaning that it will show the point of impact no matter the distance to it.Things like limited rangefinding distance or HUD limits are not present in the game. This works both for rockets and bombs. What this means in game that you can simply align your CCIP with target box and fire, distance notwithstanding. Rockets will land close to the target Works only if you had CCIP enabled in avionics.ini

By general rule, aircraft produced/designed in 1940s-1950s had dark gray/blackish color - MiG-15/17/19/early 21s, Tu-95, Tu-16, etc. In mid 1960s the coloring scheme changed for greenish-blueish color with MiGs, Sukhoi went with more blue-gray colors

Countermeasure pods of all kinds work only in player aircraft, both chaff/flares and ECM. I tried few ways around it, for example, enabling an internal CM dispenser but loaded only with 1 chaff/1 flare and then loading external pods with CMs. What AI did with it? It dropped exactly one flare and then just stopped. Same with ECM, I enabled internal ECM with 0.001 strength and then normal external pod. No change - in fact, in player aircraft you can't really activate internal ECM but ignore pods - both will go on; but AI has only internal working. So it's not like AI *chooses* not to use the pods, it simply doesn't register them on. The stuff is messed up on .dll level; I've read about that this bug came in only with NA so someone has to compare pre-NA and current .dll's. The only way around it is to fix the pod external model to aircraft through fakepilot, disable the station taken and enable the function in aircraft .data file. The bad news is that this removes the flexibility from loadout options

In RL, to jam something you need to know at what frequency it operates. After you know the frequency, you put out jamming to block it - and from then on, it's the game of jammer and radar powers. Radars, especially SAM ones, usually have more power than jammers, but the signal power decreases with range - so you have jammer working at a certain distance, but then radar "burns" through it. In Vietnam, the main task for Americans in that regard was to learn the frequency range on which Soviet radars operated. After they found out the frequencies of the first supplied S-75 radars, they issued jammers that blocked these frequencies specifically. Soviets, in respond, supplied radars with changed frequencies. And so on, this is the game one can play for a long time. The response to this was firstly, to enable radars to use several frequency presets, allowing operator to choose the one that wasn't jammed (Kub, for example, already had it, not sure about later S-75s though). Then, later, radars switched to dynamic frequencies, randomly picking and changing them within the operating range. Game doesn't simulate these later developments, all SAM radars have fixed frequencies, so early 1960-s level of tech. You can only specify search, track and guidance frequencies Interestingly, missiles have MinFreq and MaxFreq statements, but those are only for anti-radiation missiles, telling them what radar they could pick

After some testing, I came up with a routine to tune SAMs and SRMs as well. For SAMs, the data you can find online is usually given for a high-altitude target - where the air is thinner and missile could accelerate better, having more range. To get the low-level performance, for simplicity sake, we may assume that it is the half of maximum range (which is often close to reality, check MIM-23 for example) and reduced max speed. And this is all we need. Weight and Diameter as in DATA file. Init speed at zero which would mean launching from a non-moving platform. Next, we will check the missile performance at higher altitude. Again, to keep things simple, let's assume 15k meters - IAS/TAS ratio at 0.6. Here, aim for more range and speed as stated online - because you had to account for missile actually getting there and MRS doesn't do this. Then, check missile performance at lower altitudes, which would be IAS/TAS ratio of 0.8, or around 5k meters. The range should drop approximately in half and max speed below the one stated online. Speed of sound at this altitude is around 1150km/h or 319m/s for the reference. SAMs nearly universally have booster stages, so they had to be enabled in data file for the required performance. ---- For SRMs, the process is a bit different. SRMs follow the same energy rules as all other missiles, but they are in fact limited by their seeker - the max lock-on range, plus heatseekers leading algorithms are inferior to radar seekers, and they don't lead in the most optimal way. Purely ballistically, one could lob AIM-9 at well over 20km with no problems, but you would be unlikely to lock on anything at that range. Thus, as SRMs are designed for maneuver combat at close ranges, we simply pick the lesser energy state of the launch platform. For simplicity, this would be 5k meters (IAS/TAS ratio of 0.8) and Init speed at 1 Mach, or 319m/s. Tune the missile so it would have the speed close to what you can find online, and range somewhat below it. The game doesn't have good algorithms for heatseeker operation, and many vanilla SRMs have crazy lock-on ranges - it was not uncommon to lock and shoot with something like Python-3 or AIM-9M from 20km at target that doesn't even have the afterburners on. In my install I arbitrarily capped all SRM at certain ranges to prevent this.

When SF2 crashes, open the crash event report, expand it and look at the module which caused the crash. This may give some input on what caused the crash. Recently, I had persistent campaign crash in a certain mission, on further examination it was caused by ground_formation.dll or somesuch. So obviously, game didn't like something related to ground unit behavior. The solution is to start the mission and then exist it, failing but skipping it.

While playing around I noticed that missiles (BVRs mostly) behave quite unrealistically. I have a bad habit of flying low and slow, and this is the worst place kinematics wise for BVR combat, yet, I have little problem scoring hits. Granted, AI doesn't know how to defend with maneuver, but it is still wrong. Similarly, when I am on the receiving side, no defensive maneuver seems to help - missile will still get me. The only way is to abuse the game's engine and go below 50 meters when AI loses all means of attacking me - even with guns. Checking out the missile performance shines the light on the problem. First example, R-24R - I launch on pursuit course, while going at 0.7M at target above me and going with the same speed. Missile accelerates to 3.7M on upward swing and even gains velocity during the entire 30 or so km flight path. R-40, while checked in MRS, shows the range of 160km while launched at 2.8M from 15k meters. And the crazier ones, AIM-47 shows the range of above 1200km (!) at the speed of 14M (!) while launched from 15k meters at 3M. Both AIM-47 and R-33 have weird 240 second sustainer times. What this means is that missiles are barely energy limited, and the max effective launch is limited only by the statement in DATA file. Your kinematic performance barely matters. This turned out easy to correct. -------------- The missile performance is governed by few statements in the DATA file. Booster acceleration and booster time govern the max acceleration of missile. Acceleration is measured in Gs which are roughly 35km/h. The time says for how long the booster works. Thus, If we have acceleration at 5 and time at 10, we get 5x10x35 = 1750km/h of default acceleration - with no account of drag and launch platform velocity. Sustainer works by the same logic. Then we have subsonic and supersonic drag which determine mostly how quickly missile runs out of energy. Supersonic drag is the most relevant here of course. The obligatory tool to deal with missiles is MRS: Now, keep in mind that missile performance you find online is usually its best performance - meaning launch from good altitude at a good platform speed. For the sake of simplification, let's assume the altitude as 15k meters. You may tailor it more accurately by ceiling of known aircraft, but I keep it at 15k. The platform speed will be close to max M number of given aircraft or aggregate of various aircraft using a given missile. As an example, I show the process for R-40 missile as it is very dependent on launch platform kinematic state. First we have to set up the launch state. MSR has no altitude setting but it could be st by IAS/TAS ratio. For 15k meters it will be around 0.6. MiG-25 will launch it at 2.8M. The speed of sound at 15k is around 1060km/h. Thus, 2.8x1060=2968km/h. Then we convert it to m/s - the factor for this is 3.6. So, 2968/3.6=~824m/s. We input this into the init speed. Weight and diameter of missile could be picked from DATA file. Thus, 475kg and 0.31m. Now we had to deal with the booster and sustainer. R-40 has no sustainer, so both values at 0. For R-40 we are lucky and we know the default acceleration - around 2.2M and the max speed - around 4.5M. We pick the first value. 2.2Mx1060km/h=2332km/h. Then we divide the given speed at G value - 2332/35=~67. Let's say we give it a 4 second booster - so 67/4=16.75. This way, we have booster acceleration at 16.75 and booster time at 4. We press SIMULATE and get 300km range (statement Length) with max velocity 1455m/s (~4.9M). Speed is almost there, but the range is out of whack. We forgot about the drag. Now, we experimentally adjust the drag to bring missile range close to its real value. For R-40 this should be around 50-60km. Drag has two windows, first is subsonic, second is supersonic. Second is the most important here, keep the first below it. Input 0.6 for subsonic and 1.2 for supersonic. This gives us 56km range and drops velocity to 1353m/s (4.5M). This looks really good. Check out the energy loss curve too. Now we can check how missile will perform at subpar kinematic state of the platform. Set IAS/TAS to 0.95 and init speed to 350 (this is going at 1M at 2k meters). We get pitiful 11km range and 845m/s (2.4M) velocity. This is close to how the missile should perform at such launch parameters. I strongly recommend to extend the duration in DATA file too, make it so missile lives longer --- R-40 was easy as we know both default and max speed, as well as the parameters of launch platform (MiG-25 and MiG-31 behave similarly). What about missile when we know only the max speed? Sparrow for example, it has max speed of 4M. But if we use 4M for booster calculation, we get values far above 4M. Take the max missile speed at retract 70-80% of the optimal speed of launch platform from it. Assume we mind Phantom launching from 2M, so we set up 4M-1.5M=2.5M of default acceleration. Let's make the same tuning for AIM-7M Speed is almost here, but range is not enough. As we know, AIM-7M had sustainer, so we can use it here to extend the range. Sustainer acceleration at 4 and duration at 10. I also drop booster to 17 And once again, subpar kinematic state check: ---- What this does in-game is that your kinematic performance now matters. If you want extended engagement ranges, you had to go higher and faster. And missiles now actually lose energy. I am not sure if missiles in-game lose energy during maneuvering (hard to check since AI doesn't defend) but I hope so. ---- Now, this doesn't quite apply to lofted missiles like AIM-54 since they have very different flight profile, and this MSR has no loft settings. I guess you can set them up to have reduced range and velocity and then check in-game if they perform correct while being lofted. Likewise, I currently don't know how this tool could be used to tune SAMs since their flight profile is radically different.