Autopilot and AI

[AcidBath]

Seeing all the great new activity for Flying Circus, I am disappointed that the AI for the Airco D.4 still behaves like it's a Sopwith Camel, where on coming within range of an enemy it will immediately drop its bomb and engage in a turn fight with the enemy, which is hardly not the expected behavior for this class of aircraft and makes using this aircraft as an AI bomber in missions useless.  I've reported this problem months ago, and still no progress.  Here's a link to my previous problem report about this issue.

Edited March 27, 2022 by AcidBath

[-DED-Rapidus]

@AcidBath, I'm sorry, I must have overlooked it.

[hutton]

Love the game, however, the AI squad mates refuse in many cases to attack other aircraft.  Even if ordered via the "Patrol for air..." or the specific "Attack nearest..."commands.  It's as if the enemy fighters are invisible to them.  Career mode, Kuban campaign.  Am I doing something wrong?

Edited April 22, 2022 by hutton
Bad sentence.

[Noisemaker]

On 4/22/2022 at 3:40 AM, hutton said:

Love the game, however, the AI squad mates refuse in many cases to attack other aircraft.  Even if ordered via the "Patrol for air..." or the specific "Attack nearest..."commands.  It's as if the enemy fighters are invisible to them.  Career mode, Kuban campaign.  Am I doing something wrong?

Most of the time this is a mission logic issue, where priorities are set wrong.  You need to make the report with the mission file, so the devs who work on the mission generation can check for the errors and correct them.

[Yogiflight]

In ground attack missions and the bombing missions for the Bf 110, too, the AI returns to base at 1000m. But, from the target (waypoint 3) to waypoint 4, they fly at 1000m above sea level and from waypoint 4 to waypoint 5, they fly at 1000m above airfield level. As the airfields usually are located above sea level, this means they climb at waypoint 4, for the remaining way to the base. I would guess that the altitudes were mixed at mission design and should all be either above sea level or above airfield level.

[-DED-Rapidus]

@Yogiflight, what is it about? I need a mission or track to analyze the problem.

[Yogiflight]

8 hours ago, -DED-Rapidus said:

, what is it about? I need a mission or track to analyze the problem.

_gen.zip

What I wanted to say is, you fly from the target (waypoint 3) to waypoint 4 at 900m (on the Stalingrad map) and when you are at the waypoint 4 and turn to your airfield, you climb to 1000m, which doesn't make sense.

[Zooropa_Fly]

Brief description:   Multi-Seat Ai Gunners don't return fire under 'High Waypoint' Instruction.

Detailed description, conditions:   I'm calling this a bug - can't think how this situation would manifest in real life, thus why would it be the case by design ?

To initiate engagements we have low and med waypoint settings - but just because plane is flying direct to command, doesn't mean the gunners wouldn't defend it.

Additional assets (videos, screenshots, logs):   n/a
Your PC config data (OS, drivers, specific software):   n/a

 

Cheers.

[-DED-Rapidus]

51 minutes ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

Brief description:   Multi-Seat Ai Gunners don't return fire under 'High Waypoint' Instruction.

that's right, with a high priority of the waypoint, the arrows do not open fire. This is not a bug.

[Yogiflight]

In my Stalingrad career with the Bf 110, my squadmates started circling over the target after the first bombrun of a pontoon bridge attack. This costed us our flightleader, who was hit by an AA gun about 15-20 min after they had started circling. I was already on my RTB as I had stopped circling after two rounds.

_gen.zip

[KevPBur]

I had a very similar experience to Yogiflight last night in 190A8 career on BOBP.

 

I was number 3 in the flight  on the usual Freeflight. After we had mopped up some spits and Typhoons near waypoint 3 the flight circled endlessly around point 3. I noticed the flight lead had decided to head off home at some point during the flight as after 10 minutes he was asking for landing permission.

No idea what happened to number 2 but pressumably at some point I should have become flight Leader. I never got the additional flight leader command options in the menu.

In the end I got bored and lawndarted while straffing a ground target (stupid me!)

 

I restarted the mission. This time the entire flight remained together and we had a very successful mission.

 

I don't know how or what files I could previde to help or if they remain if the mission is restarted.

 

Thanks to @LukeFF I have attached the mission file which should still be the correct one.

_gen.zip

Edited May 11, 2022 by KevPBur
Added mission file

[-DED-Rapidus]

2 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

In my Stalingrad career with the Bf 110, my squadmates started circling over the target after the first bombrun of a pontoon bridge attack. This costed us our flightleader, who was hit by an AA gun about 15-20 min after they had started circling. I was already on my RTB as I had stopped circling after two rounds.

Сan you tell me which regiment you were in?

[Yogiflight]

1 hour ago, -DED-Rapidus said:

Сan you tell me which regiment you were in?

I./ZG1, based at Frolov

[LukeFF]

9 hours ago, KevPBur said:

I had a very similar experience to Yogiflight last night in 190A8 career on BOBP.

 

I was number 3 in the flight  on the usual Freeflight. After we had mopped up some spits and Typhoons near waypoint 3 the flight circled endlessly around point 3. I noticed the flight lead had decided to head off home at some point during the flight as after 10 minutes he was asking for landing permission.

No idea what happened to number 2 but pressumably at some point I should have become flight Leader. I never got the additional flight leader command options in the menu.

In the end I got bored and lawndarted while straffing a ground target (stupid me!)

 

I restarted the mission. This time the entire flight remained together and we had a very successful mission.

 

I don't know how or what files I could previde to help or if they remain if the mission is restarted.

 

It's the _gen.mission file in the /data/missions folder. It's overwritten every time a new mission is generated (either in career or quick mission mode), but if you just restarted the mission without exiting, it should still be there.

Edited May 11, 2022 by LukeFF

[Yogiflight]

@-DED-Rapidusthe circling over the target might, in my case, have to do with the mission. I had today the same pontoon bridge attack, in which we had to attack the western one of the two Volga bridges, and my squadmates again were flying circles over the target. The difference this time was, they fighted with some Russian fighters after 10-15 minutes.

So far I never experienced this behaviour in any other mission.

_gen.zip

Edited May 12, 2022 by Yogiflight

[Yogiflight]

On 3/10/2022 at 9:52 PM, Plurp said:

As the flight leader, in the briefing room map, you can click on the waypoints and change each one to v formation.

No, you can't. Only if you are the squadron commander, you can do those changes. As flightleader you are stuck to what the game gives you.

[Plurp]

14 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

No, you can't. Only if you are the squadron commander, you can do those changes. As flightleader you are stuck to what the game gives you.

Yep, sorry, meant squadron commander.

[firdimigdi]

Not sure if the proper etiquette is to also post in this thread since I already started a detailed report thread in the subforum, but here goes (feel free to delete if necessary).

 

Brief description:

Presence of multiple AI causes non-smooth motion despite having high framerate.

Detailed description, conditions:

In a mission with AI units (usually needs the presence of ground units to trigger this easily) the gameworld appears to stutter/ghost when rolling/pitching despite the game reporting high framerate and normal CPU usage.

Additional assets (videos, screenshots, logs):

Your PC config data (OS, drivers, specific software):

Windows 10, AMD 5900X / RTX 3080Ti / 32Gb RAM / driver ver 512.95.

[-DED-Rapidus]

@Firdimigdi, give the mission a test, I'll see.   Give me the mission file for the test, I'll take a look.

[firdimigdi]

1 hour ago, -DED-Rapidus said:

@Firdimigdi, give the mission a test, I'll see.

 

Sorry I didn't quite understand, do you want me to supply a mission to test or will you use the ones I mention in the report thread?

 

I've linked a multiplayer one with the minimum required AI to induce the issue and there's also the 3rd mission of Blazing Steppe that shows this really quickly and very clearly as soon as you take off to cover the IL-2 flight (I use autopilot and accelerated time and then take control as soon as the player flight is over the IL-2s).

[-DED-Rapidus]

@Firdimigdi, I'm sorry, I wrote in a hurry. Yes, I need a file to look at the behavior of AI and the load on the hardware.

[firdimigdi]

58 minutes ago, -DED-Rapidus said:

@Firdimigdi, I'm sorry, I wrote in a hurry. Yes, I need a file to look at the behavior of AI and the load on the hardware.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=156802&key=32ec7ae959e53d5b619207953bd4329f

 

Here you go. As mentioned above the other excellent candidate is mission 3 from Blazing Steppe.

 

[firdimigdi]

On 5/31/2022 at 5:07 PM, -DED-Rapidus said:

@Firdimigdi, I'm sorry, I wrote in a hurry. Yes, I need a file to look at the behavior of AI and the load on the hardware.

 

Hi again - here's an even simpler MP dogfight mission with 18 fw190s flying in circles around Lapino which exhibits the problem quite clearly.

This is the performance chart from a session playing it locally:

As you can see there's no indication whatsoever that there are missing frames or a drop in framerate.

 

Needless to say that this is way less AI units than you'd find in any of the official scripted campaigns.

stuttertest - 18 planes.zip

Edited June 2, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[firdimigdi]

@-DED-Rapidus sorry to be adding more to this but I think I've had a sort of interesting result from my testing - here are two missions: one has 33 vehicles moving along roads and it works perfectly fine, no stuttering or anything; the other is again 18 planes as the above attached mission only this time they are not moving at all, just parked at an airfield doing nothing and the stutter is very obvious.

 

Hope this points an investigation on this issue in the right direction as currently there is no way to enjoy scripted campaigns (in VR at least, no idea if this also affects any higher-than-60Hz monitors) with this issue, most missions that involve many airplanes end up being extremely stuttery and uncomfortable to play despite the framerate remaining high and there is no workaround (reducing settings has no effect whatsoever).

 

(both missions are MP dogfight missions - and as usual, hosting them on a separate PC motion is smooth as should be)

 

stuttertest - two missions vehicles vs planes.zip

 

 

EDIT

And yet another mission making it even easier to test:

stuttertest - plane spawner on flare.zip

 

Shoot a flare and a FW190 will spawn and start circling - doing it this way I saw that it actually starts much earlier than I thought it would, I started noticing micro-stutter at about 10 spawned planes.

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[firdimigdi]

One more note on this issue which might be of interest that I noticed last night:

 

If you switch to the chase camera ( F4? something like that ) then when rotating the stutter is not visible on the horizon or the scenery - this might be due to the smoothing/rubberband effect that camera has but this is where it gets interesting:  when you go near an AI plane and start rolling around them you can see just their plane stuttering/ghosting.

 

(again this is very easy to test in mission 3 of the Blazing Steppe campaign)

Edited June 8, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[-DED-Rapidus]

@Firdimigdi, we need a simple example, recording a video will help to understand what is wrong.

[firdimigdi]

On 6/8/2022 at 3:16 PM, -DED-Rapidus said:

@Firdimigdi, we need a simple example, recording a video will help to understand what is wrong.

 

Sorry that's impossible for me to do, it cannot be recorded in video since with VR the video could not exceed the desktop mirror's framerate and thus the issue would not be visible. I've described above a bunch of ways to reproduce it, and attached the missions that exhibit this issue clearly and the performance charts showing that it is not a hardware limitation.

 

Also @SYN_Vander mentioned he was seeing this as well in VR in this thread:

Maybe he has an idea of how best to illustrate it.

 

EDIT

This here is the earliest mention of this issue I could find, since then I've simply narrowed it down to being AI-related as nothing else but the presense of AI affects it:

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[Angry_Russian]

Can confirm that this is still not solved for me, I've basically stopped playing this game because of that. All I have now in IL2 is the multiplayer and instant fights 4x4 with AI (more than that causing issues), any campaign mission is not enjoyable any more.

 

The easiest to see it is to take off in the first mission of Fortress on Volga campaign. If on the take off I look at 3 or 9 o'clock I can easily see artefacts on vertical objects (any posts, hangars, etc.) even though fps is OK. Then after take off if I roll the plane I can easily see the terrain smearing. Looks like screen tearing you see on a 2d screen if vsync is off and fps is higher than monitor refresh rate.

 

I'm playing DCS with OpenXR now and it's miles better, ironically.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Angry_Russian

[firdimigdi]

5 minutes ago, Angry_Russian said:

any campaign mission is not enjoyable any more

 

Exactly this, and it wasn't like this - I've played through the Blazing Steppe campaign I mention as an example above about a year ago and did not have these issues. It's something "new" introduced around December 2021 or so.

[Angry_Russian]

5 minutes ago, Firdimigdi said:

 

Exactly this, and it wasn't like this - I've played through the Blazing Steppe campaign I mention as an example above about a year ago and did not have these issues. It's something "new" introduced around December 2021 or so.

True, this happened to me somewhere after January clouds fixes, that update or the next one, not sure exactly. Since then I even reinstalled Windows (for another reason, but still, clean installation). Tried everything I know (see my other posts), but it's obviously not on my end, I can't do anything about it, only IL 2 has this issue. Even OpenXR doesn't help it. 

[firdimigdi]

Just a quick recap since, for the life of me, I can't get people to actually speak up in this thread - there have been several other reports in the VR forum about this very same issue:

 

 

@-DED-Rapidus , I hope this is enough material to test against - barring a video (which is likely technically impossible to record and play back in a way which would show this - at least I don't know how that would be feasible) let me know if there's anything else that can be provided. IMO the easiest and quickest tests are the missions I attached in a post above.

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[T24_Martin]

@Firdimigdi and @-DED-Rapidus... I can not post any evidence, but I completely agree Firdimigdi! I play only single player and love the game, but this smoothness issue is really annoying and kills the fun. Can't tell when it started. Somewhen between 2021 and 2022. 

 

I would highly appreciate a solution!

 

Thanks for your support!

[RedeyeStorm]

As far as I know it is inherent to VR. The more proteto your pc the more ghosting as the software limits your fps (had at 90hz but fps at 45 or lower). Some use motion projection to alleviate the problem but that creates artefacten on your own plane like flapping wingtips, wiggly gunsmiths and nasty prop animation. Another method is lower your settings so your fps is the same as your hmd’s hz setting (90hz = 90 fps).

 

My preference is my Index at 120hz which gives me most of the time 60 fps. I do not want to sacrifice graphic fidelity for frames. I have disabled motion projection. I have noticible ghosting when a plane moves fast past me and I look left or right. I find it acceptable.

 

So there are some steps you can take but you will have to compromise somewhere.

[firdimigdi]

16 minutes ago, RedeyeStorm said:

As far as I know it is inherent to VR. The more proteto your pc the more ghosting as the software limits your fps (had at 90hz but fps at 45 or lower). Some use motion projection to alleviate the problem but that creates artefacten on your own plane like flapping wingtips, wiggly gunsmiths and nasty prop animation. Another method is lower your settings so your fps is the same as your hmd’s hz setting (90hz = 90 fps).

 

My preference is my Index at 120hz which gives me most of the time 60 fps. I do not want to sacrifice graphic fidelity for frames. I have disabled motion projection. I have noticible ghosting when a plane moves fast past me and I look left or right. I find it acceptable.

 

So there are some steps you can take but you will have to compromise somewhere.

 

This is not the issue I am reporting though.

 

As I keep repeating: you can see in the performance graphs provided that the HMD remains always at 90Hz with no framerate loss and no frametime increase - the game itself reports 90fps as well. This the same as @Angry_Russian reported as well.

 

If the problem was an issue of performance then the frametime would increase and the framerate would necessarily drop. And I would not be going on and on about it then as that would be totally normal.

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[RedeyeStorm]

Then I have no idea.

[firdimigdi]

26 minutes ago, RedeyeStorm said:

Then I have no idea.

 

One thing you could do, if you have time and feel so inclined, is to please try one of the missions I posted above that induce this - they're all MP dogfight missions at Lapino Summer with clear weather.

 

The one in this .zip with the 18 parked planes in this one should be enough and quickest to see (just roll your plane real quick and note the landscape) - the one with the vehicles despite being more (33 ground vehicles) and in motion does not induce it:

stuttertest - two missions vehicles vs planes.zip

 

Otherwise this one will spawn an AI plane whenever you shoot a flare - see how many planes you can spawn before it starts doing it:

stuttertest - plane spawner on flare.zip

Edited June 14, 2022 by Firdimigdi
typo

[Vendigo]

I-16\s (bots) with rockets shoot one rocket before takeoff in version 4.705c. This mission worked fine before! 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Vendigo

[LukeFF]

17 minutes ago, Vendigo said:

I-16\s (bots) with rockets shoot one rocket before takeoff in version 4.705c. This mission worked fine before! 

 

Yes, it's already been reported and acknowledged. ?

[NattyDreadNought]

I have also seen micro-stutters recently, but admit I haven’t yet determined if it is an IL-2 or an Open Composite related issue.

A further complication is that all have recently had version updates.

[gydaveb]

2 hours ago, 453=Jihadi_Daddy said:

I have also seen micro-stutters recently, but admit I haven’t yet determined if it is an IL-2 or an Open Composite related issue.

A further complication is that all have recently had version updates.

I don't use Opencomposite and have the stuttering / ghosting / etc issues, so I'd at least partially rule out it being exclusively the source of the problem.