Can we dial back the cumulonimbus clouds in single player?

[RyanR]

IL-2 GB's has it's highs and lows. The highs are amazing. The lows are frustrating.

 

The new clouds are utterly fantastic. It's such a thrill to fly through them. Especially in the early morning mist with the sunbeams streaking through. For a minute, you forget that this is a combat sim.

 

One of my frustrations is thick heavy cumulonimbus clouds over wherever the "target" is, from the deck all the way up to 12K feet. To the AI, the clouds might as well don't exist. They see right through them. You're escorting HS-129's, which is already like watching paint dry. They fly into the giant cloud to do their part. All of a sudden, unfriendlies turn up. They're P-39's. The leader is an ace.... apparently.... because that first 37mm shell connects with your tail. That's that.

 

Is there some compromise? I know that modders eventually got the AI to respect the clouds in the twilight of IL2: 1946. Is is on the drawing board for GB?

 

Thanks!

 

-Ryan

[Gambit21]

Clouds are a procedurally generated, volumetric shader basically.

What this means in this context is that they don't exist as an "object' in the game world.

Even if they did, getting AI to respect/take objects into account (like say a tank navigating around a farm house on it's own) is a whole other level of functionality.

 

So I'd put AI aircraft/cloud recognition out of your head for now.

It's one of those "holy grail" kind of things.... not sure if we'll see it ever or not.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Once I asked dev if AI "see" throw clouds. They said no , but that was on old tech clouds and my experience was different.

[Gambit21]

12 minutes ago, 1PL-Husar-1Esk said:

Once I asked dev if AI "see" throw clouds. They said no , but that was on old tech clouds and my experience was different.

You know what - I do remember them saying long ago that the clouds effect AI line of sight now that you mention it - old clouds like you said maybe? I’ll have do more checking on this. Maybe I’m wrong, or it changed with new clouds. 
 

I’ll do some testing - been a while.

 

 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

7 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

You know what - I do remember them saying long ago that the clouds effect AI line of sight now that you mention it - old clouds like you said maybe? I’ll have do more checking on this. Maybe I’m wrong, or it changed with new clouds. 
 

I’ll do some testing - been a while.

 

 

Yes ,old clouds and my concern was AI AAA shelling AC flying above  big thick wide clouds .

[jollyjack]

What the heck; flying in the clouds is boring anyway watching the horizon meter only. Nothing but grey.

Rather enjoy them going 'round the bush. But it ain't fair that the boogiemen can jump upon you out of nothing ...

[Trooper117]

Flying into a cloud should give you the ability to 'disappear' from sight if being pursued... it should also mean an enemy may not see you if you change direction and exit the cloud in a completely different direction... if this isn't an actual thing and the enemy can track you regardless, then pretty clouds are a total waste of time.

There is of course those that just want to take lovely pictures and videos and revel in the realistic clouds beauty, and that's fair enough... but if that cloud means nothing to the ai then they are next to useless in a combat sim and they might as well not be there... 

 

However, I'm speaking from a SP point of view as the majority of users are single players... if you are fighting against a human pilot in MP then the above won't matter...

Edited November 19, 2022 by Trooper117

[Russkly]

15 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

Flying into a cloud should give you the ability to 'disappear' from sight if being pursued... it should also mean an enemy may not see you if you change direction and exit the cloud in a completely different direction... if this isn't an actual thing and the enemy can track you regardless, then pretty clouds are a total waste of time.

There is of course those that just want to take lovely pictures and videos and revel in the realistic clouds beauty, and that's fair enough... but if that cloud means nothing to the ai then they are next to useless in a combat sim and they might as well not be there... 

 

However, I'm speaking from a SP point of view as the majority of users are single players... if you are fighting against a human pilot in MP then the above won't matter...

 

Agreed.

 

Nowadays, if I end up in a cloud during a dogfight I switch the AI on, because otherwise I can't see diddly squat, but the naughties can see me.

 

The whole concept of using clouds to escape an unfavourable situation, which was very common in WW1 & WW2, is just not a thing in Il2 GB single player.

[dbuile]

11 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

 I'd put AI aircraft/cloud recognition out of your head for now.

One potential change in career mode would be a little more altitude avoidance of cloud levels, or vice versa, during mission generation - especially for bomber formations.

[Avimimus]

Honestly, I think the solution would be to make AI spotters worse... and maybe to give the AI the opportunity to abort due to unexpected cloud cover (something which happened quite often). I suppose the AI could also decide to fly at lower altitude to try to pass under the cloud level...

 

But I do agree that heavy cloud should make AI spotters quite a bit less effective than they currently are... enemy flights should sometimes miss allied flights entirely.

 

 

  

3 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

Flying into a cloud should give you the ability to 'disappear' from sight if being pursued... it should also mean an enemy may not see you if you change direction and exit the cloud in a completely different direction... if this isn't an actual thing and the enemy can track you regardless, then pretty clouds are a total waste of time.

 

Theoretically we are told that the AI can't see through clouds. In practice I find that the AI is much faster to acquire targets than the player in generally, never loses track of them, and can see quite a bit further into clouds than players can.

 

Honestly, I think the complaints about difficulty spotting enemies wouldn't be so frequent if enemies were equally bad at spotting us.

 

So I agree there is an issue.

 

P.S. I'd love it if AI occasionally lost track of a target, and started climbing while attempting to re-acquire, took small evasive actions while trying to relocate the target, or even panicked and returned to base upon losing contact. But I think just flying in a straight line and having to spend more time looking before finding would be enough to make a huge difference.

[Dragon1-1]

Clouds absolutely should block AI line of sight. There's nothing there that would prevent this functionality from being implemented. DCS uses a similar cloud tech, and they're already synced in MP, although AI can currently see through them, although it's supposedly being worked on. The engine knows where the cloud is and how big it is. That's all it needs.

 

There's a lot of things AI is too good at. They can see through clouds, spot way too well, never lose tally (even if flying something with terrible visibility), never misidentify the target and seem to be reliably able to shoot at targets at 90 degree angle, I've been playing scripted campaigns lately and I've routinely seen both friendlies and enemies perform feats of deflection shooting that would be way beyond everyone but the greatest aces in WWII. They also always split and engage when they see the enemy, they never fail to do this, nor do they ever intercept a friendly aircraft only to see they've wasted their time.

[RyanR]

12 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

Clouds are a procedurally generated, volumetric shader basically.

What this means in this context is that they don't exist as an "object' in the game world.

Even if they did, getting AI to respect/take objects into account (like say a tank navigating around a farm house on it's own) is a whole other level of functionality.

 

So I'd put AI aircraft/cloud recognition out of your head for now.

It's one of those "holy grail" kind of things.... not sure if we'll see it ever or not.

 

 

I expect that AI vs clouds is not an easy fix. If it was, we'd have it. My take is if we could just dial back the worst of the cumulonimbus clouds, we'd have a workable situation.

 

It's a tough one, because the clouds are so wonderful as they are for so many other reasons.

 

-Ryan

 

 

 

 

 

 

[[CPT]Crunch]

In the new and improved engine why couldn't they set AI awareness sensors based on the same altitudes the clouds are set, pretty sure there's an altitude block setting for cloud generation, why not link them and tie the AI's hands using the same numbers, the level too which their sensor vision drops also linked with cloud types selected. 

[RyanR]

8 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

In the new and improved engine why couldn't they set AI awareness sensors based on the same altitudes the clouds are set, pretty sure there's an altitude block setting for cloud generation, why not link them and tie the AI's hands using the same numbers, the level too which their sensor vision drops also linked with cloud types selected. 

 

 

Perhaps simply make it that the AI won't pick up other planes on the opposite side of the cloud "altitude" max/mins as easily. Though, friendly AI may then have problems finding the enemy.

 

The funny thing is that I made the original post in a bit of a frustrated moment. Today, IL2 gave me near perfect weather for a handful of missions.... and I found myself missing the exact clouds I was complaining about. Glass half full, glass half empty.

 

-Ryan

 

 

 

 

 

[BlitzPig_EL]

I still think the best improvement to AI would be to have separate settings for their flying ability and gunnery.  If that were possible I'd give all the AI "Ace" piloting skill, and knock their gunnery down to "normal" or maybe "veteran", to dial back their otherworldly long range sniping abilities.

Edited November 21, 2022 by BlitzPig_EL

[firdimigdi]

On 11/19/2022 at 5:29 AM, Gambit21 said:

What this means in this context is that they don't exist as an "object' in the game world.

 

Sort of.  The game knows when the player plane is in a cloud so it can show the canopy condensation effects for example.

[Gambit21]

38 minutes ago, firdimigdi said:

 

Sort of.  The game knows when the player plane is in a cloud so it can show the canopy condensation effects for example.

That’s a very good point!

 

 

[Dragon1-1]

On 11/21/2022 at 4:40 PM, BlitzPig_EL said:

I still think the best improvement to AI would be to have separate settings for their flying ability and gunnery.  If that were possible I'd give all the AI "Ace" piloting skill, and knock their gunnery down to "normal" or maybe "veteran", to dial back their otherworldly long range sniping abilities.

Quite frankly, AI gunnery in IL2 needs a lot of improvement. Even at lower difficulties they will take and land deflection shots that should be pretty much impossible for anyone who isn't an ace. They are also impossibly good at keeping their plane steady. They need to spray around a lot more, and the higher skill levels should employ a "shoot-correct-shoot" technique, firing in short bursts.

[RyanR]

On 11/21/2022 at 10:40 AM, BlitzPig_EL said:

I still think the best improvement to AI would be to have separate settings for their flying ability and gunnery.  If that were possible I'd give all the AI "Ace" piloting skill, and knock their gunnery down to "normal" or maybe "veteran", to dial back their otherworldly long range sniping abilities.

 

 

That's a very good idea. It would be nice to have more options than "Difficulty" and "Density".

 

I'd love to see a constructive dialog with the developers on the AI fixes. The signal to noise tends to get lost in a lot of threads when the AI comes up. I'd love to see a major update to gameplay than a new "Battle of..." module. I have a feeling that the latter is where all the revenue comes in from.

 

-Ryan

[Koziolek]

On 11/22/2022 at 4:03 PM, firdimigdi said:

 

Sort of.  The game knows when the player plane is in a cloud so it can show the canopy condensation effects for example.

I have absolutely no idea how programming works but if the game knows that, then what is the problem to shorten the field of view of the AI planes inside the clouds to, let's say 50m? Unless only the player's plane knows it is inside the clouds and implementing it on all  AI planes would be too CPU heavy

[Jade_Monkey]

I'm late to the party but when new clouds were in beta I complained to the devs that AAA was able to target you through clouds and devs said they should not. I disagreed with their assessment but it was implied that they have something in place to take clouds into account for the line of sight.

 

My opinion is that it kind of works but about 60% of the time.

[Dragon1-1]

40 minutes ago, Koziolek said:

I have absolutely no idea how programming works but if the game knows that, then what is the problem to shorten the field of view of the AI planes inside the clouds to, let's say 50m? Unless only the player's plane knows it is inside the clouds and implementing it on all  AI planes would be too CPU heavy

Because the very idea of spotting range depending on environmental conditions (such as being in the cloud or not) might be incompatible with current code. This is most likely fixable, but it could require some work to implement because AI is a fairly complex thing. Checking whether a plane is in the clouds or not should not be a problem.

 

I suspect the issue is hung up on detecting whether another aircraft is obscured by a cloud, but not actually inside one (think of two aircraft with a cloud between them), which is a harder problem to solve.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Dragon1-1

[Koziolek]

13 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

I suspect the issue is hung up on detecting whether another aircraft is obscured by a cloud, but not actually inside one (think of two aircraft with a cloud between them), which is a harder problem to solve.

You may be right, but I would not mind having one problem solved first. I hate my entire flight dogfighting inside a big cloud, leaving it only going down in flames

 

 

52 minutes ago, Jade_Monkey said:

 but it was implied that they have something in place to take clouds into account for the line of sight.

 

My opinion is that it kind of works but about 60% of the time.

Question is , does it work only for AAA? Because I do not see it working for planes even for 6 % of a time

[Art-J]

@Dragon1-1^ Hear hear! The game knows when player's plane enters the cloud (to show aforementioned fancy water on the windscreen), but I'd hazard a guess that doesn't apply to AI plane (because it doesn't need to have this neat animation at all) and even if it did, the spatial situation with both planes in the cloud at the same time is rare. More common cases are: a) one in the cloud, one outside and b) both outside but separated by the cloud.

 

Devs would have to do some more difficult programming to calculate who can see who in these cases depending on relative angles and distances. Throw in cloud movement by the wind and complexity rises even more. If we keep in mind other issue with AI fighters still having eyes in their bums and spotting you lining up on their 6 o'clock low (which seems to be easier problem to solve, but it ain't solved), I'd say forget about simulation of clouds affecting AI, at least not in near future.

[Jade_Monkey]

1 hour ago, Koziolek said:

Question is , does it work only for AAA? Because I do not see it working for planes even for 6 % of a time

 

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to work for planes too, I'm just not sure it works as intended.

[Dragon1-1]

7 hours ago, Art-J said:

@Dragon1-1^ Hear hear! The game knows when player's plane enters the cloud (to show aforementioned fancy water on the windscreen), but I'd hazard a guess that doesn't apply to AI plane (because it doesn't need to have this neat animation at all) and even if it did, the spatial situation with both planes in the cloud at the same time is rare.

Detecting it for AI planes should work just like for the player, even if it's not currently done. It doesn't matter whether it's the player or AI in the cloud, two things always apply to the aircraft in such situation: no visibility (also for any AI gunners flying with the player), and not able to be seen.