[Teaser] Working radar guidance

[kraut1]

On 3/18/2025 at 12:22 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

1. Using the Win+2 and Win+3 key combinations, the user selects a desired frequency.
2. If either the user closes the widget using Win+1 or the user hasn't changed the frequency for 1s, the FREQ_SELECTED timer at the top is triggered. This disables all beacons. Note that this automatically functions as an "off" switch if an "empty" frequency is selected.
3. After a delay of 250ms, the timer corresponding to the selected frequency is triggered. In case of the mentioned frequencies, this in turn activates the corresponding beacon.

Attached are the required widgets, as well as an example mission. I also updated the KeyListener widget because of a bug that made it fail when used together with some other widgets.
SwitchableBeacons.zip

Hi @AEthelraedUnraed

For me it is okay, but for your information:

-if you end the mission with external view and the FuG10 is visible IL-2GB crashs (vanishes)

-if the FuG10 is active / working but hidden ending the mission with external view is possible.

-if the plane flys, has landed, if the engines are running or not seems not have any influence.

As already mentioned for me it's acceptable.

Again thanks very much for the radio!

[AEthelraedUnraed]

10 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Not sure what epl or efx file equates to the light you are using but for what it is worth, in data\LuaScripts\WorldObjects\mapemitters and data\LuaScripts\WorldObjects\emitters there are text files which are used to control some of the effects that you can place with the editor. Within these you can specify image attributes as you can see below. This is an example from the Dynamic effects plus units mod. IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE does what you would expect although what you see is based on the LOD set up for the object. IE if you are further away than the object would normally render you see the most distant LOD version (as I understand things based on limited experience). 

 

FYI there was an old system used as well and basically the image attr was a number which you arrived at by adding the numbers shown after the attributes shown below. So if you wanted IA_NOMINZ and IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE the image attr was 136 (128+8). I believe this has been almost completely replaced by the new system of just using a list of attributes required as shown in the example below. Which makes a lot of sense as it is vastly easier for people in the dev team to maintain and understand at a glance.

 

I use my own .epl and .txt files; modified versions of I believe the hangarpointlight effect. They do have IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE set, and I've played around with some of the other attributes but so far I haven't been able to get it to work.

 

To illustrate the problem, this is how it's supposed to look, and how it does look if less than 32 lights are shown:

 

But if I slightly move the camera so that there's one additional light in view:

 

1 hour ago, kraut1 said:

Hi @AEthelraedUnraed

For me it is okay, but for your information:

-if you end the mission with external view and the FuG10 is visible IL-2GB crashs (vanishes)

-if the FuG10 is active / working but hidden ending the mission with external view is possible.

-if the plane flys, has landed, if the engines are running or not seems not have any influence.

As already mentioned for me it's acceptable.

Again thanks very much for the radio!

Thanks for the report! I've confirmed the issue; I'll investigate.

Edited March 25 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Regingrave-]

14 часов назад, AEthelraedUnraed сказал:

Is there anybody (perhaps @Regingrave knows at least some pointers?) who knows if:

- Is there a way to increase the permitted amount of effects in e.g. startup.cfg?

- Is there anything I can set in the .epl file or .txt file to keep the effect always visible?

- If not, is there anything I can do to at least keep at least the most important lights fully visible? I.e. have some lights disappear before the other ones.

No, map effect system just isn't designed and supposed to be used that way.
In Korea separate and more optimized system is designed to be used for cities and airfield lights.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 hours ago, Regingrave said:

No, map effect system just isn't designed and supposed to be used that way.

Well, there's a difference between "supposed to be used" and "possible to be used"

 

Anyhow, thanks for the reply. I was hoping that there was some kind of graphics setting that'd regulate this, but if that's not the case I'll have to come up with an alternative.

 

For now I'll stick with this:

Only the lights at the start and end of the runway are the "proper" ones; the ones in the center only have the ground lit up and don't have the glare graphics. That makes them harder to spot from a distance, as can already be seen in this screenshot (the lights between the doubled white light and the red lights in the distance). Still, I think it's an acceptable compromise.

 

From a distance, with "Visual Lorenz" visible in the foreground:

 

Edited March 25 by AEthelraedUnraed

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Alright, given that I'm stuck with a max amount of 32 "real" lights, I've come up with one other light placement algorithm and I'd like your input. Please tell me which you like best, or let me know if you can think of another option. For both options, I show a general close-up-ish view as you might see during approach, and a distant view from the side.

 

First the historical view (photoshopped):

 

Option 1:

Pros:

- Bright lights along the entire runway.

Cons:

- Lights might be up to 2.5 times as far apart as historically correct (worst case; more typical is around 1.75 times the distance).

- Dim perimeter lights (the red triangles).

 

Option 2:

Pros:

- Historical distance between lights (~50m).

- Bright perimeter lights (the red triangles).

Cons:

- Dim lights along the middle section of the runway; only the start and end are visible from a distance.

 

Let me know which of the two you prefer. For lack of a better system, vote 😄 (Haha) if you prefer option 1 or 😕 (Confused) if you prefer option 2.

Edited March 26 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Stonehouse]

Based on your pics and purely considering what is needed to land, I think you could probably get by with an alternative option1 with larger spacing between lights if that allows the perimeter lights to be brighter. Particularly the ones marking the end of the runway.

[kraut1]

Option 1 is from my point of view better.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

That's two votes for option 1, one for option 2. Option 1 it is, for now. I also took the time to implement the "Visual Lorenz" system, based on what little information I could find on it.

 

Approaching Deelen airbase:

 

Edited March 30 by AEthelraedUnraed

[AEthelraedUnraed]

I think I get the hang of this. Testing new lighting effects for one of the major turning points in the struggle between Bomber Command and the German Nachtjäger.

Edited March 31 by AEthelraedUnraed

[kraut1]

Hi @AEthelraedUnraed,

I have released my Germany4345 EMG Settings, a Mod (with your the FuG-10 Flash Script), and my adapted Radio / Radio Navigation Group.

-For Daylight Missions.

Thank very much again for the FuG-10!

 

[Nickkyboy99]

On 2/21/2025 at 8:02 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

The second proof of concept is complete: a working FuG 202 board radar!

 

This time, it not only features intercom messages but also a GUI. Although for reasons beyond my control, not all inputs work when the GUI is active. Flight controls work, but the throttle doesn't and neither does mouse or keyboard input. So if you want to do something there, you have to hide the GUI first. Or not show it in the first place, since the intercom messages are good enough to track the target without using the GUI. The other restrictions mentioned in my first post also still apply.

 

Left tube shows distance, middle tube shows azimuth (target is in the direction of the larger lobe), right tube shows altitude (same).

 

The angular response of the radar is based on the actual response of the FuG 202, and the terminology used is period-correct as far as I could find out.

 

 

A small update on the progress of the earlier ground radar guidance; I was able to solve most remaining issues, with the exception of a rarely occurring CTD when exiting the mission. But this seemed to be at least partly related to wrong mission scripting.

Is the mod available for download? 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 hours ago, Nickkyboy99 said:

Is the mod available for download? 

Not even close

 

Actually, I've recently been working on the Himmelbett procedure code (ground controller based). I've had to rewrite the code from the bottom up because of a conceptual limitation in the old code. I'm now satisfied that my new code is:

- above all, stable,

- actually works,

- is based on historical methods.

 

However, rewriting it has taken me quite a long while. This part of the code is honestly very close to release (I "just" need to rewrite my sound system to be essentially a functional duplicate of the in-place radio system). But apart from that, it's working fine and the first few Himmelbett radar interceptions are a fact, even without actual sound

[Jeroen83]

Any news on this? Can’t wait to fly some enhanced night missions…

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 6/29/2025 at 11:05 PM, Jeroen83 said:

Any news on this? Can’t wait to fly some enhanced night missions…

Alright, it's time for an update.

 

My code behaved somewhat unpredictably in some edge cases. I've satisfactorily solved this issue by running a Newton-based iterative solver (accurate but too slow and unreliable to use in-game) on the entire range of relative angles, distances and velocities between interceptor and target, and then did a 4th order polynomial 4D least squares fit. Through this process, I was able to obtain a continuous (and mostly-convex) function with a worst case deviation of around 10 degrees from the target course.

 

...in laymen's terms, I was able to all but eliminate faulty behaviour by a bunch of fancy math. However, during testing, another issue came up, namely which way to turn. If you're flying 50 degrees and you get an order to turn to 70 degrees, no problem. But if you're flying 50 degrees and you're told to turn to 220 degrees, do you turn left or right? The commands can follow each other pretty rapidly, so no time to do much mental arithmetic. This went wrong too often, and if it did, you'd be miles away from the target again.

 

I therefore decided it's in some cases necessary to announce the direction of the turn, e.g. "Antreten Lisa 220". Doing so would triple the amount of radio calls (left, right, none) which would result in way more audio files than I was willing to use. I therefore decided to come up with a different audio system; one that's basically modular as the in-game system is, where you construct phrases out of shorter files. This is basically done now, so I just need to test and finetune it.

 

Once that's done, I need to do some more testing with the entire system, at which point I think I'll release the first half of my campaign.

Edited July 8 by AEthelraedUnraed

[IckyATLAS]

5 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Alright, it's time for an update.

 

My code behaved somewhat unpredictably in some edge cases. I've satisfactorily solved this issue by running a Newton-based iterative solver (accurate but too slow and unreliable to use in-game) on the entire range of relative angles, distances and velocities between interceptor and target, and then did a 4th order polynomial 4D least squares fit. Through this process, I was able to obtain a continuous (and mostly-convex) function with a worst case deviation of around 10 degrees from the target course.

 

...in laymen's terms, I was able to all but eliminate faulty behaviour by a bunch of fancy math. However, during testing, another issue came up, namely which way to turn. If you're flying 50 degrees and you get an order to turn to 70 degrees, no problem. But if you're flying 50 degrees and you're told to turn to 220 degrees, do you turn left or right? The commands can follow each other pretty rapidly, so no time to do much mental arithmetic. This went wrong too often, and if it did, you'd be miles away from the target again.

 

I therefore decided it's in some cases necessary to announce the direction of the turn, e.g. "Antreten Lisa 220". Doing so would triple the amount of radio calls (left, right, none) which would result in way more audio files than I was willing to use. I therefore decided to come up with a different audio system; one that's basically modular as the in-game system is, where you construct phrases out of shorter files. This is basically done now, so I just need to test and finetune it.

 

Once that's done, I need to do some more testing with the entire system, at which point I think I'll release the first half of my campaign.

Wow, a truly professional system. I suppose we need to buy a license for it to use it 😂

[hakman]

hello!
do you have any ETA when the mod will be avaliable to download? even as a pre alpha?
it looks really cool! good luck on further work and Im more then happy to see how the mod will develop

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Don't worry guys, this project has not been abandoned  It just suffers from a general lack of time...

 

However, I've had some spare time as of late, which I used to make the long-overdue changes to the radio code which now works as expected. I can now basically create radio messages on demand by combining any number of audio files, that are indistinguishable from the "real" IL-2 radio messages. I've also already employed this new system to work around the shortcomings of the previous system mentioned in my post of 8 July. If no new major issues show up during testing, this means that I can get back to writing missions again soon.

 

As a small teaser, here's the manual I've been working on. Yes, there's so many new terms and concepts that the campaign really warrants one. It provides some background information on the various forms of Nachtjagd you'll encounter, as well as on the in-game operation of the Himmelbett and Lichtenstein methods. As a small aside, it also provides some insight into the tremendous amount of work that goes into creating a historical campaign; not only writing the missions but also the required research. The manual only covers Nachtjagd operations and methods and doesn't at all concern specific missions or events, yet still cites a total of 18 sources!

Manual_Nachtjagd.zip

Edited October 20 by AEthelraedUnraed

[IckyATLAS]

It is a fantastic work, the radar stuff and now the lights. I am mesmerized by this incredible work. No idea how to write scripts and also how you can get input keys from the keyboard to activate something in the mission program. I long tried to find a way but abandoned, I am not skilled enough to find by myself. But sure it opens some very nice possibilities in missions.

Edited October 21 by IckyATLAS

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 10/21/2025 at 4:42 PM, IckyATLAS said:

It is a fantastic work, the radar stuff and now the lights. I am mesmerized by this incredible work. No idea how to write scripts and also how you can get input keys from the keyboard to activate something in the mission program.

Thanks  Programming is a hobby of mine, otherwise I'd never have put in all the work. I didn't count the hours I've spent on this project, but it must've been hundreds by now. By the way, capturing keypresses was a kinda hard problem to solve. There's no way for me to know if a particular key combination isn't already in use for something else on the user's side, which is why I decided to settle for holding the Ctrl key for a couple of seconds.

 

Anyhow, I've got the onboard radar almost functional too. There's one or two glitches but I don't think I'll be able to solve those, with the limitations I need to work with. Here's an in-game capture I made of my FuG202 widget. I'm intercepting a target, which at the beginning of the capture is near the center. Another bonafide target is a little further away and to the left. There are several Window "ghosts" visible. Can you spot why German aircrews didn't have much trouble differentiating between the Allied Window strips and bombers?  

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Major change to the code of the FuG 202; after testing it was fast enough to just use draw calls to manually draw the entire radar response. This allows for some really nice effects such as a really nice interplay between various peaks, both the real ones and Window. Compare with my previous post:

 

I think that pretty much concludes the programming for the graphics part of the FuG 202, apart from some small tweaks as well as cleanup.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Full interception video that shows the FuG 202 code at work. Note that I had the gamma on max for this video; it was a pitch-black night and without radar the interception would have been impossible.

 

I'm happy with the code now. Even the noise looks good, being modeled after real-world physical equations. Of course, it's also possible to use it with your GUI hidden; just follow the directions provided by your Bordfunker (radioman).

 

I don't think I'll modify it further, except for fixing one last bug (the widget refuses to close).

[kraut1]

On 11/1/2025 at 2:06 AM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Full interception video that shows the FuG 202 code at work. Note that I had the gamma on max for this video; it was a pitch-black night and without radar the interception would have been impossible.

 

I'm happy with the code now. Even the noise looks good, being modeled after real-world physical equations. Of course, it's also possible to use it with your GUI hidden; just follow the directions provided by your Bordfunker (radioman).

 

I don't think I'll modify it further, except for fixing one last bug (the widget refuses to close).

Great! As a german native speaker I understand the messages.

So I think for me  GUI could be deactivated / hidden.

[Jeroen83]

Looking great man. 
 

The link for the manual is broken unfortunately.

 

What’s you plan on publishing the mod? Will you release it with a night fighter campaign or seperately? Will it also feature the landing strip lighting?

Can’t wait to try it. I always thought IL2 has a very realistic and atmospheric representation of night and this mod will add so much to it. Night missions have been under represented in the game until  now imo.

[LukeFF]

On 10/31/2025 at 6:06 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Full interception video that shows the FuG 202 code at work. Note that I had the gamma on max for this video; it was a pitch-black night and without radar the interception would have been impossible.

 

I'm happy with the code now. Even the noise looks good, being modeled after real-world physical equations. Of course, it's also possible to use it with your GUI hidden; just follow the directions provided by your Bordfunker (radioman).

 

I don't think I'll modify it further, except for fixing one last bug (the widget refuses to close).

 

Very impressive. 👍

[ITAF_Airone1989]

@AEthelraedUnraed congrats, really an amazing work! 

 

Can I suggest to you to update the first message, so it's possible to find the last news there? 

 

I understood it cannot be used in multiplayer, but I have a question about that: 

Is that because any player will see the same radar/NDB interface? Because if it's just that it's still possible to use for some small cooperative mission or at least a multicrew flight...

Or there is any other reason?

[AEthelraedUnraed]

20 hours ago, kraut1 said:

Great! As a german native speaker I understand the messages.

So I think for me  GUI could be deactivated / hidden.

I hope my Dutch accent wasn't too obvious?😬

I'd like to add that, besides the numbers, it's only 8 important radio messages and these are all codephrases (5 are given names). So with a bit of practice also people who aren't German should be able to do it on audio alone

(Lisa - Links/Left; Rolf - Rechts/Right; Siegfried - Steigen/ascend; Frieda - Fallen/Fall; Marie - straight ahead; Halten - halt; Express - express, speed up; Kirchturm gleicher -  church steeple equal, at target altitude).

 

10 hours ago, Jeroen83 said:

The link for the manual is broken unfortunately.

 

What’s you plan on publishing the mod? Will you release it with a night fighter campaign or seperately? Will it also feature the landing strip lighting?

The link worked for me just now?

 

I will release it with a night fighter campaign. It will also feature the runway lighting, yes, as well as tunable radio beacons for navigation and, where applicable, Lorenz.

 

42 minutes ago, ITAF_Airone1989 said:

Can I suggest to you to update the first message, so it's possible to find the last news there? 

You mean so that only a single message is visible at a time, rather than the multiple radio messages you get now? I chose for the radio messages for basically two reasons: continuity with the rest of the game where any spoken messages also appear like this, and the message history you get when you press enter. Especially the latter can be very useful when trying to figure out where the target is.

 

Although this doesn't apply to the FuG 202, production series A and B of the FuG 220 could only show either azimuth or direction at a time, requiring the operator to manually switch between the tubes. You'll notice that the radio communication reflects this: messages alternate between the two. Although as said this doesn't apply to the FuG 202 or the FuG 220 series C, doing the radio communication this way allows to be historical while keeping the same code for both radar sets.

 

I'll give the matter some further thought, but I think I'll leave it as it is. Still, thanks for the suggestion

 

58 minutes ago, ITAF_Airone1989 said:

I understood it cannot be used in multiplayer, but I have a question about that: 

Is that because any player will see the same radar/NDB interface? Because if it's just that it's still possible to use for some small cooperative mission or at least a multicrew flight...

Or there is any other reason?

Well to be frank, I'm not completely sure it doesn't work in multiplayer, or how it would or would not function. I don't expect it works but I haven't tested anything and I don't do multiplayer myself, so I don't really know.

It basically works similar to the photo recon / artillery spotting scripts, so should suffer from similar issues, if any. If these scripts work fine in multiplayer, then I expect my script to work fine as well.

[ITAF_Airone1989]

1 hour ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

 Well to be frank, I'm not completely sure it doesn't work in multiplayer, or how it would or would not function. I don't expect it works but I haven't tested anything and I don't do multiplayer myself, so I don't really know.

It basically works similar to the photo recon / artillery spotting scripts, so should suffer from similar issues, if any. If these scripts work fine in multiplayer, then I expect my script to work fine as well.

 

Probably the interface will work as I said, so it will not possible to use for a real multiplayer mission but it should still be ok for a cooperative...

About your script, I don't know how it works, but I guess it's linked to the player plane in some way... So not sure how it can handle more than one plane...

 

But if it's ok for just a multicrew plane I think it will be tons of fun, having your friend looking the radar scope and direct you while you try to fly in the dark...

 

 

1 hour ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

 

You mean so that only a single message is visible at a time, rather than the multiple radio messages you get now?

No, I mean the first message here in the forum...

[kraut1]

4 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I hope my Dutch accent wasn't too obvious?😬

I'd like to add that, besides the numbers, it's only 8 important radio messages and these are all codephrases (5 are given names). So with a bit of practice also people who aren't German should be able to do it on audio alone

(Lisa - Links/Left; Rolf - Rechts/Right; Siegfried - Steigen/ascend; Frieda - Fallen/Fall; Marie - straight ahead; Halten - halt; Express - express, speed up; Kirchturm gleicher -  church steeple equal, at target altitude).

 

 

You are speaking very good german.

Their is a bit of the Dutch accent hearable, but on the other hand in the current version is the engine sound is comparable loud so altogether seen it sounds good and fits together.