IFLOLS datum lights missing on Hyperion, alignment indicator unreliable

[rugged ferry]

As of 0.32.5 the green datum lights are missing from the IFLOLS making it barely usable for glideslope alignment (see screenshot). This is particularly problematic since the ILS indicator is unreliable on the carrier (also see screenshot) and usually doesn't point remotely where it should until quite close to the carrier (following it usually puts you way to the right of the centerline and too high). The issues with the alignment indicator were present from the start though, while the missing datum lights seem to be new, I think it started sometime in 0.32. Flying Ifrit in the screenshot, but the same happens with Compass.

[green schooner]

The ILS indicator is not unreliable. It's just counter intuitive.

The ILS indicator causes you to land exactly lined up with the runway with minimal course changes.

You seem lined up correctly with the runway, but the Hyperion is moving forward, so its angled runway is basically moving sideways. With your current trajectory you'll have to steer to correct for the sideways movement. The ILS accounts for this and steers you more to where the angled runway will be when you touch down.

[ruby moss]

The ILS indicator is indeed off, you want to fly just like the screenshot shows, and not further right

And the IFLOLS is also borked

[green schooner]

Maybe Mitch should confirm, because I'm really quite sure it's working as intended (except maybe that it aims you at almost in front of the 1st wire instead of a slightly after for safety?). I just tested by flying carrier landings for another 20 minutes (with time speed up).

If you follow the ILS you end up exactly lined up with the runway when you touch down, which is moving slightly sideways compared to you, it does this by leading where the runway will be like a gunsight does. This amount of lead feels unnatural for flying. It prioritizes the that you set down your plane in the exact direction of the runway. This is not the direction the runway is moving in, so it feels a bit weird.

If you don't follow it you have to correct to the right (which brings you closer to the path indicated by the ILS in the first place) and I end up landing with the nose angled to the right of the runway, because of the continuous correction you have to do.

[ruby moss]

this is how you want to land in order not to leave the landing zone and hit any other parked aircraft

exaggerated for demonstration, but this is how the ILS tells you to land

[rugged ferry]

I am actually slightly to the left and falling, but if I followed the dot I'd be right and high, it's like it's assuming a slower approach speed.

[ruby moss]

your horizontal alignment is pretty much on point though, thats what i meant

[rugged ferry]

Don't get me wrong, the ILS will get you down safely if you follow it, but it makes you approach from a dangerous angle and gives you less room for error as a result

[green schooner]

Okay the ILS is slightly off after reviewing the footage. In the end suddenly the ILS wants to steer you to the left. When I religuosuly followed it I landed with my left wheel on the centerline almost always because you don't want to do the quick turn it is indicating at the end. Even if you are pointing to the left of it, the indiactor suddenly moves from the right to the left even more

[rugged ferry]

I am about one wingspan left, I'm also falling but that's not visible on a screenshot (though you can infer it from velocity vector - it should be slightly above the far end of the landing deck)

The point was to show that datum lights are borked and that the ILS correction is exagerated.
Also another thing to note is that it's not really consistent and depends on aircraft (or rather your approach speed)

[ruby moss]

this is where the ILS wants me to be

i should be way further left

[rugged ferry]

Sometimes it's less exaggerated sometimes it's more, but it usually trends top-right

[rugged ferry]

Yep

[green schooner]

Not way further though, because when you arrive at the carrier it will be there

[rugged ferry]

It will trend towards center as you get closer so you will stil lhit the wire, but this is still wrong

[green schooner]

Like 2 meters only

[ruby moss]

this is the view you want to have on final approach

[rugged ferry]

It's way too far tbh, if you kept this alignment you would hit the island

[ruby moss]

not this

[rugged ferry]

It does get you closer and closer to center as you get closer to touchdown, but it shouldn't lead you there to begin with

[green schooner]

No because the carrier will have moved to the right

[ruby moss]

that doesnt matter

[rugged ferry]

That's not how it works

[ruby moss]

you fly in a crab

[rugged ferry]

Look at my screenshot

The velocity vector there already points roughly to where the touchdown zone be at impact

Look up proportional navigation

[green schooner]

So the idea is you should fly in a turn?

[rugged ferry]

No

I'm not flying in a turn

Again, look where my velocity vector is

It's a bit too far to the left here but it's much closer to where the deck will be at touch down compared to where the ILS leads you

ILS actually makes you fly in a turn

[ruby moss]

this is what you want from your horizontal alignment

[rugged ferry]

You can literally derive from optimal control theory that if you keep a moving object motionless relative to you by azimuth and elevation, you will hit it while flying in a straight line

[green schooner]

Isn't it worse that the plane orientation is not the same as the runway? After touchdown the wheels will force the direction to become the plane orientation right, and that's pointing to the right of the runway

[rugged ferry]

That's called proportional navigation, it's how most missiles work and why the way to hit the carrier without flying in a turn is to be aligned with the deck and glideslope from the start

[ruby moss]

you cant get the orientation the same

you could only do this if the carrier was stationary

[green schooner]

But that's what ILS is doing, and that's why you are coming in crabbing to the runway

Because the runway is moving sideways

[ruby moss]

no

the ils is telling you to crash into the aircraft parked on the right and go off the end of the LZ on the left

its wrong

[green schooner]

If we had no wheels that's true

[ruby moss]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAILvWvOrOc&t=370 here you can see how he approaches directly on centerline, not offset to the right

might not be available in miniplayer

here a DCS hornet on a 25kt carrier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfvv6F5HOI8&t=1220s

you want to be as close to centerline as possible, on your entire approach

the ILS wants you off to the right because mitch did not understand how carrier landings work

[rugged ferry]

I don't want to sound rude or discourage creative problem solving here, but you're kind of trying to outsmart 100 years of naval aviation here.
Me and Battery aren't pulling it out of our asses, it's how it's done in every navy IRL.
Staying aligned with centerline and glideslope the whole time is safer than coming in at an angle so that wheels are parallel to centerline.
The same applies to landing on land with crosswind - this is actually the exact same case scenario from aircraft's perspective, there's no difference from physics point of view between a carrier moving at constant speed and a crosswind. Nobody comes in to land on a runway at an angle to keep wheels aligned with centerline, because it's easier to rotate the aircraft on touchdown (you touch down with two wheels first anyway) than to cancel all that lateral momentum to avoid sliding off the centerline.
And the ILS does not lead you to the side in NO when there's a crosswind, so clearly the behavior on carriers is not intentional.

[green schooner]

Yeah you're right

I just understood it to be not bugged because the ILS is optimizing for something correctly (aircraft orientation), it's just not what it should be doing.

Although even then it is slightly off because it is sending you to the left at the last second

[ruby moss]

in fact, all the ILS in the game is kind of in the wrong spot

they should all point you to the touchdown markers, instead of the first foot of the runway

[green schooner]

You mean too early on the runway?

[ruby moss]

the runway highlights should stay as is though, highlighting the whole runway

[rugged ferry]

Yeah they guide you to threshold when usually it guides to the touchdown zone IRL.
It's not as big of a problem as this though.

[ruby moss]

ILS in general just needs a little touch up, thats all

[rugged ferry]

And on some runways (roadstrips) it's necessary due to length

[green schooner]

Yeah it just leaves very little safety room on the carrier atm, if you're slightly low you kinda die

[rugged ferry]

My biggest gripe is the range it engages at, it should be like twice further and higher.
I get it that we get magic NVG that makes ILS mostly unnecessary but if you want to fly without it (or just make weather awful) as a challenge things get harder than they need to be.
That and also lack of any VTOL guidance, not even alignment lights on Annex, this is future so one would expect helicopters/VTOLs to be able to land completely blind.

Not a priority though cause again, barely anyone will use these things, piloting challenges are not the main gameplay loop here.
IFLOLS needs fixing though, I can eyeball carrier landings but I shouldn't need to.

[ruby moss]

you can still have pretty bad visibility, i see no reason to not have it

[rugged ferry]

Yeah but 99% of players probably don't even try anything like this since focus is on combat and for flying challenges other games exist, even in simcade space.
I would love to see these things improved but I understand if Mitch won't prioritize it.

[late fern]

rn coaching new players to land on the carriers is basically telling them to eyeball it and land "steeper than you think", the instruments rly dont help. i have also struggled because of the wonky line and would love to see the lights working again

you have to spectate them too because the instrumentation is lying to you so you cant tell them to follow the line or watch the lights. following the line makes it much harder too causing last minute adjustments instead of a stable approach. so as of rn its more "use the force luke" than anything

[green schooner]

Well except for the theoretical collision risk with the current ILS I caught the 1st wire 90% of the time when following the indicators

[ruby moss]

doing it manually is more reliable though

[rugged ferry]

Arguably IFLOLS should probably be repeated on HUD too, kinda like the optional overlay in DCS, so that you don't need to zoom in.
I fly either M&K or HOTAS and in both cases I have controls to zoom in and out easily accessible but if someone's flying with a controller you can't really expect them to put their head against the screen to try and see where the ball is.
First it needs to be fixed though.

[late fern]

weird flex. are you trolling?

[ruby moss]

leander is talking in good will, im sure

[rugged ferry]

I mean, he has a point, the ILS won't kill you, you still hit the wire you just end up rolling diagonal across the deck.
It shouldn't do what it's doing but if need be you can still use it, I tried doing blind landings with it and I survived, it just put me way closer to hitting the island for way longer than I would like.

[late fern]

reacting successfully to sudden change at the last moment and still landing is something that you get with practice. but it shouldn't be happening

it is also possible to land a dark reach on a hyperion but that again speaks to skill more than the landing systems functioning correctly

[rugged ferry]

Also another point to bring up is that there was another bug report (but I can't find it now) that I'm not sure was fixed, which was that the OLS isn't horizon stabilized: after ships reacting to waves was added the OLS became unreliable, maybe the current bug was a result of Mitch trying to fix it?

[green schooner]

No I'm just saying it's not as bad as you are saying.
https://youtu.be/Z7-wPJTPsms
15 Consecutive landings using the instruments. 14 with 1st wire, 1 with 2nd wire.

[late fern]

am i mistaken or is the line not being followed here? i was saying if you follow the line's angle you have to do a difficult turn last minute

its my understanding that when you are following the indicators the line is just a dot, maybe im mistaken

like this

i am a bit too high and left

if i was perfectly aligned it woud only be a circle

you aren't following the indicators for any of those landings, unless i dont know how to read them which is possible as im not an aviator. even then in the video you have to slip to the left when you would expect slipping to the right to account for the ships motion, but the indicator is just way too far to the right

[green schooner]

No here you are a bit too low and to the left, your velocity indicator should be on the glide slope indicator dot, but it's below, pointing at the grass in front of the runway

[late fern]

mb that was a typo, was rushed mid game. i know im low and the dots should be overlapping (dot is too high vs im too low, wires got crossed). what im trying to say is that the line should be hidden behind the dot with velocity indicator on top of it

give me a min and ill get a better pic

[late fern]

in these pictures alignment indicators are being followed, right? @green schooner

[green schooner]

Yes in both the glide slope indicator is followed nicely.
In the 1st the AOA indicator says your AOA is too low, you'd have to pull your stick back to increase AOA (but since you have to follow the glideslope, you set AOA by reducing speed). But you obviously know that because in the other pictures you shared the AOA indicator is saying you're doing perfect

[late fern]

im confused why you say the hypereon's alignment indicator isn't as bad as im saying then. you make smooth landings but do so by ignoring the alignment indicator

if it were followed it would require a sharp right turn before touchdown as others have said

[green schooner]

You're right, I don't follow it obsessively until touchdown, then it would indeed make you do a sharp turn to the left which is kinda crazy. But for the general approach I use it. I thought until the last couple meters (which I have ignored always, (but should be improved indeed)) it was perfectly fine, until AAAbattery & Matroshka thought me that it is 'optimizing' for the wrong thing.

[late fern]

https://youtu.be/Z7-wPJTPsms?t=178
i wouldn't say you follow it even if not obsessively. i dont agree that it is serviceable, its not aligned with the runway because its off by a large margin; at all times not just the last few meters. compared to the non-bugged runways it is glaring, and disorienting if you trust the indicator. you've got the skill and experience to land without it functioning but i think if you compare it to a non glitched runway you would see that im saying. in its current state following the indicator would have you running off the side of the runway instead of down the length of it and not by a slim margin either.

when the ship isnt moving its fine, there is no horizontal error (havent done any real testing to show that movement is what causes the issue)

this landing (2nd wire) for example would have ended in the water if i was following a bugged indicator.

the error doesnt have to be much to cost you an airframe

about 20 deg to turn a viable landing into a crash

[late fern]

8 deg error at the same speed would have killed me. i know the landing was a bit too fast given where the wire brought me to a stop. landing at a better speed but 10 deg off trying to follow the instruments would still be a lost airframe. catching the wire only to go over the side only because the alignment indicator wasn't aligned to the runway probably isn't an intended way for someone to fail at landing

[late fern]

the problem is when you hit the wire at a speed that would be a good landing, but the angle was off so you go in the water, unable to do a go around because you are hooked. there isnt much room for diagonal on a Hyperion

[green schooner]

@late fern From the video with 15 landings I shared I think the cause of the sharp turn becomes clear.

The glide slope guides us to a very specific spot at the start of the runway, so when if you deviate close at the end it is more sensitive to change. But it guides us a bit too much to the right during approach because it's compensating too much for the movement of the runway. So like matroshka pointed out correctly, the glide slope is actually requesting a very slight but constant left turn. If you stop the turn you end up a bit to the right of the center of the runway. So then suddenly at the the last 2 seconds it's like "No wait go to the middle!!".

There are a couple landings in the video I shared where it doesn't go to the left suddenly at the end, because I going exactly at the middle of the runway, because either I was to the left of the glide slope enough at first or I was doing the constant turn: After landing 5, at 5:00 and after landing 7 at at 6:30

I am not only following the glideslope but I want to keep AOA, which would say it's stupid to nose down to the left, right at touchdown.

[late fern]

none of that matters, right?
if the alignment indicator was aligned with the runway your landings would look like this.

not this