From my experience you have to be facing/ actively looking at an aircraft and then ping it to actually get info rather than “Air Alert!”. As for you not being able to see the targets, it works on my end, just gotta make sure you’re facing the right bearing (you can see your bearing, and the pinged aircraft icon in binos and in third person if you have that enabled) or it might be out of the Keen Vision (the crew training stat) distance.
As for its uses, its commonly used to help friendly AA locate/keep track of enemy close air support as it pings the target in your little bearing slider (the thingy at the top of your screen in binos), or just to alert them, as the name implies. Me I use it quite frequently, as it really helps out the team
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Half the time it doesn’t work in planes unless you’re in something that has gunners and point the crosshairs at whatever you want to call out which works just how it does with tanks.
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Sometimes it works when I have a radar lock on them in Sim, but that’s sometimes. I used to rely on it when I first played because I thought if it say “Air Alert” it was friendly, and “funny words” if it was not. Then I missiles my teammate, so now I just “Follow Me” and if they don’t respond, they get a missile. If I TK’d, it’s their fault because they should have said something.
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For your team mates it is quite useless, even if it gives the right azimut, because they dont see your position.
Just klick on the enemy position on the map and your whole team can see it.
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it works more when you are inside your cockpit/virtual cockpit for some reason, its weird when in aircraft
the command is so useful
you have to scan around that area up down and in that general direction, its quite useful in alot of case, spotting helis, spotting early CAS or just spot planes as an mbts
i use that all the time
yes but if ur at A and they are at B
azimuth is at 260 then your teamates at B instead of looking 200 look at 240-280
its a neat feature
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Your teammates have no reference point where to start. The only useful information is the altitude.
But it gives them way more information if you just click the enemy position on the map and write “low” or “high”.
Thanks for the replies, but most of you missed that I mentioned it mean air battles. It works with bomber gunners like someone mentioned, but in cockpit view it usually doesn’t even when the enemy aircraft is right in front.
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then they dont know how it works
its genuinely one of the most useful feature in the game
a good spaa players would know where to look for
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Problem is we’re talking air battles.
If you just spam “Air alert, azimut X altitude Y” without combining it with follow me or a “Attention to gridsquare”
well, I have 64x64 km to search for contact on small maps, 86x86 on medium and 128x128 in large maps. Especially with render/visibility issues.
Am I not finding any contacts at azimuth x altitude Y because game refuses to render the contact for or because it’s like 50 km away and outside my influence in my 500 km/h prop plane on smolensk?
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well then thats fucking great because the command on air battle dont do shit
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It does.
It IFFs if a black dot is friend or foe, and tells you its altitude. If you’re in formation flight or your friendly knows your position (“Follow me!” or “Cover me!”) or you combined it with “Attention to gridsquare”, it is genuinely powerful for intercepting enemy strike and bombercraft and for proactively protecting your own team’s groundpounders. Planes with gunner view are AWACS-lite.
To clarify, we are talking air simulator battles.
That’s my problem. Most of the time it doesn’t, even if I’m right on its 6. Usually I’m chasing a dot, use the command, nothing, regardless of whether it is an ally, enemy, player or bot. Or it tells me data about seemingly non-existent enemies. It’s weirdly inconsistent.
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The “Air Alert!” command is based off any view view except the pilot with the controls. And for some reason having your radar active counts as another crewmember regardless of actual seating in the aircraft.
So if I understand right, it only works if you have a second crew member or radar?
Generally for me it usually works better to click on the map, go “attention to Grid square” with an estimated altitude and heading to help call my teammates onto a target.
But yeah coordination is truly powerful and has helped turn around more than one match.
Now all we need is a workable team-wide VOIP for actual coordination. (With a test to weed out all those that can’t set up their microphone sensitivity right.
Actively running radar or other living crew, but yes.
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@sigma_zero
I got it working in a Bf109K4 (single seater, non-expert, keen vision 1, awareness 0.5, no radar) on a Pe-8 (range less than 2 km, around 1.2 ish?):
600 meter gun convergence, vertical targetting. I had the revi centered on the pe-8 before dropping nose as I took the screenshot.
Altitude being reported at 2000 seems very, very wrong. You can see both RALT and ALT is 2.9 km for me.
edit: got it working on friendly a.i too. Note the altitude being VERY wrong.
I’m pretty sure it converts azimuth to be relevant to the individual. I rarely use the command, but when someone else uses it I often get a useful bearing and height which reveals a dot. This is solely based on Sim EC experience.
