Though arguably the entire contrail system is really really bad and needs an overhaul as it is. aircraft just producing giant white beacons for your location above X alt is really bad. Not that it changes anything at lower alts on most maps. 9Ms would still be invisible, as most fight at low alt anyway
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Look at the video
I saw the video. What are you trying to say with the video?
Its definitly excessive, and it was likely added as a measure to make altitude dominance less important in the era of higher performance IR missiles.
Gaijins been really hammering radar missiles for the last ~2 years, trying their best to make them as terrible and useless as possible. Adding excessively visibles contrails that occur in an excessively large altitude band is a great way to make flying high a clear negative, which was already a thing before as it was easier to “spot” enemy aircrafts if they were above you, but gaijin didny handhold the mouth breathers enough, so they slammed radar missiles with multipath, and perma spotting at high alt from contrails and other stuff like radar lock precision errors making missiles oscillate since they have a “perfect” guidance system with an imperfect lock.
Its pure idiocy and pandering to pilots that struggle to fly cuz their hand got stuck in the tub of glue while they were flying their shiny new premium jet they bought with their little sisters chemo money.
Thats also why the lead indicator for SPAAG’s doesnt work properly cuz its always floating around and shifting and never accurate, yet bots can perfectly put rounds onto planes menauvering heavily. Its not human error, its gaijin introducing RNG into a game where most other factors arent rng…
I reckon it was also added to nerf “space climbing” for heavy WW2 era bombers and for GRB.
drives me nuts in SB that I cannot even consider climbing that high in something like the F3, where my radar and Skyflash would be strongest, because im a giant white marker that everyone on the map can see from 100kms away. Its a real shame.
Gaijin want everyone at 50ft and it sucks
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I said that we have both seen videos of the missile firing with no smoke, and other videos with smoke, you then send a screenshot of the balloon incident, I then respond to that with clarification and the link to said video with no smoke, saying “this video, HUGE altitude and temperatures at those altitudes are in the double digit negatives no question about it”.
What is unclear about this? English is not my native language but I’m a bit confused at where I went wrong
Not only is missile smoke relevant to air to air missiles, it is also relevant to sams. Many sams have blinding smoke which hampers their efforts to fire at targets like helicopters. Additionally, if you have a long burning missile like roland 3 and low maneuverability, hostiles will simply just spot your missile and evade it with no effort, which can be unrealistic in conditions where the missile should have reduced/no smoke.
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Are you trying to say that there should not have been smoke when the f-22 shot down the balloon because it must have been cold or what?
I’m not trying to say anything about the Balloon incident, again - I simply said that we have both seen videos with smoke, and without smoke, some videos at high altitudes without smoke, and some at low altitudes with smoke…
Clearly something is causing this disparity. My understanding of things is that due to it’s special propellant there should not be smoke at any altitude with 9M, but rather condensation, and it’s dependant on conditions, please correct me but I would assume greatest factor to this is temperature right? Idk what correlation humidity has to it- anyhow, because we’ve seen evidence of ZERO smoke whatsoever at what’s likely 25,000-30,000ft where temperature never is higher than -20c to -30c afaik I’m personally inclined to believe that at least the F16 video had smoke for training purposes
Adding smoke to an air to air missile is not a known training practice. We aren’t educated enough in atmospheric conditions, missile propellants and condensation to know for sure. One can make research to learn more though.
Respectfully, how do you know this?
Maybe some of the devs of those mods over at DCS know more… they’ve modelled plenty of modern missiles into their game, I’d assume they’ve done their research.
Looking at the training missile modifications none of them have included anything that would induce extra smoke. CATM-9M, NATM-9M, neither modification includes any type of smoke generators.
Several threads have pointed out that the contrail implementation in WT is very very wrong currently.
I would imagine that 90+% of the time, 9Ms would produce so little contrails that its simply not worth adding it for those niche few times it would, and whether or not it would be anywhere near as visible as “smoke” is also a huge debate.
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Can you see any information regarding if they’re using the same motors? Doesn’t have to be a smoke-machine taped in the back
Yeah contrails are definitely wrong in the game atm
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It would be implemented on all missiles. While most of the time 9M would produce small contrails, there is no reason to not add the system to them when it can be added to them. Just for the realism and the small % of engagements that happen higher up. Also the game already has and is going to introduce medium and long range missiles with reduced smoke. Those engagements often happen way higher than where you use sidewinders where the conditions might allow smoke or effects of condensation to induce a visible trail. SAMs also need this system implemented as their performance is significantly hampered with unrealistic amounts of smoke. (they need it lessened).
It would be of good practice to model this system.
NATM-9M includes data gathering equipment (same motor as 9M) and CATM-9M was not a launchable missile (but i included it anyway).
“The AIM-9M missiles were converted to NATM-9M, or Special Air Training Missiles. The process consisted of replacing the tactical warhead with an inert warhead, and modifying the rocket motor for employment from the F-15 aircraft. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Jessi Monte)”
It’s unclear what the modification is though…
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Seems like i was partially wrong about the NATM-9M, but the missile in the video of danish F-16’s was not a NATM-9M as it exploded on contact, it was still the original AIM-9M