if theres a cloud, you cannot lock anything more than 1km away.
becasue clouds will block the line of sight to the aircraft you are trying to lock
with an optical senseor…
it is like complaining about your phone camera not being able to photograph a plane that is behind a cloud
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Not all IRST should be bothered by clouds the same. If they use MWIR or even SWIR, they would be immune to most clouds that are not cumulus type.
As an example, the OSF on the rafale was able to detect an Atlantic 2 at above 100km while it was in cloudy conditions.
This potentially applies to other IRST systems as well
Any cloud of any thickness will block an IRST. Even if you can visually see the target just fine with or without thermals.
If the aircraft is visible on Thermals, it should be visible to the “IRST”.
Except, it usually wont let you lock.
Get this all the time in the Stormer HVM. Target is well within range, clearly visible in thermals, and even with the thermals off, you can just barely make out the wisp of cloud. But the IRST wont lock.
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And then you have the issue of clouds being rendered locally somewhat differently for each players, but IRST lock working server side, meaning that you sometimes try to lock someone perfectly visible, and can’t, and sometimes manage to lock someone through thick clouds
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Yeah, that too. Would explain actually why it can feel very random when it wants to lock. thankfully. PIRATE feels more forgiving to get locks, but still doesnt like anything more than the thinnest cloud
IR seekers of all flavours cant see thermal signatures if theres something blocking it, a giant plume of water vapour very much blocks it just as a white phosphorous smoke will block it
Ehhh… Not always…
I can think of at least 1 Aim-9L fired during the Falklands that successfully chased after and hit a Mirage that dove down into cloud.
If the target is hot enough. Like a reheating jet. Most clouds wouldnt be the solid wall they are in game. Sure, enough thickness would block it, but at the moment, it very much feels like any thickness of cloud has the same properties
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I think i know what instance you mean. A lock was aquired before the argentine jet went into cloud cover, where the missile lost track and missed.
true. light cloud will do about as much as rain. however the thick (and completley clientside) volumetric clouds we see a lot of absolutely will block everything
Irst is optical, mind you real life isn’t like war thunder. War thunder has insanely thick clouds nigh everywhere it’s awful.
Yeah, though in game, light cloud you can see through and thick cloud 2 miles thick has the same effect on seekers and IRST
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They should really tone down cloud walls
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I have no idea how you could do it with both
A) the client side vs server side clouds
and
B) Dynamically having IRST/Seeker performance affected by clouds without heavily recoding large chunks of the game (though portions of that should probably be done anyway)
Unless they just made the “thinner” clouds not affect IRST at all and only halve lock ranges for IR missiles or something
they look very beautiful but damage gameplay
They are also randomly generated and different to literally everyone in the match.
tone it down and make everyone generate the same
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The generation isn’t technically random. There are « anchor points » (not exactly sure how that works, excuse me on the wrong name) for clouds to be generated somewhat in the same positions, but there’s a lot of variability making it so that clouds can be shaped very differently from player to player.
However, if one player sees a large set of clouds over one area, every players will also see a large set of clouds in that same area
Its a generation seed but theres a lot of leniency in generation.
just make it server side and issue is resolved
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Should’ve specified, I mean clouds in the background are blocking it too