Stealth? Really?

No, F-117 is up there with the Harrier. Idk why you’re so against Gajin implementing stealth capabilities to the F-117.

Also you’re wrong about the cold-war jets. Alot of them are hotter than they’re supposed to be.

Not according to known documentation, no

Harrier, probably one of the best known examples, is insanely hot for the same reason that the F-117 is insanely hot. That reason being, heat is calculated soley based on thrust instead of IRL numbers.

And yes, we have irl documentation.

I’m aware IR signatures ar all over the place

At the end “hotter” or “colder” in game compared to IRL probably doesn’t even mean anything because the IR signature of these things isn’t based on a temperature but on thrust, as you said.

What i’m stating is : a Mistral, version 1 (and most likely equivalents as well) should lock a F-117 at a range over 4km. Regarding the rest, i don’t really care that much tbh.
A mistral III (version 3) will be limited by its kinetic energy and not by its seeker when facing a stealth jet (max range of 8km). That thing is not in game yet however

Sounds like a Mistral problem then. The F-117 both is hotter, and has a larger RCS than irl.

Its RCS is 0.0023m^2 on the frontal arc, 0.0028m^2 on the sides. The made up numbers on the internet are 0.003m^2 frontal, so it’s better than even fanboys fantasy.
NH being downed by a S-125 points to values way higher than that.
Also, 0.5 IR multiplier, against unknown IRL numbers.

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It doesn’t effect the distance at which you can lock and launch missiles at it. Heck, on the contrary, you can lock IR missiles on it from further than most planes.

The code in the file says:

“radarCrossSectionAspectMultFront”: 0.002358,
“radarCrossSectionAspectMultSide”: 0.00283,
“radarCrossSectionAspectMultRear”: 0.0283,

The word “mult” would imply those are multipliers applied to the standard RCS of the aircraft, rather than absolute RCS values. Which would mean the frontal RCS in game is likely higher than 0.002358 m2.

Coincidentally however, the values for the frontal rcs happens to be what is the publicly available rcs values associated with the aircraft…

So either it’s a complete coincidence or this aircraft actually does have an rcs of 0.002358 in-game.

Yeah, they are multipliers, and yes, technically I’m assuming something the devs have not spilled the beans officially as such, but as far as I can see it’s basically the only option that makes sense, more in the next paragraphs.

Those multipliers being on the standard RCS sphere (1m^2) make sense, as no other value RCS values are given in the files, and it fits the commonly found online numbers for the NH (0.0025 - 0.003m^2 for same altitude on a perfect head-on or frontal arc, this is per USAF stealth definition given by Col. Riccioni, and even though some will claim those numbers are the average, we know that to be impossible from simulations, physical & time considerations and the IRL events).
IIRC no other plane has that kind of multipliers (maybe drones had some RCS differences as well, I have to check the files).

From a programming point of view it doesn’t make sense to use those multipliers instead of just slapping them directly as hard values if they coded WT to allow it, because else you’re wasting operations for the same result.
The only way it would make sense is if there is indeed an universal base value for RCS. Then, why don’t other aircraft have those multipliers at all?

See, if RCS is a hard coded value, there is no need for multipliers, you just slap whatever number you want, else if it’s a base value that gets multiplied by whatever is in the aircraft blk file, then all other aircraft are missing their multipliers.

Aircraft in game do all have different RCSs. No one is quite sure how it works, but it seems to be based on the wingspan / physical size of the aircraft.

You can test this in game if you want. For example a He-162 will be detected at noticeability shorter range than a B-29

If they indeed used wingspan or physical size for RCS then that shows a MAJOR misunderstanding in how RCS works. A larger object by itself doesn’t mean it should have higher RCS accross the board.

works good enough 90% of the time this isnt an rcs simulator and never will be

Do you really want 5th gens to be more detectable than wwII fighters?
Plenty of ways to implement proper RCS values, why are you settling for such low standards?

the system will be changed when it becomes obsolete, however now it isnt obsolete and f117 is harder to detect with radar than small fighters
our current system is good enough. if you dont like it then apply for a job at gaijin

Poor RCS implementation affects all aircraft, not just 5th gens, it’ll merely affect those more since LO measures are part of their design.
Again, why are you settling for such low standards when RCS simulations are a thing? We can have decently accurate figures for all aircraft, coming from simulations running under the same conditions, no need to rely on guesswork or make believe figures from the internet.

so tell me how does it impact your gameplay in practice rather than theoretically.
in practice the system is good enough and aircraft are able to engage each other as expected within realistic ranges
what next lets make photo perfect simulations of aircraft internals and hit models, lets simulate every wire and bolt to have a purpose why settle for less. totally reasonable despite good hit models being good enough in most cases and even if it could be better there is no reason to simulate everything to the point of pretending to be real life
the current system is good enough atleast 90% of the time considering realistic engagements

Funny you should mention realistic engagements when gameplay at top tier is basically anything but.
So yeah, it does affect gameplay, especially in Sim and EC maps for ARB. Let’s say you’re on a Rafale or EF2K, those aircraft have some edge treatment, RAM and other LO techniques applied to them - even if not fully designed around stealth like proper 5th gens -, making for a claimed ~0.1-1m^2 RCS on a head-on.
You should not be detected nowhere near the same time as an F16/F15A/C. IIRC F14/15s hover around 25m^2 for frontal RCS. Early block F16s around 5m^2.
F16/15s (old mechanical radars) should not have any probability of detecting you until you’re sub 60km/32NM, as that’s about their limit for a 1m^2 target, and only from those sub-32NM should detection probability start raising – it doesn’t mean you get insta-locked at 31NM either. A Rafale using the same radar would make the non-zero detection distance for a F14/15 be more than double. It’s actually worse than that because the Rafale we have in-game supposedly has an AESA radar.
That goes for everything: it should affect low/high aspect ratio locks, it should basically auto-lock to people trolling with a parked gladiator in top tier since props have gigantic RCS, it should affect SPAA tracking in ground modes, and especially in sim, where situational awareness and “vision” matters a lot.

As for your remarks on perfect simulations of wires and bolts, the difference is decent RCS implementations have been done on other games (VTOL VR, for instance).
What’s bad is having some implementation where you don’t even attempt to construct a proper RCS profile, you use wingspan as if that meant anything for RCS at all then call it a day. It’s a sensitive topic, especially for aircraft that rely on it for their survival, as evident as per this and other threads on the F117 being tracked or not. It doesn’t help that we don’t even get a dev post on how they actually implemented the mechanic.

with realistic engagements im talking about ranges not gameplay style

and none of that matters because their missiles cant get you at that range anyway

and games like dcs have simulated the electrical system on aircraft too

and in 95% of the matches you wont run into the problem of an f16 finding you far away
its just theoretical it doesnt actually affect peoples gameplay in 95% of matches
no point fixing this spending tens of manhours on research development and testing look at how engagements happen in war thunder.
and then no one will almost never notice it except in 1 of 100 matches.