Launch was 110N.M apart and the horizontal distance travelled was 72.5N.M. The drone flew 37.5N.M at M1.5@50kft during that time. ~160s.
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This is the closest I’ve gotten with the 110nmi M1.5 shot in a user mission.
Launch at 110 nm distance, 39,500 ft altitude, Mach 1.5. 69.9 nm distance traveled before it ran out of battery 8.2km from target.
I could reattempt the shot with the launch altitude being closer to the IRL figures, but I doubt 500 feet more would’ve made the shot hit.
EDIT: I went ahead and did a test as close to the IRL parameters as I could get just to be sure.
Launch at 110 nm distance, 39,973 ft altitude, Mach 1.5. 70.14 nmi distance traveled before running out of battery 6.5km from target.
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Maybe it’s not clear to me but what altitude was the target if yours was 40k feet?
49995ft
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Could I get a video of this so it can be used in a report?
Sure thing. Do you know if its AIM-54A or C that is being referenced?
It might also be an issue if the test is done with a user model as the launching aircraft, but it’s not possible to get a solid lock at 203km with AWG-9 in game. A missile launch is possible as the PDV mode can trick the radar into locking above 185km for just long enough to launch a Phoenix, however it doesn’t get any mid-course guidance updates and therefore doesn’t quite fly straight enough to go pitbull due to the inertial navigation drift.
EDIT: Turns out I misread the launch parameters and tested at 40,000 feet instead of 44,000 feet.
Launch at 110 nm distance, 44,051 ft altitude, Mach 1.5. 73.65 nmi distance traveled before running out of battery 0.7km from target. Missile reached at least 100,000 feet altitude by my rough estimation. Sorry for the false alarm fellas.
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What was the top speed of the missile during that time?
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The missile hit mach 4.44 at motor burnout.
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So from this test, it went 73.6 Nm and around 100k ft by estimation. This pretty much matches this scenario. With thrust being correct, it looks like we’re back at looking at drag it appears since it’s not reaching its stated speed. Otherwise it’s quite impressive it’s meeting those other parameters. Thanks for your test!
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Yeah it looks to be performing exactly as on the document. There was a patch where they had changed its loft guidance, battery time, and significantly reduced its drag and I suspected it was to fit this scenario.
Allegedly the AIM-54 is supposed to hit a higher top speed at burnout, but all that would lead to is higher thrust amount but also higher drag so that it would still fit these parameters, but thats all too much work for two missile to just get the same end results. Higher acceleration and higher drag would mean that the missile would lose more speed against manuevering targets due to the higher drag.
To devs, as long as the burntime is correct, the loft altitude is correct, and the distance traveled is correct, then the missile is good enough and performing as it should be.
@MythicPi looks like you might have been bothering stepanovich this whole time while he knew in the back of his mind that the missile was performing correctly, hence the ignoring.
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AIM-54A
It is permitted to use custom models for bugreporting purposes, as well as custom radars, so long as you test the correct data points and you tested the correct unedited missile, and that’s pretty much all that matters.
I’ll assume that if the missile had been able to get mid-course guidance updates throughout, the travel path may have been good enough to make a connection instead of exploding at 0.7km away.
So what is left? With all else being correct, the only other items I can remember being discussed is G pull and reduced smoke but that’s about it.
G pull and reduced smoke is reported to my knowledge from statements of Mig23M and DavidBowie.
What’s not reported is the supposed directional warhead for AIM-54C.
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Directional warheads are not implemented for any missile. It is something that needs looked at soon because quite a lot of the new fox-3s use these including AMRAAM.
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But what missiles has been reported so far? I know of only one. The others including AIM-120s have yet to be reported and to my knowledge, I thought only the AIM-120C and not AIM-120A received it according to your sources but I’ll have to double check them.
At any rate, a source was recently passed showing that missiles older than 2012 are able to focus 70% of the explosive mass in the desired direction, newer missiles are able to focus up to 85% so Gaijin should have the information needed to model directional warheads.
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I would like to point out the shape of trajcetory is very important.
In my rough drawing (not for scale), all 5 trajectories reaches roughly the same altitude in the loft, which by your definition, all 5 trajectories are “good enough and performing as it should be” for Phoenix.
Yet, obviously, Blue trajectory is the most efficient trajectory and spend most time in higher altitude, thus enjoying lower drag; while constantly trading gravitational potential energy for kinetic energy.
The red trajectory is the one you mentioned when fired sufficiently far away and doesn’t cause Phoenix nose dive too early.
The green trajectory is close to the one we had in game when firing around 40km, where it almost always starts nose down towards target around 10 seconds after launch, even if target is still 30km away.
Furthermore, there are infinite number of possible trajectories that phoenix “should be”, just draw a random line, as long as it moves from left to right and reaches certain altitude at some point in time and never exceeds it, then it satiesfies your definition.
This is why papers on missile kinematics almost always use the word “trajectory shaping”, because lofting alone doesn’t bring any benefit if the shape of trajectory is wrong: see black trajectory as an example, clearly it performs lofting and can reach correct altitude in certain condition, thus it satisfies your definition of “good enough and performing as it should be”, but it will perform even worse than current implementation since it will fly level even when fired in lower altitude thus experience much greater drag, and players will almost never see it loft in action.
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This is not what is being stated as being, “good enough”. Obviously @legocubed can give you the better details by explaining how it lofted, but the graph you made is inaccurate. In the graph, you say
while showing that it is not reaching the correct altitude compared to other lofting profiles. The test Lego did proved that it reached the altitude from the picture Mythic provided, indicating the lofting profile is most likely correct. If the target is 30km away, the Pheonix should almost certainly burn straight towards it after a slight loft.
If AIM-54 was to be changed to a better or more efficient loft mechanism such as the ones on MRAAMs, then it would be overperforming, and they’d have to nerf the missile by increasing its drag to make sure it doesn’t travel more than 72.5nm in the 110nm shot. So the end result would still end up being the same.
It doesn’t stall at 75nm, it runs out of battery power
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On top of that, improved trajectory shaping improves its performance at lower altitude significantly, and we also know from historical footage that Aim-54 climbs at an angle much greater than 15 degrees. Thus even if the number matches, the shape of trajectory is still incorrect: Aim-54 should start with much more aggressive climb and still reaches same max altitude.
This means Aim-54 should reach the max altitude much sooner than Lego had shown.