Bar Dar

[Wiley]

Hello, all.  I've been thinking a fair bit about the way bar dar works lately, and there seemed to be a change a couple updates ago when the radar experiment was tried to how it fundamentally worked.

First of all, here's how I thought it used to work-  Enemy planes in a sector created bar dar.  Anything above NOE showed in the bar dar.  A possible exception seemed to me if there was only one plane in the sector.

Nowadays, it seems that there's something else afoot.  People have reported cons not showing on bar dar below the old NOE but above the new one, with the occasional report of an enemy plane being at alt with no bar dar showing at all.

I noticed something the other day that struck me like it might be a clue to how it works now.

I was in a sector, gaining alt trying to head toward a fight.  The furball at the base I was headed to had died out by the look of it, so I was in the middle of trying to figure out where to go next.  I was near the cross of two of the lines.  There was no enemy bar dar in any of the 4 sectors I was surrounded by.  I pop up my clipboard when I'm doing this sort of thing at least every 30 seconds or so.  Usually more often than that.

Anyways, I'm scanning the sky in front of me, when a P51 and a 109 come into icon range above me at 12 o'clock, ballpark altitude 15k.  I look at my clipboard, there's now 2 'notches' of bar dar in that sector.

Here's what I'm wondering.  I can't say 100%, but I believe I may have been the only friendly in those 4 sectors.  Could it possibly be it's taking into account whether a friendly vehicle or base is within icon range of the enemy planes before it refreshes the bar dar in that sector, or something along those lines?

I'm not sure if this should be in the bug forum or not, which is why I asked here, to try to get some understanding of whether how I thought it used to work was accurate.  I know what I'm seeing now seems to conflict with how I thought it was before.

Wiley.

[Lusche]

First, just to clarify, the current LW radar settings:

Dot dar (base radar): Radar range 15 miles, minimum altitude 65 ft.
Dar Bar (sector radar): minimum altitude 500 ft. You can't see the darbar you creating yourself - if you are the only friendly in a sector above 500ft, you will not see a green darbar, but everybody else does.

That's how it's supposed to work.

What happened to you seems to be a bug/glitch that is appearing at seemingly random intervals at least for some of us. I for one haven't really found any reason for this yet.

[Traveler]

First, just to clarify, the current LW radar settings:

Dot dar (base radar): Radar range 15 miles, minimum altitude 65 ft.
Dar Bar (sector radar): minimum altitude 500 ft. You can't see the darbar you creating yourself - if you are the only friendly in a sector above 500ft, you will not see a green darbar, but everybody else does.

That's how it's supposed to work.

What happened to you seems to be a bug/glitch that is appearing at seemingly random intervals at least for some of us. I for one haven't really found any reason for this yet.

Point of clarification please, is the radar ring 15 miles or 12.5 miles?  Thanks.

[Roadblck]

First, just to clarify, the current LW radar settings:

Dot dar (base radar): Radar range 15 miles, minimum altitude 65 ft.
Dar Bar (sector radar): minimum altitude 500 ft. You can't see the darbar you creating yourself - if you are the only friendly in a sector above 500ft, you will not see a green darbar, but everybody else does.

That's how it's supposed to work.

What happened to you seems to be a bug/glitch that is appearing at seemingly random intervals at least for some of us. I for one haven't really found any reason for this yet.

I've seen weird things like this too, where I'll be winging with a squad-mate and he shows one 'bar' worth of the sector darbar, yet my screen shows no enemy presence in the sector at all.  I haven't seen it happen more than a few times, and nothing comes to mind that correlates the occurrences, but it is a little annoying to think that the darbar is unreliable.

[Wiley]

Ok, the settings you're mentioning there are what I was expecting.  I didn't know you can't see your own bardar, that's useful to know.

I'm wondering if it's glitchy, or working as intended?  I've definitely been knocking around in a sector with squaddies, and we've had conflicting bardar reports, with some of us showing enemy, some not, which strikes me as very, very odd.  I've been trying to piece together a pattern, it really seems to me like there's some kind of pattern, it's just complex without knowing what it's taking into account.

My current working theory is that it factors in the bandit's distance from friendlies and bases to determine whether they show on bardar, and either is glitchy when it comes to showing everyone the same thing, or it takes into account how far you are from friendly bases (or something) to determine whether your bardar updates, or how often it does, or somesuch.

There doesn't seem to be a definitive 'This is precisely how bardar works' segment of the website, maybe that's for a reason and if so, I'd happily stop asking about it.  It just seems kind of odd to me, the way it works now.

Roadblck- Were you winging tight, like within a few hundred yards of one another?  Just curious.  I can't remember when my squaddies and I noticed it how close we were to one another.

Wiley.

[ImADot]

I've noticed that many times (at least in EW and MW) I won't see a red darbar until both the con and I are in the same sector.  So, for instance...

I'm climbing out, headed toward enemy base.  I know there's a con in the air, as we've told each other where to meet.  No red darbar in his base's sector.  Once either he or I cross the sector line, and are both now in the same sector, the darbar shows up.  A minute later, we have viz on each other at 12k and the fight starts.

[Wiley]

That fits with the scenario I described in my first post, Imadot.  The timing could very easily have been right that I would've crossed the line into their sector when they showed on bardar.

Wiley.

[Lusche]

Point of clarification please, is the radar ring 15 miles or 12.5 miles?  Thanks.

I wasn't unclear in my first post.
I was plain wrong. It's 12.5 miles, of course 

[Traveler]

I wasn't unclear in my first post.
I was plain wrong. It's 12.5 miles, of course 

Not wrong, just a little short on being right.

[Roadblck]

Roadblck- Were you winging tight, like within a few hundred yards of one another?  Just curious.  I can't remember when my squaddies and I noticed it how close we were to one another.

Wiley.

I don't recall exactly, but I think I've seen it both when we're in pretty close formation, or in different parts of the sector.  I'll start paying more attention to it, and bugging squaddies for "hey, do you see bar dar in sector xxx?"

[Roadblck]

Had this happen again last night.

Late war Blue, upped from a rook base (whichever is just south-east of A21) about a sector from a bishop base.  My FE shows pretty good sized green Bardar, one "box" worth of red bardar, in the sector with a21.  Squadmate (Prime26) says to me on Vox "be careful headed in there, there's a whole lot of red up in the air" (not that he was probably half a sector away from me, but, in the same sector).  I say "what are you talking about, there's barely any red showing".  He says "what are you talking about man, bardar shows the whole sector red".  A third squadmate was in the area as well, and I believe he was seeing a moderate amount of red (can't recall for sure, but I remember thinking it's weird that three of us are seeing three different things).

So, I continue on towards 21, and as I get closer, the bar dar starts to increase, and sure enough, there's at least half a dozen cons buzzing around at altitude (presumably with more on the deck).

There's definitely something going on with the darbar, and I'm losing faith in it.

[Lusche]

Seems to be map related. I saw the same in LWB last night to. Players threw out an alert for a full red darbar in a sector, which was completely absent on my screen. Only after they moved into my sector (at high altitude!) the darbar suddenly popped up.

Time for another bug report.

[viking73]

Gonna do a bug report on this. I was in Lancs at 11k coming into A26 on the Baltic map. There was NO dar bar. Someone said there was a low 262 coming in from the west. I saw one square in the next sector go away and a small one appear in my sector which would jive with the report. I have a triple screen setup and am looking in the outside view to get lined up with the field. No change on the dar bar. So I do my bombing setups, line up on the hangers and drop my bombs. As I finish the last hanger i start hearing pings. I surmised that the 262 climbed up to me. I look behind me and there were 5 prop fighters at various distances making their run on me. I look at the map and the dar bar just changes to a bigger red stripe. I didn't have a chance and was shot down. So from the time that I looked at the map did my bombing and was getting hit was about 30-45 secs.