Suggestions for AI Improvements in Future Updates

[ben_wh]

AI emergency landing has been a problem fro day one.

1) For the landing back at a friendly field issue, perhaps, as Pursuivant mentioned, having airfield marker one can assign side to (Red Vs Blue) would allow a plane to look for friendly airfield close by to land. May still need substantial coding to achieve such AI improvement though.

2) Another aspect of AI landing is even more complex and potentially challenging to code: when a plane is in trouble and there is no airfield nearby, the AI has a choice to make - where to crash land. Right now AI plane often chooses to fly into mountain or landing into a forest - i.e. ensuring total destruction of its plane (and pilot) - rather than chancing it by picking a relatively flat field to land. This is something very natural for a human pilot but I imagine can be very hard to code into AI behavior.

Cheers,

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by ben_wh

2) Another aspect of AI landing is even more complex and potentially challenging to code: when a plane is in trouble and there is no airfield nearby, the AI has a choice to make - where to crash land.

Yes. Also, AI has a very tough time making realistic emergency decisions that would come naturally for a human pilot due to its limited terrain recognition ability. For example, AI planes might have the bail out just inside hostile territory rather than attempting to hold on a bit longer to reach friendly territory. Or, AI planes might have the crew bail out over the ocean when attempting to ditch is preferable.

"Intelligent" emergency decisions would require AI planes to be able to "see" and recognize areas of ocean and open flat ground which are suitable for crash landing/ditching, as well as being able to "see" front markers.

Once that's done, the flow chart as to what to do is fairly simple.