[HN Gopher] Math breakdown: Anime homing missiles
___________________________________________________________________
Math breakdown: Anime homing missiles
Author : ibobev
Score : 653 points
Date : 2023-02-02 18:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.littlepolygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.littlepolygon.com)
| Voltage wrote:
| Great article! I didn't know about Rotation Minimizing Frames or
| the double reflection method.
|
| I've run up against the issue of unexpected twisting of splines
| at work more than once.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| They're also known as Frenet frames, or Bishop frames, if
| you're going to dig into them in the future.
| Voltage wrote:
| Thanks for the tip.
|
| I thought I recognized your handle! You wrote the "A Primer
| on Bezier Curves" article. Thanks for providing that amazing
| resource, it's been invaluable during my learning process.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I did indeed, always nice to hear folks enjoyed it!
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Frenet frames are simply any orthonormal frame. A rotation-
| minimizing frame is a frame that has minimal twist from some
| previous frame.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| What they are, and what people call things, are two
| different things though. Ran into lots of folks calling
| them Frenet frames while looking this up myself several
| years ago.
| kilgnad wrote:
| I've been a fan of macross for a long time but the mecha games
| always suck. The main problem is that the movement isn't as fluid
| as the anime.
|
| I've only seen one good game capture the essence of the animes
| while being a fair and good game. It's an old game called virtual
| on. It's a fast paced mecha game with rocket boosted dashing
| along lines of commitment. That line of commitment means that
| when you dash with your mecha it forces the mecha into a single
| permanent dash in a single direction for about 3 seconds. This
| restriction actually makes you feel like you're pulling off
| incredible dodges of anime homing missiles. The graphics are old
| but it's the only game I've ever seen pull off the same feeling
| as an anime.
|
| See video:
|
| https://youtu.be/SoUGqhPQFI0?t=279
|
| It's old, but for it's time it was incredible. Also the controls
| involve dual joysticks at the arcade to really get the feeling
| that you're controlling a vehicle.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is a whole area called 'pursuit theory' about how to guide
| a missile to a target that produces very interesting curves.
| mLuby wrote:
| It's going to be even more wild in space when missiles can
| glide.
|
| Children of a Dead Earth allowed some simulations around this
| concept.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Missiles already glide. Most air-to-air missiles fire for
| only a little bit right after they're fired, then spend the
| rest of the flight coasting. Long range missiles propel
| themselves on a lofted trajectory to preserve energy, falling
| on their targets from above. In general, missiles can burn
| energy very quickly by making high-G turns, but can't recover
| energy, while aircraft are the opposite, being unable to
| maneuver as quickly as missiles but being able to constantly
| add energy. Some missile evasion tactics exploit this
| asymmetry. But of course, for every countertactic there is a
| counter-countertactic. The new innovation in missiles is dual
| pulse missiles, which have two rocket motors so that after
| firing, coasting, and approaching the target, the second
| pulse can fire and give the missile more energy to defeat
| countermaneuvering. The MBDA Meteor is an example of a
| missile with a dual pulse motor, except that instead of
| having two motors, it just has one which can be turned on and
| off.
| iamwil wrote:
| My first job out of college was working for a lab that did stuff
| for Air Defense. We did stuff like missiles that shot down other
| missiles for the Navy. Anyway, in my naivety, I asked the more
| senior engineers why we don't shoot missile plumes. Lots of cheap
| missiles in the hopes that one hits. (I didn't mention the idea
| was from watching anime.)
|
| They told me that the backfire from the exhaust of one missile
| might ignite the one behind it if we did stuff like that. That
| said, I've seen videos of ships firing missiles in relatively
| quick succession. Just not like the Itano Circus, however.
| [deleted]
| im3w1l wrote:
| After seeing videos of n-copters dropping grenades on soldiers
| in the Ukraine-Russia war, I do think there is evidence of a
| move to small and cheap technology.
| supercheetah wrote:
| It's not a bad idea. It's just a practical reality of their
| interaction with each other that causes a problem that's hard
| to workaround.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| The challenge with "lots of smaller missiles" is really
| range, I think. You want to hit the target from as far away
| as possible. That takes fuel, which puts limits on how small
| you can go.
|
| The longest-range version of the AIM-120 has a range of
| 160km, and missiles under development promise even longer
| ranges than _that,_ so that kind of tells you what they
| prioritize.
|
| One tangential thing to understand is that air to air
| missiles are proximity fuzed. They don't need to precisely
| impact their target, they just need to get close.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think this is mostly because longer range sounds like a
| great thing when you don't have hundreds of missiles to
| defend against.
|
| It'd be nice if there was a similar defense against
| saturation bombing.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I think this is mostly because longer range
| sounds like a great thing when you don't have
| hundreds of missiles to defend against.
|
| You're optimizing for the wrong thing. Today's missiles
| are extremely lethal and good at finding their targets.
| The challenge is getting close enough to launch them
| without getting killed by other aircraft or ground-to-air
| defenses. Ground to air defenses are getting cheaper and
| more lethal all the time.
|
| If you take human pilots out of the equation, obviously
| this changes things (your aircraft can be cheaper and you
| worry less about losing one) but not entirely. You still
| have to figure out how to deliver the missiles without
| getting shot down and while remote piloting is cool, it's
| still subject to jamming and such.
|
| Minus the cool swirly anime effects, pilots certainly
| _do_ have the option of firing multiple missiles at a
| given target. Fire one missile from beyond visual range,
| wait, and then fire another one. This is very common in
| DCS, which is obviously _not_ reality but is a pretty
| decent simulation according to a lot of actual pilots.
| Not sure what actual fighter pilot doctrine is there and
| if that 's a real world practice as well.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| For many air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles, we cheat and
| improve the hit probability another way: proximity fuses.
|
| Example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder
|
| They detonate _near_ the target rather than impacting it
| directly. This greatly improves the chance of success. Jets are
| fragile, so this is almost always sufficient to take them out
| of commission.
| User23 wrote:
| The MX sort of did that on the reentry side.
| auxfil wrote:
| Thank you for calling it by it's proper name and not "Anime
| Homing Missiles"
| brmgb wrote:
| > That said, I've seen videos of ships firing missiles in
| relatively quick succession. Just not like the Itano Circus,
| however.
|
| Saturation attack is indeed a tactic used. The idea is to time
| your attack for missiles to arrive on your target at the same
| time independantly of when they are launched and of their
| trajectories.
|
| Also, a missile hit for anti-missile defense probably doesn't
| look like what you expect. There is no need to reach the
| incoming missile spot on. The goal is to explode in its
| vicinity preferably slightly in front of it. Incoming missiles
| are fast enough that impacting either debris or the explosion
| shockwave will disable them if they are close in a radius which
| is not that small.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| It makes far more sense to do something like that in space
| instead of in the atmosphere. You could spread the missiles out
| a little before ignition. But you would also need some kind of
| swarm logic and tracking to make sure they don't bump into each
| other.
| XorNot wrote:
| Ostensibly the Generation 2 Ground Launched Small Diameter
| Bomb munitions will do something like this - i.e. they're
| capable of independently acquiring targets, and then de-
| conflict the target acquisitions to ensure they don't all
| track on the same one.
|
| Basically the idea being that you fire a whole lot of them at
| the enemy trench somewhere over there, and on terminal
| approach they independently assign themselves to specific
| interesting looking targets.
| somat wrote:
| Sort of like the CBU-97, it's mission profile is
| ridiculously insane. First 10 sub munitions are ejected
| out. A parachute slows the downward movement of the sub
| munition carrier. A rocket then spins it up to a high speed
| where it starts flinging shaped charge skeet at vehicles in
| range. these skeet then detonate once they detect they are
| above the vehicle.
|
| My reaction was the same as when I first learned about how
| jpl was going to get the curiosity rover down to the
| surface of mars with a rocket crane. "There is no way
| something that complicated would actually work."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon
| Aeolun wrote:
| Must've been a fun job training them what a valid target is
| :/
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Probably pretty easy. Anything that's not flat terrain,
| kinda irregular in shape, and a fixed distance from
| another target, e.g. 3 meters or something, to ensure a
| reasonable spread.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The UK Starstreak anti-aircraft missile has 3 submunition darts
| to improve hit probability. There is nothing wrong with the
| idea per se, you can design around backfire. The Metal Storm
| gun has multiple munitions stacked in the same tube.
|
| I figure the problem is more that it's hard to scale down
| missiles to the point the plume would make economic sense.
| bob1029 wrote:
| One well-guided missile can be infinitely more effective than
| 1000 poorly-guided missiles.
|
| Unless you are seeking a penetration aid against defenses, I
| don't see much point. There are far cheaper ways to deliver
| mass on target if you simply want to spam the enemy.
| rcme wrote:
| Depends on what you're defending against. Drones are
| effective because they're cheap so they can be sent in
| large numbers to overwhelm air defense even if each
| individual drone is an easy target.
| nradov wrote:
| The type of cheap drones that can be sent in large
| numbers lack the range to attack ships unless they're
| really close.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| "Cheap drone" doesn't need to be off the shelf quadcopter
| drone, fixed-wings custom drones like the Iranian Shahed
| 126 are still dirt cheap compared to typical anti-ship
| missiles.
| nradov wrote:
| Those lack the sensors needed to detect and track a
| moving ship. Good sensors are expensive, and consume a
| lot of power.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| But you don't need one sensor per drone, but one per
| swarm with the same target (and any kind of data link
| between members of the swarm). And by the time the swarm
| is within reach of the protection weapons of the target,
| it's probably close enough for the fairly basic sensors
| onboard of every drone to be able to work on its own if
| the target drone is destroyed (for instance: GNSS up to
| the last know position of the ship, and then just
| computer vision at close-range).
| rcme wrote:
| A ship isn't exactly a small target. You could probably
| track it just fine with a satellite and update the target
| GPS coordinate of the drones manually. An aircraft
| carrier only moves at 55 km/h maximum.
| iamwil wrote:
| Apparently, the oceans do a lot of radar scattering that
| makes it harder to spot ships from the guidance systems
| of missiles. Not sure what the state of the art is
| nowadays though.
| nradov wrote:
| Nope. Ships are very small targets in very large oceans.
| Have you ever even been on a boat out of sight from land?
|
| Reconnaissance satellites will be the first casualties in
| any future high-end conflict. Modern militaries have to
| plan around the expectation that their space-based
| platforms will be unavailable or severely degraded.
|
| Radar ocean reconnaissance satellites can detect ships
| under any weather conditions but they are are large,
| heavy, expensive, and can provide only intermittent
| coverage. Smaller satellites with optical or IR sensors
| can potentially provide more coverage but are less
| effective at night or with clouds.
| rcme wrote:
| Apparently China is already tracking U.S. aircraft
| carriers via satellite: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/s
| cience/article/3177079/chin...
|
| And sure, you need to wait for a clear day, but that
| doesn't seem like too big an obstacle. Also, while space-
| based platforms will be targets, it's unclear how
| effective counter measures are. Identifying targets is
| challenging and deploying replacements is worth the cost
| if you can eliminate a large portion of an adversary's
| naval power.
| nradov wrote:
| This is nothing new. The USSR was tracking US aircraft
| carriers via satellite since the 1960's. China is only
| now catching up.
|
| Carriers are certainly vulnerable to an extent, but
| detecting one with a satellite is only one step in the
| kill chain. Carrier strike groups already carry some
| limited anti-satellite weapons that can hit targets in
| LEO. There is an active arms race underway by the
| superpowers to boost those capabilities, and also (as you
| stated) to develop a prompt launch capability to replace
| satellite attrition losses within hours rather than
| scheduling launches years in advance.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's basically how most Anti-ship missile work: you
| give them GPS coordinate for the rough location and then
| the missile uses an active radar homing system for
| terminal guidance. (You want the missile to keep quiet as
| long as possible anyway, to avoid being detected and
| reducing the time the crew has to react to the threat).
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So far. There are many ways to make longrange, fuel
| efficient flying things.
| nradov wrote:
| What are those ways? Do they also allow for large sensors
| and warheads?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Just being the overconfident random internet person with
| ideas:
|
| launch 100 vehicles, slow flying, potentially with
| gliding capabilities, converging from all directions onto
| a target at the same time, ditching main wings and piston
| engine at the last minute, firing a rocket to gain speed,
| and overwhelm air defence by sheer numbers. Combine low-
| flying attack profiles with "dive-bomb from above". Large
| sensors can be mitigated with mesh-networking between
| vehicles and sensor fusion, maybe different kinds of
| sensors on different vehicles. Slow-flying means they can
| carry heavier warheads thanks to more lift and less drag.
|
| If slowly circling at high altitude, you also tie up
| resources keeping track of them.
|
| Quantity is its own quality, and all that...
|
| this is all without even bringing "AI" into the mix, but
| if you could, you can give them "goals" instead of
| targets.
| nradov wrote:
| It is possible in principle to build a loitering cruise
| missile with those features. It will not be small or
| cheap, at least not if you want something with the range
| and endurance to seek out and attack a ship on the open
| ocean in any weather conditions. Add up the cost and
| weight for all of those components you listed.
|
| As a point of comparison, the latest Block IV Tomahawk
| missiles already do most of what you described. They cost
| about $2M each and weigh about 1.5 tons. Only the largest
| warships can potentially carry 100 such missiles.
|
| Russia has used small, cheap cruise missiles like the
| Iranian Shahed-136 drones with some limited success
| against Ukraine. In a naval conflict such drones could
| have some value as harassment weapons against surface
| vessels operating in the littorals. But those drones are
| useless against moving ships over the horizon.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Those Shahed drones are too small. I'm just thinking from
| first principles, if an ultralight plane has a range of
| 500km and has a 100kg pilot in it which could be subbed
| for a warhead, you could do an awful lot of damage with
| hundreds of such things in the air.
| nradov wrote:
| Your numbers are way off. Ultralight airplanes don't have
| ranges anywhere near 500km, nor do they have the payload
| capacity to carry the necessary sensors and associated
| electrical generator. Ultralights are also barely faster
| than surface warships, and are too flimsy to operate in
| severe weather. Seriously, you guys need to quit watching
| silly scifi cartoons and do some actual math.
| Retric wrote:
| Submunitions think ICBM or cluster bombs. There's a
| tradeoff, because smarts means less room for the deadly
| bits.
|
| Some kind of smart bomblets could be very effective vs
| traditional military bases which use sandbag walls to
| limit how effective traditional munitions are. Smarter
| drones could be more useful when trying to clear a
| forest.
|
| Anti ship missiles on the other hand need large warheads
| to be effective. But launching multiple is preferred due
| to CIWS/point defense weapon systems.
| nradov wrote:
| Smart submunitions launched from drones have been a thing
| for decades.
|
| https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/releases/bat-
| submuniti...
| Retric wrote:
| Yea, though BAT is designed for armored vehicles not
| personal.
|
| Military UAV's are also huge. I assume when people are
| thinking drones they are downscaling to the 1-10kg range
| not full sized aircraft with a 50 foot wingspan.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Just take a bigger drone truck to get them there.
|
| _happy Protoss Carrier noises_
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'm absolutely in favor of a massive airship spewing
| hundreds of drones :)
| chongli wrote:
| The question I have is: can you scale down the well-guided
| missile? I thought guidance is mostly an issue of fast
| chips and well designed software. But perhaps you need big
| missiles if you want them to fly fast and have a lot of
| range.
|
| Talking about anti-air of course. Lots of small missiles
| aren't going to be effective against hardened ground
| targets.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| But perhaps you need big missiles if you want them to
| fly fast and have a lot of range.
|
| I'm just a layperson but this has always been my
| understanding. Modern air combat is all about firing from
| beyond visual range, so I think they optimize pretty
| strongly for that.
|
| See my other answer, though - air to air missiles ARE
| generally (always) proximity fuzed. They don't need to
| precisely impact the target, they just need to get close.
| XorNot wrote:
| More then that, air-to-air missiles generally are
| designed to blow a load of metal shrapnel through
| whatever they "hit": so there's a problem where if you're
| fleeing from a missile and it explodes behind you, even
| though it "missed" the payload can still hit the plane it
| was chasing if the plane doesn't change trajectory.
| nradov wrote:
| Sensors matter a lot for guidance. In order to build an
| effective radar guided missile it needs a fairly large
| array. So in practice the minimum missile diameter ends
| up being something around 7 inches. Long range surface to
| air missiles have to be much wider than that.
|
| Data links also make a big difference. So the missile
| needs another fairly large antenna to receive guidance
| cues from other platforms.
| lobocinza wrote:
| > One well-guided missile can be infinitely more effective
| than 1000 poorly-guided missiles.
|
| Only true if it can target a high value unit or
| concentration of units which value exceed the missile cost.
|
| Anti-air is a different scenario than artillery. Startreak
| targets are fast evading and employ countermeasures that
| attempt to trick the missiles target acquisition. I'm out
| of my depth but I believe the justification for the 3
| missiles was improving the odds of hitting the target as
| that add redundancy and kind of triple the resolution of
| the targeting systems where a single missile with better
| electronics might be less effective and more costly.
| winter_blue wrote:
| Doesn't a howitzer shoot multiple middles at once? (Or are they
| shot in quick succession?)
| ygra wrote:
| Quick succession. Due to the projectiles taking a while to
| arrive on target (especially for high-arcing trajectories)
| this gives you the effect of multiple projectiles arriving
| simultaneously on target: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artil
| lery#Multiple_round_simul...
|
| It also places some demands on fire control and loading to
| achieve the high fire rate; I'm not sure manually-loaded
| howitzers are capable of that in general (e.g. the German PzH
| 2000 automates everything from loading shells and propellant
| to firing).
| cainxinth wrote:
| Reminds me of playing Panzer Dragoon Orta on the original Xbox.
| Pxtl wrote:
| This video should probably have an epilepsy warning based on
| those strobe-light explosions. I adore the strobe-lights and they
| make me nostalgic as hell for early-'90s 3D games like SNES
| Starfox and Lightspeed/Hyperspeed, but the technique was retired
| for good reasons.
|
| As for the effect itself, I wonder if it would make sense to try
| this with a boid algorithm so they move as a "flock". Most
| attempts at anime=missiles I've seen either just look too chaotic
| or the missiles while initially launched at wide angles gradually
| consolidate into a tightly-packed blob.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Dear Mechwarrior developers: Pay this man all the moneys and put
| it into the game!
| speed_spread wrote:
| Agreed, Itano Circus SRM-6 should be standard.
|
| So I'm a mechslut. Today I bought Mechwarrior 5, installed it
| played for an hour and uninstalled it out of boredom and
| disgust. When inspired, Mech games can be SO COOL but I think
| it's just too easy to go with the cheap arcade mode and plain
| physics.
| SinParadise wrote:
| Mechwarrior 5 is kind of meh without mods. I played with the
| following:
|
| VonBiome for more battlefields, YetAnotherMechLab,
| YetAnotherMechlabMechs, YetAnotherWeapon and
| YetAnotherWeaponClan for mechlab and additional weapons.
| XenoAI MissionYAML and CoyotesMission to improve mission
| variety and difficulty.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| The problem with MW games is the following:
|
| 1) They were not built for simulation. The TT rules are good
| for just that.
|
| 2) The companies coding then haven't been great at it.
|
| 3) Pirhana games has terrible leadership and coding skills.
|
| Honestly MW5 had a ton of potential, but eclipsed by terrible
| coding. Like the spawn effects are bad, and they had to do
| spawns because they couldn't figure out how to disable
| scripts for inactive units, or how to make things efficient,
| or whatever. Basically yeah.
|
| Also I'm thinking LRM-20s with that effect. Cheff's kiss.
| rustypotato wrote:
| What kind of glitches would you experience in this context
| without rotation minimizing frames? If the missiles are a non-
| symmetrical shape, I would guess that you could see some
| "snapping" in its rotation, but if the missile is something like
| a centered sphere, my intuition is that the snapping wouldn't be
| perceptible.
| BoppreH wrote:
| I love these gamedev articles on specific solutions for making
| gameplay feel good. It has a freedom and artistic drive that I
| miss in other technical writing.
|
| And if the article left you with an itch for a space mecha game
| with missile barrages, here's a suggestion: Strike Suit Zero[1],
| or its arcade version, Strike Suit Infinity[2].
|
| It's cheap, short, with memorable gameplay and a lovely
| soundtrack[3].
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/209540/Strike_Suit_Zero/
|
| [2]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/234160/Strike_Suit_Infini...
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eDWgwucK5w
| omnibrain wrote:
| Great to see that here. I used to play EVE in the same corp
| with some of the devs.
| kazmerb wrote:
| o7m8
| [deleted]
| allenu wrote:
| Really cool! I always wanted to see a shooter that made use of
| the Itano Circus style. I always imagined it would be fun and
| stylish to fly around dodging missiles like that. Is there a
| shooter out there that does that?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Nier Automata has schmup sections but they are scattered around
| mainly 2D/3D fighting action game with a very long version at
| the end of the game. The player shoots more missiles like that
| versus the computer using them, it's more effective for the
| player to bat the missiles away with the mech sword versus
| avoiding the enemy missiles.
| prova_modena wrote:
| Older games, but "Omega Boost" and "Zone of the Enders" 1 and 2
| are great examples of trying to realize this style.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I'm curious what plotting tool the author used to create those
| slick illustrations.
| crispisulcans wrote:
| Cool design! I would love for some folks who are into this stuff
| to try their hands at this missile defence programming game
| https://openprocessing.org/sketch/745415 (click the </> button at
| the top)
| mcnichol wrote:
| Can I just say, only being a portion of the way through the
| article, you are a natural teacher/communicator.
|
| You have a very kind, knowledgeable, and effective way of
| explaining.
|
| I'd like to point out how much I appreciate how you introduce
| technical specifics and elaborate concisely enough that those who
| know and those who don't can share an article without feeling
| talked past or down to.
|
| One persons opinion. With your communication style a high bar
| I've been pursuing for some time, I just want to share a sincere
| appreciation for it!
| [deleted]
| Arrath wrote:
| The end result does look very cool
| bee_rider wrote:
| It definitely looks neat.
|
| I don't really see the point of doing this for one target per
| missile (other than aesthetics which is a perfectly valid
| reason!)
|
| But, if multiple were heading at a single target, I guess they'd
| be harder to dodge? Multiple trajectories and all that.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Not just dodge, but it would be harder to counter them all with
| flak or Close In Weapon Systems (CIWS) as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
| Armisael16 wrote:
| The real-life reason for this wild spiraling behavior would be
| that the launch tube isn't pointed directly at the target and
| the missile overcorrects. That's actually how the sidewinder
| missile got its name.
|
| This kind of mid-flight course change is a characteristic of
| real missiles in other cases , though:
|
| * almost anytime a submarine or ship launches, the missile goes
| straight up for a little bit to clear the ship before sharply
| turning
|
| * if you shoot a guided missile straight up unguided to clear
| terrain (eg a hill) before turning on guidance you'll see this
|
| * cruise missiles in the gulf wars famously did this by
| following the street grid - even turning at street light
|
| * if you launch a torpedo in a random direction then activate
| guidance later it can disguise where you are, since the torpedo
| is coming from a different direction
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Ohohoh. The craziest reason for the missile to go a little
| conky has got to be the energy management steering maneuver
| in THAAD (dunno if other missiles do it as well) - https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...
| z303 wrote:
| Another was Sprint. Turning towards the target before it
| gets too fast. Limiting the stress on the airframe and
| energy required.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
| https://youtu.be/YZZV464z9g8
| bee_rider wrote:
| Good points! I was 100% thinking of this from the point of
| view of a video game, without stating it, haha.
| magila wrote:
| I always assumed the Sidewinder missile was named based on
| the snake's ability to sense prey by thermal radiation.
| Armisael16 wrote:
| It was a bit of both, really (and the snaking path was only
| present in early versions of the missile).
|
| Sorry to mislead!
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Apparently HIMARS rockets do it too to avoid counter-battery
| fire. In videos from Ukraine you can see them launch at one
| angle then change direction after clearing a good distance
| from the launcher.
| paganel wrote:
| The Russian Onyx missiles also have an interesting-looking
| initial phase of the launch [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/2-22myhg_nE?t=9
| sdmike1 wrote:
| > cruise missiles in the gulf wars famously did this by
| following the street grid - even turning at street light
|
| That's fascinating! Do you have more info on this?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think they behave a bit too wild in the first stage of
| flight.
|
| I think I'd create separate launch animation that smoothly
| morphs into this flight animation.
| blincoln wrote:
| I always assumed having missiles behave like this would have
| some neat advantages (harder to shoot down, harder to predict
| the intended target, harder to automatically trace back to the
| launcher, etc.) and that the only reason real missiles didn't
| typically do it was the complexity of making sure they didn't
| hit each other or something else sitting outside of the
| shortest path.
|
| It seems like it could be done, e.g. pre-program all of the
| missiles with randomized paths that didn't intersect, and sweep
| the entire potential flight path area with radar or similar and
| exclude volumes with obstructions. That really is an awful lot
| of complexity that could make things go wrong, though.
| somat wrote:
| Probably why I am not a game dev but when the author mentioned
| and discarded the iterative solution in favor of the closed form
| solution. I immediately thought how cool it would would be to
| have some sort of deep involved simulation that would in the end
| create the same effect.
|
| One reason a missile might spiral like that is in order to have a
| simplified seeker head and control assembly, you only seed to
| seek and control on one axis and you spin the whole missile to
| scan over two dimensions. the missile will always overshoot a
| little but correct once it rotates around the other way. while
| this makes for a far simpler seeker and control setup it wastes a
| lot of energy so you need a bigger engine for the equivalent
| range if you had a two dimensional seeker/control missile.
|
| Another reason is to make the anti-missile solution much harder.
| It still wastes a lot of energy.
| mLuby wrote:
| Deep involved simulation you say?
|
| Check out Nebulous: Fleet Command https://youtu.be/Oe-71-3khyA
| specifically 1min in they show off the missile seeker
| customization and sprint phase programming. The game is like if
| you combined The Expanse with Homeworld.
|
| In general I've found the devlogs interesting--same YouTube
| channel I linked above.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| I highly recommend Nebulous, I did some modding for it a
| while back and the dev is really friendly and helpful. I was
| never actually that good at it, but it's really fun and has
| an extremely high skill ceiling.
|
| It runs on Linux with the exception of the main menu video.
| somat wrote:
| In the same vein is the game "From the Depths". It is just
| this side of unplayable due to it's systems and simulations.
| several times now I have started a campaign, enthusiastically
| go through the tutorials and immediately go combat
| ineffective when I forget how to assemble a functioning
| internal combustion engine power train.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhTNESwAzs4
|
| Note that that trailer absolutely fails to convey the
| mysteries found in trying to design a functioning missile
| system.
| SinParadise wrote:
| honestly everything Microprose and Hooded Horse is instabuy
| for me. well, almost instabuy.
| MrLeap wrote:
| I like using PID controllers for this kind of thing. They make it
| easy to get "authentic" looking behavior. By tuning the params
| you can adjust to behave anywhere from smooth like silk to wild
| overcorrections.
|
| They look really lively, I'll post a video on twitter or
| something.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Yeah but now you made tuning the PID parameters your day job =(
| HelloNurse wrote:
| If you like machine learning, you can simulate the game in
| suitable test scenarios and evolve high-performance missile
| controllers. Like in real life at the firing range, without
| engineers.
|
| Of course, bad controllers that can be exploited by the
| player to make missiles miss are usually fun, as are slight
| variations of PID parameters in the same missile salvo, to
| disperse them organically.
| MrLeap wrote:
| If tuning to taste gets old, just use an infinite series of
| PID controllers to tune your PID parameters.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| And that's how an XKCD comic gets born.
| fho wrote:
| I just read
| [this](http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2011/04/improving-the-
| beginn...) yesterday. It details the effort that went into
| making the Arduino PID library more robust compared to the
| "beginners PID".
| themeiguoren wrote:
| As a controls engineer, this is still the best one-stop shop
| I've found for making PIDs a lot more usable & robust.
| There's a few things I'd add but this covers the major bases.
| fho wrote:
| So ... what would you add? :-)
| mwkaufma wrote:
| I wrote about those ages ago, when I was working on the game
| ABZU
|
| https://www.tumblr.com/giantsquidology-blog/144615245984/flu...
| camtarn wrote:
| Heh, great article! One of those engineering efforts where
| you're trying to get to the point where the user doesn't
| notice any of the fancy math, just that the controls always
| seem to Do the Right Thing.
| rilindo wrote:
| The term for this is Itano Circus, made famous in Macross
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgwORRFIiuE
| grimgrin wrote:
| And here's 20 minutes of Itano Circus
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzXfVgYCxWI
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Cheers. Now I have to think of a way to model that kind of
| thing shooting out of a Stormsurge:
|
| https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/KV128_Stormsurge?file=K.
| ..
| jvanderbot wrote:
| To be fair, some of the "circus" aspect could be explained by
| noise in the tracker, rather than noise in the launch
| direction or trajectory tracking (as TFA proposes). Mostly I
| say this because the directions tend to diverge more as they
| get closer to a highly dynamic target.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| A well-animated Circus is always a treat.
| Kukumber wrote:
| that's not the "term", that's "as seen in X anime"
|
| bastardizing technical "terms" irritates me
| howenterprisey wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itano_Circus
| numpad0 wrote:
| Itano circus is not an in-universe term, it's named after an
| artist Ichiro Itano who is associated with it.
| Kukumber wrote:
| You don't say: a painting using cubism style is a "Picasso"
|
| The author that popularized it doesn't get attribution de-
| facto for every paintings that uses cubism
|
| Slightly rotating your missile propulsion system with an
| auto-targeting system doesn't make it "Itano"
|
| You don't say "Mr Smith's way of braking" because you saw
| him drift
|
| There is something about the weeb culture that's very
| corrosive about culture in general
|
| That's very concerning for this generation of technicians
|
| https://llvm.moe/
| JohnBooty wrote:
| There is something about the weeb culture that's
| very corrosive about culture in general
| That's very concerning for this generation of
| technicians
|
| I'd love to hear more of these thoughts.
| numpad0 wrote:
| TIL it's called eponym[1]. Diesel engines, pasteurized
| milk, Petri dish, even _mentors_ , ... I can tell you
| it's much less common in ideographic languages, as the
| definition can be encoded into spelling by choice of
| ideographs, if that is what you would appreciate :)
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eponym
| s-lambert wrote:
| Just because you see something in "weeb culture" doesn't
| mean it's unique to "weeb culture". Naming things after
| people happens everywhere, even in programming, booleans,
| bezier curves, Turing machines, etc.
| somethingreen wrote:
| These terms come from Sakuga scene where artist
| attribution and appreciation are a big part of it. See
| also "Yutapon Cubes", for example.
|
| Also we absolutely do identify art styles after their
| creators if the style is distinct enough, but doesn't
| necessarily establish a new branch, e.g. Escher, Warhol,
| Wes Anderson.
| nvader wrote:
| I've also heard it called Roboteching, from the samish
| reference:
|
| Warning info hazard tvtropes :p
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Roboteching
| creamyhorror wrote:
| It seems like "roboteching" refers more to the sudden
| synchronised turning of the missiles towards the target, and
| "Itano Circus" / "Macross Missile Massacre" is the general
| term for near-simultaneous missile spam. Definitely very
| aesthetically pleasing. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph
| p/Main/MacrossMissileMa...
| uranusjr wrote:
| Itano Circus is about the entire choreography of the entire
| fighting sequence, more than the missiles but combined with
| unrealistically agile robot actions and dynamic camera
| placing/movement.
| SigmundA wrote:
| I have to believe Itano Circus was inspired by Saturn rocket
| fireworks, at least that what I though as a kid.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS_7nY19kXw
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I think I should be watching more Macross
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| These are sometimes worth frame advancing for easter eggs. DYRL
| in particular had a sequence where mid-circus (IIRC) a Kirin
| beer can goes one way, and a Budweiser can goes in the opposite
| direction.
|
| [Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wckZcVFLU24
| 4:54 anime girl as missile nose art 5:40 not kirin, but
| "hataiko" (hataiko?) 5:41 defo budweiser (also from the
| Valkyrie?)
|
| I was wrong, but not badly mistaken. There may be more; I'm
| stopping here.]
| anyfoo wrote:
| > Many people are intimidated by math, but keep in mind that you
| don't need to understand everything to use it.
|
| This is key. And then if you're like me, you might after all
| become interested in actually understanding, and something new
| opens up.
| tlhunter wrote:
| I always wanted a modern Omega Boost
| psychphysic wrote:
| Better off using the integration method and if they miss they
| miss.
|
| Or maybe you're not. But impossible to doge homing missiles
| doesn't feel very game like or realistic and works only against
| static targets.
| causality0 wrote:
| Very interesting read. Regarding the example animation, is that
| lifted directly from chapter 1 mission 4 of Robotech Battlecry or
| is an astonishingly good recreation?
| munificent wrote:
| What a fun article! If it were, I would probably have tried two
| simpler tweaks:
|
| 1. Instead of bothering to compute tangent frame sweeping along
| the path, just use a fixed frame that's tangent to a line drawn
| from the start to the end point. (And then pick a random fixed
| rotation angle.)
|
| 2. Just use value noise instead of simplex noise. Or, hell, just
| stack a couple of sine waves with randomly chosen phase and
| frequency.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-03 23:02 UTC)