I have read a number of posts that observed that AI planes were boltering to excess, sometimes virtually all of them, on carrier landings. I had to replace my PC, and of course the newone, although not the fastest available, was faster than what I replaced. I got the "bolter" command far more often.

Out of a hunch, I turned off the software controlled turbo button. Before I fly JF18 I now open several MS Word files along with the internet. I am not sure that it really made logical sense to do these things, but the result is that I now get much fewer bolters. I had thought that doing something like this would probably not have the hoped for effect. I used to do the same on the pc I replaced and it seemed to work then, also, but it not a dual core, but just a very fast pentium. Is this just a delusion, or am I observing a real effect?

Wait.. are you experiencing frequent bolters or the AI?

The AI bolters. I have no problem landing on the carrier. Of course, it doe not really matter so much whether the AI lands in most missions, but I just happen to like to watch all the AI planes land...it is great fun when friends and family take an interest in watching the carrier landings.

I dunno then, my AI planes usually land on the first pass most of the time.

I experience the same problem after upgrading where now the AI bolts continously, where they almost never did before. I tested with a CPU slowdown utility (CPU killer I think) to see if it made any difference, and it did. I actually waited until an AI plane was on finals, alt-tabbed and lowered my CPU to ~60%, and the AI trapped perfectly each time. Whenever I ran at normal speed they bolted.

So it is definitely a CPU thing.

/C

Thanks, Clark,

I did not think it was just me. I believe there were some discussions in the past about this problem. By loading up my desktop with stuff, it seemed to help, as I said. I guess I should try CPU Killer if its easily available for Win XP.

If you are using TSH, have you changed the priority of the F18.exe within the manager? I believe that is suppose to help too.

I get the excessive bolters with Win XP regardless of the priority selected.

I believe we first found out about this when we were finishing up the patch. Actually the first reports might have been related to bolters with the Player's ACLS since at that point it's basically the same thing. Trying to replicate it was a quite a problem since you needed to have a really good framerate and our machines were pretty weak (though I think people assumed otherwise). Nothing I saw indicated what was causing the problem. I could get it to happen from time to time but not reliably enough to help with debugging. I think I also had to not be looking in any direction that would give me real information since that would lower the framerate making the problem not happen. Just to get something to try and help if AI's started missing I'd start shifting their glide path closer to the back of the boat for each miss, though capping it so things couldn't get ridiculous. It seemed to help but didn't really make any sense. Having a better framerate should have made thing better not worse since finer adjustments could be made.

The only other thought I've had since then is that it might be related to the hook skip code. We have code that simulates the chance for a hook skip since it's something that can happen in real life. Actually I guess there could be something with the code which checks for the hook just catching a wire as well. I didn't have anything to do with this code so at this point anything I'd say would just be a guess and I wouldn't want a guess to be converted to a "fact" over time. Also if the issue was there then I would think it would show up for all landings not just when the AI is involved.

My apologies for not being able to figure out what the problem was.

Elf

I have a self-designed mission regarding landings. One of the planes is the fancy F-14 mod, and it always bolters the first time. I have experimented with this mission over time and once one plane catches a wire, most of the rest of them will catch a wire and land as well. Strange.