• 2025-04-15 Grading Updates
• 2025-04-02 One Year of Paddles
• 2025-02-01 Hook UP
• 2024-09-26 Foul Deck detection
• 2024-08-20 Grading v2.1
• 2024-07-29 New grading
• 2024-05-30 PoC Lessons Learned

Grading Updates

As time has gone by more feedback has come in. A big thanks to those that have taken the time to give us details, input and ideas on the grading.
While we're very much working on other things, like the new greenieboards, that will be as flexible as we could think of, we don't think we're done with the grading.

The grades are a nice way to measure your own improvement, but -to underline- will never replace a real person telling you what to improve.

Tracking

To facilitate comments where precision will be required in the future a full refactor of the tracking has been done.
The result is more data points for grading closer to and above the deck.
What's the point you ask? Well, more data!
This will give a better chance to look at your passes more precicely.
Comments like, Left/Right Wing Down (LWD) and 3 point landings require a lot of precision.
With this update we're hoping to open up those possibilities in the future!

On top of this more datapoints mean more precision on calculating the estimated touchdown point.
This may be handy to detect "taxi 1" wires, but I am currently still talking to SME's to see if that's used at all.
A certain possibility is that retraining the models that currently predict the wire may give good results even when the hook is up.
This means paddles can tell you which wire you would most likely have caught, even when you practices with a touch and go.

When talking about the wire caught. I got some feedback about the wire detection being a little off. While easily explainable it still triggered me into looking into better ways.
The reason why it's wrong? Cause it's guessed. Albeit by a model trained and tested to have an accuracy of 90%, it's still a best guess.
However, I looked into it and have added some more ways! It checks the DrawArguments on the carrier for the wires and if one of the wire dissapears (yes, this is how it works), that's the wire caught!
So no more wrong wires detected (hopefully!).

Next up
Now the final part of the groove is tracked with better detail, we think it's time to zoom out.
Look at parts before the groove. This was previously not done for optimisation purposes, but the refactor has opened up the possibility to do so.
Wouldn't it be great to get some insights in your turn, your altitude at the 90 and see if you started the turn abeam or maybe a little too late?
This might all be possible with future updates of paddles!

Grading

1 Wire

Avoid the one wire!
This shouldn't be news to most of you, but with this update it will be taken into account more harsly.
A #WIRE 1 can really only come to a Cut or No Grade at best without special circumstances.
Most of those circumstances don't apply in DCS.
So be aware! Play it safe. Nobody needs you to park your jet right into the fantail. There's elevators for that.

Unicorn passes

It's taken a while, but I wanted to make absolutely sure the grading wasn't too easy and dissapoint people later on.
The unicorn grade is now implemented. This means you can get an OK from paddles.
But be aware! This is not easy! Only the very best and virtually flawless passes will be getting this crown achievement!
Don't be ashamed if you won't get one, there's no shame in never having a unicorn pass. Cause who really is "perfect" anyways?

Groove Time

You'll see a change to the groove time as well. As the start calculation has changed slightly.
Before this update it followed the following logic:
"The Groove starts when an aircraft rolls wings level or crosses the PLAT centerline"
After this update it will only look at the leveling of the wings.
If you've already mastered rolling out in the center then nothing will really change!

Angling Approach

An initial implemention of "Angling Approach (AA) has been made.
Lot's of thanks to the information provided!
For those not familiar, AA or Angling Approach comments are given when a pilot does not roll out on the centerline, but needs to first fly an angled intercept.
This most often happens when undershooting the centerline and rolling out too soon.
If you get the AA comment you might want to turn a little more shallow and make sure you keep the wake of the ship on your left when rolling out.

EG

Eased Gun. When you really really want to get on the deck and forget about the backup plan.
Pulling the throttle to idle to get that last bit of decent going, or just not giving power when thinking you've caught the wire.
Best case, you've caught a wire, but delay the rest of the recoveries with a faulted wire.
Worst case, you end up in the water in front of a giant 20 story tall ship.
You'll see the EG comment with the known "IW" (in the wire) suffix, or a new "TL" one. "To Land".
When Easing the Gun no better than a no grade can be achieved and it might likely result in a Cut.
So don't hope for the hook to save you, plan for it to fail and you'll be more than fine!

Conclusion

The new comments and updates hopefully bring new possibilities and changes to the grading.
No matter how you use it, we hope that we can give you the best possible solution.
Feedback is always welcome, so don't hesitate to reach out!

Thanks to all!