3. FAQs
Robots are units in the mission from the Mission Editor (ME). Their instructions come from DCS. Any unit from the ME will be a robot by default: their behavior will be the same as it would have been if Olympus was not installed. See below to learn how to take control of robots. NOTE: any ME unit that contains the word "Olympus" in its name will NOT be a robot and will be under Olympus control from the start.
Robots are protected by default. Robots (DCS-controlled units) often have mission-critical triggers on them as deleting them could break the mission logic or potentially crash the mission. In order to avoid this as much as possible, you need to remove the protection by toggling the lock at the top of the screen, next to the Robot visibility control.
- Ensure you have a connection to the server (check connection panel)
- Ensure that the server isn't paused
If your map is empty when connected to a server, it may simply be that the server is on pause. Usually, when the server is on pause, the status display (bottom right, see the first screenshot) says "Server paused".
But when the server is started and goes straight to pause, it does not communicate at all with the client and the status display is red (second screenshot).
This is often the case with dedicated server instances; some are setup so that the missions start on pause, and are unpaused as clients connect and paused again as they leave.
This can easily be changed in the server's user interface (third screenshot), or in the configuration file: ["resume_mode"] = 1, means that it will resume at launch.
In some situations, the unit AI overrides all the commands given by Olympus. This usually happens in the following cases:
- the unit has been damaged and is returning to base
- the unit is out of fuel
- the unit is defending itself from an active threat
- the unit is unable to perform the task (e.g. bombing without bombs)
- the unit is engaging a target
Important: if a unit is set to an ROE of Free then it may not listen to your commands due to a limitation in the DCS AI (i.e. it will prioritise attacking units over anything else). If you want full control over a unit, ensure you set the ROE "Hold" and reaction to threat to "None".
The Fire at point command requires that the point is in range and that the unit has direct line of sight to it. Make sure this is true. If you want the unit to shoot even if these conditions are not met, use the "Simulated fire fight" options. This will override any check and the unit will try and shoot at the target.
Scenic functions (Scenic AAA and Dynamic accuracy AAA) are two options for Anti Aircraft Artillery that are intended for increasing user immersion. Because of their internal mechanics, these functions work correctly only if performed by neutral units. To choose the "coalition" of a neutral unit when performing scenic functions, use the "Operate as" toggle from the Unit Control Panel.
If selected, the unit will shoot in the air randomly whenever an enemy unit is nearby.
If selected, the unit will shoot at any nearby enemy unit. However, the precision of the shots can be controlled by the user from the Unit Control Panel: use the Shots scatter to decide how precise the unit is and the Shots intensity to choose how often the unit will adjust its aim.
So you are probably wondering why we’ve pre prepared a statement to this effect but during initial development (well one time over the last years) and during the beta testing we have seen this reported as a false positive by some AV’s after very recent updates to definitions. We’ve naturally been scrambling to do a lot of things to try and address this over the last month or so, which has improved the program as well, but it does make the install a little harder for the end user. We have it to the point we actually think it won’t show as one for people, correctly naturally so we’re going ahead with the launch. Given the history however we wanted to explain things and be as open as we can about it in case it does for some.
Nope, if I was you and my computer reported it was as a threat, I wouldn’t install it and we suggest you do the same as us. Obviously, it isn’t but I also wouldn’t trust a stranger telling you that either so at the end of the day this is your choice however:
- We’ve got the installer, which now is compiled on GitHub from the visible open source GitHub code
- We have the zip (archive) installation that doesn’t have the .exe in it (the .exe is really for ease of installation), you can use this instead and see what is in it but has more manual steps for the install.
- The code is naturally also there on GitHub to read and you can read it all and then compile it all yourself to be 100% sure. So we’re hoping the options help here if the .exe is detected as a false positive for you and your protection software.
We think the false positives were due to a few specific things, which we’ve removed or totally changed how they work to create more confidence in the automated machine learning checks AV’s do, with the benefit of added safety / security in the program. But in really simple terms:
- Nobody knows who we are
- Not many people have used this program, so it has low confidence
- We aren’t a big business or corporation that can sign our 100% trust us digital signature onto the thing (we have signed it ourselves)
- The installer was made with a python script and pyinstaller which is also used naturally by people that make small scale software, like a lot of malicious software are made with that as well, which from a machine learning point of view doesn’t look great and causes higher scores
During our initial development of this version of Olympus we didn’t see any issues at all with things reporting the installers as a threat. Just the normal warnings of we don’t know what this is do you trust it, which you’d get for any small scale software. A few months back we did get an initial flag on one version, by Windows Defender, nothing had really changed at but we thought this might be down to the fact back then the program used to write an environmental variable, it no longer does. We changed that and the warnings went away so we carried on happily.
As we opened up to the beta testers and a lot more people started installing and testing things, we then started to sometimes see it being flagged as a false positive again. We’ve had to basically guess as to the reasons as they aren’t exactly open about why things happen, as you could use that as way to get around the detections but essentially we:
- Changed how it worked to remove the need to edit the registry
- Removed a lot of the code the content that was in the installer, like node, itself which we think it thinks can be used to make and compile other things, which we guess looks odd. This did make the install less simple to do and it removed a lot of the nice looking installer stuff, so it now is barebones but functional
- Rewrote the configurator and made a new version that installs from the pre requisite original packages, instead of having them inside it, hence why you need to install some other stuff as part of the installation now
- Removed several of the executables that were themselves inside this, like a local client we had (instead of needing a web browser) and a nice tool to change the Olympus configuration, passwords etc easier
- Moved to using Github continuous integration so exe is from the code, instead of you having to directly trust us with a google drive link or something suspicious looking, which we used internally before this