Optically guided missiles?

[mech]

Was wondering of it is possible to make a2g missile using a camera and two pivots, mechanically it should be possible but I don't know how the math would work. Right now mine will just chase it's tail around since the camera won't slew to prevent turning or movement of the missile from making the camera off-target. Resulting in, camera is slewed right so turn right being the only command, vs the camera turning left when the missile turns right. What sort of math would be involved here?

[PenguinO]

If your laser dot sits on the ground target, you can guide your missile there.
Laser is considered optical right?

[mech]

laser can be seen visually or by infrared though (at least i think) optical wouldn't have that

[mech]

found a solution that might work, if i invert the signals going to the fins and put them into the cameras pivots then it should work, i will need to test this more but as of now it seems to work

[mech]

after some testing it does work like this with some smoothing however it isn't very accurate, this does however mean that there is no radiation from the missile (radar, laser, ect) and it isn't very bulky like gps missiles (and is also fully fire and forget). I would bet that there are better ways to do this and make it more accurate.

[Teamkiller]

Most accurate are laser guided missiles (laser from the missile carrier). And in SW it is the most simple way to do it. You may just use 2-3 PIDs. One for horizontal and vertical, and one for not rolling.

If we had lua function screen.getPixelColor(x,y) - you would be able make some sort of trully optical missile. But we had no such option.

You may use laser target designation + gps guidence. But it would work for static targets only.

I really hope that in weapons DLC there would be compact missile guidence block and target locking mechanic. For now SW is not for weapons.

[Breezing]

yes, but also how do you put cameras on missiles..

[user]

just strap a camera to a missile dude its not that hard

[mech]

The idea is to have a self guided missile with no external radiation which the target could pick up and thus have warning of the impending attack. Using radar obviously has a sensor which can pick it up, and lasers are visible to cameras or IR cameras making these not useful in this scenario. As far as I understand this is impossible to do in Stormworks for something which can hit a moving target. I have found a way to make this work on static targets by using the cameras angle to define a line in space which the guidance computer will try to follow. Unfortunately Stormworks does not posses a way to process video data so this is the only way to do it, GPS guidance could theoretically work but in order to determine the distance to the target in order to solve its position there must be some radiation emitted by either the missile or carrier.
My only other idea to make this work is to have the terrain fully mapped out then using the camera's angle, a GPS sensor, and an altimeter the math could be done to find the position of the target which GPS guidance could hit. This again is only useful against static targets, there is some possibility where the camera could stay on the carrier whom would track the target manually and those coordinates would be transmitted to the missile for guidance however this gives the possibility for radio jamming and is just an over-complicated SACLOS system so it isn't practical.
The radio possibly being jammed is the main reason I want to stay away from radios, otherwise I would use simple MCLOS or SACLOS guidance systems. Granted radio jamming is near impossible in Stormworks but for sake of the hypothetical it is something that the opponent could take advantage of in order to have notice and be able to leverage in order to deny the attack.