The Platform Tape overlay provides a much simpler way to control entity heading, speed and altitude.  There are three tapes; the Heading Tape will appear as a circle around the selected platform, the Speed Tape will be along the left border, and the Altitude Tape along the right (see figure below).  Each of these serves both as a means to quickly see and optionally, to set either the selected platform’s current heading/speed/altitude or target heading/speed/altitude.

As the full potential of buttonized scripting became more apparent, we realized we needed to create a framework for users to organize their buttonized scripts and quickly activate the desired behavior(s) at runtime. Thus we’ve introduced Action Templates and the Action Menu in 2017R1.

The Action Menu is accessed by right-clicking on a platform to bring up a context menu. In the figure below, we’re demonstrating a right mouse click on an entity (human lifeform) and navigated to the Actions menu; the actions shown in this case are those we’ve placed in an Action Template called ‘Pattern of Life’.

To illustrate the utility of the Action Templates, below is an example of a F-16 entity in that same MACE mission, with actions organized into a template for air-to-air maneuvers.  You can also assign a buttonized script as a platform’s default reaction posture; this is a great way to have an entity enter a building or take cover in one or more definable locations when a nearby detonation occurs.

Ever finding yourself zooming way in and then back out in a mission with both standoff air platforms and lots of ground entities? Now you can quickly save (and restore) up to 4 different visible map extents; these are mission-specific and will save and load with your mission. To store a visible extent, hold CTRL and press F5, F6, F7 or F8. To retrieve (zoom to) a visible extent, press ALT and F5-F8 (whichever one corresponds to the extent you wish to zoom to).

This release includes a major upgrade to how infrared is simulated within MACE. This applies to air-to-air and air-to-ground IR seekers and IR warning receivers.  The figure below shows the ‘EW devices’ on an F-16 in the Sample_Mission that ships with MACE. There are 3 different IR Signatures assigned to the F-16; the F-16’s plume signature is shown in the figure below, and can be dynamically changed by changing the highlighted fields.

MACE can now simulate both stand-off and stand-in noise jamming against both the main-lobe and sidelobes. Also, a radar will now automatically switch modes (if you have an alternate mode defined) if it detects that it is being jammed.

The visual detection model in MACE has been improved to support user-definable horizontal and vertical fields of view. For example, the ‘visual canopy’ can be assigned to aircraft and is an example of a visual detection pattern with limited horizontal and vertical fields of view.

In the last release (MACE 2016R2), we introduced the ability to ‘buttonize’ your scripts. MACE 2017R1 includes some pre-made buttonized scripts for pattern-of-life behaviors, such as ‘Go to Work within 5 minutes’. This script will tell the target platform(s) to proceed to a random platform in your mission whose ‘Tag’ property (which was added for this release) contains the word ‘Office’. There are a few other variants of this behavior included as well, such as ‘Go to Church’, ‘Go to Lunch’ and ‘Take Cover’ (with the latter having a detonation trigger, rather than a time lapse trigger). In addition, you can also now pathfind around building footprints in our worldwide OSM database. Both your starting and ending locations can now be inside of a building – in other words, you can now pathfind out of a building and into another building, while walking around all buildings in between. EZ-traffic generation has also been improved to support multiple lanes and vehicles that detect and pass other vehicles in front of them.

MACE 2017R1 contains several significant improvements related to the simulation of datalinks. Specifically, you can now simulate datalink Gateways in MACE (SADL, Link16, SATCOM, etc) and can manually create J3 tracks. You can also change the data being passed in your J3 messages – for example, to lower track quality or change the team identifier. In addition, the J12.6 (Target Sorting) message is now supported.