SOS padlocks How would you design one.

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Author	Topic: SOS padlocks How would you design one.
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-15- 07:30 AM Spanky here... K this isn't a debate. Lets get that out of the way right now. I started this topic cause i figure with SOS hopefully coming soon. We have a chance to redesign and fix the Padlock in SDOE. We will be the first group of users that have done this. Let get together and design the best Padlock that we can. I propose we start off by naming the shortcomings of the padlock we have right now. And hopefully some ideas on how to fix them. Remember we are working with minimal resorces here. We don't want a padlock sucking up all the computing power of our spanky new 1ghz CPUs. I'll let you guys lead. I'm sure Tailslide has some ideas since he seems to be a big supporter of padlock. Seriously. Lets not fight. Lets have a brainstorming session on how to fix it. If someone says somthing you don't agree with state your disproval and a SMALL counter argument. Any ideas you don't personally like will be well thoughtout before they are put in the game and i'm guessing they will be voted on. I don't even use it but it needs to be fixed to stop these fights and to prove to all the people that there is a way to do it right. IP: Logged
semmern Pilot	posted 03-15- 07:36 AM Padlocking from outside, like in WWII Fighters. IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-15- 08:03 AM Spanky here... I havn't played alot of WW2 fighters. Just the demo. Can you explain a little futher? IP: Logged
Kraftwerk Pilot	posted 03-15- 10:37 AM How bout some padlocking system that only locks the view within what is humanly possible? It would be cool if you had such a padlock, that would only let you see over your shoulder, instead as of now, where we have 360 degree swivelnecks. If you lost the target in your physical blind zone, you would have to maneuver to reaquire the target, just as in real life. One thing in most if not all sims, they don't even model the blind spot. You can see directly behind you. Except in SDOE, that is. I like that the rear fuselage obscures the vision. What I don't like is that we get views that aren't humanly possible. (Down and backwards, for instance) And in a fighter, I feel that takes away some of the realism and surprise element. IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-15- 10:49 AM Its been a while since ive played it But doesnt falcon 4.0 require that you mouse-pan to acquire a target within visual range, then hit a key to lock it up? It also loses the target when it disappears behind your aircraft or terrain. This would be the best way to do it, IMHO. Perhaps an option for 'advanced padlock' in network play for people who want a choice. IP: Logged
Tailslide Pilot	posted 03-15- 10:50 AM I'd like it if you could only acquire padlock on targets centered in your view then you could sneak up on people. The "nations" sim despite all its flaws had an excellent padlock like this. It also broke off when planes went out of sight. TS IP: Logged
graymon Pilot	posted 03-15- 01:33 PM Padlock what a human would be able to follow,then a puter best guess as to where the plane will reappear,if not correct you lose padlock.{I think this is more realistic than multiple hat switches that most of us dont have or plan to aquire ,as i think it is unrealistic anyway.The pilot of a plane essentially padlocks an enemy and does not move their head thru a series of predetermined quadrants.}An outside padlock would be great,even if only for offline playasit looks really cool(see ww2 fighters orEAW) IP: Logged
Rattler Pilot	posted 03-15- 02:03 PM The downsides of Padlock in SDoE: Tracks aircraft thru hidden site areas: The airframe of your aircraft Clouds Terrain Padlocks too far away And one of its biggest shortcomings here is the way one can cycle thru targets it finds. It finds...... is key. Something like TS of Falck said would fix this. Either center it in your view/gunsight using a / or a combo of the snap views and smooth panning view keys available now. Then maybe tap the zoom key once followed by a padlock key to request a lock. Then it locks, even if its an allied aircraft.(mouse pan could also acheive this,then a series of mouse clicks to request a lock) Padlocking an allied aircraft should be 100% possible,then the user would have to decide whether or not to shoot once within gunnery range IF Id tags are currently OFF. If Id tags are on,then the user wouldn't even bother to Padlock the Allied aircraft to begin with. IMO, this would fix it,and promote a balanced & fair online play when ID tags are off. Rattler IP: Logged
Jerry Pilot	posted 03-15- 03:18 PM The problem with being able to padlock only when the A/C is in your front or gunsite view is that you may not want to be facing him yet. For example, if the EA is off to one side and going the opposite direction you may want to make a long sweep to sneak up behind him but still keep your eye on him while turning. To have to be pointed right at him restricts your ACM's, at least until padlock is engaged. A point and click with the mouse would not require any undesirable manuevering. IP: Logged
bjorn Pilot	posted 03-15- 03:32 PM Some ideas I've had are: Have a discovery dome, sort of like the pointy end of an egg, where you can spot things the furthest away in the direction you're looking. You can still lock on things in the periphery, but they need to be closer. Needless to say, locking should only occur when when visual contact is possible, i.e. never through the floor or a bar in the canopy. Locking should NOT be lost the moment the object becomes hidden. Instead, the tracking should continue in the direction the plane it followed had when visual contact was lost. If it hasn't come into view again within some time, tracking is lost. The time will depend on the angle velocity of the tracked plane relative to you (i.e., if a plane is taxiing next to you, and disappears, it's no big surprice where it'll be the next few seconds, while a 262 zooming by at full speed is lost momentarily.) If you look in another direction, for example the dash board, tracking will behave as if the plane had become hidden behind something. When you release the instrument view, it looks up where the plane is expected to be. If it's not very close to there, tracking is lost. As an extra bonus for initial locking: The human eye is very sensitive to movement. Locking should be more likely if the angle velocity relative you is withing some range, probably peaking around 360 degrees/sec. An object that doesn't move at all relative to you, is much more difficult to discover. As others have said, limit the tracking to what's physically possible for the human anatomy. _ /Bjorn. IP: Logged
elf Cadet	posted 03-15- 05:10 PM Hmmm ... well, personally, I think any WWII (or WWI for that matter) flight-sim shouldn't have any form of pad-locking. After all, shouldn't the pilot put some effort into ACQUIRING and TRACKING the target. From what I've read, this wasn't an easy thing to do ("...lose sight, lose fight ..."). Once you've pad-locked a target, the sim will never lose the lock so long as the line-of-sight is clear (yes, NO attribute of your target should be visible behind your plane's nose/canopy struts/headrest/clouds/etc., whether it's the target itself or the target icons/flags/whatever). Heck, I find it difficult to track a camouflaged plane flying against the back-drop of the ground, let alone acquiring it. And I sometimes lose the target even with target ID on, after temporarily scanning my cockpit gauges and trying to re-acquire the target. But that's MY problem ... as it should be --- the sim shouldn't aid, in anyway, in ACQUIRING and TRACKING your foe. Seems to me a pad-lock system defeats the whole purpose of a WWII or WWI flight-sim. The only view systems that should be available are snap-views and pan-views (for that "realistic" head movement). With a no-pad-lock system, and with target ID/tags turned on, this situation is now essentially equivalent to a pilot with good eye-sight since you still have to work at acquiring and tracking your target. BUT, since pad-locking is here to stay in SDOE, you should only be able to pad-lock your target at a certain distance ... say, when you can see the smirk on the other pilot's face :p Guess I should mention (while I'm on a roll) that as good as EAW and WWII Fighters are, they're hopeless for simulating WWII online in multiplayer. Not only do they both have those silly target vectors, but WWIIF has the capability of displaying a small window so you can assess your target plane's attitude. And there is no way for the host player to defeat (turn off) these "aids" online Sheesh ... even some of the modern planes aren't this capable. Anyway ... [elf jumps off rattler's soapbox, dons on his fire-proof elf suit, puts a hotdog and a stick, and waits for the heat] My apologies to you, Spanky, I know I'm not being helpful here, but I have this "thing" about pad-locks --- elf [This message has been edited by elf (edited 03-15-2000).] IP: Logged
bjorn Pilot	posted 03-15- 05:19 PM Elf, That's what I meant. If you don't sweep the space around you, looking for things, you won't lock them until it's way too late. I will refrain from a debate about whether to have padlock or not, but instead discuss how I want it to behave to be reasonable. The problem is that no padlock at all, makes life a lot harder than it was in real life, while padlock as it is implemented in any game I've seen, makes life a lot easier than it was in real life. If we can meet somewhere in between the two, it won't be as in real life, but the difficulty and skill required may be reasonably near it. _ /Bjorn. IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-15- 09:03 PM Spanky here... A padlock in a ww1 or ww2 sim is no different then one in a modern day sim. Its supposed to simulate your ability to track a single target with your head like you can in real life. The Snap view Keys are unrealistic as can be. Can you turn your head 180 degrees in 1/100th of a second? There is a happy medium. A well designed padlock won't help you find a target. Thats why i started this. To design one that wouldn't do that. It will just track your virtual head like you would in real life. AFTER YOU HAVE SEEN AND AQUIRED THE TARGET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thats all the padlock users want. I personally want an anolog hat. But i don't think i can convince all the joystick makers to put on on there sticks. And they would just fuck it up like all the sim makers do with padlock. IP: Logged
Mirthain Pilot	posted 03-15- 11:44 PM I really hate to break this to everyone, but padlock is about one of the last things that should be fixed with SOS. How about a bombsite that actually works. how about changing some of the ways that the sim model's ground objects. how about fixing some of the online scoring. Changing water to allow us to use seaplanes. Changing some of the way that the planes are handled so that the people complaining about the inacurate DM is fixed. these are all far more important to this sim then padlock. but for my own 2 cents worth here ya go. Padlock is something that is very hard to get right. I agree though, it needs to be able to keep tracking for like 2-3 seconds after loosing target, then break. This gives you the chance to turn or roll or whatever to keep them visual. Now the problem with "Visual range" is that on my system to keep speed up, fog is at like 7 miles. So if someone has fog at 5, but you have it at 20, then you are going to have an unfair advantage that is based nothing more then what your system is. That to me is a cheat. that is something that will have to be worked out. I also think that a second mode to the id tags should be put in. Something like we hear about now, no speed, perhaps even no id till a certain range unless it is a 38, then that will always be recognized... ;} Some dissapearing icon that diminishes with range.... Mirthain=FC= IP: Logged
Rattler Pilot	posted 03-16- 04:37 AM Spanky, ========================================= The Snap view Keys are unrealistic as can be. Can you turn your head 180 degrees in 1/100th of a second? ============================================ No, one can't..........but............. In putting alot of thought to this,I decided to try out something.Merging into traffic,crossing 2 lanes in your vehicle on a busy 2 way street. Look left,right,then left again. The head snaps really fast.Trying to focus on anything on the way is impossibe and nothing but a 1/2 second blurr. Snaps have there place allright and they're about 1/2 a second too fast than real life.Padlock modeled correctly also has its place along with smooth pan.And,I've never heard it called an unfair advantage. =========================================== There is a happy medium. A well designed padlock won't help you find a target. ============================================ I totally agree with you here my friend and Mirthain, Debating constructively is a give and take process. Your taking everything and not stepping up to the plate and acknowledging their is a REAL problem with Padlock that needs to be repaired ASAP or install a check box to turn it off for certain engagements in the mean time. You convinced me yourself aways back that following an aircraft by directing a smooth pan button is much tougher than padlock models in regards to the heads natural movement.And I changed my view on that point to agree with you. But your not helping the discussion up here by trying to tell us there is not enough wrong with padlock to warrant attention. Rattler [This message has been edited by Rattler (edited 03-16-2000).] IP: Logged
jedi Pilot	posted 03-16- 09:35 AM Well, wanna real life perspective? I fly a lot of formation. This involves a lot of fixating on the other planes, but also a lot of looking down into the cockpit. A few observations: Snap views SEEM unrealistic, but in fact simulate what you see very well. Even though your head may take a second or so to reach its new position, your eyes and brain very quickly calculate a solution for where to look, and in fact, the computer probably takes more time to change views than it takes for you to refocus even 90 degrees off your original view. Now, turning around and looking at 5 or 7 o'clock DOES take a measureable amount of time, so maybe the "rear hemisphere" snap views should be done as "rotating" views taking a small amount of time to swivel to the new viewpoint. As for padlock views, they also are good simulations, because in practice, the difficult thing is to ACQUIRE a distant aircraft target, NOT to track it. Once you see something, if you keep your eyes on it, there is no real difficulty following it, so forcing you to hit keys to keep something in view isn't all that realistic. OTOH, hitting those keys actually helps you maintain awareness of your aircraft attitude, the BIG drawback to a padlock, where you're looking at a target, with, in some cases, NO clue where your airplane is pointed. That's very unrealistic, since you normally have a lot of physical, audible, and peripheral info about aircraft attitude that don't get simulated with a padlock view. The other "missing link" with a padlock is that none of them give you a "flash" view of the instruments/HUD. It's very common to be focused on a ground target or other airplane, glance down to check your instruments, and then immediately reacquire your visual target. So if I was "building" a padlock view, how would I do it? First, you need a "threshold." Yeah, Chuck Yeager could see airplanes 25 miles away, but the average guy can only see em about 5 miles out, so I'd say make no target "lockable" until 5-10 miles range. Then, you need to have a way to select the target to lock. Mouse click would work, but I'd also add a "cycle-thru-available-targets" key of some kind so you could map it to a HOTAS button. Next, I'd add a "cross-check" function. Make it possible to snap-view to the instrument panel without losing the padlock target, so that when you release the cross-check key, you automatically return to padlock mode. Falcon 4 has something like this, but it's WAY too slow. I'm talking about flicking your eyes back into the cockpit for an SA update, and then having them right back on target. That way you don't splat into the ground tracking a target when you thought you were still at 2000 feet. The last thing would be to make the padlock "smart." It wouldn't be able to track a target through an obstruction, but it would "predict" where that target would reappear. Say the target goes under your left wing. The padlock would pan across the wing. If the target reappeared within, say, 200 pixels of its "predicted" position, the padlock would automatically reacquire the target. Otherwise, the padlock would terminate, and you'd be left in the snap view looking at the wing. If you saw the target up in the corner of the screen, you could reselect it and the padlock would reset. If not, you'd have to hunt down the target again using your snap views. The big difference here is that it wouldn't just dump you back to the forward view any time the padlock was lost, and it wouldn't magically find the target for you after the guy has been on your six in your blind spot for 30 seconds. As for how the target would be displayed, I'd go with a simple dot below the selected target. Red for enemy, green for friendly. Aircraft type ID would be an option, available within, say, 3 miles, but it would be a "bounce" key. Hold the key down and you see it's a Ju-88 or Tiger tank. Release and its just a red dot again. No range, airspeed info, or any of that stuff. You simply don't get that info with your Mk I Eyeballs in a real plane. I'd also make the target select function available in snap view mode, not just padlock. That way you wouldn't need to have aircraft ID enabled all the time for all aircraft. You could choose your target and at least retain awareness of where THAT plane was, something that's not particularly difficult to do in real life, but becomes artificially hard when your're looking at 10 icons bobbing around on a screen. That's how I'd do it. ------------------ --jedi-- IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-16- 10:24 AM Spanky here.. Since we get into rip snorting fights over it i figure its really high in the list. I don't use it and wouldn't care if there wasn't aguments. I'm just trying to make it a better sim. I'm sure once we get more organized we can have some polls on what bugs people the most with SDOE and sorry to say alot of people will be disapointed because THEIR most important fix will be 10th on the list. In the end it will fall to the programmers and what they feel like working on. IP: Logged
DanW Pilot	posted 03-16- 02:07 PM If I was you guys, I wouldn't worry about messing with the padlock. That's a sorta 'taboo' subject. Kinda like the 'which flight sim is better' arguement. There is no 'best' way to do padlock since everyone has a different view on the matter. To me, if I pay 50 bucks for a game, then dammit, I want to be able to track anything and everything, regardless of position. Instead of padlock, I would worry about making TCP/IP and dialup modems a possibility for multiplayer. If you guys are having trouble with Activision servers, then maybe its a good idea to take the matter into your own hands. IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-16- 02:22 PM I personally think, once we (those among us who do) get our hands on the code should concentrate on making this sim better in all respects. That would include network, padlock, and additions to the openplane api. I think making a more "hardcore" sim would attract more players. Anything that changes difficulty, should of course, be an option. And all options should apply to online play. IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-16- 02:27 PM Spanky here... jedi "cycle-thru-available-targets" key " You can't do that cause then you padlock stuff you can't see. Some people say you can't padlock stuff until it centered in the screen but that wouldn't be right either cause who only locks onto stuff right in front of them. DanW I dont' think anything is Taboo. What would you suggest we do? SOme people hate the one we have right now and others won't play without it. Should they just not fly together? "TCP/IP and dialup modems " Why do we need that? I guess i can see TCP/IP if the servers are down but who needs modem? I think you can do that but you need to set it up right. Also i think TCP/IP doesn't work for this game as its just not very good at the job. Mighty could expand on that. Theres another thread about it somewhere. IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-16- 02:28 PM Spanky here... BTW keep this thread going. Keep the ideas flowing. Its all good. Also Tail, Since you liked the padlock in nations. Can you explain it for us that havn't played that sim? I wish there was more demos for flight sims. [This message has been edited by Spanky the Mad Dog (edited 03-16-2000).] IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-16- 02:39 PM Spanky TCP/IP would mean that no (very little) data is lost online. No more rubber bullets. If it were only used to transfer critical data (damage states) and UDP was used to transfer positional data it could be very effective. IP: Logged
Mighty Pilot	posted 03-16- 03:07 PM At first glance using TCP/IP for "important" information seems like a good idea. But it turns out TCP/IP simply is not appropriate for a real-time game. The sim will "lock up" until it gets it's ack back from the slowest ping. For most online players, that would probably be on the order of 1/3 to 1/2 second. And if you have anyone in the game with a 1000+ ping that would mean a 1+ second pause. Usually when you're on his six pouring lead into him. I think most people would find that unacceptable. Also, there is no "critical damage" message to differentiate it from any other damage message. We send damage points and it's up to the target plane to decide if something has been destroyed and what to do about it. Michael and I discussed some ideas about planes periodically retransmitting damage information from each shooter to each target plane/part. I think that's the most robust way to handle this problem. I don't know if he ever had a chance to put that in. IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-16- 03:24 PM Spanky here.. Falck Yep I'm going with mighty on this one. read this artical pointing out the problems with online and TCP/IP Vs UDP. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990903/lincroft_01.htm I don't know maybe it will even give Mighty and MH some ideas Cut from that artical. "The Internet Sucks: Or, What I Learned Coding X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter" "TCP is evil. Don�t use TCP for a game. You would rather spend the rest of your life watching Titanic over and over in a theater full of 13 year old girls. " "Use UDP. The solution to this evil protocol seems simple at first. Don�t use TCP, use UDP instead" "UDP is better than TCP, but it still sucks" " Our solution was simple and surprisingly effective. Every packet would send copy of the last packet. This way if a packet were dropped, a copy of it would arrive with the next packet, and we could continue on our merry way. This would require nearly twice as much bandwidth, but fortunately our system required so little bandwidth that this was acceptable. This would only fail if two consecutive packets were dropped, and this seemed unlikely. If it did happen, then we would fall back on the re-sending code." "Whenever you think the Internet can�t get any worse, it gets worse" ANYway read the artical if your at all interested in ONline gaming and SDOE online. Remember they seemed to have gotten it under control and those crazy planes are even faster and wilder then ours will ever be. IP: Logged
Jerry Pilot	posted 03-16- 03:55 PM SOS will be just like OpenPlane....people will tinker and build whatever interests them. For someone to say that no one should work on padlock because there are higher priorities or because it will never satisfy everyone, is just wasting their time. Look at all the threads we have had on which planes to model next. Did they ever determine what was going to be built? Did anyone ever work on something because of demand that they weren't interested in doing in the first place? My guess is never. There was no great demand for WWI planes until someone started to build one and look where that has taken us. Individual interests are what make OpenPlane work, not popular demand. It will be the same with SOS. If a person with the talent feels that a padlock rewrite should be the number one priority then it will get done despite what anyone else wants. I agree with Spanky, it's a hot button for a lot of people so it's not a matter of "if" it's a matter of "what". And that's the purpose of this whole thread. IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-16- 04:54 PM Does anyone know how IPX works? I cant find an RFC on it but I thought it was separate from UDP or TCP/IP, and I've heard it described as 'the ideal gaming protocol'. Jerry im not sure if SOS will work like that. As I understand its kind of like Inertia is outsourcing the coding work for SDOE. People working on it will have to work together so that no one is undoing anyone else's work. [This message has been edited by Falck (edited 03-16-2000).] IP: Logged
Bryan Russell Pilot	posted 03-16- 05:52 PM Mighty: Can't you use an asynchronous call to send the TCP data, or put it in another thread? IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-16- 07:48 PM Spanky here... Decent artical on padlocks in newer sims. Could be good for somthing. http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/air_combat/padlock/padlock.shtml IP: Logged
Mighty Pilot	posted 03-16- 08:21 PM Maybe we should move this discussion to another thread As I understand it, an asynchronous TCP call is UDP. IPX is functionally equivalent to UDP. But, it's tied very tightly to (I think) a 256 address limit. It was originally designed by Novell for LANs. The only way to get it to work over the Internet is to do something like Kali, and package the IPX packet into a UDP packet. Thus, you've gained nothing over using UDP directly, and in fact it has cost you a little more overhead. The protocol we use to move the planes handles dropped packets very well. We simply need to address dropped damage packets, too. When we do that then UDP will turn out to be the best low-level transport protocol to move the info around the Internet. I read that article when it came out. One problem with simply including the previous packet, as described in that article, is that noise/lost packets/etc tends to be "bursty." IOW, if you lose one packet then the chances go up that you'll lose a few in a row. Since a good shooter on another plane's tail tends to generate a lot of damage packets close together, that exacerbates the problem. Generating the initial damage messages as we do now, plus supplementing them with followup summary messages later is the very likely to produce the results we want. IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-16- 08:40 PM Spanky here... Great stuff mighty Yeah If you guys wouldn't mind moving to a new thread that would be cool. hehe it is getting a little off. IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-16- 09:27 PM I agree that with UDP the best solution would for each plane to periodically broadcast its current damage state. This would stop the weird things like planes flying without wings and propellers on line. But I cant see how it will solve the problem of one player putting 100 rounds into another but only half of them counting. You cant really have a plane say 'i hit this guy this many times' periodically since the location of the hits on that plane would be a pain to track. IP: Logged
Crankshaft Pilot	posted 03-17- 02:18 AM I am not a programer and have no clue how to begin reconstructing a padlock. I just wanted to point out the padlock of another ww2 prop sim, EAW. (looking for flying beer bottles)<G> IMO EAW has one of the most effective view systems ever done in a flight simulator. You can flip from padlock to front windscreen with the flick of a key, easily check six, three, or nine Oclock positions,or even the the 45 degree views, and still flip right back to that padlocked target view in an instant. Now you can say this isn't realistic. You can say thats a sissys tool, or what ever! Bottom line is.......You just do not have the Situational Awareness and visability with only a 19 in windscreen to look though.<G> If you gents want only the hardcore pilots to fly SDOE, then retard the padlock, and make it realistic. This in my opinion will doom FS to a slow death like all the rest. However, if you chose to make the the padlock more friendly to the not so hardcore online pilot, make it so fledgling flyers have a bit of confedence to jump in and fly with the "Big Boys" I would think that more pilots would be drawn back to SDOE. I myself had FS stuffed away in the "Land Of Flight Frisbees. Then I happened across a link to Plane Pac 5.3. When I saw all the work that has been done I immediatly had to re install SDOE. The aircraft you boys are building are beautiful! I can really become emersed flying along in the Corsair or P51. IMO The "View/Padlock System" is what would be the icing on the cake, and I would bet a 128meg stick of pc100, that making FS a little easier for the not so experienced pilot, would show a rebirth of this simulator in a scope that would surprise you! IP: Logged
Spanky the Mad Dog Pilot	posted 03-17- 07:36 AM Spanky here... I don't know man. A simple padlock isn't what people are looking for. And making the sim easier isn't either. There is already lots of options you can turn on to make it easier. Most people are complaining that the sim isn't hard enough. That the FM is too easy and the DM is all messed online. I think a better FM (when will it stop and Online fixes will bring the people back to this sim. IP: Logged
semmern Pilot	posted 03-17- 07:42 AM What I meant with padlocking from the outside is that (take WWII fighters as an example) you switch to an outside view, press F7, and the view locks on to the plane closest to you. No, it's not very realistic, but it's cool. IP: Logged
Mighty Pilot	posted 03-17- 12:25 PM Falck, re: A pain to track It's not a huge task. We have all the parts to all of the planes, anyway. We just need to hang a list off of each part that says "these planes have hit you this many points." (A list to handle AI planes on the host's machine.) Then we just cycle through the planes and cycle through the parts and send a few parts worth of info each frame. IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-17- 01:44 PM Mighty I was thinking the other way around. Since a victim plane may not truely know how many times it was hit due to dropped packets, wouldnt it be more effective to have each plane say 'ive caused x obhits of damage to this part on this plane' and send that out periodically instead? Otherwise packet loss when I spray a plane with .303 is still going to be useless, correct? I would think you'd at least need to send the 'ive damaged you' message a few times to make sure it gets through IP: Logged
Tailslide Pilot	posted 03-17- 02:00 PM Figher Ace uses TCP/IP for damage info and UDP for plane positions. Works great.. if connection is laggy it sometimes takes the damage info takes a second or two to catch up but your shots always register. TS IP: Logged
Mighty Pilot	posted 03-17- 03:03 PM We're saying the same thing. I worded it poorly. What I meant to say was the local copy of a given plane part has a list of locally hosted planes that have hit it and the damage they've done. We resend those point totals to the host of that plane periodically. In addition, we may try resending the original damage packet a second or third time after a short delay, like one second. Alternatively, instead of simply sending the points caused this frame we can include the accumulated total. That way if any of the packets get through then the target will automagically synch up with the damage caused by that shooter. Or at least get pretty close, until the next periodic update. IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 03-17- 03:43 PM >instead of simply sending the points caused this frame we can include the accumulated total Yeah I was thinking that too. When you have 80 rounds a second coming out of the Spit MkIa it would probably be more efficient to sum the data every few frames. IP: Logged
Rattler Pilot	posted 03-18- 03:01 AM Crankshaft, Wildly different expectations.............. We all have em. Hardcore,easy,and every notch in between. Fix Padlock,.........great, if it could really be done? Maybe it could be fixed all the way,and maybe not.... in order to be fully accepted as Full Realism, no Comprimise. But either way,we need MORE checkboxs for more levels of realism ONLINE. That will satisify ALL with all the Wildly different beliefs of Realism and Skill Levels. That is truely the Most Simple Short term Remedy. Rattler IP: Logged

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