posted 01-21- 12:55 PM               

I usually play SDOE without hud and what really bothers me is that the planes are invisible at distances above around 2000ft.

And I mean completely invisible. I just did some testing and at full zoom out, there was not a single pixel visible of my wingman when flying in formation. According to the rangefinder in the target box, our distance was 1900ft, about 600m. We were both flying 190 A-3's.

Unfortunately all this makes flying without padlock impossible. Using padlock is the only way to "see" the planes. Another thing that bothers in this is the inability to zoom while padlocked other than when facing forward. This is not good in FFA team games online, when you can only "IFF" with the zoom when flying towards the targeted plane.

I believe the visibility problem is because of the way the LODs, level of detail models, are designed. Would it be possible to give the low detail LODs thicker wings, for example? This would enable the players to see them from greater distances. Or is it too much of a job?

Any ideas or comments?

Camo

PS: I run SDOE with Voodoo 3 3000 in glide at 1280x1024 (beta build 65) or at 1024x768 ("regular" SDOE) on a 17" monitor.

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Camouflage
XO, Lentolaivue 34
www.muodos.fi/LLv34

posted 01-21- 02:03 PM               

But maybe some newer planes have issues, I don't know. I too want better visability at far distances. I think this helps make up for some of the poor SA provided by our computer limitations. It is VERY easy to do this, some ideas are:

1. Add a low level LOD that is a big box, just about the size of the aircraft

2. Add just a flat poly at an angle, this way the aircraft will appear to move in and out of visablity as it manuevers

3. Add a low detail rotating flat poly LOD! Rotate it on two axis at differnt rates. Now this will make the far away play look as though it is shiuning in the sun every now and then. Sounds interesting...

posted 01-21- 04:09 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Sv:
2. Add just a flat poly at an angle, this way the aircraft will appear to move in and out of visablity as it manuevers

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How about two or three polys... one of which is much bigger and bright yellow. That way you get a "sun flash" effect, the lack of which always pisses me off in games.

quote:

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3. Add a low detail rotating flat poly LOD! Rotate it on two axis at differnt rates. Now this will make the far away play look as though it is shiuning in the sun every now and then. Sounds interesting...

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This is roughly the same, but based on time rather than angle?

Maury

posted 01-22- 01:14 AM               

TS

posted 01-22- 08:15 AM               

I think this is a huge problem

Specially if you want to fly without hud, Which I do.

Right now some of the planes are actually smaller at the lowest lod, the wings and fuse are thiner.

I think a cross spinning poly is a good solution.

Question is will the community on a whole accept it and if they will, will anyone do it?

posted 01-22- 09:48 AM               

If we made the poly a single far switchin lod, lowest level for the parent object, then their would be something to see. Thats all we need. If you wanted to be a little more fancy, you could use 3 polys, one fuse outline, for side on, one wing outline and one hstab outline for overhead.

Make the lod in 3 sizes:

single engined

twin engined

4 engined

DOn't texture them, just give them flat colour, and you could add the lod in to any plane easily.

The stock planes should be okay, but since the 190 was mentioned, I guess they must suffer too.

hmmmmmmm

posted 01-22- 01:56 PM            

I believe you are describing the lowest detail LOD of the B17 fairly accurately. I looked at the LODS for this several months ago, I believe it's lowest switchin distance is 5000 feet (maybe further I think I adjusted a version to that distance - It might be 7500). The lowest detail LOD on the B17 is 3 double sided polys (as I remember) one - horizontal,front profile, two - horizontal side profile, 3- vertical profile. This actually provides a fairly good and efficient representation of the plane when viewing at distance (fewer than a box, although the box would be 6 single sided - not sure which would be more efficient).

Perhaps one of the challenges in newer planes is the construction of long-distance lods. In the B17 example as the detail lods give way to lower detail lods the number of child objects showing, drops until eventually the main fuselage is all that has active lods. I can think of a few examples where as you extend range, the lod for flaps drops off but the wing lod doesn't expand accordingly. I wonder if part of the problem is that some of the planes don't show a full profile at long distances.

Not the point though - although you can begin to see the B17 at 2 miles, I believe however that it is too small.

Perhaps it's a hard code perspective issue more than a lod issue. Maybe we can adjust scaling by each individual plane's LOD but man what a job. A hard code fix is probably a better way to go - for example, increasing the zoom-in capability on a padlock. Of course then you still must make use of the padlock. By the way I see padlock more as a way to "focus" on a particular object in the sky, not as a cheat. And as I'm sure this may fall into the classic padlock debate - I'll just add that while you can't see a plane that is out of view and padlock keeps tracking, it's important to remember, that if an object leaves your field of view, you still know where it is approximately, and reacquiring the same object wouldn't require turning your plane until the object is in your sights again.

As an experiment, find a place with a long range view. I find I am quite able to resolve objects clearly up to several miles (depending on the visibility). Usually my eye's ability to resolve is limited less to the size of an object than to whether fog or mist gets in the way. I don't spend a lot of time flying, but when I have I've always been amazed how far away you can see other planes. My most extreme example, is the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, on most days I can clearly see the full profile of the tower, it doesn't become a blob, in fact if the haze is minimal you can begin to see a surprising amount of detail from where I live (about 40 km away). Before everyone says yeah but that's a building, please remember that the tip of the CN tower is about 4 ft across, and I would suggest that the upper observation deck is smaller than a B17 wing's span in diagonal.

Anyway back to my experiment, if you pick a spot on the horizon say approximately 2 miles away, you should be able to easily pick up and focus on cars and trucks, even identifying the make and model. Now put your thumb at arms distance between you and the vehicle. Guess what it's probably smaller than the tip of your thumb, yet you can see it clearly. The difference between SDOE's distance is obviously resolution, size, and the fact that you're looking at a screen and not reallife (I keep wanting to try an LCD projector on my wall to see how much better viewing distance is). If you look directly through the gunsight in an SDOE plane at an object, to get to that thumb size resolution you need to zoom in fully (usually then you end up with control problems).

So after all this what is my point? Well maybe if SDOE modeled perspective with a greater infinite distance(and perhaps unrealistic - I don't know) we would be better able to see aircraft at long distances.

Sorry for the rant.

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Spin

posted 01-22- 02:07 PM               

We could easily add a fourth, if it were just one LOD for the fuse. The same plane outline could be used for all similar sized planes, so new builders can just paste it in.