[lukeopai]

Hi there,

I was wondering if someone knows if the player’s ship orientation can be accessed from FSO by some means. 

Can someone let me know if this is currently accessible in FSO somehow?  If not then is there somewhere that I can put this down as an enhancement idea?

Thanks!

Luke

[chief1983]

If there is, it's probably in the Lua scripting, and if there's not, that's probably where it should go.

[AdmiralRalwood]

This information should be accessible with Lua scripting, through the ship's orientation matrix. In SEXPs, there's "get-object-pitch", "get-object-bank", and "get-object-heading".

[lukeopai]

Thanks for the info.  I can see that these functions are in SEXP (sexp.cpp) and appear to be what I am looking for. 

My next question is: are SEXP functions available through LUA scripting?  If so, can someone direct me to some documnetation on (or explain) how this might be acheived?

Thanks!

[lukeopai]

Nevermind, I can see that I can call runSEXP in LUA to run these functions.  Pretty powerful stuff, looking forward to getting this working.  Thanks for the help guys!

[The E]

There's an easier way, though, one that doesn't require a detour through the sexp code. Every ingame object (ship, weapon) has an "orientation" member variable, which in turn is a matrix object that has member variables called p, b and h.

Example:

Code: [Select]

for i = 1, #mn.Ships do
     local tempship = mn.Ships[i]
     local pitch = tempship.Orientation.p
     local bank = tempship.Orientation.b
     local heading = tempship.Orientation.h

--do stuff
end

[lukeopai]

Excellent suggestion.  Thanks!

[lukeopai]

Can someone suggest some LUA code (or hook) to run this on a regular basis during the game.   

I would only need updated these angles a couple of times a second maybe, not nessessarly every frame.

Thanks.

[The E]

Then you do need to run code every frame, and use mn.Missiontime to read the current timestamp.

[lukeopai]

Got it, thanks! 

One final thing.  Can LUA write to a socket? 

I would like to get this game data to another process that is listening on a specified port.

Cheers

[m!m]

You could try LuaSockets but I am not sure if FSO properly handles loading external DLLs.

[lukeopai]

Can anyone tell me what units that the orientation is in or how to interpret it?

I am using:
local pitch = plr.Orientation.p
local bank = plr.Orientation.b
local heading = plr.Orientation.h

It looks like it could be radians but then I get negative numbers also.

Thanks

[Phantom Hoover]

Having negative values in radians is perfectly normal and expected.

[The E]

The value range for those should be -180 to 180.

[AdmiralRalwood]

The value range for those should be -180 to 180.

Other code heavily implies that angles.p, .b, and .h should be in radians...

[Admiral MS]

The angles .p, .b and .h are, as far as I remember, in radians. Just be aware of the coordinate system is not exactly the same that is usually used in actual flight applications. Also don't rely too much on information about orientations in FRED or SEXPs (see http://scp.indiegames.us/mantis/view.php?id=2023).