Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Topic started by: djsf35 on March 22, 2012, 05:10:33 pm
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Here is a project that all of you in the diaspora team should love. sites.google.com/site/mf2012theviper/home (http://sites.google.com/site/mf2012theviper/home) These kids are building a fully functional simulator based around the MVII viper.
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i'm working in a BSG viper home cockpit too since 2 years, it's a very long work, but the result is very good ... my cockpit doesn't move, but is a replica of the mk VII more close to the TV Show than that
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Mine is in my car but my girlfriend made me remove the full auto paintball guns... she said we can't afford the arrest for using them =P
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Diaspora, once released, would make a much better engine than FlightGear. Although our engine may not yet expose the right info for the actuator motor Python bindings.
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One other big problem with them using Diaspora is that we have cockpits already. They'd need to redo all the cockpits or else they'd have the actual physical simulator controls duplicated again on screen.
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Speaking of which, how are cockpits done in FSO, properly that is (I assume Diaspora will set that standard, if not already)? If a table file must call the cockpit, would it be possible for a command to render or not render the cockpit model, thus reverting to the default FS display, or a user-defined display? In essence, toggle the cockpit model on and off... there have actually been requests for that feature as well. Diaspora is not the only project with 3D cockpits coming in, so this is definately something to consider...
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Cockpits are a tabled-based feature defined on a per-ship basis. If you want to toggle them on/off, it's as simple as editing the tables manually, or dropping on your mod folder a properly edited table. That will probably be the first thing I do when Diaspora is released, because rule of cool is cool and all, but I simply can't play when half my screen is hidden by stuff really :p
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Have fun playing without DRADIS. :p
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How is that related to disabling the cockpit ? I didn't say I was disabling the HUD.
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Buy trackir, leave the cockpit as it is and have x3 times fun and immersion.
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When can I expect the money you'll send me to buy it ?
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How is that related to disabling the cockpit ? I didn't say I was disabling the HUD.
The DRADIS is displayed on a screen in the cockpit so you won't see that screen if you disable the cockpit. Although you could just change the entry in Hud_gagues.tbl to display the DRADIS without the need for a cockpit.
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When can I expect the money you'll send me to buy it ?
Freetrack is completely free, buy a 3 IR led and follow instruction, with less 10$ you have trackir homemade as i did.
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The DRADIS is displayed on a screen in the cockpit so you won't see that screen if you disable the cockpit. Although you could just change the entry in Hud_gagues.tbl to display the DRADIS without the need for a cockpit.
Fair enough, I'll keep that in mind. Didn't know you could bind a HUD element to a model.
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Currently that is only possible table-wise for the DRADIS gauge but Swifty planned to add support for other gauges some time ago. The hud gauges code is already capable of displaying every hud gauge on a cockpit display anyway, although I'm not sure in that as I've only seen to code but I didn't test of it actually works that way :nervous:
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The DRADIS is basically a 2D radar, no ? I might have to get back to FS's 3D radar instead, I can't play with 2D radar...
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The DRADIS is basically a 2D radar, no ? I might have to get back to FS's 3D radar instead, I can't play with 2D radar...
No, it's actually a render to texture 3d radar. You can sort of see it working here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EHOhOYiOEA
Just bear in mind it's an old trailer, we've improved it a lot since, modifying various icons and their sizes so it's as readable as we can make it. It's one of the cooler features we've got, in my opinion. Really works well for immersion. We had some conversations back and forth about allowing toggling cockpits on and off, and basically it opens some cans of worms. In multiplayer, for instance, anyone who doesn't have a cockpit will actually have a greater (unobstructed) field of view, and therefore will have an advantage. And having cockpits on makes each craft feel different as well - they're pretty good for immersion, and work very well in both sp and mp. Anyone who absolutely hates having cockpits will probably have to mod it out on his own. But I think - and hope - that most people aren't going to want to. We've had some people skeptical about cockpits changing their minds after actually trying it, so anyone who's skeptical should probably reserve judgement until release.
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I'm looking forward to cockpits myself. I thought about it a bit, and while I'm used to the lack of cockpits in Freespace, I'm the kind of simmer who plays flight sims entirely in cockpit view... so yeah. I'm so sold.
Back to the OP: That's pretty impressive, considering how young they are. I never did anything *that* ambitious when I was in High School... and there's an 8th grader there!
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I don't want to toggle cockpits on/off, but I do like flight sims where you can toggle field of view between the HUD and the full cockpit.
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Yeah same here. I loved padlocking views to enemy aircraft in dog fighting too.
With this being space based the dog fighting tactics don't apply the same way though.
Doing a 180 in Newtonian style physics is easy. Its the change in direction and inertia that would be the limitation.
The views went a long way toward immersion though in flight sims like this.
Realism though is not being able to see below the nose or through the floor so it was as much about positioning the craft for your field of vision as it was for the firing solution in cockpit only views. That is part of the dynamics though in keeping a reasonable playing field especially in multiplayer style combat situations.
Not fighting guys in HUD only views while you are limited in cockpit only views. The firing solutions are much different.
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You can padlock views, we have a key command for that. It works great with cockpits on, but you may find it a bit confusing with just the HUD, because there's no cockpit to provide visual reference to where you're flying and where you're looking at in relation to that. This is where the disadvantage of having your view partly obstructed by the cockpit turns into an advantage. I find this plus the immersion value of the cockpit to far outweigh any other considerations. And using it with trackIR is even better :)
The problem with turning them off is multi. You get a craft that feels totally different without the cockpit, and you have a fully unobstructed view. I'm not sure if it's possible to keep them locked for multi but enable toggling them on or off for sp. But I urge everyone to try the full game once released before deciding you want to be able to turn it off :)
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You think such a minute detail will have any significant influence on multi ? Why not try to enforce screen resolution, FoV or HUD color, while you're at it ?
There's a point where you just can't consider that every change is balance-breaking.
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Having one player have a totally unobstructed field of view and another player have more than half of it obstructed by a cockpit? Yes, I'd say that will have an impact on multi. I would suggest toning down the sarcasm until such time you've had a chance to try it and can speak from experience. No backseat dev, please.
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You could say the same for someone playing with a 800x600 resolution compared to someone on a 1080p screen. Or someone on a 15i screen compared to someone on a 22i. Or someone running on a low-end hardware with 10fps compared to someone running at full 60fps. Or someone having a 500ms ping compared to the host. Or someone changing the FoV through command line to better suit his tastes. Or someone playing with low-lighting settings. The list can go on forever.
How do you draw the line between what you consider balance-breaking, what you can't realistically enforce to all your players, and what's merely relative to the player's taste ?
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Apples and oranges. We can't control which res or with what ping will a player play. We can control whether the cockpits will be on or off, though. I'm honestly not sure if we even have the final decision on this. I'm just saying what the general idea was before. Not sure if there's code support for a "toggle cockpit on or off" keypress, but if there's high enough demand for that, it might get coded in as an update at some point. Till then, if you absolutely hate the idea of playing with a cockpit, you can always grab ships.tbl, copy it over to a mod folder, and set the cockpits off from there. It's a hack but it's not like anything is hardcoded in.
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Apples and oranges. We can't control which res or with what ping will a player play. We can control whether the cockpits will be on or off, though. I'm honestly not sure if we even have the final decision on this. I'm just saying what the general idea was before. Not sure if there's code support for a "toggle cockpit on or off" keypress, but if there's high enough demand for that, it might get coded in as an update at some point. Till then, if you absolutely hate the idea of playing with a cockpit, you can always grab ships.tbl, copy it over to a mod folder, and set the cockpits off from there. It's a hack but it's not like anything is hardcoded in.
Or just use an external view. :) Harder to aim, but guaranteed lack of cockpit obstruction.