[Sandwich]

Thanks to the derailment in the Fenris Internal Dev Thread, venom gets what he wanted - a discussion in the SCP about FS engine scale and stuff. Enjoy!

(Who knows, perhaps this time, the SCP coders will listen! )

[Nico]

Originally posted by Goober5000

When?  Bump it or start another thread.

some time ago, anyway, voila: new thread and all has been said here already

The point btw, for me, is not to make things look more realistic ( realsim, in FS2? where? ), but to have them look cool: I hate fighting 1/72 scale toys of shivan ships, if you know what I mean

[Goober5000]

Indeed.  Now we just have to figure out how to do that - I don't think it should be that hard, but we'll see...

[karajorma]

Originally posted by venom2506
Karajorma: no. of course not ( I mean the FOV thing, I know the ship are huge ig you compare to real life ). SImple exemple: run in the ass of an ursa ( no stupid pun thank you ). It's so huge, you should see a very small part of it. but know, you see almost all the damn thing. So the fov IS wrong. Plus according to what you say, the pb should be the other way around btw, people would look at them as too big, not too small.
Stryke9, I dunno ( of course ) how it works in FS2 , but in max, in the viewport, I can make a ship look gigantic and have at the same time a clear vision of everyting in the 90° in front of me .

I didn`t say that FOV wasn`t a problem. It certainly is. It isn`t helped by people getting the scale all wrong by expecting ships to be smaller though.
 If you look at an ursa and think it's about the size of a modern day jet fighter the Cruiser it's parked next to will seem really small.

Originally posted by Sandwich
Pardon me, but around here, double-decker buses aren't any longer than normal ones.

Maybe but some countries have single decker bendy buses which are twice the length of a normal double decker. The ursa isn`t 5 times bigger than one of those things

[Anaz]

add either another table, or a flag in one of the tables for FOV. From what I understand about DX, that should't be that hard to set...

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by karajorma
I didn`t say that FOV wasn`t a problem. It certainly is. It isn`t helped by people getting the scale all wrong by expecting ships to be smaller though.
 If you look at an ursa and think it's about the size of a modern day jet fighter the Cruiser it's parked next to will seem really small.

It's not just that - in XWA you can see an ISD jump in, with no reference of scale to compare it to in the viewport, and it looks far larger than a FS Orion in a similar situation.

Originally posted by karajorma
Maybe but some countries have single decker bendy buses which are twice the length of a normal double decker. The ursa isn`t 5 times bigger than one of those things

Bendy Buses? Heh - I call 'em accordion buses; we have them here..

[karajorma]

Like I said the FOV is a big problem but getting the scale wrong due to lack of a reference point doesn`t help much either.

A good example of how your mind plays tricks on you are the mission with the Aquitaine in the nebula. When you try flying around it in that mission you realise how big it actually is. With your FOV blocked and no ships to reference it against easily the Aquitaine suddenly grows to its real size

[KARMA]

humans have a natural view angle of little more than 180° (if you open your arms you should be able to see -hardly- the hands) but with a low quality view outside of a central area (no sense to discuss here about color and night vision)
This probably create some probs in game developing: represent in a monitor only the front area of visual range, where people have a more detailed view, or represent a wider area?
My opinion is that on a monitor (smaller than our natural visual range) and w/o a "true" cockpit we assume that alll that we see is in front of us, when it isn't: fs2 represet even side views at the same time, and this generate the "small effect" if we compare to other games
Personally i'd like more a smaller FOV but some tests should be necessary to verify how the game will be
Maybe to have the possibility to select the FOV with a commandline (example: fs2open.exe /2x to have a FOV of 1/2 than normal) or in game options could be a solution to satisfy everyone
Another thing that may be tested as a solution is a cockpit simulation, to make clear that the periferical (sorry for spelling) areas of our monitor are our side views

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by KARMA
Another thing that may be tested as a solution is a cockpit simulation, to make clear that the periferical (sorry for spelling) areas of our monitor are our side views

That's why you have the debris particles flowing past you... the angle at which they fly past you on the sides of the screen indicates the angle of FOV we have, since we subconciously know that the debris will always be stationary, it gives us reference points.

[HotSnoJ]

http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/bea...izecompair.html

Last time I checked 15 ft./5 m is not enough for a 2 story building. The best I figure to tell how high a building is by going 10 ft/3.3 m for every story.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Originally posted by KARMA
humans have a natural view angle of little more than 180°  

Umm...wow...Last I checked light can't enter your eyes from BEHIND your head (which it would if you could see more then 180 degrees around your head. Additionally, despite being round your pupils do not go to 180 degrees while still bouncing light onto your retina. The true FOV for a person is more like 175 or so.

[Goober5000]

No...humans have a peripheral view of around 200 degrees, I think.

[Anaz]

just for the hell of it, could someone set the FOV to sommat like 7 degrees and take a screeny?

[Nico]

If that was already possible, this thread wouldn't exist.

[Goober5000]

Another possibility is that no-one has gotten around to it yet.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Another possibility is that no-one has gotten around to it yet.

I think this is more likely - there's no such thing as "not possible" in this matter. We needs it, we wants it, WE MUSSST HAVE OUR PRECIOUSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nico]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Another possibility is that no-one has gotten around to it yet.

which is the exact same

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by venom2506


which is the exact same

Exact same as what?

[DTP]

Originally posted by Goober5000
No...humans have a peripheral view of around 200 degrees, I think.

Err. Try 90 for sharp, and 120-130 degrees for blurred regions, if we say we cant move our heads.
Even if you could see things to your side you still only have 180 degrees of sight. Above this
Would be looking “backward”.

All this talk of FOV & scale is nonsense. If we made the ships look bigger using FOV, then think what would happen when you chase the fighters, they would not be in your sight for long, unless they where flying in a semi-straight line, something even the AI does not.

You would simply not have the human reaction time needed in order to react to a fighter’s movement.

Want proof.

Ok, take Quake2 or Quake3,
Find a server and join, for Quake2, FOV 90 is default for Quake2, and I think it is the same for Quake3.

In console, type FOV 50 for Q2 and (I think) cg_fov 50 for quake3

Wow things suddenly got bigger, but notice, that you will find it hard to keep track of others strafing past you.

Also, the speed of which you move forward and backward seems to be very slow. That’s because the objects near to you (walls, players) are out of sight, while the things in sight are actually quite far away, and as we all know when looking at things that are coming against you, but are still far away. It seems to be moving very slow. Then when it is 100 meters away it seems to be picking up speed, and finally screams past you.

A lower field of view will also make it harder to navigate, since you simply wouldn’t be able judge the location of your shoulder, against an object that has left the 50-degree view zone.

So if you want bigger ships, Scale is the only real option. But then 1:1 scale (non scaled) Textures will seem pixilated, because while the ships take up more space on your screen, your screen didn’t
Get bigger in Size or resolution.
 
I think Volition did a lot of testing of this, before they settled on this FOV and Scale.

I see no reason to embark on a quest. That has a very doubtful outcome.

[Goober5000]

Okay, I was not very specific.  Humans can sense motion slightly past 180 degrees (I think as much as 200), but can't actually discern details or color outside of 90.