General FreeSpace > FreeSpace Discussion

FOV Autoaim and Convergence - How Precisely Do These Work?

(1/2) > >>

StargateSpankyHam:
I am skeptical about using FOV Autoaim. How precisely does this work? If the FOV autoaim is set to something like 0.5 degrees, then it is quite possible in a dogfight for the lead indicator of the target to be in the autoaim FOV and the target itself to be well outside. It seems only rational that the lead indicator of the target would be the point at which the FOV autoaim fires, but there seems to be very little in the way of a technical explanation of how it works. :wtf:

Convergence is even stranger. Does a ship with +Converging Autoaim also require $Convergence in the ships.tbl file? Does it require the "Gun Convergence" flag in order for gun convergence to work? If Autoaim FOV and convergence are used in unison, will the shots still converge at the distance of the target's lead indicator even if the player misses?

In designing my campaign/mod, there will be a few occasions where the player must use long-range primary weapons to snipe enemy turrets from kilometers away - and it would be nice if this did not require the player to have a high-end gaming mouse. Giving the destroy subsystem command to similarly equipped allied AI units might work, but again, the player should be able to participate in this directly, no matter what control configuration they use.

I really just want gun convergence so heavy assault fighters with widely spaced fire points aren't useless in a mid to long range dogfight.

headdie:
auto aim will aim for you if the target is with the specified number of degrees of view from the cross-hair.  the Excalibur from wingcommander saga's darkest dawn is an extreme example of this, but by using small numbers a subtle effect can be managed. For your mod I would recommend this with a small degree of assistance 1-5 degrees

conversion means that weapons fire instead of travelling directly forward from the fire point, will start from the fire point but meet at the centre of the screen at the specified distance.  auto convergence will force all shots to converge at the range of the target but will not aim for you.  Conversion is most useful on ships with fire points positioned a good distance from the model centre, eg the Star Wars X-Wing.

You do not need both for either feature to work and indeed there has been some funny results reported when you do use both together.

Droid803:

--- Quote from: headdie on April 16, 2012, 05:43:46 pm ---indeed there has been some funny results reported when you do use both together.

--- End quote ---

Which should be resolved. having the "gun convergence" flag used to completely disable autoconverge/autoaim/tabled convergence.
Now it shouldn't, and should just use firepoint normals as the "default" when no other system is active.

headdie:
cool, i couldn't remember if the fix had made it into the RCs

StargateSpankyHam:
Got it working - it functions flawlessly. An FOV autoaim of 2 helps when hitting things at 1000+ meters, which is largely the range where retail primary dogfighting becomes impractical. Convergence looks like it's working, since short-range dogfighting in fighters with widely spaced firepoints now seems much less troublesome.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page