Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Zeronet on January 14, 2003, 12:34:41 pm
-
FS was designed to make the Capital ships look massive.
-
Originally posted by Zeronet
FS was designed to make the Capital ships look massive.
Erm.... what do you mean by that? A 1.6 km Star Destroyer in X-Wing Allliance looks much more massive than a 2 km Orion in FS1/2.
-
Originally posted by Sandwich
Erm.... what do you mean by that? A 1.6 km Star Destroyer in X-Wing Allliance looks much more massive than a 2 km Orion in FS1/2.
the same was true for the very fast Xwing actually, w/o maps or anything :doubt:
let's unite to convince the SCP people working on the FOV :D I'm sure it can't be that difficult to change.
-
A 5km ship in IWAR seems tiny though compared to a Orion.
-
Originally posted by Zeronet
A 5km ship in IWAR seems tiny though compared to a Orion.
That's probably because you zip past them at a few clicks per second...
-
Originally posted by Styxx
That's probably because you zip past them at a few clicks per second...
no, that's true, Iwar2 FOV is messed up as well, even if you stay still in front of a suposedly huge station, it reall looks small. Damn, have you seen the Tug size? fly past one of those: seems as big as a FS2 fighter. that's quite not right.
-
I-War has an even bigger FOV.
It's mostly a functional thing, a tradeoff between wase of playing and looks. After all, in real life a 2km capship would take up much more of your view at any given look, but in real life you can turn your head to see that wing of Maras locking on with Harpoons. Monitors, you can't do that, so they have to make the FOV wider- if it was anything like normal, you effectively wouldn't be able to see anything but what was right in front of you.
The I-War people decided they wanted to give you a bigger eyeful at a time, so the FOV's close to 45*. Volition wanted to make its capships look more impressive, but still wanted you to be able to tell what was going on to the sides a bit(the radar screen helped, but not a lot), and brought it down to- I'm guessing- near 20-25*.
So, it's really more complicated than just reducing the FOV. You've got to improve the radar display or add a rear-view camera or something to compensate.
-
but why ad a rear view cam, if you ca just buy a joystick with a POV hat?
-
'Cause I'm not the only one here not gonna pay about $100 for some game equipment I'll hardly ever use.
You could make it keybound, too, I suppose, and have an independently moving head (or mouse freelook), but to do that you'd basically have to do the game from scratch. It's not built in, and not only is the render camera pretty integrally built (it being what the entire rest of the game hinges on), you'd have to change the physics, the way .pof files are made (different sort of camera, you might not even be able to use models with the old kind of view-camera info, meaning no models made before the source release), and probably a couple other things.
You COULD set your fighter to temporarily have some huge time-lag in turning, but it wouldn't really be a solution.
-
i know it is't the sulution, but i'm not sure whter this needs fixing anyway, just a fiew views of pilots getting into they're fighters in the intro or in a cutscene should be enough.
-
It's not just the FOV that is throwing you off though. It's that the other ships in FS2 are so big.
The bombers especially are huge but since we equate them with modern day fighters we don`t realise that they are so big. Hell even the bombs are big (A helios is as long as an F16 and only a couple of meters shorter in height).
When you remember than an Ursa is longer than 5 Double Decker buses in length it becomes easy to see why people think that the ships in FS2 are small.
-
yeah,someone should reallymake a few good size comparison things, so that you know how big these damn things are.
-
Originally posted by StrykeIX
You could make it keybound, too, I suppose, and have an independently moving head (or mouse freelook), but to do that you'd basically have to do the game from scratch. It's not built in, and not only is the render camera pretty integrally built (it being what the entire rest of the game hinges on)...
there's already that, some key on the numeric pad ;)
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 :).
-
Originally posted by kasperl
someone should reallymake a few good size comparison things, so that you know how big these damn things are.
http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/beatspete/sizecompair.html
:nod:
...yes the ships look crap, but niether were textured, and Rhino is teh suck at texturing anyway.
Heh... Reminds me of parking my ship next to one of the houses in Frontier Ellite... those were the days :sigh:
-
that's not quite right, if the house is ten mùeters long and the fighter 40, yur fighter is way too big compared to it ( should be 4 times longer, not 6 or 7 ;) )
-
Originally posted by StrykeIX
The I-War people decided they wanted to give you a bigger eyeful at a time, so the FOV's close to 45*. Volition wanted to make its capships look more impressive, but still wanted you to be able to tell what was going on to the sides a bit(the radar screen helped, but not a lot), and brought it down to- I'm guessing- near 20-25*.
So tell me, how in the world did people see anything in the Star Wars games? The ships seem sufficiently to-scale - ISDs actually look like 1.6 kilometer behemoths.
Originally posted by karajorma
When you remember than an Ursa is longer than 5 Double Decker buses in length it becomes easy to see why people think that the ships in FS2 are small.
Pardon me, but around here, double-decker buses aren't any longer than normal ones. :p
-
Originally posted by kasperl
are you reffering to the entire class or just the GTC lonewolf?
:lol:
Originally posted by venom2506
***I have asked for that already, but to no end. It was the request number two on my list, as number one ( glow maps ) has just been fulfilled, well, there's hope maybe :)
When? Bump it or start another thread. :nod:
-
That cockpit is the size of the average living room. Maybe, in the future, the trend's gone on and Americans are so fat that they have bred into a race of giants?
Yeah, it'd not easily comparable, but that isn't really a problem in itself. Fighters and bombers SHOULD still be a good bit bigger than, say, a jet plane. There's a lot more equipment to fit in them. (engines, massive amounts of life support including oxy and water tanks, G-absorbers, weapons (rockets are kinda space-hogs, ya know? In fact, most game loadouts wouldn't actually even fit in the models in FS), fusion reactors, and enough heatsinks to absorb a level of heat at least as great as that of the sun. And armor.)
It takes away a reference, but that's more or less okay- if you want the game to look more "real", which would be part of hte point here, you'll just have to live with it. Make a human or EVA model, if you like. The FOV, however, can be fixed without changing part of the game's atmosphere itself.
But I agree. Some cutscenes giving a sense of scale would be good. If anyone'd ever send me their Poser models or something, *cough* there might just be one.
-
Nope, they are to scale, i just checked and its 42m - it just looked big because of the perspective.
-
If that house is 10x5, that cockpit is roughly 3m long and at least 1m tall. A meter's about three feet, last I checked. If that's to scale, then the scale's wrong. That bomber should be half the size. It's NOT perspective, the bomber and the house are side-by-side, nearly identical distances in the image.
-
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! :D
(Who knows, perhaps this time, the SCP coders will listen! :p)
-
Originally posted by Goober5000
When? Bump it or start another thread. :nod:
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 :)
-
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...
-
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. :p
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 :p
-
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...
-
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 :p
Bendy Buses? Heh - I call 'em accordion buses; we have them here.. :p
-
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 :)
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
No...humans have a peripheral view of around 200 degrees, I think.
-
just for the hell of it, could someone set the FOV to sommat like 7 degrees and take a screeny?
-
If that was already possible, this thread wouldn't exist.
-
Another possibility is that no-one has gotten around to it yet.
-
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!!!!!!!!!!! :nervous:
-
Originally posted by Goober5000
Another possibility is that no-one has gotten around to it yet.
which is the exact same ;)
-
Originally posted by venom2506
which is the exact same ;)
Exact same as what? :wtf:
-
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.
-
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.
-
Originally posted by DTP
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.
No, no, and no. First off, space combat is quite possible at a different FOV - just look at the whole Star Wars series of space sims - capships in there had the right sense of scale.
Second, did you see the first LOTR movie, Fellowship of the Ring? Remember when Frodo senses the Nazgul coming along the path he and the other 3 hobbits rolled down to? Remember how the camera angle did that weird effect of zooimg in on Frodo while everything else seemed to get further and further away? That's the kind of change we're talking about here - I don't know enough about cinematography to know if that's the same as FOV.
-
Me neither, but I do know that the effect DTP described is the proper effect for scale. When you're extremely far away, things don't move at all, and as you get closer, they speed up. It's called parallax. :nod:
-
Hmm. Well, the only reference to player FOV that I can find in the campaign is float Viewer_zoom defined in freespace.cpp and set to 0.75. I'm not sure how that translates into the angle.
-
Ugh - well, that's not going to work. I bumped Viewer_zoom down in stages, and although the ships started looking more imposing, they didn't really start looking "bigger". I had to go all the way down to 0.3 before the capships started looking substantially bigger - but even then, they didn't seem that big. Not to mention that the small FOV made me terribly motion sick.
So FOV doesn't look like it's going to work. What about scale?
-
scale seems to be right, although I maintain that most fighters and bombers are rediculously enormous, the capital ships would be rediculously enormous where they any bigger and too un-imposing any smaller. Halfing the dimensions of fighters and bombers would help a lot in my opinion, but i still think the problem itself lies in fov and perspective.
-
:nervous: when loading the model...multipy all of the vertex positions by two....
:nervous:
whaaaat? It could work...
-
:lol:...
No it couldn't. :) Then you'd have too-big ships occupying the same area - things would get crowded.
No, I think the only way to do this would be to change the unit of measurement used in the engine. This would increase the scale of distances, models, and everything. But I don't know how to do that.
-
and all the offsets and all the thrusters and all the polygon centers and all the glow points and subsystems and paths and gun points and every thing that has a radius and every weapon and table value that has mention of anything to do with any of the four dimentions of space/time, and all the physics code and and model colision code and two hundred and fifty thousand other lines of code to make sure that everything knows that everything is to be scailed, and other things I couldn't remember.
scaleing is not as simple a solution as it sounds there is a _LOT_ of code that just assumes the values it's given is the value that it's suposed to be,
now, why don't we set the fov to be substantialy smaller than it is but when ever someone moves the stick the view rotates as to look in that direction giveing the illusion of you moveing you're head/eyes, this was one of the few things I thought was realy a good idea in Iwar, now there will be some problems in keeping the HUD aligned properly but I think these problems would be far simpler than trying to get _EVERYTHING_ scaled
-
in Max, I'd simply scale the camera down, but I guess in FS2 that's a no go :p