[Nuke]

im kinda fond of the elite style radar. gives you good at a glance ranging and linear situational awareness. but at the expense of radial awareness.

most radars only indicate the angular offset to targets and dont really give you an idea of the target's relative position to you. not to say other types of radars dont have their charm. a dual hemisphere radar gives you at a glance confirmation that noone is on your six. a fisheye radar simplifies the concept but is harder to read whats in front or behind, good markings are essential to help determine front from back. it does have the advantage of helping you determine the optimal turning angle. angs' radar seems to be a hybrid of fisheye and hemispherical. instead of two 180 degree or one 360 degree projection, it seems like a 270 and a 90 for the rear, and so has all the benefits of both.

[z64555]

angs' radar seems to be a hybrid of fisheye and hemispherical. instead of two 180 degree or one 360 degree projection, it seems like a 270 and a 90 for the rear, and so has all the benefits of both.

I personally think its much better than XWA's style or TTF's style alone. A rough ranging could be added to radial radars by progessively dimming the brightness of the blips the further away the object is... which I might add to my list of "to-do's."

[JGZinv]

What about putting the rear inside of the main radar, like a cutout... circle within a circle?

[jr2]

How about an animated, rotating radar, with the player depicted in the center and some sort of fixed lines so that the sense of orientation is not lost?  Like orb radar, but spinning between maybe 3 different axis, so that nothing escapes your view.  However, not a good idea for a quick glance to give you the position of everything out there.  Maybe make it toggleable with a key?  Or fixed like an orb radar, but occasionally shifting to cover blind spots?

Maybe I'm just crazy.    Thoughts?

[The E]

Wait till you see the DRADIS style radar.

[z64555]

What about putting the rear inside of the main radar, like a cutout... circle within a circle?

Overlap comes to mind, plus you'll be guaranteeing a bind spot.

How about an animated, rotating radar, with the player depicted in the center and some sort of fixed lines so that the sense of orientation is not lost?  Like orb radar, but spinning between maybe 3 different axis, so that nothing escapes your view.  However, not a good idea for a quick glance to give you the position of everything out there.  Maybe make it toggleable with a key?  Or fixed like an orb radar, but occasionally shifting to cover blind spots?

Maybe I'm just crazy.    Thoughts?

Um... what? Can you say it with pictures, please?

[JGZinv]

Overlap comes to mind, plus you'll be guaranteeing a bind spot.

Only directly behind you, you're thinking of keeping the displayed graphic the same, and replacing the center of the radar - creating a deadzone... that's not what I mean.

You readjust the display zone so what was "in the center" is now just outside the rim of the interior circle's rim.  Then you tweak what remains of the original radar area and
adjust it to use the new outer ring's space. How can I say it...  like taking a flat 2D picture and making it fisheye through a lens.  The content is still there, just redistributed.

Frankly if you're including the rear radar circle, then your rear deadzone will be eliminated. The blind spot directly ahead of you doesn't matter because you can see that area for
most any purpose you'd use the radar for.

[Angs]

Frankly if you're including the rear radar circle, then your rear deadzone will be eliminated. The blind spot directly ahead of you doesn't matter because you can see that area for
most any purpose you'd use the radar for.

This gave me a wild idea: You could just have a 270 degree rear view radar, because everything else is in view (though I'm note sure if vertical FOV covers the remaining 90 degrees.) Then perhaps every ship in view could be circled, akin to this:



Another possibility for the 90 degree forward sector could be a distance radar with loss of one dimension of angular information (is DRADIS something like this?)

[Nuke]

i also have a conic radar, which isnt really useful per se but i use it as part of a multi-targeting system. but im really thinking of not making the feature radar dependant so that i can lock reguardless of radar mode.

[jr2]

How about an animated, rotating radar, with the player depicted in the center and some sort of fixed lines so that the sense of orientation is not lost?  Like orb radar, but spinning between maybe 3 different axis, so that nothing escapes your view.  However, not a good idea for a quick glance to give you the position of everything out there.  Maybe make it toggleable with a key?  Or fixed like an orb radar, but occasionally shifting to cover blind spots?

Maybe I'm just crazy.    Thoughts?

Um... what? Can you say it with pictures, please?

Well, it would be hard for me to show you an animated object with a picture.  Image the orb radar.  Now imagine that it is an actual physical ball.  Pretend you can take the ball, with the information displayed in it still active, and rotate it so that you can see it from different angles.  Now, if you want to cover all the bases, you can gently rock the ball back and forth, so that you can see, for example, if a fighter is dead ahead and would normally be masked by the player ship representation in the orb radar.  You can rotate the ball towards you (so the top is coming towards you and the bottom is going away from you) so that you can see 'over' yourself and see what's in front of you.  Then rotate back.  If you keep doing this, nothing can remain hidden.  Almost like purposefully pitching your fighter up and down to accomplish the same thing, except you don't have to move your ship, as your radar display is shifting.

Now do you see?

[Nuke]

i thought about a holographic radar, kind of a third person view. you not only can see where all the ships are in relation to you but also their orientation and perhaps velocity as well. i had intended to use this for a newtonian flight model with a logarithmic scale and your velocity would be the primary frame of reference, the idea would have been to project your trajectory and your targets trajectory so that you could better engage your target, approach planets and do orbital maneuvers. using such a radar for non-newtonian flight would be a lot simpler, and it could be linear because the distances are shorter and just use the ship as a frame of reference.  of course it might be information overload and thus be somewhat useless.

[z64555]

Overlap comes to mind, plus you'll be guaranteeing a bind spot.

You readjust the display zone so what was "in the center" is now just outside the rim of the interior circle's rim.  Then you tweak what remains of the original radar area and
adjust it to use the new outer ring's space. How can I say it...  like taking a flat 2D picture and making it fisheye through a lens.  The content is still there, just redistributed.

Ok, I see what you mean... your shifting the focus of the radar to be directly behind you instead of ahead of you.

Frankly if you're including the rear radar circle, then your rear deadzone will be eliminated. The blind spot directly ahead of you doesn't matter because you can see that area for most any purpose you'd use the radar for.

Not for the purpose of flying in nebulae, where you can't see more than 50m ahead of you. You can do as Angs suggested and highlight radar targets on the screen, but I really think some experimentation of the different ideas is needed.

Image the orb radar.

Now imagine that it is an actual physical ball.

Pretend you can take the ball, with the information displayed in it still active, and rotate it so that you can see it from different angles.

Now, if you want to cover all the bases, you can gently rock the ball back and forth, so that you can see, for example, if a fighter is dead ahead and would normally be masked by the player ship representation in the orb radar.

You can rotate the ball towards you (so the top is coming towards you and the bottom is going away from you) so that you can see 'over' yourself and see what's in front of you.  Then rotate back.



If you keep doing this, nothing can remain hidden.  Almost like purposefully pitching your fighter up and down to accomplish the same thing, except you don't have to move your ship, as your radar display is shifting.

Ok, I see what you mean there. That may be a bit more difficult than simply animating a texture, because you'll be wanting the relative xyz positions the same as you rotate the orb about, yes? You'd be wanting to make a particle (a 2D plane that always faces the player camera) for each of the radar objects and the radar orb will be a standard 3D orb.

Once the 3D orb is rendered correctly, the next step would be to make an interface to manipulate the orb... Sounds like a good project!

i thought about a holographic radar, kind of a third person view. you not only can see where all the ships are in relation to you but also their orientation and perhaps velocity as well. i had intended to use this for a newtonian flight model with a logarithmic scale and your velocity would be the primary frame of reference, the idea would have been to project your trajectory and your targets trajectory so that you could better engage your target, approach planets and do orbital maneuvers. using such a radar for non-newtonian flight would be a lot simpler, and it could be linear because the distances are shorter and just use the ship as a frame of reference.  of course it might be information overload and thus be somewhat useless.

I think that style of radar would be good for capships or stations, when the commanders need to know what's all going on. But for a fighter in the thick of it all, I think the only thing they need to know is distance and angular position. Relative velocities can be estimated by the pilot and are not that important (at least from my experiance).

[Nuke]

i thought about a holographic radar, kind of a third person view. you not only can see where all the ships are in relation to you but also their orientation and perhaps velocity as well. i had intended to use this for a newtonian flight model with a logarithmic scale and your velocity would be the primary frame of reference, the idea would have been to project your trajectory and your targets trajectory so that you could better engage your target, approach planets and do orbital maneuvers. using such a radar for non-newtonian flight would be a lot simpler, and it could be linear because the distances are shorter and just use the ship as a frame of reference.  of course it might be information overload and thus be somewhat useless.

I think that style of radar would be good for capships or stations, when the commanders need to know what's all going on. But for a fighter in the thick of it all, I think the only thing they need to know is distance and angular position. Relative velocities can be estimated by the pilot and are not that important (at least from my experiance).

i considered that. in such a case it would not be so much a radar as a bit of eyecandy in the bridge model. i imagine something of a glass cube, inside of which would be floating 3d rendered icons representing the ships in the vicinity. commanders would be able to designate targets for gunners and fighter wings with some kind of point and click interface. i also envisioned an fps mode where you could walk around and interact with other bridge stations, like gunner and pilot stations, and other less interesting stuff like damage control and engineering. such a system would involve a lot of render to texture to look right. i crated a doom-ish system of 2.5d floorplans that would map to a pof cockpit model (except for an entire bridge and perhaps other areas in the ship, like fighterbays), and define where you could go. but render to texture was unstable and i still didnt have a bridge model so i never really got to hammer this idea into reality.