[Nuke]

its messy but its working now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PM69ICOhsE

[Tolwyn]

very cool!

And we could put any gauge onto the cockpit model? Or disable gauges we do not want/need?

[Scooby_Doo]

Very Sweet!! 

btw were you moving the cockpit or was it from natural head bob inertial?

[Nuke]

the guages in the demo were static, however the yoke and throttle work(you cant see it though because of clipping issues). im still not sure how gauges are gonna work. once rtt gets fixed its not to hard to render any scripted gauge to a texture and use that for your panels. hopefully non scripters will be able to use the hud_table to do the same thing.

i was using my trackir to move the view in the cockpit through mouse emulation. i essentially used the same function that i used in my mouse script to provide the rotational data. i built a rotation matrix from the euler angles and multiplied the ships's orientation by that matrix (or was it the other way around, i dont remember), and set that matrix to a camera. i could have just used the mouse (handles just like an fps but you cant do a 360), the thumbstick on my throttle, or the track ir mouse emulation. so i chose the latter works quite well.

a big problem was aiming, as you can see my reticle was useless. i tried using my leading reticle, but i couldnt get it to draw on the cameras hud. it works but not with the camera code.

the only real means of any input for scripting is the mouse. its probibly possible to hijack control from Physics.ForwardThrust or Physics.RotationalVelocityDesired to get the actual joystick positions, but this doesnt let you have any more than 4 axes, and they double up for flight control. i can imagine anyone making land vehicles, mechs, ect would use that meathod. with further adjustments elsewhere control a turret with the joystick.

[TrashMan]

  You da man!

[Scooby_Doo]

Trying to remember how it was done in Falcon 4, when your in target eye lock mode.  I think the recticle was fixed in the correct position, and when you couldn't see the recticle, a little arrow pointed to where it was located.

[Nuke]

my reticle doesnt care what your view angle is, my problem was that i couldnt get it to draw.

[TomJeffersonJones]

Sorry if this post hurts somebody but this is just my opinion. Please take it only like that, an additional opinion.

Cockpit are beautiful, wonderful, pretty and ultra shiny. But they are fully useless.

When I'm dogfighting a Shivan horde I want to see everything, (and even more), and if I have a cockpit in the middle, it just blocks some of my view area.

I'm pretty sure that 95% of the gamers are going to turn them off after the initial "how-wonderful-my-Herc-controls-are" runs. At least this happened to me with X-Wing series. And when I firstly ran retail FS I remember wondering "Hey, these guys have been smart enough to forget about stupid block-my-view cockpits". A fully transparent HUD is just great.

I don't know how much effort all the cockpit coding will take, but I feel it is mainly a waste of time and resources, (and SCP coder community is short of them both). Please spend it in other areas  .

I feel cockpit improvement is just like if someone told about codding a fully 3D mainhall. Of course it's an addition, but a worthy one?

I never would have hoped for the SCP team to turn its eyes towards virtual cockpits, since it seems the majority of the space-sim community shares your opinion  ARSPR.  FS2 is so good that I ALMOST forgave it for not having cockpits when i played the retail release.  And when i finished, I still thought that the only thing that could've made it a better game, would've been 3d-cockpits.  For me, a cockpit not only pushes the impression of sitting in a fighter, it adds both scale and depth to what is otherwise a flat plane rushing face-forward through space.  As an avid flight-simmer, I just get rankled by space-sims that think they can get away with ditching the cockpits, just cause Freespace and Wing Commander 4 did it.   Flight sims and racing sims usually feature functional cockpits since the game designers actually have a real-world analogue to *simulate* unlike space-sim developers, but even non-functional cockpits ground the sim experience in the familiar reality of sitting inside a vehicle.

Many cockpit trashers argue that a space vehicle wouldn't have an exposed aircraft-style cockpit, and would rather embed the pilot deep within the ship and surround him with a seamless projection of surrounding space.  (This doesn't change the fact that almost all space-sims, FS2 included, clearly feature aircraft-style cockpits on their ship models)  Rational or no, this bubble idea is just too abstract for my tastes, as are cockpitless vehicle sims of any breed.   

Ah sorry to clutter this technical topic, since the issue being discussed is not 'should cockpits be made'    but i had to.

Anyway, to the artists and coders here at hard-light, I now shake your hands and say you're a big part of the reason PC gaming is great.  Thanks to all.   

[Wanderer]

One thing i really, really dislike in true virtual cockpits is the instrument panel. If taken an example from for example IL-2 (or modern fighter jet sims)... When i played it in 1024 x 768 reso i have absolutely no way of reading the gauges as they got far too blurred. Those were readable only while zooming which isn't exactly practical while dogfighting... Of course in single player mode i could always pause the game while checking the instruments but that just kinda proves my point.

That is virtual cockpit frame would be great sorta like in I-W2 or in that Nuke's example clip.   

Virtual instrument panels not so much (mainly because they are mostly unreadable). If some one claims to be able to make instrument panels, that do not totally clutter the main view and, that are readable from (preferably from 640 x 480) 1024 x 768 upwards then.. cool. But as so far i haven't seen any in fighter sims.

[Nuke]

One thing i really, really dislike in true virtual cockpits is the instrument panel. If taken an example from for example IL-2 (or modern fighter jet sims)... When i played it in 1024 x 768 reso i have absolutely no way of reading the gauges as they got far too blurred. Those were readable only while zooming which isn't exactly practical while dogfighting... Of course in single player mode i could always pause the game while checking the instruments but that just kinda proves my point.

That is virtual cockpit frame would be great sorta like in I-W2 or in that Nuke's example clip.   

Virtual instrument panels not so much (mainly because they are mostly unreadable). If some one claims to be able to make instrument panels, that do not totally clutter the main view and, that are readable from (preferably from 640 x 480) 1024 x 768 upwards then.. cool. But as so far i haven't seen any in fighter sims.

with a track ir or other proper view controls, its actually possible to lean forward and get a closeup glance of the panel without a whole lot of thought. even in the middle of a dogfight. as far as modern combat goes, the cockpits are way to complex to display on small, (relatively) low res screens. its better in ww2 sims, and would probably be even easier in freespace because of the relative incomplexity of the hud.

keyword is situational awareness. the virtual cockpit is really only a part of that. in a fully immersive system of cockpit and view controls, the role of the cockpit is more to provide a frame of reference for your view controls, and secondly to provide gauge information. first rule of air combat is keep youre head on a swivel. view controls through a track ir or other system (freetrack, extra joystick axes, mouse, ect). even then you may get lost as to what direction youre facing. a good cockpit is important here to give you clues as to which way youre looking. you see part of a wing or a reflection in the glass and you know exactly where youre looking.

panel gauges are an extra. i found the track ir useful even in mw2. where the cockpit models are flat shaded, are very simple, and have no gauges. the very simple flat shaded cockpit models did lend themselves very well to view orientation. and the ability to look around improved my combat performance. my plan for panels in nukemod was to provide more technical information that the average freespacer would probibly never be concerned with, rather than just copying gauges off the hud. this also tends to be more realistic, in that the hud is just a simplified version of any other gauges which may be on the panel.

[Mobius]

I never would have hoped for the SCP team to turn its eyes towards virtual cockpits, since it seems the majority of the space-sim community shares your opinion  ARSPR.  FS2 is so good that I ALMOST forgave it for not having cockpits when i played the retail release.  And when i finished, I still thought that the only thing that could've made it a better game, would've been 3d-cockpits.  For me, a cockpit not only pushes the impression of sitting in a fighter, it adds both scale and depth to what is otherwise a flat plane rushing face-forward through space.  As an avid flight-simmer, I just get rankled by space-sims that think they can get away with ditching the cockpits, just cause Freespace and Wing Commander 4 did it.   Flight sims and racing sims usually feature functional cockpits since the game designers actually have a real-world analogue to *simulate* unlike space-sim developers, but even non-functional cockpits ground the sim experience in the familiar reality of sitting inside a vehicle.

Many cockpit trashers argue that a space vehicle wouldn't have an exposed aircraft-style cockpit, and would rather embed the pilot deep within the ship and surround him with a seamless projection of surrounding space.  (This doesn't change the fact that almost all space-sims, FS2 included, clearly feature aircraft-style cockpits on their ship models)  Rational or no, this bubble idea is just too abstract for my tastes, as are cockpitless vehicle sims of any breed.   

Ah sorry to clutter this technical topic, since the issue being discussed is not 'should cockpits be made'    but i had to.

Anyway, to the artists and coders here at hard-light, I now shake your hands and say you're a big part of the reason PC gaming is great.  Thanks to all.  

I somewhat share your opinion. I personally think that cockpits aren't cool in PC games while I love cockpits of games like Ace Combat.  Look elsewhere when you're pointing to a certain location is a feature of consolle games I love. Cockpits aren't intended as "something that makes the HUD look more realistic", they influence the game experience.

[n0s]

fs scp is great the way it is.

but i would also like to see cockpits! it completely changes the experience, like nuke stated before. it  gives you a much more "realistic" impression of the game. for example, i play colin mc rae dirt only in the cockpitview. of course, maybe i would drive better in the chase or bumper view, but i like the feeling. and i'm still not a too bad colin mc rae driver.

what i want to say: cockpits are very important for a realistic experience, like it should be in a sim. and freespace is a great sim.

PS: sorry for OT

[WMCoolmon]

Is there any good time table (as in soon, very soon, maybe within your lifetime  ) for seperate cockpit models?  I'd like to know so I can decide to stop creating cockpits within my models (those that i'm still working on).

Wonder no more

[Zacam]

How are Rendered cockpits going to deal well with the issue of 16x9 vs 4x3 aspect ratio's and the resolutions distoring because the hud and background are 2D expecting to be 4x3 interfacing improperly with a hardware 3D running true?

Can HUD and Background be rendered seperately? Because if so, would this work:

Game (3D) resolution is 1600x900. (16x9)
Draw Background (not as scaled to fit) at 1600x1200 (4x3).
Draw/Overlay HUD as 900x675 (4x3).

Would this resolve targeting box wobbly issues as well as background "moonwalk" issues?

Or create entirely different issues?