The Chinook is smaller than you might think, with a fuselage approx 50ft long, it's shorter than the Apache which is 58ft long (approx). I was surprised by that.
Networking
Today saw successful Combat-Helo net connection between the Leeds UK and Bangkok in Thailand. Getting the link to work through two routers involved the same port forwarding process as is required for BlackShark. Enabling NAT punch-through requires an external service to act as a matchmaking partner. Since the onus is on the host, we'll assume they know what they are doing anyway.
The address-book had some problems with the XML save/update, now fixed. More changes to the colour scheme. A tidy into bar at the bottom rather like the in Falcon3+ and LockOn displaying connection status, camera, mode, fps etc. General tidy work to polish what's been completed already.
Apache HMD
I corrected the Helmet Mounted Display to show the pitch ladder and horizon line as fixed instead of being locked forward (as seen in the YouTube VRCockpit First Look video). Much better for the pilot, now I can comfortably look around and make corrections to the aircraft.
There's more work to do in the cockpit to make front/rear/solo seat modes work. This is my focus for the coming week which will sees that engine start-up procedure working at last.
Game Engines / iPhone
We pre-ordered Unity 3.0 last week since it was on offer. We can squeeze the Combat-Helo PC campaign into a stripped down iPhone game. Fans of Combat-Helo can support PC development and have a little fun pretending to be an Apache gunner for 3 minutes at a time.
I still haven't migrated the PC Leadwerks engine to 2.32 yet. So many issues with the cockpit and camera-picking still. Some surface switches in our pit have a tolerance of 0.05 units and were not being recognised. This tolerance is perhaps too small anyway given floating point inaccuracies. These shouldn't be a problem when I move away from rendering the cockpit in the main world (still on my to-do list). Speaking of which here's the current priority list...
To-do
- Electrical power system and engine start-up
- Master Arm and weapon selection
- Cubic spline interpolation for client character controllers
- Landing gear dynamics (still makes landing difficult)
Combat-Helo : Operation Ouroboros
Operation Counter Insurgency was noted on shots of a splash screen posted a while back. As remarked by one soldier, "It's not very military". This harks back where we didn't have a clue for a project title, it didn't seem to be a priority. For months it remained "Unnamed Helicopter Project" or UHP. Operation Counter Insurgency (OCI) came out of that as something to fill a splash screen. In keeping with the military tradition of using really obscure names (British operations have some really odd ones), Operation Ouroboros represents the endless cycle of conflict in the region. As an ancient symbol of a dragon or serpent that swallows itself, it's unlikely to be trademarked. Above all, it makes the game sound like a sneeze "CHOO".
Bless you.
A photo that sums up a fairly typical start to a Combat-Helo escort mission.
Wow...really huge update. That lenght of Chinook is really surprising. Chinook already looks very promising. Looking forward that engine start-up. Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteShould look good on the new Iphone 4 !
ReplyDeleteOMG they've put a 3 axis Gyro in the new Iphone 4.0 That is definately going to make your Combat Helo for iphone much easier to control and very playable. Not to mention the eye candy with the new processor and four times the Res of the 3Gs. Hope the new SDK you ordered can utilise all of this.
ReplyDeleteBefore you get too happy, iPhone CombatHelo-mk1 is not a simulator but a trimmed campaign with you in the role of the gunner providing CAS across various zones. It's intended for casual play, a few mins at a time.
ReplyDeleteIt's all experimental.
Gyros imply that you play by waving your arms around in the air like fighter pilots in some crazy bar war (to quote Tim Costley). Apple's own design guidelines say most people use their phones at the waist position, under the table. I'm not sure shovelling more electronics into a phone and complaining about the power consumption of Flash. But I can see applications for having gyros beyond games. The gyro in question is a single chip solution like the ones in Wii-motes. I suspect the primary goal here is augmented reality apps that can match up data with the real world.
I wouldn't mind having an MFD repeater app for iPads/iPhones/Androids to select game functions. Especially if they carried buffered video. That would be neat.
Completely agree that the Gyro has many applications but I wouldn't write it off for yours.
ReplyDeleteNot familiar with Tim Costley and there certainly would be no need wave your arms around to get the Gyro working. In fact it will work a little like a trackIr except better. Rotate your phone 10 degrees left (the axis is your body, not the phone)and it would be possible to look out the left window and vice versa right, up and down. Much easier than tilting the damn thing imo. This of course could be a user selectable option for the 'under the table' brigade.
Didnt realise you were just doing just the gunner, thought maybe you'd do a 3rd person perspective v basic sim. BTW I am a huge fan of gravy (not to mention Yorkshire puddings).
You can keep the Ipad, at least I can fit the iphone in my pocket.