End of week progress

A short video of a live fire test courtesy of DEVLEAKS, captured as it happened from my iPhone. Just showing Dave the shell ejection at work.

Update...Gas anyone???

Firing range gas station for the highway that runs through part of it.


This week...

Bad memories of programming Misioneer resurfaced when dealing with variable map scales, orientation and panning. This wasn't so bad as we have a non-resolution dependent display system work with. MPDs are simply 2 units across. So we can plot game units directly to the display simply by multiplying them with a mapscale:

float:mapscale = 2.0 / (Self.MapRanges[Self.TSDScaleIndex] * 1000);

Yesterday was spent adding waypoint rendering which mostly consisted of adding the vector symbols to render each type of waypoint symbol. Each symbol requires a mask for blanking the map or video underlay.

AD asked me what some of the symbols meant from the shot I posted yesterday, "AP" was supposed to the "RP" for Release Point (I've changed the "R" character to be more recognisable). See shot below.

The problem I have with this map is that the symbols are hard to see when sat back. Unless you stick the ruddy map in your face it's hard to tell some blobs apart. I tried making them bigger but then they start to overlap when you have tight clusters of waypoints. Then there is the issue of layering. The trick to rendering maps like these is to draw your route first (lines) then symbols. Only connecting lines to waypoints flagged as being 'on current route'. Adding waypoints to a helicopter involves a message to the Helicopter.Navigation object, (Vec3, type, speed_knots, label).

All helos can be loaded with routes for player and AI flights, it allows for players to send their routes to other helos as a message stream if we want to implement that later. The command tent mission terminal will use this same function to upload a mission route to the helo. The ground map is scheduled for April hence the need to get the symbology done).

More 3D Art - Ammo boxes and obs tower

I didn't take these in great lighting conditions, the ground lights are still a novelty so I can't resist playing with them. FARPs now have 30mm ammo boxes, both open and closed in addition the Apache will be getting shell casings ejected  from the cannon today and if I have time, look again at the blurred rotor blades.

I think part of the problem with the blurred rotors is that they are supposed to have transparent parts added through a multiplicative blend (not alpha), but they also have parts of the hub and connectors on the model so I think they just need to be the 'blur' component and nothing else. But also it's an animated 'skinned' mesh so it cones upward with lift.

I think the best way forward is to hide this element on the model (in the LUA code) and show it when rotor RPM is above a certain rate so both the normal rotor and the blended one is visible.

The firing range tower stuck on my mini test site. You can mount the stairs but getting inside is a bit of a trick. I'll see if we can't fix a static ground camera in there.

Checking ballistics visually. Normally you won't see this.